The French Baker's War, page 8
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“What do you mean, ‘She’s gone’?” Edouard’s eyes narrow. They’re the same golden brown as André’s, but couldn’t be more different. André can’t remember his father’s eyes holding a drop of compassion.
Sitting at the table with his parents, André hangs his head, a prisoner being interrogated. Over on Frédéric’s bed, Émilie watches, her face wracked with fear the situation’s about to combust.
“Just that,” André mumbles. “She’s...gone.” What else is there to say? If only there was more to tell.
Edouard sways to his feet, and in frustration, takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over the back of the chair as though he’s about to negotiate the price of a dozen crates of wine.
Cécile leans in and rests a thin hand on André’s—her touch is weak and glassy, and she smells of lilies. “Dear, we don’t understand what you’re telling—”
“Is she on holiday?” Edouard snarls. “Gone mountaineering in the Alps? Horse riding in...” He searches for another location as fanciful. His sarcasm isn’t lost on André, but he chooses not to rise to it, even though any tolerance he has left for his father’s anger is leaking away.
“Edouard! Manners! Please!” Cécile’s expression is that of a woman chastising a routinely naughty child, part irritation, part resignation.
Her husband ignores her and continues his questioning. “It doesn’t make sense. Speak up. What’s going on here?”
When André remains quiet, his father takes two steps towards the stairs, then turns around. “Ah!” he exhales. “Knowing exactly what Mireille’s like, I bet she’s run off with the Resistance, because that’s where fanatical ideas like hers lead.”
André scoffs. “That’s nonsense.” Mireille may express her political views from time to time, mostly when she sees injustice, but she’s hardly going to storm the Bastille. But of course his father would jump to that conclusion. He and Mireille are different as molasses and vinegar, but André always felt their quarrels were harmless. More hobby than vocation.
Edouard can’t stop himself from driving home his point. “To the Resistance, then to the gallows!”
“Enough!” André yells. His father is pecking at him like a magpie hoping to find a shiny nugget inside. He’s in for a disappointment.
They’re silent for a while, each of them deliberating their next move. André can’t think of what to say that won’t make things worse, so he resigns himself to the fall of the axe. Get it over with and they’ll leave, and he’ll be able to go back to searching.
His father starts pacing. André’s mother touches her son’s arm and asks in a faltering voice, “Then what has happened to—”
“She left me.” André winces. He hasn’t a clue if that’s what Mireille has done—she would never leave them, she took nothing with her—but maybe that’ll shut them up.
His parents are stunned. Edouard sits beside him and plunks a hand on his shoulder, its weight heavier than a cast iron stockpot.
“You must go after her, mon fils.” His father sounds calmer now, caring even, although his cold eyes are unchanged. “You can’t let her abandon your family.”
“I don’t know where she is.” André doesn’t see the point in recounting where he’s gone and who he’s asked. Nothing he’s done will be enough for them. He knows that even if he does it all over a hundred times again, it still wouldn’t be enough for him.
Edouard turns to Cécile, who gives her head a shake in confusion.
Frédéric makes a low whirring noise in his throat. Everyone looks over at him, and he stops. André’s mother motions to Émilie, asking if she can join them. Émilie nods.
Cécile goes over and sits next to her grandson. At first the boy holds on to Émilie, but she passes Cécile the puppet. When she puts a hand inside and entertains Frédéric with it, he gives out a tickle of a laugh.
Edouard leans towards André and hisses, “Who is that woman?” He smells of the styptic he uses when he nicks himself shaving, slightly sweet and medicinal.
“No one. She’s good with him.”
“But she isn’t his mother. Isn’t it time for her to leave?” He calls over to Émilie, “Mademoiselle. Isn’t it time for you to go home?”
Émilie doesn’t respond; she smooths a tuft of hair sticking up on Frédéric’s head.
“Edouard!” Cécile admonishes again, still with no effect. He frowns at Émilie for a moment more, his face bunching with disgust.
He twists back to André. “Is this why your wife left?”
“No.” André raises a hand to his temple, fending off memories. He’s bombarded by all those times when he was on his knees in the mud between rows of grapevines after being knocked down by his father, forced to listen to a list of his failings. Later, André would find him kneeling at his prie-dieu, praying for what, André still can’t imagine. Most likely for a good harvest than forgiveness.
When Mireille is here, André never mulls over those things—he feels bitter he’s doing so now. It’s enough they revisit him in dreams, painful and disgusting. But what does it matter? Aren’t all childhoods little more than a series of bruising experiences?
Edouard’s voice rises again. “You’ve brought another woman into your home. And with the boy here? A putain! We raised you in the Church. You won’t bring up our grandchild in a godless—” He’s that repulsed, he doesn’t bother finishing. “I have no idea what you’re doing, but I’ve had enough of this—bordel.”
He stands and calls, “Cécile!”
With laboured breath, André says, “It’s not like that. Émilie helps—”
“Yes. I’m sure she—”
André hits the table with his fist. “Listen, you stupid old man!” He leans in, and his father’s eyes widen. “I have no choice—I’m hiding her. There’s nowhere for her to go. If I don’t, she’ll end up dead. I’ll be damned if I know what God would say, but I don’t want that on my conscience.”
