Part 11 (1/2)

The landing was thick with smoke and A had to hold his breath. In the first room was a pair of narrow beds with two white blankets, frayed but pulled neatly over pillows. There were two bedside tables of dark wood, a square clock, and a wooden closet with mirrors set in the doors.

A rushed to the window and flung it open. He filled his lungs with clean air, as smoke poured out over his shoulders. From the second floor he could see the body of the woman more clearly. The heat from the burning roof was intense.

A went back into the room and scooped out an armful of men's clothes that were hanging in the closet. He tossed them through the open window and watched them flutter to the ground.

In the second room was a chest of drawers and, to A's utter delight, a small stack of books. There was little time to choose, so A grabbed the thickest volume, which he then dropped in his excitement. As he bent down to pick it up, he noticed at the far end of the room a mess of blankets and a makes.h.i.+ft crib from which a round face was blinking furiously.

II.

A SET THE screaming child down by the cow fence and covered the body of the woman with his jacket. He changed out of his ruined uniform and dressed in the s.h.i.+rt, trousers, and jacket from upstairs. Then the baby stopped crying and watched A roll his old clothes into a ball and toss them into the fire.

There was a cattle trough by the fence, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with rainwater. Insects skimmed along the top. Dead slugs had turned white and rolled at the bottom. A splashed the mud and smoke off his face, then brushed back his hair with both hands.

When the baby started crying again, A fetched the pitcher of milk and put some cream on his finger. The child took it eagerly then reached for more. A tried many positions, but not one of them seemed appropriate for feeding. He had never witnessed a child fed by a mother before, nor felt the warmth of another human body against his. The child, being turned sideways, and spun, and held upside down by A, thought it was a game, and his crying turned to laughter.

In the end, A poured milk into the palm of his hand and the child licked it out. After a dozen palmfuls, the child looked up and made a noise that sounded like meow.

They sat there for a long time deciding what to do.

The child kept looking around. A knew why, and it filled him with despair.

At the edge of the farm was a gate. A few birds had perched to watch the flames. A imagined another child waiting at another gate for his father, and recalled vividly the forms and faces of those men he had cut down.

And through all this, the child clung to him, and A clung to the child.

They had a long way to go.

This would be the first day.

III.

HIS FATHER WOULD think he had been killed. He could read books again, sit in fields, fall asleep outside, and go back to the secret rural life he so enjoyed. He could raise the child as his own son, teach him to read and write. They would take all their meals together, make each other laugh, grow things in a small garden, and go swimming in summer, when the rivers were shallow.

His mother seemed to him now more alive than she ever had-as though he were taking over from her somehow and the child in his arms was himself.

He knew that people would be suspicious of a young man who didn't speak-but he had a baby. He was carrying a person too young to know about war.

Slow convoys of German soldiers eyed A and the child with indifference. French peasantry who, on getting little response to their questions, threw their hands in the air or hurled insults that A did not understand. After a few days, they were both desperately hungry, and the child wouldn't stop crying. If not for an old woman who noticed a man and baby stumbling along the road-it might have ended for both of them quite soon.

Her first task was to feed the child, but just enough to begin the process of eating again.

The woman had a skeletal face with deep-set, serious eyes that gave the appearance of chronic disapproval. She arranged her gray hair meticulously, in the style of a bourgeois. A thought that at one time she had probably been quite beautiful. He wondered if she had any children, and where they were. A dry mop stood upside down in the corner of her sitting room like someone watching, and beside the fire there were two wooden armchairs, one of which appeared unused. There were sheets of newspaper on the floor, and from time to time, a cat wandered past with its tail up.

A's silence did not seem to bother the woman. She had lived alone for a long time and was not used to speaking. Her initial fear was that the man would beat her. But after a few hours, her fear was that they would leave.

A sipped hot broth before a crackling fire, and watched the old woman lay the baby on a towel, then unpin the soiled cloth around its bottom. She wiped gently with a warm rag and the child screamed. She rinsed out the rag and continued wiping. The flesh on the child's genitals and upper legs was raw. The child was screaming with such force that his face had turned blue. A put down the bowl of broth and went to him.

When the child saw A, he calmed a little and his screaming turned to crying. After several shallow breaths, he fell silent and reached out his hands. A touched them. The woman smiled and applied a white paste to the baby's raw skin with her fingers.

The next day she cut up one of her old dresses and showed A how to pin a piece of fabric safely onto the child.

