The French Baker's War, page 9
“I doubt your parents will report her,” he tells André, cautiously at first. “There’s Frédéric to consider.” He sees from André’s face how little this alleviates his worry.
Monsieur Durand rubs the back of his neck and says, louder and with certainty, as much to reassure himself as André, “There are fathers who do not love their sons, but show me a grandfather who doesn’t adore his grandson.”
NINE
Sunday, October 24, 1943
Émilie has a firm hold on Frédéric’s waist as he balances on a chair at the open window and watches a pigeon strut along a roof on the other side of the street. To the boy’s delight, the church bells clang, calling parishioners to mass. Without warning, he tilts forward, but Émilie yanks him back. He gives out a squeaky giggle and her heart starts beating again. He tries to lean out once more, but she draws him in just in time.
She examines his face and finds something in his bright eyes she hasn’t noticed before, like he wants to say something. Or is she imagining it, another of hope’s optical illusions?
“What’s my name?” She lowers her voice so over at the table André won’t hear. “I’m Émilie. Can you say ‘Émilie’?”
Frédéric stays silent. He presses his palms against her cheeks, then pulls them away with a little squeal. She turns to ask André about it, but he’s hunched over drinking wine straight from the bottle, glaring at who knows what in the centre of the room.
Frédéric squeals again. André shuts his eyes as if the sound cuts through him. He takes another swig of alcohol as remedy, and Émilie stiffens her spine. Drinking tends to cure everything except for why you needed a drink.
“It would be nice for Frédéric to go out today.”
“You take him then.” André’s words are coated in bile—he’s resigned himself to wallow in anguish. Émilie doesn’t fault him for that. She has no right to criticize what despair does to a person. Let him take it out on her if it helps.
She lifts Frédéric to the floor. “Go play, mon petit loup.” He races over to a toy train as she joins his father. André pushes the wine bottle towards her, but Émilie ignores the offer. Alcohol never appealed to her. Loss of control is her worst fear. Yet what does it mean that she’s again in a situation where she’s powerless?
“A walk, maybe,” she says. “Perhaps Monsieur can—”
“You bring him.” André jumps up and opens a cupboard. He rummages around, brusquely pushing items aside. Returning to the table, he slams down Mireille’s birth certificate and identity card.
“Here! You wear her clothes. You mother her child. You might as well take it all.” He plops back down in the chair and takes another drink.
With an audible breath, Émilie picks up the identification card and examines it. The picture shows a woman with thick, dark hair with a healthy shine even a photograph can capture. The woman’s eyes gaze out, warm and carefree. Émilie lays the card back on the table. What good is it to her? She doesn’t look anything like his wife. Maybe her hair had lustre a long time ago, but that’s it.
“You can use the birth certificate,” André says, as though hearing her thoughts. He abruptly stands. “Get Frédéric ready.”
“Monsieur, never mind.” What was she thinking suggesting they go out? Was it for the child’s sake or her own? To walk around outside a free woman seems a preposterous fantasy. A shiver travels to the small of her back as she realizes the risk she’d be taking.
“Should we stay cowering in here forever? The sun’s out; the park’s a street over. We’ll look like every other family on a Sunday afternoon.” With that, André barges to the stairs and vanishes down them.
Émilie glances over at Frédéric sitting on the floor with the train in his mouth. When the boy sees she’s watching, he plucks it out with a popping sound.
She picks up the birth certificate.
•
André waits outside the front door, shoving his fists deeper into his trouser pockets. A man in a beret walks past and nods, but André doesn’t acknowledge him. The man swears under his breath, and clutching the lapels of his jacket, clumps away.
The aroma of fresh bread wafts over. It rankles André how the bread baker opens on Sundays, and he instantly realizes he’s only being mean-spirited for the sake of it. The pâtisserie could be open, too, but he and Mireille had made the decision not to for Frédéric’s sake. A man without a family can do anything he wants, but he still has no family.
