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Russian prisoners.
“This is English,” Hal suddenly says, snagging my attention back from trying to remember what Grandad told me.
“You sure?” Gabriel asks, holding an unfolded letter. “It doesn’t look like it.”
“I’m almost sure it’s English.” Hal insists. “The script is hard to read because I think it’s that swirly old German script I think it’s called Frankfort or something.”
“Franktur.” Pierre reads out from her phone. “Try typing in the letters you do recognise.”
We try, it’s not easy because the writer although definitely writing in English, has a very strange spelling. In the end we manage to salvage a paragraph.
to beetful engel bringing the morning bred vizgret kayndnes and merci. … thank you about tek denjer … Good by engel... Pre this wor finish you are gret welcam in Riga my mather mek you best gest. weshing long life to happiness thank you. Alyosha
“Alyosha is the Russian short for Alexei.” Pierre who seems to be the linguist among us, or maybe she’s just good at puzzles, seems to understand it. “This is what I …think… he might be trying to say. “‘To beautiful angel bringing the morning bread…’ something I can’t work out… then,‘kindness and mercy. Thank you for taking on danger. Goodbye Angel. Pray this war finishes and you’ll be greatly welcomed in Riga. My mother will make you the best guest. Wishing you long life and happiness thank you. Alyosha.’”
“Riga as in Latvia.” I say to no one, just thinking aloud.
Pierre glances up, dropping the letter back on the bed.“Elodie? You’ve worked something out, haven’t you?”
All eyes swing to me.
“Probably, I’m not sure.” I hesitate. “But if I’m right, then...”
Gabriel stands up. “Come on just tell us.”
I glance at Hal, but he’s picked up the letter and is frowning at it.
“I think the names in the notebook are escaped Russian prisoners,” I begin. “Someone must have been hiding them here until they could escape. Probably taking them down that insane cliff path to the beach. The resistance would have had a boat to smuggle them out. And the book…” I pick it up to flip the pages. “See how there is more writing we couldn’t decipher? It has more dates. They all have a single date which always tends to be after June 1941 which was when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. I think these are dates of when they were captured and imprisoned. Then if you look further down, there are pairs of dates, like this 1.12.1943--one word—17.2.1944. They are all like that.”
“So, these must be the dates they were here in hiding.” Pierre comes to sit beside me and tries to read. “This is a record of everyone who was rescued. Names, dates of birth, dates of when they escaped from the Germans, and finally when they left the island.”
“But why write it all down?” Gabriel asks. “I mean if the Nazis found this, they would have arrested everyone within a mile of this little cottage?”
“A record,” Hal says, crossing his arms over his chest as if cold. “In case they never made it, so someone would be able to tell their families. That explains the letters.” He picks up one of the envelopes. “It has an address on the front, also in Russian.”
“You think the resistance stumbled on this cottage and were using it?” Gabriel picks up the wooden panel engraved with the image of the cottage.
“No,” I say before I can stop myself. If what I’m thinking is right, it will affect Hal. But it really is a wild guess, so I have to go carefully.
“It’s that one letter in English. I think Alyosha must have been writing to a woman. Or a girl. You don’t call another man, beautiful Angel.” I say this to Hal, waiting for him.
He must know what it means. And this time he does look at me. “I know where you’re going with this, but you’re wrong.” He gets to his feet.
“It has to be.” I can’t keep the excitement from my voice. “Who else could have brought him bread every day if not someone in your family? I think it was the wife or daughter of Hector the baker. Taking bread meant for the Germans to feed the prisoners.”
Hal’s eyes, never actually gentle on me, harden even more, his face goes very rigid. “You don’t know that. If she,” he holds up the letter, “was a Hemingway and had been helping the resistance then why didn’t her family say so after the Germans left? Why endure decades of persecution and name calling when they had this incredible evidence of heroism?”
And with that, he bangs out of the cottage.
Gabriel exchanges looks with Pierre. “What am I missing?” he asks.
“It’s been a very difficult day for him. Twice today there’s been an exciting discovery which in the end turned out to be a disappointment. None of it will make a difference to the problem of the sale. And besides…” I say, my voice thick from trying not to cry. “He doesn’t want to stir up that old story. In the past every time they tried to shed new light on their history, it only led to more trouble. He’d rather not go there.”
I have to stop talking because I’m seriously in danger of crying. This last reaction, his rigid face, his anger, it finally makes me understand something about Hal.
At the beginning, I thought he was cold and unfriendly, even hostile. But he’s not hostile at all. He wasn’t then and he isn’t now. Hal feels things intensely and cares so much that harm to those he loves cuts him very deeply. The rigid expression, the refusal to even look at me, it’s a shield. A deliberate locking of the face, of the jaw muscles, against feelings he doesn’t want to have.
The Hemingway history is an old wound that he can’t let himself reopen. He has locked his heart against any hope of mending the past because hope makes you vulnerable and allows the possibility of pain. And the only way he knows how to deal with the hurt is to be angry. At the people of La Canette, at my grandfather, and now at me.
