Michelle reached for her egg, and her breasts were revealed to broad daylight, pink and full. Emma immediately thought of Philippe, his warm lips on her skin, his kisses on her nipples, and she felt a sudden private kinship with Michelle. This woman’s affair with Planeg was not so foreign after all.
Michelle stepped back from the tree. Her hair was wild in disarray, yet the more beautiful for it, her lips swelled as from mad kisses. Showing immense care, she cracked the egg with her fingers and split it, slowly pouring from one half to the other. Emma recognized this old baker’s trick. Uncle Ezra had called it hand-by-hand, a way to separate an egg’s whites from the yolk without dirtying a bowl. Emma herself never dared do it without something beneath, in case she spilled. How had this woman learned such a skill?
Before she could imagine an explanation, Michelle tilted one half of the shell, gliding the yellow into her mouth. She swallowed the yolk whole, an audible gulp. Then she raised the other half, unceremoniously pouring the raw whites onto the top of her scalp. Emma watched dumbfounded as the woman tossed the shells aside and used both hands to work the ooze into her hair, making it thicken and glisten.
Emma felt a flutter in her insides. It was frightening and strange, and she was unable to look away. What Emma felt was not desire, but fascination with another’s desire. She and Michelle were the same age, they had been schoolmates. Yet never in her life had Emma lavished such rich attention on her hair, or any other part of herself. She had spent so much energy striving, she had forgotten entirely about delight. For a moment it seemed as if she had never had a childhood. The one concession she made to vanity, the hair bows Philippe loved to untie, she had stopped wearing on the day he was conscripted. Since then, the occupation had turned her nearly into a farm animal, concerned with practicality and the next meal. But Michelle had kept pleasure in her life, had made it key to her survival. It was an entirely opposite response to the occupation, arguably a superior one. For one lonely moment Emma could not deny it: she contained a great reservoir of sadness.
Michelle finished combing the whites through her hair, working from the crown to the ends, then turned to climb the hill toward her bungalow, open garments trailing, blue door open, red banner flying.
Chapter 23
Yves stood on the dock, watching soldiers load his day’s catch into their truck. Bitterns stood at the water’s edge, their feathered heads raised as though they were supervising. An officer swaggered over to the fisherman.
“You are less good as before,” he said. “You used to catch more.”
“That was when I could go farther out to set my nets,” Yves answered, bristling. He bent to coil a rope. “I need more fuel.”
“Everyone around this place,” the officer said, shaking his head. “Forever holding your hands out. Give me this, more of that. No pride. If we did not need they fish, I say shoot they all.”
“That may happen anyway, right?”
The officer laughed. “You have a dark humor.”
“Was I joking?”
A private presented himself to announce that the last of the fish was loaded. “Right in time,” the officer said, nodding in Emma’s direction. “Your girlfriend is now arrive.”
She pulled the cart aside to give the truck room as it lumbered up from the docks. By the time she reached his boat, Yves sat on the bow massaging one hand with the other. “I am running out of patience with these people,” he said.
“Likewise,” Emma answered, drawing back a cloth to reveal her jug. “Yet it continues.”
“Fishing is hard work. It galls me to do it for them.”
She nodded. “Baking is not hard work, but it galls me, too.”
Yves took the fuel to the stern. “Maybe they will run out of patience as well, and do us the favor of shooting one another.”
“You have the imagination of a poet.”
“Or a clown.” Yves tipped the jug’s contents into his tank. “The wind is nothing today, so this sip will get us ten or fifteen kilometers out. More for everyone, if all goes well.”
“Let us hope so.”
“Where do you find this fuel, Emma?”
She shrugged. “Who knew Monkey Boy peed gasoline?”
Yves chuckled, returning with the empty jug. “You know, I had a decent run this morning, not half bad. But they took everything. Every single fish.”
“Yves, people are taking risks to provide this fuel. They are counting on me to bring them something in return.”
“So I kept something the soldiers didn’t want.” He disappeared into the cabin, returning a moment later with two lobsters, their claws spread wide.
“Nasty.” Emma recoiled. “Uglier than spiders.”
“They’re delicious, believe me.”
She wrapped each of the lobsters in cloth, placing them in her cart, and returning with one third of a baguette. “Do I come later for more fish?”
“I owe you so much.” Yves took the bread in both hands. “I will return only when I have caught something.”
When Emma brought the first of the ocean spiders to Odette, the buxom woman clapped her hands together. “Excellent, excellent. A perfect way to celebrate.”
Emma stood in the doorway of the café, which was deserted in that hour between late lunches and early dinners. “What on this battered world can there possibly be to celebrate?”
“The fall of Rome.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The soldiers were blabbering about it at the noon meal. The Allies have taken Rome. Mark this day, the fifth of June. The Fascists are in retreat.”
Emma lowered herself into a chair. “Rome.”
“You see? The Allies have retaken the capital of an occupied nation. When the soldiers were discussing it, all doom and disaster, that was more delicious than a banquet.”
“Odette.” Emma dug a thumbnail into the tabletop. “How long did it take?”
“From Sicily to Rome? Two years, I believe.”
“Do you think we can survive that long?”
Odette nodded. “Easily.”
“Easily,” Emma echoed, and they both laughed. But when they finished, their silence was long.
Odette took a bottle of Calvados from the shelf and poured them each a small glass. Lowering herself into the other chair at Emma’s table, she folded her pudgy fingers. “You know what this means,” she said. “We are next. They have to come here now.”
Emma shook her head. “They will never come.”
“Oh, you.” Odette threw back her drink in one gulp.
“Too many people use hope to hide their misery.”
“That is the pessimism of the fortunate.”
Emma interrupted her swallow of Calvados. “Excuse me?”
“You, for example, have Mémé out there in the wagon, happily fidgeting while you sit here. That is all you require to get out of bed in the morning. You are needed, as simple as that. But those of us with no family, no such luck, we go for the cheap stuff. We settle for having a sip of hope.”
“Tell me again how fortunate I am, please.” Emma spoke through gritted teeth. “Uncle Ezra dead, my father gone, my innocent Philippe taken who knows where. Oh, lucky me.”