Last night, after André returned from telling Monsieur Durand about his parents’ doomed visit, he went straight to bed. He woke in the night, unable to get air, forced to pant as though learning how to breathe again. Despite what his old friend said to him about a grandfather’s love, André has no faith in the sanctity of his family’s bonds. Every time someone comes into the shop from now on, André knows his eyes will snap up to see if it’s the police or the Germans.
Émilie carries Frédéric out to André. She’s wearing a light dress, a coat, and a Sunday hat. André found her an old pair of shoes, and even though they no longer have a shine, are still better than the ones Émilie arrived with, only pieces of leather clinging to her feet.
Seeing Émilie in Mireille’s best clothes alarms him. The hair bristles on the back of his neck. She’s not the same woman he discovered in dirty rags cowering beside the display case.
His scrutiny causes her to avert her eyes. One of Frédéric’s shirt buttons is undone, and she bends to fasten it.
The boy peers up at her, and something turns inside André’s chest. Anger and sadness battle. Just as both emotions are about to mix in an ugly combination, they’re overwhelmed by an incredible longing, painful as if his entire skeleton is shattering.
It’s been a week since Mireille disappeared.
André focuses on a passing woman pulling a cart crammed with three young children, their faces streaked black by coal, and he feels empty as the pastry boxes stored under the display. The morning he last saw Mireille, he wasted his chance to kiss her one more time. Now he’d do anything to have that moment back.
“I can’t.” Émilie tries to pass his son over to him, but André walks away.
In the alley, he struggles to regain his composure. He’s never known loss. He’s heard Monsieur Durand say that experiencing loss forces you to be an adult. Well, he’s already learnt how it erodes your soul.
•
Parc des Corbeaux sits placidly at the centre of town, a solid chunk of dark green trees and shady paths with thick boughs hanging low overhead. Couples stroll arm-in-arm, while parents caution little ones not to get too close to a pond teeming with ducks and the toy sailboats captained by their siblings.
Émilie sits with André on a bench as Frédéric sporadically licks a melting ice cream—he’s more fascinated by the flotilla sailing past. The pond gives off a faint sickly smell of algae, although the water is clear blue, perfectly reflecting the sky.
She wants to bring up André’s parents with him, but isn’t brazen enough to start. She pulls down the hem of the dress, touching her legs covered in bumps like chicken flesh. She should fear what his father could do to her, but that hate never acts on its own—it slinks into corners and goads others to strike first. Émilie is sure the old bookseller would readily agree with what she’s heard many times: goodness often appears in a veil, while evil always wears a disguise.
When André rests a hand on his son’s head, Émilie turns to witness their little moment of affection, despite knowing it will only further damage her heart.
She sees two German soldiers walking towards them. Her breath catches, and she moves nearer to André.
Surprised, he looks at her, then follows her gaze to the Nazis. He puts an arm around her and pulls her rigid body to him. She trembles until her bones ache.
When the soldiers walk past, André quickly withdraws his arm and keeps his eyes fixed on the pond.
Émilie turns to him. It’s been a long time since she felt the touch of someone who doesn’t mean her harm, someone without acid pooling in their veins. She feels she’ll crumble under such gentle kindness.
When was the last time she was shown affection? Or is this another memory she’s lost like a tooth, part of her so easily forgotten?
•
Watching André pour icing over three small squares, Émilie notices he’s no longer wearing baker’s whites, just brown trousers, a white shirt, and an apron. He needs a shave—stubble is visible around his chin and along his jawline. Instead of making him look older as it often does most men, he appears aloof and untidy. She’s taken aback by his expression, less of a man’s and more one of a troubled child.
“That was the last of the sugar.” He hadn’t made anything before going to the park. “It’s Sunday, the shop’s closed anyway,” he told her. But when they came back, he was restless, a man at odds with his thoughts. Émilie suggested baking would calm him—routine often has that effect—but André scoffed at the idea. An hour later, she found him doing it anyway, al-though he seemed jarringly mechanical, robbed of motivation now his wife is gone, like she took it with her.
