“Mireille Dupré!”
“Colette Gaudin!” Wives kissed their husbands and shrieked mock indignation at the compliment.
“Michèle Petit!” That was Michèle’s mother, doggedly loyal.
“Georgette Lemaître!” This was Henri volunteering his grandmother, aged ninety or more and cackling wildly at the joke.
Several young men called out for Jeannette Crespin, and she blushed furiously behind her hands. Then Paul, who had been standing in silence at my side, suddenly stepped forward.
“Reine-Claude Dartigen!” he called loudly, without stammering, and his voice was strong and almost adult, a man’s voice, quite unlike his own slow, hesitant drawl. “Reine-Claude Dartigen!” he called again, and people turned to look at him curiously, murmuring. “Reine-Claude Dartigen!” he called once more, and walked across the square toward the astounded Reinette with a necklace of crab apples in his hand.
“Here. This is for you,” he said in a softer voice—but still with no trace of a stutter—and flung the necklace over Reinette’s head. The little red-and-yellow fruit glowed in the reddish October light.
“Reine-Claude Dartigen,” said Paul for the fourth time, and, taking Reine’s hand, led her the few steps to the straw throne. Père Froment said nothing, an uneasy smile on his lips, but allowed Paul to place the barley crown on Reinette’s head.
“Very good,” said the priest said softly. “Very good.” Then, in a louder voice; “I hereby name Reine-Claude Dartigen this year’s Harvest Queen!”
It might have been impatience at the thought of so much wine and cider waiting to be drunk. It might have been the surprise of hearing poor little Paul Hourias speak without stammering for the first time in his life. It might have been the sight of Reinette sitting on the throne with her lips like cherries and the sun shining through her hair like a halo. Most of the villagers clapped. A few even cheered and called out her name—all of them men, I noticed, even Raphaël and Julien Lanicen, who had been at La Mauvaise Réputation that night. But some of the women did not applaud. Only a few abstained, only a handful, but enough. Michèle’s mother, for one, and spiteful gossips like Marthe Gaudin and Isabelle Ramondin. But they were still few, and although some looked uneasy they joined their voices to the rest—some even clapped as Reine threw flower heads and fruit from her basket at the Sunday-schoolers. I caught a glimpse of my mother’s face then as I began to creep away, and was struck by the sudden look on her face, the sudden soft, warm look—cheeks flushed and eyes almost as bright as in the forgotten wedding photograph—the scarf pulling from her hair as she almost ran to Reinette’s side. I think I was the only one to see it. Everyone else was looking at my sister. Even Paul was looking at her from his place at the side of the fountain, the stupid look back on his face as if it had never left. Something inside me twisted. Moisture stung my eyes so sharply that for a second I was sure that some insect—a wasp, perhaps—had landed on my eyelid.
I dropped a pastry I had been eating and turned again, unnoticed, to go. Tomas was waiting for me. Suddenly it was very important to believe that Tomas was waiting. Tomas, who loved me. Tomas, only Tomas, forever. For a moment I turned back, fixing the scene into my mind. My sister the harvest queen, the most beautiful harvest queen ever crowned, the sheaf in one hand and in the other a round bright fruit—an apple, maybe, or a pomegranate—pressed into her palm by Père Froment, their eyes meeting, he smiling in his sweet sheepy way, my mother, the smile freezing on her bright face in a sudden gesture of recoil, her voice coming to me thinly over the sound of the merry crowd—What’s that? For God’s sake, what’s that? Who gave you that? Not an apple then, I realized, or even a pomegranate. The harvest queen’s prize was an orange.
I ran then, while attention was diverted from me. Almost laughing, with the invisible wasp still stinging at my eyelids I ran as fast as I could back to the river, my thoughts a blur. Every now and again I had to stop to quiet the spasms that cramped my stomach, spasms eerily like laughter but that sent tears spurting from my eyes. That orange! Stored with care and love for just this occasion, kept hidden in tissue paper for the harvest queen, globed in her hand as Mother—as Mother…The laughter was like acid inside me but the pain was exquisite, rolling me to the ground, tugging at me like fishhooks. The look on my mother’s face convulsed me whenever I thought of it, the look of pride turning to fear—no, terror—at the sight of a single, tiny orange. Between spasms I ran as fast as I could, calculating that it might take ten minutes to arrive at the Lookout Post, adding to that the time we had spent at the fountain—twenty at least—gasping with fear that Tomas might already have left.
