Lisette's List (24 page)

How would André have managed under such treatment if their fates had been reversed? Would he have had the strength to endure? I hated to think of that too.

I read the letter again, hungering to know how to help Maxime. I took out my list and added, in handwriting jittery with joy,

13. Do something good for Maxime.

CHAPTER TWENTY

AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING

1943–45

I
FELT A WILD NEED TO FLY OVER
R
OUSSILLON, LIKE
B
ELLA DID
in Vitebsk, and shout, “Maxime is alive! My good friend is alive!” But there were five
Roussillonnais
whose sons had died, and over a dozen in prisoner of war camps. Their names were posted on the wall of the
mairie
just below
PRIVATE ANDRÉ HONORÉ ROUX
.

Nevertheless, containing my joy was impossible. I had to tell someone. I invited Maurice and Louise to come to my house after dinner for sweetbriar coffee, knowing that they could just as well drink that ersatz concoction at their own house. I made a paste of pulverized almonds and acorns and mixed it with some of Geneviève’s milk, a Kooritzah egg, and Maurice’s honey as a sweetener to make a pudding, using a lemon to curdle the milk. It didn’t solidify and was more like lumpy soup, but Maurice said, “Such a delight!” He licked his lips like a little boy, held up his plump index finger, and concluded, “It’s approachable, leaves a pleasant nutty flavor as an aftertaste, and has a personality all its own.”

With that, I spilled my happy news.

They both hugged me instantly.
“C’est bieng!”
Maurice cried.

Louise said more softly,
“Grâce à Dieu.”

“When I have some yarn ready, can you show me how to knit socks? I want to send him some warm socks.”

Maurice immediately pulled up his pant legs and kicked out his short calves. “Look! She made these for me before the war, and they still walk well.” He stood up and walked in a circle, showing them off. “Best socks in Roussillon.”

I laughed, realizing that I hadn’t done so in longer than I could remember.

“But certainly those aren’t the best shoes in Roussillon,” I said. He had tied the soles onto the uppers with twine and used twine for shoelaces as well. “Wait a minute.” I went upstairs and came back with an armful of shoes. André’s were too narrow, but the one pair of Pascal’s fit.

“It will be an honor to fill the shoes of the best
boules
player in the commune. Or at least the man who thought he was the best.” He stood up, pushed out his chest, took the starting position, bent his knees, and pantomimed firing a
boule
, running a few steps and pointing where it knocked another imaginary
boule
out of the way, then raised both arms in victory. “See? I have winner’s shoes. Now
I
will always be the winner.” A big grin puffed out his round cheeks, and he spread his arms wide. “You and me, we can both be happy today.”

A
LIVE
! I
COULDN
’
T STOP
saying the word as I unraveled another row of stitches in André’s freshly washed wool pullover. I wanted to be alone and at home when I committed this act of desecration. It seemed so much an ending, an unraveling of our life together, until nothing would be left. Yet as I pulled the unruly brown yarn stitch by stitch, I felt quite sure André would want me to do this. The smell of damp yarn stretched between two ladderback chairs was comforting and cozy, and I hoped each sock would carry those feelings to Maxime.

Meanwhile, my mind was flooded with questions. Had Maxime been wounded? Was he in good health? Was he well-nourished?
Was he in good spirits or in despair? Could he sleep soundly? Did he have any moments of peace? Had his natural affability hardened and become bitter? Would he ever regain his pure love of life?

I wrote from my heart without censure.

21 APRIL 1943

Dear, dear Maxime
,

Thank God you are alive! Imagine the depth and height of my joy at receiving your letter after three years of agony, not knowing. Think of that joy, and never think of shame. Max, understand this—there is no dishonor in being a prisoner or in surviving when another is killed. The outcome of events is not given to our doing. Do not carry the weight of that thought. It does no good. It is false guilt
.

I hate that you have to work in a coal mine. I fear for your health. Please remember with me our beautiful times, you in your immaculate shirts, maroon cravats, sharply creased trousers, and white spats, the picture of health sitting at the Closerie de Lilas, talking about new art. I long for such a day. It will happen again. Receiving your letter has convinced me
.

Pascal’s paintings were not in the woodpile where André wrote that he had hidden them. Did he tell you any other place? I am committed to the core of my being to their recovery. That keeps me in Roussillon. There are some good people here. I am getting by
.

What a relief it is to know you are alive. Hang on to that life with all your strength. A good end will come. I will write again, and some beautiful day, I will welcome you here with all my heart. Only endure
.

Affectueusement
,

Lisette
                 

I
PICKED GRAPES IN
the fall for Madame Bonnelly, a robust middle-aged woman with thick hands and arms as strong as a man’s. She picked two rows to my one and filled the cone-shaped basket on her back in a matter of minutes. When I saw her carrying crates of grapes on both hips, I felt for her, trying to keep the vineyard going without her husband. She had only one hired refugee to help her, Monsieur Beckett, whom she called Samuel in a motherly way. He spoke French with an Irish accent, placing the stress on the wrong syllables. Maurice and Aimé Bonhomme and this foreigner often met under an oak tree at the edge of the vineyard and talked quietly. Sometimes, after a plane passed overhead, Monsieur Beckett ran out of the vineyard and the three of them drove off together in Maurice’s bus. I imagined it was to collect dropped ammunition.

