The Last Battle of Agnes B.

Agnes Botrel put two chicken necks in a saucer and swatted at her cat.

“Get back, Raquin,” she said. “This is for Étienne.” She stooped and put the saucer on the floor. Étienne was too lazy to jump onto the counter, so he dined on the floor. Raquin hopped down and nudged Étienne out of the way. Agnes groaned, scooped up Raquin, and put her back on the counter. She cupped her hand over Raquin’s face and dished up another two chicken necks. “Stick to what’s yours, Herr Hitler,” she said. “Or shall I call you Herr Göring, my little Nazi pig?” Raquin snorted as she ate. “Take, take, take,” said Agnes. “Eat, eat, eat … until there’s nothing left to eat, eh?”

Agnes wiped her hands on a dishtowel and finished the last of her tea. “Phooey,” she said and pursed her lips. Agnes liked sugar in her tea, but there was no sugar in the shops, and her neighbors had none to spare, or so they said. Sugarless tea filled the belly and dampened the hunger, but it tasted like tree bark.

She put the cup in the sink and scratched Raquin behind the ears. “Be good while I’m away, you little storm trooper,” she said. “And let Étienne have what’s his.” She took her black shawl from the chair and put it over her shoulders. She took her walking stick from its corner and pointed it at Étienne. “And you,” she said, “could show a little more spirit. Don’t let her bully you. Scratch her if you have to. One good scratch, and who knows? She may back off.”

She reached the door. “Until we see meet again, my dears. Pray they don’t put your mama in prison today.”

The cats didn’t look up.

* * *

It was a long walk to the Place des Vosges, but Agnes was in no hurry. Her hips felt good in the dry autumn air, and the sidewalks were bare of all but the earliest risers — country women delivering milk, newspaper boys yawning and stretching, young nurses off to relieve the night shift — and she didn’t feel apologetic about moving slow. There were closer parks, but she couldn’t go to them; she had to go where she wasn’t known. There was the Parc de Bellville, but it was too steep. There was the Père-Lachaise, but it seemed wrong to wage war in a cemetery.

Anyway, she liked the Place des Vosges, although she had not been there since the occupation began. She liked how the buildings on the square kept the city noises at bay. You could hear the birds and fountains. You felt secure, like you were in the courtyard of some grand chateau, or so she imagined. She had never been to a grand chateau, but she had her ideas about them. They were places deep in the country where women in lace sat around eating little cakes and dropping crumbs into the folds of their skirts, places where cakes were so abundant and skirts were so voluptuous that nobody felt the need to root around for dropped crumbs.

No, and not only had Agnes never been to a grand chateau, she had never been outside of Paris except when she was six and her family had gone to stay with a cousin outside Bordeaux. That was 70 years ago, the time of the Prussian invasion. She remembered nothing of the cousin or the house or the fields she must have wandered. All she remembered was the rumbling of the Prussian cannons while her father’s little wagon inched through the Paris boulevards during the evacuation. She had felt the rumbling in her chest then, and she had gone on feeling it for a long time thereafter, even in the countryside where they were safe, even after the Prussians departed and the Commune collapsed — how her mother had wept at that! — and the family returned to their small rooms above her father’s shop. She would lie awake in the bed she shared with her sisters and feel the mattress rumbling, feel herself falling down through the floor and down through the shop and way down into the deep dark earth where the demons lived. The only way to stop it, the only way to stay safe and whole atop the earth, was to squeeze her pillow until her knuckles ached.

She still felt that rumbling sometimes, especially at night, especially when she was feverish, but arthritis had made her fingers knobby and useless for squeezing pillows.

* * *

It was a nice morning for a walk. The sidewalks were dark from last night’s rain but not slick. The tip of her stick bit into the pavement and kept her steady. The roads were silent. They should have been filled with delivery vans at this hour, but there was no fuel for delivery vans. A young nurse in a long skirt zipped by on a bicycle. Somewhere she heard a horse clopping. That was all.

She turned a corner and walked into a drizzle of hay. She looked up: chickens on a balcony, someone’s private egg factory. She brushed the hay from her shoulders and was glad it wasn’t an egg they’d kicked down. It had been months since she’d eaten an egg, but she didn’t need one splattered across her only good shawl.

