At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf Read online

  At the Hour

  Between

  Dog and Wolf

  A NOVEL

  Tara Ison

  NEW YORK, NY

  Copyright © 2023 by Tara Ison.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquiries to:

  Ig Publishing

  Box 2547

  New York, NY 10163

  www.igpub.com

  ISBN: 978-1632461-46-9

  “entre chien et loup”

  —French expression: “between dog

  and wolf,” i.e, twilight or dusk

  “ To do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.”

  —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  My Life

  My Friends

  My Faith

  My Family

  My Home

  MY LIFE

  by Marie-Jeanne Chantier

  10 March, 1941

  La Perrine, France

  My name is Marie-Jeanne Chantier, and I am twelve years old. My parents named me for the Blessed Virgin, and also for Saint Jeanne d’Arc, the young girl who had short hair and saved France from hostile foreign invaders a long time ago. I pray one day I will be that heroic and brave. Maman and Papa died last year in a tragic car accident outside Paris, bringing toys to poor orphans at the convent. Now I live here in the country in La Perrine, with tante Berthe, tonton Claude, and cousin Luc, who were very kind to take me in with good Christian charity and give me such a wonderful home.

  Every morning I love to milk the pretty red cow. I like the warm hay smell of the barn and the cool clay of the root cellar when I help tante Berthe sort potatoes and carrots. We send most of what we grow to the brave German soldiers, of course, who are fighting to save us from the godless Communists.

  But the happiest part of the week is Sundays when it’s holy and I go to church. I always pray first for our dear leader, Marshal Petain, who is saving France for us, and helping us return to honor and good moral order. Then I pray for my dear Maman and Papa, then for the poor children everywhere who aren’t so fortunate as me to have warm clothes or enough to eat.

  I miss my parents, but I’m grateful to our Heavenly Father for all the blessings in my new life. I know Maman and Papa are watching over me with Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, and Saint Jeanne. And one day we will all be together again, in Heaven.

  What a joke.

  It’s all lies, every word of it. That made-up girl. A stupid assignment I had to write for school here. I added the “poor orphans” part at the last moment, and my teacher just loved that, he doesn’t see it’s all a made-up story. But that’s good, it means I’m doing everything right. Keeping everyone safe. And he’s so easy to lie to. Everyone in this place is. It’s funny, really. Claire would think it’s funny.

  Claire? Are you asleep? Are you brushing your hair so it crackles? Laying out your pink skirt for school tomorrow? Maybe you’re sitting on the red velvet sofa with your maman and papa, all of you together, listening to music on the radio? I hope so.

  Are you worrying where I am? How I am?

  Maybe if I think to you hard enough, you’ll hear me. Or maybe you’ll feel it, inside, and think back about me, I’ll feel that, too, and it won’t be so empty cold dark all the time.

  I miss you so much, Claire. I have no one to talk to, only people I can lie to, and that’s not the same. I wish I could write you a real letter, not just think the true things to you, but that man Claude says it’s too dangerous, the government opens and reads everyone’s letters now, but that’s good, it’s for our own protection.

  I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye, or write you a note, but my mother made us leave so quickly. I try not to think about her, though, or my father, when I do my throat gets hot and sharp inside like something is burning stuck there I can’t swallow away, or maybe I’ll start crying and not stop, I’ll break and smash in a hundred glinty pieces like a bottle on the sidewalk, and they’ll hear me, they’ll come with the knives and guns and burning gas, the end of everything and all my fault.

  But I won’t cry. I just have to keep lying and not make a mistake, and that’s not so hard, like being an actress in a movie, maybe. And I’m good at it. And it’s just for a little while anyway, my mother promised she will come back for me when the war is over and she’s done being Underground, and everything will be just the same as before. Except for my father, but I don’t want to think about that. And you and I will go to America and become famous movie actresses together, like Deanna Durbin or Shirley Temple, like we always said.

  You remember that, Claire, don’t you? You haven’t forgotten me, have you?

  Because they can’t stop me from remembering you. Or from thinking the true things to you and being the real me inside my own head. It’s like knowing a secret trick, like the magician at your birthday party when we were little made that lady disappear, poof, remember? So I know I can’t ever really disappear. I know inside forever I’ll always be Danielle.

