“You scared me, Lina . . .” She clasped her gently but firmly, with a quiet, imperceptible anxiety. “This nightmare is coming to an end.”
Lina’s face contorted, and her eyes filled with tears. She pressed herself fearfully against her mother.
“Don’t abandon me, Mama. Don’t abandon me. Remember what happened to Viera. We don’t have any news of her.”
“I’ll never abandon you, Lina, my love. And believe it or not, Viera is better off than we are. Your papa and I managed to save her. Now I have to save you.”
“Mama!” cried Lina, flinging herself on her neck and hugging her as tightly as she could.
“Trust me,” said Amanda. “Please trust me.”
29
On Saturday evening, a wave of damp hit the camp. At sunset, Amanda watched as the clouds swirled overhead, waiting anxiously for the three stars to come out—the signal for her meeting with Bertrand.
As usual there was a lot of noise from the men’s hut. They would frantically pass around pages from newspapers, throw them to the floor in disgust, and then somebody else would pick them up, read them, and curse the heavens. The guards kept their distance and overlooked the insults some of the men dared shout at them in Spanish. Even though they didn’t understand what the prisoners were saying, the meaning was perfectly clear: the moment for them to pay for what they were doing was bound to come someday.
“It’s not just the Germans who’ll be in the dock!” one of the inmates shouted. “You’ll pay the price as well!”
Amanda and Bérénice were listening.
“There’s no more room in Drancy,” said Bérénice, shaking her head.
In a clean dress and with her coat buttoned to the top, Lina was sitting at the doorway to the hut, apart from the other children.
“She still doesn’t feel well,” said Amanda, looking over at her, her mind preoccupied by that morning’s incident. “When night comes, the fever and cough will return . . . And now it looks as if it’s going to rain. That’s all we needed.”
“But we do need lots of water. Let’s see if it can wash away the bitterness of this place,” said Bérénice, rubbing her arms furiously.
Amanda went to sit with Lina, observing her every movement and reaction. She had timed all the comings and goings from the kitchen, the changing of the guards in their post, who went most often to the outhouse. On Saturdays the guards were less careful; they ignored what was going on in the huts. This lack of attention worked in her favor. But they also started drinking whole pitchers of wine in full view of the thirsty prisoners, and it wasn’t unusual for this shameless display to end in violence. Sometimes they began to sing, and one or other always ended up bawling a strident rendering of “La Marseillaise.” The men in the hut responded with the same anthem, then shouted that what the guards should be singing was a German one instead.
At six in the evening the storage shed was usually locked for the night by Bertrand, who was in charge of opening and shutting it each day. But not that night.
The drizzle was persistent. When Amanda arrived there, Bertrand was leaning against the wall opposite the door, in darkness. On the floor were several empty bottles, pieces of wood, wet chunks of coal. They had agreed he would wait for her in the corner closest to the wire fence looking out to the forest.
Amanda had left Lina in the doorway of the women’s hut, where she had no protection from the rain and was shivering. When Amanda headed for the shed, she was convinced the deal could be concluded quickly. There was no need for any talk, seductive gestures, or clumsy caresses. The negotiations were complete; all that was left now was the exchange: the handover and the reward. When she drew near, she saw Bertrand raising a half-empty wine bottle to his lips, and noticed how red his eyes were. This didn’t worry her. He needed her: she was his future.
“Bertrand,” she whispered, cajoling him like a lover. “You’d better not drink anymore tonight.”
He smiled and took another long swig, then tossed the empty bottle as far away as he could. He fumbled to undo the buttons of his uniform and extended his arms to receive her.
She approached him cautiously, trying to postpone their embrace.
“My daughter is outside, waiting in the rain.” She hurried him as she drew near.
“She’s fine where she is. Come here.”
“The thing is, she has a fever. She’s had it for several days now. It would be best to take her and hand her over. After that I can come back to you,” she said, stepping back.
He burst out laughing and eyed her hungrily.
