Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories

Delicate Edible Birds

BECAUSE IT HAD RAINED AND THE RAIN HAD caught the black soot of the factories as they burned, Paris in the dark seemed covered by a dusky skin, almost as though it were living. The arches in the façades were the curve of a throat, the street corners elbows, and in the silence Bern could almost hear the warm thumpings of some heart deep beneath the residue of civilizations. Perhaps it had always been there, but was audible only now, in the dinless, abandoned city. As the last of the evacuees spun through the streets on their bicycles, they cast the puddles up into great wings of dark water behind them. Paris seemed docile as it awaited the Germans.

There was a fillip of sulfur and light as Parnell lit two cigarettes and placed one between Bern’s lips. In the flare, Bern saw Viktor’s eyes watching her in the rearview mirror and the pink rolls of the back of Frank’s neck. Then the match went out again, and in the darkness she was no longer flesh, only the bright, hot smoke in her lungs.

It was all over. They had awoken in the middle of the night to unnatural silence, and rose to an abandoned hotel, the door of each empty room solemnly thrust open, the beds identically smooth. In the breakfast room, the geranium’s soil was damp and their coffee was hot on the sideboard, but there was no one there but them. They were journalists; they had seen Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Belgium; they knew what this meant. They hurried, and Viktor somehow procured the jeep, and Lucci bicycled off for the photo. Just an hour, murmured the little Italian and sailed off bravely toward the invasion while Frank spluttered and fussed and Viktor grew stony and Parnell rolled cigarette after cigarette, each as perfect as a machine’s. They waited in the jeep and they waited.

Now the street gleamed with richer light, but still, no Lucci. Bern sensed the tarry massing at the edge of Paris where the Germans were undoubtedly pushing in, and felt a wildness rise up in her. But there was Parnell’s hand on her thigh, squeezing, and she was grateful, though comfort like this was not what she was hungry for. She had to do something; she wanted to shout; and so she said, voice low and furious, Fucking Reynaud. Fucking Reynaud, handing the city over to the Germans. A real man would stand and fight.

In the rearview mirror she saw Viktor wince. Bern was the first woman he’d ever heard curse so, he once told her; to him, he said, it was as if a lily suddenly belched a terrible stench. From the looks of him, it seemed impossible that he’d never heard a woman curse. He was Russian and massive, had a head ugly as a buckshot pumpkin. One imagined that had the serfs never been liberated, he’d be a tough old field-hand today, swinging scythes and gulping vodka like water. But, in fact, he was the son of some deposed nobleman and spoke perfect tutor English and governess French, and was known as a reporter whose prose was as taut and charged as electric wire. He had shadowed Bern since the Spanish war. There were times she was sure that his silent presence had saved her from some vague danger. She knew she should resent it, but the way he looked at her, she couldn’t.

Viktor, darling, she said, a serrated edge to her voice. Is there a problem?

But it was Frank, with his Kansas drawl, who said, If Reynaud fought, my dear, poof, up in smoke goes all your precious architecture. All the civilians, smithereens. He did the sensible thing, you know. Paris remains Paris. It’s what I’d have done.

It’s cowardly, spat Bern.

Frank rubbed his fat hand over his head. Oh, Bernie. Don’t you grow tired of being the everlasting firebrand? And where the hell is that little Eyetie of ours, that’s what I want to know. Let’s give him ten more minutes, then scram.

Bern bristled. There weren’t enough female firebrands in the world as far as she was concerned, she said; Lucci was the best damn photographer in this damn war; and why the hell Life magazine paired Frank with Lucci was beyond her when Frank could barely write a story without bland-as-buttermilk prose. God knows she herself, by far the better journalist, even if she was a girl, had to bend over like a goddamn contortionist for Collier’s even to get to tour the front lines.

But Frank wasn’t listening. Viktor, we better get going, he said. Germans catch us, you know where you’re all headed. Me, I’m the only one who’d go free.

Parnell rubbed his handsome forehead with a knuckle. What do you mean, Frank? he said softly.

I know it’s hard, but make an effort, Parnell, said Frank. Viktor’s a Commie, Orton’s a Jew, you’re a Brit, and they probably wouldn’t let Lucci go, what with his wife causing all that trouble down in Italy. I’m inoffensive. He gave a snort-laugh and turned around, his face set for Bern’s attack.

There was a pause, then Bern said, softly, Good God. Parnell gripped her thigh to hold her back, but the truth was that she was glad for this argument, for the dirty distractions of a fight, for just now two planes with swastikas on their wings roared overhead into the fields south of them, then separated, curved about, poured together like water into water and came back over the jeep. The journalists, despite themselves, cringed. In the silence of the planes’ wake, Bern took a breath, ready to lash some sense into Frank. But she didn’t have the chance because Parnell, his voice slipping from its cultivated heights back into its native Cockney, said, Bloody hell, if it isn’t Lucci.

There he was, tiny Lucci with the camera like a millstone around his neck, throwing down the bicycle so it clattered on the cobblestones, leaping into the jeep, saying, Gogogogogo. And Viktor threw the jeep forward even before they heard the drone behind them, and they shot out from the city onto the tiny dirt road as the motorcycles came around the bend. Two hundred feet apart and even from that distance Bern could see the stark black of the German officers’ armbands, the light-sucking matte of their boots, the glint in their hands from the pistols. Viktor cursed in Russian and spun the jeep over the dark and rutted road. Lucci was in Bern’s lap, hot with sweat and flushed and trembling; she frowned and kept her head down and watched the lace of his eyelashes on his cheeks. And then, over the roar of the engine and wind and pebble clatter, as the motorcyclists rapidly lost their grasp on them, falling back, Lucci opened his eyes and said, Oh, Bernice, in his Italian way, Ber-eh-nee-che; Oh, Bernice, I have it. The best photo of the war. Nazis goose-stepping through the Arc de Triomphe. You shall see. Oh, it is the sublime photo. Oh, the one to make me live forever, he said, and Bern couldn’t help it; she closed her eyes; she clutched Lucci’s thin shoulders and threw her head back. Hurtling into the steel-gray dawn, she laughed and she laughed.

THE DAY WAS ALREADY full when they stopped in the hemlock copse. Bern was stretched over the hood, basking in the sun like a cat. They were waiting for Lucci to finish vomiting in the ditch; ten miles south of the city he had discovered that the Germans had shot through one of his rolled-up trouser cuffs, and he slowly unrolled the fabric and fingered the six neat holes. Turned green. Viktor had to stop the car. Now Parnell and Frank were smoking, looking back at the city behind them. For a moment, Viktor wondered if he could just take Bern and leave the rest behind; Lucci was all right, but Parnell and Frank he despised. Parnell for obvious reasons; Frank because he was a greasy toad. But he couldn’t; they were not far enough out of Paris for abandonment to be anything but cruel. The last bicyclists they had passed were now passing them and an old woman with a chicken under her arm hobbled by, the chicken’s head bobbing with each step. The Germans would be along soon. In the distance there were odd mechanical sounds.