His father gapes at him, his mouth uselessly opening and closing as he searches for what to say. “Hiding her?” he sputters. “Why would...”
He turns to Émilie, who doesn’t look up from nervously rubbing her hands on her dress. André has seen Mireille do the same thing hundreds of times.
Cécile holds Frédéric awkwardly on her lap, a stricken expression marring her soft features.
“Is she a...” André’s father begins, but breaks off.
André nods. The truth’s the only thing left when you no longer have the strength to lie.
Astounded, Edouard stares at Émilie while still speaking to André. “Do you realize what will happen when—”
Before the man finishes his awful thought, André interrupts. “Émilie, go close the shop. Take Frédéric with you.” If André and his father are going to have it out, a stranger and a child don’t need to be here.
Edouard pulls out his watch again. Instead of opening it to consult the time, he idly taps it on the table and shuts his eyes like he’s concentrating on the rhythmic sound. It’s another of his ploys. He’s waiting for an explanation, but making it clear what little patience he has is ticking down fast.
Émilie moves to take the boy from his grandmother. Cécile holds onto him for a second more, hugging his little head against her pale cheek, then walks him to the stairs, holding his hand gingerly as though it’s a paw.
Picking up Frédéric, Émilie continues on down to the pâtisserie.
André’s parents look at him, anxiously waiting for answers, but he doesn’t offer them anything in return. Where to start?
Edouard whispers, “Are you mad?” as though someone is eavesdropping. “A Jew!”
At first, André shrugs, unable to argue against that. Then he says matter-of-factly, “What else could I do?”
“How is it your concern?” Edouard angles his head back in exasperation, exposing his Adam’s apple like he’s waiting for the last touches of a shave.
André traces the table’s woodgrain with a finger, squeaking it along the surface. His fingertips have been burnt enough from pulling pans and sheets out of the oven, mainly from when he first began baking, he no longer feels anything. One of the perks of the job. While what his father is saying isn’t untrue, André’s already made up his mind about Émilie. It’s what’s right. But then, out of nowhere, doubt tugs at him.
Edouard carries on relentlessly. “How are these people—these Jews—any of our concern? It’s between them and the Germans. Do you understand?”
He’s sure his father would be happy to know he’s questioning himself. André’s finger keeps squeaking along the table, louder and more adamant now.
“Stop that.”
His eyes snap up to his father and see anger hard as the tabletop.
As if given license by this minor transgression, the man starts making vile comments about Émilie’s “people.” He accuses them of all manner of atrocities, speaking with the authority of someone who’s certain he can peer into the souls of every Jew, while not even knowing a single one of them.
André clamps his teeth so hard it hurts, and his hands form into white-knuckled fists. His father’s voice diminishes until it’s no louder than the buzz of an insect flying around André’s ear. It’s one thing to disagree with a father’s opinion, but entirely another to loathe him for its ugliness.
Edouard wags an index finger and stands. “Such selfishness. We won’t stay here. Not with that here.” He jabs his finger at the floor twice, before snatching his jacket and hat, and marching to the stairs.
Cécile hesitates, then rises to her feet and follows her husband, her eyes down as she passes her son.
André can’t read her. His mother always sided with his father while making feeble obligatory noises to the contrary. But when his father was gone and she was alone with André, she’d speak out against the man.
Once, when he was a boy, André asked her if she loved him—he was her son, after all—and he never heard someone say that to someone else before, not even between her and his father. She told him not to be silly. That’s when André learned expecting to be loved was silly, too. It was years later when at long last he heard it, from Mireille right before they married. She said it without hesitation and with a conviction even André couldn’t doubt. The way she’s always said it to him since.
It seems to him his mother’s affection for children, only developed after Frédéric was born, is an attempt at penance for the lack of it she showed André when he was young.
On the first step down to the shop, Edouard turns back. “One woman—your wife—disappears, and another woman—a Jewess—has taken her place. How will you explain that?”
He shakes his head again, and tramps down the stairs with André’s mother close behind.
•
Émilie tries to imagine the argument upstairs as the distant muttering of thunder, as impossible to stop. She distracts Frédéric by showing him what baking utensils are for by making the motion when using them. With the whisk, she performs a few circles and passes it to him. Frédéric makes a tentative wave with it, so she takes his hand in hers and guides him. He does an awkward oval shape, then a circle, then another.
“Just like your papa.” She puts an arm around the boy’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. Every child’s as smart as he’s allowed to be.
Frédéric brings the whisk to his mouth and his tongue darts out. Émilie’s about to stop him, but realizes what he’s doing. “That’s right. That’s what you do when you’re finished.”
She was surprised when André told his parents his wife had left him. Does he really believe that? It’s very easy for lies you tell yourself to become truths.
She finds André’s father to be loathsome. When he was speaking, panic hit her like a thrown rock. She has no doubt he’s the exact type who turns people in. And André’s mother? If pathos was a perfume, she’d be drenched in it.
