Emma pulled her hand free. “With all respect, who are you to speak to me like this?”
“An old fool, as I have recently been reminded. But one who cherishes your well-being.” He saw that he still had his pipe in his hand, and he looked for a place to set it down, settling on the near windowsill. “Emmanuelle, who I have known since the afternoon of your birth. For once please put aside your pride and use your ears.” He sighed. “I am too old to leave, and my girls need me for morning milking. But you have a wagon, and I imagine some foodstuffs saved. You could get away.”
Emma would not look at him, but Pierre glanced at Mémé and she was listening. “If anyone from our poor village deserves to survive this war, it is the woman who has kept us alive.”
“That is exactly why I will not go,” Emma answered. “There are people who depend on me for more than tobacco. If I leave, they perish. I will stay until there is no one left to care for.”
Pierre leaned his cane against the table. “The war has arrived at our door, and I am a veteran. I know what that means.” He tottered forward and hugged her with both arms. Emma’s hands hung at her sides, but when he did not let go she raised them and hugged Pierre back.
“Your father would be mightily proud of who you have become,” he said. “I am going to miss you.”
“You are very kind, Pierre. But I will be bringing you freshly smuggled tobacco in a few days.”
He collected his cane and opened the door. “I wish I could believe that.” And the old man wandered out into the night.
Emma stood in the doorway, watching until he had crossed the barnyard and disappeared in the dark.
As she closed the door, Emma heard her grandmother growl. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
Mémé pointed at the windowsill. “Pipe.”
Pierre had left it behind.
“I’ll bring it to him tomorrow,” Emma said.
Mémé looked off to one side. “Tomorrow.”
Emma lay awake for hours, the thrum of bombs distant and then frighteningly close, until she concluded that no degree of exhaustion would bring her the relief of sleep. Even on ordinary nights, real rest did not begin until Thalheim had tromped up the stairs and kicked his boots off without regard for the thumping he’d made.
Finding herself bolt upright sometime later, however, Emma knew she must have slept. The candle had burned out and Pirate was in full cry, though it was still deep night and outside there was some form of commotion.
Mémé lay on the couch like a pharaoh in his tomb, face inscrutable and breathing so slow it seemed almost as if she had stopped. But her grandmother was fully dressed, Emma noticed, which meant she expected to be awakened before the night was through.
Again the outcry from the barnyard, a confusing tumult as Emma splashed water on her face to clear the fog of sleep. Surely it was not time to knead the dough already.
She stepped outside to what appeared like two men dancing. Back and forth they parried by the hog shed, until one of them flung a wooden box on the ground. “Explain this, you lying spy.”
The box broke open on impact, spilling shining cylinders. Emma drew closer before she recognized them as bullets, hundreds of rounds, dull brass casings and their bright steel tips.
“I am as surprised as you are,” answered the Goat. “I wonder who stored ammunition in that shed.”
“What kind of an idiot do you think I am?” shrieked Thalheim, giving the Goat a shove.
“Oh, a complete one, I’m sure,” the Goat cackled.
“A comedian,” Thalheim snarled, and he surprised the ragamuffin with a kick in the groin that dropped him groaning in a ball to the ground.
From there the Goat noticed Emma and made a hand motion, warning her away, but it caused Thalheim to spin on his boot heel and shout, “You.” He pointed at her. “You’ll have to answer for this as well.”
“For what?”
“Your shed is filled with ammunition, and don’t pretend to know nothing about it.”
“But I don’t. I haven’t been in there in years—not since your army took my father’s last pig.”
The captain unclipped his holster. “I should shoot all of you.”
“For what possible reason?” Emma asked.
“She knows nothing about this,” the Goat said at the same moment. He had come to his knees and was working to regain his breath. “We would never confide in her. She is too proud.”
“I am what?”
“Don’t bother trying to protect her,” Thalheim said.
“Why did you look in the sty anyway, after all this time?” the Goat asked, coming to his feet, reclaiming the captain’s attention. “That stockpile took months to build.”
“So you admit it?”
“Why deny what you can see with your own eyes? I am not without some pride myself.”
Thalheim seemed to relax a degree, resting a thumb on his pistol grip as though he welcomed the conversation. “One of our excellent snipers bagged a homing pigeon at sunset, headed north, back to our enemies. Its papers showed exact location of our communication center. It also had mention of ammunition supply near the eastern well.”
“God in heaven.” The Goat shook his head. “All that work, lost because of a bird.”
“You will tell me more,” Thalheim said. “And perhaps I will spare your life. How did you get that matériel here?”
“On my back,” the Goat said, having regained his swagger.
“I already recognized you as a donkey,” Thalheim scoffed. “I meant to this region.”
“Why not tell you?” the Goat said, scratching his battered coat. “On trains.”
“Our army searches every railcar thoroughly.”
The Goat smiled. “No one opens a cabinet that says ‘Danger: sixteen thousand volts.’ Once I’d carried the ammunition here, I could count on your obsession with order. Racist cleanliness is a weakness, you know.”
“It is a strength,” Thalheim said. “As valuable as discipline.”
“No one from your army searched this completely obvious hiding place, including you with it right under your nose, because you didn’t want to soil your boots. All it will take to defeat your so-called excellent army is people willing to endure a little dirt.”
“You are see our army’s weakest element here,” Thalheim insisted. “Boys who have never thrown of a punch, and old soldiers sent to recover from the Eastern Front. All they do is fall in love with the sun and ocean and wine.” He wagged a finger at Emma. “And of you harlots. An army built to blitz grows bored easily. This is why we need discipline, to protect the fatherland’s high ideals.”
Something about that last phrase caused Thalheim to recollect himself, standing in a barnyard, pistol drawn, carrying on to the conquered about his nation’s supremacy, while the man smirked and the woman calculated her escape so visibly he could hear her wheels turning. “Also you never bathe, any of you. It is disgusting. Why am I speaking to you?”
“I’m finding it educational,” the Goat said. “Please continue.”