“How the Mighty” Chapter 14 — Arthéme
Party of Three
Crack open the wine!
“Stay inside, please, Arthéme!”
“But why, Maman? The battle is a long way away. Listen!”
And there was no doubt about it. The sounds of battle were loud enough, but they were a distant loud. A thunderstorm on the horizon. The roar of waves crashing on a beach over the hill.
“Yes, listen! You hear that?”
Something landed on the roof of the old farmhouse and clunked over the slates. Like a hailstone, but heavier, more solid. Something that might not kill you outright, but could certainly ruin your day.
“But, cher Maman! What about the animals? They are outside. You heard Père Olivier. Véronique is distressed. Her milk will be sour.”
Her mother looked at her. “Véronique is a cow, Arthéme! She will have to take her chance. She will come back to the barn for milking in the evening. Or not.”
“And Henri?”
Her mother opened the kitchen door. “Henri!”
The dog appeared, wagging his tail. A summons to the door meant food.
Arthéme beckoned him inside, and he hesitated. He was not allowed in the house.
“Quick, foolish dog, this will not happen again!”
Henri was not stupid. He came through the door and trotted over to his old position by the hearth.
The two women laughed. “He remembers when he was a puppy, Maman!”
They smiled at each other. Arthéme remembered that time well. Her father had been home then. Her cousin Paul would ride his bicycle over and together they would go over their lessons. Later, they would sneak morsels to Henri under the table, and her parents would pretend not to notice the thump of an appreciative doggy tail on the floor.
“The war will be over soon. The Amis will kill all the Germans, Papa will come home from Africa, and, and all will be well once more.”
Paul will be home too, she thought, and this time I will not let him get away again.
“Your father has been having a holiday. He will bring home four skinny Arab brothers for you, and I will have to feed them up and tell the priest that they were orphans who by divine coincidence look like my husband.”
“Oh, Maman! Papa will have four years of love saved up for you. You will have quadruplets: two boys, and two girls, and we will have such fun with them!”
Now it was the mother’s turn to roll her eyes. “We shall see. Don’t go choosing names just yet.”
There was a noise at the door, and the two women looked at each other with alarm.
But it was only Feldwebel Bock. He hung his helmet by the door, pulled out a chair, and sat down at the table. Henri growled at him and quietened when the soldier glared back.
“Oh, M’sieur Bock! What is the news?”
“Die Amerikaner sind alle tot. Sie schwimmen nach England. Zeit für eine Party!” The Americans are all dead. We pushed them into the sea. Party time!
Arthéme theatrically cocked her ear. “Sehr laut für les morts.” Noisy for dead men, eh?
“A few. They just don’t know it yet.”
He thumped a chubby fist onto the table. “Today is the last day I dine with you two ladies. We must celebrate the glorious victory before I leave. Wine!”
“You have wine in your room, M’sieur. Shall I fetch a bottle?”
“Pah. I keep it to clean my gun.” Bock pulled out a pistol and set it on the table. “You have some good wine hidden away for special days. Bring it out. We can drink to this special day.”
“We have it in the cellar. Arthéme, come help me move the boxes.”
Arthéme followed her mother down the old stone steps. “He is up to no good, Maman.”
“I was not born yesterday, child. The Americans must be winning, and he wants to save his skin. And my mother’s necklace to put in his little box with the Russian coins and the gold teeth. Look, here is a bottle of the good red wine. While he is drinking his glass, you must slip outside and find the priest. He will send some men to do what needs to be done.”
Arthéme looked at the bottle. “Oh, Maman, the Christmas wine! I did not know we had any left.”
“I was keeping it for this day. For the Amis to come save us. They will be here soon enough once the filthy German pigs have gone.”
They mounted the stairs and entered the kitchen. Bock was gone.
“He is upstairs in my room, Maman. Hear him.”
“All the better. Go now. Find Père Olivier.”
Arthéme went to the rack beside the door, took her headscarf from beside the ugly German helmet, and tied it over her dark hair.
