Sisters of night and fog, p.10
Sisters of Night and Fog, page 10
“Never,” Virginia says.
I will never leave Philippe.
Virginia stuffs the letter back in the envelope and tucks it in her pocket. Try as she does to be fully happy for her sister, the news pokes fresh scars. She never told her mother about the miscarriage. Who can put that in a letter? She’s glad Philippe isn’t here to see her reaction. At least she’ll have time to compose herself before he and Mum arrive, time to work through the shameful emotions of envy and bitterness that plague her. Virginia’s only consolation is that having a child under these conditions would be terribly strenuous. She keeps repeating that to herself over and over. Maybe one day she’ll believe it.
Virginia hurries outside to fetch wood and returns to the kitchen stove. She wastes match after match, but the damp logs won’t ignite. Philippe can’t keep up with their demand. They burn fires all day and all night, giving the freshly cut wood no time to properly dry or air out. They even have to sleep with Nan between them, drawing warmth from her fur.
Poor Mum will be frozen.
Another match runs out, burning Virginia’s fingertips. She shakes her hand and blows on it. Her nails are thin and brittle, and her skin is rough and chapped. She’s run out of lotion, but no amount of it could keep up with what the cold and the washing and scrubbing do to her. She tries another match, but it’s useless.
Virginia leans against the cabinets and slides to the floor, no longer able to see through her tears. Face in her hands, she doesn’t register that Nan has gone bounding and barking toward the door, at least not quickly enough to compose herself before Philippe and Mum enter, their smiles quickly evaporating.
“The wood is wet,” is all Virginia can manage to say.
Mum and Philippe give each other worried glances. Philippe holds up a bundle of dry logs wrapped in netting.
“Dr. Lebettre traded me these and more in exchange for four pounds of pasta and beans. And something else I think you’ll like. It’s your Christmas present. Come.”
Philippe places the logs on the floor and helps Virginia to stand. Mum crosses the room and hugs her disheveled daughter-in-law, tapping a new reservoir of Virginia’s tears.
“I’m sorry,” says Virginia.
“Please,” says Mum. “There’s no need to apologize. I have to pick myself up off the apartment floor at least once a day.”
But at least you pick yourself up, thinks Virginia.
“And how’s my pretty granddog?” says Mum. “Will she let me pet her?”
“As long as I assure her you’re safe,” says Philippe.
He proceeds to introduce Mum to Nan, and Mum makes a fuss over the dog for a few moments before the little group heads outside, leaving Nan whimpering at the door.
“Why can’t Nan come?” asks Virginia.
“You’ll see.”
When they get close to the barn, Philippe covers Virginia’s eyes with his hands, and they shuffle inside and to the stalls. Virginia hears her present before she sees it, and the sound gives her such joy she’s almost dizzy from the extreme fluctuation of her emotions.
“Une poule!” Virginia says. She throws her arms around Philippe and kisses him.
The hen is a mottled black and white with a fluffy crest and beard. She’s making a big fuss, sweeping piles of straw backward with her claws. And, lo and behold, in the corner they see a fat, glorious egg. The group laughs and exclaims over the bounty. Virginia picks up the precious treasure and, after they lock the hen in the barn, they return to the house, planning how they’ll cook the egg.
Virginia falls behind Philippe and Mum, gazing upon their dear forms with love. She takes a deep breath and lifts her gaze to the sky. It’s steel gray and smells of a coming snow, which would have filled her with misery earlier today, but now she fixes her eyes on what she has. Her husband and her mother-in-law. Her dog and her chicken. A letter from her mother. A new nephew. A home and health and a bundle of dry wood. If only for a night, that’s all she needs.
* * *
—
MUM SPLATS THE slimy, wet octopus on the wooden cutting board. It looks as if it has just slunk in from the sea.
“Cut off its head and beat it,” Mum says.
Virginia has stood in kitchens taking cooking instruction from Mum countless times, but Virginia thinks today will be the most memorable. She raises her eyebrows.
“Go on, dear,” says Mum. “Imagine the enemy.”
Virginia fixes her stare on the creature, and the German officer from Cancaval comes to mind. She picks up the knife and brings it down, hard. It’s not a pretty cut, but it’s clean.
“You were generous in your execution,” says Mum. “I was hoping you’d hack at it a bit.”
Mum uses surgical precision to remove the vital pieces, leaving only the tentacles and some edible parts of the head. She passes Virginia the tenderizer, which Virginia employs with violence. When she looks up from her task, Mum smiles at her, great pride evident on her face. She wipes a splatter off her cheek with the grace of a queen.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Mum says.
“I didn’t know I had it in me,” Virginia says.
“You have a great deal of it in you.”
Virginia lowers her gaze and shakes her head, all of her fear and shame and anxiety churning like the water in the pot that’s coming to a boil.
“I’m glad you think so,” Virginia says. “I always was good at keeping up appearances.”
“Give yourself more credit,” says Mum.
Virginia doesn’t know how to answer. She’s been sulking inwardly since the war began, lamenting the loss of her fairy-tale life. For every step she makes forward, she finds she falls that much farther back. She envies her own sister for having a baby. She envies the others around her, who soldier on without hesitation, while she can barely keep up with the march.
