Iron Sniper Page 4

  "Elsa, get away from the road!" she had shouted at her niece, waving at her with a scooping gesture that was universal for "come here." The little girl ran toward her, with her twin brother, Leo, racing after her.

  The two children, both five years old, had been tossing rocks into a puddle left in the dirt road by last night's rain. Already, their clothes were spattered with mud. Lisette put her hands on her hips to signal that she had lost patience. It wasn't that she was worried about the mud, but about vehicles. The road was not usually busy, but why take any chances? A speeding German motorcycle or Kübelwagen would not be concerned about a couple of French children getting in the way.

  The children dashed toward her, their smiles and laughter making it impossible to be angry with them. Still, caring for her niece and nephew on her own was not easy. Not a day went by that she did not wonder what it would be like to be living in Paris, with her own apartment and friends her own age, instead of isolated on this farm. Even occupied Paris seemed more appealing than this farm.

  She sighed. "Here, you can feed the chickens instead," she said, pouring a scoop of grain into both of their hands.

  The twins were soon running around the yard being chased by the chickens, eager for a handful of grain. Leo and Elsa squealed with delight.

  There had been more chickens, more than a dozen, in fact, but now their flock was down to four birds. It was enough for a few eggs, but not enough for the occasional chicken dinner. Wandering German soldiers had absconded with a few chickens, but the foxes that sneaked in during the night had taken a greater toll. Without Henri there to chase them off with his battered double-barreled shotgun, the foxes had run rampant. He had left the shotgun behind, along with a handful of shells. The Germans had seized almost all guns, but they had allowed farmers to keep their shotguns. Of course, it was almost impossible to find shells anymore.

  Though it was an antique, complete with hammers that had to be cocked in order to fire the weapon, she kept the shotgun cleaned and well-oiled. Henri had given her lessons in how to use it, and she had spent an afternoon firing at pumpkins to get a feel for the gun. That exercise had left her with a sore shoulder, but a bit more confidence in her marksmanship. She kept it behind the kitchen door, unloaded, with the handful of shells that remained on a high shelf where the children could not reach them.

  Children to mind. Foxes to scare off. And then there was the farm work. Fences to mend. A garden to weed. The barn roof to patch. Everywhere she looked, the land seemed to threaten to take back the farm. The children were such a handful that the heavier chores around the small holding simply hadn't gotten done without Henri.

  Henri. She felt a mix of pride, sadness, and resentment toward her brother. Excited by the news of the Allied landing that had finally arrived after four years of German occupation, her older brother had left that fateful June day to join the fighting, leaving his young children in her care. She had not heard from him since. Her sister in law had passed away of a fever not long after the children were born.

  She loved the children dearly, but they were a great deal of work and worry.

  Watching the children having their fun, it was easy enough to forget that there was a war going on. The Germans based in nearby Argentan left them alone. No one liked being an occupied nation, but the truth was that in the end there had been little to fear from the Germans. If she had been Jewish, it might be a different story, of course. She had heard the whispers and rumors.

  She had little interaction with the occupiers, other than to see them passing on the road. The worst part lately had been getting enough to eat.

  Lately, food had been running scarce because of the war. She worried that the twins were starting to look thin. Her own clothes felt loose.

  As she went about her morning chores in the farmyard, Lisette felt lightheaded. She paused until the dizziness passed. She had skipped breakfast this morning so that the twins could eat.

  She had no money to buy food, and besides that, what could she buy? The German soldiers had picked the area clean. Her nearest neighbor, Madame Pelletier, understood Lisette's plight and was as generous as the old woman could be. She had little enough herself. Lisette's other neighbors were mostly elderly farmers who had little to share, or who were too stingy. The German occupation had not always brought out the best in the French.

  She and the children moved toward the farmyard behind the cottage, where it would be safer for them to play.

  Lisette rounded the corner of the cottage and froze.

  A German soldier was crouched over the water pump, filling his canteen. He looked up at Lisette without any particular surprise. He must have heard her and the children nearby. Her eyes flicked to his weapon, a rifle with a telescopic sight. Considering that he seemed to be alone, and that he carried this sort of rifle, it indicated that he was one of the German's Jäger. In French, the formal name was un tireur d'elite, but the term sniper was mostly used. She suppressed a shudder. These Jäger were killers.

  The children went to her and hid behind her skirts, as if sensing danger. Even they were not so young that they didn't know a German soldier was trouble.

  The soldier saw her look at the rifle, but he went back to filling the canteen. Water came out in a burst when the handle was pumped, but it was not an easy task to pump the handle and then make it around to the spigot to catch the water as it came out. He was just managing. Once the canteen was full, he set it aside and took off his helmet. His hair was matted and sweaty in the heat.

  He pumped the handle again and tried to get his head under the flow, but he was just a little too slow to get the full burst of water that arrived with each pump of the handle.

  Thinking that it might get rid of him sooner, Lisette approached. She jerked her chin at the handle to signal that she would work the pump, and he nodded.

  He stuck his head under the pump and this time, he caught the full stream of the cooling water. Even under the circumstances, Lisette had to admit how good the cascading water looked on this hot day. The soldier sighed with what sounded like relief.

