Night Soldiers

Khristo scratched his head. The women reminded him of nuns, innocent and strong-willed at once. “I am not a priest, madame. I’m sorry.”

The elder sister nodded. “That we can see. But my sister and I are Protestant, and we do not know the proper ceremony for these matters.”

He turned back toward the man. “I cannot say it in French,” he said.

“No matter,” the elder sister replied. “God hears all languages.” Then, as a slightly horrified afterthought: “You are Catholic, of course.”

“Of course,” he said.

He was Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox-closer to Catholicism than a Protestant, in theory, but the rites were different and the customs not at all the same. From his training he knew that European Catholics expected “Hail Mary” and “Our Father” and an Act of Contrition. What he was able to offer, however, were predsmurtna molitva, prayers for the dying. There should have been soborovat, elders, present to pray a dying man into the next world, but God would have to forgive this requirement. As for the prayers themselves, they were supposed to be improvisational, in whatever form was appropriate to those present. He therefore leaned close to the man-whispering so quietly that the sisters could not hear him-and asked God to ease his entry into heaven, to forgive him his sins, and to unite him with those he’d loved in this life who had preceded him. Finally, returning to the Catholic tradition, he anointed the man with river water in place of holy oil, touching his face in the sign of the cross and saying, in French, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The man’s lips were cold as snow, and Khristo suppressed a shiver. “Go to God,” he added, then stood, indicating that the ritual was concluded.

Both sisters were weeping silently, dabbing at their eyes with small white handkerchiefs. “Poor Monsieur Dreu.” The younger sister spoke for the first time. “His heart …”

“It is the war,” the other sister said.

“Was he your husband?” Khristo asked.

“No,” the elder answered. “Our employer. For many years. He was as a father to us.”

“What will you do?”

They simply wept. Finally Sophie, the elder sister, said, “Monsieur Dreu intended that we should go to the little house-we would have been safe there. We tried, but we could not make way. Everyone wants to go west. Monsieur Dreu tried to drive the car, all the way from Bordeaux, but the strain on him, the planes, the people on the road …”

Something in her voice, in the inflection of petite maison, caught his attention. “Little house?”

“In the mountains, to the east, toward Strasbourg. There is no road there, you see, and no people. Just an old man who chops the wood.”

“Charlot,” the younger sister offered.

“Yes. Charlot.”

“How would you live?” he asked.

“Well, there is every sort of food, in tins. Monsieur Dreu always saw to that. ‘One must be prepared for eventualities,’ he used to say. ‘Some day there will be turmoil,’ he said, ‘another revolution.’ He said it every summer, when we all went up there to clean the house and air the linen. Monsieur Dreu had great faith in air, especially the air one finds in the mountains. ‘Breathe in!’ he would say.” Both sisters smiled sadly at the memory.

East, he thought. No one was going east-perhaps if they took the country lanes between the north-south highways. No road. Tinned food. In his mind, the words narrowed to a single concept: sanctuary. But there was his own group to consider; he would not simply toss them from the Simca. “Have you an automobile?” he asked.

“Oh yes. Up on the road, a very grand automobile. A Daimler, it is called. Can you drive such a car?” Sophie stared at him with anxious eyes.

He nodded yes.

The younger sister cleared her throat, the knuckles of her reddened hands showed white as she twisted the handkerchief. “Are you a gentleman, monsieur?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “Very much so.”

“Thank God,” she whispered.

He went up onto the road and inspected the great black Daimler, polished and shimmering in the midday sun. The gas gauge indicated the tank was a little less than half full, but he knew they would have to take their chances with fuel, no matter what, and if his own money didn’t hold out, he was certain Monsieur Dreu had provided amply for the run to his mountain retreat.

And if he had any question at all about the change of plan, a visit to his fellow refugees, gathered about the Simca, answered it for him. At the direction of the old lady with the dog, they had pooled their money, purchased a pair of draft horses from a nearby farm, and were in the process of harnessing the animals to the car’s bumper. Khristo explained that he would be leaving them and gave the car keys to the old lady, who now assumed command of the vehicle. They all wished him well, embracing him and shaking his hand. As he walked back toward the river, the artilleryman called out, “Vive la France!” and Khristo turned and saluted him.

At the river, he waited patiently with Sophie and Marguerite and, as the sun went down, the old man died peacefully. Using the Daimler’s tire iron and their hands, they scratched out a shallow grave by the river and laid him to rest. Khristo found a piece of board by the roadside and carved an inscription with the knife stolen from a Paris cafe:

Antonin Dreu

1869–1940

The sisters had cared for Monsieur Dreu for more than thirty years, thus Khristo, as his replacement, found himself pampered to an extraordinary degree. The old man had been the last of a long line of grain negociants in the city of Bordeaux and the family had acquired significant wealth over time. Dreu himself had been, according to Sophie, something of an eccentric: at times a Theosophist, a vegetarian, a socialist, a follower of Ouspenskian mysticism, a devotee of tarot, the Ouija board, and, especially, seances. He “spoke” to his departed mother at least once a month, claiming to receive business direction from her. Whatever the source of his commercial wisdom, he had prospered in good times and bad. He had never married, though Khristo had a strong suspicion that he had been the lover of both his servants. Dreu had also believed that a great social upheaval would overtake Europe, and to this end had obtained the little house in the southern Vosges mountains, a long way from anything, and stocked it with food, firewood, and kerosene for the lamps.

Thus in the first months of Occupation Khristo had lived on canned Polish hams, tinned Vienna sausage and brussels sprouts, and aged wheels of Haute-Savoie cheese. The well-stocked wine cellar, he knew from his time at Heininger, was exceptional, and the three of them often got tipsy around the fire in the evenings.

As time passed he ventured out, walking many miles to a tiny hamlet-itself a mile or so from any road- populated by the sort of mountain people who have been interbreeding for too many generations. He became known as Dreu’s nephew, Christophe, and was simply accepted as another eccentric from up there.

When their tins of food at last ran out, they bought a rooster and several hens, a milk cow, enough seed for a large garden, and replaced staples as necessary at the little village. Khristo journeyed only once into Epinal, the nearest town of any size, to buy a weapon on the black market and to see the Germans for himself. In the sparse, occasional gossip of the mountain village he heard little of resistance, so bided his time and turned his attention to matters of daily existence.

By the end of 1941, Khristo and the two sisters had fallen into a rhythm of rural obligations: wood had to be chopped, weeds pulled, animals fed, vegetables canned. The roof needed repair, a root cellar had to be built, once you had chickens you needed a chicken house and then-local predators were abundant-a strong fence. Given the absence of ready-made materials, improvisation was the order of the day and every new project demanded endless ingenuity. Such demands constituted, for Khristo, a kind of paradise. By turning his hand to unending chores he gradually cured his spirit of the black despair that had descended on it in the Sante prison.

Down below, in mountain villages and valley towns, the war subsided to the numbing routine of Occupation. Twice, in 1942, he left the mountain and contrived to make contact with maquis units but