Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
Every day that long, hot summer, Vianne woke to a list of chores.
She (along with Sophie and Isabelle) replanted and expanded the garden and converted a pair of old bookcases into rabbit hutches.
She used chicken wire to enclose the pergola.
Now the most romantic place on the property stank of manure—manure they collected for their garden.
She took in wash from the farmer down the road—old man Rivet—in exchange for feed.
The only time she really relaxed, and felt like herself, was on Sunday mornings, when she took Sophie to church (Isabelle refused to attend Mass) and then had coffee with Rachel, sitting in the shade of her backyard, just two best friends talking, laughing, joking.
Sometimes Isabelle joined them, but she was more likely to play with the children than talk with the women—which was fine with Vianne.
Her chores were necessary, of course—a new way of preparing for a winter that seemed far away but would arrive like an unwanted guest on the worst possible day.
More important, it kept Vianne’s mind occupied.
When she was working in her garden or boiling strawberries for preserves or pickling cucumbers, she wasn’t thinking of Antoine and how long it had been since she’d heard from him.
It was the uncertainty that gnawed at her: Was he a prisoner of war?
Was he wounded somewhere? Dead? Or would she look up one day and see him walking up this road, smiling?
Missing him. Longing for him. Worrying about him. Those were her nighttime journeys.
In a world now laden with bad news and silence, the one bit of good news was that Captain Beck had spent much of the summer away on one campaign or another. In his absence, the household settled into a routine of sorts. Isabelle did all that was asked of her without complaint.
It was October now, and chilly. Vianne found herself distracted as she walked home from school with Sophie.
She could feel that one of her heels was coming loose; it made her slightly unsteady.
Her black kidskin oxfords weren’t made for the kind of everyday use to which they’d been put in the past few months.
The sole was beginning to pull away at the toe, which often caused her to trip.
The worry about replacing things like shoes was never far away.
A ration card did not mean there were shoes—or food—to be bought.
Vianne kept one hand on Sophie’s shoulder, both to steady her gait and to keep her daughter close. There were Nazi soldiers everywhere; riding in lorries and on motorcycles with machine-gun-mounted sidecars. They marched in the square, their voices raised in triumphant song.
A military lorry honked at them and they moved farther onto the sidewalk as a convoy rumbled past. More Nazis.
“Is that Tante Isabelle?” Sophie asked.
Vianne glanced in the direction of Sophie’s finger. Sure enough, Isabelle was coming out of an alley, clutching her basket. She looked … “furtive” was the only word that came to mind.
Furtive. At that, a dozen little pieces clicked into place.
Tiny incongruities became a pattern. Isabelle had often left Le Jardin in the wee hours of the morning, much earlier than necessary.
She had dozens of long-winded excuses for absences that Vianne had barely cared about.
Heels that broke, hats that flew off in the wind and had to be chased down, a dog that frightened her and blocked her way.
Was she sneaking out to be with a boy?
“Tante Isabelle!” Sophie cried out.
Without waiting for a reply—or permission—Sophie darted into the street. She dodged a trio of German soldiers who were tossing a ball back and forth.
“Merde,” Vianne muttered. “Pardon,” she said, ducking around the soldiers and striding across the cobblestoned street.
“What did you get today?” she heard Sophie ask Isabelle as her daughter reached into the willow basket.
Isabelle slapped Sophie’s hand. Hard.
Sophie yelped and drew her hand back.
“Isabelle!” Vianne said harshly. “What’s wrong with you?”
Isabelle had the good grace to blush. “I am sorry. It’s just that I’m tired. I have been in queues all day. And for what? A veal jelly bone with barely any meat on it and a tin of milk. It’s disheartening. Still, I shouldn’t be rude. I’m sorry, Soph.”
“Perhaps if you didn’t sneak out so early in the morning you wouldn’t be tired,” Vianne said.
“I’m not sneaking out,” Isabelle said. “I’m going to the shops for food. I thought you wanted that of me. And by the way, we need a bicycle. These walks to town on bad shoes are killing me.”
Vianne wished she knew her sister well enough to read the look in her eyes. Was it guilt? Or worry or defiance? If she didn’t know better, she’d say it was pride.
Sophie linked arms with Isabelle as the three of them set off for home.
Vianne studiously ignored the changes to Carriveau—the Nazis taking up so much space, the posters on the limestone walls (the new anti-Jewish tracts were sickening), and the red and black swastika flags hanging above doorways and from balconies.
