The Baker's Secret

Emma had never fired a gun before. She could remember holding one on three occasions: once assisting Philippe when he bagged a deer and wanted to dress it where it fell, and twice when her father had managed to shoot a rabbit in spite of his bad eyesight, and needed both hands to put the carcass in his hunting sack. But she also remembered the lesson the drunk corporal had been giving to his friend when they accidentally shot the pig that never existed. It was a matter of aiming and squeezing, and using the impact of one shot to decide where the next should go.

She lifted her gaze. As if by design the men had lined up for her, left to right: Thalheim, the Kommandant, the Field Marshal, the officer with the pencil-thin mustache. Here stood every one of the men that she wanted to die. Forget the knife on her thigh. It was messy and slow and she would be overpowered. One grab of the rifle, however, one lift to her shoulder, one long squeeze on that trigger, and she would lay them low.

Nothing could stop her, until it was too late.

Of course the other officers, after a stunned moment, would annihilate her, a dozen guns, a hundred bullets, her existence blasted upon the bluff above where she had played childhood games and learned to swim and sometimes strolled with Philippe for romance. But then, what better place? It would happen too quickly for her to feel pain. All she needed to do was seize it: the gun, her destiny, the opportunity, and she would change the course of history. All she needed to do.

Yet Emma did not act. The scene of slaughter replayed itself in her mind, the power of it, the certainty of success, while her arms hung dully at her sides. Despite years of occupation and oppression, despite the deaths of people she loved, still her desire for revenge remained frozen. Emma genuinely wanted those men to die, but she lacked the capacity to kill.

The moment passed. The young guard returned to collect his weapon, handing Emma the empty canvas sack with no idea of the danger that had passed. The officers recommenced their tasks, arguing over maps or attending to the Field Marshal, while Emma thought of Uncle Ezra, of Guillaume, of Philippe and her father and the others taken away, of the many villagers who had shown so much courage, and knew with lacerating shame that she herself possessed none.

Thalheim swaggered back, speaking with his mouth full. “I’ll grant you have talent in bread, but our nation’s rule will last one thousand years. What do you say to that?”

“I think you are probably right,” Emma said, the first words she had uttered to him without bite in her voice. “I think that from here on, everything that happens to me, I deserve.”

As she spoke a gust of wind swept in from the east, driving rain under the canopy so that the officers turned away. The air also caught Emma’s umbrella, snatched it tumbling across the bluff.

As she hurried after it, Thalheim called out, “I wouldn’t chase that if I were you.” He chuckled. “That whole area is mined.”

Emma halted where she stood, at the height of land, rain pelting her back. The umbrella cartwheeled twice, then toppled over the side.

“Ha.” Thalheim chortled. “Are you upsets at losing your umbrella?”

“No.” Emma continued to gaze over the bluff. “I am upset at being so weak.”

As she watched, though, Emma had to admit that there was an elegance to the umbrella’s fall: like a trapeze artist, swaying close to the bluff and then away, a flower thrown overboard from a ship, smoothly back and forth, a feather fallen from a nest, gliding down to a place on the sand, where it landed without a sound.





Chapter 21




The laboring men received sunburns indeed, some more severely than others depending on complexion, but which swiftly became symbolic. Within days, people far from the construction site, farmers and shopkeepers, janitors and magistrates, had left their hats at home and cultivated a burn. Red skin manifested solidarity. Freckles became fashionable.

As May arrived and the sunlight strengthened, people standing in the rations line could not resist the temptation to compare their tans. Odette was least darkened, because of her hours in the kitchen. Pierre had mottled skin, perhaps due to age. Monkey Boy was golden from his days in the trees. Mémé’s face had grown dappled, which made her eyes seem brighter.

The darkest arms of all belonged to Emma. Her circuit of the town, its farms and forests, placed her in daylight hour upon hour, every day. Yet her most important work, the fuel that powered her entire engine of deceit and survival, took place before the sun was up.

On each day following the Field Marshal’s visit, Emma continued to knead and shape and mark with a V her dozen compulsory baguettes, plus the two that were the baker’s secret. As the weeks passed, had the loaves been stacked together, they would have made a pile to feed multitudes.

But then the fifth of June arrived. At dawn, Emma roused herself from a sleep so deep it allowed her a respite from hunger. As she crossed the barnyard, silenced Pirate with a bribe of barley, and put herself to work, she had no way of knowing that this day’s baguettes would be the last ones she made in her life.



Straw is sinewy, like gristle. It takes strong wrists to grind the grass down. But Emma had mixed the dough so many times she barely noticed the effort. She paused now and then, only to tuck back a rebellious strand of hair. Soon the baguettes lay in their places, tanning as they baked, and Emma noticed the first daylight leaking between boards in the barn’s eastern wall. She went to the doorway, saw the pinking sky, and allowed herself a brief wander down the lane for a better view.

At just that moment, the sun found an opening in the clouds. Daylight poured down on the barnyard, illuminating the old stone house, casting shadows through the hedgerows, making grass glint and crows rise, flooding the village square and every house along the way. It brought the warmth of awakening.

The Goat stirred in the hog shed, having slept so hard on the shelf the planks left an impression in his cheek. The stink of the air was enough to make his eyes water. But around him stood all those wooden boxes he had smuggled there, two by two, for months. His legs lay across one stack as a miser sleeps atop his gleaming hoard. The captain in the house would never find these boxes. He was too concerned with keeping his fingers clean. The Goat sat up and rubbed his face with both hands.

Pierre finished sharpening a pencil, packed the curls of wood into his pipe and wished for fresh tobacco as fervently as he had once wished for a bride. He squinted in the morning light, accepting that neither desire would be granted that day. Ambling into the side yard, where his girls stood awaiting milking, he held a match to his pipe and blew gray smoke into the sky.

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