On the next block, a man let out an agonizing cry. Panicked, she looked up and saw that it wasn’t a man but a goat watching her from an open window through yellow, alien eyes. Well, she thought, some keep chickens and some keep goats. We survive. We find ways to survive.

At the Place des Vosges, in the arcade, a bookseller was setting out his tables, and a waiter was straightening chairs. She said good morning to the bookseller, and he said good morning to her. She didn’t say good morning to the waiter because he looked sour. Life goes on, Agnes thought. The world turns. We follow our little paths. Life goes on.

She crossed to the square and dragged her stick across the iron rails like she had done as a girl. The gate at the corner was open, and she went through. They said the Germans sometimes closed the parks when the mood took them, but she hadn’t found a closed one yet. She found a bench and sat. Her hips were all right, but her feet ached. She needed new shoes, but where could one find new shoes?

The fountains weren’t flowing and the trees were bare. It wasn’t at all like the grounds of a grand chateau, not today. It was more like a cathedral when you’re the only one there praying. It was cold and gray and far too quiet. Quieter than the city beyond, quieter than the other parks where Agnes had been spending her mornings. Ah well, she thought. There’ll be commotion soon enough.

A crunching on the gravel: a middle-aged man came and sat on the bench next to hers. He lit a pipe and shook a newspaper open. A prosperous man, Agnes thought. Catching up on the news before he goes to the office. Does he look at the war news first, or the business news?

She waited. There was no one else in the park. Why had she come so early? It was better when there were a few people around. She had been too eager this morning. She was getting too bold, too reckless. Reckless? No, not reckless. But bold, yes. Eager and bold and happy to have this little bit of work to do. You got to feeling so useless at times. Extraneous. Always queuing, always scraping. They forced you to be selfish, to think only as far as your next meal. Queuing at the butcher’s, queuing at the boulangerie, queuing at the little shop owned by the disagreeable Greek who’d stuck a sign in his window saying he might have sardines today. Queuing, queuing, queuing. Scraping, scraping, scraping. She rubbed her hips.

Two little boys came down the path. Two little boys in caps and knee breeches, watching their feet. It made her sad to see them watching their feet. Children were so solemn these days. Their mothers must have told them they mustn’t look anyone in the eye. Maybe the mothers had said not to look any grown-ups in the eye, maybe they’d said any Germans, but the boys had decided it was safest just to watch their feet the whole way. Or maybe they’d been taught that lesson in another way, taught to keep their eyes down. The Germans would shout at anyone, they’d shout and shove and swipe at anyone, even children. You never knew what they were going to do.

More children came. This must be the way to school. Girls in berets and boys in caps, smartly turned out: pleats sharp as knives, curls bouncing like puppies, collars white as bleached bone. Their mothers’ pride. Their rooms might be frigid and their cupboards might be bare and their men might be dead or missing, but these mothers wouldn’t let their children go to school looking like urchins. How many meals must they skip to make it so?

Agnes thought of her own daughters and sighed.

Then she saw them. They were walking against the flow of the children, keeping to the right, as they always did. They didn’t look at the children, and the children, every single one of them, even the littlest, only had eyes for their feet. Two officers, it looked like. The taller one was pointing at the buildings behind Agnes, moving his hand from left to right like a tour guide. He was showing his colleague the famous Place des Vosges like it was his personal estate, describing its history perhaps, discussing his plans for the place. There were all sorts of rumors about what the Germans were planning.

The shorter one looked bored. The taller one, he had the easy, arrogant look of a bank manager, but the shorter one reminded her of the Greek who may or may not have sardines today. His eyes were heavy. His cheeks were stubbly. His forehead was creased into sharp Vs. The sort of man who wouldn’t smile if he found ten francs on the sidewalk, as her father used to say, back when a franc was a franc. He was walking in the center of the path, so he was the one she’d have to go for. It was just as well.

Agnes rose, straightened her shawl, and fell in behind two little girls who were dragging their shoes through the gravel in a way their mothers surely wouldn’t approve. The man with the newspaper looked up and nodded as she passed, but she didn’t nod back. The Germans were coming up on her left. The children were giving them a wide berth, keeping to the edge of the path but never straying onto the grass. Their mothers had taught them well. Agnes stuck to the middle of the path, holding her walking stick in her left hand even though she was right-handed, aware that she was moving slower than the children and hoping they wouldn’t try to pass her on the left.

