by Liza Wieland
What the Man-Moth fears most he must do.
Yes. I wrote that before I had any idea, Elizabeth thinks. And then I wrote that he failed.
On the train, Clara has given Elizabeth the seat that faces the wrong direction, and Elizabeth wonders what it will be like for Marta, whose gaze is caught by the scenery rushing away from her.
The train ride—the train itself—is more dream than real. Their car moves from shadow to shadow. Massive trees hang over the tracks, elm, poplar, sycamore, walnut, maybe all of these or maybe none. Traveling at this rate, it’s too hard to tell. It’s evening all afternoon. Just a few passengers board at each stop. Women passengers notice Rachel and Marta, the two women holding them, the difference in their ages, taking it in all at once, inventing the story as quickly and naturally as drawing in a breath and letting it go. The conductor reads their tickets, addresses Elizabeth as Madame, and this sustains the dream, props it up with matchstick architecture that’s still utterly convincing, the bold-faced lies of dreams. He clucks over the babies and says something in French to Clara that makes her smile and seem to swell with pride.
She is a very good actress, Elizabeth thinks. Not for nothing has she studied all that Shakespeare.
He said, Clara whispers, that Rachel has your eyes.
It’s evening all afternoon. That line . . . Elizabeth begins to doze and has to shake herself awake. Don’t let go of her, a voice says. Not Clara’s voice. Not her own. It’s the same voice that sometimes says Elizabeth! when she’s drifting off to sleep, a warning, or a call to attention, or maybe just a reminder that she exists. The voice says, I grow but to divide your heart again. She wrote that, too, a long time ago, it seems. Does everybody live such divided lives, Elizabeth wonders: one self moving about the world like all the other million selves, and another that’s stuck somewhere behind?
I wonder if they will remember any of this, Elizabeth says to Clara.
I expect not, Clara says. She lifts Rachel, holds her close, kisses the top of her head.
I’d like to know, though, if one day when they’re seven or eight, and they’re on a sailboat . . .
If what? Clara says.
If something about the motor or the motion will remind them.
Maybe. It could be any sort of ship. Or a train.
Elizabeth leans across the space between their seats. Do you think they’ll keep them together? she whispers.
I don’t know. I hope so.
They’re such beautiful babies. I can imagine a person would say that and want two.
Yes, Clara says. And they’re girls, so the nuns could—
She stops abruptly, sits back in her seat in a way Elizabeth understands to mean they ought not to be talking this way.
Every few miles, the tunnel of shade bursts open onto squares of fields, orderly, quiet, domestic as tablecloths. A few cows make a postcard tableau. Elizabeth noticed this just before the car accident, and just after, how the landscape’s clarity comes from tasks performed there. The farmer moves in rows. The cows follow nose to tail in a line from barn to pasture and back again. Maybe Marta should see this, the calm order of things, to balance the vertigo in her past few days. She reaches her little hand toward the window as if to stop it sliding past. But it’s too fast, dizzying, like being passed from hand to hand, house to house, father to mother to granny to aunt to cousin.
The familiarity of this sort of passage comes like an electric shock.
Oh! Elizabeth says.
What is it?
Nothing. I just remembered—
Did we forget something? Clara looks over at Marta, then down at Rachel, asleep in her lap.
No, no, Elizabeth says. It’s all right.
This baby could be me, she thinks. Or I could be her. Which is it? Life and the memory of life. So close in this moment they have become each other. A child given up, let go, kidnapped. A little girl with just one name. But no. That’s the mystery and the danger of these twins. They have two names, just like everyone else.
Clara, she says. Does anyone know their surname?
Clara puts her finger to her lips, quickly, as if she’s blowing a kiss.
Évêque, Clara says. Same as you.
The train slows at Domfront, and there’s the station, a hunched building made of gray stone that looks soft to the touch, worn by departures and arrivals. A wall of windows, for looking, for waving. At this hour, the sunlight seems to sit on the glass like paint, as if someone had wanted the blue-milky color of water at seven in the morning. A trick of light, a miracle: water hanging in the air like a curtain. Marta notices it, too, with a baby’s useless concentration. It doesn’t surprise her, water hanging that way. She takes note, then she looks at something else. Or does she even take note?
