She and Elise paused to examine the dusty black car that eventually pulled up two houses farther on. When the car door opened, Elise caught a glimpse of a woman’s leg in a silk stocking and high-heeled shoes. The lights immediately went on in the house opposite and a woman emerged.
“That’s the baker’s wife,” said Marie-Louise. “She doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to what’s going on in the neighborhood.”
The car engine was still running. It was obvious the driver had no intention of spending the night in this out-of-the-way village.
The young woman with the silk stockings took her time saying goodbye. As she finally emerged from the vehicle, she smiled at the neighbor across the way, whose only reply was to spit on the sidewalk. Ashamed, the young woman lowered her eyes and rummaged in her bag for her house keys. The car had moved off and she felt vulnerable. Marie-Louise folded her arms and stared at the baker’s wife, then smiled at the young woman.
“That filthy slut Viviane,” the baker’s wife complained, loud enough for Marie-Louise to hear. “The village slut. Who can wear silk stockings with no holes these days? Only her. And she even has the nerve to hang out of her window chewing on a bar of chocolate. Who can get chocolate these days? Only her.”
Elise gazed at the perfect seams on the shimmery silk stockings in the dim glow from the streetlamp. Then the young woman disappeared inside, slamming the door behind her. The cook inhaled deep lungfuls of warm air. She was exhausted.
“Tomorrow is ration card day. Let’s see what we can get.”
Inside the house, Elise followed Marie-Louise up a worn staircase with peeling walls. Green damp showed through the original pale pink, while in some corners bare stone and seemingly indestructible wooden beams poked through.
“Since my mother died, we haven’t been able to rent out the store down below. Nobody wants to buy cloth or upholster furniture,” explained Marie-Louise as they climbed the stairs.
Elise was anxious to know more about the young lady in the car, and to get to know the home of the woman who cooked for them every day, but Marie-Louise didn’t switch on any lights, simply picking up a pair of candles like those in the abbey.
“Every Friday night I burn a candle in memory of my husband. That’s all I can do for him,” she said. “Tomorrow morning you’ll see how the house is filled with light.”
Elise uneasily pulled away from the candles, following the flickering light and the cook as they walked through the upstairs rooms. She noticed there were very few pieces of furniture, along with some photographs and ornaments.
“It’s true that Viviane makes us Frenchwomen look very bad. I wonder what’s brought her back to the village?” Marie-Louise was not a great conversationalist, more of a specialist in soliloquies. “But who am I to judge a woman they want to spit on?”
She placed one of the candles on the bedside table and tucked Elise in among the feather pillows. Snuggling in the white, freshly washed sheets, the little girl thought she was in paradise.
“In the end, I feel sorry for Viviane. She’s a victim too,” Marie-Louise continued in a weary voice. “When I came back to the village on my own and she heard my husband was an ‘infidel’ and had been arrested, she was the only one who felt sorry for me. All the other neighbors looked down on me.”
Marie-Louise wasn’t expecting any reply, but all Elise wanted to do was close her eyes, sink into her fantasies about Paris, and forget about the shameful young woman.
“We’re all victims of this war,” the cook went on. “Time is against us. One morning, Viviane and the baker’s wife will wake up, and one of them will no longer have the car to get her home safely. She’ll have to take the train, and from our windows we’ll see her arrive, dragging her feet along, with no silk stockings to wear or any sad chocolate to eat. And the other will have lost that vile milicien son of hers who does dirty work for the Germans and makes her feel so high and mighty. By then it’ll be too late to ask for forgiveness,” she said, snuffing out the candle between her fingers. “There’ll be no forgiving, not for those two, or for anyone.”
She paused in the doorway, glancing back at the already sleeping Elise. And you, where were you brought here from? she said to herself.
She went and filled the bathtub with steaming hot water and poured in what was left of the salts in their purple jar. A perfumed vapor hung over the surface of the water. Marie-Louise got in, careful not to splash any water on the immaculate black-and-white bathroom floor tiles.
