D+79
August 24
At daybreak, White Dog came out of his alleys.
What the hell, he thought.
In his year and a half of hiding in Montparnasse he’d grown fat in the waist and wallet. But years before that he’d become a bomber pilot for adventure. Over the past five days he watched skinny French boys and girls and doddering old gents have the adventure of a lifetime, rioting to free Paris. While he peered out from shadows, they knocked over trees, tore up cobbles, and tossed them in piles, flipped cars, filled sandbags, and planted their flag on top of the mounds in the middle of boulevards. Obstacles were thrown up all over Paris to restrict the Krauts’ movements around the city, making them unable to respond to flare-ups. The brave French flung stones at approaching Germans, fired rounds from a handful of weapons, and shouted curses. The only ones who got hurt were the ones who came out from behind cover or were slow to run away. The rest of the time they congratulated themselves and spread rumors.
White Dog put his white linen jacket over his shoulder. He wore his baggy zazou trousers and spats, topped with a gray fedora. He lit a cigarette and strolled out to the barricade built across Avenue du Maine at Avenue d’Orleans. White Dog said good morning and helped roll a car over.
After breakfast, he killed a soldier.
It was a remarkable piece of luck. He’d thrown a broken cobblestone dug from Avenue du Maine. The block struck a German soldier who was backing away.
A German patrol, just five gray boys on foot, had turned a corner. They froze at first sight of the barricade, this one constructed of iron railings, bed frames, old furniture, a tipped-over public pissoir, and five vehicles rolled on their sides. The soldiers edged around the corner and moved slowly into the open to investigate. When the five were close, one of the Communists behind the barricade fired his rifle, an ancient carbine dusted off from an attic. The shot missed. The young Krauts showed no stomach for a street fight, with no reinforcements and no reason to make a stand. They backed off. More men popped from cover to throw bottles and rocks, brandishing ax handles and crowbars. White Dog, hiding behind a snooker table mounted on the barrier, rose, too. He heaved the cobble as far as he could. The square stone hit one of the soldiers flush in the face, between the eyes. White Dog was amazed. The German fell backward. A battle cry rose from the barricade, the avenue, and every window and doorway. Lamps and household items rained from balconies, women tossed them down with curses. The four soldiers grabbed the legs of their downed mate and dragged him around the corner. Standing at attention, the French sang the ‘Marseillaise,’ the hymn banned by the Germans for four years. When some bold souls looked where the Krauts had gone, they found the German boy dead with blood run out of his ears. The fifis and Commies and women of the barricade cheered White Dog.
Hugo the mobster approached from one of the many shadows of Paris.
‘Careful, Chien Blanc. You’re coming very close.’
‘To what?’ White Dog asked, basking in the man’s grin.
‘To choosing a side.’
Hugo ambled off, leaving White Dog with a pat on the arm. What fucking luck, he thought. Not just smacking that Kraut with a rock, but Hugo saw me do it. I’m definitely in like Flynn now.
A woman tied a white brassard around his biceps, a blue-and-red patch depicting the tricolor. Other men wore the FFI initials on their armbands. White Dog knew the names of none of the Parisians who manned the barricade, and no one asked him his. None of his regular Mack market crew were on the street; his cadre of petty thieves kept to their blackness. White Dog stood in the sunlight, tossing another little brick to himself should one more patrol round the corner. He thought he might jettison his old network, specialists in nylons, vegetables, smokes, butchered meats, currency exchange, all trivialities of daily life, and start fresh with Hugo and his Voltaire gang. The mob was well organized. White Dog would need to strike big with his gasoline scheme, and he needed professionals around him, men of action, men like these who stood on the barricades for France today, for profit tomorrow.
He lunched at café tables set up behind the obstacle. Around him were other young men in shirtsleeves, some carrying revolvers, a few in military helmets. In the high windows of buildings framing the street, like opera boxes, people waited for something to happen. White Dog enjoyed being a performer on the barricade, the dose of danger and the safety in numbers, an audience in attendance. He figured some of the other young men might be Hugo’s gangsters, and for them especially he kept up his appearance of patriotisme. A phone rang in an open window. Someone shouted down news from other districts:
- There’s fighting in Neuilly!
