The Illusion Of Separateness Part 11

The landing was thick with smoke and A had to hold his breath. In the first room was a pair of narrow beds with two white blankets, frayed but pulled neatly over pillows. There were two bedside tables of dark wood, a square clock, and a wooden closet with mirrors set in the doors.

A rushed to the window and flung it open. He filled his lungs with clean air, as smoke poured out over his shoulders. From the second floor he could see the body of the woman more clearly. The heat from the burning roof was intense.

A went back into the room and scooped out an armful of men's clothes that were hanging in the closet. He tossed them through the open window and watched them flutter to the ground.

In the second room was a chest of drawers and, to A's utter delight, a small stack of books. There was little time to choose, so A grabbed the thickest volume, which he then dropped in his excitement. As he bent down to pick it up, he noticed at the far end of the room a mess of blankets and a makeshift crib from which a round face was blinking furiously.

II.

A SET THE screaming child down by the cow fence and covered the body of the woman with his jacket. He changed out of his ruined uniform and dressed in the shirt, trousers, and jacket from upstairs. Then the baby stopped crying and watched A roll his old clothes into a ball and toss them into the fire.

There was a cattle trough by the fence, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with rainwater. Insects skimmed along the top. Dead slugs had turned white and rolled at the bottom. A splashed the mud and smoke off his face, then brushed back his hair with both hands.

When the baby started crying again, A fetched the pitcher of milk and put some cream on his finger. The child took it eagerly then reached for more. A tried many positions, but not one of them seemed appropriate for feeding. He had never witnessed a child fed by a mother before, nor felt the warmth of another human body against his. The child, being turned sideways, and spun, and held upside down by A, thought it was a game, and his crying turned to laughter.

In the end, A poured milk into the palm of his hand and the child licked it out. After a dozen palmfuls, the child looked up and made a noise that sounded like meow.

They sat there for a long time deciding what to do.

The child kept looking around. A knew why, and it filled him with despair.

At the edge of the farm was a gate. A few birds had perched to watch the flames. A imagined another child waiting at another gate for his father, and recalled vividly the forms and faces of those men he had cut down.

And through all this, the child clung to him, and A clung to the child.

They had a long way to go.

This would be the first day.

III.

HIS FATHER WOULD think he had been killed. He could read books again, sit in fields, fall asleep outside, and go back to the secret rural life he so enjoyed. He could raise the child as his own son, teach him to read and write. They would take all their meals together, make each other laugh, grow things in a small garden, and go swimming in summer, when the rivers were shallow.

His mother seemed to him now more alive than she ever had-as though he were taking over from her somehow and the child in his arms was himself.

He knew that people would be suspicious of a young man who didn't speak-but he had a baby. He was carrying a person too young to know about war.

Slow convoys of German soldiers eyed A and the child with indifference. French peasantry who, on getting little response to their questions, threw their hands in the air or hurled insults that A did not understand. After a few days, they were both desperately hungry, and the child wouldn't stop crying. If not for an old woman who noticed a man and baby stumbling along the road-it might have ended for both of them quite soon.

Her first task was to feed the child, but just enough to begin the process of eating again.

The woman had a skeletal face with deep-set, serious eyes that gave the appearance of chronic disapproval. She arranged her gray hair meticulously, in the style of a bourgeois. A thought that at one time she had probably been quite beautiful. He wondered if she had any children, and where they were. A dry mop stood upside down in the corner of her sitting room like someone watching, and beside the fire there were two wooden armchairs, one of which appeared unused. There were sheets of newspaper on the floor, and from time to time, a cat wandered past with its tail up.

A's silence did not seem to bother the woman. She had lived alone for a long time and was not used to speaking. Her initial fear was that the man would beat her. But after a few hours, her fear was that they would leave.

A sipped hot broth before a crackling fire, and watched the old woman lay the baby on a towel, then unpin the soiled cloth around its bottom. She wiped gently with a warm rag and the child screamed. She rinsed out the rag and continued wiping. The flesh on the child's genitals and upper legs was raw. The child was screaming with such force that his face had turned blue. A put down the bowl of broth and went to him.

When the child saw A, he calmed a little and his screaming turned to crying. After several shallow breaths, he fell silent and reached out his hands. A touched them. The woman smiled and applied a white paste to the baby's raw skin with her fingers.

The next day she cut up one of her old dresses and showed A how to pin a piece of fabric safely onto the child.

After they had eaten supper that night, she demonstrated how to hold the baby against his shoulder, and pat the middle of his back.

