Love in the Haystack

By Robyn Singer Rose

 

The dawn crept into the kitchen. It cast a white light into the corners where the kerosene lamp's yellowing glow had dulled to a shadow. Pierre's fist pushed against the dough, his knuckles rolling the surface and releasing to thump into it again; a technique that produced light, sour-dough bread for the villagers' breakfast. Like his father and grandfather before him, it was his turn to be part of this tradition. The flour fell from his sieve like soft snow and dusted his wooden work surface between loaves. Tearing at the dough, he molded a round shape and placed it on a baking tray. He continued working this way until the last dough-round was placed onto the tray. He put the tin tray onto a heavy, iron rack. With an effort that made him hold his breath and grunt, he lifted the rack into place above several other full racks. There the dough was left to prove in a kitchen warmed by hot oak-fired ovens. Pierre wiped a few beads of perspiration from his brow with the end of his apron, leaving flour dust on his forehead. Soon the loaves would be baking and the acrid sourdough odor replaced with a fresh bread aroma to entice the shoppers to buy for a day's eating.

Pierre looked at the clock and grabbed his mitt to open the cast-iron oven doors and remove the croissants. The air around him smelt delicious and he felt his tummy rumble and his mouth watering. With a proficiency that comes from a lifetime of bread making, he removed the croissants and placed a lower tray of bread dough into the oven. He opened the lower door and stoked the fire, tossing fuel onto the red coals. Pleased the fire was combusting, he relaxed knowing he would not have to go out into the cold, across the yard to the woodpile.

Pierre stopped. He pushed his baker's cap back on his forehead inadvertently wiping the errant flour with the back of his hand. He looked into the cobbled street at the roses that overhung the old tailor's shop wall. Without taking his eyes from the street, he reached for a croissant and tore at the soft bread, popping the pieces into his mouth. The last century saw his wife buried, may God rest her soul, Pierre thought, making the sign of the cross. She had not lived to give him a son to apprentice. The new century had brought hope, joy and celebration and he had waited for something wonderful to happen, but nothing changed. His daughter Rosetta had grown from a child to a woman and he hadn't looked up from his precious dough to notice. The future looked grim. He stuffed the remaining croissant into his mouth, but the sweet, buttery texture failed to provide comfort.

This morning his heart was heavy. Rosetta hadn't come home last night. Not last night nor the night before. The nights turned into weeks, then months. At just sixteen, his precious daughter had run off with the tailor's son. A union neither the tailor nor he had supported. Pierre liked the tailor's son, Simon. He liked the family. The Levy's were good people and friends for more than two decades. Their son Simon was a good boy – better than that – a good son and was learning the trade from his father.

‘Simon, lad, you make your father so proud,' Pierre had said on more than one occasion when the young man came in for the bread. His daughter Rosetta was shy around Simon, serving him without looking and blushing when he came into the shop. Pierre had thought it puppy love, a crush on his daughter's part. He expected the lad, almost twenty, to know better. They had known each other all their lives and they knew their religions forbid any liaison.

The sound of hooves on cobbles alerted the villagers to their milk delivery and Pierre watched the milkman dart in and out of doorways, collecting empty copper pails and filling them with milk. A larger pail for the Chableau's, now their family had increased to five.

Monsieur Levy was of the Jewish faith and Pierre had raised his daughter a Catholic – Mass every Sunday to prepare her as a devout Catholic like his late wife. If he hadn't had to bury Rosetta's poor dear mother, more than eleven years ago, maybe this could have been prevented.

Madame Levy wept. Monsieur Levy toyed with his skullcap as if an itch had developed on top of his head. Pierre felt guilty he had not taught his daughter virtuousness. Surely this was up to the nuns. At the parish they said she had fallen prey to Satan and he should pray for her soul and the soul of any offspring that came from this ill-advised union. That was the trouble with Catholics they had only one solution to a myriad of problems, prayer.

The Levy family did not live in the village, but opened a shop to serve the many wealthy landowners living in the chateaus scattered through the countryside. Jews kept to themselves and lived together around the Jewish church, their synagogue. They were strict about their children's social life.

Some shopkeepers protested the tenanting of one shop by a Jew, but Pierre had supported it, befriending the Levy family. He was upset by the news of the burning synagogue and distressed to hear it was in retaliation for Simon's transgression. There were villagers known to use any excuse to further victimize the Jews. Pierre publicly spoke out against the culprits as he did whenever there were acts of anti-Semitism. Larrikins he called them, boys who had eyed his daughter for their own gratification. Brutes she would not have looked at. Now it was Pierre who they were laughing at and ridiculing as a foolish Jew lover.