A few passengers rise, gather their bags, wait for the train to come to a stop and the doors to be opened by the stationmaster. Then they’re gone. A brief stillness, and then the bustle of new passengers, footsteps and calling out of seat numbers. The far door to their car slides open with a metallic bang, and two German soldiers step in. The eagle emblem on the jacket is unmistakable, the small swastika pin like a red eye staring out from the collar. They seem very large, too tall for the passageway, where they stop to remove their hats. Elizabeth freezes, looks at Clara, who does not meet her eyes. Her head trembles slightly. Marta wakes suddenly, begins to cry.
The bottle, Clara says. Quickly.
But Marta does not want to drink. Clara reaches for her, and in an awkward exchange, Elizabeth takes Rachel, who looks up at her and at the luggage rack above as if she finds this shift of perspective deeply interesting. Marta’s cries are piercing, shrill, an alarm.
Why are they here? Elizabeth whispers.
I’m sure they’re just on their way to Paris for the exposition, Clara replies.
They make a strange pair, one olive skinned, with dark, curly hair, who looks a bit like vom Rath’s friend Hermann. The other is unusually fair, with golden hair and light eyes.
The train begins to move, and the Germans shoulder their large packs and struggle their way forward awkwardly, catching hold of seat backs. They are looking for two seats together. They stop near the middle of the car. Elizabeth believes they must be asking a man seated on the aisle if he will move. The man does not—or pretends not to—understand the question or their gestures toward an empty seat across the aisle. Marta continues to wail. Other passengers stare at Clara and shake their heads, though no one seems to be angry. The dark-haired soldier grows agitated. He lifts his arm as if he will strike the man or lift him bodily out of the seat, but his companion says no, and shakes his head, lifts his chin, indicating that they should move on.
The blond German scans the rows ahead. Elizabeth understands that Marta’s crying is like a beacon, distracting, distressing. They stop again, three rows away, and confer quietly. Elizabeth cannot hear what they are saying. She doubts she could understand anyway. She glances at Clara, who appears to have fixed her attention on Marta. Rachel makes a tiny sound, like a dove. Then she smiles at Elizabeth and grasps her finger. She feel Clara’s body tense and looks up. The Germans are right there, both frowning.
Was ist mit dem Kind los?
She is tired, Clara says, then collects herself. Das Kind ist müde.
Ach du unglückliches kleines Kind. Bitte geben Sie es mir.
Es wird in Ordnung sein. Danke. Entschuldigung, Sie zu belästigen.
Ich habe auch einen Sohn. Meine Frau sagt, ich bin sehr gut Umgang mit ihm.
Clara’s smile is forced. She looks at Elizabeth.
He is asking you if it’s all right for him to comfort the baby, she says.
Yes, Elizabeth says as carefully as she can. She is afraid she might weep or be sick.
Rachel has closed her eyes. She is sleeping.
Clara lifts Marta out of her lap and gently places her in the German’s open hands. As she’s in midair, Marta begins to quiet. She coughs. Clara hands up the bottle, and the German run
s the nipple along Marta’s bottom lip. She drinks.
Die beiden sind Zwillinge, the dark-haired German says suddenly. He looks at Elizabeth, shakes his head in amazement. Die Kinder müssen wie ihr Vater aussehen.
Ja, ja, Clara says, smiling. She puts her arm around Elizabeth, draws her close. They look exactly like their father, she says.
Marta drinks hungrily. She reaches one tiny hand toward the German’s face. His companion continues to stare at Rachel. Elizabeth hopes he will not ask to hold her. The train is so quiet that she wonders if she’s gone deaf, except that she hears her heart pounding, echoed in the wheels of the train running over the tracks. She watches Rachel sleep. What a good thing to have a baby to look at, to divert one’s attention.
Perhaps half a minute later, the German hands Marta back to Clara.
Es scheint, meine Frau hatte Recht, he says, smiling. Es hat sich beruhigt. Es war mir eine Freude. They take up their packs again and move away, looking for seats. The door between the cars wheezes open.
