Mary Russel - A Thread of Grace

MARITIME ALPS

FRANCE

Before the war, climbers from Italy and France hiked in these mountains to escape the heat and noise of urban life. After sunset, they’d hear only the hoot of an owl or the leathery hush of bat wings, and the unnerving nighttime silence could keep them awake in their woolen blankets. Claudette Blum, by contrast, has spent a dreamless night in the deep, unmoving sleep of a growing child, exhausted by the day’s exertions, until now.

Her eyelids flutter and snap open in the predawn darkness. All the small noises are near and comforting— her father’s soft snore, the soldier’s deep-chested breathing— but something woke her up. She rises onto an elbow and listens hard. A moment more, and she slumps with relief, matching sound to sight: the pat-pat-skitter-pat of falling autumn leaves.

They’re alone in this small high clearing: Claudette, her father, and Santino Cicala. Most of the refugees spent the night at a mountainside collection point for a logging operation. Their soldiers worked in teams to lift whole tree trunks from a giant’s woodpile and heaved the logs onto a huge blaze, sending a column of sparks and smoke toward the stars. Santino shook his head at the fire. “The Luftwaffe will see it.” He insisted the Blums move on in a darkness that seemed only slightly less menacing than the Germans.

They’d have been warmer by the bonfire, but Claudette is grateful for the soldier’s concern. Her father’s optimism annoys and frightens her, but Santino has relieved her of the need to worry, a responsibility her father has obviously relinquished.

A blush of light tints the sky beyond the mountain. Too cold and hungry to go back to sleep, Claudette sits up. Every morning for months, she’s awakened to her father’s slack face and its gray stubble. He is of no interest, but the soldier is new to her. Santino’s face is lined around the eyes, but his hair is thick and shoe-polish black, so tightly waved it looks marcelled. She cannot guess his age, but he is… mature, she decides, not old like Papa. Serious, and silent. Not handsome like Brigadiere Giovanetti, but he has a wonderful smile.

Perhaps sensing her inspection, the infantryman rouses, yawning noiselessly. Mouthing, “ Buon giorno, ” and then “ Scusi, ” he rolls to his feet with easy strength and disappears into the woods.

Claudette brushes bits of dried leaf from her hair and rubs her arms to generate some heat. For a few minutes, she sits on one heel, but it does no good. She jostles her father’s shoulder. “Papa? Papa!”

“What? What is it?” he cries.

“I have to go!”

He flops back onto the ground, fingers digging into his eye sockets. “ Na, zum Donnerwetter! For this, you woke me up?” Groaning, he pulls off the pair of socks he wore to keep his hands warm and rummages through his suitcase. He locates the squares he cut from newspaper in preparation for this trek— only yesterday? Handing one sheet to Claudette, he points to a bush.

She’s still appalled by the necessity of dropping her pants and squatting, but she’s already learned the first lesson of Alpine hygiene: face uphill. This time, the relief is so exquisite, she forgets to be embarrassed. “That’s really not so bad,” she says, returning to the campsite.

Santino is already back, and he puts a finger to his lips, glancing at her father. Albert chants Shakharis, bowing and swaying, eyes closed. Claudette puts herself to work, preparing a meager breakfast for the three of them.

“That’s Jewish praying!” Santino exclaims when the chant is complete. “What are those things— those little boxes?”

Claudette meets her father’s eyes. This is not a subject she has ever heard discussed. Jews know; goyim never ask.

Unwrapping the long laces of his tefillin, Albert summons his Italian. “The Torah — la Bibbia vecchio, sì? It tells that we should love God with tutto cuore— ” He taps on the left side of his chest.

“ Tutto il cuore, ” Santino corrects solemnly, accepting the little cube of cheese Claudette offers.

“ Sì. Love God with all the heart, and tutta l’anima— all our spirit. E tutta la forza— all our strength. The Bible also tells us to bind — legare, sì?— bind these words on our hands and in front of our eyes, so we remember them always.” Albert shrugs. “Who knows what that means? How do you bind words in front of your eyes? So we write the words about tutto cuore, tutta anima, tutta forza, and put them inside the little boxes. Then we tie the boxes to our hands and foreheads when we pray.”

Chewing, Santino nods repeatedly, mouth turned down in thoughtful consideration. “ È bello, ” he decides. “That’s a good prayer.”

“The Torah says we must put those words by the doors of our houses and on our gates,” Albert adds, waving toward the forest. “No more house. No more gate. Tefillin are all I have.”

“The boxes look like little houses,” Santino points out helpfully. “Is that why they’re shaped that way? What’s wrong?”

Albert is staring at his left hand. “My wedding ring is missing.”

Swallowing her second, and last, mouthful of dry bread, Claudette shifts to German, too. “Are you sure you were wearing it?”

“Of course, I was wearing it— I never take it off!” He combs through low vegetation and dry leaves with his fingers. “Don’t just stand there, Claudette! Help me find it!”

“ C’è male? ” Santino asks.

“ Mein Ring, ” Albert says, unable to remember the word in Italian. “ Mariage, ” he says in French, and then “ Moglie! ”— wife— in Italian. Albert points to the place where years of constriction have compressed the small muscles of his finger, and makes a circling motion. Santino’s face lights up, then darkens with dismay. Dropping onto all fours, he joins the search.

When a few minutes of scrabbling through the stones and twigs produce nothing but scratches and skinned knuckles, Claudette sits back on her haunches. “We’ll never find it,” she declares, clapping dirt from her palms. “We’ll have to leave it behind.” Fingers raking, her father ignores her. “Papa, the Germans could be right behind us.” She means only to be practical and to justify her impatience, but speaking makes the prospect real. “Papa? Please— let’s just go!”

“Claudette, I don’t expect you to understand, but I do expect you to—”

A loud, unresonant crack! not one hundred meters away startles him into silence. The three of them freeze. Crouched to run, Claudette looks to Santino, who listens, still as a deer. When they hear someone speaking Polish, Santino picks up a branch and mimes breaking it. Smiling reassurance, he gestures for Claudette to resume the search, but she folds her arms across her chest. “That could have been the Germans, Papa!” she insists in a tense whisper. “It’s just a ring, Papa!” Terrified now, clutching her father’s arm, she tries to pull him to his feet. “Papa, let’s go! This is stupid!”

In one motion, Albert Blum straightens and slaps his daughter’s face. “It’s not just… a ring!”

It is the home he and Paula made during sixteen years of marriage, his children’s baby photos, mementos of his own youth. It is his orderly office, and meticulously cared-for wardrobe, the reputation he built as an accountant, accurate and scrupulously honest. It is everything that was, and is no more. He’s barely slept, freezing and miserable on a rocky mountainside. Every muscle and all his joints ache from yesterday’s awful climb, and God knows he’s as frightened of capture as Claudette. But months ago, he left his wife and two young sons on a train platform, expecting to see them a few days later. Now they have vanished, like everything else, and Albert Blum cannot — will not— accept another loss.