- There are Boche tanks in the Place de la Concorde!
- The Mayor’s office in the fifth arrondissement is under attack!
In the early afternoon, the phones went out again. On the street, rumors replaced the news: the Americans were only five miles to the southwest; a fresh Panzer Division had entered the city; the Boche had mined every monument and bridge in Paris; the Resistance had cut the wires to the bombs; the fifis were out of ammunition. No one could be certain of anything that was happening in the rest of Paris beyond their own street and barricade. Even the new FFI radio station, broadcast only when the power was on, could do little more than read proclamations, play the ‘Marseillaise,’ and report that people should stay away from certain areas. The Palaise du Luxembourg and the Place Saint-Michel should be avoided, as the Boche had a clean field of fire from both strongholds. The Germans were strengthening their forces in the Palais Bourbon, the École Militaire, the Invalides, the Hôtel Majestic, and the Hôtel Meurice.
One fact every Parisian knew: the commandant of the German garrison in Paris, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz, was also called the Butcher of Stalingrad. Two years earlier the man had reduced that Russian city to ashes. The Butcher might have the same lack of remorse when it came to Paris.
A stout boy with an FFI armband got into a shoving match with another who wore a red kerchief at his neck. Others separated the two, but their shouts continued. White Dog listened out of boredom.
The FFI boy yelled, ‘This all your fault! Why couldn’t you jerks just play along with the truce?’
The red neckerchief shouted back: ‘It wasn’t our truce. It was de Gaulle’s!’
‘Who cares? Everything was fine. The Germans were quiet, the Americans were coming, and now there’s fighting and people are getting killed all over the city. All because you Commies couldn’t sit quiet for three days. It’s just like Warsaw. Now the Boche are going to burn Paris!’
‘No they’re not! The Americans are too close.’ The red armband pointed at White Dog. ‘What do you think?’
White Dog’s ears picked up. Did these boys suspect something about him?
‘You know who I am?’
‘No.’ The Communist waved off White Dog’s concern. ‘No one cares. What do you think?’
The barricade had gone quiet watching this squabble. White Dog drew himself up. Hugo and his boys might still be keeping their eye on him.
‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know where the Yanks are. But you’d better hope they come quick. He’s right,’ White Dog aimed a finger at the FFI, ‘you Reds should have left the truce in place. Now you’ve forced von Choltitz’s hand. He has to fight back. If he doesn’t, Hitler might get impatient and send in the Luftwaffe. Then Paris is really fucked. And who knows if all the bridges are really mined? Or the Eiffel Tower? It could all happen. It might not. I do know one thing, though.’
The two antagonists cocked their heads. The rest waited.
‘I’m hungry. And I’m buying dinner for everybody.’
White Dog recruited the two bickerers to shake hands and come with him. Folks on the barricade patted him on the back while he walked away. Several blocks off was his Montparnasse warehouse. White Dog opened it, put carts in the hands of the amazed fifi and the Communist and loaded them with meats, cheeses, breads, Gauloise cigarettes, wine, liquor, and cider. He emptied half his stores into the carts and into a hand-pulled wagon for himself. He tossed on bars of soap, tins of butter, bolts of cloth, boxes of socks, stockings for the girls on the barricade and the old women in the windows, chocolates, anything he could spare to curry favor and celebrate the Liberation. Loading the carts, White Dog exulted. The two boys with him stood laughing at his wealth and generosity.
‘You’re Chien Blanc,’ the Communist declared.
‘Friend to man,’ White Dog sang, closing the warehouse door.
At the barricade, he sprayed the goods around, feeling like a Vanderbilt or a summer Santa. His name spread with the socks and nylons, the words Chien Blanc left mouths just before the meat and cheeses went in. He took a place at a café table where the people of the barricade and the neighborhood came to shake his hand. White Dog was a curio, a celebrity of the night who’d strolled into full light, to mingle and lend himself to the struggle.
Like fucking Flynn, thought White Dog.
Just before eight o’clock, with the sun resting on the roofs of Avenue d’Orleans, a pair of bicyclists in FFI brassards streamed up to the barricade. Their tires skidded when they braked.
‘Leclerc has crossed the Pont d’Austerlitz!’
The people on the barricade were stunned. No one knew first whether to shout with joy or wait for the detonations, for if von Choltitz was going to blow up Paris, he would do it now, with de Gaulle’s tanks on the Right Bank.
From a doorway, the mobster Hugo started the celebration. He raised a bottle and bellowed, ‘Vive la France!’
Other voices swelled. Embraces and kisses swept the barricade. White Dog was lifted from his seat. In moments, out of the high windows above the barricade, old women shouted for the revelers in the street to hush. The power had come back on. The FFI radio station was broadcasting.
An excited, electric voice floated in the dusk. Windows, like a chorus of mouths, announced the arrival of the French 2nd Armored across the Seine.
No skeptics remained on the street or in the buildings. Every voice and hand lifted, some skirts, too. The Germans weren’t going to destroy Paris! The French army itself was the first liberating force!
The radio voice was not drowned out, the old ones in their windows turned up the volume. The Resistance called for every priest in Paris to ring his church bells. Within moments, the radios were drowned in the peals in the dusk, from Notre Dame and Sacré Coeur to the little jingles from the handlebars of the bicyclists pedaling off.
After dark, when the festiveness was drained from the barricade, White Dog slunk away, a little drunk on his own cognac. Kraut artillery boomed from the north. The shells landed west in the 15th arrondissement, aimed at the advancing French armored columns.
Tomorrow, he thought, when the fight for the city is over, the Germans will be done here. Paris will become America’s problem. The floodgates will open.
White Dog tossed his linen coat over his shoulder and headed into Montparnasse.
Near one of his flats, he passed a girl carrying a lantern with the wick low. She was alone in the alley, dressed fine and made up. In the little yellow light she seemed fantastic, sent to him. He kissed her and patted her rump. Handing her a cigarette, he boasted in English, ‘I was on the barricades today.’
~ * ~
D+80
August 25
‘Gentlemen, good morning. Take a seat.’
Major Clay doffed his helmet and waited for the three hundred drivers and maintenance men under the mess tent to settle. From the middle of the crowd, Joe Amos saw the Major’s hair glisten, gooped in place. McGee dropped the last of his cigarette and ground it under his boot.
The boy muttered, ‘What they want from us now?’
The company took seats on the benches and tables. Major Clay pursed his lips watching his coloreds mill too slowly into place. Joe Amos chuckled at the drivers showing their disdain for taking an order, even one as simple as ‘Sit down.’ These boys had driven twenty hours a day, sometimes two and three days with no break at all. They’d been on their own except for the guy in the cab with them and the bumpers close in front and behind. They’d seen as many French sunups as sundowns. They’d taken their loads right up to the front lines and hauled back prisoners, wounded, and bodies. Their Jimmies sported bullet holes and spiderweb windshields. Major Clay was their CO, but the moment they shifted into gear, each one of them answered only to the convoy and the road.
Major Clay stepped up on a table. He screwed his helmet back on his slick head.
‘Shut up, goddammit!’
The room hushed.
‘Gentlemen, I have news. This morning, Paris was liberated.’
No one in the tent knew whether or not they should cheer. Major Clay had said shut up. Men fidgeted, nodded, and whispered.
The officer continued. ‘I heard an interesting report this morning, that General von Choltitz was holed up in the Hôtel Meurice and wouldn’t come out. A French soldier went inside and asked him why he was laying back. The good General said he could not surrender without some combat, so the Führer would get told at least that he’d been under attack. The Frogs obligingly tossed three purple smoke grenades through a window, and the Krauts came out pleased as punch. Boys, you gotta love this war.’
The drivers and mechanics all laughed with Major Clay. The man had the Southerner’s front-porch storytelling gift.
