We gathered later that it was Raphaël’s disappearance that decided it. The cache of weapons in the basement suggested that the café owner had connections with Resistance groups. No one really knew. Perhaps the entire outfit was a blind for carefully organized Resistance activity, or maybe Tomas’s death had been a simple case of retaliation for what had happened to old Gustave a few weeks earlier, but whatever it was Les Laveuses paid a heavy price for its little rebellion. Like late-summer wasps, the Germans sensed the end coming and retaliated with instinctive savagery.
Martin Dupré. Jean-Marie Dupré. Colette Gaudin. Philippe Hourias. Henri Lemaître. Julien Lanicen. Arthur Lecoz. Agnès Petit. François Ramondin. Auguste Truriand. I wondered if they fell silently, like figures in a dream, or whether they wept, pleaded, clawed at one another in their efforts to escape. I wondered whether the Germans checked over the bodies afterward, one still twitching and staring but silenced at last with the butt of a pistol, one soldier lifting a bloody skirt to expose a sleek stretch of thigh…. Paul told me it was over in a second. No one allowed to watch, and other soldiers training their guns at the shuttered windows. I imagine the villagers still, behind their shutters, eyes pressed avidly to cracks and knotholes, mouths half open in stupid shock. Then, the whispering, their voices lowered, stifled, spilling words as if words might help them understand.
They’re coming! There’s the Dupré boys. And Colette, Colette Gaudin. Philippe Hourias. Henri Lemaître—why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, he’s hardly sober ten minutes in the day—old Julien Lanicen. Arthur Lecoz. And Agnès, Agnès Petit. And François Ramondin. And Auguste Truriand.
From the church, where the early service was already beginning, a sound of voices raised. A harvest hymn. Outside the closed doors, two soldiers standing guard with bored, sour faces. Père Froment bleats out the words while the congregation mutter along. Only a few dozen people today, their faces harsh and accusing, for rumor has it the priest has made a deal with the Germans to ensure cooperation. The organ blats out the tune at top volume, but even so the shots are audible outside against the west wall, the muted percussion of the bullets as they strike the old stone, something that will stick in the flesh of every member of that congregation like an old fishhook, half healed over and never to be pulled out. At the back of the church someone begins to sing “La Marseillaise,” but the words sound beery and overloud in the sudden lull and the singer falls silent, embarrassed.
I see it all in my dreams, clearer than memory. I see their faces. I hear their voices. I see the sudden, shocking transition from living to dead. But my grief has gone down too far for me to reach it, and when I awake with tears on my face it is with a strange feeling of surprise—almost of indifference. Tomas has gone. Nothing else has any meaning.
I suppose we were in shock. We didn’t speak to one another about it, but went our separate ways, Reinette to her room where she would lie on her bed for hours, looking at her movie pictures, Cassis to his books, looking increasingly middle-aged to me now, as if something in him had collapsed, me to the woods and the river. We paid little attention to Mother during that time, though her bad spell continued as before, lasting longer than the worst of them that summer. But by then we had forgotten to fear her. Even Reinette forgot to flinch before her rages. We had killed, after all. Beyond that, what was there to fear?
My hate had no focus as yet, like my rage—Old Mother was nailed to the stone, after all, and could not therefore be blamed for Tomas’s death—but I could feel it moving, watching, like the eye of a pinhole camera, clicking away in the darkness, noting everything, noting. Emerging from her room after another sleepless night, Mother looked white and worn and desperate. I felt my hate tighten at the sight of her, shrinking to an exquisite black diamond-point of understanding.
You it was you it was you
She looked at me as if she’d heard.
“Boise?” Her voice was shaking, vulnerable.
I turned away, feeling the hate in my heart like a nugget of ice.
Behind me, I heard her stricken intake of breath.
19.
