The French Baker's War, page 5
More knocking, insistent now. It echoes up the stairs, deepening as it travels, until it booms through the room.
Émilie creeps down to the shop. On the last step, she peeks out and sees an old man peering in through the window in the front door.
She jumps back.
•
Monsieur Durand shields his eyes, trying again to glimpse the unfamiliar woman he’s just spotted inside. Despite the sign saying fermé, he reaches for the handle to let himself in when he’s startled by a voice behind him saying his name. He spins around, sees André and reddens, embarrassed at being caught.
“My apologies. I was worried. You’re shut on a Wednesday. Has something happened? Is it Frédéric? Is Mireille—”
“She’s gone away for a while.”
“But just now—”
“If you don’t mind, Monsieur.” Any passion the baker had in his tone that morning has dried up.
“I saw a strange woman on the stairs.”
André unlocks the door and goes in. “You were mistaken.” He starts to close the door.
Monsieur Durand puts his hand out to stop him. This doesn’t make sense. He’s never known André to be untruthful. If asked, Monsieur Durand would wager his own reputation on the younger man’s impeachable one. But he knows what he just saw: a woman on the stairs who isn’t Mireille.
“What’s going on, André?” Monsieur Durand’s hand stays rooted on the door. The baker looks at it as if willing it to disintegrate.
Small feet scamper above them, and both men look to the ceiling. André tries to shut the door again, but Durand says, “Would a mother leave her child behind? Would Mireille leave Frédéric?”
André weighs the situation.
His face drops, then he opens the door wider.
•
Monsieur Durand moves his feet out of the way of the route Frédéric is traveling on the floor with a woodblock truck. He sits across from Émilie at the table, André between them at its head. Anyone not acquainted with the circumstance would be forgiven in presuming they’re about to play a dire jeu de cartes. Fittingly, their expressions give nothing away.
“A strange affair indeed,” Monsieur Durand says as his opening bid.
André’s jaw clenches. “I’ve asked everyone, but no one will tell me anything.”
“That’s not surprising. It’s difficult to answer when intentions are unclear. Who knows the reason why you’re asking? Or for whom?” Monsieur Durand refrains from adding that the wrong word uttered to the wrong person has caused tongues to be excised. But surely his dear friend knows this. If he didn’t before, he does now.
André disappears behind the folding screen. When he reappears, he places a ball before them on the table: Mireille’s apron. “It was on the street.”
“The street?” Monsieur Durand spreads it on the table, waiting for an explanation, but André turns away. “Maybe there’s been an accident? Have you been to the—”
“No! She’s not— She can’t be!”
“She may be hurt.”
All at once such a possibility appears to crush André. His eyes dart wildly and his face blanches in horror. “What if she’s...” The question dries up in his mouth. He cannot say out loud what must be his worst fear. “What do I do without her? What will the boy...” André shakes his head. “No! I have to find her.”
He looks over at Frédéric who’s watching, his face growing concerned. Seeing his father give him a tight-lipped nod, the boy resumes pushing his truck to its destination. The child’s innocence cuts Monsieur Durand to the marrow.
“I’ll make enquiries. Someone must know something and is willing to tell.” Monsieur Durand turns to Émilie. “And you? Ending up here out of nowhere?” He tries to decipher her, and she quickly looks away. He feels his brow wrinkle. “You’re Jewish,” he says cautiously.
Émilie gauges him with suspicion. And rightly so. A stranger is of no more consequence than a fly flitting past.
André gives her a small nod, and she answers, “Yes.”
“So you’re what he’s been hiding.” Monsieur Durand huffs with frustration at their predicament. A dear friend is missing, and a Jewish woman turns up here. While he’s a firm believer in the existence of balance in nature, this is absurd.
Émilie lifts her head, waiting for his verdict, looking resigned to whatever it is.
Monsieur Durand looks at the bruise below her eye, but thinks better of asking about it. He’s not unaware of the hate targeting these people, convinced it prospers in failed societies where lies go undisputed. It’s women like her who bear the brunt of it.
