The Room on Rue Amélie

by Kristin Harmel

  “Just that a man named Léo Huet disappeared at the same time and hasn’t turned up in any of the prisons, as far as we can tell. He was working on the escape line, and the suspicion is that he betrayed Ruby and a few others. Laure has also been apprehended, as has another man who ran a safe house just outside Paris.”

  “And have any of them talked yet?”

  “Not as far as I know. But the Nazis have their techniques.”

  “Will they torture her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But from the way Lucien averted his eyes, Charlotte guessed that the answer was probably yes. She felt suddenly sick to her stomach. “Surely the fact that she is American will help her.”

  “Yes. I hope so,” Lucien said. But his tone was flat and unconvincing. “Charlotte, if there’s a way to survive, Ruby will. I know she will.”

  “Yes,” Charlotte agreed. But she also knew that survival might not be a possibility. There was no reason to say it aloud.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  June 1944

  From Dartmouth, Thomas and the other two British pilots who’d made their escape from Plouha in January had been escorted to London by two MPs, who took them first to the movements office and then to the Ministry of Defence. There, Thomas had been grilled for hours by an MI9 man who was evidently trying to confirm that Thomas was who he said he was. “You never know,” the man said at the end, when he was assured that Thomas was telling the truth. “It wouldn’t be the first time the Germans had tried to infiltrate us. Welcome back, son.”

  The interrogation was followed by fourteen days of mandatory leave, which Thomas was supposed to use to “get his head straight,” according to the MI9 man. But he didn’t want to straighten out his head. He wanted to return to the skies. He wanted to defend Britain. He wanted to drive those damned Nazis out of France. He wanted to get back to Ruby.

  It was clear, however, that none of that was going to happen immediately, so he accepted an invitation to visit Harry’s family for a week, although he left after just four days because Harry’s mother hovered over him, staring as if he were a ghost. He knew she could see shadows of her son in him, in the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, the way he walked, and he realized how difficult his visit was for her. So he made his excuses and spent the rest of his leave alone in a small hotel room in London, dreaming of the day he’d make it back to Ruby. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could see poppies. It was the only time he felt a sense of peace.

  Thomas received word on the last day of his leave that instead of returning to Northolt, he was to report to RAF Headquarters for a new posting.

  “Won’t I go back to my old squadron?” Thomas asked the movements officer, whose office he was shown into upon arrival.

  “No,” said the man, who introduced himself as Roscoe Vincent. “I’m afraid you can no longer take part in ops over Europe.”

  “Pardon?” Thomas’s stomach was suddenly in free fall.

  “The regulations have changed,” Vincent continued as he studied Thomas’s file, which was open on the desk in front of him. “You see, if you were to be shot down and captured by the Germans, you’d be in a position to give them information about the escape line. We can’t risk that.”

  “But I would never do that. I swear it!”

  Vincent was unmoved. “Of course you don’t think you would. But no one really knows how they’d hold up under torture, eh? In any case, those are the rules, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Now, shall we talk about where to post you? Perhaps you might like to fly Lysanders in a unit that handles air-to-air firing practices?”

  “No.” Thomas resisted the urge to squirm in his chair. “I need to be back in combat.”

  “Then Malta.”

  “I wouldn’t really be making an impact in the war effort there, now would I?”

  Vincent sighed and made a note in Thomas’s file. “The RAF base in Drem, then. You can fly missions in North Africa.”

  “With all due respect, sir, I’d like to be as involved in the campaign in Europe as possible.”

  Vincent peered at Thomas over the top rim of his glasses. “Why?”

  Thomas hesitated. “The people of France saved my life. I vowed to myself that if I got out alive, I would do all I could to protect them.”

  Vincent studied him for a long time. “So you met a girl.”

  Thomas didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to hurt his cause.

