With Each New Dawn, page 17
Melancholy shrouded Kate as a cloud covered the sun. She’d made Celeste’s house her home. There, she helped with household chores when she had no courier duties, and one of Celeste’s sons seemed like the younger brother she’d never had. She’d even learned to make a few French dishes, and everyone praised her crêpes.
Nothing to do, though, but accept her circumstances. Miss G would say this presented an opportunity to rest, but Kate had plenty of energy. Out back sprawled a woodpile, so she found a wood box faded an odd shade of blue—something to keep her busy.
Back and forth, she filled the cavernous wooden trunk and low slung iron arms beside the fireplace. Every load lightened her spirit. On her next-to-last trip, words came to her, silent but strong.
Your real life is hidden with Christ in God—last Sunday’s text in Celeste’s small home church, read with great enthusiasm by an elderly pastor. The French version helped Kate rethink the meaning, and now she lifted her eyes to the spires just as sunshine broke through the cloud cover.
“I’m like you, a long time in the making. But there you stand, whole and beautiful. I must not let this lost feeling overwhelm me.”
Chapter Eighteen
T
o Kate’s left, a cavernous desk monopolized an alcove in the parish house. When she sat down and picked up a newspaper, the writing mesmerized her.
“L’Echo de la Montagne” and another smaller paper titled “Le-Chambon Pages” brought to mind the Presbytery and Linden.
“The confessing church and its persecuted ministers. We must care for foreign peoples, as Holy Writ instructs.
“Sunday June 23, Pastors Trocmé and Theis preach: The duty of Christians—to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the Spirit—We will resist whenever our adversaries demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the Gospel. We will do so without fear but also without pride and without hate.
“The Pastorales, our regular meetings, inform Pastors of the Plateau.They educate their parishioners of our activities through sermons and Bible study groups.”
This morning proved that Kate attained to no such standard. One haughty German officer mocked her, and she was ready to kill him.
“July 1941 - Detention camps.
Gurs. 12,000 internees, many transported east. Still 7,000. 90% Juifs.
Rivesaltes, created January, ’41. 8,000 families. 3,000 children. 3,000 Juifs.
Noé, 17,000 sick, old, infirm.
Récébédou, same as Noé.
Internment Camps.
Vernet - 3,200 men, 25% Jews, political prisoners, refugees.
Argeles - 200 Juifs. 700 Spanish cripples
Rieucros – 400 undesirables (feminine)
“Cripples ... undesirables ...” Kate’s whisper sounded hoarse to her own ears. Many at the Presbytery would qualify.
Doctors and charities reported living quarters badly constructed, no windows. Huts 50-60 meters long for nearly 100 internees. People sleep on straw, rarely changed. Filth. Rats. No disinfectant. Loathsome latrines.
No changes of clothes, worn for six months. No access to adequate water for washing. Dreadful stink and continual infection risk from rats, flies, mosquitoes.
Poor food. Hardly 800 calories daily. Cold conditions.
Children – only milk coffee in morning. Rice twice a week. Swede and turnip soup. Children weak and nervy. Dysentery, tuberculosis, high death rate. No medication, unstocked hospitals.
At least the final section showed something being done.
Actions:
Opening of Abric for internment camp children
November ’42 - opening of Faidoli, same mission
November ’42 -L’atelier Cévenol– workshop to teach woodcutting to young men
December ’42 - Swiss Aid rents two farms,
1. teach modern agriculture techniques.
2. Alleviate foodstuff shortage. Run by Swiss national and wife, former nurse at Rivesaltes.”
So many people, and by now, many of them likely inhabited German prisons or camps.
Undesirables.
Kate’s head swam with visions of frightened parents and lost children—children like Linden. Deep in thought, she grasped for some way to aid them when the vicar suddenly stood beside her. She startled up.
“Forgive me. I couldn’t stop reading about the camps.”
He leaned on the doorjamb and wiped his brow with a kerchief.
