The Baker's Secret(53)
Yet Emma’s attention next turned west as she heard, and then saw, more bombers, again with their wings painted oddly white. This time, however, there was enough treeless sky for her to see that only one of the aircraft possessed that black mouth in its belly. The others were smaller and quicker, guards of some kind, darting above and beside the big one. Behind that trio came another three, close on its wake, though they did not stand out against the gray sky until they’d drawn close.
Something fell, then, some small, parachuted item swinging side to side in the air, its landing place hidden by the hedgerow half a kilometer ahead. Prompted perhaps by the continuing angers of her belly, Emma’s immediate thought was: food.
By the time the second wave passed, the thunder of the first crew’s bombs had reached where she stood. Another sound responded, not an echo but similar in volume and growl, and Emma wondered if these were the antiaircraft guns Thalheim had spoken of so proudly that day upon the bluff. Regardless, it was still her village under attack, still the railroad station that seemed to be the target. But nothing came by train anymore, and the rails had already taken away Philippe and the other conscripted men. Why were the bombers bothering now?
As quiet returned Emma continued to imagine the afternoon from Planeg’s perspective, how he disobeyed Thalheim in order to explain himself, to identify her with a righteousness that outranked rank, and how the impatient captain had squinted at her, but upon discovering the identity of the fuel thief, what pleasure it had given him. His smile had turned her stomach.
“Here,” Mémé said. She had climbed down from the wagon and tiptoed up beside her pensive granddaughter. “Watch.”
She grabbed Emma’s shoulder for balance, pulled her dress up to the knee, raised one foot against the side of the motorcycle’s seat, and shoved. The machine tipped, then toppled, falling on its side with a torqueing of handlebars and the sound of things breaking on the underside. The gas cap tumbled off its perch, rolling into the ditch and the grass below, where it came to rest somewhere out of sight.
“Home now,” Mémé said, marching to the wagon’s stern and hoisting her buttocks to drop heavily aboard. “Hungry.”
Emma considered the motorcycle, there in the ditch. Apollo arrived at her side and seemed to contemplate it, too.
“I guess we can’t get in any worse trouble,” she told the horse. “Right?”
Emma slipped her arms back into the harnesses, which by this time had formed the leather into the exact shape of her pulling body. Leaning toward home, she started the wagon rolling, planning a route that would keep her on as level a terrain as possible, all the way to the barnyard gate.
“Do you know what, Grandmother?” she called back over her shoulder. “Everything is about to change.”
Mémé stroked her eyebrows with both hands. “Change?”
“Yes.” Emma pulled with her head up while the horse, snorting his nostrils clear, fell into step beside her. “Everything is about to fall apart.”
Chapter 27
In early evening on the fifth of June, Odette stood working in her kitchen when the café’s front door swung open, pushed so hard it clattered against a table.
“Not open for dinner till six thirty,” she called, chopping an onion. “And go easy on that door, would you please?”
“Here she is,” a familiar voice snapped. “As I told you.”
Odette turned to find DuFour standing at her kitchen’s entry. Two soldiers hovered behind him with rifles. “Oh, you,” she said. “What are you sniveling about? Or have you finally come for that free dinner I offered you?”
“You are under arrest for spying for the Resistance.”
“Go shuffle your papers,” she replied, returning to her cutting board. “I have soup to make.”
DuFour strode into the close room, clearing a way for the soldiers. “Arrest her,” he told them. “The Kommandant will want to hear everything.”
Odette pointed the knife at him. “I’m busy, I said. Now get out of my kitchen.”
One of the soldiers lowered his rifle. He did not speak. Odette sized up the three of them, only one in stabbing distance. Oh, the pleasure it would bring, to bury that blade in DuFour’s poochy potbelly. But he was not worth the repercussions.
After wiping the knife, Odette placed it on the cutting board, raked the diced onion into her palm, and dropped it into a pot of steaming broth. Inside boiled a good-sized lobster, and Odette had intended for it to draw a high price that night.
Now it would more likely go to waste. But hadn’t this moment been coming for months? Still, as she switched off the heat under the pot, Odette was surprised to find her throat tightening. So many foods for so many mouths, customers in fact expected within the hour, regardless of the bombing of the train station. Yet interrupting that meal’s preparation felt like an act of loss and surrender. It felt final.
Odette knew what it was to relinquish something precious: throwing a handful of dirt on a casket, releasing the hope of ever marrying and having children. By placing a top on that pot, she felt as though she were taking leave of her oldest friend.
“Go ahead,” she said to the soldiers. “I’ll behave.”
Odette kept her buxom chest out and shoulders back as she followed the soldiers out into the street. Rather than the garrison, they turned toward town hall, and she understood that she would not be facing the Kommandant right away. More likely, she would be locked in the cell that had held Emma’s father. Odette cast her gaze about, wishing the sky were not so gray, nor evening coming on, while she took a last view of Vergers for what could be months. Allied planes buzzed in the distance, as they had all afternoon, and she suspected that this arrest was DuFour’s doing entirely. If she managed to survive, she would roast him on a spit.