Viktor flicked his eyes over Bern. Though she was the most beautiful woman he knew, she was not a true beauty. He should know; he himself was a warthog, but he had grown up around swans, long-necked sisters with velvety eyes and a mother whose grace was so legendary that, among her three dozen rejected suitors in old noble Moscow, there were still men who wept when they remembered her. Bern was too dark a blonde and too light a brunette, devoid of embonpoint, her face hawkish with its aquiline nose and her mouth like a pink knot tied under it. Too thin, also; war whittled her down, though she was always hungry, always eating. Still, even though she was almost plain when she slept, when she was vibrant it would take a strange man to find her unattractive. In the sunshine she radiated; her hair turned golden, her eyes green, and her skin seemed to pulse with health. In the sunshine, Viktor had to hold his hands in his pockets to keep from grabbing Bern’s sole world-class attraction, her tidy rear, fleshed with a layer of smooth lard, firm and handy as a steering wheel.

The day Viktor met Bern, she was twenty-two, climbing up the stairs of a Spanish hotel just after witnessing her first battle. Her face was pink, her eyes sparked angrily. She was trembling, and shook his hand hard to introduce herself, then said, Damn! I mean, damn! and went into her room and tapped at her typewriter for an hour, until she came out to the veranda, where he was waiting for her and pretending not to. She thrust a piece of paper into his hands and demanded to know if it was good, because, you see, she was determined to be a war reporter, and she’d heard he was a good one. The man she came to Spain with, a lover, wasn’t worth his weight in pig poo, she’d said, and she had to learn from someone. Viktor read the article, and said it was a job well done, B. Orton: but what does B. stand for? And she said in her French horn of a voice, Ah, well, it means Bernice but it also means that if I can fool Collier’s into thinking I’m a man, I’m a war reporter for good, and don’t you forget it. And Viktor said, To be sure. And she said he better goddamn not because they were going to be buddies, watch out.

But they didn’t become buddies yet: he went off to a different section of the front and when they met up again, it was in a hotel right after Guernica and Viktor was having an awful time of it. He kept seeing flashes of things he tried to shunt away. Late at night he wept in the water closet, unable to stop himself; he tried to stuff his shirt in his mouth to muffle the sound, but couldn’t. For fifteen minutes, there were two dark shadows in the crack under the door, Bern’s feet, Bern’s head on the door, listening. When she came in and took off her blouse and hitched down her trousers and smiled up at him, he couldn’t think to say no.

Afterward, he kissed the delicate slice of her chin under her ear and asked her to marry him. And she laughed roughly, gave him a tweak of the ear, and said, Oh, well, Viktor, dear, now you’ve made a terrible mistake, and vanished down the dark hallway. And so, to Bern, it had been a mistake; it hadn’t happened again. Instead, he’d watched time and again as she disappeared down other hallways with Parnell. And he had to swallow it because she was who she was, a woman so removed from the women of his youth as to be a whole new gender. In her every small movement she was the woman of the future, a type that would swagger and curse, fall headlong, flaming into the hell of war, be as brave and tough as men, take the overflowing diarrhea of nervous frontline troops without grimacing, speak loudly and devastatingly, kick brain matter off their shoes and go unhurriedly on. When he looked at Bern, Viktor saw the future, and it was lovely and clean and as equal as things between men and women, between prole and patrician, could be. And he also saw that any impulse to pin her down would only make her flitter away. Some days he hated her.

He must’ve sighed, because Bern shielded her eyes with one graceful hand.

Viktor, you’re wearing ye olde death-head again, she said. What’s the matter?

But instead of saying, for the hundredth time, Oh, Bern, why Parnell and not me? or Oh, Bern, why won’t you marry me? he gave a grimace and ground out his cigarette and said, We should be off, then, if we don’t want the Krauts to catch us.

Now the others climbed up the embankment and Bern let herself slide off the hood, graceful, winking. Come on, chaps, she called out in her high honk. Vite vite. We’ve got to make it to Tours before the Nazis bomb the bejeezus out of it.

IN HALF AN HOUR, the dampness had burned from the ground, and dust rose in a haze and saturated everything. The oaks that drooped over the avenue and the pocked road were so lovely in the dust-cloud they seemed to drip with honey. Strange, Parnell thought dreamily, that on a day like this there should be beauty left in the world. For a while they had been going increasingly slowly, passing thicker and thicker clumps of evacuees, whole families like packhorses, even the smallest pulling little red wagons full of bedding or small dogs or even tinier children than they. Terrible shame, he thought, terribly sad.

But later he saw a number of parties in the fields huddled over blankets spread with food, picnicking as if the occasion were a merry one, and he murmured, How lovely, wishing himself out there, with his own little ones — how the girls would enjoy it! — and Sally presiding over it all with her neat sandwiches and birdly chatter about gardens and whatnot. He longed for home, longed for the house in London and his shoes shined in the morning and a proper cuppa. Looking out in the fields, he murmured again, Oh, how lovely, and hadn’t thought he’d said it aloud until Bern turned her head to him and snorted, They’re idiots, Parnell. Germans flew by they’d be blown to bits.

He stared at this brusque American, appalled as ever. Then she softened and cuddled against him, a good kitten, and he reminded himself that she never meant it, not really. She talked a terrible hard streak but was a dear thing inside. Reminded him of Sally, in some vague way, not that Bern would ever do if he had a mind to introduce her to his wife. Sally was so peculiar in that way, refusing to take tea with so-and-so for somesuch reason or other, and he knew that Bern in his wife’s parlor would be a frightful thing; the snubbing going on over the tea and poor Bern never seeing it for a moment, honking on the way she does and getting on Sally’s nerves. It was odd, wasn’t it, how people changed; he was only a housepainter back in the day when he met Sally, and she didn’t hold it against him then, although she did make him take elocution lessons and become something. He was about to follow this thought into another daydream of Sally, young and naked and smelling of his house paints, when Bern interrupted, saying, So, did anyone think to bring food?

There was a long silence, until Parnell, wanting to be helpful, said, Well, rather, I brought that half a can of petrol, you know.

And I the jeep, said Viktor.

And I the stupendous photo, said Lucci.

And I the water, said Bern.

The back of Frank’s neck turned red, but he said nothing. Bad-tempered fellow, Parnell thought, but doesn’t seem to mean any real harm.

Frank? Bern prompted sweetly, but he just turned and said, Darling, you being the only female of the bunch, I thought provisions were your field.

