The Baker's Secret(13)
“Vee can’t spare gutt men to guart a tree,” she said in exaggerated imitation of the Kommandant, earning the villagers’ laughter. Odette wagged a scolding finger at an imaginary Thalheim. “Vee must prepare for zee invasion.”
“Which will never come,” Emma whispered to Mémé, who swayed at her elbow in the queue.
Mémé snapped her teeth. “Shoot.”
“Shoot who, dear one?”
“Thalheim.”
Emma hid a smile. “Let’s not say so in public, all right?”
Mémé did not reply. She was frowning at her fingers, tangling them together as if they were tied in a knot.
With the tree guards reassigned, the next morning a new V appeared—above the reach of any ladder, extending into two branches like an embrace of the whole churchyard.
Everyone agreed that Monkey Boy was not only the sole person capable of such acrobatics, but he was also the least likely to perform them. People saw him wandering the meadows, one arm raised as he called to a passing crow. They saw him on a bench in the village green, sulking like a toddler because his mother had forced him to wash his filthy face. No, someone else was being clever at the occupying army’s expense. The villagers’ speculations made a low buzz, like a hive in a tree branch.
At last it rained, an all-day seaside downpour that washed the bloodstain away. All that remained was a splintered area where the bullet had lodged after shattering Uncle Ezra’s head.
Yet Captain Thalheim could not resist one last blow against the rebellion. After the storm passed he dispatched a corporal, a strapping blond with strong arms and a square jaw who brought with him a long-toothed chain saw. The Monsignor monitored the proceedings from the rectory, his cottage across the lane from the church. When the engine snarled to life, the priest marched across the churchyard, one arm raised with the finger pointing at heaven—a sight that would have cowed the stoutest villager. But his shouting about God’s house and the sanctity of church property was inaudible as the corporal revved the chain saw and approached the tree. The soldier never acknowledged him. The blade took its first bite, bark chips flew, and the Monsignor flinched.
The machine howled while sawing and grumbled while idling as the soldier cut a wedge from one side of the poplar, sliced another from the opposite side, and the tree dropped unceremoniously onto the churchyard grass. By then the priest had repaired to the rectory, where he scowled behind a half-closed door. As efficient as his tool, the soldier methodically reduced the tree to a stump, the stump to a flat knot on the ground, so low one could stub a toe on it. The poplar had required perhaps fifty years to attain its height, but the soldier’s job took no more than twenty minutes.
When the muscular corporal shut off the motor, he paused to sit on the downed trunk and smoke a cigarette—few things expressing leisure and indifference more visibly than the expert making of smoke rings—then hoisted the chain saw on his shoulder like a gun and marched back to his unit. He left the fallen limbs and greens behind like litter. Watching him go, the priest lifted the rosary around his neck, kissed the crucifix, and closed the rectory door.
In those days the villagers let nothing go to waste. Poplar, though a poor burning wood, had other uses, lumber and such. People soon came and hauled everything away.
That evening the veterinarian’s beautiful daughter, Fleur, knocked on the door in Emma’s barnyard wall, then retreated a few steps. “Is anyone at home?” she piped.
Emma set aside her chore of the moment and crossed the yard to open the door. Leaning against the bricks was a cross section of the poplar, a circular slice from the tree. “What’s this?”
But Fleur only curtsied, stuffed her hands into her apron pockets as ever, and trotted away up the lane. Emma examined the slab of wood. From that day forward she used that board for her kneading and rolling, and none other would do.
Still Captain Thalheim did not have the last word. One day later, all of the churchyard’s remaining poplars bore Vs in the upper branches. So did four ancient oaks that arched over the village green. It was like a story, told in hieroglyphics. Seven days after Uncle Ezra’s death, trees all over town wore tattoos of defiance. No one knew who was responsible. Years later, people who survived those times debated with fervor who had done the carving.
Emma had her suspicions, but found them contradicted a few afternoons later when she spotted Monkey Boy, high in the special sycamore on the edge of the bluff by the sea. He was giggling like a three-year-old while his political self-expression arced out of the high branches in a long golden stream.
Chapter 6
Despite the Vs, Uncle Ezra’s execution caused Emma to weep daily in the arms of Philippe. While others tried to comfort or distract her, he attempted nothing of the kind.
“Terrible,” he said as she bawled against his chest. “It is a crime.”
Emma was a messy crier, nose running and eyes red, yet he seemed not to care. Philippe came to the house, asked Marcel if his daughter would like to take a walk, brought her somewhere private, put his arms around her. And she would gush.
Philippe spoke softly, telling her it was a huge loss. Unlike her father, Mémé, and the Monsignor, not for one sentence did Philippe attempt to beguile her out of grief. “An enormous wrong has been done,” he said, tucking her head under his chin.