People had begun to leave Carriveau, abandoning their homes to the Germans.
The rumor was that they were going to the Free Zone, but no one knew for sure. Shops closed and didn’t reopen.
She heard footsteps coming up behind her and said evenly, “Let’s walk faster.”
“Madame Mauriac, if I may interrupt.”
“Good Lord, is he following you?” Isabelle muttered.
Vianne slowly turned around. “Herr Captain,” she said. People in the street watched Vianne closely, eyes narrowed in disapproval.
“I wanted to say that I will be late tonight and will, sorrowfully, not be there for supper,” Beck said.
“How terrible,” Isabelle said in a voice as sweet and bitter as burned caramel.
Vianne tried to smile, but really, she didn’t know why he’d stopped her. “I will save you something—”
“Nein. Nein. You are most kind.” He fell silent.
Vianne did the same.
Finally Isabelle sighed heavily. “We are on our way home, Herr Captain.”
“Is there something I can do for you, Herr Captain?” said Vianne.
Beck moved closer. “I know how worried you have been about your husband, so I did some checking.”
“Oh.”
“It is not fine news, I am sorrowful to report. Your husband, Antoine Mauriac, has been captured along with many of your town’s men. He is in a prisoner of war camp.” He handed her a list of names and a stack of official postcards. “He will not be coming home.”
* * *
Vianne barely remembered leaving town. She knew Isabelle was beside her, holding her upright, urging her to put one foot in front of the other, and that Sophie was beside her, chirping out questions as sharp as fish hooks.
What is a prisoner of war? What did Herr Captain mean that Papa would not be coming home? Never?
Vianne knew when they’d arrived home because the scents of her garden greeted her, welcomed her. She blinked, feeling a little like someone who had just wakened from a coma to find the world impossibly changed.
“Sophie,” Isabelle said firmly. “Go make your mother a cup of coffee. Open a tin of milk.”
“But—”
“Go,” Isabelle said.
When Sophie was gone, Isabelle turned to Vianne, cupped her face with cold hands. “He’ll be all right.”
Vianne felt as if she were breaking apart bit by bit, losing blood and bone as she stood here, contemplating something she had studiously avoided thinking about: a life without him. She started to shiver; her teeth chattered.
“Come inside for coffee,” Isabelle said.
Into the house? Their house? His ghost would be everywhere in there—a dent in the divan where he sat to read, the hook that held his coat. And the bed.
She shook her head, wishing she could cry, but there were no tears in her. This news had emptied her. She couldn’t even breathe.
Suddenly all she could think about was the sweater of his that she was wearing.
She started to strip out of her clothes, tearing off the coat and the vest—ignoring Isabelle’s shouted NO!
—as she yanked the sweater over her head and buried her face in the soft wool, trying to smell him in the yarn—his favorite soap, him.
But there was nothing but her own smell.
She lowered the bunched-up sweater from her face and stared down at it, trying to remember the last time he’d worn it.
She picked at a loose thread and it unraveled in her hand, became a squiggly coil of wine-colored yarn.
She bit it off and tied a knot to save the rest of the sleeve. Yarn was precious these days.
These days.
When the world was at war and everything was scarce and your husband was gone. “I don’t know how to be on my own.”
“What do you mean? We were on our own for years. From the moment Maman died.”
Vianne blinked. Her sister’s words sounded a little jumbled, as if they were running on the wrong speed.
“You were alone,” she said. “I never was. I met Antoine when I was fourteen and got pregnant at sixteen and married him when I was barely seventeen. Papa gave me this house to get rid of me. So, you see, I’ve never been on my own.
That’s why you’re so strong and I’m not. ”
“You will have to be,” Isabelle said. “For Sophie.”
Vianne drew in a breath. And there it was.
The reason she couldn’t eat a bowl of arsenic or throw herself in front of a train.
She took the short coil of crooked yarn and tied it to an apple tree branch.
The burgundy color stood out against the green and brown.
Now, each day in her garden and when she walked to her gate and when she picked apples, she would pass this branch and see this bit of yarn and think of Antoine.
Each time she would pray—to him and to God—Come home.
“Come,” Isabelle said, putting an arm around Vianne, pulling her close.
Inside, the house echoed the voice of a man who wasn’t there.
* * *