Chapter 32
Sven got out of the water as fast as he could and pulled on his clothes. It was difficult to do when his body was soaking wet.
Mathieu stayed where he was. “Wait!” he shouted.
“Someone saw us. We have to get away from here. You need to go back to the vineyard,” Sven said quietly.
Mathieu shook his head. “No. I won’t do it. I’m out of there for the first time in years.” Slowly he waded to the edge and climbed the bank, like a naked, somewhat sinewy Greek god. He stopped next to Sven.
“Are you crazy? Get dressed and go home. We don’t know who saw us. The Gestapo or the police could show up and arrest us at any moment.”
“You don’t know what it’s like, having to hide away. For the first time in years I felt happy.” Mathieu spread his arms wide, emphasizing his words.
“Mathieu, you can’t search for happiness now. There’s a war going on. France is occupied by the Nazis, who are looking for people like . . . like . . .” He just couldn’t say it.
“Go on—people like us.” Mathieu’s expression was challenging. “Are you ashamed of us?”
“Ashamed? It’s not about that. I’m terrified that we’ll be caught. Your parents have kept you hidden for a reason. Doing what we did here, letting ourselves be seen, was just stupid. Totally idiotic. I shouldn’t have stayed at the vineyard. I’ve exposed your family to . . .”
Mathieu snorted. “Fine. Just go. You think I don’t know that you’re planning to return to the Legion?”
Sven shook his head slowly. “Not planning exactly. But they’re expecting me back, and soon they might start searching for me.”
“So you want to go back?” The look on Mathieu’s face was wary.
“I have to, eventually. I signed a contract.”
In fact, Sven wanted nothing more than to stay here with Mathieu. Of course he did, but the Legion would never allow it. As a deserter, he risked being sent to jail. If you joined the Foreign Legion, you had to remain loyal.
“A contract.” Another snort of derision. “As if soldiers haven’t already done enough?”
“We can’t talk about this now—someone has seen us.” Sven began to walk away, but Mathieu didn’t follow him. “Are you mad?”
Mathieu simply stood there, watching him go.
Sven hurried back to the vineyard and continued working on the vines from where he had left off, as if nothing had happened. He waited for Mathieu. Why, why had he gone with him? Why had he taken such a huge risk? What danger had he exposed Mathieu to?
He gazed over toward the edge of the forest on the other side of the vines. The minutes passed. Mathieu didn’t come.
What if something had happened to him? What if he’d already been arrested?
Eventually Mathieu emerged from the trees. Sven let out a long breath. He felt like throwing up with relief. His stomach turned over and he let out a sob. Hugo was working nearby and looked up, but Sven simply held up his hand.
Mathieu wandered along a row of vines. Hugo stared at him in surprise. It was almost nine o’clock; at this time Mathieu was usually indoors, working. Mathieu didn’t even glance in Sven’s direction, but continued into the house.
Sven sighed. Right now Mathieu was safe. He had no idea who had seen them, but right now Mathieu was safe. Mathieu is safe, he repeated over and over again in his mind, like a mantra.
The day passed, and Sven jumped at every sound from the road, but they were spared a visit from German soldiers, the Gestapo, or the French police.
Mathieu stayed out of the way and didn’t show up until dinner. Sven couldn’t bring himself to think about their quarrel. He was still too shaken and frightened because they’d been seen.
After dinner, Hugo went outside to carry on working. Sven was about to join him when Juliette asked him to stay for a while.
She began to clear away the dishes. “I saw the two of you in the river earlier.”
Sven’s heart was pounding. A wave of relief flooded his body.
It wasn’t an outsider who had spotted them.
No one was going to report them to the police.
Then the shame hit him. Then the guilt. Then the fear.
Juliette would never report her son, but what if she reported him?
Maybe she thought that Sven had led Mathieu astray?
“I’m so sorry, I . . . I can turn myself in to the police or the Nazis. I don’t want anything to happen to Mathieu.” He tried to pull himself together. “It was my fault. It was my fault.”
Juliette stopped what she was doing. “Calm down—nobody is going to report anybody, and I know it wasn’t your fault. I know my son, the hopeless romantic. I also know that he was the one who put you in danger.”
“I should have had more sense.”
Juliette nodded. “Yes, you should have.” She pulled out a chair, indicated that Sven should take a seat, then sat down opposite him.