The Germans were getting closer. They were looking through the bare trees toward the buildings, heedless of the children, heedless of her. They were four children away. Two children away. They came even with Agnes. She stuck out her cane and caught the short one at the ankle. He barked and landed on his knees in the gravel.

Agnes kept walking.

The children stopped and looked at the fallen German. A few tittered. Now they were looking him full in the face. What would their mothers say? The German was still on his knees, shouting words that were surely curses. His colleague put out a hand, but he ignored it and stood without help. His face had gone purple like a plum. He was shouting and looking all around. He grabbed the nearest child, a timid little blond boy in suspenders who looked like he’d mourn the death of an ant, and he shook him until his cap fell off. Another little boy stooped for his cap, and the tall German clapped him on the ear. Neither boy made a sound. None of the children did. The tittering had stopped. They all stood as if frozen.

Then they ran. They scattered in all directions — across the grass, down the path, up and over the empty fountains. They flew like gulls from a bounding dog. The short German was still shaking the blond boy, shouting and spitting, while the other boy dodged the tall one, yelling at them to let go of his friend. He was brave, this boy. He was calling them all sorts of names, names that even the stupidest German must understand. He was small and dark and quick. Agnes turned to get a better view, but her stick was still in her left hand and the tip slipped in the gravel. Now she was down on her side, one leg twisted painfully beneath the other.

Up until that moment, Agnes had been invisible. Little old ladies in parks were like bare trees in winter: You expected them to be there, but it wasn’t strange if they weren’t. Now she had called attention to herself by falling.

It had never happened this way before. Usually when she tripped Germans — and how many had she tripped? A dozen, at least — usually it was obvious that the action had been hers and hers alone. Usually there was nobody else nearby who might have done it. She would apologize to the fallen German with her mouth but not her eyes. She would mutter something about being a clumsy old lady, but her eyes would say that she wasn’t sorry. Her eyes would dare the German to make some sort of move, to debase himself by striking an old lady. But these Germans, they didn’t have the guts.

No, but now she’d made a mistake. She had become careless, selfish. Reckless — yes, that was the word. Not once had she thought they might blame the children, these good children with their clean clothes and their careful eyes. Not once had she thought they’d blame the children for an action that was hers alone

“I did it,” she cried. “Let them go. I did it!”

The short German spun the blond boy around and took him by the wrists. The tall German had caught the other boy, the dark one. He was holding him from behind with his arm around his throat.

“I did it,” Agnes cried, and tears blurred her vision. “It wasn’t those boys. They’re good boys. Take me.”

The tall German scowled. The short one didn’t show any sign of having heard. He was wrenching the blond boy by the wrists, but the boy was thrashing. If either man understood what she was saying, he didn’t show it.

“I did it,” she cried again. “I tripped the son of a whore! And I’d do it again!”

Then a man’s voice said something she didn’t understand. The Germans turned toward the voice. Agnes shifted on her elbow and craned her neck. It was the businessman, the one with the pipe and the paper. He was pointing at Agnes with his pipe. He was saying something to the Germans in their language, although his way of speaking was softer than when a German spoke it. A Frenchman, Agnes thought. A Frenchman who speaks their vile tongue. He’s telling them it was me.

The man was pointing at her and waving his pipe around. The Germans listened to the man with distaste. But they seemed to understand what he was saying. They looked at Agnes. She nodded, as if to affirm what the man was saying.

The boys had gone limp and were staring at their feet. Agnes had the impression the boys were avoiding her eyes. It occurred to her that no one was coming to her aid. She saw herself as if from above, an old woman lying on a gravel path, her legs twisted beneath her, a walking stick beside her, two grown men in uniform holding two small boys, a third man waving a pipe about. It was absurd. What had the world come to when an old woman can collapse in the middle of the Place des Vosges and nobody comes to her aid?

The businessman stopped speaking and folded his arms. The Germans looked at one another. Agnes thought about yelling again, but what good would it do? She wanted very badly to leap up and beat those two Germans with her stick. She wanted to crack them on the sides of their ugly heads and free those boys to run off to their school and the safety of their teachers and friends. She wanted to pull the bare trees down on top of these Nazis, tear the trees down and the buildings, too. She wanted to bury these sons of whores tree by tree and brick by brick in a great, spraying fountain of branches and rubble right in the middle of the Place des Vosges. Yes, the Nazis and that French collabo, too. A spy, no doubt. An informer, a traitor. Let him be buried with his masters.

