“One day everything changed,” she said. “I haven’t told it often, except to myself, and there inside I’ve told it so often that it has worn grooves in my mind, like the tracks of a tire rolled through wet cement. In the years since my husband’s death, these memories seem to be stirring.”
She clasped her hands together, intertwining the fingers, and laid her head against the tall back of the chair. Gazing skyward, she continued.
“It was April 27, Maman’s birthday, only a week or two after you left us. We had two more Americans with us, one from New Jersey and one from Michigan. We had completed the work on their papers, and Robert arrived at our apartment just after I returned home from school. He spent some time explaining to these two Americans all their instructions. There was much to remember—the little pine grove at the Jardin des Plantes, the tickets, the walk to the Gare d’Austerlitz, where Robert would meet them. I told you about the pine grove recently.”
“Yes, I went there this week. It was just as you said.”
“My mother was making sandwiches for the boys. Robert had brought some good ham, and she had a small Camembert. She had two small apples. Papa was at work. Then the priest arrived. I do not know if I told you about the abbé, Father Jean. He was our liaison to the Bourgogne. He helped young people like Robert to avoid the forced-labor exile to Germany.
“ ‘I came to warn you,’ Father Jean said. ‘There has been a betrayal. I don’t have time to explain, but you must leave. Allez, allez! I have warned Monsieur Vallon.’
“Immediately, Maman ran to the balcony, where she set a plant in a certain position to warn Papa if he came home. Father Jean put his hand on Robert’s shoulder. Robert was his protégé, the young man he had hoped would enter the priesthood. The priest departed, but he was still in the corridor leading to the downstairs door when the milice arrived, followed very soon by Papa, who saw the flowerpot and should have stayed away! But he had to know what the danger was—and he stepped into its midst, the maelstrom. The milice—the worst of the French police, as bad as the Gestapo—were there, in those dreadful dark navy berets.”
Annette spoke rapidly, as if scuttling the hard memories down a dark street.
“The intrusion was brutal. They threw Papa against the wall. I could see that worse than the physical pain was the assault on his pride. The milice, so puffed up with power, arrested us—Robert, the two Americans, Papa, Maman, the priest, and myself. Monique, as she knew to do, was hiding in the cupboard near the door. One of the officers pulled that cupboard open and saw her huddling there with her poupée, her dear worn ragged doll, terror on her face, and he kicked the door shut again. They left her behind and drove the rest of us to the police station. We were questioned, but we refused to answer. They had searched the apartment and found the incriminating equipment before we had a chance to dispose of it out the back window. After fifteen minutes or so of confusion at the station, the police separated the men from Maman and me. They led us down a corridor and locked us into a cold cell. Maman held her arms around me to make me warm and to comfort me. What was burning into my mind was the sight of Monique, grasping her poupée in the same way Maman was holding me, Monique with her face in terror. I had only a glimpse before the policeman slammed the door shut and we were gone.
“ ‘Will the little door open from the inside?’ I asked Maman. ‘Can she get it open?’
“ ‘Yes,’ Maman said. ‘Don’t worry.’
“Monique had the address book of all the aviateurs we had helped—about fifty of them. We had been prepared, and she knew what to do. She had hidden the little book in the clothing of her doll. Your address was in there. I thought about all of you a great deal after our detainment. I hoped that you would arrive home and that after the war you would have a good life. We were arrested long before the BBC would send its coded message that you had arrived safely.
“There in the prison cell I was frightened for Monique, and for Robert and my father and the priest. And the two Americans we barely knew. I remembered their new false names better than I remembered their actual names.