  His head dripping, she was surprised when he began stripping off his tunic. His skin was very pale in the sunlight. She could not help noticing that arms and chest were well-formed and muscular. She guessed that they were about the same age, although he might have been just a little younger. He raised both arms to push the hair out of his eyes, revealing blondish hair in his armpits, and she noticed that the only other hair on his body was a single patch of thatch on his chest no bigger than her hand, just where the metal disk of his Hundermarken dangled. She felt a bit of heat come to her cheeks. Was she actually blushing at the sight of this German boy?

  Elsa pointed at his pale torso and giggled, but the soldier didn't seem to mind. Grinning now, he nodded at Lisette, indicating that she should work the pump, and he held himself under the water, taking an impromptu bath. Water ran down and soaked the waistband of his trousers. Satisfied, he straightened up and stood dripping in the barnyard. He really wasn't much more than a teenager. Sadly, Lisette suddenly remembered that she wasn't much more than a girl herself. It was a fact that she had forgotten in the face of tending to the twins and the farm. One grew of fast these days.

  "Danke," he said. Then, smiling at Leo and Elsa, he asked, "Sind das deine Kinder?"

  Even after the years of occupation, Lisette knew maybe a hundred words of German. She caught the word for children.

  "C'est ma nièce et mon neveu."

  He nodded. “Tante." Aunt. The word was the same in German and in French, although in German it seemed to be pronounced in a manner that gave it two syllables.

  She nodded again.

  He dressed, pulling on his soiled uniform again, although he seemed reluctant about it. Who could blame him? The sunshine must have felt so good on his pale body. He put on his ugly steel helmet and picked up the rifle. Instantly, he was transformed into a soldier once more.

  For the first time, he seemed to really notice Liset
te. He looked her up and down. Some sort of calculation was going on behind the soldier's blue eyes, and Lisette did not care for what she saw there. She became acutely aware of how alone and vulnerable she was here on the farm.

  "Ton père?" the soldier asked. "Ton mari?"

  "Mon frere," she replied in French. "My brother is in the village and will be home soon."

  The soldier nodded as if he understood, although it was impossible to tell. Then he patted down his pockets and produced a tin of meat and a package of crackers. He handed them to Lisette and she noticed with surprise that the foodstuffs were marked in English. Where had he gotten those?

  His hand dipped into another pocket and produced a chocolate bar the size of a franc note, which he offered to the twins. The heat of the day had warmed the chocolate, and the smell of it after months without any sort of sweets was intoxicating. Wide-eyed, they looked to her for permission, and when she nodded, they grabbed the chocolate as ravenously as the hens had pecked at their corn. Lisette made sure that they thanked him. He might be a German, but the French still minded their manners.

  "Dieter," he said, patting his damp chest.

  "Lisette," she blurted out, almost by reflex.

  He smiled, his blue eyes twinkling.

  She felt a bit more heat touch her cheeks, then chided herself. This was a German soldier, for God's sake. It was best to avoid any trouble.

  Then the soldier turned and walked off toward the road. Before he rounded the corner of the old house, he looked back over his shoulder for a final glance at Lisette.

  He gave her another smile, and then he was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  Lisette made a feast that evening with the food the German soldier had given them. The tin contained chopped ham. The writing on the tin was in English. Where had the German obtained it? Off a dead American? She shuddered at the thought because the Americans were fighting to liberate France, but she and the children were too hungry to let her principles stop them from devouring the food.

  At the thought of food, her belly rumbled painfully. It had been a long time since she had eaten a full meal. There were days when she was dizzy with hunger, having given the lion's share of her food to the twins. Henri was nowhere to be found; he seemed to have abandoned his sister and his children.

  Lisette made an omelet with the tinned ham, using eggs that she had been saving, and one of the precious peppers from her garden. Together with the crackers, it was a feast, the most delicious food that they had eaten in weeks. The twins had long since given up being picky eaters. There was some wisdom in the old saying that hunger was the best sauce. Seeing the children stuff themselves pleased her to no end.

  She washed the children, scrubbing off the day's dust, and put them to bed, reading them a story in an effort to drown out the distant boom of artillery. To the children, who had grown up with war, the sound was no more threatening than far away thunder on a summer evening. She kissed them and tucked them in, then retreated, gratefully, to the kitchen, where she could be blissfully alone with her thoughts.

  She kept a jug of rough red wine in the cabinet, and she allowed herself a tiny glass as she sat at the table and let her mind drift.

  She thought about the German soldier. Dieter. If anyone had asked her an hour ago, she would have answered that she hoped never to see him again. But now that she had eaten, and seen the satisfied look that full bellies brought to the twins' faces, she was not so sure of her earlier answer.

  Lisette was not naive. A soldier who brought her food would expect something in return. Was she prepared to make such a trade?

  She would have to be careful. More than one local girl had been shunned for what was euphemistically called "horizontal collaboration." If the Germans were forced to leave, there would be worse than shunning. Already, in places that Wehrmacht forces had abandoned, French girls who had taken German lovers were having their heads shaved, and being marched through the liberated streets in their slips, to the jeers of their old neighbors.