  “Europe isn’t an option.” Vincent marked something in Thomas’s file and then flipped it closed with finality. “We’ll start you at Ras El Ma in Morocco. It’s being used as a staging post for now. From there, I suspect, you’ll be heading to”—he checked his notes—“Oujda. Also in Morocco. Rest assured, you’ll be a very important part of the war effort. That will be all.”

  He stood and waited until Thomas, the breath knocked out of him, rose and made his way to the door. The poppy fields felt farther away than ever, but he was powerless to change that. If he needed to help win the war from the edge of Africa, that’s what he would do. After all, the base in Morocco wasn’t far from the European coast. And that was something.

  IT TURNED OUT THAT INSTEAD of flying combat missions, Thomas’s assignment was to deliver Spitfires to airfields in Corsica through the heat of the summer. The aircrafts would be used in the upcoming liberation of France, so Thomas was able to rationalize to himself that in a way, he was protecting Ruby after all, even if he wasn’t doing so directly. But he longed to fly missions, and as the weeks rolled into months, he began to feel as if he would be stranded in Morocco forever.

  On June 6, Thomas was on another continent as more than 160,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy to fight the Nazis head-on. The men storming through northern France were a mere 170 miles from Ruby, and he wasn’t there.

  Thomas took a short assignment in midsummer training other RAF pilots to evade capture if they went down behind enemy lines. The tide of the war had changed after D-Day, and it was becoming clear that the Nazis wouldn’t be able to hold on. Still, they seemed to be hunting downed pilots ruthlessly. It was more important than ever for pilots flying over the Continent to know what to do if they had to eject over land.

  “There are good people on the ground there,” Thomas said to a group of fresh-faced young men in late June. “People who rise above the danger and risk their own lives to help us. It’s why we will win the war, because the things we stand for are rooted in that sort of goodness.”

  “How do you maintain your faith in humanity, sir?” asked a young pilot. “How should we go about believing that we will get home safely when the odds are against us from the moment we hit the ground?”

  “You must think of the people you love the most,” Thomas said, “and remember that you’re fighting the war to make the world safe for them. Whatever becomes of you—whether you live or die—you’ll know that you are doing things for the right reasons. That’s how you maintain your faith.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  June 1944

  Ruby was still imprisoned at Fresnes when she heard the news of the Allied invasion of Normandy. The end of the war, it seemed, was at hand. But how long would it take for the Allies to reach Paris? Would she survive that long?

  Five and a half months into her pregnancy, her belly was growing, but the guards hadn’t noticed yet. In fact, they hardly seemed to notice her at all anymore. They’d tried to force the names of her associates out of her when they first captured her, but she’d maintained a steadfast denial, repeating that they were wrong, that she’d never worked for the Resistance, that she had no idea what they were talking about. She suspected the only reason she hadn’t been tortured or executed was that she was American.

  Home was now a whitewashed cell ten feet long and six feet across with an iron cot attached to the wall and an open toilet in the corner. Every day, weak coffee was handed out in the morning, and just before noon, the soup cart came by. The same bland p
otage was served at dinner along with a small piece of bread. The prisoners were given minuscule amounts of cheese or meat twice a week, and sometimes, there were Red Cross food parcels filled with treats like chocolate, jam, and crackers. Some prisoners received clothing or food from relatives, but of course Charlotte couldn’t come forward with a delivery without revealing herself. Ruby received packages just twice, from her “cousin” Lucien, who wrote that his wife was fine and in good spirits. She knew it was his way of telling her that Charlotte was alive and well, and that knowledge brought her far more comfort and warmth than the wool socks and bread he sent.

  Twice a week, the prisoners were taken into the courtyard for twenty minutes of exercise. Communication with prisoners from other cellblocks was forbidden, but Ruby was heartened to catch glimpses of Laure twice during the first few weeks. After that, the raven-haired courier was gone, and Ruby had no way of knowing whether she’d been released, sent east, or executed. She prayed for the first but knew the last was far more likely.

