In This Hospitable Land (30 page)

Suddenly Touté raised his head sharply and his ears stood up straight. André tried to pronounce several more local words. Touté began to whimper and whine.

Had André stumbled upon words sufficiently familiar that the mutt could understand them despite André’s mangling? What if Touté could be made still more useful with the sheep, helping them file out into the proper field mornings and back down to the barn late afternoons before snuggling up with the children at night?

For the first time it struck André that in coming to Soleyrols he had inadvertently ended up where he truly belonged. Or perhaps God had arranged it.

Alex enjoyed breaking up rock-hard ground, chopping down and lugging away dead trees—all farm labors. But he was troubled about doing nothing to help bring down the Nazis and their collaborators. Sure he listened to the radio and passed on news that could be valuable to the Resistance. But how much effective resistance was there when the Vichy government was able to announce mid-month the arrest and internment in concentration camps of twelve thousand Jews purportedly engaged in a “Jewish plot” to hamper Franco-German relations?

Those actions reminded Alex of nothing so much as the Phony War. And phoniness struck him as a major factor in the mid-June denial by Tass, the official Soviet news agency, of widespread rumors of the massing of German troops along the Russian border.

Those rumors proved true. The world-at-large proclaimed astonishment and shock as the Nazis launched an attack on the Soviet Union that made prior Blitzkriegs look like warm-ups—just what Alex expected of Hitler.

And what did the Americans do? Offer to send “assistance.” Churchill announced a similar intention: “Any state who fights Nazism will have our aid.”

Undeterred by these threats of “aid,” Finland, Hungary, and Albania declared war on Russia. Less bold, Vichy France merely broke off diplomatic relations.

By the end of June the Germans had the Russians on the run. But believing Hitler had finally overreached, Alex actually felt elated. By attacking Mother Russia, Hitler, like Napoleon before him, had signed a death warrant for his dream of world domination.

Others panicked, but feeling celebratory, Alex purchased a pig. If André could buy sheep and a sheepdog without discussion surely Alex need feel no compunction about pursuing his porcine predilection! Besides, they could unquestionably use a pig. The previous winter they had all learned the value of a little fatback or a bit of bacon in making bajana more substantial and palatable. Thanks to the lush results of their plantings, they were now learning the value of pig-manure-based fertilizer.

When Alex brought the porker home and placed it in the third space beneath the archway of La Font’s open-air basement, Geneviève complained about the stench. The warmth of the pig rising along with the smell was equally unwelcome at that time of year.

“It’s so offensive,” Geneviève sniffed.

“The smell or the heat?” Denise wondered.

“They’ll always be together,” André reminded them.

“Just think how glad you’ll be for extra heat,” Alex shouted, “when cold weather comes!”

Realizing how disappointed Alex was by their response Denise quickly agreed. “I guess we’ll get used to the smell just like that of the rabbits, chickens, and goats.”

“Speak for yourself,” Geneviève pouted. “I’ll never get used to the stink of goats.”

“How about this?” Alex said angrily. “Whenever the pig stench bothers you, think ‘ham,’ ‘bacon,’ ‘sausage,’ ‘pork chops.’ Then the smell won’t be so bad, will it?”

Alex focused his outrage by naming the pig “Adolph.” Adolph turned out to be a dirty pig, only adding to fastidious Alex’s revulsion for the animal.

At first Alex only let Adolph gorge on water to enlarge his stomach and increase his capacity for food. Then Adolph’s diet was leftover chestnuts and kitchen scraps. He gained weight rapidly but became fussy about the grub, so Alex tried a mix of grain and chaff boiled into paste-like flour. This gruel pleased Adolph for a while but then he turned away from it in disgust. Soon he would only eat bits of greens from the bounty of the garden.

Alex hadn’t anticipated the need to keep a pig interested in eating. At least the creature kept putting on pounds. To judge by the look of him Adolph would be fattened up for the slaughter by the time cold weather arrived.

