Delicate Edible Birds (25 page)

There was a long silence, until Parnell, wanting to be helpful, said, Well, rather, I brought that half a can of petrol, you know.

And I the jeep, said Viktor.

And I the stupendous photo, said Lucci.

And I the water, said Bern.

The back of Frank's neck turned red, but he said nothing. Bad-tempered fellow, Parnell thought, but doesn't seem to mean any real harm.

Frank? Bern prompted sweetly, but he just turned and said, Darling, you being the only female of the bunch, I thought provisions were your field.

Not now, said Lucci throwing his hands into the air, but Bern seemed too tired to curse Frank to hell more than a few times. Then she bent down and rummaged in her valise and pulled out a bottle of Scotch, brandishing it like a tennis victor with a trophy.

Looks like a liquid lunch again, fellas. She grinned and cracked the seal with her fingernail. I liberated this from the hotel bar this morning.

Now Parnell wanted to take her in his arms again. This was why he invited her into his bed every night, propping the picture of his family up on the windowsill first, a plea for them to forgive him the sin he was about to commit;
this
feminine thought for the comfort of others. He felt a bubble of elation rise in him as he took a swig of the Scotch; this is why the men were out here in the fields, fighting: for their women, for knitting and stews and flower arrangements, the
wondrous small things that keep a fellow's life pleasant. If he weren't so blasted old, Parnell would fight for it, too. And Bern had a great womanly capacity for comfort, though she kept it hidden because she thought it made her seem like less of a chap than she wanted to be. Silly duck. She shouldn't hide it; it was what he liked about her. He resolved to tell her so, maybe sometime when they were alone and not so pressed for time.

Bathed in a warm dust and a warming buzz, Parnell drifted into a pleasant waking doze as they passed the growing numbers of refugees on foot, on bicycle, on carts pulled by peasant women like pendulous-breasted oxen. They went down that insignificant road from Paris until it emptied out, at last, into one of the major southbound arteries, to the northeast of Orléans and about sixty miles south of the city.

It was then that, pulling out onto the autoroute, Viktor cursed and stopped the jeep, jolting Parnell out of his lovely trance. Before them roiled a scene of such chaos that they, all veterans of chaos, had to take a moment to sit, absorbing, before they reacted. For, instead of the neat, small clumps of refugees who had decided to take the small road they had just left, the autoroute was teeming, impossible: cars that had run out of gas were abandoned by the roadside, women in summer dresses had fainted in the heat and were fanned by wailing children, a teeming mass of man and mule and bicycle and machine was pulsing down the road as far as their eyes could see, and everywhere were wounded people. An old woman, haute bourgeoise by her chignon and her gray silk
dress, had a dried magnolia of blood blooming on her chest. Two men carrying a makeshift stretcher bore a tiny boy, waxen and still, with a tourniquet on his thigh and nothing where his knee should have been. Filling the air were the claxons of the few cars still running, hushed talk, a faraway keening.

And, out in the fields beyond, as if this migration were not a hundred feet from them, the backs of an old farmer and his wife as they bent to pull weeds from their crop.

Shit, said Bern, and she flew out of the jeep, into the maw of humanity, asking questions, scribbling answers. Parnell felt a tad sheepish: this was not his beat; the British people were under attack enough—they didn't need more bad news. His orders were to write about resistance and bravery, not innocent civilians fired upon when they fled their homes. From where he sat in the jeep he heard
bombed, machine-gunned
,
massacred,
the airplanes strafing the émigrés about twenty miles south of Paris. Numerous dead. A two-week-old baby shot in the throat. An old man had a heart attack, seeing it. Parnell watched as under Bern's pen the story formed, neat and relentless, threads ordered from chaos.

Frank trailed slowly behind her, gleaning, having little success at asking questions himself: his French was poor, and people did not warm to him as they always did to Bern. Viktor glowered in the jeep, keeping it a meter behind Bern as she walked beside her subjects, protecting her; dear Lucci darted hither and thither taking photographs until he returned to the car to hide his face in his jacket, unable to see
any more. For a while, Bern held a baby so its mother could shift her bundle, and she held it awkwardly. But Parnell wanted to tell her she would make a marvelous mother; as she looked down into its soft fist of a face, he knew she would. His admiration only grew when, after a while, Bern held the hand of the boy on the stretcher when he awoke and sobbed soundlessly in pain.