She rolled a little and held out her hands, wrist upon wrist, inviting them to handcuff her. The Germans didn’t see. They were going through the boys’ pockets. They pulled out coins and marbles and bits of string. Identity cards. Ration tickets. Agnes wrenched herself around so she could reach the pouch she kept on a strap around her neck. The pain in her leg made her moan. She would show these Germans her documents, act as if she were being detained too, give the boys a chance to escape. She put a hand in the pouch and pulled out all it contained: identity card, birth certificate, tickets for food, coupons for soap, a whalebone comb, a tattered square cut from an old handkerchief, a photograph of a tall man and two little girls standing beside a pond and a willow tree, their faces washed out by the sun, although Agnes could fill in every line from memory. Each item fell onto the gravel and lay there like rubbish.

Other people were in the park now. They were keeping their distance, ready to bolt if the Germans turned their way. Some were leaning against bicycles. One man had a broom and a rubbish cart — a street sweeper.

The short German pulled the blond boy over to his colleague, who put his free arm around the boy’s neck so that now he had both boys. The short German, the one she’d felled, walked over to Agnes. He started to say something but stopped when he saw her papers on the path. He stooped to pick them up.

There was a grunt, then another grunt. A woman — a large woman, and not young — collided with the short German, and they both went tumbling onto the gravel. Nearby, a man cursed loudly in French. More voices came, men’s and women’s, German and French. Agnes looked up and saw the bookseller she had greeted earlier. He ran up to the businessman and smacked him in the head with a heavy book. The man collapsed. The bookseller dropped the book and kept running down the path, toward the gate in the far corner, kicking up white dust.

The tall German lost his grip on the boys. The blond boy stumbled, but the other boy pulled him up and they ran through the nearest gate. The tall German ran after them, blowing his whistle. Two people came to the aid of the woman who was wrestling with the short German. They were both young men, laborers probably. They kicked and beat the German with stones they’d found somewhere. Cobblestones? Agnes felt a hand on her shoulder and turned in fright.

“Are you all right?” It was the waiter from the café. The one she hadn’t greeted earlier.

“My leg,” she said.

“Can you move it?”

She could. It wasn’t broken, just sore. She chided herself for overreacting.

The man with the rubbish cart came up. The street sweeper. “Get in,” he said.

“But — ”

“Can you stand?”

She tried. “No,” she said.

“Then get in.” The street sweeper and the waiter helped her into the cart, first her bottom and then the rest of her. Her legs dangled from it. She felt like a child.

“My stick,” she said, and the waiter handed it to her.

“Your address?” the street sweeper asked, and she told him.

* * *

She rested in her chair for the remainder of the day, stroking the cats when they came to her, watching the sidewalks fill and then empty again. It wasn’t until she was undressing for the night that she remembered the documents. She took the empty pouch from around her neck and grimaced. “Too late to go back now,” she said to the cats. “The Germans will already have them.” Or maybe someone else had picked them up. That kind waiter, the woman who had tackled the German. Maybe they found my identification card and my birth certificate and whatever else was there. Maybe they’ll put them in my mailbox. They seemed to want to help. “Parisians,” she told the cats. “Fighters. Comrades.”

She slept fitfully. Her leg throbbed. Her legs were always restless at night, but now the injured one throbbed with every beat of her heart. She squeezed it like she used to squeeze her pillow to make the rumbling stop, but her fingers were too weak and her knuckles were too sore. She lay awake for a long time, thinking about those boys, hoping they got away, hating herself for being so reckless, so selfish. “Agnes,” she heard her father say, and his voice came out in a rumble, “the world does not revolve around you. Other people, Agnes. They exist. They feel. Just like you do, Agnes. They feel, just like you.”

Her father was just climbing into the seat of the family’s wagon, just climbing up and beckoning her to follow, when the knock came. She opened her eyes and reached for her stick but grabbed a cat instead. Raquin or Étienne, it was hard to tell. Both would let you grab them by the scruff of the neck and carry them wherever you pleased. Agnes envied them their trust. She envied them their ease.

She released the cat and tried again. Another knock, louder this time. She found her stick. She found that her legs were both in working order. When the door flew open, she was ready.