It was a circle of want. Emma pondered on these things as she wandered the village and missed her Philippe. Like a sad song, walking sharpened her sorrow, yet soothed it as well.
During her travels Emma came to notice that no one was wearing yellow stars anymore, and not because the occupying army had relaxed any regulations. The grocer, the rail-yard worker, two of Yves’s fellow fishermen, they were all gone.
She saw Monkey Boy, though, ambling along the hedgerows and whistling his little tune. She saw the draft horse Apollo, a huge-hooved giant wandering the world in search of Neptune, his partner under Pierre’s yoke for fifteen years, exerting identical power, at the identical pace.
Apollo stood observing at the edge of a ditch while five soldiers of the occupying army shoveled under a sixth one’s supervision, and Emma thought the horse did not look well: large-eyed, his ribs showing, his slow breathing as he took it all in. She came up and patted his giant flank, saying, “I know exactly how you feel.”
Later that day Emma passed a field above the sea, where barbed wire coiled not only along the top of the bluff, but in a long arc out to the dirt road. A soldier was nailing a sign to a thin post, then using the side of his hammer to pound the post into the clay. The sign bore a skull and crossbones, and a single word which provided as complete a declaration as any literate person would require: minen. There were four more signs, identical, in an arc around the field.
No one had fuel. No one had tobacco. No one had lightbulbs. The occupying army had taken everything of value—including this land along the sea, with its lovely view of the beaches, now appropriated for minefields. There was no denying it: all of her neighbors’ desires were impossible.
Yet somehow Yves had opened a floodgate, like the locks at Honfleur which kept harbor boats afloat under full moons, when the tide could drop fifteen meters overnight. Everyone lacked something; everyone asked Emma for help. This person needed soap, that one shoes, this one medicine, that one a pane of glass.
There were a few exceptions. First, DuFour, whom no one trusted, and who knew it, and who therefore did not dare make a request of any kind. Second, the priest, who announced that he would offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass regardless of who partook of the blessed sacrament, and thus did not ally himself with either faction.
Amid all of this activity—a request for razor blades awaiting Emma at the eastern well, another for skin salve as she followed the hedgerows—she spent her days mentally kneading a single question: Why, of all people, were they asking her?
The question followed her everywhere, even as she made her weekly trek to the village laundry: a metal shed roof over a marble pool, each side long enough for three women kneeling hip by hip to scrub at a time, water supplied by a hand pump at one end, drying racks and clotheslines at the other. As a place for the women of Vergers to gather, the laundry placed second only to the weekly market. But Emma deliberately came at an hour when she could expect to be alone. Afternoon light angled through the trees, dappling the dense hedgerow to the west.
It was here that Philippe had ventured one noontime when Emma was sixteen, lurking in the bushes while she and the other women scrubbed for their families. He and Emma had been glancing and flirting for so long, she was as aware of his presence as if he had been playing a tuba. Perhaps the women perceived as much, those mothers and aunts and grandmothers, because they finished all at once, as if by some shared understanding. Once they’d departed with their clean loads, Philippe sashayed into the open, stepping on the marble rim of the washing pool and balancing along its edge. Soap had made it slippery, of course. He was halfway across, Emma studiously ignoring him while watching every move, when his foot slipped, his arms windmilled, and her suitor fell face-first, flat into the shallow pool. For a long moment he did not move. Was he hurt? Emma jumped to her feet, tossing aside the shirt she’d been washing, not wanting to get wet, not sure how to help, when Philippe burst upward, shook himself like a dog, took two bold strides across the basin, and kissed her on the mouth.
Six years had passed since that day. Philippe was far away, no one knew where, and the occupying army had encamped in the village for the rest of time. Kisses were for dreamers, and people with too little work to do. Emma dumped her basket of clothing unceremoniously into the water. Romantic memories were an indulgence she could not afford.
Washing had become a frustrating chore, too, because of the scarcity of soap. Emma’s clothes did not accommodate this deprivation, her blouses nonetheless growing dusty with flour, her skirts accumulating dirt as usual. Meanwhile Mémé managed to soil every garment within minutes of donning it, spilling from spoons and sloshing her mug. Emma decided to provide her grandmother with one set of clothes per day, and if she made a mess at breakfast, the old woman would have to spend the day in unclean wear. Otherwise the washing would be constant.
Emma caressed the garments back and forth in the water to help the stains soften. Was every act some version of kneading? For a person commanded to make bread, it might seem so, just as a policeman over the years begins to see all of his neighbors as suspects, a physician notices strangers’ symptoms, a farmer measures a place by the quality of its soil, a merchant is concerned with nothing before an item’s price, and a person living under military occupation seeks perpetually to be free.
“Pardon me, mademoiselle.”
Emma jumped in surprise.
“I am sorry, I did not mean to startle you.” It was Michelle, the woman carrying on with Lieutenant Planeg. Once she and Emma had been rivals in beauty, but there was no comparison anymore. Emma struggled merely to stay clean, while Michelle’s hair was lustrous and blond. She wore a snug chemise with two buttons open at the top, as if she had forgotten to finish dressing herself, or was inviting someone to help complete an undressing, and a crimson bloom of a skirt. Her skin was lucent like a pearl.
“Mademoiselle.” Emma gestured at the washing. “Forgive me for not standing.”
“On the contrary, forgive me for not kneeling with you. I failed to dress properly for the occasion.”
Emma spoke to the water. “You look lovely, as ever.”
“It is all illusion.”
Emma raised her eyes. “I think not.”
Michelle took a long breath, in and out. “Whatever you may have heard, whatever you believe, I am here to ask your help.”
“A common request lately, although I am ill equipped to help anyone.”
“You have managed to gain the favor of the occupiers without compromising your honor. That is an achievement.”
What sort of an admission was Michelle making? Emma wondered while the young woman continued. “You have fed your family. You have kept your household intact. You have done these things without the aid of a man.”
“I would rather have relied upon my father and Philippe.”