One day, while we were eating our lunch under the oak tree, I mentioned to Monsieur Beckett that since he needed to pass as a Provençal, he ought to pronounce
bien
as
bieng
, and
vin
as
ving, pain
as
paing
, and
raisin
as
raising
. “Add a
g. Ang, ang
, at the end,” I said. “It needs to be nasal. And pronounce the final
e
on words as another syllable.
Je par-le. Le, le
at the end. Make it bounce. Speak it with more energy, more urgency. Decorate the words. Make them robust. Sing them.” And so he practiced.

“When I first came here six years ago,” I told him, “I thought their speech sounded ugly. Now I find it amusing.

“And another thing. Your shoes. Anybody can tell by your shoes that you are from Paris. Tomorrow I’ll bring you my husband’s outdoor work boots. They’re scuffed and worn enough to look Provençal.”

“Won’t he need them?”

“No” was all I said, but he gathered the truth.

After some moments of quiet, he asked in a near whisper, “Do you have a strong stomach and a stout heart?”

“Yes,” I said, with some doubt, remembering with shame how I’d broken under the threat of that bludgeon.

He reached into the pocket of his shirt and showed me two pages from
Défense de la France
, a newspaper of the
Résistance
. “As far as I know, these are the first photos of Nazi barbarism in the camps,” he said.

Shock after sickening shock drove into my chest until, mercifully, the photos of skeletal men blurred before me.

“Who are these people?”

“Mostly Jews.”

“Are they in prisoner of war camps?”

“No. Extermination camps.” He paused while I took in the meaning of the word. “Few people know of the mass atrocities, or believe that they have happened.”

“I believe now.”

“Besides preserving our liberty and way of life, whether or not your husband was aware of it, this was one reason he fought.” He pointed to a photo. “And why we are still fighting, covertly. Why we are doing more than just waiting under this tree for God to deliver us.”

Then André had been protecting us from
that
, preventing
that
from happening here. I saw at once the nobility in his act and felt proud. He had accepted his place in the bigger picture without the reluctance I had felt.

Monsieur Beckett folded the pages and put them back in his shirt pocket, and I went back to picking grapes, unable to see what I was doing, my hands shaking with relief that Marc and Bella had gone away, although I might never find out if they had reached safety. If they had known that this was happening, and that they had to flee for their lives, what a bighearted man Marc was to have taken the time to paint a picture for me when danger loomed, and what a caring woman Bella was to get that address of a friend in Paris who might be able to help me one day.

How many thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands were
suffering, hopelessly dying at this very hour? Out of a black sky that night, the sad old moon shone down on the cruelty of humans. What must he have been thinking? What must God have been thinking? How deeply disappointed He must have been.

W
HAT COULD
I
DO
? I remembered de Gaulle’s speech, which Louise had rescued and posted in the window of her hair salon.
I call upon every French person to unite with me in action, in sacrifice, and in hope
. With all leather going to Vichy and from there to Germany, there were people other than Maurice walking around in tattered shoes. After giving Monsieur Beckett André’s work boots, I still had three pairs of his shoes. I saved one to wear while working in the garden when it was muddy and for cleaning the outhouse and took the others and two leather belts to the
mairie
. Alone in the office, Aimé Bonhomme welcomed me warmly and asked how I was doing.

I told him I was getting by, then asked, “Would you see that a refugee or a farmer in need gets these shoes and belts?”

“That’s very kind of you.”

I thought for a moment. “If you suggest this gently to other widows, we could establish a giveaway box here.”

“A fine idea.”

“I can help with that. I mean, I would like to. It doesn’t have to be only widows who contribute, or only shoes and belts. I can get started knocking on doors right now.”

I whirled around to go out the door and ran smack into Mayor Pinatel coming in from the square. I apologized but he didn’t, even though he had stepped on my foot; nor did he even greet me. He just peered at me slantwise and shuffled the papers in his hands. “Did you ever find Pascal’s paintings?” he asked gruffly.

It was prying, not compassion, that colored his tone, so it irritated me. “That’s my business, monsieur, not yours.” I slipped out
the door, wondering if it had been he who had told the German officer about my paintings.

I
N CONTRAST
, I
APPRECIATED
Madame Bonnelly’s kindness and down-to-earth company. In the evenings, Samuel and I stayed to help her write the labels identifying the wine as the vintage of 1943. Would it ever be known as a war vintage? Samuel felt sure that it would. I asked him what he did later in the evenings, because Madame Bonnelly went to bed early.

“I’m writing a play about waiting.”

“Just about waiting? That doesn’t sound very interesting.”

“About waiting and about cruelty.”

That made me think of the camps, so I asked Madame Bonnelly for the name of her husband’s prisoner of war camp, hoping it was Maxime’s, Stalag VI-J.

“First it was XII-A, Limburg, a horrible transit camp. Now it’s XII-F, which was moved from Saarburg to Forbach, where he is now. It’s better. He works in a factory.”

“Better than digging coal in an underground mine.”

“When he’s back here tending the vines he loves, I’ll be so happy I won’t be able to take my eyes off him.”

I admired her spirit. Working alongside her every day, by the end of the
vendange
, I knew her well enough to ask if André had hidden anything there. No, she said, not unless he had done it before her husband left.

I wondered whether there would come a time when I could go house to house through the whole commune, asking that question. It wasn’t wise to do that yet.

N
OW
I
WENT TO
the post office every day and came home to tell the sad no-news to Geneviève, and to receive her compassionate bleat
in reply. Often I stood with her looking out over the valley, resting my hand on her neck while trying to resolve the knotty question of loyalty. I bore my sorrow for André so deeply that I doubted I would ever get over it completely, yet I longed for a letter from Maxime.