“Go quickly, Arthéme!”
But it was too late. Bock came down the stairs in a clatter, his pack over his shoulder and a little metal box in his hand.
“Where are you going, girl? You must stay and drink with me!”
“There is a bottle of champagne in the milk room where it is cool. You would like a glass of champagne, yes?”
“Your mother may fetch it. Pour me some wine. Three glasses, we will drink a toast to the Reich!”
Arthéme got down three of the fine crystal glasses, while her mother uncorked the bottle. The wine was deep and red, and Bock held it up to the light, sniffing it approvingly.
“If I had known you had such good wine, I would have insisted we celebrate the Fuhrer’s birthday in April. And May.”
He waited until three glasses had been poured, then raised his. “To the German Reich, may it bring wealth and happiness to all. Heil Hitler!”
He drank his wine in a gulp and motioned that the women should do the same.
Arthéme drank a mouthful and coughed. It was strong, and she was not used to alcohol. Her mother drank hers deliberately, a sour look on her face.
Bock seized the bottle and poured himself a second glass. “This is good! Come, woman, where is that champagne? Let’s make this a real party to remember!”
Arthéme watched as her mother carefully set her glass down and went outside. There was the sound of hasty footsteps on the gravel of the yard.
“Take that scarf off, girl. You are not going anywhere. And finish your wine.”
She took another mouthful, beginning to enjoy the rich taste of it, then untied her scarf and went to hang it on the peg.
“Good. Now the blouse. Let me see what you have been hiding.”
Arthéme stared in outrage. “I will do no such thing!”
“There are two ways we can do this. The easy way or the hard. You will not like the hard way. But I will.”
He picked up his pistol, and clicked the safety off.
“Hurry. We do not have much time.”
“You would not dare!”
Henri growled from the hearth.
“Do what I say. Now!”
Arthéme backed away.
Bock aimed his pistol.
Not at Arthéme, she realised, watching the muzzle as it swung around.
“No!”
But the noise of the shot and the strangled yelp of the dog came together on her ears. There was another shockingly loud noise, and the dog was quiet and still.
The pistol swung around again until she was looking along the length of it to Bock’s stare. It moved slightly, a gesture to one side.
“Off, girl, if you want to see another minute of life.”
She should stand and die for France. Like Joan of Arc. But her fingers betrayed her, moving to the buttons, and undoing them one by one.
“And that.”
She tugged on the chemise, and slowly brought it over her head, trying to think of a way out.
“Very nice. I should have had you warm my bed each night, instead of your mother’s. Now the rest of it.” The pistol indicated downwards.
The kitchen door opened, and Arthéme’s heart bounded.
But Feldwebel Bock’s sneering voice chilled it.
“Good. Now it is easy. You hold her down for me, soldat, and then you may have second prize.”
The plot changes as I write it. This is probably where I should take a break for a while, let my subconscious chew on the details. I may yet do this.
Nearly 15 000 words so far. Some crucial scenes to come. Crisis definitely here, climax and resolution ahead. Five or six chapters of a thousand plus words each, say a total count of 25 000 words.
You must imagine these people speaking in a mixture of French and German. Some soldiers would — like Rudi — take the trouble to learn some words of the Normans amongst whom they temporarily reside. On that note, I should incorporate a bit of Norman rather than my high school textbook version of French, but that research may be gilding the lily and make it even more confusing.
The French would pick up some German, if they had day to day dealings with the occupiers. There would be some totally bilingual, and some refusing to use the other language, but most, I imagine would use whatever words and gestures got them by, and I shall spare you, cher reader, my attempts at reproducing this imagined pidgin.
We are reading in English, we get the conversation in English, with the occasional spatter of Germench for colour. And yes, sometimes my translations are deliberately off. The gist is there, the words may offend the purist, but the sort of communication these people would have had during the months leading up to the invasion would have been nowhere near pure.
Especially as so many were not even German to begin with, just allied or conquered soldiers scraped up to patch the holes in Hitler’s Festung Europa.
Britni
All the story so far:
