by Perrat, Liza
‘All the boys are in Montluc Prison, and ––’
‘Montluc!’ She laid a hand on my arm, and with the other grasped her silver cross. ‘And what? Tell me, Céleste.’
‘They’ve been sentenced to …’
My sister remained silent, but the skin about the edges of her coif flushed scarlet.
‘Sentenced to what?’ she finally said. ‘Death?’
I nodded. ‘But Dr. Laforge has a plan to break them out. I’ve just come from the prison.’ I explained about the pills and the note. ‘I have to wait a few days before I go back. You know, give them time to get sick enough to be transferred to the hospital. That’s if they do find the note and the pills.’
‘Be very careful at Montluc, Céleste. I know this work appeals to your sense of excitement and adventure, but it’s a dangerous place. If they have the slightest suspicion you’re trying something they’ll imprison you too. Or simply shoot you.’
‘You don’t have to worry about me.’ I fought to mask the agitation I felt when my sister lectured me. ‘I’m not a child.’
‘I’ll pray for you anyway.’
‘So, if I can’t see the children,’ I said, ‘maybe I could see Max and Sabine?’
‘I might be able to arrange a quick visit. Wait here.’
In a starchy bustle Félicité slipped out, and I peered about her room –– the place my elusive sister slept, prayed and dressed to hide her curvy body and her long dark braids beneath the grim habit.
I don’t know what I’d imagined, but I’d never pictured the narrow bed, the scuffed dressing table and wardrobe, and the single decoration –– a plain wooden cross above the bedhead –– the things for which my sister had given up everything. A life she’d relinquished for God.
Next to that barest and saddest of rooms, the centuries-old L’Auberge des Anges seemed a place of great homeliness and timeless comfort.
I plied the angel pendant between my thumb and forefinger. The worn piece of bone warmed me in that dim starkness, and I understood religion was not, as I’d presumed, simply a convenient escape route for Félicité. As I took my strength from the angel talisman, my sister took hers from God.
Félicité came back into the room, the rosary beads dangling from her belt clack-clacking softly as she sat on the bed.
‘We’ll see them in the kitchen shortly. It will seem more natural, in Sabine’s working place.’
‘You don’t ever regret it?’ I said, my gaze moving around the room again. ‘The convent, this religious life?’
‘I didn’t choose it, Céleste. God chose me.’
‘I wish something would choose me, and I could get away from Maman too.’
‘Don’t think like that. Imagine Papa’s relief, knowing you’re keeping the farm going without him and Patrick,’ Félicité said with her soft smile. ‘He’d be proud of you. I’m proud of you. One day you’ll get your chance to do what you want.’
‘We’ll see if that ever happens,’ I said. ‘But I always imagined a boy might come along and change your mind, and you wouldn’t want to be a nun anymore.’
‘It’s true,’ she said with a sigh. ‘The thought did come over me at times, but not now.’
‘When?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. When I was younger … on sad days. So, tell me how things are going with the German officer?’
‘Well, no more questions about the boys, so I’m fairly certain he doesn’t know anything about their activities, or that he’s trying to get information from me. It seems he likes me a lot in fact … that’s what he says.’
‘That’s reassuring,’ Félicité said. ‘If you believe he knows nothing about the boys. You’ve done your job well. So, there’s perhaps no point in seeing him any longer?’ She took my arm. ‘Come on, let’s go and see our friends.’
We stepped back into the corridor and I felt the unease stirring inside me, the same indefinable feeling I’d had since our riverbank meeting, which had my mind flailing about in confusion. There was, naturally, the fear I’d be caught with a Boche; the risk of playing with a lethal toy. There was the danger of being caught at our cat and mouse game too. But alongside all these things I felt a kind of gentleness and longing; a desire to lose myself in him and to forget the conflicts of my humdrum farm life with Maman.
I was so consumed with thoughts of the flaxen-haired German, I didn’t notice Félicité beckoning me to the window.
‘Look, there’s Talia.’
From the group of girls standing in a courtyard below, I picked out Talia’s dark frizz. In her pleated navy skirt and sweater, with its celluloid collar attached by buttons, she looked just like all the other girls. I went to crack the window open, to call out to my little friend, but resisted the urge.
‘Thankfully,’ Félicité said, ‘in these times of scarcity, kind mothers leave their children’s outgrown uniforms at the school.’
We watched the girls divide into parallel rows, holding their arms straight out until they touched their neighbour’s fingertips. They began their exercise session, soles squeaking on the paving stones with every jump, young bodies bending and straightening. The seats of knickers appeared and disappeared to the rhythm of the clapper, until the nun in charge blew her whistle and the girls fell into a double line and hurried back inside the building.
‘She does look happy,’ I said. ‘I’m so glad.’
‘She’s doing well in class too,’ Félicité said as I followed her down the stairs and along another sombre hallway. ‘Such a bright girl, and she’s painting more and more, like her father.’
The vast, shadowy kitchen stank of cabbage and rancid grease. We stood in the doorway, reluctant to disturb Sabine, dancing across the tiles. Young Jacob sat on the floor, his little head nodding up and down in rhythm to each of his mother’s steps, one hand clutching the toy soldier in the red coat.
‘Céleste!’ Sabine wiped her hands down her apron, rushed across and threw her arms around me. ‘We’ve missed you. How is your brother, and Olivier? And your maman? Are they all safe?’
‘Maman’s been released,’ I said. ‘The boys are still in prison, but they’re alive. How are you all?’
‘Your sister has the kindest soul.’ Sabine’s laid a hand on Félicité’s forearm. ‘I’m becoming quite the chef. Your mother would be proud of me.’
‘I doubt Maman is ever proud of anyone,’ I said with a snort.
Max sloped into the kitchen in a pair of blue overalls, which on such a studious man looked like some comical party costume. He gave us a hesitant smile and slumped into a chair at the table in the centre of the room.
‘Papa,’ Jacob said, clambering onto his lap.
Sabine placed a bowl of café Pétain before Max. ‘And I think my husband’s acquiring green fingers,’ she said, squeezing his shoulder.
‘What about your paintings?’ I said. ‘I’d love to see them.’
Max removed the rimless spectacles and wiped the lenses with his handkerchief. ‘Perhaps next time, Céleste. They’re not that good, really.’
Sabine gave her husband’s cheek a peck. ‘Don’t be humble, you’re a master.’
‘Oh I know he is,’ I said. ‘And soon, after this war is over, everyone else will know it too, when they admire them in the gallery.’
‘Who can assure us this war will be over soon?’ Max said. ‘And that nothing will have happened to us, or our helpers?’ He gulped down his ersatz coffee, lifted Jacob from his lap and handed the child to his wife. ‘No one! Now, I’d best get back to the garden … can’t be absent too long. Thank you for coming to see us, Céleste.’
‘And I should prepare the beans and artichokes for supper,’ Sabine said.
I hugged them both and kissed Jacob on the forehead.
‘Give Talia a hug from me. I’ll see her next time.’
‘Take care, Céleste,’ Sabine said.
‘Thank goodness Max has his painting,’ I said as my sister closed the door behind us.
‘
I think it’s become more a crutch to him than the hobby it once was,’ Félicité said. ‘But he paints with such a reckless kind of frenzy these days that I’m not certain it gives him much pleasure at all. It’s simply a way to escape what’s going on around him and what might happen to them. As you probably noticed, he barely talks anymore. Not even to Talia.’
‘I can’t imagine how awful it is,’ I said. ‘And I know Sabine’s cheerful face is nothing but a mask for the children but at least it’s more comfortable here, and safer, than our attic.’
‘More comfortable perhaps, Céleste, but terrifying all the same. Gestapo men were here only the day before yesterday looking for a child –– a little girl of five whose parents had been deported. They couldn’t account for the daughter and somebody had informed them we were hiding her here. Thankfully she had false papers and they failed to identify her.’
‘But what harm could a five-year old do? And what would they’ve done with her?’
‘What they do with them all, Céleste –– send her to one of their special camps.’