“She has no one,” André tells him, more apology than explanation.
“No one? What a distressing condition to be the sole word on a page.” Monsieur Durand leans towards her in his chair. “Then we must whisk you away from here. That won’t be an easy matter.” He leans back. “No family? Hmm.”
“I have a family.” Émilie takes a long swallow of air. “A mother. A father.” She flinches almost imperceptibly. She’s regretting telling them. Who are they to hear of her loved ones? How can they understand? They’re not Jewish; they’re not seen as enemies.
Silence overtakes them. Monsieur Durand hopes she sees his and André’s empathy. Too often people’s compassion sits below the surface, profoundly felt but seldom acted upon.
Then, with a sigh, Émilie starts again. “We were taken together to Drancy.” She lowers her eyes, and repositioning herself in her chair, traces the table’s woodgrain with her index finger.
“And you ran off? So I see.” Monsieur Durand looks at André who blinks, his forehead creasing just above the bridge of his nose.
“I was healthy and had a skill. They made me work in a factory sewing uniforms, flags, banners, dresses for their women.”
“Ah, you’re a seamstress.”
“Yes, Monsieur.” She looks up at them, a tiny light dances in her eyes. “Before the war I worked in an atelier in Paris, but the couturière closed her shop. It was no longer a time for fashion. They were taking me to the trains with the others who were no longer of use.”
“And back to Drancy?” Monsieur Durand prompts. Looking at her face, he can tell something ghastly must have happened.
“Perhaps.”
“A detention centre for undesirables,” he explains to André. Realizing the insult, he turns back to her. “Apologies, Mademoiselle. I meant no offense.”
“There are worse places than Drancy.” The spark in her eyes goes out. She looks about to speak again when André interrupts.
“Your hand. I didn’t realize you were hurt.”
Émilie follows their gaze to her damaged hand, now on the table. “I got too close to a machine weaving the material they need, and my hand was caught in its belt.” She hides it under the table. “I was feeling faint. I was careless. They told me I was lucky my arm wasn’t torn from its socket, as though I’d won a prize. I assured them over and over I could go on working, but they still sent me away.”
“May I?” Monsieur Durand reaches for her hand, but Émilie covers it protectively. After a moment, she reluctantly allows him to take it, barely suppressing a wince when he touches it.
Monsieur Durand tuts. “It might be broken. It should be seen to. And your eye...” Her eyebrows arch as if not knowing what he’s talking about.
“We must send for the doctor.” André springs to his feet, ready to go for help.
“No!”
Émilie’s plea stops them. Monsieur Durand is about to argue her hand needs to be attended to, when he remembers there are realities of the times they can’t ignore. Too many doctors have been called who, when they left, slithered to the Germans to secrete what they’ve seen or heard. That kind of scum are even commended for providing the medical attention that ensures their patient is well enough to meet a firing squad.
“We can wrap it and hope for the best.”
André sits down again, more defeated than before.
Monsieur Durand looks from Émilie to André and back again.
“Two lost souls.”
•
At the front door, André speaks quietly with Monsieur Durand. It’s dark and the street’s empty, the bells of Saint-Joachim having rung moments before announcing the nine o’clock curfew, tolling the end of their existence for another day.
“Be strong, mon ami.” The bookseller rests a hand on André’s shoulder. “Mireille will be back soon, of this I’m certain. Will you open tomorrow?”
“I-I don’t—” Finding answers to questions like this will only clutter his mind.
“Open. Force yourself if you must. Keep this the place you want to welcome her home to.” The old man gives André’s shoulder a squeeze and scans the street. With a slight tip of his hat as his goodbye, he heads home.
André watches him unlock the bookstore and slip inside.