“No doubt conditions have worsened since those reports. Gurs, where many perished in the Spanish conflict, has been reopened. Thousands have been hauled to Drancy, near Paris, but most on to Germany. His voice dropped. “To death camps.”
“You know this for certain?”
“Informers have no reason to lie. One camp they call Auschwitz.” The hall clock marked time. “And as if the Chantiers de Jeunesse were not enough, Vichy established the Service du Travail Obligitaire on February sixteenth.”
“All French men are to take the places of conscripted Germans. Young men refuse, and many come to us. A large group from Bolbec, whose Pastor once lived near here, has joined the Résistance.”
“This is not good?”
“Yes, but also dangerous. Who can tell what is good any more?” He raised his palms. “The whole world has turned around. What we once thought evil masquerades as right.”
“I stayed in Le Chambon for a while.”
“You know about the YMCA? A man named Charles Guillon settled volunteers in Camp du Joubert. Some young Jewish men work with them in cooperation with the Maquisards.”
He pulled long fingers through his thinning hair. “These times require so much discernment, with enormous consequences and few, if any, parameters. I long for simple Sunday sermons and visiting the sick.” His limbs sagged. “Forgive me, but you know how to listen.”
“I’ve learned a great deal today.”
“You may be hungry?”
Suddenly, Kate realized that toting wood had worked up her appetite.
“I’ll brew some tea.” He entered the kitchen. Through the hallway window, the spires shone like a guidon bathed in sunset.
Hot tisane, thick baguette slices, jam, and a plate of cheese made her stomach growl, and a smile softened the vicar’s angular face. “You neglected your needs for knowledge?”
“I guess so, but how can we help the internees?”
“Outside aid and more food drops. But making a difference inside the camps is impossible unless one knows a worker.”
Overhead scuffling sent his forefinger to his lips. “We give temporary shelter to as many as possible. You may never know the impact of your deliveries.”
“My English and American friends would give if they knew—”
“I’ll provide an address to give them.”
“I mustn’t send any mail.”
“Ah yes. If you leave their addresses, I will contact them to send their donations via the Quakers. Don’t worry—I travel far and wide and mail letters from different areas. Every small gift helps.” Deep forehead wrinkles belied his hopeful words.
“It’s no coincidence the Resistance beckoned you on this full moon. I would guess you carry news of a new commander coming to set up military training, a Spanish woman, expert in guerilla warfare.” He took a sip of tea and rubbed his temples. “Also, there is word—”
He stared above her head. “One of our agents has turned on us—for how long, we don’t know. They call him—or her—la Corbeille. Every time I hear a crow call now, I think of this. And I must admit, I hesitated when Celeste spoke with me. For all I know, you could be this double agent.”
“True.”
He gave a hollow laugh. “Well, if you are, you can kill me, and then my troubles will be over. If you aren’t, then beware—it seems this crow crosses France like a dance floor.”
La Corbeille. Wasn’t it Iowa crows that pierced Addie’s cherries in early July one year?
“In the end, we will fight. I find comfort in the Psalms, where King David confronts vile enemies who kill les innocents. And the other day I realized again our Lord’s all-encompassing love, when He healed the daughter of a Roman soldier, a man who surely had taken innocent life.”
He eyed Kate’s empty plate. “Pack some food for your journey.”
Out the window, the cathedral disappeared in the darkness, yet its outline remained in Kate’s mind. She refilled her cup. The well-steeped concoction eased the pressure in her head, so she started her list of names and addresses.
•
“You think our agent believes?” Philippe scraped snow onto their campfire.
“You mean, the way we do?”
The woman they just took over the mountains through bitter cold had faith in the Allied cause. Chattering teeth, raw skin, too thin a coat—but she refused help until she had to let Philippe rub her legs before the fire. Even then, she turned her head away.
Beautiful Sancha rested with the saints, having sacrificed her life for the Chosen. This British agent, blue eyes afire with intensity and wild tawny hair massed under a beret that offered no protection from frostbite, was willing to give up everything, too.