The impulse to run rises within her, but Émilie can’t move. She’s come so far, through so much, only to feel besieged again, trapped in a room without walls, or a floor, or ceiling, so she can’t even claw her way out.
Émilie hears them move around above her, the floorboards creaking like the hull of an old sailing ship. Then there’s a calm before André’s father barrels down the stairs and into the room. His wife follows, but she waits at the bottom step while her husband stamps over to their luggage. André comes down a moment later.
“You can’t tell anyone.” André is insistent, almost pleading. “You can’t say anything. Think of—”
“We should take him with us.” Edouard clenches his teeth and reddens. “This is no place for a child.”
“You can’t take my—”
“A home is where a boy’s raised with morals. What does he find here?”
“Edouard,” Cécile begins, “don’t say such—”
“They’ll come for her. They’ll come for the Jewess and they’ll take both of you with her.” Edouard blatantly scowls at Émilie.
Frédéric tilts his head as though trying to understand his grandfather’s anger towards her.
•
André scrambles for the words to convince his father how wrong he is, as Edouard yells.
“Don’t you care about your son’s safety? Or have you already chosen her over your own flesh and blood?”
André glances at Frédéric, who’s motioning with the whisk with a genuine finesse. André’s heart jumps. His fondest dream for his son is one day he’ll take over the shop. It’s something André seldom allows himself to hope.
They almost lost Frédéric at birth. Mireille says she has no more than a shadow of a memory of that time, distraught and medicated as she was, but André can detail what happened as though it were last night. The baby was breech. André can still taste the dusty grit in his mouth when the doctor warned him they “might” be able to save one life, “and one alone, God willing.”
When André was asked for a decision, without hesitation he said, “Mireille.”
A priest was sent for to perform the last rites, someone André never met before or has seen since. It intrigued him to learn later he was Jésuite. They were taught in school Jesuits were driven out of the country centuries before. How this one came to be there, André never found out.
Whenever he recalls the night Mireille gave birth to their beautiful boy and what could have happened to them, no matter how fleeting the thought, he goes cold and his saliva turns to paste.
“No! Don’t let them take your child!” Émilie moves towards him, torment raw in her face. “Don’t do it!”
André’s father glares at her as if she’s tied him to a chair and is cutting away strips of his skin. André recognizes that look from his past, as excessive then as it is now. The agony the man has caused—forcing André to live in fear—is it any wonder André won’t go back to living behind his hands, only catching glimpses? He has Mireille to thank for that.
André decisively scoops up Frédéric and turns away.
Edouard smirks. He takes out his watch and scowls at the time, transparently giving André a chance to reconsider. A full minute passes before his father shuts the watch and hides it away.
He puts on his jacket, then his hat, adjusting it with practiced care until it sits just right on his head.
Still André doesn’t stop him.
His father storms over to the suitcases and struggles to pick up all of them himself, clearly needing help, but doesn’t ask for it. He’d never ask. Asking for help is something weak men do.
Edouard humps to the door and steps out into the sun. He walks past the window in the direction of the railway station.
André grinds his teeth, rebuking himself for allowing his father to anger him one more time. He has no one to blame for letting the man into their home to destroy the spirit of everyone around him with his indiscriminate cruelty, then to retreat to his vineyard. Why did he think his father would break a habit of a lifetime?
Cécile straggles to the door where she stops to look back at André holding Frédéric to him. She grimaces, and her eyes soften to tears.
André knows what she wants to say: Why such needless conflict between a father and a son when all either of you want is the other’s heart?
Well, to hell with the both of them.
Cécile gives Émilie a parting nod and slips out.
When André hears the door close, he turns to see his mother reel past the window to catch up to his father.
“They’re your family,” Émilie gently reminds him.
“No. My wife and son are my family.”
•
Monsieur Durand has his ear to the wireless when there’s a knock at the door. He was fretting over whether to tell André how Madame Bujold had misstepped and called whatever had happened to Mireille, “a wicked affair.”
It surprises him to see André at such an hour. He snaps off the radio, tired anyway of reports filled with the ambiguities of war, and adjusts in his chair, ready to listen to his friend.
When André finishes his account of his parent’s visit, Monsieur Durand pours more cognac into their glasses and jokes, “One should only imbibe the drink of the gods to heal a heart,” but he sees André is not listening, his face turned away.
They down their drinks and sit for a few minutes, staring at the top of the desk, looking for answers.
André finally raises his head, waiting for Monsieur Durand to offer whatever wisdom he’s found to questions most likely having none, not much different from what someone would expect a father to do for a son.
Monsieur Durand doesn’t know what to tell him. To be honest, he has no ability to discern the motives behind human behaviour, stolen from him by experiences he hoped would make him more astute, but rendered him an idiot. It’s as though the calibration of the compass he always relied on has been thrown off, and he can’t even determine by how much.
But he has to tell André something—his friend needs comforting, even if it means he has to mouth meaningless noises. Monsieur Durand mines what he can from inside him and endeavours to dispense it as sage counsel. Anyway, such things usually end up taking the shape of what it’s poured into.