Danke, Clara calls after them, faintly, as if she really doesn’t want to be heard. Sie haben ein Leben gerettet.
Elizabeth recognizes the important words as she hears them, recalls them stamped across the life-saving equipment aboard the S.S. Königstein. The orange jackets, the rubber rings, the inflatable dinghies hung in glass cases along the narrow passageways as if they were art. To save a life.
The babies are quiet. Clara’s right hand on the bottle trembles. Elizabeth listens to their breathing, the four of them, the uneven rhythm, as if they were taking turns.
Though it’s really you I should thank, Elizabeth, Clara says. A thousand times over.
In Gare Saint-Lazare, Clara tells Elizabeth they have one more taxi ride, not very far, a mile perhaps, to the convent. It’s half past five o’clock. Not anywhere close to dark. The station is oddly silent, so that Rachel’s crying echoes. She needs her diaper changed (Léonie has sent a dozen, ironed and neatly folded), so Clara takes her to the lounge while Elizabeth waits in the domed arrivals hall. Light filters in from the east. Monet painted this in 1877, this same train arriving from Normandy, over and over, twelve versions, his portrayal increasingly accurate, progressively real. Elizabeth and Margaret learned this in art history class. The meaning, the interpretation of the paintings came later: Monet was painting the chaos of modern life. A dirty, gritty place made beautiful, but not by the artist, not really. He’s entirely forgotten. Margaret had said, Let that be a lesson to you, Elizabeth. He painted what he saw, and it’s so real that it becomes abstract. Coal-burning steam engines dissolve under the light, as if light were water.
A train arriving. How ordinary. Even now. Now while the modern world slips into chaos again.
I am standing here, Elizabeth thinks, holding a child, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. I’m waiting. That’s what everyone will think. Whether to arrive or to depart, no can really tell. No one will really care.
Clara is taking a long time, but this glacial passage of minutes is somehow comforting. For a moment, Elizabeth forgets the truth of what they’re doing here. How preposterous: not that she, Elizabeth, should be carrying a child to safety, but that safety is even possible. She knows she must try not to look lost, but now Marta is squirming in her arms and beginning to whimper. She steps a little way away from their baggage, lowers herself to a bench, talking to Marta, Now, now, there, there. Marta starts to cry.
Elizabeth does not know what to do. She’s heard both Clara and Léonie singing to the babies.
What song would you like? she whispers. I know some opera. I know some Billie Holiday. I know two different national anthems by heart. I know a few hymns. If Dominique were here, he would sing “Ave Maria.”
A gendarme appears, points to the baggage, asks in French what Elizabeth assumes to be a questions about ownership. She nods, and so the gendarme busies himself carrying the bags closer to the bench. Trop de bagages! he says, and Elizabeth wonders how it might be possible to explain this much luggage: my friend, this child’s twin. Marta is crying in earnest now, and the gendarme frowns, perhaps in sympathy, but it’s hard to tell. He might have children at home. But it could also be that he is angry. It could be that he sees a different picture, how preposterous it is that Elizabeth could be this child’s mother. He steps closer, kneels, reaches to move the blanket from Marta’s face.
Très belle, he says. Très adorable.
He looks up at Elizabeth. He asks if she speaks French.
A little, she says. Un peu.
Elle a faim, he says. He speaks very slowly, a bit too loud, as if Elizabeth might be deaf. He raises his right hand, presses the tips of his fingers together, and brings them to his lips. He moves his jaw as if chewing. Eating, hungry, yes, yes.
Elizabeth points toward the baggage with an awkward jutting of her left elbow. She doesn’t dare loosen her grip on Marta. The gendarme stands, lifts the bags one by one, until Elizabeth nods to show he’s found the one with the bottles. He brings over the small satchel, sets it on the bench beside her, begins to undo the snaps. Elizabeth tries to think what else, what damning item, might be in this bag. The bottle of jenever. A notebook. She tries to recall what’s written on the first page. Or on the last. If anyone opened a notebook, that’s what they would read, the start and the finish. Unless they’re looking for something specific, something incriminating, some words they can bend to suit their suspicions.