In a trunk upstairs, the woman found A a pair of shoes, which were too big, but cushioned his ruined feet as they foraged each night in the dusk for potatoes, turnips, carrots, or anything remotely edible. Whatever they unearthed was first offered to the child.

One day a man knocked on the door. When the woman opened it and spoke to him, he said he was lost, but couldn't stop looking at A, who stood behind with the baby. The next day, two men kept walking past the house and trying to look in. When gunshots were heard in a nearby field that evening, A decided they would leave at dawn.

The woman filled a basket with clean rags, apples, and anything else she had lying around.

She stood in the middle of the road and watched them disappear.

That night in bed she held her rosary and wondered who else she could help.

On her deathbed thirty-eight years later in 1982, still clutching her rosary, the old woman felt the measure of her loss through the grief of those at her bedside. She tried to appear calm but was in a great deal of pain. She was known simply as Marie, though older people liked to call her Mairie,* to show their respect for all she had done for people over the years.

When the moon came out, she exhaled a final breath and the most insignificant part of her slipped away with grace.

The entire village took part in the funeral procession. Behind the hea.r.s.e, the priest talked loudly and laughed because she had taught him the joy not only in life. Teenagers followed slowly at the back, keeping distance enough to smoke and hold hands.

IV.

A AND THE CHILD slept mostly in barns. When it rained, they found shelter under thick summer trees. If there was no one around, A read to the child from the book in his pocket. And though neither of them understood what the words meant, the sound of it gave them peace.

A knew how to harvest the wild hedgerows, and the child soon developed a taste for blueberries and strawberries. They found a rhythm for eating and sleeping, and the child seemed content-except at night, when he often woke and was inconsolable.

A changed his diaper always in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. If not too soiled, he would keep the old pieces to wash later. He also applied the white paste given to him in a jar by the old woman.

There were a few times when the child was screaming so much that A got worried, and so broke his silence and hummed the only song he loved, that he had heard as a child, and which haunted him with mysterious familiarity. He liked to think of it as something his mother had taught him. He did not know who wrote it, when, or why-that it was called "Of Foreign Lands and People," and that his mother had received a standing ovation when she played it to a packed school auditorium in 1911.

One morning, they found a bicycle in some damp hay. With a little practice, A figured out a way to keep it going with both of them on.

After hours gliding through the countryside, they approached a village so small there wasn't even a sign. In the distance outside a cafe, a group of n.a.z.i soldiers were standing in the road, smoking and talking. The child could feel A's fear and clung tightly. In a flash of inspiration, A rang the bell on the handlebars and the soldiers instinctively separated to let them pa.s.s through the middle.

By noon the next day there were gradually more buildings, more people, and a steady stream of sputtering cars with things strapped to the roof.

When they saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, A got off the bicycle and wheeled it. They had no more food and the baby was restless. Eventually, it was too much for A to bear, and so, holding the child in his arms, he stepped into the first cafe that looked friendly. A man in a short brown tie greeted him. A tried to convey, using his hands, that he wanted to sell the bicycle outside, or trade it for something to eat.

People stopped eating and looked. The owner held meal tickets to A's face and shrugged. Then a waiter began to usher them out, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell of the child. When they were almost to the door, an elegant woman in a red dress strode over to the owner and slapped him hard on the cheek. Then a chair sc.r.a.ped because an old man at the back of the dining room had stood up to see.

The woman took the baby from A's arms and went back to her table, where she mashed her lunch into tiny morsels. A few people applauded. Others shook their heads in disgust.

A stood by the door and watched the boy reach madly for the food on the woman's plate. He felt giddy with delight. The waiter went back to work. As people finished their meals and left the restaurant, some handed A a piece of cheese, or bread, or meat wrapped in newspaper. One woman told him he should be ashamed of himself, begging like that with a child.

Before giving the baby back to A, the elegant woman wrote her name on a piece of paper, along with her address in the Ninth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. Then she kissed the child and walked out.

They wandered the boulevards of Paris for hours like a pair of tourists. A's feet ached in a new way. He wanted to tell the baby that Paris was like a poem in stone. He thought about the woman in the red dress, and wondered if they would live with her from now on. She was very attractive, and in time, they might even grow to love one another. He could get a job, fix up her place-read to them at night for entertainment.

They came upon the Louvre Palace by accident, and ambled through an archway into the Tuileries, where A set down the bicycle and found a sunny patch of gra.s.s.