When she at last returned to the car, when the first bats began swooping over the fields, she wiped and wiped at her cuff where a small coin of the boy's blood had darkened it. She moved close to Parnell and looked up into his face and he saw the kind of searing look she gave him when she wanted to take him into a corner and have her furious way with him. As always, he was taken aback, though he would have complied, had there been any real chance, but he looked around at the boiling mass of humanity, at the others in the car—poor Viktor, he tried not to be so obvious around him—and shook his head, just slightly.

Disappointed, Bern turned away and said, I have four stories just dying to be published. And no fucking wire to send them.

That is why we are going to Tours, darling, said Viktor.

That's our problem, said Bern. People out there told me. The wires are cut in Tours, too, the government's fleeing to Bordeaux. Nowhere to sleep, even the barns forty kilometers out full of people. No food. No water. General panic. What have you.

A long silence, broken at last by Lucci, saying, So what is it we're to do?

And Frank unfolded the map, whistling “La Marseillaise,” as he was wont to do when he wanted to calm himself. There's a road, he said, three miles to the east, that's smaller than this one. Takes us to Bordeaux, looks like, if in a bit of a roundabout manner.

Bordeaux, said Parnell, thinking of good wines and soft beds. He hadn't eaten in a day and his hunger had been replaced by a dull ache. How he longed for the buttery melt of pheasant in cream sauce on his tongue. How fine it would be to take a warm bath, to sleep and sleep without awakening to the sound of artillery. So Parnell said, Oh, yes, let's go on to Bordeaux, and he wondered if he spoke more strongly than usual, for Bern looked at him, a smile flickering across her face, and Lucci made a little noise of approval.

It's decided, said Viktor. On we push. He turned into a cart path through the nearest field. When that path dead-ended in a long, lush field of barley sprouts, he drove through the young crops. The jeep left a path of broken plants in its wake. Parnell felt sorry for those small broken plants, he did. But when he was about to mention this to Bern, he felt foolish for it, and said nothing, after all.

 

THEY MADE THE ROAD
by the time the sky had immolated itself in sunset. Bern would never admit it to the chaps, but
she was beginning to shake with hunger; always a bad sign. When she began to shake, she needed to eat soon or suffer fits of nasty temper. The jeep pressed on valiantly until the moon had risen, but presently it began to make a coughing sound and slowed to a crawl. There was an electric light glimmering through the trees. Though they urged the engine along, the jeep died before they reached the light. Parnell got out, uncomplaining, and Frank got out, complaining, and together they pushed until they reached the settlement.

There she saw a group of three stone buildings that, in the thin wash of moonlight, seemed to have sprung up organically from the ground, as if a natural geologic formation or a mushroom ring. In the hard-packed dirt courtyard, two skinny dogs skulked and rattled their chains. One weak bulb hung over a door, which was thrust open when Viktor honked, and an immense, bullet-shaped body filled the light pouring from within.

Oh, he is very large, said Lucci. He will be sure to have food.

Our savior who art in hovel, said Frank, his sharp good humor returned.

When they saw, however, that the man had the unmistakable silhouette of a rifle in his hand, and that he spoke to two other creatures who came outside behind him, also with what appeared to be rifles, the reporters did not climb out of the jeep, as they had been about to do. They waited, still and quiet, in the car, until the man came up and pointed a flashlight at their faces, one by one. When he reached Bern,
he paused, and she winced in sudden blindness so that she didn't notice that he was fondling a lock of her hair until he tugged on it. When she batted at his hand he had already pulled it away and she was left clawing air.

Excuse me, sir, said Viktor in his impeccable French, but we are hungry and tired, and would gladly pay for some food and a place to rest. And some gas, if you've got any.

The man, still invisible in the darkness, grunted, and the soft voices of the two others murmured behind him. Yes, he said in an earthy provincial French, yes, we've got all that. Come inside and bring what you've got.