“Father Jean, who was very courageous, had been recruiting students for the réseau Bourgogne.” She paused. Her hands unfolded and fluttered up beside her ears like birds at a window. “Robert had been a student of Father Jean’s, but he didn’t have a heart for the priesthood. He was too worldly. The life of the escape line was for him irresistible. Everyone thought so highly of Robert. He was handsome, courteous, vivacious …”
Annette faltered then. Marshall waited quietly for her to continue. The summer light was fading, and bats were beginning to flicker above the courtyard. He had told her that he wouldn’t probe her with questions. He didn’t want to say something insensitive. He hadn’t known before that Robert had also been arrested, and now he realized that Robert had probably been sent to the concentration camp too—and that Caroline perhaps did not know. His view of Robert Lebeau kept shifting, like light and shadow flitting across the face of a mountain.
Annette sipped her wine and continued. “My mother and I never again saw the men who were arrested with us. We were told no news of them.
“In the middle of the night we were transferred to a large stone prison called Fresnes, south of Paris, and there we stayed in an overcrowded cell with three other women. We were all French, all arrested for résistance. The other women had left their children, all small children, I think, and they were frantic with worry. My mother commiserated with them, but she would not give up her belief that Monique was safe with our friends. ‘She had her instructions,’ Maman would say. ‘She knew where to go.’ The image of Monique and her poupée would not leave me. Eventually we managed to exchange messages with her, and the other women received messages smuggled in from friends, along with some small parcels of food, which they shared with us. We formed a bond then, after an uneasy start. Yvonne, Marcelle, and Jacqueline—three women we began to know intimately. In prison, the bonds become very strong. You have no one else, do you see?
“We maintained our dignity despite the closeness of our quarters. Yvonne began to withdraw, working herself into a ball and moaning now and then. One morning my mother ordered her to straighten herself. ‘You can’t wash yourself if you stay rolled up like that,’ she said. We had managed to create some privacy by hanging up a bed-sheet in a corner by the toilettes—if you could call it that. Well, never mind. Marcelle told us again and again about her three children who were at her mother’s when she was arrested, how she was innocent of any political activity. She was confused with someone else, she insisted, although her insistence began to break down eventually, and we never knew if she was truly not résistante, or if she had come to believe she was, weakening out of fear.
“Three times Maman and I were taken from the prison in an armored truck to the Gestapo headquarters on the rue de Saussaies for questioning. That was a frightful place. We had to wait for hours in a damp cell, where they had kept horses. The stone floor was covered with filthy straw, and there were no chairs. One day, about the third time we were taken there, I was waiting in the cell while my mother was being questioned, and when she returned, she was smiling. She whispered under her breath, ‘Robert left a sign that he was here.’ She explained what she saw: in his handwriting, on the wall of the waiting room, some lines from Villon.” She paused, seeing the past, her eyes distant. “He was always quoting Villon because we were Vallon.”
“A poet?” Marshall asked.
“A poet, yes.” Annette stopped to spread a dollop of the pâté on a piece of toast. She stared at it and handed it to Marshall. He couldn’t eat it.
“I cannot dwell on how we were treated at the Gestapo headquarters.” She shuddered. “We could hear the sounds of street life outside, mostly German sounds but now and then a French word called through the air, or a child singing. We clung to those French words; we always spoke French to the officers who questioned us. We refused their words. We wouldn’t repeat them.
“A German
officer would say, in halting French, something like ‘Did you have a notebook of contacts?’ He would hold up a notebook, a carnet. And he would use the German word. And instead of repeating the German word, we’d say carnet. It was almost funny. It was as though he was teaching the German word and we were teaching the French word. I liked to speak quickly and excitably—nothing incriminating, just something to confuse them.
“They were a type without humanity,” she said harshly. “You would think that in their position, with all the fine accommodations they had in Paris, and the privilege of the finest restaurants and other enjoyments, they would be easier in their sentiments, but no, evidently no. For our part, my mother and I, we had to grab at any stray bits of wit in order to know that we were alive, that we were still ourselves.”
Annette wasn’t looking at Marshall as she talked. She was staring across the courtyard as if waiting to see the moon rise above the rooftop.
“At Fresnes, there were frequent air-raid alerts, and once some bombs hit a factory nearby. The prison was in an uproar. The anticipation was so great that we became riotous as the sounds died away, as the aircraft receded. We knew the Allied planes—we recognized the sounds.