The village was a buzz with rumors of the Jew and Rosetta in the haystacks at old man Benou's farm. A popular place for the young, a short walk from the village and far enough away from the farmhouse for many youngsters to play hide-and-go seek around the large golden stacks. Pierre remembered kissing Rosetta's mother. Several stacks in, laying her against the soft mound, he had kissed her lips, raised her skirt, unbuttoned his trouser and found ecstasy between her lovely thighs, keeping her secret place for the wedding night. Had his Rosetta met this same fate? The Jew violating her secret place against her will.

Placing his singed loaves into baskets, he wished his Rosetta had been taken against her will, but he had heard otherwise. Jokes at how masterful the Jew was with his love, wooing her like a peacock courts his hen, reading her poetic words written about her loveliness. How compliant and in love his Rosetta looked to the village spies. The Jew weaved his demonic spell, some said.

Monsieur Levy had closed his shop and moved his business back to his village. Pierre felt for the family and racked his brains for a solution. Word would surely come of the couple's whereabouts. Some said Paris, the east end where all sorts of strange people gathered--misfits, women who dressed like men, poets, homosexuals, black people from Madagascar mixed freely together so his Rosetta and the Jew could live together amongst these odd people and raise their possibly odd children.

His Rosetta was bound to be carrying the Jew's child, a bastard to the Jews and a misfit and damned baby if not baptized with the Catholics. His grandchild, possibly a grandson lost in limbo. People speculated that the child could not be normal. The blood wouldn't mix. It would have the devil in it. Ignorant rubbish he didn't support.

Pierre smelt burning. He raced to the oven door and opened to a smoky reception. Today the loaves would be singed – blackened with his despair. He scraped the crust of the burnt loaves and dusted them with baker's floor, covering his mistake. While Pierre prepared the shop for opening he was alarmed by a knock at the window. The nose of Simon's brother, Asher, peered over the windowsill. Pierre hurried to the side door and let the youngster in. ‘I have word,' he panted. His breath visible in the cold now disappeared in the warm kitchen. Pierre bagged up a few loaves and some croissants and held them to him. ‘What news?' Pierre asked.

‘The child is born, a boy.'

‘Did your father send you, lad?' Pierre asked of the boy shivering next to the oven.

‘No my mother, father has said Kaddish for Simon,' the boy said.

‘What is Kaddish?' Pierre asked, sensing gloom.

‘The mourner's prayer as Rosetta, a shikser,' the boy looked at the older man's frown, ‘a non-Jew. It is our custom to consider a fallen Jew who marries outside of our faith, to consider them dead,' the boy said. ‘I have other bad news,' Asher said.

Pierre's heart hardened. He fell against his workbench, his cap toppling to the ground. ‘Rosetta?'

The boy looked at the ground, biting his lip and shaking his head. ‘She's died having the child.'

‘And your brother?' Pierre asked, steadying himself against the bench, his head down, tears falling into the flour-dusted surface making dark rounds like stepping stones.

‘Sick with grief, he cannot manage the boy. A neighbor is nursing the baby. My mother wants you to take him. He is more a Catholic than a Jew.'

‘An old man to raise a baby, are you mad?'

The boy shrugged. He was no longer shivering. ‘The woman nursing the baby will come here for a few weeks to help wean it and settle you in with him. My mother has arranged payment. Otherwise you can give him to the nuns. She will arrive tomorrow.'

‘Tomorrow?' Pierre rubbed his hands together. If he was late opening the shop, the customers would be suspicious and the lad would not be guaranteed a safe return. Sighing, he handed the sac of bread to Simon's younger brother. ‘Give this to your mother.' He let the boy out the side door, checking to see the way was clear of village spies.

The customers poured in and Pierre served them in silence. Most would have heard his daughter's fate, but would not want to be the first to discuss it with him. After the rush, Pierre sat on a stool in his shop, his shelves half empty of the morning's bake, and wept.

The next morning, Pierre was tired from lack of sleep and his eyes were puffy and red, alerting the villagers to his grief. The talk was apologetic and kind with, ‘for the best' being repeated. The question, ‘but what of the child?' was answered amongst them. Most deciding he would be kept by the Jews. Pierre thought it would come as a shock when they saw he was taking the boy. He had put blankets in a bread basket for a crib and was ready to receive the woman and the baby in Rosetta's room. Worried the child would be monstrous to look at or ailing in some way from being of an unsavory union, he had decided if this was so he'd take him straight to the nuns. Rumor had it that the monster babies were smothered.

A carriage rumbled to a halt outside his shop. Neighbors came out into the street. A fat woman alighted with a babe wrapped in a dark cloth in her arms. Pierre greeted the woman and looked at the bundle. The woman pushed past him concerned to get the baby in doors. Shutting the door and drawing the blind on the onlookers, Pierre motioned for the woman to sit.

‘Here is your grandson,' she said, smiling at Pierre.

Pierre waited for her to pull the blanket from the infant's face. Sleeping in her arms was a beautiful baby boy with tufts of black hair, fair complexion, and Rosetta's ruby mouth made for one lovely child.