“Come here,” he insisted, arms wide and a drunken grin on his face.
When she didn’t respond, he pulled her roughly toward him. Amanda lowered her head and repeated his name again.
She tried to free herself, but he grasped her even more tightly. Amanda pushed him off, but in the struggle, he pulled on her dress until violently unclasping her brassiere. Something fell to the ground. Glinting at their feet was the promised treasure: the diamond bracelet and ring, with its spectral turquoise-blue gleam.
Gripping her with one hand, pinioning her by the throat, he flung her against the shed wall. She was cornered, unable to move or breathe.
“So your friends were the ones who were going to bring the bracelet . . . Did you think I’d let you escape with your daughter and the treasure? Who did this society madame, the cardiologist’s widow, think I was? Nothing stays a secret in here.”
His words flew around her incomprehensibly, striking her like icy gusts. She didn’t dare say anything in response.
With one of Bertrand’s hands around her throat and the other between her legs, it felt to Amanda as though the rusty barbed-wire fence she was hoping to cross was slicing through her, sinking viciously into her flesh. As he began to move rhythmically inside her, she gave a low moan.
“You’re used to it,” he said, panting and licking her ear. “Don’t tell me it upsets you now.”
Struggling to get her breath back, Amanda pretended to briefly pass out, and let him do whatever he wanted.
“My daughter’s waiting for me,” she repeated.
Bertrand seemed determined to obtain as much pleasure as possible. He didn’t want to waste his Saturday night; he would sleep peacefully, relieved and satisfied. From time to time he paused, searched for her eyes and smiled a crazy, drunken smile.
Amanda slowly moved her hand to her coat pocket, feeling for the handle of the rusty blade. Grasping it as cautiously as she could, she closed her eyes and blindly, as though in the grip of an uncontrollable impulse, stabbed at the jugular of the man pushing against her. She struck a second time, and could feel the battered blade slowly cut through the neck muscles. Still inside her, Bertrand stopped moving. Amanda drove the knife in again and again. With all her strength, all her rage.
“And on the seventh day, God ended his work, and rested,” she said in Hebrew close to Bertrand’s neck, as if about to kiss him. Then she did kiss him. She could feel the blood trickling down her lips, her hand, but only reacted when the warm, sticky liquid seeped through her coat and threatened to stain her dress. She carefully pulled out the knife and dropped it. Coldly, she inserted her fingers in the wound, searching for any remaining sign of life, the last heartbeat. There was still a pulse, as if he was drawing sustenance from her. But when she jerked her fingers out again, Bertrand took his last breath.
Amanda didn’t move. She felt a deep calm sweep over her. Now she had absolutely nothing to lose. Her daughter would be free. She would keep the bracelet and diamond ring. Bertrand’s death brought her not only a strange sense of peace, but a disconcerting sense of fulfillment. Lina was safe.
Bertrand’s corpse was still upright, jammed between her and the wall. He was steady, with eyes staring blankly and a grimace on his lips. She stepped back, and the lifeless body slid to the muddy floor of the shed.
The rain eased off, and the moon appeared from behind the clouds. A silvery gleam lit the face of the man with the slashed nec
k. Dazed, Amanda sat beside the body, just as she had on the nights when she gave him her body as her part of the bargain. There was no hurry: this was simply another nocturnal encounter between a hungry officer and a prisoner from the women’s hut. No one would wonder where he was until dawn the next day.
Amanda straightened her dress and coat, then walked slowly back to the women’s hut. She found Lina asleep in the doorway. She was trembling; her fever had returned, her quiet cough more like a groan. Amanda put the bracelet and ring in the inside pocket of her daughter’s coat. In the other she placed the letter with instructions for Viera. Without any greeting or goodbye.