  FEBRUARY, 1941

  “Marie-Jeanne?”

  Who?

  She turns over in the hard bed, presses the pillow to her ears. There is no one here by that name. No one here is called that,

  “Marie-Jeanne, the cow does not milk herself!”

  and there is no cow here, no milking or grimy, fly-buzzing barn. She curls herself under the rough blanket, it’s so cold, she’ll hurry back to sleep, where it’s satin warm, and now she is strolling through a gleaming city of polished stone, like diamonds shiny with fire. But the city is on fire, she realizes, hurry, she must run, is running, there is blazing air, the river a white boil, houses cracking to splinter and flame, no, that’s boots, soldier boots crack cracking on pavement, and drums beat beating inside her bones. A howling boy, a flash of metal, the boy’s hands are sliced off, the boy is reaching for her, reaching with bright dripping stumps, crying for her to help him, save him, and she doesn’t know how. Hurry, hide, flee! Paintings and marble angels smeared with human filth, glass shattering, lungs seared and bursting into blood, Maman, she cries out, Papa? Where are they, did they leave her here all alone? And she must hide, be hidden, hurry, her mother said so, You’ll be safe here, Danielle! But it’s still after her, the march marching soldiers and hot knives, the choking gas, blistering flesh, the screams, the golden bubbles of blood, and she startles awake, again.

  She blinks. It’s still dark, still quiet. In this strange room, bed, house. But safe here, yes. Just a bad dream. That beat beating is just her heart. She breathes the cold air deep, closes her eyes again, waiting, listening, for any moment now,

  Wake up, lazy girl, she will hear Maman call, You’ll be late for school!

  And she’ll leap from the satin-coverlet bed she shares with her doll Adele, sink her feet in pink carpet, hurry to braid her hair and button her blouse. She’ll run downstairs for a bowl of milk, a butter and jam tartine, a pipe-smelling kiss from Papa, Maman chiding for her messy braids or a lost glove. The three of them planning the weekend, maybe dinner at Drouand’s? A movie with Papa on Sunday, and hot chocolate, a wafer cookie before their walk home over the bridge?

  Danielle, she will hear. Danielle, they will call, any moment now, calling for—

  “Marie-Jeanne!”

  Not her mother’s voice. She tightens her closed eyes, pushes her face against the coarse pillowslip. That is a strange woman’s voice, it’s that woman Berthe, calling for Marie-Jeanne. It’s been this way for six mornings, in the early dark before she opens her eyes and is still home, in Paris, her real home, real bedroom. Still Danielle, her grandmother once told her th
at means God is my judge in Hebrew, she remembers. Not anymore. It’s Marie-Jeanne, now.

  She pulls the scratchy wool blanket over her face, tries to twist herself back and away into sleep, it doesn’t matter what frightening thing awaits her there. But she sees her mother, and that woman, Berthe, the first night here, in this house, hunched over a candle in the smoky, cabbage-smelling downstairs, whispering about papers while that strange man Claude paced and cracked his knuckles, all of them busy coming up with the first lie, the biggest, most important lie. The lie of a name.

  “Marie-Jeanne!”

  A man’s shout, that man Claude, and then a boy’s mean laugh. That boy, Luc. It used to be his job to milk the cow every morning and now it’s hers and he just loves that, loves watching the cow’s tail slap-sting her face, loves watching her struggle to lift the full pail, the wire handle a knife blade in her frozen hands, and then step-sliding in chicken droppings and dirty straw. She pushes the blanket aside, opens her eyes. In the growing-blue light she sees the braid shapes of onion and garlic hanging from raw wooden beams overhead. This is her room, now. She knows above her on the wall is a wooden crucifix with Jesus on it from when he died, but at least she doesn’t have to see it when she’s lying in this bed. She sits up, shivering in her nightgown. She sees the slight trickle-shine of ice on the wall, where the wet comes through a crack in the window frame Claude said he’d fix but has not. Downstairs will be a piece of tough bread that hurts to bite, the merest scrape of butter, no milk, just a cup of water clouded with the smallest tip of cream. Most of the milk gets sent to the Germans, and most of their stored vegetables, too, which means the aches of helping Berthe stuff dirty, winter-cold potatoes into heavy sacks. Once she saw Berthe spit on them and curse.

