The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [39]
Nicolas said, “It was very exciting to see the planes, and to hear the roar of them filling the sky. We were always watching for parachutists.”
“Nicolas saw a parachutist die,” Gisèle said.
“An American? Did one of our bombers crash around here?” Marshall stiffened.
“It was a man from a B-24, the Liberator, which fell somewhere to the east,” Nicolas explained. “We were outside at school, at the time of the recess, and we heard the noise of the plane high above, but we could not see it. Then we saw the man in the harness, floating down so peacefully, below a canopy. We began running. He was not far away. Then as he floated down we saw a German soldier on the bridge shoot him. We could see the man’s body jerking. He dropped behind a dairy near my school. Naturally we ran toward him. We had our little pocket knives—my friends and I had them for cutting parachutes! And now there really was an aviateur coming from the sky. He was not far from the school, maybe half a kilometer. Other people were running, and they told us to go back, stay away. Of course I was a boy and I wanted to be involved. There may have been six of us boys, all running. And the aviateur was shrouded in his parachute. People began tearing it away, quickly, cutting the lines, and I could see him lying there, bloody and lifeless. I remembered all the aviateurs we had harbored in our house, men who had parachuted or who had survived crash landings—like you, Marshall—and I was very disturbed, because I realized that this young man would have a family, maybe a girlfriend, probably dear parents who were worried about him and who would grieve. I knew that the Germans would bury him in a way that if the man’s parents knew, they would be mortified. Oh, the thoughts I took with me as we hurried back from recess to our classroom, where we must sit perfectly still all afternoon and recite pluperfect verbs!”
No one spoke as Gisèle cleared the dishes.
“I was lucky,” Marshall said then. “Without you, what would I have done? Out on my own, I would have been dragged to a stalag very soon.”
Pierre raised his glass. “To friends from two countries, to the friendship of two countries.”
“The same for me,” Marshall said, not finding the right words. His voice choked.
“La tarte Tatin—voilà!” said Gisèle, setting the dessert on the table.
“Merci, Maman,” Nicolas said.
The apple tart was so delicious that everyone fell silent. After it was finished, Gisèle removed the plates and served coffee.
“This is real coffee!” she said. “It is good, is it not?”
Marshall laughed. “I remember the wartime coffee! What was it—mud and sticks? What was the secret?”
“An exclusive ingredient from Germany,” she said, touching his arm gently.
Marshall nodded. “It was a hard time.”
“Yes, very difficult,” Gisèle said, trading glances with Pierre.
AFTER THE COFFEE, they showed Marshall the back room where he had hidden. Now it was a laundry and storage room, packed full, so that it appeared even smaller than Marshall remembered. He recalled Gisèle crooning to a baby crying in the kitchen. A commotion outside. Someone running down the street. Later, a gunshot in the distance. A fire in the neighborhood, a house burned. Gisèle told him to crawl through an opening in the back of the armoire into a narrow lair behind the wall and not to come out until she signaled. He heard sirens, blasts.
Now he listened as Pierre and Gisèle explained that the Germans had found résistants three houses from them. They arrested the adults, shut the children in the basement, and set fire to the house. Neighbors rescued the children, and Gisèle cared for the baby until a grandmother in the country could be located.
“I heard the baby crying,” Marshall said. “I never knew what was going on. But I wasn’t supposed to be told anything.”
“It was better that we keep you closed behind the armoire!” Gisèle said.
Marshall remembered hearing about the bombing of the aerodrome at Laon. At