“Why do you bother?” It comes out more dismissive than Émilie means it to be, but André doesn’t seem to notice.
“Mireille always says, ‘Make at least three. Even if no one buys them, there’ll be something for us to look forward to at the end of the day.’” He transfers the petits fours to a plate, their bright colour the sole cheerfulness left in the shop. André considers them for a moment as though he can’t figure out if he’s pleased or disappointed. He takes off his apron and throws it on the worktable.
“Lock the door.”
“Where are you—”
“To the next town. And the next. And the one after that. To as many as it takes to bring her home.”
André yanks the front door open, and brushes past a startled Monsieur Durand.
“Bonjour, André,” the bookseller calls after him, but the baker continues walking away.
•
Monsieur Durand looks questioningly at Émilie.
“He won’t stop.” Her voice twists in distress, and she winces. It’s so subtle, Monsieur Durand doubts that’s what it is, then she does it again. He glances down and catches her digging her fingers into her bandaged hand. Such an obvious act of harm to oneself shocks him. How can anyone be so self-loathing?
“Émilie?” he says, but she doesn’t hear him. “Émilie?” he repeats and touches her arm. It’s hard as slate.
She spins towards him, then to avoid his eyes, moves away. He follows her to the display case.
“I have news how to leave. They require money, but I must be frank, it’s doubtful you’ll get far. The Germans—the Nazis are everywhere.”
Émilie begins wiping the display with a cloth she pulls from her apron. Is she having second thoughts about going?
“It’s safer here, I imagine. They aren’t going house-to-house, and no one has turned us in. So far.”
She gives no indication she’s listening. Monsieur Durand clears his throat and takes his hat off. He brushes unseen specks off its rim and holds it against his chest.
“I see you’re not convinced of humanity’s goodness. With reason, I suppose. We become accustomed to poison drop by drop.”
He expects her to at least mutter something in response, but Émilie doesn’t even glimpse at him to show she’s heard.
“Do you still want me to arrange your passage?” he asks point-blank.
“Yes.”
He’s about to ask her if she’s sure, but her face hardens against everything around her, killing further queries.
Monsieur Durand puts on his hat and tips it to her. “À bientôt,” he says between his teeth. He strides to the door and departs.
On his way back to the bookstore, he passes Samuel’s gutted shop and sees Madame Monchamp and a German soldier in the doorway, their heads together in conversation. Right from the start of the war this fiend of a woman took treachery as her lover.
Monsieur Durand looks away and quickens his pace.
•
André fumbles with the key, trying to find the lock in the dark. He manages to open the door, stumbles in, and collapses.
Émilie appears, floating above him like an apparition. Seeing his battered face and the blood dripping from his mouth, she steps back.
“Monsieur!” She falls to her knees beside him and holds him.
They remain this way, him breathing in her ear, his lips brushing her cheek, until he goes slack in her arms.
•
Émilie and Monsieur Durand watch over André while he sleeps, his face cleaned but marred by bruises and cuts. Desperate, she risked being caught defying curfew to bring back the bookseller, fearful André wasn’t going to make it through the night—his pulse was that feeble. They washed him and tended to his wounds until dawn. Thankfully he slept through it all.
The lines on Monsieur Durand’s forehead deepen. “You’re right. He has to stop. It’s enough. He does more damage than good looking for her.”
Émilie motions for the old man to step away with her. “Let him sleep,” she whispers. She’s not sure when she became so protective of the baker and his son, but she believes she has a responsibility for them now. The why is much too complicated to untangle.
Monsieur Durand shakes his head, resolute about having his say, and raises his voice, not caring if André hears.
“He’s asked the wrong people. Too many questions, and no one will trust you. Next time it may be worse.”