  Ruby found she could communicate with the prisoners in the adjoining cells by speaking close to the faucets; somehow, the pipes went through the walls and carried sound next door. She learned that the woman to her right was a twenty-three-year-old named Angelique, accused of helping to distribute a Resistance newsletter. To her left was Jacqueline, who was forty-two and suspected only of being the girlfriend of a man who worked on one of the escape lines. Both women refused to admit any wrongdoing, and they were beaten regularly for it. Ruby found strength in their steadfast resistance, and she tried to draw upon that inspiration in her darkest hours.

  And there were many dark hours. She was by herself for most of the day, but she wasn’t really alone, for she had the baby in her belly. Thomas’s baby, her source of strength. And if she was grateful to the Germans for anything, it was that they never tried to starve her as a tactic to make her talk. They took away every other freedom they could, but the fact that she was still able to feed herself meant that her baby was able to grow. At night, when she couldn’t sleep, she sang softly to her belly and hoped that the baby wasn’t somehow absorbing her fears. She prayed for a better life for her child, and she begged God each night to continue to conceal the pregnancy.

  There were four women who had babies with them and had been allowed to remain at Fresnes, but still, Ruby hesitated to give up her secret. She didn’t know what the other women had been accused of, but she suspected their alleged transgressions were more minor than hers, for the guards left them alone.

  In mid-June, she was moved to the prison at Romainville, on the edge of Paris, which sent chills down her spine. She knew that this was the place where prisoners were taken before being deported to Germany. On the way into the prison, she had to sit down with one of the commanders, a hulking Nazi soldier who looked blank and unsympathetic as he quickly skimmed her file.

  “I’m American,” she said, trying to sound confident. “You can’t send me east. I have rights.”

  He merely laughed and said, “None of you have rights. Haven’t you worked that out by now?”

  For a week and a half, she languished in a cell with nine other women, all of whom were just as worried as she was about what was coming next. Romainville should have seemed a pleasure after Fresnes—after all, they were allowed to socialize with each other, and their cells even had windows, which looked out on the prison yard—but the 4:00 A.M. roll call each day ruined any chance Ruby had at happiness. Every morning, the prisoners were marched into the prison yard, and thirty or forty names were read out. These women were on the list to be deported east, and most of them stepped forward with heads held high. Some shouted “Vive la France!” and others simply smiled bravely and waved good-bye. All of them seemed to be facing the future with courage. Ruby didn’t know how they did it.

  And then, on June 25, her name was called. She didn’t dare look back at the others, for fear of crying. She felt so much weaker than they were; she wanted to scream and rage and cry out that this wasn’t fair, that this was France, that the Germans had no right to take her away. But there would be no point in any of that, and she knew it. She was on her own.

  Ruby was loaded onto a bus full of other women, all of whom were silent as they made their way through the familiar streets of Paris. Ruby stared out the window and searched the faces of passersby, hoping against hope to see Charlotte or Lucien or even Monsieur Savatier, but of course it was only a sea of strangers, many of them staring with detachment as if the same couldn’t possibly happen to them.

  At the Gare de Pantin, on the northeast edge of the city, the SS shoved the women into trains, sixty to a car. There was straw on the floors and very little ventilation from the tiny slit windows above. There was an air of fear as they pulled out of the station, and soon that fear was tinged with the pungent scent of urine from the overflowing tin toilet in the corner.

  For the next few days, the train stopped frequently, sometimes for hours at a time, as it chugged slowly east. Twice a day, the prisoners were let out briefly, with armed guards standing by, to relieve themselves in fields. A few tried to flee, but they were shot dead on the spot. Ruby simply tried to blend in with the others, hiding her belly as the transport drew closer to the German border. There were rumors that children and pregnant women were being shot upon arrival at the concentration camps. She didn’t know if this was true, but she couldn’t risk anyone noticing her condition. As long as she was still in France, as long as she could hear bombs dropping in the distance, Ruby held on to the hope that they could be rescued.