This time I’d ask him, I promised myself. I’d ask him to take me with him this time, wherever he was going, back to Germany or into the woods on the run forever, whatever he wanted as long as he and I—he and I…I prayed to Old Mother as I ran, brambles snagging at my bare legs unheeded. Please, Tomas. Please. Only you. Forever. I met no one on my mad run across the fields. Everyone else was at the festival. By the time I reached the Standing Stones I was calling his name out loud, my voice shrill as a peewit’s in the silky silence of the river.
Could he already have gone?
“Tomas! Tomas!” I was hoarse from laughing, hoarse with fear. “Tomas! Tomas!”
I almost didn’t see him, he was so quick. Sliding out of a stand of bushes, one hand clamping around my wrist, the other over my mouth. For a second I hardly even recognized him—his face dark—and I struggled wildly, trying to bite his hand, making small birdlike sounds against his palm.
“Shh, Backfisch, what the hell are you trying to do?” I recognized his voice and stopped struggling.
“Tomas. Tomas.” I couldn’t stop saying his name, the familiar scent of tobacco and sweat from his clothes filling my nostrils. I clutched his coat close to my face in a way I would never have dared two months ago. In the secret darkness of it, I kissed the lining with desperate passion. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you would.”
He looked at me, saying nothing. “Are you alone?” His eyes looked narrower than usual, wary. I nodded.
“Good. I want you to listen.” He spoke very slowly, emphatically, enunciating every word. There was no cigarette at the corner of his mouth, no gleam in his eyes. He seemed to have got thinner in the past few weeks, his face sharper, his mouth less generous.
“I want you to listen carefully.”
I nodded my obedience. Whatever you want, Tomas. My eyes felt bright and hot. Only you, Tomas. Only you. I wanted to tell him about my mother and Reine and the orange, but sensed that this was the wrong time. I listened.
“There may be men coming to the village,” he said. “Black uniforms. You know what that means, don’t you?”
I nodded. “German police,” I said. “S.S.”
“That’s right.” He spoke in a clipped, precise tone very unlike his usual careless drawl. “They may be asking questions.”
I looked at him without comprehension.
“Questions about me,” said Tomas.
“Why?”
“Never mind why.” His hand was still tight, almost painfully so, around my wrist. “There are things they might ask you. Things about what we’ve been doing.”
“You mean the magazines and stuff?”
“That’s right. And about the old man at the café. Gustave. The one who drowned.” His face looked grim and drawn. He turned my face to look at his, coming very close. I could smell cigarette smoke on his collar and on his breath. “Listen, Backfisch. This is important. You mustn’t tell them anything. You’ve never seen me. You weren’t at La Rép the night of the dance. You don’t even know my name. All right?”
I nodded.
“Don’t forget,” insisted Tomas. “You don’t know anything. You’ve never spoken to me. Tell the others.”
I nodded again, and he seemed to relax a little.
“Something else too.” His voice had lost its harshness, becoming almost caressing. It made m
e feel soft inside, like warm caramel. I looked at him expectantly.
“I can’t come here again,” he said gently. “Not for a while, anyway. It’s getting too dangerous. I only just managed to get away with it last time.”
I was silent for a moment. “We could meet at the cinema instead,” I suggested shyly. “Like we used to do. Or in the woods—”
Tomas shook his head impatiently. “Aren’t you listening?” he snapped. “We can’t meet at all. Not anywhere.”
Cold prickled over my skin like snowflakes. My mind was a surging black cloud.
“For how long?” I whispered at last.
“A long time.” I could feel his impatience. “Maybe forever.”
I flinched and began to shake. The prickling had turned to a hot stinging sensation, like rolling in nettles. He took my face in his hands.