But did she believe in the gift of forgiveness? After he and Philippe killed Sancha’s murderers, that forgiveness embraced Domingo like the plant tincture Maman boiled to soothe cuts and deep bruises, or her slippery elm and aloe cream for sheep sores.
In this budding season of Paque, did the agent believe in the restoration of life, redemption, and the resurrection? The fire sputtered out, and Domingo would have shrugged away things too deep to utter in this wet cold, but Philippe waited for his reply.
“Others would have turned back, but she lunged into the cold—is that not faith? You led us well, Philippe.”
“It seemed heaven itself fought us. But after five attempts, we simply had to succeed.”
Heaven itself—Lately, Heaven seemed adrift and whimsical to Domingo. Yet, the Creator protected them through this long winter, the coldest he recalled.
The wind increased, but an hour down the trail, a south breeze carried a putrefying odor. Some animal must have died. A while later, Domingo decided several animals surely perished together in a terrible storm, and their carcasses thawed a bit today. With each step, the stench grew.
“Only a couple of kilometers left to that pass I used last winter.” Philippe lowered his head like a bull and plunged ahead, but the smell almost gagged Domingo. He recited the past weeks’ events for a diversion.
He’d longed to return to his valley before this latest series of trips. Due to treacherous snows, the final one wound through unknown territory. Never had a border delivery been thwarted so many times. But finally, he and Philippe prevailed.
The agent balked when they turned back the last time, for she carried vital information for London. But fierce winds blocked trails and froze noses and toes.
Philippe overruled her and sought shelter—a cave away from the wind, where they lighted a fire and waited. The snow stopped, but an hour after they started walking again, a wall of white swirled around them like thick soup. When the woman’s legs became raw, Philippe hovered over her in yet another fire’s glow.
Why did she come so ill prepared? Geography lessons taught Domingo that Great Britain lacked mountains like these, but cold, its citizens ought to know. Maybe the Nazis outed the agent’s circuit, and she fled with nothing but her clothing.
Even on their last attempt, Philippe considered retreating. But when the wind died down, the agent swayed on her wobbly legs and proclaimed, “Only a few more hours—I almost know the way myself.”
When they finally left her at a safe village, Philippe suggested they try a southern pass. But Domingo didn’t know which was worse, the formidable snow or this overwhelming odeur dégueulasse. He would never even use that word in public.
He choked back a cough. “That atrocious smell—what is it?”
“Gurs.”
The name knocked against Domingo’s breastbone—this was where Ander died. Philippe waited a few steps ahead.
“You mean—?”
Philippe’s pointing finger replied. Below them, organized rows of wooden buildings resembled felled trees against the snow. Philippe pulled his kerchief over his nose.
Gurs. After Ander’s death, that same syllable rolled from Aitaita’s tongue. Now it roiled in Domingo’s stomach.
“Someone you know perished here?”
“My brother, after Catalonia fell. He survived the fighting and started home, but the French built this camp for the International Brigade and sent him here.”
No use detailing the experience—straggling survivors brought back word, and Aitaita translated—dysentery or pneumonia wasted Ander’s precious life. On the day the news came, something altered in Aitaita, as though saying the words meant he bore a portion of the blame.
That spring, he shrank back from carrying the Olentzero, a straw figure left over from the ancient jentillak, in the Saint Joseph the Workman’s Day parade. And in the local summer festival, he refused to take his place as one of the bertsolariak, the revered storytellers. Always before, he improvised rhymes with the best of them.
Combined with line after line of low windowless structures, these memories ignited a dark sickness in Domingo. Far from home and family, Ander, whose name meant warrior, breathed his last. Dear Ander taught him the valley, the hills, the paths, and how to hunt and care for the sheep. Domingo still sensed his presence, like Aitaita’s.