Next it was the water. The well water was always sweet and clean, except when the weather had been exceptionally dry. That week it began to run brownish, like peat, and it had an odd taste to it, something bitter and burnt-tasting, as if dead leaves had been raked into the cylinder. We ignored it for a day or two, but it only seemed to get worse. Even Mother, whose bad spell was finally coming to an end, noticed it.
“Perhaps something’s got into the water,” she suggested.
We stared at her with our customary blankness.
“I’ll have to go and look,” she decided.
We waited for discovery with an outward display of stoicism.
“She can’t prove anything,” said Cassis desperately. “She can’t know.”
Reine whimpered. “She will, she will,” she whined. “She’ll find everything and she’ll know—”
Cassis bit his fist savagely, as if to stop himself from screaming. “Why didn’t you tell us there was coffee in the parcel?” he moaned. “Didn’t you think?”
I shrugged. Alone of all of us, I remained serene.
Discovery never came. Mother came back from the well with a bucketful of dead leaves and proclaimed the water clear.
“It’s probably sediment from the river swells,” she said, almost cheerily. “When the level drops, it will run clear again. You’ll see.”
She locked the well’s wooden lid again, and took to carrying the key at her belt. We had no opportunity to check it again.
“The parcel must have sunk to the bottom,” decided Cassis at last. “It was heavy, wasn’t it? She won’t even be able to see it unless the well runs dry.” We all knew there was little chance of that. And by next summer, the parcel’s contents would be reduced to mush at the bottom of the well.
“We’re safe,” said Cassis.
20.
Recipe for crème de framboise liqueur.
I recognized them at once. For a while I thought it was just a bundle of leaves. Pulled it out with a pole to clear the water. Clean the raspberries and wipe off the bristles. Soak in warm water for half an hour. Then I saw it was a parcel of clothes tied together with a belt. I didn’t have to go into the pockets to know at once. Drain the water from the fruit and place in a large jar so as to cover the bottom. Thickly layer over with sugar. Repeat layers until jar is half full. At first I couldn’t think. I told the children I’d cleared the well and went to my room to lie down. I locked the well. I couldn’t think straight. Cover the fruit and sugar with Cognac, making sure not to disturb the layers, then fill with Cognac to top of jar. Leave for at least eighteen months.
The writing is neat and close-written in the strange hieroglyphics she uses when she wants her words to remain secret. I can almost hear her voice as she speaks, the slightly nasal intonation, the matter-of-factness of the terrible conclusion.
I must have done it. I’ve dreamed of violence so often and this time I must have really done it right. His clothes in the well. His name tags in the pocket. He must have come round again and I did it shot him stripped him and threw him into the river. I can almost remember it now but not quite, like a dream. So many things seem like dreams to me now. Can’t say I’m sorry. After what he did to me what he did what he let them do to Reine to me to the children to me.
The words are illegible at this point, as if terror has taken over the pen and sent it skating across the page in a desperate scrawl, but she takes control again almost immediately.
I have to think of the children. Can’t think it’s safe any more for them. He was using them all the time. All that time I thought it was me he wanted, but it was the children he was using. Keeping me sweet so he could use them some more. Those letters. Spiteful words, but that’s what it took to open my eyes. What were they doing at La Rép? What else did he have planned for them after? Maybe it’s a good thing, what happened to R eine. It spoiled things for him, at least
. Things finally got out of control. Someone died. That wasn’t in his plan. Those other Germans were never really a part of it. He was using them too. To take the blame, if that’s what it took. And now my children. I have to think of the children. Can’t think it’s safe any more for them. He was using them all the time. All that time I thought it was me he wanted, but it was the children he was using. Keeping me sweet so he could use them some more. Those letters. Spiteful words, but that’s what it took to open my eyes. What were they doing at LaRép? What else did he have planned for them after? Maybe it’s a good thing, what happened to Reine. It spoiled things for him, at least. Things finally got out of control. Someone died. That wasn’t in his plan. Those other Germans were never really a part of it. He was using them too. To take the blame, if that’s what it took. And now my children.
