The boy lying next to him, called André, was fifteen, and it was his job to guide Casson across a branch of the river Allier into the Zone Non-Occupée. André stared intensely, angrily, at the sales Boches below him. These were his hills, this was his stream, these teenagers below him—nineteen or so—were intruders, and he would, in time, settle with them. By his side, his brown-and-white Tervueren shepherd waited patiently—Tempête he called her, Storm—her breath steaming as she panted in the icy morning air.
These were in fact his hills—or would be. They belonged to his family, the de Malincourts, resident since the fifteenth century in a rundown chateau just outside the village of Lancy. He raised his hand a few inches, a signal to Casson: be patient, I know these two, they chatter like market ladies but they will, eventually, resume their rounds. Casson gritted his teeth as the wet grass crushed beneath him slowly soaked his clothing. Had they left the chateau as planned, at two in the morning, this would not have happened.
But it was the same old story. He was scheduled to go across with another man, a cattle-dealer from Nevers who couldn’t or wouldn’t get a permit to enter the Vichy zone. The cattle-dealer arrived forty minutes late, carrying a bottle of cognac that he insisted on opening and sharing with various de Malincourts who had chosen to remain awake in honor of the evening crossing—the father, an aunt, a cousin and the local doctor, if Casson remembered correctly. Everybody had some cognac, the fire burned low, then, at 3:20, a telephone call. It was the cattle-dealer’s wife, he’d received a message at his house in Nevers and he didn’t have to go across the line after all. That left Casson and André to make the crossing later than they should have, almost dawn, and that invited tragedy.
The sentries had themselves a final laugh, then parted, heading east and west along the stream. The dog made a faint sound, deep in her throat—sentries leaving. No, Casson told himself, it wasn’t possible. But then, he thought, dogs understand war, its memory lived in them, and this one’s traditional business was herding stock to safety. A small cold wind, just enough to lift the soft hair on the dog’s neck, made Casson shiver. He’d been offered an oilskin, hanging amid shotguns and fishing baskets and rubber boots in the gunroom of the chateau, but he had declined. Well, next time he’d know better.
André, in short pants and sweater, seemed not to notice. “Please, sir,” he whispered, “we will go down the hill now. We will stay low to the ground, and we will run. Now I count one, and two, and three.”
He rose and scrambled down the hill in the classic infantry crouch, the Tervueren in a fast trot just behind his left heel—dogs were always trained left, thus the right side, the gun side, remained unhampered. Casson did the best he could, shocked at how stiff he’d gotten just lying on the damp earth for thirty minutes.
At the foot of the hill, André took his shoes off, tied them at the laces, hung them around his neck, then stuffed his socks in his pockets. Casson followed his example, turning up his trouser cuffs as far as the knee. André stepped into the stream, Casson was right behind him. The water was so close to ice that it was barely liquid. “My God,” he said. André shushed him. Casson couldn’t move, the water washed over his shins. André grabbed his elbow with a bony hand and shoved him forward. The dog turned to make sure of him, soft eyes anxious—did this recalcitrant beast require a nip to get it moving? No, there it went, swearing beneath its breath with every step. Relieved, the Tervueren followed, close by André. For Casson, the sharp gravel of the midstream island was a relief for a few yards, then the water was even deeper and the dog had to swim, her brown ruff floating on the surface. At last, the far bank. The Tervueren shook off a great cloud of icy spray—just in case some part of Casson’s clothing had accidentally remained dry. “Ah, Tempête,” André said in mock disappointment, and the dog smiled at the compliment.
André sat in the grass to put his shoes and socks back on, Casson did the same. Then they ran up the side of a low hill until they reached a grove of poplar trees on the skyline. André stopped to catch his breath. “Ça va, monsieur?”
“Ça va, André.”
He was a wiry kid with black hair that fell over his forehead, the latest in a long line of pages and squires that had been going off on one mission or another since the crusades. This was, after all, not really knight’s business, conduction of a fugitive. The knight, red-faced, ham-fisted de Malincourt, was back at the chateau, where he’d settled in to wait for his son with a night-long discussion on the advantages of Charolais over Limousin steers, the price of rye seed, and the national disposition of Americans, who would, he thought, take their time before they got around to deciding they needed to come back over the sea and kill some more Germans.
Casson stayed quiet for a moment, hands on knees. Then a whip cracked the air in the poplar grove. Instinctively, André and Casson flinched. Then two more cracks, close together, this time a spring twig clipped from a branch. The dog—fear had been bred out of her many generations earlier—gave them an inquiring look: Is this something you’d like me to see about? André raised the bottom of his sweater, revealing the cross-hatched wooden grip of a huge, ancient revolver, but it was Casson’s turn to take somebody by the elbow and before this particular war could get fairly underway they were galloping down the reverse slope of the hillside. They took cover for a moment, then headed south, toward a little road that would, eventually, take Casson to Lyons. At the next hilltop there was a view back to the river, a dull silver in the first light of dawn, and very beautiful.
He had a fantasy about how it would be in Lyons—the lover as night visitor. Long ago, when he’d been sixteen and in his next-to-last year at lycée, he’d had his first real love affair. In a world run by parents and teachers and maids it wasn’t easy to find privacy, but the girl, Jeanette—eyes and hair a caramel shade of gold, dusting of pale freckles across the bridge of the nose—was patient and cunning and one day saw an opportunity for them to be alone. It could happen, thanks to a complicated fugue of family arrangements, very early one Sunday morning at the apartment of her grandmère in the 7th Arrondissement. Casson found the door open at dawn, went to a room where a slim shape lay buried beneath heavy comforters. Perhaps asleep, or just pretending—on this point he’d never been certain. He undressed quietly, stealthily, and slid in next to her. Then, just at that moment, she woke up, her smooth body warm and naked next to his, and breathed “mon amour” as she took him in her arms.
So he calculated his arrival at the Hotel du Parc for just after midnight. But no sleeping maiden awaited his caress. The hotel, high on the bank of the promontory formed by the Saône and the Rhône, was a Victorian horror of chocolate-colored brick, turrets and gables, off by itself in a small park behind a fence of rusted iron palings, with a view over a dark bridge and a dark church. Brooding, somber, just the place for consumptive poets or retired generals. Just the place for the night visitor.
However.
When Casson climbed the stone stairway that went from the street to the little park, he discovered every light in the hotel ablaze and the evening air heavy with the scent of roasting chickens. A trio—bass, drums, accordion—was pounding away at the Latin rhythm of the dance called the Java. There were shouts of encouragement, and shrieks of laughter—in short, the noisy symphony that can be performed only on the instrument of a hundred drunken wedding guests.