Monsieur Durand’s friendship has been one of the greatest blessings André has known since he came to Saint-Léry d’Espoir—a welcome steadying influence. If someone had asked, André would have said he didn’t know why he hadn’t gone to his friend straight away. But that’s not true. He was going to go to Monsieur Durand for help, but that decision was carved away by a razor-edge of doubt whispering Mireille had left him on her own, just like the gendarme and that Nazi had insinuated. Maybe not alone. The humiliation of even thinking that was overwhelming. He was terrified his all-knowing friend would tell him it was true.
Mireille will be back soon, but for now he needs the steadiness his friend offers, if not for him, then for Frédéric.
Shutting the door, André glimpses a sliver of light from the window above the boucherie. A curtain’s been pushed aside, and he can make out the silhouette of someone peering at him.
André continues looking until the light disappears.
SIX
Thursday, October 21, 1943
Another morning where André reaches deep in the bag of flour with a scoop and tips its contents into a bowl. But today he pauses, and seconds melt into minutes.
“Monsieur?” Émilie is at the stairs, her hair hidden by Mireille’s work kerchief. She looks warily towards the windows. “Can I be of help?”
“It isn’t necessary,” André snaps, and returns to his task.
“But I must repay your kindness.”
“You’re hurt.” It’s an excuse. It’s better if he carries on with preparations on his own, difficult as he’s finding it. By now, Mireille would be next to him, and together they’d be baking. André is not sure he’ll be able to finish the last touches alone, he hasn’t the heart for it.
When he doesn’t hear Émilie go back up, he glances over. She holds up her freshly bandaged hand and shrugs.
“Yes, okay,” he says with a sigh.
Again, Émilie looks to the windows as two schoolgirls skip by.
“Never mind them. No one will guess you’re a Jew, not dressed like that. People will assume you’re someone we hired.” André couldn’t be less worried about her now—he’s busy trying to contain the turmoil churning within him. But so what if his emotions run amok? Who is he sparing by keeping them in check?
Émilie walks over, quickening her pace as she crosses by the windows.
“The old man knew.”
“He’s not easily fooled.” André passes her an apron and places a large bowl in front of her. “Just stay back here and don’t speak to anyone.”
He instructs her how to make madeleines in an even but vacant tone. It takes every crumb of his self-control not to scream out in frustration. André passes Émilie a wooden spoon and watches her vigourously fold the mixtures with her bandaged hand while using her good one to hold the bowl secure on the table. She winces with every stroke.
“Not so rough. It’s done you no harm.” He takes the spoon and demonstrates. “Gentle. Show it you care.” He hands back the spoon. “Two more minutes.”
He remembers how pleased Mireille was when she persuaded her father to teach André all his tricks of the trade. Once she was the one at her father’s side learning. It was only a week ago when Mireille, in an uncharacteristically maudlin mood after climbing into bed, told André how appreciative she was they were keeping her father’s spirit alive. So moved by that sentiment, André could only grunt in reply.
The bell rings when Monsieur Durand walks in. André hastens over to meet his friend by the empty display case. Right away, André asks, “Have you heard anything?”
“How are you, Mademoiselle?” the old bookseller calls over to Émilie. She nods, not missing a beat in her rhythm. He turns back to André. “I see you have her working. Good. And will there be pastries today?”
“It’s the last of the flour.” Impatient for an answer to his question, André cracks his knuckles. It sounds like dry twigs breaking.
“Then I’ll have to find more in my travels. There’s a widow on the next street who’s taken to me.” Monsieur Durand chuckles. “See? There’s always hope.” He glances over at Émilie again. She swipes her brow with an arm and carries on working.
André tugs at his foulard like it’s strangling him. “Monsieur, have you heard?”
The old man hesitates before saying, “Not a thing.”
André deflates like a soufflé.
Monsieur Durand gives André’s shoulder a pat, and André averts his eyes, unable to stand even this simple act of intimacy. He doesn’t need sympathy. Mireille will be back.
“André, there may be certain truths you must—”
“No! I’m going to find her.”
