In This Hospitable Land (24 page)

The big black Buick and its trailer had been stashed temporarily in the big barn but the brothers believed they needed a better hiding place. Anyone who saw it would know they weren’t ordinary farmers.

“Not that anyone would ever mistake us for locals,” Alex laughed, pointing to the berets he and André had taken to sporting. “Even if we wear these.”

André insisted, “We still shouldn’t make it any easier for anyone to unmask us.”

“Not that they couldn’t just unmask us by checking the notary’s records,” Alex sighed.

They found Albertine alone at the café washing and drying dishes.

“Do you know of any spare space available in a barn around here?” André asked.

“For your car and trailer?”

André and Alex looked so startled Madame Brignand couldn’t help laughing.

“You should know by now,” she said cheerfully, “there are no secrets in these mountains.” She polished a glass and set it on the shelf behind the counter. “Louis and I have already discussed it. We have a barn off the road you’re welcome to use.”

Later that day the brothers drove the Buick and trailer down into the barn and closed the door behind them to work to conceal their vehicles.

“It feels strange to give up the car,” Alex said wistfully.

“Now we’ll really be like the rest of the inhabitants here.”

“No, André. No matter what, we’ll never be like the inhabitants here.”

They used a jack to raise the car’s tires and then placed blocks under each axle. They disconnected the battery, poured the fluid into a glass jug they carefully sealed, and hid the battery and jug in the loft under some hay. When they spotted a piece of old canvas lying about they drew it up and over the car.

“It’s not perfect,” André said glumly.

“No,” Alex agreed, “but unless someone also finds the battery and the battery fluid it’s not going anywhere. What about the trailer?”

“If anyone sees it let’s hope they assume it is in storage because there was no car to attach it to.”

Early Wednesday morning the sixth of November, Denise dressed Katie neatly in clothes more like those of the other children in Soleyrols than her more familiar Brussels attire. Today they had an appointment with the local schoolmaster about enrolling Katie and Ida in the one-room schoolhouse.

Hastening downhill and around the café through another dusting of snow blowing wispily around them, mother and daughter spotted Louis across the road leaning over the woodpile but not chopping. He seemed to rest his full weight on his ax handle and to sway slightly side to side.

Apprehensive, Geneviève raced across the road dragging Katie by the hand.

“What’s the matter, Father?” she cried. Louis always looked pale but something about his pallor now and the grimace on his face seemed terribly, irremediably wrong.

“Uh, uh,” Louis grunted as he slumped down onto the woodpile. His eyes pinwheeled then settled briefly on his granddaughter. “Katie,” he sighed, smiling fleetingly as he slipped from the wood to the earth, falling flat.

As Katie cried, “Bonpapa! Bonpapa!” Geneviève ran to the café shouting for help. Albertine grasped the situation immediately, picked up the public phone bolted to the outside wall and cranked it to call the one doctor she knew still practicing in Vialas, a young man who had somehow escaped notice during the army call-up. He agreed to come immediately.

Hearing the commotion, Rose opened her front door and ran to her fallen husband. Albertine sent her second daughter up to La Font to bring the rest of the Sauverins quickly.

Geneviève hurried over to Rose, who held her husband’s hand, worried his face, and pleaded with him to speak to her. His eyes glazed over and then he lost consciousness.

Several regulars from the café scampered across the road, lifted Louis’s limp form, and carried him to the bed that almost filled the back room of the little house. André, Alex, and Denise arrived on the run just as the doctor drove up.

The doctor strode rapidly past the small crowd that had gathered outside the house in which the stricken man remained unresponsive. Rose, who had regained her composure, sat by her husband’s side clutching his hand as the doctor conducted a short examination.

With a serious expression and a curt nod the doctor signaled to Louis’s sons and daughters-in-law that he would like a word with them in the front room.

“I’m sorry,” the young doctor said without preliminaries, mostly addressing André as the eldest son. “Your father is in bad shape. There’s not much I can do.”

Denise covered her mouth as a wrenching cry escaped her. Geneviève suspected the doctor felt true sympathy but found his manner dismayingly abrupt.

“This is a very seriously sick man,” the doctor continued, shaking his head. “He’s had a stroke. I could perhaps do a little to help him but it would hardly be worthwhile. No matter what, he will remain severely paralyzed for however little life remains.”