After they had eaten supper that night, she demonstrated how to hold the baby against his shoulder, and pat the middle of his back.

In a trunk upstairs, the woman found A a pair of shoes, which were too big, but cus.h.i.+oned his ruined feet as they foraged each night in the dusk for potatoes, turnips, carrots, or anything remotely edible. Whatever they unearthed was first offered to the child.

One day a man knocked on the door. When the woman opened it and spoke to him, he said he was lost, but couldn't stop looking at A, who stood behind with the baby. The next day, two men kept walking past the house and trying to look in. When gunshots were heard in a nearby field that evening, A decided they would leave at dawn.

The woman filled a basket with clean rags, apples, and anything else she had lying around.

She stood in the middle of the road and watched them disappear.

That night in bed she held her rosary and wondered who else she could help.

On her deathbed thirty-eight years later in 1982, still clutching her rosary, the old woman felt the measure of her loss through the grief of those at her bedside. She tried to appear calm but was in a great deal of pain. She was known simply as Marie, though older people liked to call her Mairie,* to show their respect for all she had done for people over the years.

When the moon came out, she exhaled a final breath and the most insignificant part of her slipped away with grace.

The entire village took part in the funeral procession. Behind the hea.r.s.e, the priest talked loudly and laughed because she had taught him the joy not only in life. Teenagers followed slowly at the back, keeping distance enough to smoke and hold hands.

IV.

A AND THE CHILD slept mostly in barns. When it rained, they found shelter under thick summer trees. If there was no one around, A read to the child from the book in his pocket. And though neither of them understood what the words meant, the sound of it gave them peace.

A knew how to harvest the wild hedgerows, and the child soon developed a taste for blueberries and strawberries. They found a rhythm for eating and sleeping, and the child seemed content-except at night, when he often woke and was inconsolable.

A changed his diaper always in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. If not too soiled, he would keep the old pieces to wash later. He also applied the white paste given to him in a jar by the old woman.

There were a few times when the child was screaming so much that A got worried, and so broke his silence and hummed the only song he loved, that he had heard as a child, and which haunted him with mysterious familiarity. He liked to think of it as something his mother had taught him. He did not know who wrote it, when, or why-that it was called ”Of Foreign Lands and People,” and that his mother had received a standing ovation when she played it to a packed school auditorium in 1911.

One morning, they found a bicycle in some damp hay. With a little practice, A figured out a way to keep it going with both of them on.

After hours gliding through the countryside, they approached a village so small there wasn't even a sign. In the distance outside a cafe, a group of n.a.z.i soldiers were standing in the road, smoking and talking. The child could feel A's fear and clung tightly. In a flash of inspiration, A rang the bell on the handlebars and the soldiers instinctively separated to let them pa.s.s through the middle.

By noon the next day there were gradually more buildings, more people, and a steady stream of sputtering cars with things strapped to the roof.

When they saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, A got off the bicycle and wheeled it. They had no more food and the baby was restless. Eventually, it was too much for A to bear, and so, holding the child in his arms, he stepped into the first cafe that looked friendly. A man in a short brown tie greeted him. A tried to convey, using his hands, that he wanted to sell the bicycle outside, or trade it for something to eat.

People stopped eating and looked. The owner held meal tickets to A's face and shrugged. Then a waiter began to usher them out, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell of the child. When they were almost to the door, an elegant woman in a red dress strode over to the owner and slapped him hard on the cheek. Then a chair sc.r.a.ped because an old man at the back of the dining room had stood up to see.

The woman took the baby from A's arms and went back to her table, where she mashed her lunch into tiny morsels. A few people applauded. Others shook their heads in disgust.

A stood by the door and watched the boy reach madly for the food on the woman's plate. He felt giddy with delight. The waiter went back to work. As people finished their meals and left the restaurant, some handed A a piece of cheese, or bread, or meat wrapped in newspaper. One woman told him he should be ashamed of himself, begging like that with a child.

Before giving the baby back to A, the elegant woman wrote her name on a piece of paper, along with her address in the Ninth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. Then she kissed the child and walked out.

They wandered the boulevards of Paris for hours like a pair of tourists. A's feet ached in a new way. He wanted to tell the baby that Paris was like a poem in stone. He thought about the woman in the red dress, and wondered if they would live with her from now on. She was very attractive, and in time, they might even grow to love one another. He could get a job, fix up her place-read to them at night for entertainment.