That Ander now lived in glory seemed paltry comfort as Domingo gaped at this place that wounded his mother forever and diminished the luster in Aitaita’s eyes. For weeks afterward, Maman inhabited a shell, cooking, tending her garden, picking herbs, and kneading bread, a mere remnant of her former self.
Papa, Ander, Aitaita, and Sancha. Aitaita had been ready to leave this earth, but not Papa or Ander, and surely not Sancha. But Père Gaspard maintained that their deaths also afflicted the Almighty, and heaven grieved along with Domingo’s family.
A wind gust strengthened the foulness. Domingo crushed his fist against Philippe’s shoulder, and Philippe turned downhill so fast Domingo raced to keep up.
Down, down, down, faster and faster they scrabbled through rocky outgrowths, slippery inclines, and fearsome brambles. Up a bit, then down again, two dots in the wilderness, strong and evasive as gazelles.
Anything to get away.
Philippe never paused, but ran even faster. Finally, he paused and gasped. “They brought German prisoners and common criminals here at the war’s outset. Now the Chosen fill it.
“Nearly a year ago, I passed closer and saw some children and trembling old women, their ribs accordion pleats, their bellies protruded. Some witless soldiers constructed a two-storied latrine, so prisoners carry their own excrement out in carts.”
He swiped at his nose. “When the wind turns, the smell is not so bad.”
Cold sweat traced the back of Domingo’s neck, and he wanted to scream, “Enough—no more talk of the camp.” He thrashed into the bushes and braced against a tree. A cavernous breath quelled the distaste in his throat, and the urge passed. He leaned back to study the heavens, blue and glorious in spite of this mangy earth.
A new determination rose in him. He’d always thought to travel south some day, to view the famous tree at Guernica. But now, he reconsidered what it would mean to stand before his people’s emblem, the lone tree that withstood such fierce shelling from the Luftwaffe.
The South reeked of violence, and he’d seen enough for a lifetime. Aitaita’s recollection of the tree sufficed for him. Above all, Domingo longed to embrace the sweet scent of his own valley. That alone could satisfy. He found Philippe, and they took off, men strong to run a race, oblivious to everything but the call of home.
Chapter Nineteen
K
ate knew she ought to stop for a few minutes, yet the road spread before her, inviting her on. At least she knew her way, having biked the route between Maurice’s headquarters and Clermont-Ferrand so many times. Her raincoat and gloves, well used during the past weeks since she met up with him again, kept the sharp March wind at bay.
Moonlight presented a trail off the road, so she stretched her legs, munched a hard biscuit, and remounted her bicycle. A dark blur crossed the road—probably a raccoon or fox. Ten minutes later, she circled the back way into an abandoned chateau garden.
To her relief, a guard stepped out of some bushes. He recognized her, no need to prove her identity with passwords. Often, one of his replacements called for the password even though he’d seen her several times.
Down a dank, creaky stairway and through a maze of tunneled hallways, Kate gave her own personal tap at the door. Maurice opened it—his eyes had shrunk back into his head even more since her last visit, and his latest instructions came in ghost murmurs as furtive as this cellar room.
“We’ve issued you a new identity card for this mission, and you must go by train, almost to Toulouse.” He held out the card, and Kate perused her new persona as a French teacher.
Nom: Dumont
Prénoms: Marguerite
Profession: Institutrice
Nationalité: française
Née le: 16 Juin, 1919
“Leave your bicycle behind the Issiore station. In addition to the Auvergne Maquis, I work with another unit near Tarbes. You will deliver a vital message almost all the way to Spain.”
Tiny somber lines around his lips and his chicory-laced breath seemed as familiar as his tone. Maurice laid out her mission in a terse sequence Kate had become used to. The thought of leaving gave her a fearful twinge.
Almost all the way to Spain.
“Recent Gestapo patrols captured the circuit leader at your destination, but regardless, messages must be delivered. Chances are, another leader will rise by the time you make contact. Yet we must face the truth—once the enemy finds a worker, two more may fall. Be wary as a vole hunting food.”