39
As usual, Elise was the first to wake up. She walked into the living room and opened all the shutters. Light flooded in. She was surrounded by books. A heavy green-upholstered armchair and a standard lamp were the only furniture that had survived the tenants’ greed.
The books were piled up in different sizes, thickness, and colors. Some had red or golden leather or paper covers; others were very tattered. When she saw this enormous quantity of books, Elise shivered, and crept over to the bookcases. Fascinated, she read the authors’ names: Racine, Balzac, Flaubert, Dumas. This was a new side to Marie-Louise, although in fact beyond the sad story of her life in Paris, Elise didn’t know who this cook with her answer to everything really was.
“My books are the only thing I brought with me from Paris,” Elise heard behind her. “But there’s no point reading these days. That’s a thing of the past. Besides, I don’t have the time. My husband and I used to spend hours on end in the bookstore on Rue de l’Odéon . . .”
Elise went with her into the kitchen. In the hallway she discovered a collection of family photographs. A baby covered in lace and ribbons, a man in a bowler hat, a woman in black behind a counter stacked with rolls of cloth who must have been Marie-Louise’s mother. To Elise it seemed as if her stern gaze was following and judging them. Marie-Louise told her that the portrait had been with her for her entire life, shooting out its invisible threads. Her mother had been convinced her daughter had chosen an unsuitable husband, and never stopped repeating that the marriage would come to a sorry end.
The smell of hot chocolate took Elise back to the happy days with Maman Claire; she smiled at the comfort the memory gave her. Other treats were awaiting her: an omelet, cheese, and a slice of buttered bread. What more could she ask? She was the cook’s friend, and was in heaven.
“One day I’ll live in Paris too,” she said contentedly. “And I’ll go to the Rue de l’Odéon bookstore as well. When there are no soldiers in Paris,” she went on, savoring the chocolate.
Marie-Louise was watching the dreamy child, unable to avoid the thought that there would be no future for her either in Paris or anywhere else in France, but she said nothing: it would have been unfair to shatter her illusions. Father Marcel spent every evening writing letters to find the children’s close or distant relatives. He also had hopes that strangers would take pity on them and adopt some of the older ones, who could help in the fields or with housework. A few days earlier, he had written to the archdiocese of New York to try to find Danielle and Elise’s uncle, Roger Duval, who had left France a few years earlier, but Marie-Louise didn’t want to worry the girl with that news just yet. Who could be sure if some bored priest in New York would take the trouble to track down a Frenchman who possibly didn’t want to be found? And even if they did, he had every right in the world to argue that he couldn’t take on the responsibility of two young girls. But Father Marcel, who remembered him as a youngster in the village, assured her that Roger Duval was someone with a kind soul, a staunch believer who would reply as soon as he heard his sister had left behind children.
But Paris? No, she couldn’t see Elise in Paris, that was for sure.
“Paris isn’t what it used to be, and it never will be again,” she declared, a piece of bread in her mouth. “The day the swastika flew over Place de la Concorde and the French chose self-preservation, the spirit of the city vanished, and its magic ended up in the gutter,” she said, with one of her mordant cackles. “They thought that by l
etting the Nazi flag fly, or by allowing the German choir to sing on the steps of l’Opéra, they would leave us in peace, with our newspapers on the table and a madeleine dipped in our coffee cup. Elise, Paris is no more than a fantasy.”
Marie-Louise asked her to tidy the kitchen while she ran an errand for Father Marcel, and as the young girl washed up the breakfast things she gave her imagination free rein. She was now certain that Marie-Louise, whom everyone thought was no more than a simple cook, was in reality a sophisticated woman, a rebel intellectual, a fighter in the heroic Resistance led by the priest and those two mysterious magicians.