The Sauverins were slowly becoming self-sufficient like the region’s long-established residents. Every day they felt less need to go to Vialas. As they produced more of what they had formerly bought, they found their ration coupons lasted longer. They did so well they even felt free to sell off the last of the previous season’s chestnuts.

Agricultural disappointments were few. The potato yield only increased fourfold above seed stock. Even though the textbook suggested growth by a factor of ten to twelve that still meant lots of potatoes. And as if to compensate for that “failure” they pulled a great many more carrots out of the ground than expected. The Cévenol summer had passed its peak but these root vegetables continued their exceptional productivity.

The corn proved a triumph as did the soybeans. In fact the twenty-four soybean seeds produced a crop sufficient to help feed the family and their livestock and to save a great many more seeds to plant the next spring—if necessary.

The need to stay in Soleyrols was a distressing but increasingly likely prospect. Pétain broadcast a speech asserting Hitler had attacked Stalin’s Russia “in defense of civilization” and he had taken measures to suppress opposition political parties in the unoccupied zone, to create a stronger police force and—most frighteningly—to establish special courts.

Denise felt encouraged by a joint declaration by Roosevelt and Churchill. The “Atlantic Charter” described their vision of a free, peaceful, democratic world to be constructed after the destruction of Nazi tyranny. She believed these leaders would never have enunciated such a vision if they did not intend and anticipate its realization.

The Sauverins were well-housed, well-fed, comparatively safe and—most important—together. Which need not have been true. Much had gone badly for the Jews in France since late August when the Germans opened a major concentration camp in the northern Parisian suburb of Drancy, a holding facility and transit point for Jews who would later be sent—well, no one knew where, assuming they weren’t executed…a real possibility since German authorities threatened to shoot Drancy detainees should attacks on German troops and interests continue.

Continue they did. In a matter of days, Pierre Laval and a prominent pro-German newspaper editor were shot and wounded near Versailles by a young man acting independently. Always seeking to impress its German masters, the Vichy government ordered the immediate roundup of many opponents, generally branded Communists.

Distinctions were drawn between French and non-French Jews in France. The non-French were better off because only French police rounded them up. French Jews were rounded up the Gestapo since the brutes didn’t trust the French police to arrest their fellow countrymen.

Which did not make the Sauverins sanguine. They would have to be increasingly careful in their travels and associations as the Germans and their henchmen became more entrenched.

The sheep behaved well until chestnut season. Then they revealed a taste for falling nuts.

“They like them more than we do,” Denise suggested, penning the sheep for the night.

“That’s not saying much,” Geneviève said sullenly.

“Who cares whether we like chestnuts?” Alex demanded. “The sheep eat what we need. Do you really think they’re worth the effort?”

“Their behavior is certainly exasperating,” Denise conceded.

“Isn’t it interesting though,” André asked archly, “that the lambs always follow Alex?”

Denise giggled.

“They’re still stupid,” Alex said miserably.

He left to expend his anger slopping pigs. Over the summer the family had acquired two more. Besides “Adolph” they now had “Herman” and “Emmy,” named after the Görings.

With those names,
Alex thought,
slaughtering them will be a pleasure.

Early on the morning of October twenty-fourth, Alex went out alone to look at trees. He and André had already scavenged the dead and fallen for the hard winter ahead. Now they would have to chop down a few live ones, sanctioned neither by custom nor tradition. So he did his best to select those which didn’t produce anything valuable enough to rival the family’s need for heat. He had to wander farther and farther afield for such trees, which meant hauling as well as chopping. And they would have to fulfill Rose’s needs as well as their own.

When he returned to the house for breakfast, Alex ran into the postman and told him about the evacuation of Moscow. The postman reported the latest rumor: de Gaulle had met the previous day with leaders of the French Resistance asking them to spare the innocent and bide their time.

As the postman started back downhill, Alex was glad to see Emmanuel and Sebastian coming up. Two Spanish Communists, they had come to France as refugees from their civil war and somewhat later had visited La Font to satisfy their curiosity about the Sauverins. Now they returned every few weeks out of friendship and to see the children as they yearned for their own.