Oil for the lamps is always in short supply and we suffer the indignity of using “latrines”—buckets that must be taken out and dumped—for our most basic needs. We have to line up for food, but at the very least, we know we will not starve.
Indeed, businesses spring up in the caves. When he has access to flour, the baker can makepain au levainandpains-biscuits, sending warmth and the mouthwatering aroma of baking bread through its section of the cellars; the grocery often has a stock of vegetables and canned goods, and very occasionally offers grapes, apples, or even pears for sale.
Somehow, Monsieur Émile Legrand found us down there, in Dakar. He brought a note from my fiancé, and another present: This time it was a wheel of cheese, so I suppose he was listening. He sent a postcard, telling me he was well, and wishing me better.
In the caves a small café proffers coffee and tea, and even champagne and brandy; the woman in charge sets out little tables and chairs so we can pretend we are sitting outside, enjoying the air.
Monsieur Legrand and I took a glass of champagne there, feeling quite daring. He told me he was sorry to see my family living down in the caves, but was happy to know we were safe. At my heartfelt urging he spoke of his life in the trenches; he said he felt like ananimal, poking his head above the earthen rim of his ditch only to feed and to kill.
I told him we made quite the pair, both running to ground to survive.
He told me that he writes several times a week to hismarraine, a woman who lives in Australia, which is a country clear on the other side of the world, where no bombs fall. He laughed when I asked whether he had ever seen the ocean, and whether we might sail away to that land of peace, after the war.
Before leaving, he asked if he could leave a bundle of hismarraine’s letters with me for safekeeping; he invited me to read them at will.
When I stood I remarked that I thought the champagne was going to my head. He smiled and quoted his favorite poet, a man named Charles Baudelaire:
One must always be drunk. That’s it—that’s the only question. In order not to feel the horrible burden of time that weighs on your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunk without pause.... But drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you wish.
I made him write it down for me. To be honest, I am not sure whether my head was affected by the champagne or by the man himself.
This time, I nearly cried to see him go.
?My family fell into a pattern: Upon rising and sharing tea, my mother and I would tidy our niche, which meant folding our blankets, dusting, and sweeping up the chalky white powder that sifteddown incessantly from the walls and ceiling. Henri would venture deeper into the caves to find out through the grapevine whether any new supplies were expected that day and, if so, where we were supposed to line up. My father would remain mute, sitting on a scavenged chair and staring at the bottles that provided us a modicum of privacy.
He was not the only one; I would venture to say that the great majority of those dwelling in the underground shared that same vacant stare, beset by the treacherous malaise that attacks one who has lost too much.
The children, meanwhile, ran wild.
Had I been only a few years younger, I’m quite certain I would have joined them—most likely I would have led the little gang, running through the tunnels and mounting crude stairs, discovering hidden niches and tunnels within tunnels, exploring galleries that led onto wider galleries or narrow passages or dropped into steep pits, pretending to be in Alice’s world.
But as it was, my mother drew me aside and told me I must do something to help.
“What am I to do about it?” I asked. “No one else is doing anything.”
“You must,” she said. “You are able, and therefore you must.”
My mother was not a woman to be gainsaid. And it was clear she was right; this was no way to live.
First, I joined the small groups that waited for a pause in the shelling, and then went to sift through charred remains, searching for anything of value: unbroken chairs, serviceable blankets, even pretty little items that would remind us of the before time. We raided the ruins of a pharmacy and helped to stock the “hospital” that had been set up in a large quarry pit; a soot-covered Madonna was rescued from the cathedral, cleaned, and brought down to grace ourunderground chapel. We scavenged from a damaged interior decorator’s shop, and were able to embellish parts of the cellars with wallpaper and figurines; it may sound silly but it provided a degree of normalcy to some family niches and well-used sections of the caves.
The bravest children were able to help, slipping through openings too small for adults and reaching into crevices between the rubble to extract items of value. Though it was hazardous to be outside, we learned to stay close to standing buildings, to dart quickly across open areas, and to listen for shells and bullets.
One little girl of seven years, Topette, began to follow me around. She has no idea what happened to her family; as far as she could explain it to me, she last saw her parents at the train station, when they were waiting for permission to evacuate. Her father had to go back to their home to retrieve some important papers, but when he did not return, her mother ordered her to stay right where she was, by the pillar closest to the track; her mother disappeared into the crowd, and that was the last time she saw her. Through her tears, Topette told me she stayed by the pillar as long as she could, but night came and went, her stomach hurt, and she wet her pants. Finally she disobeyed her mother and ran home, but their house was now no more than a bombed-out crater.
Topette and I were mending privacy curtains one day when Monsieur Albert Corpart, the longtime vineyard manager of Pommery champagne house, came down to the caves.
He announced he was looking for help to bring in the harvest.
Dull eyes turned to him, wondering if it were true. The vines were now on the front line of the fighting; how could he expect us to bring in the grapes?
But Monsieur Corpart is well-known to all for hisentêtement, his pigheadedness. After working in Pommery’s vineyards and nurturingthe plants for nearly thirty years, he was not about to abandon his precious vines to the vicissitudes of war.
“The winery has no access to proper money since the banks closed,” Monsieur Corpart explained, “but workers will be paid in vouchers that can be used at any local businesses, and after the war, Pommery promises to make good on the markers. All of our healthy young workers have gone to battle theBoches, but you women and children, and anyone else feeling well enough, can wage war against the enemy in the classic way of theRémois: You can help make champagne.”
He was asking us to bring in the grapes, to lay up bottles of a Victory Vintage that would develop bubbles and be ready to drink only after this wretched war was over. For some reason I thought of Monsieur Émile Legrand; I imagined sharing a glass with him in peacetime, long after the war.
Despite the bombs, despite everything, Monsieur Corpart was asking us to make the wine.