‘Anyway,’ the Major said, hoisting a hand for quiet, ‘everything was fucked up before. Now it’s a whole new ball game of fucked up. Here’s the situation.’
The war had gotten out of whack, the Major said, at least according to the way the battle planners had figured it would unfold. Allied forces were not supposed to cross the Seine and reach the German border until May of 1945. They were now just days away from this goal. Paris was not supposed to be liberated until mid-September; instead it fell this morning. The unexpected and massive victory in the Argentan-Falaise pocket had apparently convinced the Krauts to fold up their tents in France and head back home, to hightail it across the border and man their Siegfried Line defenses. The upshot of all this was that Ike had told Monty, Patton, and Bradley to chase the Krauts east across the Seine, to try and destroy the enemy’s armies in France before they could reach Germany and dig in to their prepared defenses there.
‘The Germans were not supposed to cut and run like they have,’ Major Clay told them. ‘No one saw this coming. So, right now, instead of supporting twelve divisions approaching the Seine a few months from now, like the pre-invasion plan called for, COM Z is supplying sixteen divisions that are crossing the Seine as we speak. One week from today, those divisions will be another two hundred miles even farther east. And you boys know, every mile them doughs go toward Germany is another two miles we have to drive, out and back. Our supply lines are being stretched pretty thin, and pretty damn far.’
The men groaned. ‘Amen,’ someone said.
Clay kept up the bad news.
In addition, he explained, instead of supplying a Third Army that was supposed to be just a supporting force while Monty made the main thrust in the north, Patton’s recent successes to the south had convinced Ike to bulk up Third Army to almost twice its planned size. That meant twice its supply needs.
Major Clay waved a hand east.
‘And you all know George is not gonna slow down. Every day he gets farther and farther away from the plan, which I think we know by now has been thrown pretty far out the damn window.’
All told, there were twenty American divisions operating in the ETO. Each division required five hundred tons a day. Another ten divisions waited in England or back in the States to join the fight.
Major Clay looked over the company. He shook his head.
‘If this was all we had to deal with, it’d be tough enough. But today, the deal got worse, because starting today we have got to add in ...’
Most of the men in the tent said the name along with the Major.
‘... Paris!’
The drivers’ mood changed instantly. A bunch whooped, shouting, ‘Yeah, baby!’
Calling over them, Major Clay made it clear they were missing his point.
‘Perhaps, gentlemen. I’m eager to see the place myself. But now that we got Paris to take care of, you can throw in another four thousand tons a day. Every goddam day. And we got to take it to them, along with everything else we haul.’
Major Clay let the men react. They whistled their amazement and chattered their excitement. Joe Amos looked across the colored faces in the tent. Every driver picked up his loads and drove his routes, steady as a drumbeat. Every mechanic kept his head under a hood or a chassis. Not one of them knew much more than the job at hand and how tired doing it made him. But ever since he first drove through the water and up onto OMAHA beach two and a half months ago, Joe Amos had tried hard to keep an eye on the big picture, assembling how the war was faring from bits and pieces, from where he went and who he delivered what to. He kept a French map in his head, and did his best to keep track of the infantry’s progress over it. But he had no idea things had gotten this big, this fast. Just one month ago was the big breakout from Normandy, that everybody now called Operation COBRA. Thirty days later and look at us, he thought. Already knocking, on Germany’s door. We’re feeding Paris. Hot damn.
His thoughts flashed to Geneviève and the Marquis. He wanted to celebrate with them, take them all the news. Where would he get the time to see them? He’d have to be clever. So far, that hadn’t been a problem.
Geneviève and Paris. Joe Amos’s heart thumped at the prospect. With Paris open, and another four thousand tons heading to the city, there were bound to be opportunities galore. He’d find one, the right one, then he’d make his move.
‘Alright,’ the Major called the men down, ‘I’m not done up here. Settle.’
The drivers and grease monkeys latched their attention back on Major Clay.
