Last Message Read online

  I paced in the room for the rest of the afternoon, imagining what might happen tomorrow, and what, exactly, I should do. The Noels would be really old now, their two children about seventy. Maybe none of them were still alive, not even the children; maybe there would be no trace of them at all. Perhaps no one around here would remember them. Would this be a wild-goose chase? Was it ridiculous?

  I went out and ate in the café next to the hotel, getting by on my fractured French, helped out by a good-looking young waitress, probably about seventeen or eighteen. She had short ragged blond hair, cut to look like it had been torn, and a big smile. She was wearing a long white T-shirt with the word L’Amour written on it, over black-and-yellow-striped tights. She had a bright orange scarf wrapped around her neck, looking like she had just tossed it there, and yet it was perfect. And very artistic. She asked “Américain?” before I even opened my mouth, and then giggled and pointed out what she thought I might eat. I wondered how she knew where I was from. I was wearing jeans (good ones, mind you, bought in an outlet mall in Buffalo) and my best Aéropostale T-shirt. I knew that was a French word, something to do with air, so I thought it made sense to wear it here. In fact, I had two of them and intended to wear them both a lot on this trip.

  I went for a walk after I finished eating and tried to imagine what it must have been like for Van Gogh in the 1880s. Because the town was so historical—other than the cars and people in modern clothing, it didn’t look like it had changed a great deal—it was easy to believe I was seeing what he saw. I strolled north along the river to the place where his yellow house once stood and found a plaque with a reproduction of one of his paintings on it, but little else. Just a park and some busy streets. It didn’t matter; his art lived on. I went back to the hotel and got into bed early. Despite the time change and how exhausted I was, it was hard to sleep. I was too excited. I couldn’t wait for tomorrow. I knew that it would change my life.

  SEVEN

  REVELATION IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

  I got the concierge (I couldn’t believe how they pronounced that in France, so weird) at the hotel, who spoke fairly good English, to hail a taxi for me and let the driver know that I wanted to go to the village of Bellegarde, and that I was looking for someone named Jean Noel in that area. My driver wasn’t an Arab man this time, but a French woman, middle-aged and chain-smoking but as slim as a straw and dressed as colorfully and stylishly as my waitress had been. She talked all the way to Bellegarde, which thankfully was only about fifteen minutes away. She kept waving her arms as she spoke, popping her cigarette in and out of her mouth. I didn’t understand a word she said.

  I told her my plan was to start at the City Hall or a tourism booth, but she did me a favor by paying no attention and insisting that I get out in front of a café that looked like the most popular place in town. I immediately had the feeling that you could find anyone in this neck of the woods if you asked at this establishment. It was packed, even at this early hour, and they were all obviously locals—no fancy Paris or even Marseille styling was going on. They were plainly dressed, or at least as plainly dressed as the French could be, which wasn’t all that plain and a lot fancier than most Americans. Many were sitting outside. The windows, which ran the length of the building, were wide open, so you could see everyone inside too.

  I strode past the outdoor customers, who were leaning over their little round metal tables, drinking coffee and wine (believe it or not, at this hour), eating bread and cheese or quiche or crepes, everyone talking loudly, waving their hands to make what appeared to be very important points. I walked up to the counter inside, half expecting someone to ask me to leave, since this was obviously an adult place, as evidenced by the wine. But no one seemed to care.

  “I…am…” I began, very slowly and loudly, somehow convinced that the louder and slower I spoke the easier it would be to understand my American English, “looking for…someone…named…Jean Noel.”

  The man behind the counter introduced himself as Monsieur Leblanc, the owner, and said something very quickly. It may or may not have been “Jean Noel?” It sounded like “Sha-nole?”

  I plucked up my courage.

  “Et sa femme Yvette!” My French teacher would be very proud.

