Falling Idols

a private who rounded up priest and nuns at rifle-point, and began to march them back down to join the rest while the cyclist buzzed a circuit around rectory and priory and barn to make sure they hadn’t missed anyone.

The thought of Nomad, gargantuan child that he was in some respects, back there alone, elicited surprisingly little worry in Giselle. In his vast span of days on this earth, he had learned nothing quite so well as how to hide.

Pity the rest of them had not learned so valuable a skill.

They were gathered within a perimeter of uniforms. Some in tears, others in sullen quietude, most of the older ones calm and resigned, as ones who were watching history repeat itself. Father Guillaume moved among them, as did Giselle and Anna-Marie, but how much comfort could cold hands provide under the watch of muzzles colder still?

The officer who came striding forth from a tight knot of his men silenced them with a pair of shots into the air from his Luger sidearm. His face was tightly seamed. Prematurely graying blond hair strayed from beneath his helmet to cling wetly to his upper forehead. When he spoke, he had no need of an interpreter. His French was deliberate but no less understood.

“I am Untersturmfuhrer Streckenbach,” he called out, “and you will give me all the cooperation due the Third Reich. Who refuses, will be shot. In a few moments you will be questioned and asked to surrender whatever weapons you may have in your possession. Who refuses, will be shot. Your homes will then be searched. Who is found to be lying … will be shot. Understood?”

Giselle stood with clasped hands and listened to the scarcely audible murmuring around her. How little malice the man actually spoke with. He might have been placing an order in the bakery.

“For tonight,” Streckenbach went on, “your home will be ours. We have just suffered the loss of our radio at the hands of some countrymen of yours. For their actions, I do not hold you responsible, unless you are found to have aided them. For your own actions, you will bear every responsibility. Until a messenger can be dispatched to send back new orders and evacuation for our dead and our wounded, you will accord us your hospitality.”

He suddenly craned his neck, scanning faces in the crowd. “Where is the priest … ah, there you are.” Beside her, Giselle felt Father Guillaume go suddenly rigid. “I wish to see you in a few minutes.” The lieutenant flicked one finger toward the door of the cafe, and in a moment a young private was at his shoulder to ensure he found the way.

Giselle met his eyes only once as he was led away from the crowd. The Father’s eyes, resigned and bitter, retained something crushed as well. Something broken that could never be restored. Did they kill priests to demoralize an occupied village? She prayed not. There was no need. Chateau-sur-Lac was full of compliant people.

She continued to pray until her concentration was shattered, as two soldiers departed on motorcycle and in sidecar, down the road and away to the west, buzzing like a horsefly until they were gone, simply gone.

*

Servant of God or not, Father Guillaume looked for things to hate about this man. This Hun. There was plenty to find. He hated the small scar that curled out from the corner of the left eye, hated the cleft in the chin. He hated the straight posture and the blue of his eyes and the gray of his uniform and the sharp tangy sweat-smoke smell of him, and most of all he hated the very fact of this man’s existence, and how they were now forced to breathe the same air in this rustic cafe. I can never eat here again, thought Guillaume. I’ll see him and smell him even then.

“You despise me,” said Streckenbach, “Your eyes make no secret of it, and I find it perfectly understandable. I don’t ask your goodwill, only your cooperation. Wine?”

He poured from a bottle and savored the bouquet and nodded quietly as Guillaume told him no. He then gulped like a Philistine at a stream and Guillaume hated that too.

“Occupying officers often seek out the mayors of the villages they enter,” the lieutenant told him. “That may be of value, but I find greater worth in men of God. You priests are natural born mediators, sworn to keep the peace. You know the hearts of your flock better than anyone. Better than I can ever hope to.”

Father Guillaume’s stomach curdled. “I’ll tell you nothing about a single one of them.”

Streckenbach refilled, toasted him ironically with the glass and poured it down. “Nor do I ask that of you. As I say, you hear their confessions and know their hearts. You know who lives peacefully, and you know who’s prone to impulsive behavior. What I require of you is to keep them pacified, any among them with, shall I say, ideas.

“Regardless of what you may think of me and the army I serve, I have no desire to leave dead villagers behind. Whether or not I do, is largely your responsibility. Understood?”

Guillaume shut his eyes and nodded slowly and agreed. How sad a day this was, and would that he’d been born deaf so that he would not have to hear himself acquiescing like a toady.

“Dismissed,” Streckenbach said, and of course that was but one more thing to hate.

*

As they were his people, and he their shepherd, he went from home to home to comfort whom he could. Some families had been forced out and into the cottages of neighbors, as their own homes were appropriated for makeshift barracks and, in one case, a ward for the wounded.

The pile of confiscated weapons grew, with hunting rifles and shotguns and pistols, even implements of daily life on the farm such as pitchforks and scythes. Their lives were no longer their own in Chateau-sur-Lac, and even God seemed very far away.

Late afternoon, Guillaume left the heart of the village and trudged back up the hill to his church and rectory. For a minute, at the very least, he stood over and contemplated ruts dug into the earth by a heedless motorcycle. He stamped them flat, smoothed them over until no trace of tire remained, then bypassed both home and church. Onward, to the cool dim recesses of the stable.

He found it inside, that hateful thing whose very existence mocked the divine creation beneath its feet. It stood in one of the stalls, stroking the sculpted neck of one of the horses and murmuring into its ear. Beside it the beast looked like a Shetland pony to a normal man.

Such was his first sight of this abomination: the ghastly face, the gigantic stature, the clothing that looked crudely sewn together from existing garments to meet the task of covering its outsize frame. Guillaume saw, and could believe in devils.

“You came,” it said, like a child who feared to trust its own delight.

Guillaume swallowed down his disgust and tried to offer a reassuring smile. “You doubted?”