Not now, said Lucci throwing his hands into the air, but Bern seemed too tired to curse Frank to hell more than a few times. Then she bent down and rummaged in her valise and pulled out a bottle of Scotch, brandishing it like a tennis victor with a trophy.

Looks like a liquid lunch again, fellas. She grinned and cracked the seal with her fingernail. I liberated this from the hotel bar this morning.

Now Parnell wanted to take her in his arms again. This was why he invited her into his bed every night, propping the picture of his family up on the windowsill first, a plea for them to forgive him the sin he was about to commit; this feminine thought for the comfort of others. He felt a bubble of elation rise in him as he took a swig of the Scotch; this is why the men were out here in the fields, fighting: for their women, for knitting and stews and flower arrangements, the wondrous small things that keep a fellow’s life pleasant. If he weren’t so blasted old, Parnell would fight for it, too. And Bern had a great womanly capacity for comfort, though she kept it hidden because she thought it made her seem like less of a chap than she wanted to be. Silly duck. She shouldn’t hide it; it was what he liked about her. He resolved to tell her so, maybe sometime when they were alone and not so pressed for time.

Bathed in a warm dust and a warming buzz, Parnell drifted into a pleasant waking doze as they passed the growing numbers of refugees on foot, on bicycle, on carts pulled by peasant women like pendulous-breasted oxen. They went down that insignificant road from Paris until it emptied out, at last, into one of the major southbound arteries, to the northeast of Orléans and about sixty miles south of the city.

It was then that, pulling out onto the autoroute, Viktor cursed and stopped the jeep, jolting Parnell out of his lovely trance. Before them roiled a scene of such chaos that they, all veterans of chaos, had to take a moment to sit, absorbing, before they reacted. For, instead of the neat, small clumps of refugees who had decided to take the small road they had just left, the autoroute was teeming, impossible: cars that had run out of gas were abandoned by the roadside, women in summer dresses had fainted in the heat and were fanned by wailing children, a teeming mass of man and mule and bicycle and machine was pulsing down the road as far as their eyes could see, and everywhere were wounded people. An old woman, haute bourgeoise by her chignon and her gray silk dress, had a dried magnolia of blood blooming on her chest. Two men carrying a makeshift stretcher bore a tiny boy, waxen and still, with a tourniquet on his thigh and nothing where his knee should have been. Filling the air were the claxons of the few cars still running, hushed talk, a faraway keening.

And, out in the fields beyond, as if this migration were not a hundred feet from them, the backs of an old farmer and his wife as they bent to pull weeds from their crop.

Shit, said Bern, and she flew out of the jeep, into the maw of humanity, asking questions, scribbling answers. Parnell felt a tad sheepish: this was not his beat; the British people were under attack enough — they didn’t need more bad news. His orders were to write about resistance and bravery, not innocent civilians fired upon when they fled their homes. From where he sat in the jeep he heard bombed, machine-gunned, massacred, the airplanes strafing the émigrés about twenty miles south of Paris. Numerous dead. A two-week-old baby shot in the throat. An old man had a heart attack, seeing it. Parnell watched as under Bern’s pen the story formed, neat and relentless, threads ordered from chaos.

Frank trailed slowly behind her, gleaning, having little success at asking questions himself: his French was poor, and people did not warm to him as they always did to Bern. Viktor glowered in the jeep, keeping it a meter behind Bern as she walked beside her subjects, protecting her; dear Lucci darted hither and thither taking photographs until he returned to the car to hide his face in his jacket, unable to see any more. For a while, Bern held a baby so its mother could shift her bundle, and she held it awkwardly. But Parnell wanted to tell her she would make a marvelous mother; as she looked down into its soft fist of a face, he knew she would. His admiration only grew when, after a while, Bern held the hand of the boy on the stretcher when he awoke and sobbed soundlessly in pain.

When she at last returned to the car, when the first bats began swooping over the fields, she wiped and wiped at her cuff where a small coin of the boy’s blood had darkened it. She moved close to Parnell and looked up into his face and he saw the kind of searing look she gave him when she wanted to take him into a corner and have her furious way with him. As always, he was taken aback, though he would have complied, had there been any real chance, but he looked around at the boiling mass of humanity, at the others in the car — poor Viktor, he tried not to be so obvious around him — and shook his head, just slightly.

Disappointed, Bern turned away and said, I have four stories just dying to be published. And no fucking wire to send them.

That is why we are going to Tours, darling, said Viktor.

That’s our problem, said Bern. People out there told me. The wires are cut in Tours, too, the government’s fleeing to Bordeaux. Nowhere to sleep, even the barns forty kilometers out full of people. No food. No water. General panic. What have you.

A long silence, broken at last by Lucci, saying, So what is it we’re to do?

And Frank unfolded the map, whistling “La Marseillaise,” as he was wont to do when he wanted to calm himself. There’s a road, he said, three miles to the east, that’s smaller than this one. Takes us to Bordeaux, looks like, if in a bit of a roundabout manner.

Bordeaux, said Parnell, thinking of good wines and soft beds. He hadn’t eaten in a day and his hunger had been replaced by a dull ache. How he longed for the buttery melt of pheasant in cream sauce on his tongue. How fine it would be to take a warm bath, to sleep and sleep without awakening to the sound of artillery. So Parnell said, Oh, yes, let’s go on to Bordeaux, and he wondered if he spoke more strongly than usual, for Bern looked at him, a smile flickering across her face, and Lucci made a little noise of approval.

It’s decided, said Viktor. On we push. He turned into a cart path through the nearest field. When that path dead-ended in a long, lush field of barley sprouts, he drove through the young crops. The jeep left a path of broken plants in its wake. Parnell felt sorry for those small broken plants, he did. But when he was about to mention this to Bern, he felt foolish for it, and said nothing, after all.

THEY MADE THE ROAD by the time the sky had immolated itself in sunset. Bern would never admit it to the chaps, but she was beginning to shake with hunger; always a bad sign. When she began to shake, she needed to eat soon or suffer fits of nasty temper. The jeep pressed on valiantly until the moon had risen, but presently it began to make a coughing sound and slowed to a crawl. There was an electric light glimmering through the trees. Though they urged the engine along, the jeep died before they reached the light. Parnell got out, uncomplaining, and Frank got out, complaining, and together they pushed until they reached the settlement.

There she saw a group of three stone buildings that, in the thin wash of moonlight, seemed to have sprung up organically from the ground, as if a natural geologic formation or a mushroom ring. In the hard-packed dirt courtyard, two skinny dogs skulked and rattled their chains. One weak bulb hung over a door, which was thrust open when Viktor honked, and an immense, bullet-shaped body filled the light pouring from within.