“All the while, my mother held me and reassured me. I realized I was still a child. I clung to her as I did when I was five. I had been so happy going about with Robert. He had told me his wishes for the future. He was determined to fight the Germans. He vowed to join the Free French army if he ever received the opportunity, although he did not want to leave France because of his parents. He was devoted to them and always went to them on Sundays. In his heart, Robert was a man of peace, but it was thrilling to hear what he would sacrifice, how he would dare to change if necessary to regain freedom for France.
“It was dark in our prison. And so hot, with no air circulating. The noises were unending, day and night. Cries, pounding and clanging, boots tramping up and down. We heard rumors and snatched morsels of news. We knew that the débarquement, D-Day, had happened. We heard the bombers. We believed the liberation of Paris was imminent. We heard shouts and fights, and the guards who brought our food taunted us with false, twisted stories, lies. The food was hardly food. Yvonne was rolled in a ball again. Our clothes had become worn, but still we tried to wash them and keep them as clean as we could. At times we were thrown into an exercise yard for some free movement, though there was little we could do. They wouldn’t let us have boules—too much like weapons. For the most part, what we did was cast around for news; we exchanged life stories and gossip. We learned to talk through a system of signals we tapped on the pipes that connected all the floors. Oh, the prison was dreary and bleak and isolated. We could see in the distance the gray ceiling of Paris, as if it were empty and deserted and we were at the end of the world, looking back.
“De Gaulle is coming, we heard. The Free French are coming.
“The Germans are going home.
“Au revoir, les Allemands! We made it into a song. Au revoir, les Allemands, and then it seemed appropriate to learn some of their words, to taunt them and mock them. So we twisted those ugly words, Auf Wiedersehen, Deutsche, singing them vengefully. In the exercise yard, we would burst into spontaneous songs and shouts, but we were quickly dispersed and returned to our cells.
“What happened next is unspeakable. I have gone over and over it my mind, and I never comprehend it. There were two things I held closely for the duration: the image of Monique and her doll, and the presence of my mother, holding me in the same way Monique held her doll.
“I clung to my mother like a baby, and she held me in her strong arms and sang lullabies.”
Bernard lifted his head toward her, but Annette went steadily on.
“Paris was liberated on August 25, although the war did not end for many months yet. I have seen the films. Oh! Such scenes! When the Allied tanks roared into Paris—led by Frenchmen!—there was jubilation, and de Gaulle strode down the Champs-Elysées like a man on stilts, wearing the military hat that always reminds me of a gâteau box. ‘La Marseillaise’ was sung everywhere. There was so much joy. The church bells rang again. The champagne came out of hiding.”
Annette folded her hands across her breasts and continued in a soft monotone.
“However, we were not there. Ten days before, the Germans—who were in retreat from Paris—sent off the last convoy to Germany. My mother and I were in one of those cattle cars, creeping out of Paris toward Germany as the sun was rising.”
46.
IT WAS DARK. ANNETTE WENT TO THE KITCHEN, TAKING WITH HER the plate of toast and the pâté. Bernard followed her, and in a little while she returned. She brought candles but did not light them. Marshall tried to speak. He did not know if, in telling her story, she was offering him a gift or transferring a burden. His ears and eyes and heart were not sharp enough to catch fully all that Annette was telling him. He could not grasp the depths of her story. He felt that his mind was cemented over. She replenished the wine, and the wine made him feel easier with her, drawn to her like someone reaching across an abyss.
When she touched the inside of her forearm, he tried to remember if she had worn long sleeves throughout their visits. It was ironic, he thought, that the Nazis had kept such meticulous records, branding their victims while knowing the numbers would disappear, flecks of ash floating through the air.
He took her hand and—boldly or tenderly, he did not know which—pushed her sleeve up, nearly to the elbow.
“No, there was not a number,” she said. “We wore a cloth patch with our numbers, on our clothing.”