“Of course. We mustn’t give up, but we must be careful whom we ask.” The bookseller lowers his voice. “I believe the busybody across the way—Madame Bujold—has seen something. She has said as much. While her declaration was more a cipher than a confession, I could tell she was keeping something back, something was weighing heavily on her.”
André’s muscles tense so tightly, he might as well be in a straightjacket. Yesterday, when he went to the neighbours asking about Mireille, no one was home at the woman’s flat. “Then I have to speak to her.” He rips off his apron and hurries to the front door and yanks it open. A passing woman, pushing a pram without a baby in it, startles at the abruptness and quickly trundles away.
“André! Wait.” Monsieur Durand grasps his arm before he can run out. André stares up at Madame Bujold’s apartment, willing the window to fly apart and the old hag to float out and cackle what she knows.
“She’s afraid.” His friend’s voice becomes louder. “She won’t breathe a word, not a word. But I have her confidence. She’ll tell me soon enough.”
André turns to him. “Soon?” He moves his mouth as though there’s something acrid on his tongue. He wants to growl back that any lapse of time, no matter how short, is torture. Forget soon. He aches to hear now.
Monsieur Durand attempts to lead him back to the display, but André wrenches away and bolts out of the shop. If Bujold knows, she’ll have to tell. Surely she can be reasoned with.
Monsieur Durand dashes out after him. “André! André! Listen. Don’t be rash. You must think these things—”
In a second, André is across the street and taking the stairs in twos to the flats above.
The old man follows him into the building and struggles to keep up. “Don’t make trouble,” he shouts. “There are other ways to contend with such matters.”
Already at the landing, André rattles the door with his fist. “Madame Bujold!” There’s movement in the flat. “Madame Bujold! It’s me. André Albert. From the pâtisserie.”
A woman’s thin voice hisses, “Go away. Leave us alone.”
André knocks on the door again and tries the handle.
Monsieur Durand reaches him and tugs on his sleeve. “Come away. They’ll call the gendarmes.”
André ignores him and bellows, “Madame, if you know where Mireille is—”
The door flings open and from her wheelchair Madame Bujold scowls at him, so old and frail she’s folding into herself. The smell of damp and stale sweat hits André, then the overpowering medicinal odour of balms and ointments. His nose creases in disgust. The sewers give off a more bearable aroma.
Before André can say anything, the woman’s son, all muscles and rage, flies out. He grabs hold of André, and they grapple on the narrow landing. Their bodies lurch one way, then the other.
The woman’s son crashes into Monsieur Durand, who only just keeps from tumbling down the stairs. The old man presses his back against the wall and raises a hand in a futile attempt to stop the fight.
André fends off two quick jabs to the face, but the third smacks him squarely in the cheek. It rattles him, but barely hurts. Adrenaline courses through his veins. He swings hard and hits the man in the nose, knocking him into the wall next to Monsieur Durand. The bookseller’s eyebrows shoot up when Bujold’s son wipes blood away with his hand, smearing it to his ear.
André’s fists hang there, his lips curled back, his teeth bared. With a roar, the man charges him, pushing him down the stairs.
“Here we mind our own business,” the old woman’s son says triumphantly. “You’ll get us killed.”
André bounds up the steps, still full of fight, but Bujold’s son retreats into the flat and slams the door with a finality even André with all his determination can’t doubt.
Anger still burns around André’s pupils, and he breathes in quick gasps. He steels his shoulders to cave in the door, but Monsieur Durand blocks his way. He takes André’s head in his hands and turns it towards him.
“What are you doing? This isn’t what Mireille would want.” The bookseller’s touch is warm and comforting.
“What would she want then? To do nothing?”
Monsieur Durand keeps his palms firmly planted on André’s cheeks, and reason returns to him like he’s been miraculously healed of a fever.
André pushes past his old friend. What’s the use? No amount of punches will make that ratface Bujold talk. He bursts out of the building into the path of a workman carrying a tool bag. The man gawks at André as he staggers to the middle of the street, disheveled and bloody, and glares up at the Bujolds’ window. With a shake of his head at the insanity of it all, the workman carries on.