Oh, he is very large, said Lucci. He will be sure to have food.

Our savior who art in hovel, said Frank, his sharp good humor returned.

When they saw, however, that the man had the unmistakable silhouette of a rifle in his hand, and that he spoke to two other creatures who came outside behind him, also with what appeared to be rifles, the reporters did not climb out of the jeep, as they had been about to do. They waited, still and quiet, in the car, until the man came up and pointed a flashlight at their faces, one by one. When he reached Bern, he paused, and she winced in sudden blindness so that she didn’t notice that he was fondling a lock of her hair until he tugged on it. When she batted at his hand he had already pulled it away and she was left clawing air.

Excuse me, sir, said Viktor in his impeccable French, but we are hungry and tired, and would gladly pay for some food and a place to rest. And some gas, if you’ve got any.

The man, still invisible in the darkness, grunted, and the soft voices of the two others murmured behind him. Yes, he said in an earthy provincial French, yes, we’ve got all that. Come inside and bring what you’ve got.

Now they all slowly slid from the jeep and walked behind him, the two other strangers dark shadows at their backs. And when they were inside the cottage all Bern saw at first was a tiny old woman paring potatoes in a dark corner, a fairy-tale grandmother who smiled, though her eyes watered, rheumy. Bern’s eyes adjusted in a moment, and only then did she see the small photograph of Hitler over the mantel, one plucked daisy and a guttering candle before it, as if the Führer were some syphilitic-looking saint.

Bern spun toward their host and found him grinning down at her with his dark eyes and his oily but handsome face. His arm was jutted out, his hand upraised, and on his great biceps there was an armband embroidered with a crude swastika. Heil Hitler, he boomed. Today is a great day, is it not, my friends? Please, sit. Are you hungry? Call me Nicolas.

She didn’t know how she bore it, but in the next moment she was eating, and to her surprise it was good. A smooth white wine, hot bread, potage of carrot, even a small tin of potted meat. She scowled. It would do no one any good if she were to starve to death, but she didn’t have to enjoy it. Viktor sent her warning glances from his side of the table, and Parnell kept his hand on her knee, for good measure; not as if she were really so stupid as to open her mouth and let fly; they were just making sure. By the fireplace at the far end of the room sat the two creatures who had come outside with their host to greet them, and now Bern had a hard time seeing any threat in them: they were two teenaged boys with guns in their arms, but so skinny, and cringing, they may as well have been girls cradling their dolls.

My sons, Nicolas had said, gesturing at them. My wife died many years ago. The boys kept their eyes averted, and on one of them Bern noticed the blue-green stamp of a fading black eye. The watery old woman kept peeling her potatoes, nodding and smiling vaguely.

For his part, their host was leaning back in his chair, watching the reporters eat and smiling his approval. When they had finished and Frank had speared the last hunk of bread with his knife, Nicolas spoke again, softly. I am so glad my meal was to your liking, my friends. Now that you are satiated, I hope, we can come to an agreement, can we not? You mentioned that you could pay for my hospitality, did you not?

We did, said Viktor. We can. We have money. Francs, pounds, dollars. For supper tonight, of course, plus a roof over our heads, plus provisions for tomorrow. And enough fuel to get us to Bordeaux. Perhaps fifty francs would be a good deal. That is, if you please.

I do please, said Nicolas, smiling his charming smile. I do, indeed. I will give you all that you want, the food, the gas. But I do not, most unfortunately, accept currency from those places. Those countries will presently be crushed, and all that will be worthless. Just paper, a few tin coins. Now, if you had reichsmarks, that would be something, he said, and sighed a voluptuous sigh. How I am glad that I share this day with you, he said. I must admit that I have been dreaming for this day, my friends, for years.

Since the last war, said his mother from her potatoes. He has not let up about it. Germany this, Germany that. Takes a correspondence course. German. All sorts of books. Always a very smart boy.

I was a prisoner of war during the last one, Nicolas said, but, really, I was kept better there than here: they valued me more there, where I could not at first speak the language, than they do in my own country. We had schnitzel for luncheon every day. Schnitzel! A marvel of precision, the German mind. These boots here, he said, rapping his vast foot on the ground, are German-made, given to the prisoners, and they’re still as good as the day I got them. I lived among those people and knew they were superior. The Germans rise, he said, dreamily. And with them a better race of man.

Oh, Christ, spat Bern, feeling herself flush with rage.

Indeed, said their host. Bern saw his eyes drop to her lap, where Parnell’s hand was clutching her thigh too tightly, too high on her leg. Nicolas raised an eyebrow and gave her a private smile. Bern was not prepared for the pretty dimple in his cheek.

Viktor rushed in. Well, we have other goods. I’ve got a gold watch, he said, and put his father’s watch on the table, looking sternly at the others. I’m sure we can rustle some more up.

Parnell gamely took the photographs of his family out of the silver frame, tucked them back into his pocket, and put the frame beside the watch. Then he added to the pile two diamond cuff links (What, Bern thought, amused, even now, does he imagine he’s doing with cuff links in a war?), his engraved cigarette case, and a still-wrapped bar of Pears soap.

It’s unused, he said with a significant glance at Nicolas.

I don’t understand what’s going on, said Frank in English, but he can have my flask if he wants it, and threw into the mix a horn-and-silver flask that he had kept hidden from all the others until now. Parnell gave him an odd look; Frank only shrugged.

Bern threw in her gold bangle and it made a furious jingle on the pile.

Lucci fumbled, and found a pair of clean woolen socks in his pocket. All I have, he said cheerily in French. The watery old mother by the woodstove creaked out of her chair and hobbled up and took them, muttering how nice the wool was, how soft, what lovely socks they were, worth a lot, she was sure, and she patted Lucci on the head like a good child. The boys by the fireplace watched the pile hungrily, their eyes large in their faces.

Ah, sighed Nicolas. A pile of riches. Surely more than this family has ever seen in one place before. He played his hand around in the pile for a moment, moving this bit, then that, but shook his head, and pushed them back toward the reporters, save for the socks, which the old woman stroked in her lap like a kitten. Alas, said Nicolas, this is not what I want, either.

Well, what in bloody Christ’s name does he want then? said Parnell in English. But Viktor shushed him, and it was only when Bern saw the face of her good, strong Viktor pale, as if washed with bluing, that she began to feel cold. Frank gave a small whistle, like a kettle releasing the pressure of its steam. In the wake of this sound, Nicolas looked at Bern.

Her, he said.

Into the vast, frigid silence came a snicker; Nicolas’s boys, eyes like darts.

Never, Bern said. Never, never, never.

