The Baker's Secret(44)
As she hurried after it, Thalheim called out, “I wouldn’t chase that if I were you.” He chuckled. “That whole area is mined.”
Emma halted where she stood, at the height of land, rain pelting her back. The umbrella cartwheeled twice, then toppled over the side.
“Ha.” Thalheim chortled. “Are you upsets at losing your umbrella?”
“No.” Emma continued to gaze over the bluff. “I am upset at being so weak.”
As she watched, though, Emma had to admit that there was an elegance to the umbrella’s fall: like a trapeze artist, swaying close to the bluff and then away, a flower thrown overboard from a ship, smoothly back and forth, a feather fallen from a nest, gliding down to a place on the sand, where it landed without a sound.
Chapter 21
The laboring men received sunburns indeed, some more severely than others depending on complexion, but which swiftly became symbolic. Within days, people far from the construction site, farmers and shopkeepers, janitors and magistrates, had left their hats at home and cultivated a burn. Red skin manifested solidarity. Freckles became fashionable.
As May arrived and the sunlight strengthened, people standing in the rations line could not resist the temptation to compare their tans. Odette was least darkened, because of her hours in the kitchen. Pierre had mottled skin, perhaps due to age. Monkey Boy was golden from his days in the trees. Mémé’s face had grown dappled, which made her eyes seem brighter.
The darkest arms of all belonged to Emma. Her circuit of the town, its farms and forests, placed her in daylight hour upon hour, every day. Yet her most important work, the fuel that powered her entire engine of deceit and survival, took place before the sun was up.
On each day following the Field Marshal’s visit, Emma continued to knead and shape and mark with a V her dozen compulsory baguettes, plus the two that were the baker’s secret. As the weeks passed, had the loaves been stacked together, they would have made a pile to feed multitudes.
But then the fifth of June arrived. At dawn, Emma roused herself from a sleep so deep it allowed her a respite from hunger. As she crossed the barnyard, silenced Pirate with a bribe of barley, and put herself to work, she had no way of knowing that this day’s baguettes would be the last ones she made in her life.
Straw is sinewy, like gristle. It takes strong wrists to grind the grass down. But Emma had mixed the dough so many times she barely noticed the effort. She paused now and then, only to tuck back a rebellious strand of hair. Soon the baguettes lay in their places, tanning as they baked, and Emma noticed the first daylight leaking between boards in the barn’s eastern wall. She went to the doorway, saw the pinking sky, and allowed herself a brief wander down the lane for a better view.
At just that moment, the sun found an opening in the clouds. Daylight poured down on the barnyard, illuminating the old stone house, casting shadows through the hedgerows, making grass glint and crows rise, flooding the village square and every house along the way. It brought the warmth of awakening.
The Goat stirred in the hog shed, having slept so hard on the shelf the planks left an impression in his cheek. The stink of the air was enough to make his eyes water. But around him stood all those wooden boxes he had smuggled there, two by two, for months. His legs lay across one stack as a miser sleeps atop his gleaming hoard. The captain in the house would never find these boxes. He was too concerned with keeping his fingers clean. The Goat sat up and rubbed his face with both hands.
Pierre finished sharpening a pencil, packed the curls of wood into his pipe and wished for fresh tobacco as fervently as he had once wished for a bride. He squinted in the morning light, accepting that neither desire would be granted that day. Ambling into the side yard, where his girls stood awaiting milking, he held a match to his pipe and blew gray smoke into the sky.
Fleur, the veterinarian’s daughter, dressed without speaking, tied the blue apron around her waist, and plunged her hands into the patch pockets to confirm that certain somethings were still in there. Then she went to wake her mother. Marie had all but ceased eating, ever since the day three soldiers took her behind the woodshed and she ordered Fleur to stay away. Perhaps a rind of cheese would appeal to Marie today.
The war could not prevent an early June morning from glistening with dew. Hedgerows rang with the gossip of birds. In later years many villagers insisted they could not remember hearing any birds during the occupation, but of course they were there, flitting through the branches and calling over the fields.
Cats prowled barns, Apollo wandered in search of Neptune, and Mémé clasped a pottery bowl with both hands, trying to recall whether her grandmother had made it, or her granddaughter. Time had grown so untrustworthy.
Monkey Boy was skipping down the lane by the western well when he entered a tunnel of light, his shadow tall on the ground at his feet. At once he made his gait stiff-legged, lumbering like a giant, arms spread as though he were a tree. “Whishhh,” he sang, flourishing his fingers like leaves.
The clouds closed, the sun vanished, and Emma broke from her reverie. She crossed the barnyard, knotting her hair. Pirate strutted alongside, quieter now that day had begun. She peered into the house to see Mémé at the stove making tea, the sight calming Emma for a moment.
Then she heard a noise from the baking shed, realizing with a start that she had not yet put certain things away. She dashed across the barnyard, and there was Captain Thalheim, squatting beside her basin of ground straw. Emma pulled up short, skirt bunching around her legs.