In This Hospitable Land (28 page)

Before eating chickens, though, they had learned to kill and grill pigeons they discovered pecking at chestnuts in the loft of the barn. Alex kept careful records of them too. The pigeons attracted hawks and the documented depredations helped speed the Sauverins’ determination to get the pick of tasty pigeon treats.

Toward the end of the first week of February André trembled with delight, believing he had discovered how to stop the German jamming of radio signals.

“The key, you see,” he told the others that night, “is oscillation. By rapidly shifting the broadcast frequency back and forth ever so slightly, the jamming signal can be evaded and the broadcast can still get through since a radio’s tuning mechanism isn’t all that precise.”

“You mean we’ll constantly have to twiddle the dial?” Denise asked perplexedly.

“Not if the oscillations are fast enough. Anyway it’s worth a try. It can’t sound any worse than it already does.”

André was so taken with this that idea he addressed a letter to “The BBC.”

“The only problem is where to mail it from,” he said. “I’ve signed it ‘PHOTON’ to maintain anonymity but I don’t want to take any chances even with the postman. I don’t want to get him into any trouble either.”

“Why not go to Alès and mail it from there?” Alex suggested.

The next day André returned from his mission to Alès in an unusually foul humor.

“I got the letter off easily enough,” he hastened to explain. “But I’m outraged by the black market I found. The world is at war, the true French are under siege, everyone is suffering, and here are black-hearted selfish people profiting from misery.”

“You’re not just right but righteous,” Geneviève sniffed. “We should feel fortunate you let us accept cow’s milk for our children even though we don’t have proper ration coupons.”

The cow’s milk was another great gift to the Sauverins arranged by the Brignands. When the old goat stopped giving milk, jeopardizing the children’s health, Albertine convinced an elderly farmer and his wife who lived down the road and owned a milk-giving cow to happily share “with the little ones.”

“That’s altogether different,” André insisted. “No one
profits
by it—the farmer and his wife give the milk for free. That’s as it should be. These good people demonstrate we’re all in this together, as we must be if any of us is to survive.”

“Careful, André,” Alex said acidly. “With thoughts like that next thing you know you’ll be taking up arms against the enemy.”

“Never.”

“That’s enough.” Denise interposed herself between the two brothers. “André, something came for you while you were away.”

She thrust an envelope into his hands and watched his eyes open wide.

“So mail really can get through from outside the country,” he exclaimed, quickly tearing open the envelope.

“If we would only hear from our relatives,” Geneviève said wistfully.

André peered into the envelope and laughed joyfully. The others watched in astonishment as he poured twenty-four little seeds into his hand.

“Soybeans. From Switzerland.” He declared. “Amazing! Wonderful!”

Over the next few days letters finally started arriving from family in Canada, Portugal, and Switzerland. Each of these exiled relatives had been relieved to receive evidence of the Sauverins’ successful escape and wanted to know what they might do or send to help them. They also provided good news about members of the family elsewhere. Ominously there was no information about those who had stayed behind in Belgium.

The greatest joy was definitive word of the fate of Jack Freedman. He had bided his time in Biarritz as suspected but, spurred to action by the Germans’ drive down the Atlantic coast, had caught the last ship out the previous June. Now he was safe with other Freedmans in England.

The Sauverins asked the postman why he thought mail was so slow getting to unoccupied France. He suggested that censorship was more prevalent and intrusive as the Vichy government grew increasingly nervous about dissension and conspiratorial communications. Regarding contact with friends and family in Belgium, he believed the Germans were restricting exchanges between occupied and unoccupied territories and that the Sauverins ran a risk by writing to Belgium at all.

When André confirmed that some of those they wrote to in their homeland were Jews, the postman said, “I don’t recommend trying that again—not directly. If known Jews write to you from Belgium Vichy postal authorities might be alerted by the Nazis, compromising your security and the security of those associated with you.”

“We’re already registered as Jews,” Alex burst forth. “How much worse could it be?”

