“There is not enough danger in the streets, my son marches to battle to die on a German bayonet.” Mme. Villeneuve sat with a lace handkerchief to her cheek, eyes numb with shock.
“You don’t know that Jeannot went with them,” Caroline said with little conviction.
“I am not a fool!” the widow proclaimed and waved her visitor from the front drawing room. She wished to be alone to embrace her grief without interference.
“Can they succeed?” Caroline asked Claude as the big man gently shut the doors to the room, leaving his mistress to her sorrow.
“It is doubtful, Madame,” he said solemnly. “The defeat and capture of the city are inevitable. The generals have tried to convince the populace of this with little result.”
“You are a resolute people.”
“We are a romantic people, Madame. And when romance is held too dear, it becomes foolishness.”
“But if this counterattack will fail, then why have the generals agreed to lead it?”
“Perhaps because it is the only way to convince us that we have lost,” Claude said and held the door to the kitchen open for Caroline and her bundle to enter.
“Excuse me for saying so, Claude, but for so formidable a man, you are quite the philosopher,” Caroline said.
“I am French.” Claude shrugged. “What you call philosophy, I call seeing the world for what it is.”
Anatole was within the kitchen. But rather than preparing their lunch he was pulling on his winter coat while Inès, the plump downstairs maid, stood weeping into the sleeve of her blouse.
“And where are you off to?” Claude demanded. “I will fight!” Anatole declared. He jammed a hat upon his head and snatched a broad-bladed chopping knife from a block.
Claude stepped close to him and batted the knife from the smaller man’s hand with a flick of his fingers.
“You will not,” Claude said, and lifted the man from the floor by the front of his coat. A button went flying across the room from where Claude’s big hands took twin fistfuls of the heavy cloth.
“You are needed here, you pompous little Breton,” Claude said with no malice. “The Madame needs the comforts of her home and staff, and you will not desert her, only to be killed by some Bavarian whoreson.”
“Only a coward refuses the clarion call.” Anatole sniffed. He looked ridiculous suspended above the tiles, feet swinging and making belligerent challenges to the giant who held him.
“What good are you to anyone dead?” Claude set him down. “Now, back to your stove and make us breakfast.”
Anatole slipped from his coat with the help of an openly blubbering Inès, only now her tears ran down a face transformed by joy. The little chef glared at Claude, who took a seat on a stool. But the expression on the man’s face was a front that did little to mask the relief in his eyes. He had made his display of courage for all to see, and thus, his manhood was secure.
Late that evening, either due to a widow’s prayers or pure, stupid chance, Jeannot did return.
He came to the door well past midnight. Claude answered to a feeble patter from outside and drew the bolts open to admit the boy. Jeannot was covered in drying mud from his boots to his collar. His right hand was bandaged in dirty rags encrusted with black blood. He was drawn and exhausted. The young man looked as though he had aged a decade in a single day.
Claude ushered the boy into the dining room and sat him down before pouring a tumbler of brandy. Jeannot gulped the draught greedily. Claude ordered Inès to rush upstairs and alert Madame, who came down the steps with the help of Corrine and their Canadian guest. She was not so overcome with relief to prevent her from ordering Inès to sweep up the clumps of muck left on the floor by her son’s passage. The widow sat in a chair close by her son and took his bandaged hand in hers.
“We came out of the fog within steps of their defenses at Gennevilliers,” Jeannot said from his seat at the head of the table. His mother sat by him holding his wounded hand, leaving his other free to hold the tumbler of brandy. He spoke huskily, drily, with no trace of emotion. His eyes looked pained as they focused inwardly while he told his tale.
“That surprised the swine. It really did. We swept over them, mobs of men rushing together to batter a single Prussian to the ground. There were children who joined us at the end. And women. I saw a woman fatter than Inès laughing like an asylum inmate as she drove a butcher knife into the face of a screaming soldier years younger than I. There was no rifle fire at first. It was man to man with bayonet and club. The trenches were packed with writhing men.”
He took a long swallow of the brandy, and Claude poured a new portion that reached the brim of the glass.
“I joined an attack on a gun position, a big twelve-pounder. I think our mad idea was to turn the gun and use it ourselves. Though I doubt one of us knew how to load or fire the damned thing. We slipped and slid up an icy earthworks hand over hand, climbing over one another to be the first.
That was when the rifles sounded. The Germans recovered from their shock soon enough and trained their guns on us in ranks of three. It was like the old way, like Bonaparte’s time. They stood in files loading and firing in terrible succession.”
A single tear