Gently, he kissed the spot where he thought the Nazi mark would have been, and she enfolded his head with her arms.
She held him close to her breast, an endless embrace. There was no time, just this breathless communion. The courtyard was silent.
Eventually, slowly, he raised his head.
“And that was the price you paid for helping us—for helping me.” Marshall was near tears. “I can’t bear it.”
“It was the same—you aided us and we aided you,” she said, touching his face gently. “It is no matter. Whatever I did for you, I also did for myself, for my family, for France. We were crushed, Marshall. Defeated. You cannot know the shame. Whatever any of us did, we did for ourselves—so that we could have still a little self-respect. Just a little.”
“I didn’t know that any of this happened to you,” he said.
“I didn’t want you to know. I have told very few.”
“I was safe back home, and you were still going through the war.”
She rose and gathered the napkins and wine. “I must check the dinner,” she said. “And then I want to tell you the rest.”
He didn’t know if he had had too much wine or too little. Food would not have occurred to him. He opened the kitchen door for her, bringing his glass.
“Please stay here tonight,” she said with a smile. “There is a room upstairs that can be yours. It will be like the old times. You will be in hiding, and I will take care of you.”
47.
THEY MOVED INSIDE, WITH BERNARD, TO HER SITTING ROOM. Marshall noticed that the dog seemed to trust him now, enough to leave Annette’s side and go to his bed in the corner. A table was set in the adjoining dining room, and Marshall could smell food cooking. She said they would eat soon.
They sat on a divan, side by side, and she resumed her telling. It seemed that she was telling her past to him as she had told it to herself for years. It came even more easily as they became more comfortable together. Intermittently, her expressive hands touched him, making contact, drawing him in.
“I don’t speak of it,” she reminded him. “But now I tell you. I want to tell you. I trust you, and you are part of my past. A good part.
“I know you are well aware of the Jews, their terrible fate under the Nazis. There were also thousands of résistants like us sent to Germany during the war. We were sixty women in a train carriage that had room for forty. The train journey was
five days, with little food or water or other necessities—space, air.… On the way, through the small vents on the wooden sides of the car, we glimpsed the bombing damage to Germany.
“We expected to go to a labor camp. We also expected that the war would end soon. Maman reassured me. She said, ‘We’re strong. We can work. It won’t last. The war is almost over.’ Her reassurances gave me strength, and my acquiescence and obedience gave her strength.
“We still had not heard what had happened with my father and Robert and the priest and the two aviateurs. Fear for our men had haunted me all the while we were at Fresnes. If the aviateurs were lucky, they would go to a stalag as prisoners of war. But I had a profound apprehension about the others. I did not know what might happen. My mother insisted they would not be shot, but I had seen the posters on the street stating clearly that anyone caught helping aviateur evaders would be punished; the men would be shot, the women would go to prison. At Saint-Mandé we had lived under this threat, and we took the risk willingly. But now the reality of our situation was very bitter.”
Annette fell silent for a moment. Then with a shake of her head, she said, “Others suffered so much worse than we.”
She clasped her hands together, as if to squeeze something out of her memory. “We arrived at Ravensbrück, a camp for women north of Berlin. Ravensbrück was in a beautiful part of Germany. There was a lake and beautiful trees. But then the sight of the camp struck us with terror. We could not comprehend what this place was. There was a high wall all around it, with electric barbed wire strung along the top. Inside were many long rows of rough wooden buildings—like warehouses, with bars on the windows. They were overflowing with thousands of women—women starving, despairing, fighting for survival. It was shocking and so bewildering that we thought we must have lost our sanity.
“The prisoners worked in the Siemens factory, which made armaments. And there were many workshops. We were put to work first filling in a swamp with sand, then hauling wagons of manure to a field. The barracks was terribly overcrowded, and there was not enough food. We were slaves. Women were dying. And more kept arriving.
The Girl in the Blue Beret Page 24