“Where are you?” says Mum.
Virginia looks up at her mother-in-law, then around the kitchen.
“What do you mean?” Virginia asks.
“Where are you—my American daughter-in-law, who is free to go home to the safety and care of her family in warm, sunny Florida—as war ravages cold Europe?”
Virginia stays quiet.
“I’ll answer for you,” says Mum. “You’re in France, with your husband, standing in the middle of the fire, voluntarily. My American daughter-in-law, who drove me through an air raid to safety, who cared for me on the long journey to Cancaval, while losing a baby, and never saying a word about it.”
Mum knew. Virginia blinks back her tears.
“My beautiful American daughter-in-law,” continues Mum, reaching for Virginia’s hands, “who defied Nazi officers in whatever ways she could, who’s learning to make a home on a farm where there are no workers, who keeps my son cared for and happy in spite of terrible conditions.”
A little pilot light in Virginia’s heart flickers to life.
“You’re generous,” says Virginia. “I feel like a spoiled child sometimes. You and Grandmère never complained about having to sleep in a peasant cottage after getting displaced by Nazis.”
“Yes,” says Mum, “because we lived through the Great War and the Spanish flu. We have calluses. But don’t forget, it takes the skin breaking and bleeding many times before calluses are formed.”
* * *
—
AFTER THE OCTOPUS dinner, which turned out much tastier than Virginia could have imagined, they decorate the little pine tree Philippe cut down, and exchange gifts. Mum and Virginia present Philippe with Mum’s father’s car coat—salvaged and hidden by the women during the thinning of the estate and lined with rabbit fur by the village seamstress in Nesles. Philippe’s eyes roll to heaven when he pulls it over his large frame.
“Was this Granddad’s?” Philippe asks.
“None other,” says Mum. “He was as big as you are.”
Next, Philippe and Virginia present Mum with her prize: the last pound of real coffee Virginia was able to buy at the market, months ago.
“No,” says Mum. “I can’t accept this.”
“We insist,” says Virginia.
“We’ll at least share it while I’m here.”
Mum hushes their protests and brews them each a cup. It will help them stay awake for midnight mass, which is actually at nine because of curfew. Philippe’s father was Catholic, but the rest of them are Protestant. Saint-Symphorien is the only church in the village.
After coffee, they make their way. Candles illuminate the nave of the church. The spicy, pungent incense calls to mind the wise men. Abbé Rabourg, a former missionary, is like a star burning in the chancel.
“Hope is not a flimsy thing based on an outcome,” says Abbé Rabourg. “It’s a deep well—its source in God—from which we can draw in any situation.”
Virginia thinks her life has always been about outcomes: degrees, marriage, children. She realizes she has a mindset that tells her, “You will finally be happy when this or that milestone is reached.” But perhaps that’s why—in spite of times of happiness—there has never been peace. Maybe peace is an illusion. Or maybe she has been looking for it in the wrong places.
“I beg you to find courage,” the priest continues. “We’re at the beginning of the winter of our lives. We can no longer delude ourselves by placing hope in the temporal. We must become new creations, acting out of love for our fellow man. Each act, no matter how small, is noticed by our Lord. And those acts will look different for each of us.”
Virginia gazes around at the parishioners, mere shadows in the dark. She notes those closest to her. Their widowed neighbor, Madame Fleury, who with her late husband helped find the land for them to build Les Baumées. The baker, Marcel Renard, and his wife. Dr. Noël Lebettre, the earnest young village physician. It’s good to be with people. It’s good to be warm and safe, if only for a night.
“‘Be not afraid,’” says Abbé Rabourg. “The most oft-repeated phrase in the Bible. Make that a prayer and keep it always on your lips. Some of my brothers are afraid to say it—and I understand—but I will not stay quiet any longer. The Nazis are evil. They are the enemy. Find ways to resist. Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body but not the soul.”
Virginia is stunned at his pronouncement. The parishioners whisper around her. This is the first time she has heard a priest or minister speak so boldly from the pulpit. She looks at Philippe and at Mum, who raise their eyebrows.
Is it Virginia’s imagination or does the congregation sit up a little straighter? Sing a little louder? By the time the service concludes, walking out through a dark cloud of incense, she feels wide awake.
The people file like soldiers down the dark streets, but a sudden sound causes them to look to the skies. Panic ensues when the airplane engine roars closer. Philippe shepherds Mum and Virginia toward Les Baumées, but as the plane crosses overhead, it doesn’t fire upon them. It looks like a blizzard begins. Falling from the sky, what Virginia thought were snowflakes materialize into the papers they are. She reaches up and catches one, while those around her do the same.
It’s a newspaper: Le Courrier de l’Air. Joyeux Noël! reads the headline. Underneath is a cartoon of Hitler getting punched in the face.
Virginia laughs aloud. She hears laughter around her. As the Allied plane leaves them, she looks back to the heavens, uplifted, as papers continue to fall gently over the village like snow.
15
LONDON
VIOLETTE
TIME DURING WAR is a strange, altered, uneven thing.
