Amanda was standing beside the red mailbox. Every evening, like a sentinel, she waited for some sign from the distant island, and wrote meaningless phrases on the sheets from the botanical album. She could not help feeling punished whenever Viera’s face became blurred in her memory. Only six months after her departure, she could no longer picture her daughter clearly, recall the exact color of her eyes, or remember what clothes she had been wearing when she left. We distance ourselves from the past far too quickly, she told herself.
The mailman was panting. He opened the enormous bag that contained nothing more than a small, yellowing envelope covered with red and black stamps. Amanda took it without a word. The mailman looked at the ground, but she gazed up at the cloud-filled sky.
“It’s getting darker earlier. I must light candles,” she said, and hurried back to the house.
Perhaps she ought to try to understand better the Christian idea of trespasses and forgiveness. Perhaps she should confess all her sins and try to redeem them. Perhaps she should forget who she was, put herself in the hands of a merciful god and worship the cross. But she could not, she must not. For her own sake and that of her dead family, and for her daughters.
Amanda searched in the wardrobe for a perfectly ironed dress and changed into it, avoiding the sight of herself in the mirror. She put her hair up and fastened her pearl earrings. Switching off the light in her room, she lit two small candles, rubbing her icy hands above the flames to warm them. Weeping in a jagged silence, she glanced at the envelope by the candles’ meager light. They had returned the letter after it had crossed France, the Atlantic, and the streets of Havana, without finding her daughter.
She put the envelope away in the ebony box. Leaning on the windowsill, she watched the sun begin to set and prayed for some respite from her pain. When she heard Lina come into the room, she bent toward her and greeted her with a smile. She blessed her with a kiss on the forehead, then told her to wash her hands before supper.
Amanda prayed for strength on the path she still had to follow and decided to start another letter as soon as she could see three stars come out on Saturday night. She could not give in. She was sure her daughter was well, and so at dawn she would sing silently just for her at that special moment when they could communicate even though the letters never reached their destination.
14
At school they had begun air-raid drills. France had declared war on Germany, and Lina was afraid she would once more be seen as the enemy. That was what she had been in Berlin, and now they might regard her as the invader. She was only comforted by the fact that this time she was part of the majority. Shutting her eyes, she begged all the gods in the universe to leave her in peace, to let her be just another little French girl in her class.
The teacher explained that they all had to be prepared for the first bomb to fall, unable to avoid sounding terrified, not because of the imminent attack, but rather due to the fear she could be instilling among her students. When they heard the siren go off, the girls were to hide under their desks until they were told they could go out into the yard. They had to respond quickly to orders, without thinking or hesitating.
For the girls, the enemy was still invisible. Lina thought they would come out of the sky, hidden among the clouds, and crush them all. This time there would be no chosen ones, no religion. All of them, no matter which god they worshipped, would fall in the clutches of the same power, and no one in the world would be able to withstand it.
“We’re in the drôle de guerre,” Father Marcel told Claire as he stood in the doorway after supper. Amanda was watching the two girls dig a grave for a baby bird that had fallen from its nest.
“I bet it was shot down by a German plane,” whispered Lina.
“The first victim of this phony war,” Danielle agreed.
“If we go on like this, the Germans will swat us like flies,” the priest went on. “We have an old man commanding our army, and the British aren’t going to cross the Channel to defend us. Why would they?”
“The Germans won’t dare invade. It won’t be easy for them to take Paris,” Claire repeated, trying to sound convinced simply to calm her friend’s suppressed anger. In fact, she was far from sure of what she was saying; an obscure fear kept her awake most nights now.
For Amanda, the future was veiled. Her mind fixed on her reunion with Viera, she was no longer able to see what lay ahead. At dawn one Saturday she picked up another sheet from the book and began to write. The war she had left behind in Berlin, as well as this one pursuing her even in the fields of Haute-Vienne, made no sense to her. But she also knew that however much she hid, she would be found out and humiliated time and again before eventually being annihilated. To her that war, the only war that mattered, was not in any way phony.
Fall of 1939. My little Viera . . . The days here grow grayer and grayer. The sun struggles to come out every morning: sometimes it succeeds, and other times it fails, and stays hidden in the clouds. I’m sure that on your island it always shines, and lights up every morning . . .
With the November rain the sky came crashing down on the roads. The Vienne River seemed to spread everywhere. Stones, tree trunks, house facades, and even windows became covered in moss. Lina would spend hours fascinated by this green carpet clinging to every surface and growing with each passing day. One day, the light will no longer enter the house, she thought, trying unsuccessfully to scrape the dark wet velvet from the walls.
One morning, Claire didn’t appear from her bedroom. The rain had left them all disoriented, walking around in an endless dusk. Amanda knocked gently on her door. Nobody answered, but she could hear Claire’s labored breathing in the dark. When she went in and pulled back the curtains, the reluctant daylight revealed Claire bathed in sweat, with cracked lips and half-closed eyes. She was shivering with fever.
Amanda sent the girls to soak some towels in cold water, then gently pressed them against the back of Claire’s neck and on her forehead.