More of the mad scrawl.
I wish I could remember. What did he offer me this time for my silence? More pills? Did he really think I could sleep knowing what I’d paid for them? Or did he smile and touch my face in that special way as if nothing had changed between us? Was that what made me do it?
The words are legible but shaking, forced into control by a mighty effort of will.
There’s always a price. Not my children, though. Take someone else. Anyone. Take the whole village if you like. It’s what I think to myself when I see their faces in my dreams. That I did it for my children. I should send them to Juliette’s for a while. Finish up here and collect them when the war’s over. Safe there. Safe from me. Send them away my sweet Reine Cassis Boise most of all my little Boise what else can I do and when will it ever end?
She breaks off here—a neat recipe in red ink for rabbit casserole separates this from the final paragraph, which is written in a different color and a different style, as if she has thought about this at length.
It’s all arranged. I’ll send them to Juliette’s. They’ll be safe there. I’ll make up some tale to keep the gossipmongers happy. I can’t leave the farm like this, the trees need care over the winter. Bele Yolande still has signs of fungus, I’ll have to sort that out. Besides, they’ll be safer without me. I know that now.
I can’t begin to imagine what she must have felt. Fear, remorse, despair—and the terror that at last she was going insane, that the bad spells had opened a nightmare door from her dreams into the real world, threatening everything she loved…. But her tenacity cut through it all. This stubbornness I inherited from her, the instinct to hold, to hold on to what was hers if it killed her.
No, I never realized what she was going through. I had my own nightmares. But even so I had begun to hear the rumors in the village, rumors that grew ever louder and more menacing and that Mother, as always, failed to deny or even to notice. The graffiti on the henhouse had begun a trickle of ill will and suspicion that now, after the executions at the church, began to flow more freely. People grieve in different ways, some silently, some in anger, some in spite. Rarely does grief bring out the best in people, despite what local historians like to tell you, and Les Laveuses was no exception. Chrétien and Mirielle Dupré, shocked into brief silence at the death of their two boys, turned upon each other, she shrewish and vicious, he boorish, glaring at one another over the pews in church—she with a new bruise over one eye—with something close to hate. Old Gaudin turned in upon himself like a turtle getting ready for hibernation. Isabelle Ramondin, always a spiteful tongue at the best of times, became milky and false, looking at folk from her huge blue-black eyes, her soft chin trembling tearily. I suspect maybe she started it. Or maybe it was Claude Petit, who had never had much of a good word to say for his sister while she was alive, but who now seemed the picture of fraternal grief. Or Martin Truriand, who would inherit all his father’s business now that his brother was dead…. Seems like death always brings out the rats from the woodwork in any place, and in Les Laveuses the rats were envy and hypocrisy and false piety and greed. Within three days it seemed that everyone was looking askance at everyone else, people gathered in twos and threes to talk in whispers and fell silent as you approached, people broke into unexplained tears one minute and knocked out their friends’ teeth the next, and little by little even I realized that the hushed conversations, the sideways glances, the muttered imprecations all happened most often when we were around, when we went to the post office to collect the mail or to the Hourias farm to fetch milk or to the hardware shop for a box of masonry nails. Every time, the same looks. The same whispers. Once, it was a stone flung at my mother from behind a milking shed. Another time, clods of earth thrown at our door after curfew. Women turned away without greeting us. More graffiti, this time on our walls:
NAZI WHORE, one read. Another, on the side of the goat shack, read, OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS DIED FOR YOU.
But Mother treated it all with indifferent contempt. She bought her milk from Crécy when the Hourias farm ran dry and posted her letters in Angers. No one spoke directly to her, but when Francine Crespin spat at her feet one Sunday morning on the way back from church Mother spat back, right in Francine’s face, with remarkable speed and accuracy.
