A Troubled Peace by L. M. Elliott Read Free Book Online Page A

bridges blown on their eastern edge, beams and cable still dangling into the water, bricks strewn hundreds of yards from the blast of plastique explosives. The maquis had been very thorough in their work. Or perhaps it was the handiwork of retreating Germans.
    The landscape reflected Henry’s state of mind—all the basics were there, but the things that made everyday life and getting back to normal possible were broken, disconnected. He wondered how the French would rebuild. Could they repair what remained, or would they have to tear it all down and begin anew? Which was better—reconstruction that openly contained scars from the past, or brand-new architecture that wiped clean a painful history? Which was stronger, more quickly accomplished? If the second method were chosen, what hole would be deep enough to bury all that rubble? Or all that pain?
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    In early afternoon, the train chugged into Montélimar. One more stop to Valence. The train jostled with people getting on and off. Their shoes—still soled with wood instead of rubber, which had been requisitioned for tires during the Occupation—clacked loudly on the iron-grate stairs.
    A pretty young woman stepped into Henry’s train car. He noticed her at first because she didn’t seem half-starved like everyone else. She had a healthy voluptuousness that made him blush a bit. Her face was round, her nose long and straight, her eyes large and almond-shaped. She had that idiosyncratic French beauty about her that Henry had first come to appreciate in Claudette, the young, fiery Resistant who took him in after he escaped the Gestapo. He winced, remembering how he met Claudette—stealing fruit from her orchard, starving, broken. Her yellow-green, catlike eyes had looked at him with such disdain.
    As the girl neared, Henry noticed bruising around hercheekbones. She nervously tugged on the colorful silk scarf she’d tied round her head.
    â€œLa femme au turban,” a man beside Henry hissed.
    Henry glanced at him in surprise. The man had been silent, his eyes half closed the whole trip. It was like a giant snake had awakened. He nudged the man next to him, repeating the phrase “turban woman” and adding collabo horizontale.
    That man passed the nudge and the words: la femme au turban. Instantly all the men were on alert, sneering.
    The young woman looked at each one, defiantly at first. She turned red and then very, very pale. She backed her way out of the compartment and spent the next hour clinging to the hand bar of the platform linking the cars, her skirt whipping around her in the wind. At one point her scarf was blown loose. She caught it before it flew away. She was bald.
    Now Henry understood. She’d been shaven. Her scarf, her “turban,” was like the scarlet letter in that Hawthorne novel he’d read in high school. It was the clear marker that the girl had had a romance with a German soldier. Until her hair grew back, she’d be shunned—or worse.
    Claudette had threatened to stab a teenager accused of such dalliances. Claudette’s passions—loyalty, love, and hatred alike—ran hot. That trait both attracted and repulsed Henry. In many ways, Claudette reminded himof Patsy—a Patsy who was boiled down, distilled. If Patsy had been faced with the same kind of dangers and tragedies Claudette endured, she might have condensed into the same fury.
    Henry’s thoughts went to a recent conversation with Patsy—a painful one. “Sometimes when you kiss me it feels like you’re searching for something, Henry,” she’d whispered, uncharacteristically unsure of herself. “Almost like your mind is elsewhere, on something—on someone—else. Henry,” her voice grew hoarse as she asked, “was there someone else in France?”
    No, Pats. That kiss with Claudette, that night by the Morvan pond—that was searching for you .
    He should have told her