Did Emmanuelle feel afraid? Of course. No one in the village was immune. Fear, they learned, did not live in the heart or mind. It inhabited the stomach like a bad oyster. There was nothing to do but endure it. Neither could anyone deny it, because everyone had witnessed what the occupying army did to Uncle Ezra.
First they made him wear a star. They ordered it, commanded it on one of their posters. Odette was certain he would refuse. This thorny man who showed contempt for his best customers, who bowed to no one, who held himself and all to the same impossible standards? Never.
But there he was, the day the order took effect, with a six-pointed star sewn onto his tunic. It was yellow, the size of the palm of his hand. He stood in front of his shop, giving everyone an unambiguous view. Others wore the same star, of course, people who villagers might have known were of another faith—had they ever thought about it—because they did not worship at St. Agnes by the Sea. For some reason, the compliance of Uncle Ezra mattered more.
“Yes,” he barked from the doorway of his shop, slapping the star on his chemise. “Here it is. My mark of David, the house of David. Look all you like.”
Though his neighbors were obviously not the source of the star regulation, Uncle Ezra directed all of his indignation at them. He paced in the street flexing his fists, spitting in the dirt. In response, people were never kinder: praising his baked goods, buying extra, calling a greeting from down the lane. One day after a thick fog rolled in off the ocean, when he locked his shop for the evening, someone had left a new lantern on his stoop.
“Here it is,” he nonetheless proclaimed to the square the next morning, slapping his star. “I am doing what I am told. I am an obedient knave.”
Soldiers entered the library and confiscated all books by Jewish authors. Jews had to carry papers and leave jobs. They would realize that they were under surveillance. Then they would vanish. No one under surveillance was ever found innocent. First you were identified, then you were watched, then you were arrested. A plus B equals C.
“Here I am,” Uncle Ezra railed in the street, his apron stained with butter, dusted by flour. “Son of Abraham. Child of Isaiah. Here I am.”
One day soldiers came to the shop. Emma, busy at the giant mixer, did not hear them until one put his rifle butt through the front door’s window and the shattering glass startled her. She switched off the mixer and hurried out front. Soldiers stood on all sides of Uncle Ezra, hollering at him in their harsh language.
“I don’t understand you,” he said. “What are you saying?”
The men continued to shout until an officer swaggered into the shop and they silenced. The captain wore his helmet angled forward, hiding his eyes. His mouth was pinched, as though he had bitten into something sour.
“Unless you are going to buy something, please leave,” Uncle Ezra told the men. “You make my life hard enough, with the flour rationing. You have already emptied my bank account.”
The captain studied the shop without haste. “We will search,” he said. He barked a word to his men and they began ransacking, breaking shelves, spilling bowls, knocking a cake to the floor. He spoke in a bored tone. “You have nothing to fear, if you have done nothing wrong.”
“Go home,” Uncle Ezra called to the back of the shop. “Leave now, Emmanuelle.”
He had never before used her name. But before she could take one step toward the back door, all of the soldiers made the same loud sound: Ahhh. Feigned surprise and genuine joy. One of them had punctured a sack of flour, and from it he seemed to have pulled a pistol—though Emma could see that the gun was as black as a locomotive.
“What is this?” the captain asked Uncle Ezra, dangling the pistol in front of his face. “What have we here?”
“I’ve never seen it before,” Uncle Ezra said. “Please leave my shop.”
“Never seen it? What are you making imply? Did I put it there? Or one of my men? Which one? I will punish him at once.”
“I don’t even know how to load a gun. What use would I have for possessing one? I know the laws.”
“I’m sure you do,” the captain said, shaking his head, as if hurt with disappointment. “The penalties as well.”
He handed the gun back to the soldier who had found it. The others seized Uncle Ezra and pulled him from the store.
“Go home,” Uncle Ezra called to Emma, but a soldier jammed a rifle into his belly and he said no more.
They dragged him away. Emma followed at a distance, as did others from the village. This was something wholly new. Although eventually there would be so many incidents of this sort the villagers would lose count, this day was a first, and they were ignorant about what might happen. Naive. Along the way someone had tied Uncle Ezra’s hands, and though the soldiers buffeted him about, he held his head high. Emma saw that his lips were white with rage.
The crowd arrived at the churchyard, where a row of poplars stood with their pale bark and heart-shaped leaves. The soldiers shoved Uncle Ezra back against one tree and stepped away. Suddenly the people knew, could not believe that they hadn’t known, felt ugly and wrong for being there.
The captain stood to one side, smoking a cigarette with the rich odor of real tobacco. He had wanted an audience, obviously. The whole event was theater. Emma kept a hand to her mouth as though she might be ill.
“Have you anything to say for yourself?” the captain asked.
“I have never seen that gun before,” Uncle Ezra said. He tried to use his best gruff voice, the one the villagers knew and feared, but he was nearly stammering. “If I had hidden it in the flour, it would have been white.”
The captain laughed, smoke dragoning from his mouth. “Are you defending of yourself? In the face of clear evidence, are you protesting of your innocence?”
“Of course I am innocent,” Uncle Ezra cried. “I am a baker, a danger to no one. I make bread. Let me go.”
“Of course you are innocent,” the captain mimicked. He dropped the last of his cigarette on the grass, grinding it with his heel. He sauntered closer to Uncle Ezra, unclipping his holster, pulling out a pistol.
“I am Captain Thalheim,” he said. “By the way.”
“For God’s sake,” Uncle Ezra pleaded.
“Let us pause for a moment here,” Captain Thalheim said, raising the pistol till the barrel was an arm’s length from Uncle Ezra’s face. “Contemplate your mortality.”
And he waited. The wind blew, just then, pressing Uncle Ezra’s apron against him so that everyone could see the spreading stain and know that he had wet himself, that his last moment on earth would be one of humiliation, the fierce expression gone utterly from his face as his head lowered and all the people saw the bald spot on top.
“That’s right,” Captain Thalheim said, and he pulled the trigger.
Part Two
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Chapter 5