They played, clapped hands, and rolled in the gra.s.s. Bees shouldered their way into soft bells, and birds circled noiselessly above the fountains. When A took a small, plump tomato from his pocket, the child s.n.a.t.c.hed it, but instead of eating it, held it to A's lips.

He bounced the boy on his lap, and from time to time, fed him pieces of food from his pocket. Old people stopped walking to look at them.

A collected fallen petals from the flower beds and rained them down over the child. The statues seemed to protect them without moving.

When the baby cried, A hummed quietly and cradled him.

They fell asleep with their foreheads touching.

When other people began to pack up and go, A looked for the woman's address in his pocket, and set the child on the bicycle. The sun was beginning to set, and night would be cool.

When they reached a wide square of cobblestones at the edge of the Tuileries, A noticed people congregating on the rue de Rivoli, and thought it might be a good place to get directions. He would show the piece of paper with the address, then point questioningly.

At the center of the crowd was a stout old man with a small dog that was doing tricks. A leaned the bicycle against a wall, and pushed to the front so the baby could see. The dog was wearing a tiny beret and a tricolor coat. People applauded when he stood on his back legs. The old man was delighted and blushed.

After a short time, the crowd had grown so large that pedestrians had to step into the road to pa.s.s. There was no end to the dog's folly. A wondered if they were once part of a circus. When the crowd laughed, A and the child laughed with them.

Then angry shouting in a language that A understood. People strained their necks to see what was happening. The crowd was so large that a motorcycle and sidecar were unable to turn up a narrow street. The driver shouted in French, then in German, but the dog had put everyone in a trance.

The soldier climbed out of the sidecar and muscled his way through the crowd. He shouted at the man to take his animal and clear off.

The man made a face and turned to his little dog. The soldier shook his head in reproach and pointed for the man to go. Then the little dog shook his head and raised a paw in the same direction.

The crowd screamed with laughter.

A and the baby laughed too because the dog had done it without any sign from his master. The soldier pushed the old man to the ground. The crowd surged and shouted viciously. When the dog attacked the soldier's ankle, he pinned his body with his boot and drove the b.u.t.t of his rifle hard upon the dog's skull, dashing it against the stone. The crowd broke into violent screams, and rushed upon the soldier. A felt in danger of being crushed but couldn't get away. The soldier, cornered by the fierce mob, waved his gun frantically back and forth.

Then gendarmes arrived blowing whistles. They tried to break up the crowd, but people were resisting. A wrapped the child safely in his arms and tried to shoulder their way out of the mayhem, but then nudged a gendarme in the back who quickly turned around and demanded to see his ident.i.ty papers. A tried to back away slowly, but the policeman raised his pistol and demanded identification.

"'I have no way,'" A said in English, "'and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw.'"

There was a moment of connection, which may only have been confusion, but the gendarme's father had been an English teacher in Le Mans and often recited lines from Shakespeare at the dinner table on Sunday.

Then military vehicles arrived. Soldiers beat anyone in their way.

One of the soldiers must have thought that A was resisting arrest, and stormed past the gendarme with his rifle out. The policeman told the soldier to lower his gun, but his eyes were burning. A quickly handed the child to a teenage girl standing next to him, and raised his arms in surrender. The soldier pushed the barrel of his rifle against A's forehead and screamed. Then some of the other soldiers began firing and the crowd went mad. As the soldier prepared to fire upon A, the teenage girl, still holding the child, realized that she was looking at the same soldier who had killed her brother last year outside a cafe as she and her mother watched helplessly. Without hesitation, she took a pistol from her pocket and shot the soldier twice in the heart. A gendarme several yards away fired at the girl, but missed and hit A in the face. People found themselves spotted with blood and fragments of bone.

The teenage girl dropped the gun and ran, still holding the baby in her arms. A team of soldiers gave chase, but Anne-Lise was a fast runner. She grew up in a village outside Paris and was a champion ice-skater.

She had taken part in many missions under the name Sainte Anne. She had killed nine people and always cried after-but would never give up. She was seventeen years old, and her heart was a determined one.

In her pocket were keys, a small notebook of poems, a pencil stub, some string, and a ring her mother had given her for her thirteenth birthday.

She had been asked to leave Paris for a while by the others because she was known to the enemy-but news of the Normandy landings had reached the city. The liberation was a matter of weeks. Plans were being concocted, weapons smuggled in. Sainte Anne's skills and daring would be vital.

She sprinted toward the river, stumbling on loose cobbles, but never losing her balance. Her hope was to get ahead and then hide under a bridge, or in a boat moored to the bank.