‘Your husband will miss you while you are here?' Pierre said.

‘I am a widow. Tuberculosis killed my husband. My mother will look after my girl. She is weaned. My name is Maree Ranouf.'

‘You are making a lot of money, Madame Renouf?'

‘The Jews are rich enough, call me Maree,' she said, smiling. Pierre liked this woman she reminded him of someone. His own mother perhaps?

The pair settled into a routine. Maree making Pierre's breakfast after the rush and they talked into the night about many things – the villagers' gossip, about Rosetta and Simon whom she had gotten to know very well and the boy, Jean Paul, named for her husband for want of any other name coming to mind.

Maree was a tireless worker in the shop and efficient with the baby. Her loveliness hadn't escaped Pierre either, but he kept a lid on his emotions not wanting to appear a dirty old man. A bit of a gypsy, Maree was at ease with her womanliness. Her hips were round from childbirth and her love of croissants. Her full breasts, he'd seen them when unabashed in the tiny quarters, she nursed Jean-Paul. Her round, fresh face, smiled often and her eyes were mischievous.

More than once he had wanted to kiss her and thought when she leant across him to put the kettle back on the stove they might have embraced. Had he been younger he would have surely pulled her to him. Instead he blushed and leaned away, noting the cheeky look in her eye.

She liked Pierre and told him often he was a kind man and that Rosetta talked about him lovingly . He liked the fact she approved of his Rosetta.

‘Simon loved Rosetta very much, a big love,' she said, putting her nipple to Jean Paul's lips. She looked back at Pierre, ‘The way he attended to her, bringing her treats during her confinement, massaging her feet and toward the end…' They were quietly looking at Jean Paul, smiling because the infant's eyelids were closing, his mouth open. Maree changed the infant to her other breast, whispering now the baby suckled, ‘At night Simon carried Rosetta, heavy with child, from the bed to the window to see the stars.'

Maree sighed, stroking Jean Paul's hair, ‘Such love, a child from such a union is blessed.'

Pierre arranged the day old bread in a basket, sprinkling one loaf with water and putting it back in the oven for their evening meal. He was happy to hear these things and his heart was tender for this lovely woman and her kindness toward his daughter.

‘Birth is hard for a woman but she came through, my mother and I thought she was lucky, only four hours.' Maree lifted the baby over her shoulder to burp him.

‘She suffered?' Pierre asked.

‘She died in Simon's arms that night, exhausted.' The baby spat up on the cloth over Maree's shoulder. ‘Simon suffers, and…you my friend, because you miss her so.'

Pierre turned away from Maree's sympathetic look. ‘You like the Jews?' he asked.

‘Some, I like Simon. The Germans I do not like. They take over Paris and they encourage the newspaper, La Libre Parole, to spread nasty rumors.'

‘Paris is no place for Simon, then?'

‘No, not while they have that fellow, Dreyfus, on trial, opinions are touted in cafes and bars. If you are not a Jew, talk is cheap,' she said and spat into the fire.

‘I would not like to be a Jew,' Pierre said, looking at Jean Paul and thinking it was wise of Madame Levy to leave the boy with him.

 

The villagers noticed the effortless compatibility the woman had with Pierre and gossiped. The three weeks were drawing to an end. Madame Levy had paid Maree's mother for three weeks. Pierre was nervous about her leaving him. He enjoyed the company. It eased the grief he felt for his Rosetta.

‘I have come to rely on you, Maree,' Pierre said to Maree while sipping the soup she made for his lunch.

‘I know Pierre,' she said, spreading the bread with a slice of cheese for him.

‘I want you to send for your mother and girl to join us here,' he said, swallowing a mouthful of bread and cheese.

Maree sat at the table and spooned her soup to cool it before taking a mouthful.

‘What do you think, Maree of my proposition?'

‘I think you should make it a proposal and even though we haven't been to the haystack,' she said, her eyes sparkling, ‘I will say yes to you, Pierre.'

Pierre looked up from his soup, his eyes misted. This younger woman would consider wedding an old man like him? It was a miracle. A mother to his grandson, her little girl to complete the family and he supposed, her mother. The angels must be rewarding him, providing the mother didn't prove troublesome.

Pierre had once been an adept lover. He was a Frenchman after all. At fifty he could still remember the needs of a woman. He rose from the table, grabbed his hat and went into the street. He looked at his neighbors' homes, rubbing his whiskered chin.

Maree watched Pierre from the kitchen window. Her gaze followed him into the shop across the road and saw him bringing the young girl back to the bakery. Seated back at the table, Maree pretended to be finishing her lunch when the door opened and the pair entered. Pierre took Maree's hand, turning it palm up and pressed his lips against her soft palm flesh. Handing her a hat and cardigan, they left the shop, walking hand-in-hand the length of the village, along the highway in the direction of Benou's farm and the haystacks.

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Robyn Singer Rose is a psychologist and writer from Australia.