As for us, we were ignored. Paul still spoke to us occasionally, though not when anyone else was there to see. Adults seemed not to notice us, but from time to time someone like crazy Denise Lelac might give us an apple or a piece of cake to stuff in our pockets, murmuring in her cracked old voice, “Take it, take it, for God’s sake, it’s a pity you children should be caught up in such a business,” before hurrying on her way, her black skirts dragging in the sour yellow dust and her shopping basket clutched tightly in her bony fingers.
By the next day everyone was saying that Mirabelle Dartigen had been the Germans’ whore, and that was why her family had been spared retribution. By Tuesday some people had recalled that our father had once expressed sympathy for the Germans. On Wednesday night a group of drunks—La Mauvaise Réputation, had never reopened, and people grow bitter and violent drinking alone—came to yell abuse at our closed shutters and to throw stones. We stayed in our bedroom with the light off, trembling and listening to the half-familiar voices, until Mother went out to break it up. That night they went quietly. The following night they left noisily. Then came Friday.
It was just after supper. It had been gray and dank all day, as if an old blanket had been thrown across the sky, and people were hot and prickly. Night brought little comfort, rolling a whitish mist across the fields so that our farmhouse seemed an island, mist seeping damply under doors and around window frames. We had eaten in silence as had become usual, and with little appetite, though I remember Mother had made an effort to make what we liked best. Bread freshly baked and scattered with poppy seeds, fresh butter from Crécy, rillettes, slices of andouillette from last year’s pig, hot sizzling pieces of boudin in its grease, and black buckwheat pancakes toasted in the pan, as crispy and fragrant as autumn leaves on the plate. Mother, trying hard to be cheerful, served us sweet cider from earthen bolées but took none for herself. I remember she smiled constantly and painfully throughout the meal, sometimes giving a sharp bark of false laughter, though none of us said anything funny.
“I’ve been thinking.” Her voice was bright and metallic. “Thinking we may need a change of air.” We looked indifferently at her. The smell of grease and cider was overpowering.
“I was thinking of going to visit Tante Juliette in Pierre-Buffière,” she continued. “You’d like it there. It’s in the mountains, on the Limousin. There are goats and marmots and—”
“There are goats here,” I said in a flat voice.
Mother gave another of those brittle, unhappy laughs. “I should have known you’d have some objection,” she said.
I met her eyes with mine. “You want us to run away,” I said.
For a minute she pretended not to understand.
“I know it sounds like a long way to go,” she said with that forced cheeriness. “But it’s really not that far, and Tante Juliette will be so pleased to see us all—”
/> “You want us to run away because of what people are saying,” I said. “That you’re a Nazi whore.”
Mother flushed. “You shouldn’t listen to gossip,” she said in a sharp voice. “Nothing good ever comes of it.”
“Oh, so it isn’t true, then, is it?” I asked simply to embarrass her. I knew it wasn’t—couldn’t imagine it to be true. I’d seen whores before. Whores were pink and plump, soft and pretty, with wide, vapid eyes and painted mouths like Reinette’s cinema actresses. Whores laughed and squealed and wore high-heeled shoes and carried leather handbags. Mother was old, ugly, sour. Even when she laughed, it was ugly.
“Of course not.” Her eyes did not meet mine.
Insistently: “So why are we running away?”
Silence. And in the sudden silence we heard the first harsh murmur of voices outside, and in it the clanking of metal and kicking of feet, even before the first stone hit the shutters. The sound of Les Laveuses in all its petty spite and vengeful anger, people no longer people now—no Gaudins or Lecozes or Truriands or Duponts or Ramondins—but members of an army. Peering out of the window we saw them gathered outside our gate, twenty, thirty or more of them, mostly men but some women too, some with lamps or torches like a late harvest-procession, some with pocketfuls of stones. As we watched and light from our kitchen spilled out across into the yard, someone turned to the window and threw another stone, which cracked the old wooden frame and sprayed glass into the room. It was Guilherm Ramondin. I could hardly see his face in the flickering reddish light of the torches, but I could feel the weight of his hate even through the glass.