she was restless, confused as to why she’d been kept in the house for so long.
“Well, you’re definitely alive,” Julien said. He untied her, and the little goat leaned her head against him. She had green eyes and was very quiet. Perhaps she knew what had befallen her owner.
He led the goat downstairs by the rope coiled around her neck and took her out to the barn, where there was hay for her to eat. He thought of Monsieur Félix, who had helped to save so many lives of fleeing Jews and was now hanging from a rafter. There were flies in the barn, too many of them. Julien took an old jacket that was hung on a peg. Monsieur Félix was dead, and therefore taking the jacket wasn’t technically stealing. One owed a man like Monsieur Félix a debt of gratitude; because of this, once the sun had risen Julien grabbed a shovel and went out behind the barn and dug a grave. It took a while and the sun was surprisingly hot for the season.
Julien went back into the house, to search the kitchen for a sharp knife, then cut down Monsieur Félix. The body was heavy as it collapsed against him. It smelled like the moss on the trees in the woods, like bitter weeds. Julien folded the corpse onto a blanket, then pulled the blanket along, out the door and down the porch steps, dragging the dead man behind the barn. He kept the knife tucked in his waistband.
“I’m so sorry I don’t know your prayers,” Julien said after he had placed the farmer in the grave. His face was wet with tears. Still, he did the best he could, reciting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.
Blessed is He, beyond any blessing and song, praise and consolation that are uttered in the world.
Amen.
Afterward he covered the body with hard, cold earth, sweating more than before, for he was wearing the old man’s jacket. The last of the bees were buzzing around him; it was the end of their season and they were wild. Julien had to bat them away. The sun was bright, with silvery light spilling over the fields. When he was done Julien went into the barn, where he drank water from the goat’s bucket. She nudged him, and he realized there was something in the pocket of the jacket that had belonged to the farmer, a beekeeper’s mask of cheesecloth, with the eyes cut out. A bee sat on his arm, so he stayed steady until it lifted and flew away.
He began to consider what a thousand soldiers could look at a thousand times and never think anything might be hidden there. He knew there was a rational manner in which to approach this problem. Mathematics had been his first language, after all. He cut the farm into sections in his mind, as if it were a pie. The house was in one section, the barn in another, the vegetable garden in another, the field in still another, and then there were the woods beyond. He thought about each of those sections, and where the papers might be, but all of the possibilities seemed too obvious. What would a thousand soldiers ignore?
He walked into the field. It was the least likely place. There wasn’t much there. Cabbages, leeks, the large sunflower stalks leaning over like dead men in the chill air, an overturned wheelbarrow. The bees were clustered in the hive, keeping each other warm, but a few that had been guarding the entrance flitted out and surrounded him, so many their buzzing rang in his ears. He had no fear at all, only curiosity. The hives were at the edge of the far woods. It was possible to see the mountains from here, with their crags of gray volcanic rock. The sky was so blue, but inside that blue there were a hundred shades. There were bees buzzing around him. The old man had once told him he had no fear of God’s creatures, and in turn the creatures knew this and respected him.
Julien stopped in his tracks. The least likely place was right in front of him.
He slipped on the mask he had found in the jacket pocket. As he approached a hive, he was covered with bees. He slid his hand inside the wooden box and reached up. The buzzing was more like a throbbing now, but he was used to noise inside his head and this was