She still had that summer’s letter with her, the last letter, which she had never finished. She peered at the sheet from the mutilated book, which was still blank. No, there’s no time for goodbyes, she was convinced. Shakily, she traced the first letter, then a whole syllable. Yes, she at least had to complete the single word, and yet it took her several minutes to do so. At the bottom of the empty page, she wrote: Mama. This was her goodbye, what else could Viera need? She was sure that every night, before going to sleep, her daughter listened to her lullaby. She was delighted by the gleaming white of the faded sheet of paper and its washed-out image of Anagallis caerulea. Rejoicing, she finished writing that one, unique, true word, the one that could save them and rescue them all from oblivion. A single word would be enough.
She folded the sheet and placed it in her daughter’s coat pocket as well.
“Lina, it’s time for us to go.”
She shook her daughter tenderly and tried to lift her, but didn’t have the strength. Lina gradually woke up and, without asking what they were doing or where they were going, grasped her mother’s bloody hand.
30
Amanda and Lina carefully separated rows of barbed-wire fence and crossed over. In the distance, the whole forest trembled as Amanda peered into the darkness, her eyes veiled by a feeling of hatred completely new to her. The night’s cool air began to dry the dead man’s blood, turning it into crystals on her skin.
She turned to look back at the dark camp in the distance. Her daughter was leaving behind a past that should never have existed. She would forget the insults, the fever, the escape, the apathy, the rejection. She would wake up in Claire’s arms and forget her name. She would have to forget it: that was the only way she could save herself.
Before first light, Amanda would return to the hut, alone. She would wash off the blood with steaming hot water in the kitchen. No trace would remain of the vile man who had betrayed her, who had turned her into a murderer. She would get another dress from the suitcase, and when she was clean and without guilt, she would say goodbye to Bérénice and Frau Meyer. As she embraced them, she would say, “I did it. My daughter is safe. It’s time to forget.”
Then she would return to the shed and close Bertrand’s eyes. After that, she would go and find one of the guards and take him to the scene of the crime. At dawn, the camp would wake up to a deafening uproar. The French guards would have yet another reason to be afraid. She would confess her guilt and be sentenced yet again. A few days later, she would be deported in a train packed with dying souls, and would end up, as she herself had predicted, in an oven. She was no longer afraid of fire. Or maybe, when she returned to the camp, she would be met with a bullet to the head. That simple, that painless.
The forest was a huge shadow that separated the concentration camp from the nearest village. Amanda and her daughter plunged blindly into it, until far ahead of them they could make out two silhouettes. In the darkness, they could hear footsteps on the fallen leaves. They came to a cautious stop. Amanda knew she shouldn’t go too far from the camp: in a couple of hours at most she had to be back there. She could feel Lina’s hand squeezing hers, and bent down so that she could hear.
“You’re to look up at the treetops, as high as you can, and search for the stars. All I ask is that, whatever happens, don’t look back. I’ll be here or somewhere else, always keeping watch over you and Viera.”
Lina clung to her.
“Now you must promise me something. You’re about to start a new life, and must forgive me for having made you suffer so much.”
“Mama, don’t abandon me . . .”
“How can you think I’m abandoning you, my little Lina? Look who’s over there.”
Deep in the shadows of the forest, Lina could only see a hand being held out by a man as tall as a silver birch.
“You have the letter you need to send to Viera, the last one I wrote. When the time comes, she’ll look for you and you’ll get your name back. Our name.”
At that moment Lina saw Claire’s face beneath the trees. Her body stiffened, as if she was asking: “Why do you want to take me away from Mama?” She began to tremble uncontrollably. Next to Claire she recognized Father Marcel.
Feeling weaker, her vision blurring, she shut her eyes tight and counted her accelerated heartbeats: One, two, three, four, five, six . . .
Opening her eyes again, she cried out as loudly as she could: “Mama, verlass mich nicht,” and collapsed to the ground. Father Marcel picked her up; Claire felt her forehead. The fever was raging.
By the time Claire looked up again, Amanda had vanished. Claire bent down to the little girl’s face and kissed it.
“From now on, you are Elise. Let’s go home, sweet Elise.”