TEN
Monday, October 25, 1943
As his son’s tiny arms strain to wrap around him, André’s not sure he’ll survive another slice being cut from his heart. There’s been so much turmoil and upset this past week, it doesn’t surprise him Frédéric is holding on so tightly. André challenges anyone to question their boy’s ability to love.
Monsieur Durand once told him the first thing you think about when you wake up tells you who you are. The first thing André thought that morning wasn’t of Mireille, exactly, but of the hole inside him where she’s supposed to be.
Émilie brings over a bowl of soup and a spoon to his bed.
“I can get up.” He moves to stand, grimaces, stifles a curse, and falls back against the pillow.
“Rest.” Émilie starts to feed him, but he puts up a hand to stop her.
“I’m not the one who needs mothering.” He tries to get up again. “She’s still out there.”
“André!”
He’s as startled she said his name as with the force she used in saying it. The lioness roars.
“You have Frédéric to care for. He needs all of you, and not just what you have left over from grieving.”
André flinches. What nerve she has. But before he can argue, he sees Frédéric looking up at him, his expression made tentative by the tones of their voices, causing him to teeter between giggles and tears. André’s not sure he can deal with either right now.
“He’s our— He’s my life.” André strokes the boy’s cheek with his thumb, and Frédéric makes a soft guttural noise like a purr.
Émilie offers him the soup again. “Go on,” she prompts.
Not wanting an argument, André gives in. He takes the spoon and starts eating, but can barely swallow it. It tastes of skunk soaked in sea water.
Émilie leans over him. She wants to know what happened—who did this. To avoid being asked things he’d rather not confess, André turns away. She doesn’t so much as twitch. She won’t leave him alone until she knows.
André lowers the spoon, almost knocking the bowl from her hand. “It’s like I told you—I’ve been going to the towns between here and Paris. Yesterday, I went to a church in this one town with the foulest river I’ve ever seen and spoke with the priest. He was an elderly man, his eyes phlegmy with cataracts, but when I showed him a photograph of Mireille, he shook his head. Then he warned me that wasn’t a town to be asking questions in.”
Émilie holds the bowl to her, almost hugging it, and André has to lift the spoon until it feebly bobs in the air for her to notice.
“But you didn’t listen.” She holds out the soup to André as he sips another spoonful. This one’s not all that bad. His taste buds must be rotting in his mouth.
“For the rest of the day, I stood in the town square outside a boulangerie and shared Mireille’s picture with anyone who I could stop long enough to listen. No one had seen her.
“Just before sunset, my heart seized when I saw her walking across the square. I sprinted after her, but froze when a man approached her and kissed her on the lips.”
André places the spoon in the bowl. “No more.” He lies back on the pillow and looks up at the ceiling, imagining the endless sky above it. Like a road, it can lead anywhere. You just need someone to travel with.
He sighs heavily and sits up again, wanting to finish his tale soon as possible and be left alone with his thoughts.
“Only when they turned, I saw it wasn’t Mireille. I was relieved and devastated.
“After the bread baker shut his shop for the day, he came out and offered me a petit pain—I guess he mistook me for a beggar. I told him about my search, and he sympathized with me. He was a kind man. He told me he’d given a son to the Great War.
“He hadn’t seen Mireille, either, but he said there was a café at the end of the street where, as he described it, ‘those with their ears glued to the ground gather before curfew.’ I should’ve taken that as a threat.”
André looks around for where his clothes are. He’s supposed to be out there.
“That’s how this happened?” Émilie waves a hand at his injured face.
André nods. “Quickly as I could, I was in front of these grubby men who were smoking and drinking, and smelled of idleness and pickled eggs. After telling them my story, they made me promises, took my money, and said to follow them out back where they beat me.”
He pauses for Émilie’s reaction, but she simply stares at him, her face purged of all emotion. He wants to stop speaking—he isn’t thinking straight. But she should know one more thing.