Other moments of her life pa.s.sed as she darted across streets, through trees, down ancient stone steps.

The smell of oil on her father's hands. The night she left the window open at her grandparents' house and snow settled on her bedclothes. Riding a horse for a bet and then falling in love. Lacing up her ice skates. She wanted to marry and live in Montmartre. She loved dancing and American jazz.

As she hurried down the steps to the river, she looked up to see the soldiers pa.s.sing above. She slowed and tried to appear calm-but then someone sitting idly by the water whistled, and the soldiers turned around.

As she flew up a narrow bank of the Seine, the soldiers shouted at her to stop. They were closing in and the child in her arms was a terrible, screaming weight.

After pa.s.sing under another bridge, she spotted a narrow staircase that led back to the street. The soldiers followed her up the steps one by one. When she reached a long, straight boulevard, two of the soldiers stopped to fire. Someone screamed. People on bicycles pedaled for their lives. Anne-Lise saw an alley and cut into it, but then halfway down realized it was a dead end.

These were to be the last moments of their lives.

But then a door swung open and a surprised teenage boy in a baker's ap.r.o.n stood looking at her. She pushed past him into the storeroom and told him to close the door quickly.

It was very dark. They could hear the soldiers' boots outside. Then the sound of rifle b.u.t.ts slammed against doors and the order to open up. When the baby started to cry, they bashed at the baker's door, and kicked it with their boots.

Pascal took the baby from Anne-Lise and told her to stay hidden under a pile of sacks.

Then he unbolted the door with the child in his arms.

The soldiers stared at them angrily.

"What's going on?" Pascal said. "What do you want?"

"Who else is in there?" one of them growled.

"My mother is sleeping upstairs."

"What about your wife?"

"She went to visit her grandfather in Tours, who says he's dying but probably has the flu," Pascal said. "This is my son."

"Your son?" one of the soldiers said. "What's his name?"

"Martin," Pascal said.

The soldiers stared menacingly until Pascal asked if they would like to come in for some hot coffee and something to eat. They entered without saying anything and walked through the kitchen into the place where there were tables. They took off their helmets and set them noisily on the floor. The shop had just closed, but Pascal put on all the lights and warmed some cakes in the oven, as if it were just another, ordinary day.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

The author would like to mention how the story of John and Harriet Bray is inspired, in part, by the real-life story of Bert and Annette Knapp. During World War II, Mr. Knapp served in the Eighth Air Force and was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart. He was a member of Operation Carpetbagger when his B-24 Liberator crashed in n.a.z.i-occupied France on 7 August 1944, after being hit by flak. He died in 1994. Mrs. Knapp is ninety-four years old and lives in Connecticut.

The author wishes to acknowledge the following: Amy Baker; the O'Brien family; Joshua Bodwell; Bryan Le Boeuf; BookCourt; Dr. A. S. and Mrs. J. E. Booy; my dear brother Darren Booy and his wife, Raha; Catrin Brace and the Welsh a.s.sembly Government; Ken Browar; David Bruson; Jonathan Burnham; Gabriel Byrne; Lauren Cerand; the Connelly family; Mary Beth Constant; Rejean Daigneault; Dr. Shilpi Epstein; Laurie Fink; Peggy Flaum; Tom Ford; Foxy; the Gaddis family; Dr. Bruce Gelb; Rich Green; Jen Hart; Dr. Maryhelen Hendricks at SVA; Dolores Henry; Gregory Henry; Nancy Horner; Mr. Howard; Carrie Howland; Dr. M. Kempner; Alan Kleinberg; Hilary Knight; Babette Kulik; the Lotos Club; Alain Malraux; Lisa Mamo; Michael and Delphine Matkin; McNally Jackson Booksellers; Dr. Edmund Miller; Dr. Bob Milgrom at SVA; Cal Morgan; Michael Morrison; Dr. William Neal of Campbellsville University; Neil Olson; Orchard Strategies; Wendy and Jon Paton; Lukas Ortiz; Deborah Ory; Jonathan D. Rabinowitz; Rob; Shambhala Sun magazine; Ivan Shaw and Lisa Von Weise Shaw; Society Club; Dmitri Shostakovich; Philip G. Spitzer; Vi Trayte; the Vilcek Foundation; Virginia Stanley; Jeremy Strong; Lorilee Van Booy; Fred Volkmer; Dr. Barbara Wersba; Sylvia Beach Whitman at Shakespeare & Company.

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