‘Boys, in case you didn’t already suspect this, you and your trucks are pretty much the only game in town. The French railways west of the Seine have been bombed by us and blown by the Resistance to the point where they’re no damn good. Cherbourg is barely bringing in a trickle, and the rest of the major French ports in Brittany are either wrecked or still in the Krauts’ hands. Some numbskull in Washington figured he’d rather have more bombers than cargo planes, so air freight ain’t taking up much of the slack, either. As of today, eighty percent of the supplies for the entire American force is still arriving over the beaches. All that adds up to one thing: for now, it’s you and me and a shitload of Jimmies.’
Joe Amos didn’t know why, he didn’t see it coming, but he let out a yell. No one else in the hundreds around him made a sound, his cheer died fast under the warm canvas. He found himself on his feet, McGee gazing confounded at him.
Someone in the rear of the tent said, ‘Yeah.’
Another picked this up. A murmur sputtered, then caught. Someone clapped. In moments, the entire company applauded Major Clay’s words, shouting for themselves and their mission, that they, tired and dirty and surely unappreciated, mattered so much.
Major Clay held up his hands a long time before the thunderous clamor dispelled. The men punched shoulders and slapped palms, they rose from the tables and benches to be on their feet. Joe Amos even got dour McGee to root.
‘The job ahead,’ Major Clay called, almost preacher-like now, buoyed in their spirit, ‘looks impossible, don’t it?’
The men laughed at this.
‘Back in the Civil War, General Forrest once said the way to win a battle was to get there the fastest with the mostest. Eighty years later that ain’t changed. So pay attention, boys. I’m about to tell you how we’re gonna do the impossible.’
~ * ~
The Red Ball Express began with the call, ‘Wind ‘em up!’
Joe Amos turned the key and gave the gas a rev. Beat-up mufflers beneath three thousand Jimmies growled north at OMAHA, down in St. Lô, and across the bivouac where Joe Amos let out the clutch. A dozen green columns moved together, roaring like a rapid river. Joe Amos shot McGee a grin and rolled out of the field, bumper to bumper.
Twenty minutes later, on the beach, the company took on its first Red Ball load—sixty trucks of clothing, sixty-five for rations. While the Jimmies waited on the sand for the cranes and COM Z crews to shift the tonnage to their beds, each driver painted a red-ball emblem on his front bumper. This was to let the MPs know who was on the Red Ball and who was not.
Joe Amos bought five more cartons of Lucky Strikes from Speedy Clapp, thinking this was small potatoes. So much materiel was arriving over OMAHA that Speedy had dispensed with even the pretense of a clipboard and paperwork. He just played traffic cop on the sand.
When his company was loaded and in line, Joe Amos climbed behind the wheel. Jumping into the cab, McGee looked excited. Joe Amos was glad to see the boy animated, the first time in weeks. McGee had been a pain in the ass and had not bothered to explain why. Joe Amos was left to guess, and hadn’t put much effort into it except to figure McGee Mays was one of those boys who just did not like the Army.
‘Sarge,’ McGee said, ‘I can drive.’
‘I got it.’
‘But I’m gon’ get to drive later.’
‘Sure.’
‘Major Clay said the Red Ball was gonna be historic. I’d like to drive the first leg, you know, on the first day. You don’ mind.’
Joe Amos took his hands from the wheel. Let the boy have his history, he thought. The Army’s not going to give him much else.
McGee guided the loaded Jimmy off the beach. He drove in the middle of the convoy streaming through the draw. Once on the main road, the column built speed and stretched out. Joe Amos could not see Lieutenant Garner’s jeep at the head nor could he spot the tail of the convoy, it was so many miles long.
The trucks headed south, to St. Lô, the start of the Red Ball route. The road from OMAHA passed through Couvains. Joe Amos put his elbow in the window and waited.
The column was loud and seemed endless. Joe Amos cast his thoughts ahead: Hear us coming! Passing through Couvains, to his astonishment, she was there, beside the road. This was fantastic! He heard other trucks honking at her when they passed. Joe Amos stuck his head and shoulders out the window, spreading his arms into the wind. He tossed her a carton of Lucky Strikes, landing them in the ditch. Geneviève recognized him only after he was beyond her, shouting and waving like mad. She threw him a kiss, then scrambled in the ditch for the cigarettes. Trucks behind honked at her, too. He watched until she was out of sight, only seconds. The convoy was moving fast.
