The French Baker's War, page 25
The memory of the first time he met Mireille blossoms in his thoughts. He never told anyone about it—he and Mireille kept it to themselves fearing it would break a fairy-tale spell if shared. Back then he believed that, even though his father frequently labelled love “a sloppy blend of insanity and stupidity.”
Not Mireille’s love.
The priest repositions himself in his chair and pulls his coat sleeves, first the left, then the right, over his wrists. His expression settles to a pious calm, and his eyelids half-close like he’s prepared for André’s confession. But then the clergyman gives André a serene look, aggressively saintly, and André feels compelled to justify himself.
“I saw her outside a café much like this. She’d smile, but she wouldn’t talk to me. It took two weeks to get her to speak. I waited there every morning. She would be carrying a tray of pastries and had trouble opening the door, so I’d rush to open it for her, always with a bonjour, hoping for an answer. Every day I offered to carry the tray, but Mireille wouldn’t let me. When it rained, I walked beside her, holding an umbrella over her. She only looked more annoyed each time, but I didn’t let that put me off. She told me later it was because she was angry at herself for falling so easily, too. I suppose if she’d never spoken to me, I’d still be there. I was that stubborn, she called me ‘her summer flu.’
“One morning, I couldn’t meet her because of a problem at the pension where I was staying—another resident was being thrown out for lack of payment, and had barricaded the hallway outside his room. I couldn’t get past. I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t back down until I told him why I needed to leave so urgently.” André lets a hint of a grin escape. “He let me through. That was when France seemed full of romantics.”
He pauses so the priest has a chance to say something, but the man remains stoically blank. He should anoint André’s forehead and give him three “Our Fathers” as penance and be done with it.
Just when André decides talking to the priest is useless as whispering to Notre-Dame’s spire, the clergyman rests his arms on the table and gives André a nod, encouraging him to continue.
“When I showed up at the café, Mireille was still there. Finally, she spoke to me. She’d been worried when I hadn’t shown up. Her voice was so beautiful and clear it sounded like singing, and I could smell lilacs on her. I was ecstatic and nervous, all at once. It took another week before I could ask her to join me for a walk.”
Père Blais exhales a puff of approval. “There you go. There’s your faith: Love. If you believe in nothing else, believe that with love, stars can shine through your soul.”
As wonderful a sentiment as that’s meant to be, one Mireille would agree with without hesitation, André is not sure he does. “What’s love when the other person’s not there?”
“It’s an act of faith that it exists, even when it can’t be seen, like air. Some would argue it’s more important whom we love and how we love than who loves us.”
His words strangle André’s breath. No, the mistake was not holding on tight enough.
Père Blais shakes his head. “But never mind. I won’t reveal your reason to the others, but let’s stick to the plan. You did right coming to us during these times of spiritual emptiness. Think of the lives we’ll save from their bombs,” he discreetly points at the factory, “and those wretched souls working inside.”
Callous as it is, André wants to say he can only think of one of those souls. He’ll leave the rest of them in someone else’s hands.
A girl carrying a basket on a bicycle passes in front of the checkpoint, and even in the fading light, André recognizes the teenage girl from the Resistance.
The sentries step out of their box, and one says something to her while the other chuckles. The girl climbs off the bicycle and casually walks back. She beams with the charm of a sunrise in May as she coquettishly lifts a corner of the cloth draped over the basket to allow them a peek inside. After more banter, the teenage girl rolls open the cloth and invites the soldiers to help themselves, which they eagerly do. Like starving jackals, they start gobbling down the pastries André baked.
A canvas-covered military truck rumbles down the street towards them. The two sentries, all at once serious as pallbearers, throw down the treats and shoo the girl away.
André and Père Blais grab their knapsacks and hurry out of the café.
Suddenly the teenage girl falls, the bicycle tumbling to the muddy ground with her, right in the vehicle’s path. Just when the truck’s about to roll over her, rusty brakes grind, and it skids to a stop with a hand’s length to spare.
A sentry helps her up while the other guard moves her bicycle out of the way. She slowly rises to her feet, then falters, stalling for time, while André and the priest cross the street and stealthily climb into the back of the truck. The smells of gasoline and musty canvas are so strong André can taste them.
The girl picks up her bicycle and the basket and carries on.
One sentry returns to the box and opens the boom barrier, as the other one waves the vehicle through. It travels up the road to the factory, where the driver, a German soldier, climbs out, stomps over to the door, and forcefully knocks.
André and his devout comrade jump out of the truck and take cover behind it.
A loud horn blows from inside the factory. A soldier with a sidearm exits, and dozens of prisoners tramp out after him in a single file to the truck. Another German follows, rifle at the ready.
Back at the checkpoint, the shy man from the Resistance creeps up behind a sentry, and in a flash, slits the German’s neck in a fluid, brutal motion, in spite of having one arm. The other guard flies out of the sentry box, but before he can raise his rifle, the teenage girl pops up at his back, grabs his wrist, and flips him onto the dirt. The shy man finishes him with an expert slice.
The girl snatches a pistol strapped inside the basket and picks up the rifles, and they hustle up to the factory.