Now they all slowly slid from the jeep and walked behind him, the two other strangers dark shadows at their backs. And when they were inside the cottage all Bern saw at first was a tiny old woman paring potatoes in a dark corner, a fairy-tale grandmother who smiled, though her eyes watered, rheumy. Bern's eyes adjusted in a moment, and only then did she see the small photograph of Hitler over the mantel, one plucked daisy and a guttering candle before it, as if the Führer were some syphilitic-looking saint.

Bern spun toward their host and found him grinning down at her with his dark eyes and his oily but handsome face. His arm was jutted out, his hand upraised, and on his great biceps there was an armband embroidered with a crude swastika. Heil Hitler, he boomed. Today is a great day, is it not, my friends? Please, sit. Are you hungry? Call me Nicolas.

She didn't know how she bore it, but in the next moment
she was eating, and to her surprise it was good. A smooth white wine, hot bread, potage of carrot, even a small tin of potted meat. She scowled. It would do no one any good if she were to starve to death, but she didn't have to enjoy it. Viktor sent her warning glances from his side of the table, and Parnell kept his hand on her knee, for good measure; not as if she were really so stupid as to open her mouth and let fly; they were just making sure. By the fireplace at the far end of the room sat the two creatures who had come outside with their host to greet them, and now Bern had a hard time seeing any threat in them: they were two teenaged boys with guns in their arms, but so skinny, and cringing, they may as well have been girls cradling their dolls.

My sons, Nicolas had said, gesturing at them. My wife died many years ago. The boys kept their eyes averted, and on one of them Bern noticed the blue-green stamp of a fading black eye. The watery old woman kept peeling her potatoes, nodding and smiling vaguely.

For his part, their host was leaning back in his chair, watching the reporters eat and smiling his approval. When they had finished and Frank had speared the last hunk of bread with his knife, Nicolas spoke again, softly. I am so glad my meal was to your liking, my friends. Now that you are satiated, I hope, we can come to an agreement, can we not? You mentioned that you could pay for my hospitality, did you not?

We did, said Viktor. We can. We have money. Francs, pounds, dollars. For supper tonight, of course, plus a roof over
our heads, plus provisions for tomorrow. And enough fuel to get us to Bordeaux. Perhaps fifty francs would be a good deal. That is, if you please.

I do please, said Nicolas, smiling his charming smile. I do, indeed. I will give you all that you want, the food, the gas. But I do not, most unfortunately, accept currency from those places. Those countries will presently be crushed, and all that will be worthless. Just paper, a few tin coins. Now, if you had reichsmarks, that would be something, he said, and sighed a voluptuous sigh. How I am glad that I share this day with you, he said. I must admit that I have been dreaming for this day, my friends, for years.

Since the last war, said his mother from her potatoes. He has not let up about it. Germany this, Germany that. Takes a correspondence course. German. All sorts of books. Always a very smart boy.

I was a prisoner of war during the last one, Nicolas said, but, really, I was kept better there than here: they valued me more there, where I could not at first speak the language, than they do in my own country. We had schnitzel for luncheon every day. Schnitzel! A marvel of precision, the German mind. These boots here, he said, rapping his vast foot on the ground, are German-made, given to the prisoners, and they're still as good as the day I got them. I lived among those people and knew they were superior. The Germans rise, he said, dreamily. And with them a better race of man.

Oh, Christ, spat Bern, feeling herself flush with rage.

Indeed, said their host. Bern saw his eyes drop to her lap,
where Parnell's hand was clutching her thigh too tightly, too high on her leg. Nicolas raised an eyebrow and gave her a private smile. Bern was not prepared for the pretty dimple in his cheek.

Viktor rushed in. Well, we have other goods. I've got a gold watch, he said, and put his father's watch on the table, looking sternly at the others. I'm sure we can rustle some more up.

Parnell gamely took the photographs of his family out of the silver frame, tucked them back into his pocket, and put the frame beside the watch. Then he added to the pile two diamond cuff links (
What,
Bern thought, amused, even now,
does he imagine he's doing with cuff links in a war
?), his engraved cigarette case, and a still-wrapped bar of Pears soap.