Émilie creeps down to the shop. On the last step, she peeks out and sees an old man peering in through the window in the front door.
She jumps back.
•
Monsieur Durand shields his eyes, trying again to glimpse the unfamiliar woman he’s just spotted inside. Despite the sign saying fermé, he reaches for the handle to let himself in when he’s startled by a voice behind him saying his name. He spins around, sees André and reddens, embarrassed at being caught.
“My apologies. I was worried. You’re shut on a Wednesday. Has something happened? Is it Frédéric? Is Mireille—”
“She’s gone away for a while.”
“But just now—”
“If you don’t mind, Monsieur.” Any passion the baker had in his tone that morning has dried up.
“I saw a strange woman on the stairs.”
André unlocks the door and goes in. “You were mistaken.” He starts to close the door.
Monsieur Durand puts his hand out to stop him. This doesn’t make sense. He’s never known André to be untruthful. If asked, Monsieur Durand would wager his own reputation on the younger man’s impeachable one. But he knows what he just saw: a woman on the stairs who isn’t Mireille.
“What’s going on, André?” Monsieur Durand’s hand stays rooted on the door. The baker looks at it as if willing it to disintegrate.
Small feet scamper above them, and both men look to the ceiling. André tries to shut the door again, but Durand says, “Would a mother leave her child behind? Would Mireille leave Frédéric?”
André weighs the situation.
His face drops, then he opens the door wider.
•
Monsieur Durand moves his feet out of the way of the route Frédéric is traveling on the floor with a woodblock truck. He sits across from Émilie at the table, André between them at its head. Anyone not acquainted with the circumstance would be forgiven in presuming they’re about to play a dire jeu de cartes. Fittingly, their expressions give nothing away.
“A strange affair indeed,” Monsieur Durand says as his opening bid.
André’s jaw clenches. “I’ve asked everyone, but no one will tell me anything.”
“That’s not surprising. It’s difficult to answer when intentions are unclear. Who knows the reason why you’re asking? Or for whom?” Monsieur Durand refrains from adding that the wrong word uttered to the wrong person has caused tongues to be excised. But surely his dear friend knows this. If he didn’t before, he does now.
André disappears behind the folding screen. When he reappears, he places a ball before them on the table: Mireille’s apron. “It was on the street.”
“The street?” Monsieur Durand spreads it on the table, waiting for an explanation, but André turns away. “Maybe there’s been an accident? Have you been to the—”
“No! She’s not— She can’t be!”
“She may be hurt.”
All at once such a possibility appears to crush André. His eyes dart wildly and his face blanches in horror. “What if she’s...” The question dries up in his mouth. He cannot say out loud what must be his worst fear. “What do I do without her? What will the boy...” André shakes his head. “No! I have to find her.”
He looks over at Frédéric who’s watching, his face growing concerned. Seeing his father give him a tight-lipped nod, the boy resumes pushing his truck to its destination. The child’s innocence cuts Monsieur Durand to the marrow.
“I’ll make enquiries. Someone must know something and is willing to tell.” Monsieur Durand turns to Émilie. “And you? Ending up here out of nowhere?” He tries to decipher her, and she quickly looks away. He feels his brow wrinkle. “You’re Jewish,” he says cautiously.
Émilie gauges him with suspicion. And rightly so. A stranger is of no more consequence than a fly flitting past.
André gives her a small nod, and she answers, “Yes.”
“So you’re what he’s been hiding.” Monsieur Durand huffs with frustration at their predicament. A dear friend is missing, and a Jewish woman turns up here. While he’s a firm believer in the existence of balance in nature, this is absurd.
Émilie lifts her head, waiting for his verdict, looking resigned to whatever it is.
Monsieur Durand looks at the bruise below her eye, but thinks better of asking about it. He’s not unaware of the hate targeting these people, convinced it prospers in failed societies where lies go undisputed. It’s women like her who bear the brunt of it.