André and the priest spring from behind the truck and start shooting at the guards. Prisoners scream and scatter and dive to the ground. The driver attempts to wrestle the gun from Père Blais, but André shoots him in the head, and he falls down dead. André’s mind drains until he’s only aware of his physical senses. His mouth fills with the sour taste of beer gone bad, although he can’t remember the last time he drank any. He takes down the guard carrying the rifle, while the one with the sidearm hides beside some rusty equipment.
The girl and the shy man dash up to André and Père Blais. The nearest perimeter guards run towards them, firing their MP40s at everything that moves. Bullets make pinging sounds piercing the truck’s metal chassis.
André scrutinizes the prisoners for Mireille, and doesn’t see her. He waited too long. He should’ve come on his own soon as he knew where she was. He motions for the teenage girl to take out the approaching perimeter guard while he fires at the guard hiding behind the machinery.
At last the guard is shot, by whom is difficult to know in the confusion—he falls to his knees before toppling over face first into mud. André uses this as his opportunity to make a break for the factory door, when another German soldier comes out, sees him, and gets off a couple of rounds before retreating inside again, slamming the door after him.
It’s locked. André shoves his hand in the knapsack, pulls out a lump of plastic explosive, and molds it around the handle. Jamming in a detonator pencil, he takes cover behind the truck again. He thinks of Gilles and knows, had he had the chance, he’d be right beside them.
Another perimeter guard barrels their way—now two Nazis bastards are shooting at them. Père Blais and the girl return fire, and the guards hit the ground, popping up to snipe at them any chance they get.
The explosive detonates with a loud bang. The door falls inward and there are more screams from the building. André runs in, and prisoners scatter when he exchanges shots with three German soldiers.
So badly does he want to find Mireille, every one of his muscles burns, straining to run up to her the minute he sees her. His eyes scan back and forth searching for her, but the Germans maintain their non-stop barrage, so André has no choice but to hunker down next to a brick pillar.
Outside, Père Blais steps out from behind the truck and kills a perimeter guard, while the teenage girl shoots at the other one, keeping him occupied. Despite bullets hissing by in erratic bursts, she skillfully aims, steadies her hand with the other, and slows her breathing. BANG! The guard drops like an anvil.
André remains pinned down in the factory as the three guards move to flank him. The stink of gunpowder makes it hard to breathe. A bullet whizzes by his left ear. He finds himself praying again, forgetting his claims of no longer being religious. If he’s to die, at least let Mireille go free.
The priest and the girl charge in, the deafening salvo from their guns announcing their arrival, this gun battle more ferocious than the one outside.
Now the Resistance has the Germans busy, prisoners risk escaping through the windows, but André doesn’t see Mireille. He throws the knapsack with the rest of the explosives at the teenage girl’s feet and bolts back through the door.
André sprints to the rear of the factory where bodies spill out windows onto the ground, then rise up disoriented, as if from a deep lake, to flee for their lives to the forest.
He searches for his wife. His heart lurches when he spots her scrambling towards the trees. He calls out, “Mireille,” but she keeps to her beeline. “Mireille!” he yells again, but she doesn’t stop.
A handful of perimeter guards appear from around the side of the building and start shooting the escapees—terror rises to André’s throat as they drop. This can’t be for nothing. It can’t end this way.
He tries to go after her, but he’s trapped again by a volley of bullets. Mireille glows in the truck’s headlights and floats between the trees.
Out of the forest, the white-haired woman and the mechanic materialize leading a dozen men. The Maquis! The perimeter guards now concentrate their weapons on the newcomers. The woman takes out two Germans, but one of their bullets hits the mechanic in the shoulder. He stumbles back towards the trees, but is shot again, falling to the ground as though his clothes no longer have anything inside them.
The white-haired woman crawls over. She lies beside him for a moment, bullets kicking up dirt around her, and rests a hand on his chest. Then she scrambles over to the trees, and seemingly oblivious to everything, fires with a reckless vengeance at anyone in a German uniform.
André runs towards the forest. “Mireille!” he screams over and over. All of a sudden, he hits the wet ground hard. Only when he struggles to stand does he notice blood leaking from a bullet hole in his leg. He manages a few steps before falling again, his eyes not wavering from where his wife has disappeared—she’s right here, not a dozen paces from him.
He feels his arms wrap around her, their lips touching, and the all-encompassing euphoria of being together pulses through him.
Then she withers away along with everything else.
Père Blais and the teenage girl exit the factory without the knapsacks, their guns firing at any Germans still able to shoot, and run like hell as the building explodes spectacularly in oranges, and yellows, and clouds of black.
•
The pâtisserie barely exists in the dim light of a new moon.
There’s loud knocking at the alley door, and Émilie’s quick to open it. André stumbles in, supported by the white-haired woman and Père Blais.
“Here.” Émilie points at a chair, and the woman and the priest ease André down. He’s covered in blood and mud, and his eyes are glassy and rolling back in their sockets. Her core fills with a familiar foreboding. A human being can withstand so much, yet perish over so little.