  But no breakfast at all today, Berthe has told her. Not on Sunday. The Christian Sabbath. It is her first Sunday here, first Catholic Sunday, first time going to the village. First time going to church. Berthe has explained it, how the priest will drink wine and put the blessed host in her mouth, Just like the bread and wine at the Last Supper, Marie-Jeanne, but it’s now the very body and blood of Jesus Christ, His precious gift to us, isn’t that beautiful? She’d tried to smile and nod, as if that wasn’t both horrible and ridiculous to think about. Maman and Papa drink, used to drink, special sweet wine on Shabbat, with a tiny sip for her from the silver cup, a bite of rich yellow challah bread, but no one pretended it was anything but wine and bread. Why is that so beautiful to these people, eating pretend flesh and blood?

  And why do they have to go to church at all, really? Papa says, used to say, God wasn’t only in synagogue and church and reciting old prayers, He was in the everyday kindnesses we do, and the shapes of petals and shells, the rhymes of words, the shiver of cello strings and the colors of the twilight sky and everywhere there were beautiful things. Maybe today will just be like going to a museum then, she thinks. Like a school trip to study the art.

  But Berthe hasn’t allowed her beyond the garden for six days, Too dangerous, she’d warned, so why does she have to go now, today, out where the danger is, strange people to be Marie-Jeanne for, the whole village watching and judging? It would be so easy to do something wrong. Make a mistake. Get found out, get taken away, hurry run hide, the knives and guns, blood in gutters, hot and sticky thick, screams and smoke and--

  “Marie-Jeanne!”

  She throws the blanket aside and stands, feels the wood burn like ice beneath her bare feet. Yes. That is who you are now. A lie of a girl. She shivers.

  This is what is real, now.

  “Our Father who art in Heaven …”

  “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy …”

  “Come, Marie-Jeanne, let’s hear them again. Our Father … ?”

  “Why can’t I wear my own dress? My blue one?”

  “This will be fine on you, just be still.”

  She is standing by the kitchen stove with Berthe, trying to absorb its meager warmth, while Berthe buttons her into an old wool dress, taken in by handfuls on the sides and up at the knees and still too big. It’s an ugly dun yellow, home-sewn, clean but stiff with stale air and dust.

  “Shouldn’t I dress up for church?” It’s practically new, her blue dress. A special dress, velvet, satin sash, tiny roses on the cuffs. Claire was so envious of that dress, but she never let her borrow it. It wasn’t Claire’s color. And a lady always knows which colors are most becoming, Maman says. Used to say. Blue and green are best for a girl with red hair, like Maman, like Danielle.

  “We dress as good as you people do,” Luc says. He’s at the table, rubbing his cracked black shoes with a rag. He’s fourteen, with a mottled forehead and chin, always simmering and annoyed and he smells different from how girls smell. He has black hair that juts out everywhere, and black eyes with dark circles around them like a lady’s smudged makeup. His ears stick out from his head and his long bones bump out from his shoulders and wrists, although Berthe treats him like her precious baby boy, fussing about his eating enough and buttoning his coat. They’re supposed to be cousins now, Berthe tells her, and love each other like brother and sister, but he glares at her when she eats Berthe’s food, he kicks at dead birds he finds on the ground, and she tries to stay out of his way.

  “You people don’t even kneel down to pray.” He spits on a shoe.

  “Hush,” Berthe says to him, then a glance at Danielle’s face.

  Ignore him, she thinks. Just pretend you’re somewhere else. Somewhere pretty. She tries to picture the shop windows on the way to school, where she and Claire always stop to study the clothes, yes, and she will try to talk Claire into the pink dress, which is more becoming for a girl with brown hair. Then they’ll study the movie posters at the Odeon. Claire likes Charles Boyer and Clark Gable, and she likes Franchot Tone and Spencer Tracy, and they will argue over which they will marry when they grow up.