Not forever, no, Nicolas said, seeming not to understand her. I’m not a sadist, young lady. For a night. No more. Then you will be on your way tomorrow. Plenty of gas to get you to Bordeaux. Plenty of food, my mother’s delicious chicken. I have been far too long without female companionship, and I am a man with strong desires. You remind me of my wife, you know. Same hair. Same, excuse me, behind. Lovely behind. Now tell me, my cabbage; I know you’re American, but is there a chance your people were German?

A sharp blow to her ankle: Lucci kicking her, and she knew he meant to remind her that this man was both bats and had a gun. So she said, grimly, Oh, in a way.

I knew it, he said, sitting back with his charming smile. You are the purest Aryan I have seen for some time. I knew it when I saw you.

Oh, did you, said Bern, and couldn’t help herself, saw herself telling this story to a whole dinner table of guests, saw herself shrieking one day with laughter, saying, My God, he was telling a Jewess she was the most Aryan creature he’d ever seen; even now, she gave a high little bleat of delight. Viktor, she noticed, had grown huge, was sitting up in his chair as if ready to spring; Frank was gaping, red, having apparently understood; even Parnell’s handsome brow was knotted and black. Lucci’s eyes were bowed to his lap, as if in shame.

Your answer is no, Bern said. I would rather gnaw off my own foot.

Very well, said Nicolas, making his mouth twist painfully. You may soon be doing so. I am sorry, but I’ll have to keep all of you fine foreigners here until the Germans come, won’t I. Prisoners. And who knows what they’ll do when they find you.

You can’t do that, said Viktor. We’re reporters.

Oh, can’t I, said Nicolas and it was not a question. Now, boys, he said to his sons. Lock them in the barn.

He stood and nodded at them all, thoughtfully, and said, Good night, and after he climbed the stairs they heard his footsteps on the boards above them, so heavy they feared that great rocks of plaster would fall down on their heads. Then they moved, one by one, into the night, Lucci kissing the hand of the old woman in thanks for the meal.

The barn was one of the buildings of stone, dark and chill, more a cellar than a barn. Inside was a great mass of hay and a mound of potatoes and one ugly old donkey that bit at Lucci when he tried to make friends. The boys shoved the reporters inside and made a great to-do about running the chain through the handles outside and locking them in sturdily, and when the reporters were alone, with just a chink in the roof for a weak light, they settled into the hay in silence. But Parnell stood up presently and began to pace between the donkey and the door, and at last spat out, How disgusting, really. That delivered, he sat down again.

There was another long silence, then Bern burst out, Filthy. Filthy, filthy. I would commit hari-kari. Spectacular fucking brute. Never in my life would I sleep with a Fascist.

From his corner, Frank cleared his throat. No, Bern, he said. No question. I would shoot you myself if you did it. For the principle of the thing. If there’s anything we Americans know, it’s principles. His voice in the darkness held a tremble, and Bern, who was never quite clear where she stood with him, felt a small easing inside her.

No, said Parnell. Nothing of the sort can happen, of course. Barbaric, really. So what, old chaps, do we do?

Bern said, Well, we sure as hell can’t wait for the Germans, and they will be here sometime soon. And even if this old barn weren’t a fortress we couldn’t escape, not without gasoline.

I say, said Viktor, so quietly they could barely hear him, we murder the son of a bitch in his bed. And his two whelps. And leave the mother trussed outside for the vultures.

Wonderful, wonderful, murmured Parnell, standing, then sitting again. Your fury, Viktor, it’s wonderful. In his agitation, he fumbled for a cigarette and failed to light it three times before it glowed a sudden orange in the dark.

Yes, but, said Lucci. But how is it we escape this place?

And you forget, said Frank, that there are three of them, and they all have guns.

After this, a black silence enveloped them. They sank deeply into their thoughts. Without conferring with anyone, Lucci eventually rose and made a thick bed of hay, and they lay down together for the warmth. Bern was in the middle, between Viktor and Lucci, Frank and Parnell on the outside; and when Frank began to snore and Lucci’s nose let out a sleeping squeak, Viktor turned to Bern, and put his arms around her. There, safe against his smell of body and sweat and his own clovelike undertones, she realized how unsurprised she was.

Even as she was now — unbathed, unkempt, exhausted — Bern knew she had it, that same old something. She’d had her first great love affair at sixteen, was still notorious because of it. The man in question had been three times her age, the mayor of Philadelphia, but even so they blamed her, a child. The father of a schoolmate, he had given her a ride home from school one day in his chauffeured car, and that was that. Over the year she was involved with him, his wife grew skinny and sour, his daughter turned the entire school against Bern, and her lover took her to Montreal for a week while her parents were visiting family in Newport News. She was enraptured; she felt free. She took it as her due when her lover fed her vast meals and put her in bespoke lingerie and took her to burlesque shows and, the last night, to a dinner party given by the kinds of friends who would be amused by a sixteen-year-old mistress. In that gilt-and-velvet world of closed curtains and secrets circling like electricity, there was another girl there not much older than Bern, but uncertain and clumsy with her hands, her face in painted roses like a porcelain doll.

Bern had still been vibrating with her strange new joy when the butlers set the silver domes in front of them. The lights had dimmed, and the lids were whisked away. There, on the plates, Bern saw the tiniest bird carcasses imaginable, browned and glistening with butter. There was a collective gasp: L’ortolan, a woman murmured, her voice thick with longing.

A bunting, whispered her lover, bathing her ear in his wine-warmed breath. Caught, blinded, and fattened with millet, then drowned in Armagnac and roasted whole. A delicacy, he said, and smiled, and she had never noticed until then that his eyeteeth were yellowed and extraordinarily long.

With the gravity of a religious ceremony, her tablemates flicked out fresh white napkins and veiled their faces with them. To hide, someone said, from the eyes of God. The porcelain girl held hers like a mantilla for a moment before she dropped it over her face. Bern did not: she watched, holding her breath, as each person reached for his own small bird, and made it disappear behind the veil. For a long time, at least fifteen minutes, there were the wet sounds of chewing, small bones cracking, a lady’s voluptuous moan.

A stillness came into Bern as she observed this, a chill, as if she were watching from a very distant place. Later, she would read of what the others tasted just then: the savory fat, representing God, followed by the bitter entrails, which is the suffering of Jesus, followed by the bones, which lacerated their mouths so they tasted their own blood. All three tastes commingled became the Trinity. Bern, to whom Christianity was a gorgeous myth, like literature, saw then the barbarism at the heart of all the beauty.

The bird on her own plate cooled and congealed, and she didn’t even look at it when she wrapped it in her napkin and placed it gently in her evening bag. She watched as the others, radiant with badness or shamefaced and shaky, came from behind their napkins, wiped their lips. A tiny bone — a wishbone, a foot — stuck to the carmine lipstick of some opera singer. Bern saw thin wet streaks in the porcelain girl’s cheek powder, saw she was still holding something in her mouth, and Bern gazed hard at her until the other turned away, flushing for real under her paint.

