Lina said nothing, staring at the candle’s wavering light. When it went out, the two girls fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Amanda had difficulty convincing Lina, but decided they shouldn’t go with Danielle and Claire to mass that Sunday. Father Marcel’s homily began with references to princes, Philistines, surrendered daughters, and betrayals. None of the congregation understood quite what he was trying to say with these biblical references. There was no mention of the war, of Paris handed over to the Germans. Everything revolved around guilt and betrayal, shame and duty. At the end, staring hard at the faithful, Father Marcel slowly read them a psalm: “For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it. Neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him. But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance . . .”
An uneasy murmur filled the church. Tears ran down some of the congregation’s cheeks. Claire fell to her knees and began to pray, while Danielle and Remi ran off to find Lina.
The priest shut himself in the sacristy. For a long while he paced up and down, hands clasped behind his back, deep in troubled thoughts. When he emerged, he bumped into the mailman who had apparently been waiting for him. The priest walked straight past him: he had no intention of stopping. He could not improvise another sermon, and had no wish to punish this fellow who was consumed by his own cowardice. He had to concentrate on something far more important: finding a new refuge for Amanda and Lina.
“I was only following orders,” the mailman burst out, running after him. “I couldn’t ignore them.”
“What do you want me to say? That you should recite ten Our Fathers? Go on then, if you think that will clear your conscience.”
“There were instructions from city hall that the register had to be updated. All I said was that there was a foreigner living there. I had no idea she was Jewish. We were ordered to locate all étrangers indésirables.”
“And what’s the difference?”
“You know, Father, that we cannot hide Jews. They are acting against us.”
“They are?” Father Marcel was about to add something else, but there was no point. “I think it’s better if you leave now. I’ve got important matters to attend to.”
“The thing is, if we don’t get rid of them, if we don’t collaborate, the Germans will unleash all their fury against us, Father. I have a family . . .”
“They’ve already unleashed that fury on us. We are on our knees.” Father Marcel sighed. “Well, each of us must decide for himself.” He turned on his heel and strode off across the village square, heading for the abbey.
The mailman did not move. He thought about returning to the altar, genuflecting, and asking forgiveness, but in the end preferred to reassure himself that he had done the right thing. “We have to carry out the laws,” he told himself as he confronted the image of the crucified Jesus. “That’s the only thing we can do. You know that even better than us. You were betrayed as well, and what did you do? Nothing.” He dipped his finger in the font and crossed himself with a shrug of the shoulders. “No priest is going to come and tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. Neither he nor anyone else is above the law.”
As he crossed the square, Father Marcel was thinking about the incident with the mailman. The stench of fear contaminates: everything that comes into contact with it becomes vulnerable, and once someone has started down that path, it’s impossible to get off it. The stench of disgrace is even more disgusting: nobody thinks, nobody reacts. And God simply looks on, the priest mused, analyzing his own refusal to argue with the informer.
This episode amplified his vigilance. He was alert to any activity in the village, aware that anybody could follow the mailman’s example. All those who had taken communion from him could become informers, because the moment had arrived to betray one’s neighbor to save one’s own skin. He went into the Hotel Beaubreuil to buy a newspaper. He read the headlines and tried to keep himself informed, but only had access to news that he mistrusted. He had no doubt that soon all the “undesirables” would be rounded up. He spent sleepless nights trying to find excuses for his congregation by dwelling on the smallest act of kindness. He even came to question his own vocation, and his doubts caused him physical pain. It would be more useful if he joined the Resistance, he thought, if he went into the maquis. But he was nothing more than a priest, who could only speak out and forgive in the name of God.
“First they’ll take away the undesirables. When not a single one of them is left in France, it’ll be our turn,” he told himself under his breath.
18
The presence of the Germans in Limoges meant the nearby towns and villages felt exposed. The time to begin the exodus had arrived. However small their farms and village squares, however distant they might be from the big cities, the Nazi occupation was a fact, and everyone feared the outcome.
Those who had arrived from the north or from Paris set off again southward in search of refuge. The villages emptied; the roads became crammed with people. For Claire, the war was just beginning. For Amanda, it was coming to an end; it was impossible to keep up a fight for more than three years. Her only hope lay with time, the cure to all her ailments. But how long would she have to wait?
The days seemed longer to Lina since she had been prevented from going to school. Danielle and Remi told her that a bomb could fall on them at any moment, and that the protective measures the teachers demonstrated were a farce that the children took part in gleefully as they would a game.
The days were filled with danger; Lina’s aim was to reach nightfall safely. She didn’t think the French or German soldiers would come to remove them at night—that was the word her mother used whenever Claire or Father Marcel mentioned the roundups in neighboring villages.
“What if they do come to remove us at night . . . ?” Amanda was saying to Claire one afternoon when she saw Lina and Danielle rush in, wild-eyed and with their shoes covered in mud.
“We saw them,” cried Lina, trying to catch her breath.
“They crossed the bridge heading for Limoges,” Danielle whispered.
