The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [41]
“Les Allemands,” said the older one, with a guttural spitting sound of contempt.
“Va-t’en!” the other man said.
A cat jumped up on the hay and landed virtually on Marshall’s face. The tail swiped his face, and then the cat rubbed against Marshall’s head and purred. In the shadows the men did not see the cat’s discovery. The cat, a bushy, ragged, pied thing like a mop head, drooled on Marshall’s hair, then rubbed its face in it. Marshall didn’t dare free his hand to move the cat, who was purring loudly.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est, Félix? Tu ronronnes comme un train!”
The lantern whipped toward the corner, and Marshall’s eyes were blinded by the glare. The French voices rose in alarm as he crawled out of the hay, the cat swirling around him. Standing, he held his hands out to the men.
He had been given a password, a phrase that might be innocuous if these men were collaborators, but meaningful if they were expecting him.
Carefully, he said, “Il y aura de l’orage demain.”
“Comment?”
He repeated the phrase he had memorized.
“Oui, oui,” they said. He had passed.
“Je suis américain,” he said haltingly. “Aviateur.”
“Aviateur?”
Their excitement purred like the cat. “Chut!” they said to the cat. Be quiet.
“Je suis un aviateur américain,” Marshall said.
The older man repeated the French words. Marshall always remembered his own poor pronunciation—a hayseed stab at a phrase that was elegant in a Frenchman’s mouth.
The older man was Claude, and the younger one was Pierre. They were cousins, Marshall learned later, and the farm belonged to Claude. They wore rugged work clothing, heavy wide-legged trousers and tight jackets. Their clothing was patched, their shoes were dirty, and their berets were heavy and dark. Marshall’s clothing by then was similar, though ill fitting. He still wore his U.S. Army boots and his flying jacket. One of the women in black had ingeniously sewn a layer of coarse linen onto the outside of the jacket.
Pierre pointed to the house just beyond the barn and touched his stomach, then his lips.
“Vous avez faim? Soif?”
Marshall nodded eagerly. Pierre gestured for Marshall to stay hidden in the barn. When Pierre and Claude left, the cat bounded down from the hay and followed them. Marshall thought he heard the men teasing the cat, saying the Germans would catch him and have him for supper.
Long after dark, Pierre returned, bringing bread, cheese, an apple, a bit of fatty ham, and some wine—a quarter of a bottle. Marshall devoured the food. “Merci, merci,” he kept murmuring.
In patient, slow French, with some inventive gestures, Pierre explained that the Germans were bivouacked in the village a mile away. Marshall could catch some of the words. If they found him hiding here, Claude would be shot—Pierre clutched his heart and drooped for effect—and his wife would be sent away. The American had to be silent.
After Pierre left, Marshall relieved himself outside, burying his waste like a cat. During the night the cat found him and curled up beside him. Nurse Begley’s woollies warmed Marshall’s neck, and he drifted through sleep, his dreams sending him on bombing raids to Germany. A crashing sound awoke him—the cat, leaping off the hay. Later, the cat crunched his way through a mouse meal. Afterward, Marshall could hear the cat licking his fur. Marshall had not had a real bath since he left England.
Near dawn, in an adjoining section of the barn, someone snapped a cow into her stanchion. Marshall heard the sound of milking, hard squirts on metal. Through a crevice he saw a woman in a scarf and a heavy coat leave the barn with the pail of milk—and the cat. In a short time, Claude appeared, with a hot breakfast wrapped in a towel in a basket. A boiled egg, some ersatz coffee, some hard bread. Claude had acquired a few English words during the night.
“Tonight you go to Pierre. The house of Pierre, yes? The son has English. Today—” He made gestures for Marshall to stay hidden.
Letters from Loretta would keep coming to Molesworth. Here he was, lost, hidden, having dropped from the sky like a bomb.