  The question was, how far would she be willing to go to put food on the table for herself and the twins? The little flutter in her stomach when she thought of Dieter meant that she did not entirely trust herself to turn him down. He'd had a handsome face with nice eyes, and his body, though pale, had been lean and muscular.

  Sipping her wine, she thought about how her life had turned out so far. It had not been so long ago that she had been excited about the possibilities. Looking back, she had dreamt of so much more. She thought again of her dreams of moving to Paris, away from the country. Then the war had broken out. With her brother gone and the children to tend, her world had grown smaller, rather than larger. Except for the children and a few old people in the village, she hardly spoke to anyone. She sighed.

  Lisette was just thinking about a second, tinier glass of wine when there was a knock at the door. She froze in fear. Their old dog, too lazy to chase foxes, stirred himself from where he slept on the stone floor to bark at the door. She thought about the old shotgun, but quickly dismissed the idea. She was not expecting trouble, and she doubted that trouble would bother to knock.

  She went to answer the door, half expecting it to be one of her elderly neighbors, needing help with some chore or simply wanting to complain about some ache or pain. But the quiet leading up to the knock on the door had been so stealthy. Not the shuffling of an old woman through the dark farmyard. In her heart, she already knew who it was.

  She opened the door.

  Standing there was the soldier from the yard. She felt a quiver of something that wasn't entirely fear.

  "Allo," he said. His eyes went past her to search the empty kitchen.

  All that Lisette could do was stare.

  The German raised a sack and smiled. She could hear the shifting of tin cans inside. More food. She stepped back from the doorway to let him inside. He was not wearing his helmet, but a soft hat that the Germans called a Schiff. He had a fresh-scrubbed look about him, as if he had taken some pains with his appearance. He looked far different from the scruffy soldier who had cooled off at her water pump earlier that day.

  The soldier entered and put the sack on the ancient, scarred wooden table. Belatedly remembering his manners, he snatched off the Schiff, revealing tousled blondish hair. He really was rather pretty, she thought. He certainly did not look dangerous. She let her guard down ever so slightly.

  Then he sat. He nodded at another chair to indicate that she should sit as well. First, she got another glass and poured him wine.

  "Danka," he said, smiling shyly.

  The language barrier was a gap between them, but not so much a wall as a gossamer curtain. As if to fill the silence, or perhaps to make his case, the German removed items one by one from the sack. There were six more tins similar to the one that had enabled their feast tonight. More packages of crackers. Finally, two four-ounce bars of bitter Hershey's chocolate, which he added to the top of the stack, like a finishing touch. Altogether, the food made up what was known to American GIs as a D ration.

  She thanked him, although she was unable to take her eyes off the food. There was so much of it.

  They sat for another few moments in silence. He smiled, and Lisette returned the smile. Then the German stood. He reached down and took her hand, guiding Lisette to her feet. She thought that he might try to kiss her, but instead, his eyes flicked toward the narrow hallway. The one that led toward her bedroom.

  She understood then why the German had brought her food. It was a simple transaction. An unspoken deal had been struck. Now, she realized that she must live up to her end of the bargain if she and the children wanted to eat.

  Her heart pounding, she led the way to her bed.

  Since that first night, the German had been a frequent visitor. He always brought food, for which Lisette was grateful. The twins were thin enough that the extra food was welcome to supplement what little came from the farm.

  Alone for the moment, with the twins tucked into
their beds and the old dog lounging at her feet, she sat at the battered kitchen table and poured a tiny glass of the rough red wine. This quiet time had become a ritual, and her favorite time of the day.

  It was now August. As it grew dark, she lit an oil lantern. The cottage was close enough to the main road to have electricity and even a telephone, but sometimes she preferred the warm glow of the old-fashioned lamp. A moth appeared and bumped in futility against the glass globe of the lantern, intent on destroying itself in the flame. In the distance, she could hear the ominous thump of artillery, still many miles distant, but louder than it had been in days past. The flashes on the horizon resembled the heat lightning present when a storm was gathering.

  She thought about Dieter. If the German was using her, no matter; she was using him as well. Lisette had been surprised to make this discovery about herself, that she had the capacity to use and to be used, but instead of being disappointed in herself, she took a small measure of pride in the fact that she was being practical and tough. It was enough that she loved the twins with all her heart; she did not need to love the German. Not that she minded having him in her bed.

  She did not know how this affair would end. She just assumed that one day, the German boy would simply not return, having been caught up in the maelstrom of war. She suspected that the German forecast this as well. As a result, they both seemed to savor each caress, each coupling in the dark, each sip of wine and bite of contraband food, all the more. They were both on borrowed time. They did not need to speak one another's language to understand that they dwelt together like two castaways in a lifeboat, drifting in an eddy of the current on a rushing river.

  Soon enough, the tide would rush even faster and sweep everything away.

  Lisette finished her wine, then raised the globe of the lamp, allowing the moth to come to its fiery end.

  Chapter Eight