He wore black vestments, with a white stole that hung from either side of his neck, and he strode slowly, as though he were leading a long procession. The priest paused outside the house, shaking holy water on the open door. “May the soul of Marcel be protected by the Almighty so that he arrives in a place of peace.”
Emma glared at him from the floor, where she sat at Mémé’s feet. “Peace? Do you actually believe they are taking him to a place of peace?”
“God understands suffering,” he answered. “Because He sacrificed His only begotten Son.”
“Are you actually saying this to me?”
“Emmanuelle, I hope you will draw close to the comfort of the Lord. There is peace through prayer.”
“Go mount yourself.”
Everyone in the room gasped. A murmur passed through the people outside as her curse gossiped outward like rings from a stone hitting a pond.
“God forgive you,” the Monsignor said, making the sign of the cross.
“Thank you, but I decline,” Emma said. “All I want now is to help our people survive.” She wiped her face, though it lacked a single tear. “All I want now is to make the occupying army die.”
Chapter 14
The next day Emma made bread without seeing, handed baguettes to the Kommandant’s aide without hearing. Numbly she loaded the wooden-wheeled cart with her tools of deceit: the carpetbag, the watering can with a false bottom. Weaving her web had become routine regardless of circumstances. Too many people depended upon it. As with a dairyman who must milk his full-uddered cows the morning after his wife has died, certain kinds of life allow no pause.
“Gypsy?” Mémé called from the doorway. “We Gypsy?”
“Not today, dear one,” Emma answered. “Today, me alone.”
Marguerite stood at Mémé’s elbow; she had arrived just after dawn and refused entreaties to leave. “Go about your business,” she told Emma. “We’ll be fine.”
Emma slid her arms into the straps of the wagon, which she had adapted after the occupying army took their last horse. She could pull and steer, but when the wagon was full she had to lean back with all her weight to make it stop.
It was a short march to Pierre’s, where the old man dozed on a chair in the sun. When Emma placed her large glass jug beneath the spigot of his tank, a few drops dribbled out and the flow stopped.
“That would be the final bit,” Pierre said, sitting up and pointing with his pipestem. “There was more than I’d expected.”
Emma shook the jug to hear the sloshing of its contents. “Most good things do not last long.”
“Maybe so.” He reached over to rest a hand on the flank of Curie, his youngest and most docile cow. She swished her tail as a princess might wave her fan. “Personally, I would like my life to stretch long enough to see the Allies come. That will be a fine, fine day.”
Emma straightened. “None of us will live long enough to see that, because it will never happen.”
“You have no hope, Emmanuelle.”
“Can that be eaten?” she said, capping the jug and placing it on her cart. “What does it taste like?”
Next she went to check on her chickens. She left the wagon at a break in the brush, approaching their pen from a new direction. Emma did not see the dead bird until she had nearly stepped on it.
The hen must have shown weakness of some kind. It lay in the dirt, eyes hooded, its flank hollowed where the others had pecked it to death. Despite all the effort it had taken to bring that bird into existence, despite all the value it held for Emma and the villagers, on the morning after her father’s injury and exile it caused her no emotion whatsoever. She picked up the hen, examining the small body, how little it weighed considering the worth of what it produced, then wrapped it in a cloth to tuck it away in the carpetbag.
The other hens puttered about in their usual manner, wary, single-minded. Emma scooped their dish into Pierre’s old feed bag, then set it full by the trough. They gathered and bent to peck away, and she suppressed the urge to slaughter them all.
Two dodges through the hedgerows later, she arrived at the bungalow of Mademoiselle Michelle. Relieved to see that the soldier’s motorcycle was absent, she knocked on a front door which was newly painted blue. As Michelle opened the door, Emma took several steps back. She had no desire to be invited in.
“Emmanuelle!” Michelle exclaimed. “What a surprise.”
“I remember our conversation at the washing,” Emma said.
“As do I.” Michelle hesitated, stepping out of the house. “I am sorry to hear about your father.”
Emma waved both hands, as if there were smoke in front of her face. “Your rabbit, is there a regular time that he visits?”
“I told you already that I am no strumpet.”
Emma kept her eyes averted. This was all so distant from the chaste desires she had shared with Philippe. She knew now that they were innocents, they knew nothing. “Do you have a routine? Has he assigned a certain hour for you? That is what I am asking.”
“Why?”
Emma fidgeted with her dress and said nothing. She ran a hand along the wagon wheel, then pulled it away. A glance told Emma that Michelle looked radiant, whereas she was wearing the same dress she’d had on since Monday.
“Most days he cannot come here at all,” Michelle answered. “But when he does, it is in the early afternoon.”
“Always by motorcycle?”
“Otherwise it’s an awfully long walk.” She smiled. “Though I suspect Lieutenant Planeg would crawl if he had to.”
Emma scanned the surrounding field. The bungalow sat atop a steep rise. She had never considered the prospect from here, a place one could watch the roads and know people’s business, the sea a distant northern glimmer. “Do you have a bright cloth of some kind? A colorful shirt, perhaps?”
“My mother left me a red scarf, you might remember seeing me wear it at church last Easter.”
“No, but that will do.”
Michelle leaned on one leg. “What mischief are you up to?”
“From now on, when your rabbit comes, hang that scarf from the upper window.” Emma stepped closer. “You will keep him inside the house for one solid hour. Can you do that?”
“What is your purpose in all of this?”
“After he leaves, you may find an egg in the crook of that tree.” Emma pointed at a chestnut beside the bramble downhill. “Not every day. But some days. Most days, if all goes well.”
“How is this possible?”
“If you do not know, then you cannot be forced to tell.”
Michelle beamed. “But an egg? Every day he visits?”
“Most days, as I said. But this machine has many moving parts. You must keep him in for the full hour, I don’t care how.”
“I believe I can manage that,” Michelle said, in a tone that caused Emma to regard her directly. She seemed taller, more confident, less a fool than a survivor. Michelle knew something, Emma realized, about which she herself was wholly ignorant.