“She has no one,” André tells him, more apology than explanation.
“No one? What a distressing condition to be the sole word on a page.” Monsieur Durand leans towards her in his chair. “Then we must whisk you away from here. That won’t be an easy matter.” He leans back. “No family? Hmm.”
“I have a family.” Émilie takes a long swallow of air. “A mother. A father.” She flinches almost imperceptibly. She’s regretting telling them. Who are they to hear of her loved ones? How can they understand? They’re not Jewish; they’re not seen as enemies.
Silence overtakes them. Monsieur Durand hopes she sees his and André’s empathy. Too often people’s compassion sits below the surface, profoundly felt but seldom acted upon.
Then, with a sigh, Émilie starts again. “We were taken together to Drancy.” She lowers her eyes, and repositioning herself in her chair, traces the table’s woodgrain with her index finger.
“And you ran off? So I see.” Monsieur Durand looks at André who blinks, his forehead creasing just above the bridge of his nose.
“I was healthy and had a skill. They made me work in a factory sewing uniforms, flags, banners, dresses for their women.”
“Ah, you’re a seamstress.”
“Yes, Monsieur.” She looks up at them, a tiny light dances in her eyes. “Before the war I worked in an atelier in Paris, but the couturière closed her shop. It was no longer a time for fashion. They were taking me to the trains with the others who were no longer of use.”
“And back to Drancy?” Monsieur Durand prompts. Looking at her face, he can tell something ghastly must have happened.
“Perhaps.”
“A detention centre for undesirables,” he explains to André. Realizing the insult, he turns back to her. “Apologies, Mademoiselle. I meant no offense.”
“There are worse places than Drancy.” The spark in her eyes goes out. She looks about to speak again when André interrupts.
“Your hand. I didn’t realize you were hurt.”
Émilie follows their gaze to her damaged hand, now on the table. “I got too close to a machine weaving the material they need, and my hand was caught in its belt.” She hides it under the table. “I was feeling faint. I was careless. They told me I was lucky my arm wasn’t torn from its socket, as though I’d won a prize. I assured them over and over I could go on working, but they still sent me away.”
“May I?” Monsieur Durand reaches for her hand, but Émilie covers it protectively. After a moment, she reluctantly allows him to take it, barely suppressing a wince when he touches it.
Monsieur Durand tuts. “It might be broken. It should be seen to. And your eye...” Her eyebrows arch as if not knowing what he’s talking about.
“We must send for the doctor.” André springs to his feet, ready to go for help.
“No!”
Émilie’s plea stops them. Monsieur Durand is about to argue her hand needs to be attended to, when he remembers there are realities of the times they can’t ignore. Too many doctors have been called who, when they left, slithered to the Germans to secrete what they’ve seen or heard. That kind of scum are even commended for providing the medical attention that ensures their patient is well enough to meet a firing squad.
“We can wrap it and hope for the best.”
André sits down again, more defeated than before.
Monsieur Durand looks from Émilie to André and back again.
“Two lost souls.”
•
At the front door, André speaks quietly with Monsieur Durand. It’s dark and the street’s empty, the bells of Saint-Joachim having rung moments before announcing the nine o’clock curfew, tolling the end of their existence for another day.
“Be strong, mon ami.” The bookseller rests a hand on André’s shoulder. “Mireille will be back soon, of this I’m certain. Will you open tomorrow?”
“I-I don’t—” Finding answers to questions like this will only clutter his mind.
“Open. Force yourself if you must. Keep this the place you want to welcome her home to.” The old man gives André’s shoulder a squeeze and scans the street. With a slight tip of his hat as his goodbye, he heads home.
André watches him unlock the bookstore and slip inside.
