The Baker's Secret(36)

When Thalheim returned that evening, Emma was busy scrubbing her soiled dress in the yard. He strode past without a word, at which she flipped the dress over to clean the other side. It made a loud noise, wet cloth slapping down on a washboard. An air-raid siren could not have delivered a clearer advance signal. Thalheim pushed open the house door as if it were his own home. And, as an hour’s rehearsal had prepared for, at that exact moment Mémé rushed the bottle downward out of sight.

“What was that?” the captain said, pausing by the stairs.

“Hmm?” Mémé said it in a singsong way, at the same time examining her fingernails with great interest.

“Something you hid just now. What was it?”

Mémé studied him, her expression addled, and did not reply.

“God save me from the simpletons,” Thalheim said. He pointed. “That thing you are now concealing. Bring it out.”

As though she were a cat being commanded to fetch, Mémé stared at the tip of his finger.

“Damn it.” Thalheim moved past her, muttering to himself. “Why do they permit of your kind to continue to live?”

Mémé slid her chair aside, and the captain found the bottle. “Oho,” he cried out. “What have we here?”

Immediately he removed the cork with his teeth, spitting it out on the floor. He sniffed the mouth of the bottle, then used the nearer of the glasses to pour for himself. When Thalheim put the bottle down and raised his tumbler, Mémé filled hers as well.

“Is that so?” he asked, then threw the drink back. Mémé responded by doing the same. When she brought her glass down on the table with a hearty whack, the captain took it to mean that he should refill both glasses, though it actually signaled to Emma to put aside her washboard and make further preparations.

Normally the captain was not one for alcohol. Odette knew this about him, because the other officers often teased. He sent his pay home to his mama, they said, keeping enough for razors and sundries but not for gambling or drink. Still, this Calvados was free, and he poured himself another tumbler. So did Mémé.

When he’d downed the second shot, Thalheim started for the stairs again. But Mémé banged her glass and he hesitated. Then she poured into both glasses and put the bottle down.

“Well, aren’t you the souse?” he said, ambling back to the table. He picked up his glass, but before he drank Mémé used her foot under the table to push the other chair backward, and without thought or dispute, the captain sat.

It took a full hour and more to intoxicate him sufficiently. Mémé matched him glass for glass, sometimes rushing him.

“Why are you in a hurry?” he slurred.

“Death,” she said, throwing back her drink.

“Not anytime soon,” he protested, but he emptied his glass.

Mémé growled at him, and slapped herself in the face, both sides. Then she poured again.

Eventually Thalheim’s head began to sway, his words to make less sense to Emma eavesdropping outside. He spent some time with his chin on his chest, Mémé knocking on the table beside his full glass though he was slow to respond. After one last shot, he crossed his arms on the table and lowered his head into that cradle.

Mémé pushed his shoulder, but the eyes did not open. She thwacked his skull. No response. Though there was half a drink left in her glass, she slid it away and rose. With slow dignity she opened the front door, marched past her granddaughter, and threw up in the flowers.

“Oh, Mémé,” Emma said, placing a hand on her back.

“There,” the old woman answered. “There—”

But another wave of nausea interrupted, and she vomited on the bushes again. So it continued until her belly was empty, and beyond. By the time Emma had given her water to drink, a bit of bread to absorb, and led her to the couch—a mixing bowl nearby in case Mémé needed it later, Pirate meanwhile closed in the baking shed to keep him quiet—a group of neighbors had clustered in the barnyard with torches, Odette at their head sharpening her butchery knives over the pink carcass.

Yves had built a crossbar of rough lumber, tied the hooves in pairs, and hoisted the pig till it hung upside down. Odette brought her blade up to the sow’s throat.

“Wait,” Emma said. “If you gut it here, we will have to explain blood and innards in the dirt tomorrow morning. Not to mention the crows that will assemble to pick at the mess.”

The people murmured, but no one offered a solution. Then a voice called from the barnyard wall. “I have something that will work.”

They turned as one, and saw the Goat standing with a knapsack on his back. “Give me a minute,” he said.

No one had seen the Goat in weeks. He looked thinner, a waif struggling with the weight of his pack as he staggered into the hog shed. They heard him drop his load on the floor.

“I don’t know how he can stand the smell of it,” Odette said to no one in particular.

“Or how we can stand the smell of him,” Emma replied.

The people laughed. The Goat heard it all, too, standing in the stench and gloom. But it did not merit a reply. With the two boxes in his knapsack that night, his task was at long last complete. Not once had the occupying army come near this shed. Why would they bother to investigate now?