Delicate Edible Birds (27 page)

It was this that got him. That he'd said this to her, of all people. That she'd taken it in and stored it away and might use it someday. He couldn't shake the idea that maybe she'd only done it out of pity, slept with him because she'd felt sorry for him. He couldn't take pity. Frank turned away and counted his breaths through the morning to stay steady.

The day passed. Lucci sat staring through a crack at the clouds skimming across the delicate sky. Viktor did fifty pull-ups on a beam. Parnell smoked the last of his cigarettes and flipped the photographs of his family over and over again like playing cards. Outside, there were the sounds of a few more passersby. A French owl, someone working nearby, the clang of metal, the blunted clock of wood.

In the midmorning, Frank couldn't take his hunger, and bit into one of the raw potatoes from the sacks, but spat it out again when he saw its black heart.

Before noon there was a rumble in the sky, and the way that Viktor scowled, Frank understood that the Russian had recognized the sounds as Nazi planes. If the Nazis could fly this far south without firing, their troops would be only a few days away. Then, the camps, which he had heard of. Bullets in the head, inmates thin as bones. Frank was not so sure now that he would get away easily.

At midday, the mother came out into the yard and scolded
her chickens; Nicolas and the boys clomped back to the house for their meal. Afterward, Nicolas unlocked the chain on the barn and thrust open the door. In the overbright sun that poured into the dim barn, Nicolas did not seem quite so frightening. Just a peasant farmer, and a not bad-looking one at that. Younger than Frank, at least. He gabbled something inquisitive in French at Bern, and she spat back her answer, saying
cochon,
which Frank knew meant pig. So: the answer was still no. He felt his insides twist at this and a fury rise up in him when Nicolas laughed, then slammed the door shut again, locking them in the dark.

Germans are advancing on Orléans, Viktor said for Frank's benefit.

I got it, Frank said. He hadn't, though he couldn't let Viktor know that.

Damn Bern. In the light of day, he didn't see what all the fuss was about. She'd slept with everyone and his brother, so why one more peasant meant anything, he didn't know. The first time he knew he was going to report on this war (how young he seemed then, my God, not that long ago, either), the fellows back at
Life
raised their eyebrows. Say hello to Bern Orton for us, Frankie-boy, they'd said. We hear she's a hot number, and when he said, What do you mean?, admiring a woman whose moxie let her do what only men had done until then, they laughed. Showed him a photograph of a young lady. Said, She looks all prim, distant cousin to Eleanor Roosevelt, Main Line, all that, but don't be fooled. They told stories: the mayor she'd seduced at sixteen, the mar
riages she'd broken up, the painter who'd shot himself in the heart over her. Pussy of gold, they said. And gives it away for free.

Lucky bastard, they all said, and clapped him hard on the back. Queer, he thought now, how those men were equally right and wrong about Bern.

By evening Frank's shudders made the wall behind him rattle. He had nothing in America, no family, no wife, no children, nothing but his job and baseball and a small house near a decent brewery, but he just wanted to go home again. When night fell and the moon rose in the chink in the roof and it became painfully evident that there would be no dinner, Frank began to curse. The curses rattled out of his mouth like gravel, like spittle, he couldn't stop them. He cursed Nicolas, the boys, the dogs, the chickens, the old hag; he cursed God, France, the world, the United States of America, the
Kansas City Star, Life
magazine, his mother who urged him to be a reporter, his father who had gotten him his first job, President Roosevelt and his ugly old wife, and, because Bern jumped in roaring to defend Eleanor, he spun about to curse Bern.

Dammit, girl, he said. Just do it and get it over with and we can go. I'm dying here. I feel like a fucking beehive was set loose in me. Just do it. Then we'll never talk about it again and we can reach civilization and I can have a fucking drink.

Viktor grabbed Frank by the collar and shoved him up against the wall. Frank struggled to breathe, his vision black
ening from the edges. And then, saying nothing, Viktor let him go and Frank slid to the ground and wheezed there sullenly for a long time, watching the straw before his eyes dance with his breath, watching Bern at the far end of the room as she combed and combed her hair like a cat licking itself calm.