No one made a sound. It was as if they were all afraid to breathe, for who knew which of them might inadvertently take Louis’s last mouthful of air?

“It’s up to you,” the young man concluded, a neutral professional. “In my considered opinion it would be far better for all concerned to let nature take its course.”

“In which case,” André said somberly, “he will die.”

“It won’t take long,” the doctor said. “He should pass peacefully.”

The young doctor took their silence as agreement and put on his hat to take his leave. André stepped over to shake his hand firmly and with that decisive handclasp said for them all all that needed to be said.

The siblings set up a vigil in the little living room, each taking a turn to sit with Rose by Louis’s side. Albertine brought over coffee and pastries—“To keep up your strength,” she said—but no one felt like eating. Neither André nor Alex took even a sip of coffee.

Louis remained unconscious for two hours. The room seemed to grow smaller with every passing moment. Then he was dead.

Tears welled up in Rose’s eyes and flowed soundlessly down her cheeks as she cradled her dead husband’s head. Geneviève reached out to touch her late father-in-law too—to brush his white hair back from his forehead—but recoiled as if shocked when she realized how quickly his body was cooling.

André, Alex, and Denise were drawn into the dark room as if bidden. The brothers watched intently and Denise gently laid her hands upon her mother-in-law’s shoulders as Rose stroked Louis’s goatee and moustache, settling each whisker into its proper place.

After some time Geneviève delicately disengaged Rose’s hands from the body that had been her husband for forty years, and embraced her mother-in-law with touching solicitude. Stillness filled the air. Rose sank to the floor and wept.

This is a most melancholy mission,
Pastor Robert Burnard thought the following morning bicycling up the road from Vialas. Leaning his bicycle against the café’s outer wall he walked over to the little house and rapped tentatively at the door. André introduced himself and thanked the pastor for coming.

“I am heartily sorry for your loss,” the pastor said feelingly. “I’m only glad that Madame Brignand thought to call me and that you agreed she should. Our young doctor had already told me the sad news.”

“Of course you will want to meet my mother,” André said, escorting the pastor through a small gathering of mourners.

The son led the way into the little shuttered room. The pastor lowered his eyes, moved his lips in prayer, and went directly to Rose, who sat alone on the edge of the bed.

Rose got up and took the pastor’s hand. He felt certain he would never forget the warmth of her touch nor the penetrating look of understanding and appreciation in her eyes.

“I know that Louis would feel comfortable in your hands,” she said kindly.

Pastor Burnard felt humbled by her graciousness and generosity. “We take strength from the long tradition of the Huguenots.”

“It’s terrible,” Louis Brignand said as if he would much prefer to spit than speak. “That good man lies dead and Vichy France orders all Jewish businesses sold or expropriated for ‘Aryanization!’”

“It makes me so ashamed of being French,” Albertine exclaimed, mourning her country as much as the deceased.

“We must do something,” Monsieur Brignand grumbled. “We must! Both to uphold our honor and to do what is right.”

Despite the cold and because he simply could not think of any other place to conduct a tactful conversation, Pastor Burnard gestured for the Sauverin brothers to join him outside. Though this was not his intention he found that the three of them naturally gathered around the woodpile—the site, he understood, of Louis Sauverin’s last stand.

Sensitive to the fact that the Sauverins were not Protestant, the pastor began by expressing his regret that it wasn’t possible to see to the interment as quickly as required by Jewish tradition.

“We just aren’t equipped to provide such service on the very next day,” he explained.

“I’m sure Father would understand,” André said immediately as if it was incumbent upon him to relieve the pastor of his discomfort rather than the other way round. “Although he was brought up as a Jew he was not a practitioner or a believer. But he was a wonderful man and I’m certain he would be honored to find his final resting place among the people who have proved so warm and welcoming and sympathetic to our plight.”

“No matter our backgrounds and beliefs,” Pastor Burnard assured the brothers, “we are the same in God’s eyes. God understands us in whatever language we use to speak to Him even if we choose not to speak to Him at all. None of this matters to God. Our prayers, formal or informal, go through different channels but all reach the same source.”

“And so our history as Jews,” Alex asked quizzically, “doesn’t trouble you?”

“Never,” Pastor Burnard affirmed, “and especially not at a moment such as this.”