  “Yvette!” cried someone nearby. “Jean et Yvette Noel?” There was no doubt about what he had said. I turned toward the outdoor seating area to see an old man rising to his feet, the legs of his ornate metal chair grinding on the stones. He wore a blue beret and a long double-breasted coat, even though it was a warm summer day. Once he was standing, he struggled toward me, using his cane to keep upright.

  “Américain?” he asked as he approached.

  “Oui.”

  “Pourquoi cherchez-vous les Noels?” He had a big veiny nose and bloodshot blue eyes. He smiled at me with a look of genuine kindness. But he had spoken so fast that I had absolutely no idea what he had said. I turned to the café owner, who surprised me by saying, “He wants to know why it is that you search for la famille Noel.” It was pretty heavily accented English, but certainly understandable, thank goodness.

  I spoke slowly. “Tell him…that my grandfather… was an American pilot…shot down…near here… during the Second World War. The Noels…found him…and kept him…in their home…safe from the Nazis…and the Milice.”

  The old man had looked toward the café owner partway through my speech, searching for the correct translation, but his head snapped back at me when he heard the word Milice.

  The owner translated what I had said and as he did, the old man began staring at me, absolutely staring, as if he had seen a ghost, and then his eyes filled with tears. He looked at me for the longest time, then seized me by the face, kissed me on both cheeks and then on the lips. It was absolutely disgusting.

  He turned to the entire café and shouted what sounded like, “C’est le petit-fils de David McLean! C’est le petit-fils de David McLean!” Even I knew that “petit-fils” meant grandson. There were maybe thirty customers seated at the tables. Half of them—the younger ones—remained exactly as they were, still talking or staring at their newspapers. Another quarter looked up with interest—they were middle-aged. And the last quarter—the elderly—immediately struggled to their feet and began to shout and cheer in my direction. Within moments, they were coming toward me as fast as they could go (which wasn’t very fast—it was like a mob of elderly groupies coming at me in slow motion) and soon they were surrounding me, each and every one trying to lay another peck on my cheek.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was in Monsieur Leblanc’s little Citroën car, the old man in the front passenger seat and me stuffed into the back, knees up near my chin. Every now and then, the old man would turn around and grip my hand and pat it.

  They were taking me to the Noels’ home.

  I couldn’t believe it. It would have been pretty cool if that home were simply where the descendants—the children and their children—lived now, in Bellegarde or Arles, but no, as Monsieur Leblanc made clear in his translations, we were actually heading to the little farmhouse where my grandfather had been harbored nearly seventy years ago!

  My heart was pounding as I listened to him.

  “The home is still standing,” Monsieur Leblanc said.

  “It is?”

  “Mais oui, but Monsieur et Madame Noel do not live there anymore.”

  “They are alive?”

  “Of course. We peasants live long, hardy lives en Provence.” He didn’t pronounce his hs. I wondered why he couldn’t just spit them out. It wasn’t that hard.

  “That’s amazing.”

  “Not as amazing as your being here is to the older people of Bellegarde. I am sure that word is spreading through the village. Apparently your grandfather, Monsieur McLean, was a—how do you say?—a celebrity around here. He was the only American pilot the Resistance found near here and got to safety. We all know that your grandfather was very kind to the Noels after that, sent them money that made their lives bear
able, allowing them to move to a nice house near Bellegarde, since a few years ago.”

  “Just a few years ago?”

  “They are very stubborn people. Their children—their daughter Lise is retired en Paris and their son Antoine was a, uh, air-traffic controller at the aéro-port en Marseille and is retired there too—they could not convince the old people to leave their home until recently. It had no indoor plumbing, no electric heat, nothing, but they would not move. But now, they must. For le démolition, you know.”

  “Demolition?”

  “They are building many new homes here, what you Americans call, I believe, a subdivision. Rich people, they like to live in southern France, you know. It is fashionable in these parts—the home of Van Gogh et Gauguin—and it has gorgeous weather.”

  I had noticed how many new homes were in the region. The roads were busy and the countryside was receding. It looked like very little farming was going on anymore.