‘Paris,’ Joe Amos said. ‘I’m gonna take her to Paris.’ McGee said nothing, which was right because no one else was involved. She was his alone.
At St. Lô, the column slowed. The town was in such ruin that the trucks had to detour several times. The engineers had plowed only a narrow path through the rubble. Joe Amos stared at the hills of bricks and timbers shoved to the the side, all of it knocked down by American shells and bombs. McGee shook his head at the destruction, even no though this was the umpteenth time they’d driven through here. This time, tiptoeing through the St. Lô wreckage, Joe Amos felt different. Now they were part of something huge, the Red Ball, like red blood flowing through here, strength returning to all this.
The column hit its stride outside town, stoking south to Tessy-sur-Vire, then to Mortain. The road ran wide, Joe Amos guessed maybe twenty-five feet, and solid. These were the French roads he’d read about in college, roads that dated back to Napoleon, built on granite. Three years of bombs and one month of fighting had barely scarred their surface.
The Norman countryside, always green and rolling, scissored by hedges, glowed its brightest today. Joe Amos had never traveled so fast in so huge a convoy; the roads before had always been choked with traffic going both directions, from vehicles merging out of side roads, snarling at intersections. The Red Ball was designed for speed. It was a one-way loop, utterly dedicated to military transport. Every few miles, MPs in jeeps sat beside the road, watching the columns fly past. Their job was to make sure that nothing slowed the Jimmies. No civilian cars or farm tractors, no cattle, sheep, or geese, no horse-drawn carts, no tanks or TDs, nothing that couldn’t keep up was allowed on the Red Ball to hold the flow back. At every major crossing, a tall white sign was nailed to a post, painted with a big red ball and an arrow to show the way. McGee pounded the gas pedal, the pitted muffler snarled through the next town, Mayenne. Over this single-purpose highway on the backs of the great American fleet rode millions of gallons of POL, mounds of rations and ammo, whole divisions of troops, forests of phone poles, cable, boots, medicine, everything to fight a war, and nothing was going to slow it down.
McGee did not give up the wheel, staying in the driver’s seat after the first way station at Marmers one hundred twenty miles southeast from St. Lô. The men jumped down for a piss and coffee, rations were handed out but the drivers were obliged to tuck into them back on the road. As soon as Joe Amos’s company left the bivouac, another column sped in.
The Red Ball route rolled east another sixty miles, through Nogent-le-Rotrou, then to Chartres, the terminus. This was the first time Joe Amos had seen Chartres. The twin spires of the great medieval cathedral became visible from a long way off. It was nice to have those great arms hailing the convoy from a distance, waving them in.
The ASP at Chartres swarmed with activity that rivaled OMAHA. Materiel arrived at a fevered pitch. The off-loading was furious and haphazard, supplies got dumped into piles to be sorted out later. The object was to get the Red Ball Jimmies cleared and moving again. A signpost showed the distance to Paris, just sixty miles; to Berlin, six hundred and sixty.
For the return trip to St. Lô, Joe Amos took the wheel. After gassing up, the return leg of the loop ran through Alençon at the halfway mark, and another bivouac area. This time Lieutenant Garner didn’t let the company slow for coffee or a leak, they poured through and powered all the way to St. Lô and OMAHA.
The entire three-hundred-and-ten-mile round-trip took just under nine hours. The summer sun rested on the black bunkers of the bluffs when Joe Amos lowered himself from the cab. He sat in the sand, resting his back against a hot tire. He lit a smoke and tossed the pack to McGee. Both were too tired to say anything. Joe Amos had not sold one cigarette all day, where was the time?
Garner walked bandy-legged through the lines of steaming Jimmies. A dozen radiators had cooked off and their tired drivers tended to them. Garner toured the four platoons of the company, taking stock. He glanced down at Joe Amos and slowed to accept a smoke, then moved on. Joe Amos closed his eyes to the noises of trucks arriving and departing, and the grinding of landing craft ramming the sand, both never ceasing.