 

HE WAS IN THE GARDEN
in Fiesole eating figs and Cinzia was there, her hair short like a boy's and blown by the warm wind. She opened her mouth, about to say something—Lucci's very limbs tingled, waiting for her voice—when Parnell sat up beside him, shouting incomprehensible words. Lucci sprang up in the darkness of the donkey-smelling barn, his heart splitting in his chest.

Oh, he cried. Viktor lit a match.

In the spit and flare they saw Parnell's face, seized by fear. Then he was weeping. No, he said, No, no, no, and Bern was beside him, holding his face, saying softly, Parnell, wake up, wake up, it's okay, sweetheart, it's a dream, and Frank scrambled to the wall, and Lucci sat down again, wearily, and the donkey kicked, and Viktor lit another match when the first burned out in his fingers.

Parnell rested his head on Bern's shoulder until he stopped weeping, until his breath came naturally again. He told them what he had dreamed: ranks of soldiers, black as beetles, marching in lockstep down the Strand, a child swung by its heels against a wall so its brains splattered out. London
burning. Bombs falling like hailstones on the Houses of Parliament.

I want to go home, Parnell said. Please, Bern. Just let us go home.

See, said Frank from the wall, where he sat, shuddering. See, Bern. You're hurting all of us, you know. Your
morals
, he said, are hurting all of us.

Viktor moved toward Frank, but Lucci stepped between them. Frank's ill, he said quietly, and he knows not what he talks. Viktor glowered down and for a moment Lucci steeled himself for a blow, wondered if it would kill him, but Viktor turned and sat, abruptly.

When they settled again, Lucci could no longer sleep. In his mouth he could still taste figs. He could almost smell Cinzia's hair. He thought of her as she would be now, if she were alive, in the camp at Bolzano. Probably gaunt, no longer pregnant. Still as fierce as she was as a partisan, going into the night, doing what she needed to do. All that time Lucci had tried not to worry, stood under his red bulb, pulling images from the baths, but growing more frantic as their child began to show. And one bright afternoon he watched as, down a street too long for him to run to her, she was hustled into a dark car.

Now the Germans were coming, perhaps only a few miles down the road. A great ugly inkstain on France, spreading. And when they overtook this barn, who's to say where the journalists would go. Perhaps Lucci would walk into the camp and see Cinzia look up from whatever work it is they
make women do; sewing, or weeding, and she'd blanch, be furious with him for being caught. Wishful thinking, Lucci knew: more likely he'd be killed on the spot. Journalism was no impediment to evil. And only the willful say they do not know what's happening in Europe anymore.

Yet, he thought, there are still people like Bern, and this is good. White-hot people. Lucci had met Bern long before the war, when she was a debutante visiting Europe on the arm of some man. They'd met at a nightclub and she charmed him. That night, Cinzia, in the presence of a woman so beautiful, was dazzling herself and danced the way that only Cinzia could dance. Bern turned to Lucci in the dim flickering light and brilliant bleat of horns, and said, Giancarlo Bertolucci, your wife is spectacular. And he said, This I know, Bernice, and she laughed her smoke-filled laugh. Later, in his despair with Cinzia gone, when he took the job to photograph the looming war, they met up again in Czechoslovakia. When one night he knocked on her door, she opened it a crack and said, Oh, Lucci. Oh, darling, no. I make it a point of honor not to see the husbands of women I adore. He said, I understand, but it is probable I am a widow. And she said, Widower. And don't think that. Never Cinzia, she's a strong one—you can't let yourself think that. She opened her door a little wider and gave him a long, soft kiss on his mouth. There, she said, now I know she's alive, and she closed her door.

They were going to die there, in the barn. Starve. Already, they were at the end of the water in the donkey's
bucket and he had seen Parnell try to eat the oats. A terrible shame to die now; it made him want to weep for the glorious world out there, weep that he would not be able to see it grow healthy again. To find Cinzia, or to avenge her. Now, in the bleak night, he hoped his heart would break and kill him before the Germans did.

Lucci heard a scraping at the door and sat up. Probably rats; still, he crawled over to see. It was morning but still dark, and he pressed his eye to a crack and saw the teary old woman creep back across the yard and close the cottage door with exquisite care. Lucci was heartened; perhaps there was still good in the world. Then he smelled a smell that made him heady—crêpes—and he could isolate each of the ingredients as he never could before: butter, sugar, flour, milk, even a little rum. He felt the ground until he found the plate, and pressed his fingers into a soft stack two inches high. If he were Frank, he would eat them himself. But he wasn't Frank, so he said, loudly, Excuse, and the others grumbled in the hay. Chaps, he said, and they sat up. Breakfast is served, said Lucci. Courtesy of Madame Lachrymose.