“You’re going to be all right,” she whispered. “It’s impossible not to get ill with weather like this. Are fall and winter always the same here?”
Lina and Danielle hung in the doorway, not daring to come into the room.
“We must let her rest,” said Amanda, and went to make an herbal tea.
When he heard from the girls that Claire was ill in bed, Father Marcel came running back to the house with them. He was overwhelmed by the smell of eucalyptus and the calendula, mallow, and celandine infusion when he entered his friend’s private chamber for the first time.
“This rain is getting to us all,” he said, sitting down at her bedside.
He took Claire’s hands in his, and kissed them timorously. She smiled and tried to sleep: that was all she had the strength to do. Father Marcel scanned every corner of the dimly lit room. He recognized Claire dressed in white in a faded photograph, alongside a man in a jacket and straw hat. They were both staring out with startled eyes. The priest picked up his wooden rosary and concentrated on his prayers.
The next morning, Claire was worse. The fever had not come down, her breathing was increasingly irregular. Amanda thought they should send for a doctor.
“No,” protested Claire. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”
For six nights, Father Marcel prayed and kept vigil beside Claire’s bed. He would leave in the rain at midnight, and return at dusk the next day. He quickly grew accustomed to being alone with her and recounting the details of his life: his childhood with the nuns, the seminary, the early discovery of his destined vocation, when he realized he would never find out who his parents were. Possibly two fearful adolescents who had left him on the convent doorstep. “Too melodramatic to be true,” he joked.
“For a long while I felt abandoned and helpless,” he went on. “How can anyone leave a child out in the open like that? But I came to understand, and forgot and forgave. Who knows what was going through my mother’s mind? And now I have a huge family, don’t I?”
One morning color began to seep back into Claire’s pallid, fever-lined face. Father Marcel was ashamed that this good news didn’t fill him with joy. If Claire recovered, his contact with her would once more be limited to the Friday evening suppers and the occasional conversation after mass, or a trip to the abbey with the girls. He knew there would no longer be any reason for his daily visits to the house, still less to remain alone with Claire. She understood his ambivalent feelings.
“This is your home, Father. You’ll always be welcome here,” she said without looking at him, blushing and grateful.
That night they did not say goodbye with an herbal tea but drank freshly ground coffee outside her bedroom. They sat together in the dining room, staring out at the storm that had kept them happily imprisoned.
15
The second letter was returned as winter arrived. They already knew what it was when they saw the mailman approaching, head down. Amanda took the envelope and stored it away in the ebony box. She was convinced that someday her daughter would read them all and discover she had always been by her side. That was the most important thing. She would wait for the new year; it made no sense to send another letter at a time when it was bound to get lost among all the Christmas cards and packages. She was hopeful that, in the first days of January, the distances would grow shorter when some post office employee on the island would take pity on her for insisting so much, and finally uncover the whereabouts of her daughter, who must by now speak Spanish like a native. Or maybe it would be better to start to write again in spring, when the flowers bloomed once more. Amanda was resigned to the passage of time, but not to oblivion.
At the start of this new decade, the war still seemed like a silent threat. There had not been a single clash on a battlefield, a single explosion, no invaders, no defense maneuvers. War ships against war ships in the mid-Atlantic, far from land. In the city, occasional leaflets fell from the skies onto roofs and squares like delicate snowflakes. Father Marcel lamented that this was the only response that a nation willing to go down on its knees before the enemy was willing to make. For her part, Claire was convinced the German attack was imminent, that the days of peace were slipping away. Amanda also sensed that her place of refuge would soon vanish.
In the middle of spring, with the tulips in full bloom, the Netherlands collapsed like a house of cards. A month later, the Germans crossed the weakest border and entered France. Two months later, on June 14, 1940, Paris, la grande dame, surrendered at their feet.
“Nobody can resist the Germans,” Amanda told them. “It’s dreadful, but that’s the reality. They will rule the world.”
“I don’t think we’ll see any Nazis around here. They won’t raise their swastika flag over our village,” said Claire, although she herself was not entirely convinced.
Amanda shuddered. If she abandoned Claire’s house and headed south across the Pyrenees, Viera would not know how to find her. She had to wait a little longer before making a decision.
They listened heavyhearted to the voice of the French general calling from his London exile.
“Whatever happens, the flame of the French Resistance must not be extinguished, and will not be extinguished.”
It took Amanda a year to finish her next letter. She was well aware that it would never reach its destination, at least not while she was alive. But she had to write.
Winter of 1940. My little Viera: Darkness has come over us. Can you see how right I was to let you go, even though my heart suffers for it every hour of every day? Only God is witness to the strength I had to summon to abandon you. Only He could give me the determination to take your sister by the hand and walk away from you.
This was the first time Amanda was writing about leaving her daughter, and she did so resolutely. It was also the moment when she had to face up to herself and take responsibility for her possible mistake. And now she needed to be even stronger to save Lina. She began to quietly hatch her plan, studying all the different possibilities. She had a mission, and could not allow herself to be thwarted.