That night Bern let the tiny carcass drop from the hotel balcony, setting it free, she thought, though it dropped like a lead weight to the ground for some prowling beast to eat. Like that, she who had been perhaps too amenable, too obedient — why else could she be seduced so easily? — felt herself harden. When she returned to Philadelphia, Bern never spoke to the man again, and the story formed the foundation of the first piece of fiction she ever wrote, in a hiatus between wars. After the magazine ran it, people in Paris and New York began to call her behind her back L’ortolan. Bern Orton; Bern Ortolan. It made a certain awful sense, Bern herself could admit.

Now, so close to Viktor’s peculiar scent, Bern felt something stirring in her again, and with her silent cool hands undid his belt. This is what she needed, a man coming alive in her arms, such comfort; and though she preferred Parnell — there was no complication in him, and he was gentle and sweet to Viktor’s large roughness — when Viktor put his hand on her waist and slid it under the band to hold her rear, she let him, eager. She loved this, and not because she ever had much pleasure from it; it was a gift, the men wanted it. Their gratitude made it good; the way that Bern was the white-hot center of another person’s world for those minutes or hours; the way for a moment it made them both forget everything but this other skin, forget the shattered souls drifting over the world, how it was cracking in half.

But Viktor put his two hands on hers and stopped them. She could see a glint in his dark eyes as he looked at her. He lifted her hands to his mouth, and kissed them both, on the palms and on the backs. Then he turned her about so that her back was facing him, and he held her gently around the chaste arc of her rib cage, his arm for her pillow, the deep beat of his heart a current, eventually drifting her off to sleep.

Frank was up earlier than everyone else because his blasted hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Hungry, too. The others useless logs in the hay, Bern cuddled with that mad Russky Viktor. In the back the donkey stinking in his own muck. The dark barn, the stench, the longing to leave made his skin crawl. When he went to the doors and peered out into the half-dark, he saw the refugees along the road. Pale as death, a huddle, waiting.

Frank remembered an assignment he took to Haiti long ago, when he was young, not the fat sad sack he was now. He remembered the stories, the fear in the people’s faces when they talked of the warlords who would steal souls and turn the emptied bodies into slaves. Those people out there moving in the dust and dawn seemed to have their very souls leached from them: war zombies. When they sensed someone awake in the cottage, they knocked, loudly; when nobody answered, two of them moved on. The last, a young man, waited for an hour until the sun rose fully, and then halfheartedly stole a chicken from the yard. The son with the bruised eye stepped from the roadside and cocked his rifle under the man’s chin. The man released the chicken and limped away.

Crazy, Frank muttered, what war makes people. Animals.

There was a rustle and he peered behind him, saw Bern sitting up with her lovely sleepy eyes, hay in her hair. Frank? she said uncertainly.

What I wouldn’t give, he said, for a fucking drink. His voice was shaking, he noticed. Bern stood, and Frank’s heart lifted as she moved toward him, but then the group in the hay began to stir and his mood darkened again. Always there were others around. Frank was no match for handsome Parnell, or Viktor, who sweated virility, or even Lucci, with his easy charm. He’d seen it, there was something going on there between Bern and the photographer. He might as well forget about it. Not that a cold bitch like Bern would be good for him, drive a cold dagger through his heart, more likely than not. There was something so phony about her.

They rose and stretched and tried to forage for food and watched the sunbeams slowly rake across the floor of the barn. Still no Nicolas, none of the sons, not even the weepy old hag, no food but the scent of some kind of ham wafting from the cottage. He couldn’t ignore Bern: just by existing she commanded attention. She needled him. There was that one time in Oslo, anyhow, when they were drunk on aquavit and everyone else had gone to bed. Frank normally resorted to whores, peroxide and bosom, but that night when the electricity shorted out, under the smoke of the cheap tallow candle there was something so dark and appealing about Bern that he put his hand on her and raised his eyebrow. She went still, and carefully raised hers back. Bern had tasted of alcohol and copper, and in the night, rumpled and sweating, he wept and confessed that for years he’d dreamed of killing himself. Usually a noose, he’d said. Sometimes a gun. Sometimes I step deliberately on a land mine.

It was this that got him. That he’d said this to her, of all people. That she’d taken it in and stored it away and might use it someday. He couldn’t shake the idea that maybe she’d only done it out of pity, slept with him because she’d felt sorry for him. He couldn’t take pity. Frank turned away and counted his breaths through the morning to stay steady.

The day passed. Lucci sat staring through a crack at the clouds skimming across the delicate sky. Viktor did fifty pull-ups on a beam. Parnell smoked the last of his cigarettes and flipped the photographs of his family over and over again like playing cards. Outside, there were the sounds of a few more passersby. A French owl, someone working nearby, the clang of metal, the blunted clock of wood.

In the midmorning, Frank couldn’t take his hunger, and bit into one of the raw potatoes from the sacks, but spat it out again when he saw its black heart.

Before noon there was a rumble in the sky, and the way that Viktor scowled, Frank understood that the Russian had recognized the sounds as Nazi planes. If the Nazis could fly this far south without firing, their troops would be only a few days away. Then, the camps, which he had heard of. Bullets in the head, inmates thin as bones. Frank was not so sure now that he would get away easily.

At midday, the mother came out into the yard and scolded her chickens; Nicolas and the boys clomped back to the house for their meal. Afterward, Nicolas unlocked the chain on the barn and thrust open the door. In the overbright sun that poured into the dim barn, Nicolas did not seem quite so frightening. Just a peasant farmer, and a not bad-looking one at that. Younger than Frank, at least. He gabbled something inquisitive in French at Bern, and she spat back her answer, saying cochon, which Frank knew meant pig. So: the answer was still no. He felt his insides twist at this and a fury rise up in him when Nicolas laughed, then slammed the door shut again, locking them in the dark.

Germans are advancing on Orléans, Viktor said for Frank’s benefit.

I got it, Frank said. He hadn’t, though he couldn’t let Viktor know that.

Damn Bern. In the light of day, he didn’t see what all the fuss was about. She’d slept with everyone and his brother, so why one more peasant meant anything, he didn’t know. The first time he knew he was going to report on this war (how young he seemed then, my God, not that long ago, either), the fellows back at Life raised their eyebrows. Say hello to Bern Orton for us, Frankie-boy, they’d said. We hear she’s a hot number, and when he said, What do you mean? admiring a woman whose moxie let her do what only men had done until then, they laughed. Showed him a photograph of a young lady. Said, She looks all prim, distant cousin to Eleanor Roosevelt, Main Line, all that, but don’t be fooled. They told stories: the mayor she’d seduced at sixteen, the marriages she’d broken up, the painter who’d shot himself in the heart over her. Pussy of gold, they said. And gives it away for free.