  Then, on June 30, her mother’s birthday, the train passed through the eastern French city of Nancy and finally, inevitably, into Germany. Once the French border had disappeared behind them, Ruby’s heart sank. They were in Hitler’s land now. And as they rolled farther into Nazi territory, Ruby felt a heavy sense of certainty. There would be no reprieve. She had to do all she could to protect herself and her child until the Allies came.

  RAVENSBRüCK—THE CAMP WHERE RUBY AND the other prisoners were taken—was hot. Blisteringly hot. On the day of their arrival, Ruby and the other women were marched through a town called Fürstenberg, some fifty miles north of Berlin, up and down dusty hills and winding roads until they finally reached the enormous green gates of an expansive prison camp. Barracks seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see, and the women who were already imprisoned there walked back and forth, pushing carts and pulling wagons with hollow eyes, sunken cheeks, and emaciated limbs. It was like something out of a Bela Lugosi horror movie, and Ruby had to pinch herself as a reminder that in fact this was real life. Her life. Her stomach lurched, and she had to bite her tongue to avoid vomiting in the dirt.

  Ruby was horrified when the arriving prisoners were ordered into a huge building and told to undress. What if someone noticed her belly? But a heavy woman who had been near her on the train moved toward her as they entered the building and took her arm. “You are pregnant?” the woman whispered in French.

  Ruby hesitated. “Is it obvious?” Tears clouded her vision. Had she been fooling herself to think she could get away with concealing it?

  “Stand behind me,” the woman said firmly. “We will not let them see. We cannot let them see.”

  “Thank you,” Ruby whispered. She held her breath as she cowered, naked and terrified, behind the woman.

  “I have two daughters of my own,” the woman said softly as they inched forward. “They are around your age. I pray every day for their survival; as a mother, it is the most important thing in the world, is it not?”

  “Yes,” Ruby managed. “Yes, it is.”

  Ruby shuffled with the rest of the prisoners through several stations, where they were ordered to hand over their clothes, their jewelry, and all their belongings to the guards. In another room, she was forcibly separated from the kind woman and told to climb onto a table. She wanted to scream as a hawk-faced female guard probed between her legs. But the exam was a cursory one, and as Ruby was ushered o
n, quaking with relief, she realized that every woman who came into the room was being subjected to the same indignity. The guards were checking to make sure they hadn’t hidden any valuables inside their bodies.

  Next, Ruby fell into a line to have her head shaved, and she sobbed as her auburn hair fell in glossy ringlets to the floor. The tears earned her a slap across the face, and then, nearly bald and shivering, she was sent into another room, where she was shoved under a shower, handed a tiny towel, and given a pair of dirty underpants and a thin cotton dress with an X sewn onto both the back and the front.

  She saw the kind woman again as the prisoners were herded into the huge barrack that would become their home. There were dirty straw mattresses, roughly five feet wide, arranged in bunk formations three high, and the women were told they would be sleeping three to a bed. The older woman sidled over to a dazed Ruby and took her hand. “You are all right?” she asked.

  Ruby could only nod; she still couldn’t understand how the physical examination had failed to reveal her condition.

  “Thank God for that,” the woman said. “He must have heard our prayers.”

  But as the days turned into weeks, Ruby began to wonder whether God could hear them at all here or whether all of Germany was somehow a void from which no prayers could escape. She was sent to work at first on a crew that leveled sand dunes. It was hard, grueling labor under the watchful gaze of a female guard with a face like a bulldog’s. They worked for nearly twelve hours each day, with very few breaks, and Ruby worried constantly that the food she was given wouldn’t be enough to keep the baby alive. Every day, she inhaled a small amount of rutabaga or beet soup, a tiny portion of bread, and some watery grain coffee. Once a week, the meager rations were supplemented with a slice of sausage or an ounce of cheese. Ruby knew she was losing weight quickly. Her belly was still growing, and she was relieved to know that the baby, at least, was receiving some nourishment. But it came at Ruby’s expense. The only saving grace was that with the near starvation, Ruby’s pregnancy wasn’t readily apparent, although it should have been by now.