Thirty minutes later, with the day pinching shut, Garner returned to the front of the company, carrying orders. He stopped for another cigarette.
The lieutenant stepped back from Joe Amos’s lighter and blew a billow. He looked up from the walls of trucks on all sides, to the evening’s first stars. Joe Amos started to get up.
Garner shouted into the dusk, ‘Wind ‘em up!’
~ * ~
D+81
August 26
Ben got drunk.
He did it quietly, over the course of the afternoon. The townsfolk of Donnemarie never left an empty bottle at his table or in his hand. At midday, the radio reported de Gaulle’s walk in Paris—forty miles to the northwest -from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame. A million Frenchmen hailed him along the way. De Gaulle walked in Donnemarie, too, across the radios playing everywhere in the town. The General’s stroll set off a celebration here, for the people’s freedom and for the Americans who’d delivered it to them.
Ben took a seat at an outdoor bistro table in the warm blue day. He was alone. Sam had given him up, and Ben had given up the jeep. He walked again with the Tough Ombres, or rode with them in the backs of trucks. He hadn’t been in the bistro chair for more than a minute before a bottle was plopped on the table by a local, someone else gave him a glass, a girl kissed him on the cheek, and Ben began to drink.
Townsfolk ran around the streets. Ben could figure no reason for this other than to exercise the simple liberty of running and shouting. Even the old hobblers with canes did their best to move somewhere fast. Ben’s own liberty was to sit still and pour himself pink bubbles or scarlet wine or the velvet of cognac, whatever he felt like next. An impromptu parade took place. People lined the avenue. Around a corner came the hubbub of an approach, a pack of screeches and jeers. Down the cobblestones of the main street shuffled three women in nightgowns. They had been shorn of their hair down to patchy stubble. The people of Donnemarie booed them and threw things or shook champagne bottles to spray them. Behind these three were a gaggle of older women, driving them on with sharp fingers and tongues. When the collaborators were past, laughter returned easily in their wake. Their misery was nothing but a bobbing cork on the gaiety.
Through the late afternoon and four bottles, no one joined Ben at his table until a priest sat. The old man wore a long black frock and a collar.
‘May I?’
‘Please,’ Ben said.
‘Merci.’
‘I do not have a glass for you, Father.’
The priest shrugged. He grabbed the champagne bottle by the neck and took a long plug from it. He set it on the metal table with a clank; again, Ben thought, such freedom.
‘You are a rabbi?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have sat here for hours. Why you do not join?’
‘I’m fine, Father. Merci.’
The priest raised a hand and shouted something to a running boy. The lad stopped in his tracks, then disappeared into a doorway. Moments later, he returned with a bottle of Camus VSOP and two glasses. The priest patted the boy’s head and sent him off.
‘A toast?’ The priest poured the glasses. Ben took one, the glass was stemmed and more fragile than the cup he’d been drinking out of. He lifted it to the priest.
‘La libération,’ the priest said.
They clinked the lips of their glasses. Ben had to focus to make sure he met the priest’s glass with his own.
They drank. Out of the village square came the first sounds of music, from a trumpet, a drum, and an accordion. The people of Donnemarie perked at the strains and headed that way. The priest kept his seat.
‘Rabbi.’
‘Yes, Father?’
‘May I tell you? We have lost Jews. They were taken.’
‘I know.’
‘We do not know what has happened to them. We fear. We hope.’
Ben said nothing.
The priest poured two more cognacs. They touched glasses in silence.
Setting down his glass, the priest said, ‘I have tried to pray, oui? For them. But I am not certain I have God’s ear for this. You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you come with me? To my church to pray?’
Ben drained his cognac.