“Look, Framboise,” he said slowly. “I’m sorry. I know you—” he broke off then, suddenly. “I know it’s hard.” He grinned, a fierce but somehow rueful grin, like a wild animal trying to mimic friendliness.
“I brought you some things,” he said at last. “Magazines, coffee.” Again that tight, cheery grin. “Chewing gum. Chocolate. Books.”
I looked at him in silence. My heart felt like a lump of cold clay.
“Just hide them, won’t you?” His eyes were bright, the eyes of a child sharing a delightful secret. “And don’t tell anyone about us. Not anyone at all.”
He turned to the bush from which he had sprung and pulled out a parcel tied up with string.
“Open it,” he urged.
I stared at him dully.
“Go on.” His voice was tight with enforced cheer. “It’s yours.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Ah, Backfisch, come on…” He reached out to put his arm around me, but I pushed him away.
“I said I don’t want it!” It was my mother’s voice again, screamy and sharp, and suddenly I hated him for bringing it out of me. “I don’t want it, don’t want it, don’t want it!”
He grinned at me helplessly. “Ah, come on,” he repeated. “Don’t be like that. I only—”
“We could run away,” I said abruptly. “I know lots of places in the woods. We could run away and no one would ever know where to find us. We could eat rabbits and things…mushrooms…berries…” My face was burning. My throat felt sore and parched. “We’d be safe,” I insisted. “No one would know….” But I could see from his face that it was useless.
I can’t,” he said with finality.
I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.
“Can’t you even s-stay for a while?” I sounded like Paul now, humble and stupid, but I couldn’t help it. Part of me would have liked to let him go in icy, prideful silence, without a word, but the words stumbled out of my mouth unbidden.
“Please? You could have a cigarette, or a swim, or we c-could go fishing—”
Tomas shook his head.
I felt something inside me begin to collapse with slow inevitability. In the distance I heard a sudden clanking of metal against metal.
“Just a few minutes? Please?” How I hated the sound of my voice then, that stupid, hurt pleading. “I’ll show you my new traps. I’ll show you my pike pot.”
His silence was damning, patient as the grave. I could feel our time slipping from me, inexorably. Again I heard the distant clanking of metal against metal, the sound of a dog with a tin can tied to its tail, and suddenly I recognized that sound. A wave of desperate joy submerged me.
“Please! It’s important!” High and childish now and with the hope of salvation, closer to tears than ever, heat spilling from my eyelids and clogging my throat. “I’ll tell if you don’t stay, I’ll tell, I’ll tell, I’ll—”
He nodded once, impatiently.
“Five minutes. Not a minute more. All right?”
My tears stopped. “All right.”
12.
Five minutes. I knew what I had to do. It was our last chance—my last chance—but my heart, beating like a hammer, filled my desperate mind with a wild music. He’d given me five minutes. Elation filled me as I dragged him by the hand toward the big sandbank where I had laid my last trap. The prayer that filled my mind as I ran from the village was a yammering, deafening imperative now—only you only you oh Tomas please oh please please please—my heart beating so hard that it threatened to burst my eardrums.
“Where are we going?” His voice was calm, amused, almost disinterested.
“I want to show you something,” I gasped, pulling harder at his hand. “Something important. Come on!”
I could hear the tin cans I had tied to the oil drum rattling. There was something in the trap, I told myself with a sudden shiver of excitement. Something big. The tins bobbed furiously on the water, rattling the drum. Below, the two crates secured together with chicken wire rocked and churned under the surface.
It had to be. It just had to be.
From its hiding place beneath the banking I pulled out the wooden pole that I used to maneuver my heavy traps to the surface. My hands were shaking so badly that at the first try I almost dropped the pole into the water. With the hook secured to the end of the pole I detached the crates from the floater and pushed the big drum away. The crates bucked and pranced.
“It’s too heavy!” I screamed.
Tomas was watching me in some bewilderment.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
“Oh, please…please…” I was heaving at the crates, trying to drag them up the steep banking. Water ran out of the slatted sides of the boxes. Something large and violent slid and thrashed about inside.