“I saw her,” André mumbles. “I saw Mireille.”
“He’s been patched up, but there was a lot of blood.” The white-haired woman’s expression collapses like she’s lost control of her features.
“We removed the bullet,” the priest says.
The Resistance fighters go to leave, and Émilie follows them to the door where the priest nods to her. He and the woman join a girl and a young man, each looking depleted as candles on the last night of Hanukkah. They remain in the alley for a moment, oblivious to their cuts and wounds, their muddy and ripped clothes, the blood, and bow their heads. The girl is especially upset—she dries her tears with the sleeve of her coat.
Someone hasn’t returned. Émilie sees the mechanic Monsieur Durand spoke of so highly when they were under the catacombs isn’t here. She feels her heart close around her own grief.
The fighters go their separate ways. Émilie imagines Père Blais going back to the church, the girl to her parents, and the woman home to an ill mother waiting up for her, rosary beads gripped as firmly as her arthritic hands will allow.
The young man is the last to exit the alley. He scrutinizes the street before slinking off, hugging buildings, to a flat spartan as a crypt and just as quiet. There he’ll grieve all his losses alone. Sharing them is too much like shedding clothes until you’re naked and shivering.
Émilie fetches a cup of water. She brings it to André’s lips, but he pushes it away. He mumbles incoherently, the only words slicing through the fog are: “Is she here? Did she come back?”
“No.”
“I have to—”
“You’re in no condition.”
“She’s free. She made it out. They couldn’t have shot her, not after everything— I have to find her.”
André attempts to stand, but drops back into the chair to stare off in the distance, his eyes half-shut. A moan rises from him, ripped from inside as though by a jagged hook, growing louder until it fills the shop. His body will heal, but can the same be said for his mind?
As André wails, Émilie falls to her knees and lifts one of his bloody hands to her cheek.
THIRTY-THREE
Thursday, December 2, 1943
Émilie takes the cloth, warm and clammy, from André’s forehead, soaks it in a bowl of cool water set on the floor, and tenderly blots his face. He stirs, mumbles, and falls back to sleep.
She stayed next to him all night. Although she wanted to find a doctor, she argued herself out of it because of the difficult questions that would be asked about a bullet wound. She was going to go for Monsieur Durand, but André slept so restlessly, she worried if he woke and found himself alone, he might do himself harm in his delirious and despondent state.
The things he muttered in his sleep were troubling, of revenge and killing. At the stillest hour of the night when something was scratching in the walls, André settled, only to thrash around violently as though being burned alive.
Frédéric watches while she tends to his father, the boy’s expression perfectly reflecting his concern, deep and sharp. Any other time, this would be welcome progress. He wouldn’t go to bed and was close to tears whenever Émilie mentioned it. Fearing a tantrum, she let him stay up. Now he sits at the table like a guard at his post, clutching the Guignol to his chest as a shield. Against what, she has no idea.
What this unfortunate child has endured these last weeks. Émilie can’t rebuke herself more for it. She believes the love and attention she’s shown him has slightly eased whatever he’s going through, but this could just be wishful thinking. And isn’t wishful thinking simply diluted hope for those who’ve had it beaten out of them?
As she changes André’s bandages, the odour of blood reaches her. The bullet hole, round and black as a dilated pupil, shows no signs of infection. Her fingers brush against his skin, its softness surprising her, while his blond hairs are wiry as a scouring brush. She fights an impulse to lie beside him and take him in her arms.
André breathes deeply, his lips slightly puffing out each time he exhales. The urge to taste him on her mouth again rises in her like a fever. She can’t forget his kisses of hazelnut and vanilla. An exhilarating energy pulses through her, joining her to him, and for a second, she feels the shock of love once more.
Then it crashes down on her that André can’t be experiencing it the same way—she’s hiding in a fantasy. No matter what’s happened, there’s nothing between them. All they were doing was bleeding in each other’s wounds.
Émilie picks up the bowl of water and retreats to the sink to empty it.
Since André is sleeping more soundly, she tiptoes downstairs and stands at the front door, looking out the window at the vacant street filled with birds fighting for specks under the first glint of dawn. Now’s the time to bring back a doctor or the old bookseller, but she can’t move. She stays there until people start passing by, although few notice her. For all those times wanting to be invisible, here’s when she demands to be seen—her survival shrieks to be acknowledged. She won’t be made worthless again.
She hears André struggle on the stairs, and her sight returns as if the curtain is rising on a third act.
“You should be resting.”
He waves her off, shuffles towards the door, and falters. Émilie offers her arm as support. “Let’s go up—”
“She’s out there.” André reaches for the door, but Émilie stops him.
“I’ll keep watch. I promise.”
He shakes his head, too weak to object more than that. “Is everyone...” he begins, but it fades in his throat. He coughs with a racking spasm and he can barely ask, “How many died?”
Before Émilie can answer, André turns his face. He knows she’s withholding something from him—the smell of a lie’s on her again.
She remembers her grandfather, who survived the Battle of Verdun, telling her, “Truth has killed more people than all the wars, it’s certainly caused more suffering.”
He didn’t live to see this war.