“It’s one thing to be Jews who keep to themselves,” the postman explained. “It’s something else entirely if someone imagines you fomenting rebellion with coreligionists in another country. I recommend that the next time you attempt to reach anyone in Belgium you send those letters to relatives elsewhere—in Portugal or Switzerland—and ask that they forward them. That would insulate you and paradoxically might get you a quicker response.”

The calendar promised spring, but as March trudged by, precious little gave hope that the long-dreamt-of softening weather would arrive by the twenty-first—Philippe’s second birthday. And how else could they make that a special occasion?

Philippe could hardly take a single spoonful of bajana anymore, and who could blame him? The Sauverins had eaten so much of it they could identify the trees the chestnuts came from by the slight difference in look and sweetness. They often ate chestnuts several times a day—as soup, in puddings, mixed with carrots, or roasted in the great fireplace. The barley from Bédouès had begun to run low and the fatback was rapidly diminishing so they could rarely leaven their diet of the despised nuts.

But based on Alex’s reading, charting, and planning there was reason to hope some of the rabbits born at the end of February would be ready to provide a fresh taste sensation soon.

“Shall we have rabbit for Philippe’s birthday dinner?” Alex asked Geneviève, surprising, pleasing, and relieving her.

Immediately after lunch Alex went out to ready the chosen rabbit for roasting. The least squeamish Sauverin did his bloody work behind the barn so no one else had to see.

Grabbing the pudgy creature by its ears and using steady pressure from his boot on its hind legs he held the rabbit on its back on top of the great chopping block then drew a six-inch knife across its throat, letting the blood drain out onto the ground. It was a quick business.

He sliced the knife down the underside of the dead rabbit’s soft, still-warm body, priding himself on his skill at skinning. To use almost the whole animal he only cut off the tail and the bottoms of the feet, making it easy to pull the skin down and even to bare the head so it too was available for the pot. Methodically scraping the carcass down to the meat, Alex saved the abundance of fat for André to make into soap—now a scarce commodity.

It was not a pretty job but the results were delectable. Fortunately Alex’s newly prattling son had not yet connected the “rabbit” they would eat with the “rabbits” he helped feed and loved to pet.

A few days later, the brothers began working the terraced garden plots to prepare for planting. Even if a tractor had been available gas was hard to come by and the hill to La Font was too steep. What they really needed was one of those sturdy Brabant draught horses from Belgium.

But they persisted by hand and got the job done. Then they prevailed upon a neighbor to part with some pig manure that they mixed with hay to make high-quality fertilizer. Disking it into the poor soil was a laborious, nose-holding chore that got worse as the days grew warmer.

They planted Swiss chard, green and yellow beans, tomatoes, beets, lettuce, and even some corn purchased in Vialas. They cut up potato seed stock and implanted each eye in a small mound of soil. They drilled their two dozen soybeans into the ground.

The change in the weather also changed the family’s social life. Everyone in the little hamlets thereabouts could finally get out after the long, hard months as virtual shut-ins. Many strolled up to La Font to make sure the Sauverins had survived the winter.

The farmers were intrigued by the brothers’ agricultural “experiments.” None of them had ever considered planting soybeans. The corn rows were also a curiosity because only a little corn was ever planted in the Cévennes and then the green stalks were fed to the cows since the ears never matured.

All knew the Sauverins’ status as “Israelites.” Many commented on the recently established
Commissariat General aux Questions Juives
designed to assist the Germans with “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses in the occupied zone. Some decried this further despicable evidence of Vichy collaboration but others insisted it was an effort by Pétain’s government to make sure matters got no worse.

Each day after Philippe turned two Christel grew more excited because her birthday came next. She couldn’t wait to be three. Knowing this milestone was approaching made her feel bigger than ever—so big she wanted to go to school with Ida and Katie more powerfully than before. She begged and pleaded until one morning her mother told the two older girls to take Christel with them. They were embarrassed to be saddled with a child too young to attend school but Denise would not be denied.