The World That We Knew(59)

“She needed children,” Monsieur said, to explain why the girls could stay while Julien had been made to leave. They had gone out to have a smoke in the garden. It was a habit Julien had picked up from Victor. “We can take them. We’ll say they’re our own, and after a while they will be.”

Julien nodded and watched the smoke rise into the night sky. Lea would be furious if she knew he was smoking. She’d told him her father had been a doctor, and said smoking was bad for the lungs.

“My brother has a farm,” the old man said. “It’s a little more than three kilometers outside town. Maybe he can use the help.”

They went there together, Monsieur driving, Julien in the space between the front and backseats, beneath a blanket. It was a small farm, and Monsieur Bisset’s brother was a brusque widower who had fields but no one to work them. Julien would stay in a borrowed canvas tent in the woods beyond the pasture until the snows came, and be given two meals each day, as long as he worked without complaint, for the hours were long, and the labor backbreaking. Julien shook hands with the first Monsieur Bisset and they wished each other luck. The food was not as good here, it was simple fare, mostly bread and eggs and cheese, but it was filling, and Julien didn’t mind living outside.

This is what it feels like to be alone, he would have written to Lea if he could. You hear more and see more. You’re a part of the world around you. Ants under the leaves, the clouds moving by. He had begun to divide the world into sections, as his father had taught him to do; everything was a piece of the whole, he understood that now. He had no difficulty finding his way to his campsite in the dark; he did so by touching the trees as though they were a map through a forest maze. The weather grew colder and he could feel how close winter was. At night he looked into the sky and remembered the names of the constellations. There was Orion, the hunter who appears in the winter sky with his bow and his dogs, so that he could be remembered by those who loved him during his time on earth. Julien imagined that his father lay on the ground beside him, looking upward. Dear father, he said aloud.

The nesting birds scattered at the sound of his voice. The vines had grown over his tent so quickly he sometimes thought he would disappear. Snow would fall, ice would cover the canvas, and one day Monsieur Bisset’s brother would come looking for him and be unable to find him in the woods.

Find me, he would have written to Lea if he could.

Find me before I disappear.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


THE DOCTOR’S HOUSE




ARDèCHE, WINTER 1943

AT NIGHT, ETTIE WALKED OUT through the dark trees to have dinner with the doctor, nothing fancy, usually a shared omelet and some potatoes or stewed tomatoes. Dr. Girard, who was considered a fine chess player, had patiently taught her the game, and, as it turned out, she had a real talent for it. There was little else to do while she waited for Victor’s return, although she had begun to act as Girard’s nurse when he was called upon by the Resistance, always unexpectedly, often in the middle of the night. His telephone would ring and they would go off together in his car, a beat-up Renault that groaned when it took the hills as the doctor found his way to a safe house where a patient was waiting. In only a few months Ettie had learned quite a bit, how to clean and bind a wound, how to stitch flesh with a needle and surgical thread, how to calm a distraught man or woman who was in the throes of pain. This will only take a minute, then you’ll be fine, lie still, count to one hundred. Sometimes they would be driven through the night to a remote field, then be blindfolded and led to the injured. Ettie never wavered; she was firm and calm with the patients, and the doctor had been impressed with her courage.

“You’re a surprise,” he said, pleased to have found a worthy opponent at chess and an even worthier assistant in the field.

“My mother used to deliver babies on our kitchen table,” Ettie told him. “I suppose I learned a thing or two from her.”

Still, Ettie felt uncomfortable whenever she was alone with Dr. Girard. She was accustomed to the world of women and had only known the boys in her community, all of whom she seemed able to outthink and talk rings around. She had no experience with men, or maybe it was more than her lack of experience. She had tender feelings toward the doctor, especially after watching his work with wounded Resistance members and refugees. He was such a good man, measured and deliberate, allaying his patients’ fears. When their work was done, and their clothes bloodied, he would guide her back to the car with his fingers against her back, and the heat of his touch had both comforted her and enflamed her.

Tonight, after their chess game, the doctor had unexpectedly suggested they go upstairs. Ettie had immediately felt nervous. She had fleeting thoughts of all the men who had approached her, the fellow who ran the laundry, the owner of the café. She avoided the doctor’s gaze, and had a moment of doubt as to what a man such as himself would want from her.

All the same, she followed him to the second floor, and as it turned out Dr. Girard wasn’t after anything inappropriate. He simply went to the closet and opened the door, then turned to Ettie and motioned her forward. There were his wife Sarah’s clothes, neatly displayed on wooden hangers. She had been gone for several years, lost to cancer. The fact that her disease had been incurable was a personal affront. He was meant to cure, and could do nothing at all. Girard often imagined that Sarah was in the kitchen, making coffee or reading a book at the table as sunlight came through the window, waiting for him at the end of the day. Darling, she would say when he walked in, I’ve missed you.