Lucky bastard, they all said, and clapped him hard on the back. Queer, he thought now, how those men were equally right and wrong about Bern.

By evening Frank’s shudders made the wall behind him rattle. He had nothing in America, no family, no wife, no children, nothing but his job and baseball and a small house near a decent brewery, but he just wanted to go home again. When night fell and the moon rose in the chink in the roof and it became painfully evident that there would be no dinner, Frank began to curse. The curses rattled out of his mouth like gravel, like spittle, he couldn’t stop them. He cursed Nicolas, the boys, the dogs, the chickens, the old hag; he cursed God, France, the world, the United States of America, the Kansas City Star, Life magazine, his mother who urged him to be a reporter, his father who had gotten him his first job, President Roosevelt and his ugly old wife, and, because Bern jumped in roaring to defend Eleanor, he spun about to curse Bern.

Dammit, girl, he said. Just do it and get it over with and we can go. I’m dying here. I feel like a fucking beehive was set loose in me. Just do it. Then we’ll never talk about it again and we can reach civilization and I can have a fucking drink.

Viktor grabbed Frank by the collar and shoved him up against the wall. Frank struggled to breathe, his vision blackening from the edges. And then, saying nothing, Viktor let him go and Frank slid to the ground and wheezed there sullenly for a long time, watching the straw before his eyes dance with his breath, watching Bern at the far end of the room as she combed and combed her hair like a cat licking itself calm.

HE WAS IN THE GARDEN in Fiesole eating figs and Cinzia was there, her hair short like a boy’s and blown by the warm wind. She opened her mouth, about to say something — Lucci’s very limbs tingled, waiting for her voice — when Parnell sat up beside him, shouting incomprehensible words. Lucci sprang up in the darkness of the donkey-smelling barn, his heart splitting in his chest.

Oh, he cried. Viktor lit a match.

In the spit and flare they saw Parnell’s face, seized by fear. Then he was weeping. No, he said, No, no, no, and Bern was beside him, holding his face, saying softly, Parnell, wake up, wake up, it’s okay, sweetheart, it’s a dream, and Frank scrambled to the wall, and Lucci sat down again, wearily, and the donkey kicked, and Viktor lit another match when the first burned out in his fingers.

Parnell rested his head on Bern’s shoulder until he stopped weeping, until his breath came naturally again. He told them what he had dreamed: ranks of soldiers, black as beetles, marching in lockstep down the Strand, a child swung by its heels against a wall so its brains splattered out. London burning. Bombs falling like hailstones on the Houses of Parliament.

I want to go home, Parnell said. Please, Bern. Just let us go home.

See, said Frank from the wall, where he sat, shuddering. See, Bern. You’re hurting all of us, you know. Your morals, he said, are hurting all of us.

Viktor moved toward Frank, but Lucci stepped between them. Frank’s ill, he said quietly, and he knows not what he talks. Viktor glowered down and for a moment Lucci steeled himself for a blow, wondered if it would kill him, but Viktor turned and sat, abruptly.

When they settled again, Lucci could no longer sleep. In his mouth he could still taste figs. He could almost smell Cinzia’s hair. He thought of her as she would be now, if she were alive, in the camp at Bolzano. Probably gaunt, no longer pregnant. Still as fierce as she was as a partisan, going into the night, doing what she needed to do. All that time Lucci had tried not to worry, stood under his red bulb, pulling images from the baths, but growing more frantic as their child began to show. And one bright afternoon he watched as, down a street too long for him to run to her, she was hustled into a dark car.

Now the Germans were coming, perhaps only a few miles down the road. A great ugly inkstain on France, spreading. And when they overtook this barn, who’s to say where the journalists would go. Perhaps Lucci would walk into the camp and see Cinzia look up from whatever work it is they make women do; sewing, or weeding, and she’d blanch, be furious with him for being caught. Wishful thinking, Lucci knew: more likely he’d be killed on the spot. Journalism was no impediment to evil. And only the willful say they do not know what’s happening in Europe anymore.

Yet, he thought, there are still people like Bern, and this is good. White-hot people. Lucci had met Bern long before the war, when she was a debutante visiting Europe on the arm of some man. They’d met at a nightclub and she charmed him. That night, Cinzia, in the presence of a woman so beautiful, was dazzling herself and danced the way that only Cinzia could dance. Bern turned to Lucci in the dim flickering light and brilliant bleat of horns, and said, Giancarlo Bertolucci, your wife is spectacular. And he said, This I know, Bernice, and she laughed her smoke-filled laugh. Later, in his despair with Cinzia gone, when he took the job to photograph the looming war, they met up again in Czechoslovakia. When one night he knocked on her door, she opened it a crack and said, Oh, Lucci. Oh, darling, no. I make it a point of honor not to see the husbands of women I adore. He said, I understand, but it is probable I am a widow. And she said, Widower. And don’t think that. Never Cinzia, she’s a strong one — you can’t let yourself think that. She opened her door a little wider and gave him a long, soft kiss on his mouth. There, she said, now I know she’s alive, and she closed her door.

They were going to die there, in the barn. Starve. Already, they were at the end of the water in the donkey’s bucket and he had seen Parnell try to eat the oats. A terrible shame to die now; it made him want to weep for the glorious world out there, weep that he would not be able to see it grow healthy again. To find Cinzia, or to avenge her. Now, in the bleak night, he hoped his heart would break and kill him before the Germans did.

Lucci heard a scraping at the door and sat up. Probably rats; still, he crawled over to see. It was morning but still dark, and he pressed his eye to a crack and saw the teary old woman creep back across the yard and close the cottage door with exquisite care. Lucci was heartened; perhaps there was still good in the world. Then he smelled a smell that made him heady — crêpes — and he could isolate each of the ingredients as he never could before: butter, sugar, flour, milk, even a little rum. He felt the ground until he found the plate, and pressed his fingers into a soft stack two inches high. If he were Frank, he would eat them himself. But he wasn’t Frank, so he said, loudly, Excuse, and the others grumbled in the hay. Chaps, he said, and they sat up. Breakfast is served, said Lucci. Courtesy of Madame Lachrymose.

It was enough to keep them alive, not enough to satisfy, and by dawn they were starving again. Nicolas came early to take the donkey to the fields and recoiled at their smell. My cabbage, he called to Bern, Have you come to any new conclusions? But Bern sent a scathing stream of curses in French at him and Nicolas chuckled and led the donkey into the light and locked them in again.