  “Nothing has been done to their home yet. There were protests, you know, and le démolition was held up by the courts. But it is set now. It will happen before the end of the summer. They will be paid nicely for their home.”

  The old man in the front seat shouted and gesticulated wildly with his hands.

  “Oui, Paul.” Leblanc turned to me. “He says that does not matter, that they should leave the Noels home alone, that it should be a monument, that all of La France is going to, uh, hell. Or is in the shithouse, as he actually said.”

  “The subdivisions kind of remind me of Buffalo,” I said.

  Paul blurted something else out.

  “But he also says they all wondered why your grandfather never came back. He would have been welcomed as a hero.”

  I paused. “Yes, uh, I don’t know. I never asked him.”

  “Voilà!” cried Paul.

  “Oui. Here it is!” said Monsieur Leblanc.

  We had turned off the highway onto a narrow road lined with old fences and were approaching two small stone buildings. They were even smaller than I imagined. I remembered Grandpa saying in his letter that on the fateful day the Milice had come to the Noel home, they had approached from a direction that made it impossible for him to be rushed to the barn from the house without being seen. It was clear now that he was right. The two buildings were about twenty feet apart and I could see the gap between them. If I’d had a gun, I could have picked off anyone running from one to the other. The stone buildings were ancient—tiny, with old orange-tiled roofs—and they looked as if they were about to fall down. Old wagons and barrels were strewn about on long, uncut grass.

  We pulled up to the front door and I got out. It was the first time in my life that I had ever been speechless. Here was the setting for that amazing story my grandfather had told me, a drama about espionage, life-and-death moments of bravery…and betrayal. To me, it was a setting from a fairy tale come to life.

  I walked forward and touched the outside walls, thinking that Grandpa had touched them long ago.

  “The Noels are coming,” said Monsieur Leblanc, taking his cell phone from his ear. “Someone is bringing them.”

  I glanced at the barn.

  “They are very, very excited!”

  I thought of what I had to do. My stomach began to churn. How was I going to tell them?

  “Entrez-vous!” said Monsieur Leblanc, taking me by the hand and ushering me toward the front door the way someone might motion to a king. But I didn’t feel like royalty at that moment. I felt like the grandson of a jerk. It was a strange feeling. I had never felt that way about him before. But my idol now had feet of clay.

  The house was so small that it almost made me cry. It felt damp inside. There was the meager stone fireplace, cold ashes left behind, an open doorway leading to the tiny bedroom, not much bigger than a closet. There was a musty smell. I pulled out a wooden chair at the wooden table and sat down with a thump.

  “Oui, it must be overwhelming for you,” said Monsieur Leblanc.

  “I-I’d like to see the barn before the Noels get here. That was where they kept him. It might be too much for me to see it with them.”

  “Bien sur,” said Paul, taking me by the hand and leading me back through the entrance. Once outdoors, I let him take the lead. He was a little hard of hearing and as we walked, Monsieur Leblanc whispered into my ear.

  “Paul was a Maquis, a member of the Resistance. The older folk around here think very much of him. He told me in the car that he knew the men who got your grandfather out. He thinks of them as heroes and he—what is the word?—reveres Monsieur McLean too.”

  The barn was even smaller than the house. My head almost touched the ceiling. It was hard to believe that one or two animals could be kept here, let alone the horse, cows, pigs and chickens of so long ago. But it was evident the minute we entered that all residents were long gone. The smell of old manure was in the air, but the building was silent and filled with cobwebs.

  Just as Grandpa had said, there was the small stall with feed bins for cows, a smaller one behind with troughs for pigs and, past it, against the far wall, an even smaller area where the chickens had been kept. I left my hosts and stepped over the low board fence into the pigpen and approached the coop. There was no evidence of a grave-sized disturbance in the soil, but I could see that it would have fit perfectly against the wall and been well separated from the pigs, an unattractive place for the Milice to want to search. It was very clever.

