Lauren Groff - Delicate Edible Birds - And Other Stories

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.