‘We’re hearing so many rumours,’ I said, ‘but what really happens in the camps?’
Félicité’s eyes met mine and I noticed something odd about my sister’s face –– a darkness that was not hers; a shadow across the features that had always given the impression everything would be all right.
‘Nobody knows for certain,’ she said. ‘But I’m sure we have only God to thank that our friends have not yet been sent away.’
18
On that Saturday market day, the mist obscured the Monts du Lyonnais and clung low and tight about the bare lime trees. With the shop doors closed against the cold, there were none of the usual smiling faces of Lucie’s artisans, and a joyless chill hung over la place de l’Eglise. It seemed more forlorn without the chatter and laughter of Patrick, Olivier, Marc and André, lounging around the fountain. It even seemed odd without the freckle-faced Gaspard Bénédict. I longed for the day to be over; for tomorrow to come, when I could return to Montluc Prison.
‘It seems we’re not the only ones with so little to sell,’ Maman said nodding at the other stall holders hunched beneath their tarpaulins, wearing their desperation like brands on their thready woollen coats. ‘Since the German swine are requisitioning more and more food. Not to mention the disastrous harvest. The farmers are the only happy ones these days,’ she went on, straightening her apron. ‘People like Olivier’s uncle, demanding ridiculous prices from the Germans instead of saving stocks for their own kind. I believe Ghislaine’s father’s playing the same game, flogging his meat on the black market.’
‘Well they obviously don’t have a choice,’ I said. ‘You do keep reminding me these are hard times, and we’re all just trying to get by.’
‘Still, it’s not right,’ Maman said, her face turning sour as she watched Rachel Abraham setting up her stall. ‘Unlike us, no drought, storm or German requisition seems to affect her.’
‘Why do you hate her? Madame Abraham is such a sweet old woman.’
‘Wherever did you get that notion, Célestine? I don’t despise her at all. Sweet she may be, but it just doesn’t seem right, all of us suffering with the weather … this occupation, while she goes on making a tidy living as usual.’
‘Madame Lemoulin sells antiques,’ I said, unpacking the winter stocks Maman had taken to selling: her terrines, pâtés and saucisson, all made from last winter’s pig. ‘Of course the weather doesn’t bother her.’
Maman mumbled something incomprehensible and turned to greet our first customer.
I made myself busy, serving several people, but at the first chance of a break, I sidled off to Au Cochon Tué.
The stale odour of wine and tobacco assaulted my nostrils as I entered the empty bar, which would only fill with noisy banter and cigarette smoke when the market was over.
As I reached the alcove behind the bar area, Denise Grosjean scuttled from the toilet and almost barged straight into me.
‘Oh, Céleste, what are you doing here?’
‘Er … what do you think?’ I stared at Denise’s tomato-red cheeks, and at Fritz Frankenheimer, strutting out behind her.
‘Good, well have a n-nice time,’ Denise stammered, swiping at clumps of hair that had fallen across her face. Fritz scuttled after her, his huge thighs and fat bottom threatening to split his breeches.
They left the bar separately and the simplest dimwit could’ve guessed why the German’s face had the satisfied, defiant look of a fat cat purring by a stove. I shook my head, shocked at the flagrant risk Denise was obviously taking. At least I kept my “fraternising” humble and hidden.
I bolted the door, reached behind the cistern, the skip in my heartbeat surprising me as my fingers closed around the scrap of paper.
Four more days until I see you. It will seem like four years. M.
I felt a quick pulse of something I could not define and I was aware of a strange feeling growing within me; an intense mixture of fright and tenderness, something like stroking a wild animal. I flushed the bits of paper away and struggled to compose my face as I weaved my way back through people and animals.
As I approached our stall, I saw Karl Gottlob standing, with majestic ease, before my mother, as if the power of all Germany reflected on him.
I edged closer. Maman was jabbing her finger at Karl and shaking her head as if chiding him. That wouldn’t surprise me, Maman giving the enemy a good telling-off as if she, rather than Karl Gottlob, were the occupier. But I couldn’t catch a word, so brief was their conversation.