“Well, that’s where they’ll stay. They’ve got more important things to do there,” Claire retorted, trying to play down the significance of what the girls had seen. She went into the kitchen and stood there, head bowed. Amanda followed, and when she reached her, stared at her for a long while. The moment was coming.
At sunset, Amanda lit her Friday candles. She was convinced Father Marcel would bring bad news to the supper table, and her mind was made up. She went back into her room, packed a suitcase for her and Lina, then called Claire in.
They sat for several minutes on the edge of the bed in silence. A shaft of light shining in through the window caught them by surprise. Claire looked down anxiously at the ebony box on Amanda’s lap. In the half-light, her friend’s face lost its soft outline and looked severe, imposing.
“The only thing that unites me and my daughter is in here, Claire. Can you imagine that something so big could fit into such a small space?”
There was no answer to a question like that. Claire’s heart started racing.
“I know they’re going to come sooner or later,” said Amanda. “They’ll take us away, to who knows where. This box contains what’s most precious to me. Someday my daughter will hear from us, someday she’ll understand that I didn’t abandon her.”
Her voice cracked, and the last words sounded like a moan. A dry, tearless moan.
“Everything must come to an end, and I know that this war will be over one day and life will go on. But not for me. It’s too late for us.”
Claire couldn’t help feeling guilty, wounded, desperate. She prayed silently to God to help her find a way to save her friend.
“Promise me these letters will reach Viera. Promise me that, Claire. That’s all I ask of you.”
Claire tried to embrace her, but could feel how stiff Amanda’s body was, ref
using all compassion. They moved apart, and Amanda went over to the window. Lighting another candle, she picked up one of the pages from the botanical album. She read out aloud the name of the flower illustrated on the faded sheet: Matthiola incana, admiring the delicate purple of its petals, its enduring beauty.
All of a sudden, she felt breathless, as though the flower was absorbing all the oxygen in the room. She dropped the sheet, trying to capture a reviving breeze. A letter wasn’t going to solve anything; she had to put a stop to this pointless farce.
And yet she began to write, and the words spilled out furiously, unrelenting. When the candle burned down, she snuffed it out with her fingers, and continued writing in the darkness. The light from the window glinted on the mother-of-pearl decoration on the small box that Claire was still holding.
Suddenly, Amanda halted. She took the sheet of paper, crumpled it in her fist, and threw it into a corner of the room. She stood up and, without looking at Claire, made her way into the dining room, as stiffly as a robot.
Alarmed, Claire rushed to retrieve the crumpled sheet of paper. She stroked it smooth against her chest, then opened the box to put it with the other returned letters.
“We have to go. There isn’t much time,” Father Marcel urged them as he came into the room.
For the first time, he was including himself. And he didn’t mention Lina’s baptismal certificate, or speak of sending her to a convent, or say Amanda should cross the border into Spain, or that Claire and Danielle should get as far away south as possible. This time, he would be leading their escape. That was the only thing that made Claire feel safe: it was the only way she would run the risk of fleeing.
Amanda didn’t get involved in these new escape plans. She thought that she was paying for the guilt of having betrayed her husband by not sending Lina to Cuba with Viera. If she had done so, both would now be safe. But the damage was done, and it was irreparable. There was no way back.
That night, Lina slept with her in the narrow bed. There were no bedtime stories, no readings about exotic plants, no Latin names. Amanda remembered Hilde, and in her mind went over the infinite different paths she could have taken: what if she had sent both girls to Cuba; what if all three of them had gone to Paris? There were too many possibilities.
Her eyes shut, Amanda tried to picture Hilde in her mind. My dear friend, the Nazis have also reached the most beautiful city in the world, the city you dreamed of living in with the girls. Paris: Can you imagine? We would have been happy . . . but in the end, happiness is only a moment, a mirage. Viera is on a far-off island, Lina and I are helpless . . . and you, where are you? Berlin, Paris, or did you perhaps decide to seek refuge with your parents in the distant south? We don’t belong anywhere. We have no roots, and never will. At this moment I need your hand to give me the strength to make a decision. A decision that I’m sure I will also regret. That is my punishment, constant regret.
Listening to herself, she thought for a moment of writing a letter to her friend. It was never written; instead, she fell fast asleep.
19
Each morning, Amanda got up as though it was her last. She had a hot bath, scrubbed herself, put up her hair. She left the suitcase packed behind the bedroom door and made sure that in their proper place on the table were the pen, ink, a candle, and the sheet of paper from the mutilated book, so that she could write her final letter to Viera. She had already written the date: Summer of 1942. She paused for a moment over the illustration, and read as if she was praying the words of the Latin text describing the flower, with its corolla of five blue petals and a center as red as a wound: Anagallis caerulea, she spelled out as she sat on the doorstep waiting for them to come for her. Nobody in the house had the heart to change her silent, deliberate routine. Perhaps she would never write that letter, perhaps the page with the flower was her farewell.
With the first rays of sun, Lina heard something strike the windowpane in her room. Looking out, she saw Remi down below. Danielle ran over to the window, wrapped in a blanket. They knew Remi never slept much, but a visit so early was not a good sign.
