“It is.” She looked around and threw her arms out and he could tell that she was glad to be back. He saw the way she looked at Victor, and the way Victor looked back at her.
Marianne’s father was out at his beehives, dressed in his white beekeeper’s suit, including a hat with white netting.
“He looks like a ghost, doesn’t he?” Julien said.
“He’s anything but,” Victor said. He whistled and waved to the old man, and Monsieur Félix waved back. “You’ll see when Marianne and I go off. He’s a tough old bird.”
“This is your brother?” Monsieur Félix said when he came in for dinner. The brothers had settled in, taking over the front parlor. Julien noticed that Victor stored his rucksack in an old wooden bureau.
“He’s the one,” Victor told Marianne’s father.
Julien stood and shook his hand.
“I’ll teach you about bees if I think you’re smart enough to learn,” Monsieur Félix said. “We’ll keep you busy here.”
The brothers slept on quilts in the parlor, but halfway through the night, Julien realized he was alone. Victor had made his way to Marianne’s room and Julien could hear the sound of their voices and moans. It was a good thing the old man was half-deaf. Julien felt a sort of anger rise inside him as he lay on his back in a thin strip of moonlight that streamed through the window. He was fed up with being treated like a boy, while Victor did as he pleased.
The following day, Victor and Marianne both set off, Marianne to once again shepherd children to the border, and Victor to complete some business for the Armée Juive, a secret Jewish militia that he clearly didn’t wish to discuss.
“Why can’t you say where you’re going?” Julien complained, feeling left out, as if he were still a child when he was almost as tall and as strong as his brother.
Victor grabbed him in a rough embrace. “You don’t need to know.”
Privately, he believed he did know, and once Victor had gone, Julien searched the bureau. Sure enough, the rucksack was gone. He worried about his brother, driving like a madman with a bag full of explosives, but he envied him as well.
“Time for you to get to work,” Monsieur Félix told him as he was moping around.
Julien was taught to do chores on the farm and took a liking to the little goat, Bluebell, who followed him around. He wasn’t yet allowed to collect the honeycombs from the beehives.
“For that you need an experienced beekeeper,” Félix told him. “You’re not ready.”
But Julien had the sort of fearlessness a person needed to tend bees, and soon he’d convinced Monsieur Félix to let him try his hand. As they worked, Félix explained what happened here at the farm. Identity documents would arrive with a man who traveled from town to town, the papers hidden in the frame of his bicycle. He was a postman, therefore no one thought to stop him as he made his rounds through the mountains. Monsieur Félix was to give the documents to Marianne to use in transporting children across the border.
The postman came, a quiet, skinny fellow who had no problem bicycling throughout this rough terrain. Julien saw him give Monsieur Félix an envelope before he rode on. Félix disappeared into the dusk. When Julien went outside to look for him, he was coming back from the barn. He asked about the papers, but the old man shrugged.
“Hidden away so no one would ever find them. I’m smarter than I look. The Germans could send a thousand soldiers, and search for a thousand days, they still wouldn’t find them.”
“Maybe you should tell me, in case you’re not here and Marianne needs them.”
“I’ll always be here.” The old man continued to limp after his encounter with the Germans, still he was fast, and Julien had to struggle to keep up with him when they went to collect the chickens, who were let free during the day. “Anyway,” he went on as they walked, “I couldn’t tell you. They could torture it out of you, but with me it’s different. I’ll never talk. I’ve done this transaction thirty-three times, which means thirty-three souls are alive.” He slapped Julien on the back. “Now that you’re my helper, the next soul who is saved can be yours.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE MESSAGE
ARDÈCHE, SEPTEMBER 1942
VICTOR ARRIVED AT THE SAFE house one blue evening, cutting his headlights before turning off the road. There were