He stood with the priest, the first time on his feet in hours. The alcohol hit him in his first strides. The priest took his arm and the two walked through the crowds like comrades. The old man talked of the town, how he was born here. Close into Ben’s ear he told a joke, about the man who came to confession for having sex with two beautiful sisters. When the priest did not recognize the man’s voice, he asked if he was a member of the parish. The man said no, he was Jewish. The priest asked, ‘Why are you telling me?’ The man replied, ‘I’m telling everyone.’ Ben had a laugh, appreciating how the priest made the man in the joke Jewish, he could have been anything else. Ben asked the priest to let him take a pee, which he did against a wall with children running behind him.
The church filled an entire block. The priest, linked again to Ben’s arm, walked them past a monument for the town’s dead from the first war. Ben patted the obelisk above the granite names, thinking he might have fought beside some of these boys.
The arch above the doorway to the church was sooty, as though there had been a fire. Inside, the church was immaculate and coolly lit. None of the windows were stained glass, but regular panes painted over.
‘The windows, they are in a bank vault,’ the priest said, walking Ben to the altar. ‘Now we will return them. They are beautiful and very old.’
Stone steps led to an altar draped in burgundy, topped with silver challises, candlesticks, and a tall cross. Above, a shining wooden Jesus looked to heaven through a crown of thorns. A polished mahogany rail enclosed the altar. Ben thought of a Greek word he’d learned in seminary, éntheos, the feeling of possession by the Divine. The hands that carved this Jesus, that hid the stained-glass windows from the war, they had éntheos. The priest kissed a white satin stole and laid it around his shoulders. This priest had éntheos, too.
The priest kneeled on the steps before the altar. He did not invite Ben to join him, leaving the rabbi to say his prayers on the other side of the railing as he saw fit. Ben had never kneeled to God. That was not something asked of Jews. He wanted to sit, the alcohol in him made him unsteady. He looked back at the first row of pews but wanted to be close to the priest. Ben walked to the steps and bent to his knees beside the old man’s shoulder.
The old priest moved his lips to a whispered prayer. Ben had not prayed in weeks, not since Sèves Island. Here, on his knees in an ancient church, he felt at last that he could pray. He was not burdened anymore, not with Sam, Phineas, or even Thomas, not with hope or the Divine. The words felt liberated in his throat. Kaddish was to be said only with a minyan of at least ten, but he figured six million souls made a minyan, too. The Hebrew words came with ease. He did not think to whisper them beside the priest but sang:
‘Yis’ga’dal v’yis’kadash sh’may ra’bbo, b’olmo dee’vro cbir’usay v’yamlich malchu’say, b’chayaychon uv’yomay’chon uv’chayay d’chol bais Yisroel, ba’agolo u’viz’man koriv; v’imru Omein...’
When Ben finished, he discovered he’d closed his eyes anyway. He opened his lids and looked beside him to the priest. A tear wet the old man’s cheek.
‘Amen,’ the priest said.
Ben stood from his knees. He staggered and caught the priest’s arm. The man brought him off the steps and sat him on a pew. The priest returned to the altar, kissed his stole again, then took it off. He muttered a few parting words, crossed himself, and came to gather Ben. The two walked from the church.
In the street, the sounds of the celebration had not slackened. Music and clapping sounded from the cobblestone square. Ben could tell the voices of women and soldiers.
The priest said, ‘That was beautiful. Magnifique. What was it, Rabbi?’
‘Kaddish. The prayer for the dead.’
‘Ahhh,’ the priest sighed, and shook his gray head. ‘You think this? They are dead?’
Ben could tell this priest. The old man might believe, might let go of his hope for the missing Jews of his town. But what could the priest do? He was not a soldier he could do nothing to stop the war. He would only pray more. And he was right, he did not have God’s ear for this. No one did, no matter who Ben told. God had chosen. That was why for Ben the Kaddish was a breeze. When your God does not hear, you can pray without gravity. When your God is so distant, you can shout or whimper, you can hold your silence, or your heart in your hands. You are free because God does not care or interfere. You are free because nothing is wanted from you.
Ben unhitched from the priest’s arm.
‘So long, Father. I’m not mourning anyone else today.’
Ben headed toward the square, leaving the old man behind. He would get drunker, he might dance.
~ * ~