They opened the window and waited for him to explain. He had on his best clothes beneath his coat: the Juventus shirt and the white belt with its gold buckle.
“Today is my last day,” he told them, his lips a taut line and his eyes brimming with tears.
Seeing him cry upset the girls, but they didn’t know how to comfort him. They got dressed nervously and met him at the back of the house, then the three of them set off down to the river.
We should have been ready for this, thought Danielle. She knew Remi would leave with his parents when they were least expecting it, to cross the Pyrenees with the aid of a Spanish Republican who might, who knows, have also been a Juventus fan. Remi had promised his parents that not even in his dreams would he reveal that they were fleeing at nightfall that Saturday. “Fascism is a plague, it’s contagious,” his father would repeat, punching the walls. One more day with the Nazis and he would go mad, if he wasn’t already.
On the path to the river, Remi couldn’t find the words to say goodbye to them. He paused at every bend to pick up a stone and fling it as far as he could; he tore off a leaf, feeling and smelling it, as if it wasn’t the girls and the village he was saying farewell to, but his own childhood.
“Do you know what I’d like to do right now?” he suggested when they reached the river. “I’d like to shout as loud as I can. Shout for the whole world to hear. God as well, if he can hear, if he really does listen to us.”
“Shout if it’ll do you good,” said Danielle.
“I hate the Nazis,” said Remi between his teeth.
The girls burst out laughing.
“I hate the Nazis!” said Lina, a little bit louder.
“I hate the Nazis!” shouted Danielle forcefully.
The three of them were repeating the sentence together when they were surprised by a cart, piled high with boxes, suitcases, and two bleating sheep. The man leading the cart joined their protest.
“I hate the Nazis!”
This solidarity restored their spirits. When they saw an eel swimming downstream, they ran after it to the border of Haute-Vienne and La Creuse. They were brought to a halt by the sound of an animal howling. It’s a dog, thought Lina.
“It’s drowning!” she cried.
Remi crouched down. The front half of the dog’s body was out of the water. It was plastered with mud, and its two back legs were bloody and still in the water, where they were being nibbled at by any number of tiny fish. Lina warily stared the poor creature in the eye; it no longer reacted to them being there. It was gasping for breath, and its muzzle was covered in a yellowish froth.
“It must have rolled here from the meadow. It’s too small to know how to swim, and the water’s very cold.” Remi was talking softly, trying to calm the dying animal. He reached out toward it, but when he tried to grasp its front legs to drag it out of the water, the dog growled defensively and bared its teeth. “God knows how long it’s been here.”
Lina began to stroke its head, and the dog relaxed. It gave another, much weaker growl, and Remi managed to pull it out of the water and lay it on the grass. It closed its eyes and went on breathing painfully. Its paws were crushed.
“It’ll recover,” said Remi, not even convincing himself.
The three of them sat around the dog, stroking it, waiting for it to show signs of recovery or decease. They couldn’t leave the poor creature on its own. They said nothing, watching as little by little it stopped breathing, its body twitching in its death throes.
This was the first time they had come face-to-face with death. They stared at the heaving chest as it fought for air. The pauses became longer and longer, until finally the dog stopped moving altogether.
“It was his fate,” Remi pronounced, tears in his eyes. Danielle hugged Lina to comfort her, and stroked her hair.
“Everything will be all right,” whispered Lina, without knowing why. Who w
as she to assure them that they wouldn’t also end up like the dog, dying in agony on a riverbank?
When he saw how upset Lina was, Remi put his hand on her shoulder.
“Come on, Elise, the world’s not going to end today. Listen, I’ll give you Combi, but you have to look after it!”
This brought a smile to Lina’s face. If her friend called her Elise, everything would be all right, even though Danielle protested.
“What are you saying, Remi? Combi is yours. And we’re not going to play soccer without you . . .”
But Lina was clutching the ball, her eyes tightly shut.
“I don’t need it anymore. I’ll buy a new one. Take good care of it! It belongs here with you and Danielle . . .”
They climbed back up to the path. From the top, they looked down at the dog’s lifeless body, then gave each other a big hug. Remi peered up at the sky.
“The clouds are very low. If it rains, we won’t be able to leave, and maybe I’ll spend another day with you.”
The wind blew in their faces as they walked home. But that night there was no rain.
20
The weather remained damp and misty. The day was drawing to a close, and as before, Amanda was sitting with the blank sheet of paper in front of her. Danielle was in her room, while Lina was helping Claire in the kitchen. There was a knock at the door.
“That must be Remi,” said Lina. She was going to open the door, but Claire held her back and went there herself. Lina followed. Before seeing who it was, Claire bent down and said to her: “This entire nightmare will come to an end one day, and we’ll forget it.” Hugging Lina, who didn’t understand what she meant, she added, “Help your mother. Be strong.”
Another loud bang on the door forced her to regain her composure. She opened it. On the threshold was Amanda’s premonition come true: a German officer in his black uniform, escorted by two French gendarmes. Beyond them, a car and a truck with swastikas painted on the sides, lights extinguished.
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