Monsieur Durand’s friendship has been one of the greatest blessings André has known since he came to Saint-Léry d’Espoir—a welcome steadying influence. If someone had asked, André would have said he didn’t know why he hadn’t gone to his friend straight away. But that’s not true. He was going to go to Monsieur Durand for help, but that decision was carved away by a razor-edge of doubt whispering Mireille had left him on her own, just like the gendarme and that Nazi had insinuated. Maybe not alone. The humiliation of even thinking that was overwhelming. He was terrified his all-knowing friend would tell him it was true.
Mireille will be back soon, but for now he needs the steadiness his friend offers, if not for him, then for Frédéric.
Shutting the door, André glimpses a sliver of light from the window above the boucherie. A curtain’s been pushed aside, and he can make out the silhouette of someone peering at him.
André continues looking until the light disappears.
SIX
Thursday, October 21, 1943
Another morning where André reaches deep in the bag of flour with a scoop and tips its contents into a bowl. But today he pauses, and seconds melt into minutes.
“Monsieur?” Émilie is at the stairs, her hair hidden by Mireille’s work kerchief. She looks warily towards the windows. “Can I be of help?”
“It isn’t necessary,” André snaps, and returns to his task.
“But I must repay your kindness.”
“You’re hurt.” It’s an excuse. It’s better if he carries on with preparations on his own, difficult as he’s finding it. By now, Mireille would be next to him, and together they’d be baking. André is not sure he’ll be able to finish the last touches alone, he hasn’t the heart for it.
When he doesn’t hear Émilie go back up, he glances over. She holds up her freshly bandaged hand and shrugs.
“Yes, okay,” he says with a sigh.
Again, Émilie looks to the windows as two schoolgirls skip by.
“Never mind them. No one will guess you’re a Jew, not dressed like that. People will assume you’re someone we hired.” André couldn’t be less worried about her now—he’s busy trying to contain the turmoil churning within him. But so what if his emotions run amok? Who is he sparing by keeping them in check?
Émilie walks over, quickening her pace as she crosses by the windows.
“The old man knew.”
“He’s not easily fooled.” André passes her an apron and places a large bowl in front of her. “Just stay back here and don’t speak to anyone.”
He instructs her how to make madeleines in an even but vacant tone. It takes every crumb of his self-control not to scream out in frustration. André passes Émilie a wooden spoon and watches her vigourously fold the mixtures with her bandaged hand while using her good one to hold the bowl secure on the table. She winces with every stroke.
“Not so rough. It’s done you no harm.” He takes the spoon and demonstrates. “Gentle. Show it you care.” He hands back the spoon. “Two more minutes.”
He remembers how pleased Mireille was when she persuaded her father to teach André all his tricks of the trade. Once she was the one at her father’s side learning. It was only a week ago when Mireille, in an uncharacteristically maudlin mood after climbing into bed, told André how appreciative she was they were keeping her father’s spirit alive. So moved by that sentiment, André could only grunt in reply.
The bell rings when Monsieur Durand walks in. André hastens over to meet his friend by the empty display case. Right away, André asks, “Have you heard anything?”
“How are you, Mademoiselle?” the old bookseller calls over to Émilie. She nods, not missing a beat in her rhythm. He turns back to André. “I see you have her working. Good. And will there be pastries today?”
“It’s the last of the flour.” Impatient for an answer to his question, André cracks his knuckles. It sounds like dry twigs breaking.
“Then I’ll have to find more in my travels. There’s a widow on the next street who’s taken to me.” Monsieur Durand chuckles. “See? There’s always hope.” He glances over at Émilie again. She swipes her brow with an arm and carries on working.
André tugs at his foulard like it’s strangling him. “Monsieur, have you heard?”
The old man hesitates before saying, “Not a thing.”
André deflates like a soufflé.
Monsieur Durand gives André’s shoulder a pat, and André averts his eyes, unable to stand even this simple act of intimacy. He doesn’t need sympathy. Mireille will be back.
“André, there may be certain truths you must—”
“No! I’m going to find her.”
“Of course. We mustn’t give up, but we must be careful whom we ask.” The bookseller lowers his voice. “I believe the busybody across the way—Madame Bujold—has seen something. She has said as much. While her declaration was more a cipher than a confession, I could tell she was keeping something back, something was weighing heavily on her.”