The change in her was obvious to Claire, who could not understand how Amanda could seem so serene, happy even. Her face was lit up. She was more affectionate with the girls, and her silences over supper turned into lively conversation.
She began to call her friend “Maman Claire.” “Come on, Lina, help Maman Claire.” “Run along, Maman Claire needs you.” “Go to the market with Maman Claire.” In this way she began a kind of transfer. From that moment on for Lina, Claire was Maman Claire. Now, whenever her daughter asked if she could go down to the river with Danielle or Remi, or stay in the village after school, she told her to ask Maman Claire. Soon, even Father Marcel began to call her that as well.
The following year, 1941, even though they had not seen signs of them anywhere near the village, it was rumored that the Nazis had occupied Limoges, about twenty kilometers away. The newspaper headlines began to publicize the new regulations for Jews, signed by the French government in Vichy. The new laws authorized the “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses and prohibited Jews from working in newspapers, the theater, or radio. For Amanda, history was repeating itself. This time she was indifferent to it. There was nothing to be done.
Claire had taken over reading to the girls at night, and told them fantastic stories to take their minds off the invisible war.
When Lina had fallen asleep, Danielle asked Claire about her father.
“You were the apple of his eye,” Claire would tell her nostalgically, glancing at her wedding photograph and sighing. “Thank God your father is no longer with us, Danielle. He wouldn’t have been able to bear what France has turned into. He was a man who devoted his entire life to his country . . .”
16
One summer morning in 1942, the mailman knocked on Claire’s door. This time he was accompanied by a gendarme and Limoges city hall employee.
Claire’s heart sank. She greeted them warily, with Amanda by her side. An icy blast entered the house with them, and the girls ran to hide in the loft. The mailman pointed to one of the two women with a trembling hand. There was fear in his gestures, but his eyes glittered with the relief of being able to denounce someone.
“She is Amanda Sternberg,” he said.
“Your papers,” the uniformed gendarme demanded. This was the law and it had to be obeyed, even if it came from the enemy. Though when all was said and done, no one was very clear on who exactly the enemy was.
Amanda went to her bedroom, then returned and slowly handed the gendarme her documents and those of her daughter.
The man laboriously jotted down their names and dates of birth. In the margin he wrote the date, July 16, 1942, and the word JEWS in capital letters. Proud of his beautiful handwriting, he checked what he had copied into his notebook, then held it out for the mailman to admire as well.
“It’s a mere formality,” the city official added uncomfortably. “We have to keep an up-to-date record of all the Jews in the area. That’s the law.”
Confronted by the two women’s forbidding looks, the three men turned and left without saying goodbye.
From that moment on, Amanda and her daughter lacked protection. Their fates would be decided at the whim of the French police who, according to Father Marcel, were becoming more cowardly and submissive by the day.
The letters. The letters gave us away. The thought hammered at Amanda’s temples. Her determination to find Viera had put Lina at risk. She and Claire sat silently over a cup of tea while they tried to find some consoling idea, some words to offer them hope. Claire’s eyes flashed with anger and terror: Amanda and Lina’s lives were in the hands of a law signed by the French to please the Germans—a provision that allowed them to carry on in return for denouncing the undesirables.
There’s no way out. No one can rewrite their fate, Amanda told herself. She was protected by a village priest and a woman who had endangered her own daughter’s life by taking her and Lina in.
Father Marcel arriv
ed in a state of alarm. The few Spaniards living in the village, the Gaullists, and the “undesirables” had just been rounded up and taken away to a forced labor camp.
“I can prepare a baptismal certificate for Lina and send her to the convent I grew up in,” he said, stumbling over his words. “Neither of you is safe here, but we can at least make sure they don’t take Lina. There is talk of people being rounded up in Paris. With the help of the Vichy government, the Germans have filled France with forced labor camps.”
Amanda listened to him eyes half closed, showing no emotion. Outside, the girls were chasing happily after Remi’s ball.
“The best thing would be to talk to Father Auguste at the abbey. I’m sure he’ll help us. This isn’t a safe place for you anymore,” the priest insisted.
“No place is safe. We can’t spend all our lives running.”
“Amanda, with the abbot’s help we can save Lina,” said Claire. “He’s an old man, but I’m sure that if Father Marcel asks him, he won’t refuse. With the baptismal certificate . . .”
“I’m not going to abandon my daughter,” Amanda interrupted her sternly. “I did that once, and I’m not going to do it again. She is only seven years old.”
They sipped wine as they sat around the table. Claire grasped Amanda’s hands; her friend allowed herself to be comforted, while Father Marcel drank in silence until he suddenly thumped the tabletop twice and stood up with a sigh.
“We’ll find a solution. For now, I think it’s wiser if Lina doesn’t go to school.”
17
Shielded by the light of a candle in the small loft, the girls hid behind some wooden barrels. They had built a den with discarded blankets and rusty pieces of junk.
“They won’t find us here,” Danielle said. “From today on you will be Elise, so everyone will think you’re French like us. Maybe Maman can adopt you, then we would officially be sisters. Who would doubt it? You look more like her than I do.”
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