  Tears nearly came to my eyes again, and I’m not a crier, not remotely. But I imagined my young grandfather lying here nearly seventy years ago, frightened out of his mind, buried in the soil, breathing through a straw, praying that he might live another day, evil all around him.

  Then I looked up on the wall and saw it. Nailed to a beam and barely visible behind a blanket of thick cobwebs and covered in grime was a painting! I could tell that its dominant color was yellow. It was a miracle.

  I heard the sound of a vehicle rumbling up the road. It stopped outside the house, much the way the Milice had roared to a halt near the very same spot long ago, looking for an American to kill.

  “Allo! ALLO!!!”

  The Noels had arrived.

  EIGHT

  MY MOMENT COMES

  They were the sweetest people on earth. I had never met such gentle, decent folks. Mr. Noel still looked big and powerful. Dressed in a long blue coat, under which I could see a shirt and tie, he struggled up from the little car and stared at me as I left the barn, his face glowing. I stood there looking back (probably the spitting image of my grandfather). But he didn’t come toward me. Instead, he turned and put his big hand back into the car and, like the gentleman he was, helped his wife, his bride of more than seventy years, from her seat. Though unsure on his own feet, he gallantly steadied her, putting his arm around her waist and guiding her toward me, allowing her to greet me first. Yvette was at least a foot shorter than him and wearing a thick coat far too hot for today but obviously her Sunday best. It was only unbuttoned at the collar. She wore a flower-patterned dress underneath and black shoes with thick heels, the latter not helping her ability to stay upright. Her face was round and open, her glasses circular, her white hair just wisps now under her fancy hat with its bright feather. I could see that it had once been a pretty face. Still was, actually.

  “Monsieur Murphy?” she asked as they shuffled as fast as they could toward me.

  “Oui,” I said softly.

  “Le petit-fils de David McLean?”

  “Oui.”

  “Oh!” she gasped and almost fell into my arms. A second later, Jean had enveloped me too, both of them gripping me in a family hug.

  I couldn’t do it.

  There were many opportunities that morning. We sat at the wooden table in the house talking for more than an hour, Yvette holding my hand the entire time, staring into my face as if I were a miracle. They knew Grandpa had died. His will had left them a series of payments to be made until their deaths, and even some money for their f
amily afterward. They asked many questions about him: how he had been over the last few years, what his wife had been like, his children, his grandchildren. They said how thankful they were for all he had given them and remarked on how he had been suddenly taken from them; how they hadn’t seen him since the moment the Resistance spirited him away in the hay wagon that summer day in 1944. They wanted to know why I had come alone. That took a great deal of explaining. I said that I had been a sort of favorite of my grandfather and that he was an eccentric sort (they laughed when that was translated) and that he had, for some reason, asked in his will that I come alone and that I do exactly as I was told (they laughed at that too). I said that my parents were in Marseilles and I had to keep in touch with them and get back there soon.

  And of course, they too asked why he had never come back to see them. I could see tears well up in their eyes. But they insisted they understood. David McLean was an important man, a busy man, a family man.

  “Not that busy,” I said quietly. When that was translated, Yvette took my face in her hands and kissed me.

  But that was the closest I came to an apology, at least at the house. They invited me to their home near Bellegarde for a meal and wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I was bundled back into Monsieur Leblanc’s little Citroën and brought to their apartment halfway between their old farm and the village center. Paul was still with us, more than happy to tag along for a meal. I was pleased to see that their place, on the bottom floor of a new complex in one of the new subdivisions, was modern and well furnished, and that their granddaughter, also named Yvette, was looking after them.

  “Votre grand-père payait pour tout cela!” cried Jean as he proudly showed me around.

  “That means, your grandfather paid for all of this, including young Yvette’s wage,” said Monsieur Leblanc.

  While that was nice to hear, it didn’t make up for his staying silent. He had given them thousands when they should have had millions. All throughout dinner—chicken pie and fresh salad followed by sweet pastry from a local bakery—served on their best china, I had a hard time concentrating on the conversation, and not just because it was being translated.