The Baker's Secret(3)
Emma wondered what would happen to Monkey Boy when he turned eighteen. His father was long gone; his mother despaired of so much as keeping the boy washed. Thus far, all he had demonstrated the capacity to do was sell apples, most of which the villagers purchased out of pity. The orchards in that region were solely cultivated for Calvados brandy, crushed in the fall and distilled in winter and far too bitter to eat, but somehow he had found a few trees whose fruit was edible. This discovery was no qualification for laboring far from home in the occupying army’s factories. Would the enemy conscript him to work there anyway, as they had Emma’s beloved Philippe? Or would they declare him useless, and dispose of him as they had so many others? Monkey Boy’s sixteenth birthday was in mid-August, not ten weeks away, and there was no chance the war would be over in two years. Not when it had already raged for four. Probably it would never end. So let him whistle and wander. It did no harm, and a short life might as well be a merry one.
Emma eased the loaves into the oven, fourteen pale babies swaddled in a skin of water to make a crisp crust, using her thumbnail to mark the underside of each one in the shape of a V. May you break a tooth on it, she whispered.
No one knew where the Vs began, or precisely what they meant. But for anyone with eyes open, they were as common as stones: carved into the public benches, scribbled on the chalkboards of summer’s empty classrooms, scuffed in the dirt outside the town offices. The occupying army saw, and announced that V meant victory, their mighty triumph. They put it on giant flags, flown high. By attempting to make V their own, however, they had no idea of the extent to which they committed an act of self-mockery. Proper Vs did not occur on flags or grand displays, but in secret and only among those who knew: matchbooks left on a café table, folded into a V. Driftwood piled upon the beach. Books standing open on their spines. Vs everywhere, little sprouting flowers of undiminished will.
Nonetheless, Emma’s bread would taste of humiliation. Shame flavored the village’s food because it had infiltrated the people’s hearts.
Twenty-six years after the Great War had devoured nearly two million of the nation’s young men, spending them on the countryside’s soils like so much fertilizer, a new aggressor had returned with even greater force. This mustached demon had a passion to his righteousness before which all people paled. His hordes swept through Belgium, requiring a mere nineteen days to march from armed border to triumph in the capital, whereupon the tanks turned their turrets in the direction of the coast, and the tiny village of Vergers.
Who could blame the nation’s leaders for negotiating? The madman’s power was exceeded only by his fanaticism. The linden trees had not yet grown tall enough to shade the graves of those who had died in the last war. There were no lichens yet embroidering the monuments that bore their names. Who volunteers to sacrifice another generation of sons and husbands and brothers, especially for a fight that would be futile?
Thus did life and liberty depend upon a distant ruler who did not speak the people’s language but felt at ease commanding them in his. The guttural ruled the elegant, the command replaced persuasion, the shout overwhelmed the subtle.
The invader vowed that he would not repeat the Great War, that this time would be different. His troops would behave themselves, the radio was full of propaganda, and promises of the bright future fell like petals from a bough. They would win the people’s hearts, surely, once order had been established.
It was a story people wanted to believe, but they knew better. Village by village the soldiers took down the statues, carting old heroes and artists away in railcars, as if people were too ignorant to imagine that they would soon be melted into armaments, Napoleon into gun barrels, Balzac into bullets. The pedestals on which the bronzes had stood remained in place, however, though now they were monuments to nothing.
Lies collapsed upon themselves like timbers of a barn on fire as the passionate lunatic systematically disregarded every word of the armistice. His troops took the people’s guns, confiscated their radios, packed men into cattle cars that were headed to his factories—so that his own nation’s males would be available to make new wars on new enemies.
The occupying army spread across the continent with the persistence of a disease. Emma heard it was worse in Spain, where no one was permitted to travel anywhere, for any purpose. She heard it was worse in Belgium, where no one had enough to eat. She heard it was worse in Russia, where the charismatic maniac had besieged one beautiful city and incinerated many small ones.
For two years the people of the coast lived behind a fa?ade that fooled no one, their letters censored, mayors and police chiefs disappearing in the night, any loudmouth jailed or vanished, until the wild-eyed zealot declared it was enough. The nation would become one again, albeit united under identically strict rules. Almost overnight, the village’s signposts, alley walls, and storefronts all bore posters listing many forms of conduct—breaking curfew, possessing guns, aiding escaped prisoners, sheltering enemies, listening to foreign radio stations, refusing the occupying army’s currency—and under these lists stood a single word that required no translation: verboten.
Eventually the truth revealed itself like the sun coming up. Fuel began to run short, battles elsewhere demanded more resources, and food rations fell by half. Fishermen, normally considered smelly and coarse, became a salvation, their catch the village’s only meat.
The fastest-growing crop of that season was indignation. When a man has raised a calf, fed it, and milked it, and he sees the full frothing bucket taken away for someone else’s breakfast, the woes of elsewhere dwindle and his stomach is not all that grumbles. Only nursing mothers, pregnant women, and young children were permitted to receive a ration of milk. The occupying army insisted that this was an act of generosity. Thus did the people learn that thirsting occurs on many levels.