  “You don’t even show that respect to our Lord,” Luc is saying.

  “Luc,” says Claude. “Enough.” He wipes his face at the sink, straining his bulk at an awkward angle, trying not to splash his black suit gone gray at the elbows and knees, his carefully ironed shirt.

  “She must’ve packed it,” she says, her pretty blue dress, the picture in a magazine, she remembers hurrying with her mother to the Galleries Lafayette, her promises not to get it wrinkled or stained. Just a few months ago, glossy magazines and smart dresses in shop windows. Perfumed department stores, a new winter white coat with a fur collar, the matching hat. She’d worn them on the train when they left Paris, the middle of the night, just a week ago, how can it be only a week? Maman in a stylish traveling suit, hers had a fur collar, too. But no lipstick, no jewelry, her hair in a loose braid. She’d never seen her mother leave the house without a well-placed piece of jewelry, without her red hair curled in a perfect shining crown. And she wore a pair of Danielle’s father’s boots, Hurry, Danielle, just do what I’m telling you! Her mother never wore anything but high heels. And that tone of voice, full of edges. No, you can’t say good-bye to Claire, you can’t bring Adele, you’re a big girl now!

  “It should be in the suitcase,” she insists. The small leather valise, her mother handed it over to Berthe that first night and she hasn’t seen it since. She’s been wearing the same gray dress, the same green sweater, hating the animal-dung-and-old-vegetable smell of barn gripping her hair and clothes after doing her chores. Maman lets her dab perfume on her wrists, choose from the crystal bottles on her vanity table, You choose, cherie. Chanel No. 5 or Jacqueminot.

  The scent of roses in the sun …

  “Really, Berthe, why can’t I just wear my own dress?”

  “This was my Sunday dress when I was little.” Berthe finishes the buttons, turns her around. “Now, again. Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy … ?”

  “I’ve practiced all week, Berthe. I’ve said them a million times.” “Tante Berthe.”

  “When it’s just us, here? Why do we have to—”

  “Don’t ar
gue with your aunt, Marie-Jeanne.” Claude dampens his comb and arranges hairs across his freckled scalp, still bent forward. He has a stiff arm he can’t raise above his head, a shoulder wound from Verdun, Berthe has told her, proud. He looks crooked when he stands, his jacket pulled out of alignment on one side. Tante Berthe and tonton Claude, more lies, just her grandparents’ old butler and maid, who she doesn’t even remember. What a joke. She can’t picture this uncle ladling soup from a porcelain tureen to her frowning grandfather on Passover or Yom Kippur. She can’t see him cracking his knuckles in front of them, taking up so much space. Berthe, too, is a thick person, doughy, as if she and Maman could be sisters! Her brown and gray hair is scraped into a potato-sized bun at the back of her head, pierced with wooden pins. There’s a ruddy lace of broken veins across her nose; her fingers are always swollen and red. Danielle has seen her twist the green tops off whole bunches of turnips with those angry-looking hands. She can’t imagine those hands folding linen napkins into flowers for her grandmother’s table.

  “You need to understand this isn’t a game.” He peers in the small mirror above the sink, smooths his mustache. “How dangerous this is, for all of us.”

  “I do.”

  “Claude,” Berthe says. “It was our Christian duty.”

  “Yes, and she needs to appreciate the sacrifices we’re all making.”

  “I do. Really.” She is tired of hearing about their Christian duty to take her into their home, about all the danger she brings, and Doesn’t she know how lucky she is? She wishes they could just let her alone, like her first days here, to lie curled on her oniony bed or sit by the stove and wind mutton-smelling balls of wool, or work by herself in the garden, scattering straw on the frozen ground. She was so tired, those first few days, her feet swollen, legs with hot bone aches, toe blisters that ran a thin fluid then turned to crust, and when she awoke those first mornings her eyes were puffed up so sore and tight she could hardly see. Berthe has said she hears her crying at night sometimes, calling for Maman or Papa, but she doesn’t believe that. How could she cry and not wake up? And she is trying so hard not to cry, ever, no, she will never cry again. She swallows, hard.