Spring of 1942
My little Viera:
I can recall my mother’s terrified face on the day when she said goodbye because she knew she was about to die. I can recall my father’s anxious look when he gave me away at the altar. I can recall those summer evenings by the lake when we played at being happy. I can recall your father’s warm embrace on winter nights when I was trembling, not from fear, but because the silences between us frightened me. I can recall his last letter, word for word. I can recall the smell of the antique books in the Garden of Letters, mixed with the stench from the bonfire in the middle of the square, and the crunch of broken glass everywhere. I can recall those long, peaceful afternoons when we had tea with Hilde, unaware of what our fate might be. I can recall the day you were born and when for the first time I had the dreadful premonition that I would not see you grow up. I can recall the day I discovered I was pregnant with your sister, and again began to tremble with fear. I can recall Frau Meyer’s stern gaze when I abandoned you at the foot of the gangway.
And yet I have trouble recalling your eyes and your smile. I know that I once held you in my arms, but I cannot recall when you took your first steps, or said your first word.
Now I struggle every night with my poor memory. I don’t have the strength to fight oblivion.
How could I have abandoned you, my little Viera? How could I then have protected myself by forgetting you? That wasn’t the fault of the Nazis, the war, or the hatred that now guides my hand across this faded sheet filled with wallflowers. It was the fault of my fear.
Fear led me to oblivion.
This may be the last letter I’ll be able to write to you. All I ask is that your sister and you always wear the chains with your names engraved on them. They are the most precious possession you will ever have. That way you will never forget who you are.
The day this inferno is over, come and search for your sister. Protect each other and recover your name. To save herself, she now must forget who she is. But you don’t have to.
Mama
The Abandonment
Haute-Vienne, 1942–1947
31
For six days and six nights, the little girl’s lacerated body lay beneath damp sheets in a room where not even the smallest shaft of light was allowed in. Only the moon’s reflection entered to bring a pale glimmer of life to the inert face.
The fever had gradually abated, but she was still breathing with difficulty, as if she had already given up the struggle. Eyes closed, she barely moved her lips, and her body began to shake uncontrollably whenever Claire rubbed her lips with small pieces of ice to try to
rehydrate her. She refused to eat, drink water, smile, or cry.
She did respond to caresses, or so Claire, who was always at her side, liked to believe. She reacted to Father Marcel’s prayers with sporadic sighs that brought a timid smile to the faces of the two adults, in the hope she would pull through. At night, Danielle sang her songs, searching for a sign that would let her know her friend’s soul had not been lost in the dark forest.
After the little girl had been unconscious for a week, Father Marcel decided they had to take her to the hospital in Limoges. They couldn’t leave her another day without eating or drinking any water. He picked her up before Claire had time to object. Her arms hung down like broken branches; her head hung lifelessly against his neck.
“She’s only seven, and we’re all she has,” Claire protested. At that moment Father Marcel felt the girl snuggling against his chest.
Claire was still kneeling at the foot of the bed, praying for a miracle. The priest took some ice and dripped a few drops of water onto the girl’s brow, violet-tinged face, and cracked lips.
“Claire,” he said gently, “she’s going to be all right.”
When Claire saw the girl had opened her eyes and offered him a wan smile, she came up and touched the priest’s arm. At that moment the two of them were again as close, or possibly even closer, as when he had kept vigil over her for a week. Sickness had once again brought them together.
The girl began to stir. Taking her in her arms, Claire held Father Marcel’s hand and broke into sobs. The priest wished the embrace could also include him, and immediately asked God’s forgiveness for the thought. He didn’t want anything to spoil this moment of rejoicing. The girl was saved, and Claire was beside him. Concentrating his mind on the little one, he prayed with all his might that she would thrive, for Claire and for him.
Day dawned with both of them at the bedside of the emaciated girl, who soon began to anxiously devour everything they offered her. For the first time since they had recovered her in the forest, they dared open the windows, hoping that the merciful angel who had restored her to them would remain there the whole time they hid her on the farm.
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