It was enough to keep them alive, not enough to satisfy, and by dawn they were starving again. Nicolas came early to take the donkey to the fields and recoiled at their smell. My cabbage, he called to Bern, Have you come to any new conclusions? But Bern sent a scathing stream of curses in French at him and Nicolas chuckled and led the donkey into the light and locked them in again.

Frank and Parnell sat together by the wall and conferred quietly. Lucci did not like this. He stroked Bern's hair, telling her little tales that his mother had told him as a child so that she would not have to see the others in their low discussions. Viktor paced. Lucci wasn't looking at him when Viktor suddenly, around noon, turned pale, sank to his knees, and fainted.

Though Frank looked close to death, he was quick enough as Bern knelt over Viktor. He stood over her and shook her shoulder roughly. Listen, he said. You don't have to prove anything to us, you know. You're the most courageous woman we all know.

The most courageous
person,
rather, called Parnell from the wall.

I've seen you with my own eyes, said Frank. I've seen you kick a wounded man from a door so a cottage full of women could escape. I've seen you walk through brains and guts and viscera without gagging. If you could do those things, you could sleep with Nicolas to set us free. It'd only take an hour. One hour of courage and then we can go.

It's not about courage, said Bern. Shut your trap.

Viktor stirred on the ground and blinked confusedly, drawn and pale. She leaned over him again, cradling his pitted face. Lucci felt ill to see Viktor as low as this.

Nicolas is not even that bad-looking, said Parnell, in a rush. A bit greasy, but overall quite all right. It'd be a kindness to him, actually. He hasn't had a woman in years and years, he said. Think of yourself as doing a kindness, Bernie.

And, listen, said Frank. You can write about it when you're done. Imagine, a short story. Like that one you did, “L'ortolan,” that won all the prizes. It's material. Be a good chap, Bern. Be a good sport.

Lucci leaped up, shouted, Enough, she will not do it. That is enough. He pushed Frank back, and though Frank was far larger than Lucci, he stumbled a little. As he waited for Frank to raise his fists, Lucci thought he could hear everything there was to hear in the world: distant planes, the shuffle of a weary family on the road, the wind rustling under the skirts of the trees, voices hushed and murmuring, moving in, moving out, one great tide. He could hear, somewhere, singing. No: it was Frank, whistling “La Marseillaise” softly under his breath. Lucci looked toward Viktor, who was struggling to sit up. When he looked back at Frank, a curious glint had come into the fat man's face.

Frank said, slowly, Why the hell not, Bern? Everybody knows you're a slut.

Shut up, said Viktor, voice deadly, quiet, but Frank gave his sour little smile. Oh, Viktor, I'm surprised you didn't know, he said. She sleeps with just about everyone she meets. I could name hundreds.

I do know, Viktor said, rubbing his head wearily. She's had a few lovers. It is her right, as it is yours. As it is Parnell's, and Lucci's, and mine. At least unlike Parnell, she's not married. Bern, at least, is not a hypocrite.

Ha! A few lovers, well, said Parnell, his voice turning
Cockney, ugly. Don't you wonder, Viktor, why she won't sleep with you? I do, very much. She fucks me, you know.

I know, said Viktor. I know.

She sleeps with everyone, said Parnell. She slept with Frank, if you can believe it.

What's that supposed to mean? said Frank, but nobody heard him because now there was a hole ripped into the air in the barn, and Bern was alone in the middle of it. She reached out to take Viktor's face in her hands, speaking low and seriously, but Viktor shook her off.

Frank, he said, very slowly. Frank? I knew about Parnell. He's handsome, it's uncomplicated. But Frank, Bern? Him?

Bern sighed and tried to find the sauciness in her voice again, but it came out strained. I don't understand it myself. I guess I felt sorry for him, she said.

Viktor stared at her, and though it was dim in the barn, Lucci thought he saw his eyes fill. Well, Viktor said. I suppose you felt sorry for me, too.