Elise saw her leave with several enormous rolls of cloth under her arm. From the window, she was able to watch her until she saw her go unannounced into the house where the girl with the silk stockings lived. In broad daylight! But Marie-Louise had nothing to fear. After having lost her husband and her beloved café, she would lose no sleep over being rejected again in the village, thought Elise. In her imagination, Viviane was not the slut everyone thought she was, but had been forced to create that facade to disguise the fact that she transmitted messages from the Paris Resistance to the group of men hiding behind the walls of the run-down abbey. It was also possible that Viviane’s mission was to poison her lover, a forbidding German officer responsible for the deaths of more than one French hero who had courageously confronted the enemy . . .
A few hours later, Marie-Louise returned out of breath, laden with three heavy bags. Leaving them on the table without any explanation, she withdrew to have a nap.
On Sunday morning, just before sunup, Marie-Louise and Elise set off for the abbey. Elise had to carry a huge bag, but didn’t dare complain. Before they left the house, the cook took a piece of chocolate wrapped in foil out of her pocket, broke it in half, and shared it with her.
“We’re all entitled to a delicacy like this,” was all she said of her visit to Viviane. Elise happily devoured this kind of dark communion host that dissolved in her mouth like a sigh.
“Don’t you miss anything about Paris?” Elise insisted.
“Of course I do. But do you know what I miss most? The poplars lining the Seine.”
40
Elise felt restored, and returned to the abbey keen to tell Danielle all about her adventures in the village. She was convinced that the harmless cook was a brave Resistance fighter who, rather than hide out in the woods, had turned the abbey into her secret operations center from where she would drive the Germans not only from France but the entire continent.
Before reaching the dormitory she heard an uproar. Some of the children were shouting so loudly they seemed to be making the stone walls shake. In the distance she could see Father Marcel running toward her, and stepped warily into the darkened room. Danielle was sitting astride the boy who had never stopped insulting Elise, throttling him with both hands and cursing him angrily with words the others couldn’t make out. The boy was struggling to breathe, and his eyes were popping out of their sockets just as Father Marcel arrived and pulled Danielle off him. In a corner of the bed the two girls shared, Maman Claire’s suitcase lay open. The clothes were strewn across the floor, the ebony box had been tossed aside, the photograph and letters were everywhere, and a gold chain lay at the far end of the bed. Elise began to weep as she picked up her belongings, Maman Claire’s treasured heirlooms. A tall, thin boy came over to defend her and shot a challenging look at the aggressor, who was still sobbing fearfully.
“Don’t even think of attacking them again, do you hear me?” the tall boy threatened him. “Or you’ll have me to deal with.”
“Boche,” the attacker whispered slyly at Elise, so quietly that no one else could hear. He crawled over to a corner, where he writhed silently for a few seconds before lying down cowering in pain, trying to avoid the other children’s gaze.
“I’m Henri,” the girls’ new defender introduced himself. Wiping away Elise’s tears with the back of his hand, he helped her put the coats, a photograph, and letters back into the suitcase. “Trust me, that bully won’t bother you again.”
“We’d better keep that case in my room,” said Father Marcel, who had observed the scene without intervening. He laid his arm on Danielle’s shoulder as Elise closed the suitcase. Then he went over to the boy who was still sniveling by the wall, and hauled him up by the ear. “Into the sacristy. Right now! Get a move on!”
When Danielle recovered the case, she saw that the small purple box was still lying under the bed. Henri saw it too, and kneeled down to pick it up and return it to her. Her hands still shaking, Danielle took it and thanked him with a look. Her chest was still heaving with rage. She could have killed that wretch and got him off their backs once and for all. She should have escaped much farther away with Elise, to another village where no one knew them or would recognize them. She didn’t understand why they still had to put up with this kind of insult. Father Marcel’s cell won’t be enough. Why not shut him in the cloister, where only monks are allowed to enter? The Germans would never dare cross the threshold into a place where people devote themselves to prayer, she thought, desperate to find a solution.