“But love makes us indiscreet. Love makes us crazy.” She smiled.
“After we heard about Gerard’s death, a part of Mathieu died too.
But he’s come back to life since you arrived.
He’s himself again. It’s so good to see, and I’m so grateful to you, Sven. ”
He didn’t say anything.
“But what you did today was dangerous, and I’m well aware that Mathieu doesn’t always consider the consequences of his actions.”
“I won’t do it again, and I won’t allow Mathieu to take off like that.”
“That’s not your responsibility. But Mathieu listens to you. You make him feel safe.” Saying that, she smiled again, wider this time. “The two of you took a huge risk today. Even if love is what enables us all to survive right now.”
“What we were doing, Mathieu and I, it wasn’t . . .” Sven searched for the right words. “I mean, we’re not . . .”
Juliette shook her head. “We don’t need to talk about that. With all the terrible things that are going on, how can tenderness between two people be wrong? Love is life-affirming. It’s what makes the world go round. How can it be bad for two people to love each other?”
Sven took in what she said; it sounded so straightforward, so self-evident a truth. A million miles from her describing him as having a disgusting, revolting sickness, which is what Sven had imagined everyone else thought.
“Was that why you joined the Foreign Legion?” Juliette asked.
He nodded. “I thought it would cleanse me, that I’d change. And it gave me a new place to be. I was able to get away from home, where I was no longer welcome.”
Mathieu considered the large map in front of him.
It would be used to help another family escape from Bordeaux, from occupied France.
Mathieu and his parents never knew the names of the people they helped, so there was no risk of them revealing anyone’s identities if they were arrested and tortured as a way to make them talk.
Whoever they were helping now could easily be someone he knew.
He’d had classmates who came from Jewish backgrounds, and it was strange to think that none of them were still around.
Some had been sent to labor camps where they might well have died.
Others had gone underground or managed to flee.
Mathieu and his parents could have been involved in making that happen—he really hoped they were.
He sighed. He knew that Sven thought he’d been careless and rash, but Mathieu lived in these conditions all the time, just like Sven did.
He just tried to handle it in a different way, in order to keep from going under completely.
If he worried as much as Sven about everything that had happened, he wouldn’t be able to cope.
Gerard.
Friends and acquaintances they hadn’t heard from for months.
Had they been deported?
Killed?
And then there was the loss of his own personal freedom.
The constant fear.
Mathieu’s way of dealing with it all was to find those glimmers of light in the endless darkness, like searching for a twinkling star on a cloudy night. Recently Sven had been Mathieu’s star, the source of his happiness.
The candle flickered in a draft. The hatch opened and Sven clambered down, moved toward Mathieu.
“I’m sorry about our argument earlier.”
“Is that an apology?” Mathieu asked. “Because if so, it’s a terrible one.”
“No, it’s not an apology. I meant everything I said, even though I was angry. We have to be careful.”
“I understand,” Mathieu admitted. “And I know I should have been terrified because we risked being caught—but I can’t live like this.
” He looked Sven in the eye. “You asked how I can be so happy. But it’s a question of survival.
Right now you make me want to live. And being with you is what makes me able to keep going. ”
Sven gave a faint nod. “But think about your parents. The Nazis have already come looking for you; you’re on some kind of list. If you’re caught, that will put your parents in danger, because they’ve hidden you. I won’t be safe either.”
Mathieu let the words sink in. He realized that his behavior had been selfish.
If it came out that Mathieu had been kept hidden, then of course the Nazis would take a closer look at his parents and they’d be in harm’s way.
Plus their work with the resistance movement would be at risk of being revealed.
“We can live here,” Sven went on. “We can be together. Here. But we have to be careful.”
Mathieu didn’t say anything.
“Here at the vineyard, we can dance in the darkness,” Sven said.
Mathieu thought about Gerard again. About how he had once said almost those exact words in order to teach Mathieu how to carry on.
When the war broke out and they both were called up, Mathieu had been inconsolable.
But Gerard had wanted to spend their last few days together behaving as if nothing had happened.
He didn’t want to talk about the war anymore, he had said.
He wanted them to have fun together, to live life to the fullest. Dance in the dark.
Mathieu later said the same thing to Sven. The fact that Sven had repeated those words, had tried to understand Mathieu, made his heart break.
“And the Legion?” he asked.