At my side I heard Tomas’s low laugh.
“Oh, you Backfisch,” he gasped. “I think you’ve got it at last. That old pike…Lieber Gott, but it must be huge!”
I was hardly listening. My breath rasped my throat like sandpaper. I could feel my bare heels in the mud, sliding helplessly toward the water. The thing in my hands was dragging me in inch by inch.
“I’m not going to lose her!” I gasped harshly. “I’m not! I’m not!” I took one step up the bank, pulling the sodden crates after me. Then another. I could feel the slippery yellow mud beneath my feet, threatening to bring my legs from under me. The pole dug cruelly into my shoulders as I fought for leverage. And at the back of my mind, the rapturous knowledge that he was watching, that if only I could drag Old Mother from her hiding place, then my wish…my wish…
One step. Then another. I dug my toes into the clay and dragged myself higher. One more step, my burden getting lighter as water poured from the crates. I could feel the creature inside hurling itself in fury against the sides of the box. One step more.
Then nothing.
I pulled, but the crates did not move. Crying out in frustration, I threw myself as far as I could up the banking, but the crate was stuck fast. A root, perhaps, dangling from the bare bank like the stub of a rotten tooth, or a floating log wedged in the chicken wire. “It’s stuck!” I cried desperately. “The damn trap’s stuck on something!”
Tomas gave me a comical look.
“It’s only an old pike—” he said, with a hint of impatience.
“Please, Tomas…” I gasped. “If I drop it…she’ll get away…reach down and pull it loose…please…”
“I’m not getting mud on my uniform,” Tomas observed mildly.
He shrugged and took off his jacket and shirt, leaving them neatly on a bush.
My arms trembling with the effort, I held the pole while Tomas investigated the obstruction.
“It’s a clump of roots,” he called to me. “Looks as if one of the slats has come free and got caught in the roots. It’s stuck tight.”
“Can you reach it?” I called.
He shrugged. “I’ll try.” Pulling off his trousers to hang them beside the rest of his uniform. Leaving his boots beside the banking. I saw him shiver as he entered the water—it was deep there—and heard him swear comically.
> “I must be crazy,” said Tomas. “It’s freezing in here!” He was standing almost to his shoulders in the sleek brown water. I remember how the Loire parted at that point, the current just hard enough to make little pale frills of foam around his body.
“Can you reach it?” I yelled to him. My arms were filled with burning wires, my head pounding furiously. I could still feel the pike—still half in water—as it flung itself mightily against the sides of the crate.
“It’s down here,” I heard him say. “Just below the surface. I think—” A splashing sound as he ducked momentarily and resurfaced sleekly as an otter. “A little farther down—” I leaned against the pull with all of my weight. My temples burnt and I felt like screaming in pain and frustration. Five seconds…ten seconds…almost passing out now, red-black flowers blooming against my eyelids and the prayer—please oh please I’ll let you go I swear I swear just please please Tomas only you Tomas only you forever only—
Then, without warning, the crate released. I skidded up the banking, almost losing my grip on the pole as I did, the freed trap almost bouncing after me. With blurred vision and the taste of metal in my throat I dragged it to safety on the bank, driving splinters of the broken crate under my fingernails and into my already blistered palms. I tore at the chicken wire, stripping the skin from my hands, certain that the pike had got away…. Something slapped at the side of the box. Slap-slap-slap. I was suddenly reminded of Mother and how she used to scrub us when we wouldn’t get washed, sometimes until we bled. The fierce wet sound of a washcloth against an enamel basin—Look at that face, Boise, it’s a disgrace! Come here and let me see to that—
Slap-slap-slap. The sound was weaker now, less persistent, though I knew a fish could live for minutes—even twitching for as long as half an hour after it was caught. Through the slats in the darkness of the crate I could see a huge shape the color of dark oil, and now and again the gleam of its eye, like a single ball bearing rolling at me in a stripe of sunlight. I felt a stab of joy so fierce it felt like dying.