As I took my place beside her, Karl gave me one of his ogling looks, as if the cat-eyes were stripping my clothes from me. He marched off, empty-handed.
‘I can’t imagine what he’d want to buy from us,’ I said, as Karl disappeared into the crowd, ‘when they get all they need from stripping every home and farm in Lucie. Whatever did he want?’
‘None of your concern, Célestine. Merely a … he simply wanted advice about a medical problem.’
Maman fussed about transferring our takings to her money tin, and since people were staring at us, I sensed it wasn’t the moment to press her for details.
Besides, since her release from prison and Patrick’s arrest, my mother had grown ever more peculiar. Always gruff and unrelenting, she’d become so distanced from me –– from everyone –– as if she no longer inhabited the same world. She barely spoke, going about her daily tasks with ordered efficiency until the twilight stopped her and she sank into her Napoléon III armchair and assaulted her knitting, her brow creased low over the savagely clicking needles.
The only conversations she had were with the trickle of people who climbed the hill to L’Auberge for castor oil to purge their systems, or cod-liver oil to encourage their children’s growth. They came with their respiratory troubles, for her ventouses and leech treatments, and for the poultices she made from flax and mustard seeds. They bought bottles of her famous eau-de-vie, the miracle remedy she made from leftover fruit, which she claimed banished every last germ. A splash in the morning coffee for the elderly, she advised them. A drop in the ear for infections, and a dash in the children’s morning milk.
The girls kept coming too. Not only young girls, but married women –– mothers who, with the rising ravages of war, could barely feed their children, let alone a newcomer. There were others also, whose husbands were prisoners or voluntary workers in German camps, who didn’t want to have to explain a fair-haired toddler when their spouse finally trundled home. I overheard their hushed excuses, their whispered justifications, as they made the sign of the cross and spread their trembling legs.
But still, after her arrest, and more so with the guillotining of the faiseuse d’anges Marie-Louise Giraud, it was hard to comprehend why Maman kept taking such a risk. Surely she could find another, legal, way to earn a living?
‘Célestine!’ she snapped. ‘Stop your dreaming.’
I jumped to attention.
***
The bells of Saint Antoine chimed midday and as the stallholders began packing their goods back into boxes, I glimpsed Fritz Frankenheimer and Karl Gottlob marching into Monsieur Dutrottier’s butcher shop. My eyes flickered across the square but there was no sign of Martin with them.
I hurried to the butcher’s shop. Did Karl and Fritz know something about Marc and the others? Or –– God forbid –– had someone informed them we listened to the BBC on the Dutrottier’s radio?
I peeked around the doorway. The Germans were saluting Ghislaine’s father with their exaggerated, almost insolent politeness. They spoke in low tones. I caught Ghislaine’s eye. She gave her head a quick shake and I moved away, back out onto the square.
I kept one eye on the Dutrottier shop as I helped Maman pack up our stall. Minutes passed, and Karl and Fritz stomped from the shop. There was no sign of the radio, or of a handcuffed butcher.
‘Back in a minute,’ I said, hurrying away to the shop before Maman could argue.
Ghislaine was standing behind the counter counting the takings. I caught a glimpse of her father out the back, scrubbing his giant cleaver.
‘Did they come about Marc?’ I said.
‘No, I think that’s strictly Gestapo business. Someone informed those two my father is trading his meat on the black market; that he sells it at a great profit to rich city people.’
‘But the Germans get enough to eat,’ I said. ‘Why would they want your father’s meat?’
‘Oh they don’t want to eat it,’ Ghislaine said. ‘They want to flog it to the rich city people themselves. They’ll denounce him to the authorities if he doesn’t sell the lot to them from now on.’ The blue eyes narrowed. ‘Trading with the Lyon people was the only way poor Papa could make ends meet these days.’
‘I suppose it could’ve been anyone,’ I said. ‘Informing on him. My mother keeps telling me we can’t trust anyone; that people are only interested in protecting themselves and would tell the Germans anything, if it suited them.’