André’s muscles tense so tightly, he might as well be in a straightjacket. Yesterday, when he went to the neighbours asking about Mireille, no one was home at the woman’s flat. “Then I have to speak to her.” He rips off his apron and hurries to the front door and yanks it open. A passing woman, pushing a pram without a baby in it, startles at the abruptness and quickly trundles away.
“André! Wait.” Monsieur Durand grasps his arm before he can run out. André stares up at Madame Bujold’s apartment, willing the window to fly apart and the old hag to float out and cackle what she knows.
“She’s afraid.” His friend’s voice becomes louder. “She won’t breathe a word, not a word. But I have her confidence. She’ll tell me soon enough.”
André turns to him. “Soon?” He moves his mouth as though there’s something acrid on his tongue. He wants to growl back that any lapse of time, no matter how short, is torture. Forget soon. He aches to hear now.
Monsieur Durand attempts to lead him back to the display, but André wrenches away and bolts out of the shop. If Bujold knows, she’ll have to tell. Surely she can be reasoned with.
Monsieur Durand dashes out after him. “André! André! Listen. Don’t be rash. You must think these things—”
In a second, André is across the street and taking the stairs in twos to the flats above.
The old man follows him into the building and struggles to keep up. “Don’t make trouble,” he shouts. “There are other ways to contend with such matters.”
Already at the landing, André rattles the door with his fist. “Madame Bujold!” There’s movement in the flat. “Madame Bujold! It’s me. André Albert. From the pâtisserie.”
A woman’s thin voice hisses, “Go away. Leave us alone.”
André knocks on the door again and tries the handle.
Monsieur Durand reaches him and tugs on his sleeve. “Come away. They’ll call the gendarmes.”
André ignores him and bellows, “Madame, if you know where Mireille is—”
The door flings open and from her wheelchair Madame Bujold scowls at him, so old and frail she’s folding into herself. The smell of damp and stale sweat hits André, then the overpowering medicinal odour of balms and ointments. His nose creases in disgust. The sewers give off a more bearable aroma.
Before André can say anything, the woman’s son, all muscles and rage, flies out. He grabs hold of André, and they grapple on the narrow landing. Their bodies lurch one way, then the other.
The woman’s son crashes into Monsieur Durand, who only just keeps from tumbling down the stairs. The old man presses his back against the wall and raises a hand in a futile attempt to stop the fight.
André fends off two quick jabs to the face, but the third smacks him squarely in the cheek. It rattles him, but barely hurts. Adrenaline courses through his veins. He swings hard and hits the man in the nose, knocking him into the wall next to Monsieur Durand. The bookseller’s eyebrows shoot up when Bujold’s son wipes blood away with his hand, smearing it to his ear.
André’s fists hang there, his lips curled back, his teeth bared. With a roar, the man charges him, pushing him down the stairs.
“Here we mind our own business,” the old woman’s son says triumphantly. “You’ll get us killed.”
André bounds up the steps, still full of fight, but Bujold’s son retreats into the flat and slams the door with a finality even André with all his determination can’t doubt.
Anger still burns around André’s pupils, and he breathes in quick gasps. He steels his shoulders to cave in the door, but Monsieur Durand blocks his way. He takes André’s head in his hands and turns it towards him.
“What are you doing? This isn’t what Mireille would want.” The bookseller’s touch is warm and comforting.
“What would she want then? To do nothing?”
Monsieur Durand keeps his palms firmly planted on André’s cheeks, and reason returns to him like he’s been miraculously healed of a fever.
André pushes past his old friend. What’s the use? No amount of punches will make that ratface Bujold talk. He bursts out of the building into the path of a workman carrying a tool bag. The man gawks at André as he staggers to the middle of the street, disheveled and bloody, and glares up at the Bujolds’ window. With a shake of his head at the insanity of it all, the workman carries on.
