Resistance by Anita Shreve Page A

as a man—larger even than Henri. She was perhaps only thirty, Claire thought, but she was of a type that had looked middle-aged for years.
    Dinant injected the airman with morphine, then cut away the rest of the flight suit. She wanted the pilot naked, she explained, in order to make sure there were no, other wounds. A bullet wound in the back, under a shoulder blade, might go unnoticed in an unconscious patient. Claire and Henri did as they were told, together undressing the airman, rolling him over for Dinant's inspection. Claire was sweating in the heavy wool coat, but could not remove it altogether. Antoine, Dinant had told them, was coming soon to collect the schoolbags, and there had been no time to put a dress over her nightgown.
    Dinant told Claire and Henri to keep the man on his stomach and pin his wrists down, avoiding the hands if possible, but if it became necessary, to sit on the pilot's hands. In a rudimentary English she told the pilot that what she was about to do would hurt, but she would be quick.
    The pilot, drifting in and out of consciousness, raised his head and shoulders when Dinant began to treat the wound. Henri held the pilot's shoulders; Claire put her hand to the airman's mouth, and he bit the soft pad at the inside of the thumb. When that moment was over, a moment even the morphine couldn't touch, the pilot's forehead fell down onto the blanket. His skin was a terrible color.
    Claire helped Dinant to roll the plasters around the man's calf. The bandage stretched from the sole of the foot to the knee. Only his toes, white and waxy, were exposed.
    Her hands covered with blood, Claire became aware of another presence in the room. Antoine Chimay had entered the Daussois kitchen without a sound. Such stealth, even grace, in a large, rotund man was always a surprise, and came, she knew, in Chimay's case, from his years with the Maquis. He wore a dirty woolen coat and knitted gloves from which the ends of the fingers had been removed. Without taking off these gloves, he pulled a crumpled cigarette from his pocket, lit it in the corner. The smell of the tobacco produced in Claire a sharp and intense longing.
    “Will he live?” Chimay asked Dinant.
    It was a dispassionate question. Claire heard the note of weariness in Antoine's voice. The downed pilot was, for Chimay, merely a package, valuable to be sure, but nevertheless a parcel to be sent to England as soon as possible so that he might return to combat.
    Antoine was there, Claire knew, not only to collect the schoolbags, but also to interrogate the airman. He might already have obtained information from the other airmen who had been found, but he would want especially to talk to this officer, when Chimay had as much intelligence as he could gather, he would send a message, in code, back to England, via a radio he kept in a suitcase under the hay in his barn. That message, in turn, would be forwarded to the crew's base. Until the survivors had safely returned to England, however, the aviators would be listed officially as missing in action.
    Dinant shrugged, flipped her hand back and forth as if to indicate a fifty-fifty chance of survival.
    “The wound is deep. There's tendon damage., He's lost a great deal of blood,” she said. “And there may be some infection. How he fares will depend upon how well he can fight that off.”
    Chimay took a long pull on his cigarette, rubbed his forehead with his free hand. “When will he be able to talk?” he asked.
    Dinant looked at the pilot's face, and shrugged. “Difficult to say. He will need the morphine for a day or two, and perhaps after that—”
    “We can't wait that long,” Chimay interrupted. “I’ll return in the morning and try again.” He looked pointedly at Claire. “Where are the schoolbags?”
    “In the barn, under the feed.”
    Antoine turned and threw his cigarette into the sink. He leaned both of his hands on the lip of the porcelain. In the candlelight Claire could see only