She left the dormitory, suitcase in hand, accompanied by Elise and the lanky boy with the name of a Resistance hero. To Elise, Henri was another warrior who had come to defend them, a valiant member of the maquis, ready for anything. In her eyes, he looked much taller than he really was, with muscular arms and wearing the scruffy uniform of a fighter from the hills. In fact, Henri was simply a skinny young man, not even fifteen, whose khaki shorts revealed a pair of socks with holes in them, a short-sleeved shirt with three missing buttons, and a pocket about to come off.
At the entrance to Father Marcel’s cell, Henri stopped them solemnly.
“We’re going to win. We are winning,” he said, pausing for effect. “We won’t be here much longer.”
Danielle and Elise said nothing, but glanced at each other. There was no one else they could trust.
From that moment on, Henri became the girls’ inseparable ally. His gentle expression contrasted with a badly healed wound on his forehead, his sad, ragged clothes, his shoes full of holes, and a slight limp that he tried to hide.
A few days later, the three of them were sitting out in the courtyard with nothing to do.
“We ought to head for the mountains down by the Spanish border,” said Henri, breaking the silence. His voice sounded more and more like that of an adult. “We’ll have to walk for days and nights, crossing bridges and sometimes swimming across rivers, but we’ll get there. We can’t stay here a day longer. The Germans are desperate because they know they’re about to lose the war, and the first thing they’ll do when they think they’ve been defeated is to come and finish us off.”
“Count me in,” said Danielle, in all seriousness. She was determined once and for all to leave behind the role of a victim that the Nazis had imposed on her. An orphan with no home or family to claim her, waiting for an uncle on the far side of the Atlantic to appear as her savior. It would be safer if she left the suitcase with Father Marcel. She would come back for it once they were free.
“If we get far enough south, we won’t meet any filthy Boches for kilometers,” Henri went on, absolutely determined. “The danger there is the milices, those damned French traitors who collaborate with the Germans. A milicien is a thousand times worse than a Boche. But don’t worry, the farmers will lend us a hand, you’ll see. We’ll find shelter from village to village until we reach our destination.”
“But what is our destination?” Elise asked hesitantly, not wanting to dampen her sister or her new friend’s rebel spirit.
“To be part of those who face the Germans day and night. That’s our destination,” said Henri grandiloquently, imagining a crowd listening to him with expectant fervor. “The bombing of Paris will begin very soon. The English, Americans, and Russians are determined to wipe the Nazis from the face of the earth. Not a single one will be left alive.” At this he fell silent for a long
while, before adding somberly, “And soon perhaps we’ll also see a bomb fall here. The abbey would be left in ruins and we’d all be buried in oblivion. Who knows?”
The three of them remained quiet, gazing at the stones of the abbey walls that now seemed to them as fragile as the straw and mud shelters that the seasonal workers built on the nearby farms. But only a few seconds had gone by before Elise leaped to her feet.
“Follow me!” she ordered. She had adopted her most conspiratorial air. Danielle and Henri hesitated.
“Follow me, it’s important!” Elise insisted, heading for the kitchen. Curious, the other two stood up and reluctantly obeyed.
She led them to the mysterious room where she had once seen the rabbit, the top hat, and the magic wand. The room where—and this was what was important—she had discovered the telltale leaflets that Father Marcel had quickly tried to hide.
“Not your story about the magician again!” Danielle mocked her.
Henri, on the other hand, was alert and excited. This was the first time he felt he might find an escape from the boring life in the abbey. He knew that Father Marcel had already been in contact with his older brother, the son of his father’s first marriage, who lived in Alsace, a man who had married a Frenchwoman who regarded herself as German. The two men must be organizing his departure—that was why he wanted to put his plan into action as soon as possible, to set off down unknown roads, to escape. He preferred to die of hunger and thirst than to live with a brother he considered a collaborator. He refused to be sent to one of those border villages where they spoke French in an abnormal German accent that drove him mad.
He went into the room and began examining every corner, like a forensic expert searching for clues. It was the start of a fascinating game. Though she was skeptical, Danielle realized she didn’t want to be left behind, and so allowed herself to be swept along by Elise’s curiosity and Henri’s enthusiasm.
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