55.

UPSTAIRS IN THEIR ROOM, THEY STOOD BY THE WINDOW LOOKING at the moonlit street. Marshall was not sleepy, and he anticipated that the moonlight, if not thoughts of Robert Lebeau, would keep him awake. Annette seemed wide awake too.

“Robert always worked hard,” she said. “He worked intently on anything he did. His gentillesse, his sensitive character—his sensibility was perhaps his weakness. He couldn’t achieve a balance with the torment. Maybe he couldn’t refuse it as I did.”

Annette rubbed the fabric of the curtain between her fingers, as if to feel the essence of the material. She said, “No one ever knew how I loved him, except Maman. She knew everything. I loved his hair, and the quiver in his upper lip when he smiled.”

She turned away from the window. The light in the room was dim, and her small frame seemed to fade into the shadows.

“I believe his disappearances are his way of regathering his strength,” she said. “I remember that when I used to go out with him to meet a group of aviateurs at the train, or to escort some of them to a safe house somewhere, if we passed a church and we had time, Robert would always go inside. It was a way of focusing his will, reconstituting himself. It was humble; he was a servant. Maybe his disappearances are periods of retreat, another way of being like the priest he couldn’t be.

“I believed in the church too, before the war, but it left me. Perhaps it left Robert also. I often wonder where he is. Sometimes I can imagine him in one of the spots that we went, our own little bowers, or escape places when we went out on our missions.”

“Are you still in love with him?” Marshall asked.

“That is not a practical question,” she said sharply.

She switched on a lamp and began preparing for bed, searching through her suitcase. Her clothing was perfectly organized and folded, but she seemed flustered. She closed the case and disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the roar of the bidet.

Later, when she was in her silky gown, he drew her to him and embraced her tightly, feeling her warm breasts against him. He held her while she cried, her tears running onto his shoulder. In a while, she drew back to speak.

“You know, I must think of what Father Jean did for the Bourgogne. I must find Robert and confront him. We cannot let the abbé disappear into oblivion, without being acknowledged. We must commemorate him somehow.”

“Is that what your mother wants?”

“Maybe. I think she despairs of Robert, but I must get him to remember how he loved Father Jean.”

“If he lost his religion, wouldn’t he be reluctant?” Marshall said.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said almost dismissively. “The abbé was a person, and he sacrificed his life. He loved Robert. I must remind him.”

Marshall imagined setting out with Annette to find Robert Jules Lebeau. He had searched for the bright young man Robert had been, only to find that the trail had taken a dreadful twist—Robert damaged by the war, the young lovers split apart. It would serve him right, Marshall thought, if he helped reunite the two now.

“Thank you, Marshall,” she was saying. “Thank you, thank you.”

“For what? Don’t thank me,” he said. Not me.

He held her and she did not cry more. He thought she felt an immense relief in knowing him. She snuggled with him, letting him hold her a long time. She kissed him deeply. He was right to hold her close.

“Do I have a chance with you?” he ventured to ask.

“When we get over the mountains,” she said.

“Then what?”

“We will know.”

Later, he tossed around in bed, wondering where he was headed. He had come to France hopefully, pie-eyed, imagining a pleasant jaunt down memory lane. Now the faces of the absent characters—Annette’s father, Robert and all his children, Robert’s mistress, his priest, even the mysterious chief of the Bourgogne—paraded through Marshall’s waking dreams.

At dawn, hearing water trickling somewhere, then birdsong, he felt his mind clearing. Annette was lying close to him, curled toward him, her fine hair tangled, her lips hanging open. Were they thrown together inevitably, or had he imagined them into a couple with a destiny? After the war, Robert was crushed, but Marshall had been rescued, and he thrived. No matter what else he might feel, he was indebted to both Robert and Annette. The logic of that was undeniable. He wept inside for the priest—Marshall, whose religion ended when he was eight and heard that an old woman’s house had burned down with her picture of Jesus over the stove and her grandbabies sleeping on a pallet nearby.