Frank and Parnell sat together by the wall and conferred quietly. Lucci did not like this. He stroked Bern’s hair, telling her little tales that his mother had told him as a child so that she would not have to see the others in their low discussions. Viktor paced. Lucci wasn’t looking at him when Viktor suddenly, around noon, turned pale, sank to his knees, and fainted.

Though Frank looked close to death, he was quick enough as Bern knelt over Viktor. He stood over her and shook her shoulder roughly. Listen, he said. You don’t have to prove anything to us, you know. You’re the most courageous woman we all know.

The most courageous person, rather, called Parnell from the wall.

I’ve seen you with my own eyes, said Frank. I’ve seen you kick a wounded man from a door so a cottage full of women could escape. I’ve seen you walk through brains and guts and viscera without gagging. If you could do those things, you could sleep with Nicolas to set us free. It’d only take an hour. One hour of courage and then we can go.

It’s not about courage, said Bern. Shut your trap.

Viktor stirred on the ground and blinked confusedly, drawn and pale. She leaned over him again, cradling his pitted face. Lucci felt ill to see Viktor as low as this.

Nicolas is not even that bad-looking, said Parnell, in a rush. A bit greasy, but overall quite all right. It’d be a kindness to him, actually. He hasn’t had a woman in years and years, he said. Think of yourself as doing a kindness, Bernie.

And, listen, said Frank. You can write about it when you’re done. Imagine, a short story. Like that one you did, “L’ortolan,” that won all the prizes. It’s material. Be a good chap, Bern. Be a good sport.

Lucci leaped up, shouted, Enough, she will not do it. That is enough. He pushed Frank back, and though Frank was far larger than Lucci, he stumbled a little. As he waited for Frank to raise his fists, Lucci thought he could hear everything there was to hear in the world: distant planes, the shuffle of a weary family on the road, the wind rustling under the skirts of the trees, voices hushed and murmuring, moving in, moving out, one great tide. He could hear, somewhere, singing. No: it was Frank, whistling “La Marseillaise” softly under his breath. Lucci looked toward Viktor, who was struggling to sit up. When he looked back at Frank, a curious glint had come into the fat man’s face.

Frank said, slowly, Why the hell not, Bern? Everybody knows you’re a slut.

Shut up, said Viktor, voice deadly, quiet, but Frank gave his sour little smile. Oh, Viktor, I’m surprised you didn’t know, he said. She sleeps with just about everyone she meets. I could name hundreds.

I do know, Viktor said, rubbing his head wearily. She’s had a few lovers. It is her right, as it is yours. As it is Parnell’s, and Lucci’s, and mine. At least unlike Parnell, she’s not married. Bern, at least, is not a hypocrite.

Ha! A few lovers, well, said Parnell, his voice turning Cockney, ugly. Don’t you wonder, Viktor, why she won’t sleep with you? I do, very much. She fucks me, you know.

I know, said Viktor. I know.

She sleeps with everyone, said Parnell. She slept with Frank, if you can believe it.

What’s that supposed to mean? said Frank, but nobody heard him because now there was a hole ripped into the air in the barn, and Bern was alone in the middle of it. She reached out to take Viktor’s face in her hands, speaking low and seriously, but Viktor shook her off.

Frank, he said, very slowly. Frank? I knew about Parnell. He’s handsome, it’s uncomplicated. But Frank, Bern? Him?

Bern sighed and tried to find the sauciness in her voice again, but it came out strained. I don’t understand it myself. I guess I felt sorry for him, she said.

Viktor stared at her, and though it was dim in the barn, Lucci thought he saw his eyes fill. Well, Viktor said. I suppose you felt sorry for me, too.

No, said Bern, but he had already turned away, already walked to the muck and stink of the donkey’s area. Viktor, she said, but he raised his hand to quiet her.

Do what must be done, Bern, he said. It shouldn’t make a difference to you, should it.

They were all looking at Bern, all of the men. She took a step back and leaned against the door to catch her breath. Lucci saw that Viktor had changed something, had turned something with his words, and Lucci himself couldn’t resist the change. He saw the light again in Fiesole, Cinzia, the million small colors of that world, and longed to be in them. He longed.

In a minute, Bern stepped closer to Lucci, searched his face. She tried to take his hand. But Lucci couldn’t breathe, and he stepped away, turned his back.

Bern blinked and her voice came out ragged. Et tu, Lucci? she said with a grim little smile. Then she took a deep breath and turned her back and waited at the door. When one of Nicolas’s sons passed by, she called to him in a muted voice and told him to fetch his father. The minutes that she stood there, with her back to the men in the room, seemed to Lucci like weeks, like months. Her hair was lit golden in a sunbeam that fell in a long strip down her delicate back. He wanted, terribly, to say, Stop, to say Bern’s name, to stroke her soft cheek where it was bitten by the light. But, in the end, he didn’t do anything at all.

A SOOTY DUSK. It had begun to drizzle, and the men waited in the jeep. Under the seats were boxes of food: terrine, bread, cheese, pickles, bottles of wine. A full canister of gas. They had washed themselves with water the teary old woman had heated, they had eaten their fill beside a fire, warming their bones. The old woman would not look at them, though she wore Lucci’s woolen socks in her clogs. She held out food with a closed face, turned those perpetually watering eyes away. The two sons had stalked in and out of the house with their excitement, loading the jeep with provisions. At one point, they had both disappeared upstairs, and reappeared an hour later to sit whittling by the fireplace, dogs licking their paws, satisfied.

In the car, Viktor held his face in his hands. Frank held a bottle and his normal pink flush had already regrown across his cheeks. Parnell held an unlit cigarette and stared at his hands. Lucci held his camera, but did not take a photo.

At long last, the door of the cottage opened, and Bern emerged. She had lost a great deal of weight in the last few days, and her clothing hung on her; she moved as if sore, and her lip seemed torn and bleeding, as if she had bitten through it. She climbed up beside Parnell, who glanced sideways at her, his eyes liquid and fearful. Viktor turned on the engine, and looked at Bern in the mirror, willing her to look back; Lucci, tentatively, put his hand on her cheek. Her skin was icy and white as wax. The world seemed to slow for a moment — there was the moon like a half-closed eye — the wind had died and so everything seemed to hold its breath. But Bern would not look at Viktor and grabbed Lucci’s hand and threw it back at him.

Don’t, she said, very softly. Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me. Go.

But they didn’t, at first. A hawk over the trees darted down. There was the wail of a distant plane. When it passed, they were able to hear the silence of the woods, as if it had gathered itself in and was waiting for the conflict to end. At last, Bern said, Go, again, and Viktor started up the jeep. Frank cleared his throat and turned his face toward the sky; Parnell sighed. The engine throbbed and the jeep pulled away from the cottage, into the trees. And for hours they drove like this, in silence, southwest, toward a certain kind of safety.