As long as individual days drag, the months move at an astonishing speed. It scarcely seems any time has passed since Violette stood in the snow, back in December, crying tears of joy to see St. Paul’s Cathedral had survived that unholy night of one hundred thousand bombs. The telephonist station, however, did not survive, forcing them to relocate to a cellar that reached its damp fingers deep into Violette’s lungs, plaguing her with a cough, ending her employment.
It’s now summer, a second summer of war. It seems as if a century has gone by since Violette’s honeymoon, since she looked through the eyepiece of a telescope, cheek to cheek with sweet Étienne, hair littered with sunflower petals, skin flushed with the heat of love.
That was a year ago, not a century. And it has been six months since the telephonist station was bombed. And it has been two months since Étienne’s last letter, which makes Violette chew her nails, and run to meet the postman each day, and scowl every time he has nothing for her.
When Étienne’s letters do make it to her, they look as battered and aged as they’re all becoming. Greedily, she reads and rereads them, particularly enjoying how he’s taken to giving her secret messages. The last letter had read, “Are you reading your Bible like a good girl? Ex. 21.”
She’d laughed aloud at the words, but then she’d grown quiet.
While pondering the strange question, she sought the family Bible and opened it to the passage Étienne had noted. It was when God parted the Red Sea for Moses and the Israelites. It was then Violette realized Étienne was telling her where he was, and it gave her a thrill.
Then he’d written, “I’m staying well fed on lots of pasta. I’m devouring it.” Violette took that to mean Étienne was fighting the Italian Army. News reports supported it.
She’s going mad worrying all the time about Étienne and living by the endlessly disappointing mail delivery cycle. Seeing women in ATS uniforms, while being unable to walk ten feet in London without coming across a poster for the service, convinces Violette what she must do.
100,000 women wanted urgently for the auxiliary territorial service! reads one poster.
no woman will ever have peace in her heart unless she helps these men! reads another.
Since April, women in the ATS have full military status. Duties used to be solely domestic—cooking and washing for the men—which held no interest for Violette. But now women are drivers and mechanics, and they staff searchlights and antiaircraft batteries, though they still aren’t allowed to fire the guns. Violette has no doubt she’d be able to get off a round if she had the opportunity. The question is, will Étienne support her wishes? Like her parents, he wants her tucked snug within her family, keeping the home fires burning.
On her one-year wedding anniversary, Violette’s mood is black. She should be in Étienne’s arms, not at her parents’ house, wondering if her husband is alive or dead. She had to get out for a walk, but she’s been brooding so heavily, she’s back home before she knows it. The poster closest to her house infuriates her.
cook for the troops! great responsibility is borne by the ats cooks who nourish our men!
She tears it from the wall, crumples it into a ball, and throws it in the nearest rubbish bin. On her way inside, she slams the front door behind her.
“Vi, s’il te plaît,” Maman chastises from the kitchen.
“Je suis désolée,” Violette says.
When Violette enters the kitchen, her parents turn to her with smiles. Her mother steps aside to reveal a three-tiered cardboard wedding cake, with a real strawberry tart as its crown. Papa promptly tops it with the bride and groom from Violette’s wedding. She’s so touched by the gesture, her anger evaporates. Maman holds open her arms and Violette falls into them.
A knock at the door calls Papa away, but he’s soon back and beaming.
“A telegram,” he says.
Violette pulls away from her mother and snatches the envelope from Papa. Her hands shake as she devours the words that lift her from her misery and send her whooping and shouting all over the house. She can hardly believe it.
Étienne!
* * *
—
ÉTIENNE RUNS A raven feather down Violette’s side, from her breast to her thigh, and back up to her neck, which he punctuates with a kiss. He slides the feather in her hair and brings his lips to hers.
For days they’ve barely left the Liverpool hotel room. Étienne’s week of leave is almost concluded, and aside from surfacing for the necessity of food and drink, they’ve stayed in bed consuming each other. Even after the long year apart, Violette feels no shyness, not a breath of hesitation. Remarkable, really, since their courtship had lasted only half a summer. How can this man she has known in person for three months of her life feel as if he has been in it forever?
“My love,” Étienne says in French. “In Egypt, there are ravens in the desert they say bring good luck. There was one I saw every day. Its shiny blue-black wings made me think of your hair.”
She kisses his neck while he whispers to her.
“When we won the last battle,” he says, “I saw the raven, and as it flew from me, it left a feather on the ground. I can’t tell the difference between it and your blue-black hair. Your violet eyes. My Violette.”
She bites his ear, and once he is fully relaxed, lying across her body, she tickles him. He squirms, attempting to get out of her grasp, but she wraps her legs around him, continuing her assault. He’s able to grab her wrists and pin her to the bed, but she quickly pushes him over until she’s on top of him. She pins him down and nuzzles his neck.
“Woman. You’re an animal.”
She bites his ear in reply.
When daylight fades, she pulls the shutters, ties the blackout curtains, lights candles around the room, and two cigarettes, one for each of them. He sits up to smoke in bed and pats the place next to him, but she walks to the vanity, sits, removes the feather, and brushes her hair. Their gazes meet over her shoulder in the mirror.
“I need to ask something of you,” she says.