Ah, the gendarme says. He draws Marta’s bottle out of the bag, raises the bottle to the light, as if it were wine in a glass. He frowns at the bottle, at Elizabeth.
Pas de lait? he says.
Elizabeth shakes her head. A long journey, she says. Milk might spoil. Acide.Très mal.
Ah, he says again. He hands her the bottle. He waits.
Now, surely, he will see she is not this child’s mother, an imposter. Marta’s crying grows louder. She can see the bottle, but it isn’t close enough. Elizabeth tries to remember how to do it, touch the nipple to Marta’s lower lip, gently, so that she will think it’s her own idea to drink. That’s what Clara said: you have to make them believe it’s all their doing. That’s how they learn, by thinking they already know what they want.
The gendarme is still watching. Marta’s mouth is closed in a tight, angry line. Talk to her, too, Clara had said. Tell her what a good girl she is, how smart, how beautiful, how sweet.
Elizabeth begins to say these things. At first she doesn’t recognize the voice that comes out of her mouth. She listens to the words even as she’s saying them. It’s a little like falling out of one’s own body (imagine that, but not now).
Sweet child, beautiful girl.
The sound of her voice seems to create more sound, but it is really that the station is beginning to fill with people leaving work, everyone rushing to catch a train, going home.
Elizabeth doesn’t look at the gendarme. She couldn’t see him if she wanted to. She’s gone from here, from Gare Saint-Lazare, gone from time. No, she’s inside time, Elizabeth and Marta alone inside a giant clock. Marta’s blue eyes fixed on, fallen into Elizabeth’s. She seems to forget about crying. She opens her mouth, as if to smile, and takes the bottle. She drinks as if she will never get enough
Elizabeth is still talking. The words come in a stream, like the sugar water into Marta’s mouth. Sweet girl, beautiful child.
That voice. Thirsty, thirsty.
Then she’s seized by a memory so vivid, she nearly lets go of the baby. Another voice, harsh and sudden as thunder. No, Elizabeth. Don’t touch that.
She is very thirsty. There is a fire in Great Village. Many people have lost their homes. She wants something she cannot have. She is three years old.
Oh, Elizabeth says, Mama.
The word feels pressed up from her lungs, into her throat.
Mama.
Then to Marta she says, Mama’s here.
Marta is drinking happily, and Elizabeth finds the courage to look up at the gendarme, wh
o smiles, speaks gently. Elizabeth believes he must be talking about his own children. She listens intently, trying to get a few words. His children have children—that’s it. His wistful expression would match that statement. He is, she sees now, of grandfatherly age and disposition. He has the prominent French nose, like de Gaulle, large ears that do not lie flat against his skull. She likes this face. It has come to be a comfort. The uniform, too, the fringed epaulets.
The gendarme is asking a question now. Where? Where are you going?
Into Paris, Elizabeth says.
He is puzzled, she knows, because of course she is already in Paris.
I have need of a taxi, Elizabeth says in slow, painful French, thinking he will leave to find a taxi and never come back. Clara will return, and they will gather the bags and go. Instead, he calls for a porter, who brings a cart and begins to load the luggage. This might take a long time, but of course the porter is an expert. The bags are quickly loaded, and the porter directs the cart toward the taxi stand. The gendarme steps closer, slides his hand under Elizabeth’s elbow. His breath and his jacket smell of peppermint and tobacco. He is large—she has not really noticed this before—and strong. He might lift her, with Marta, into the air, hold them aloft over the heads of all the travelers in the station. She can almost feel her feet rise off the floor.
Elizabeth! Clara says. What are you doing?
A taxi, Elizabeth says. It’s been arranged. The baggage is waiting.
The gendarme turns, takes in Clara with Rachel in her arms. He begins to laugh.
Deux! he says. He understands the situation immediately, just as Léonie had imagined. Venez, Madame, he says to Clara, on y va!
Behind him suddenly, there is a flash of color, an enormous bouquet of flowers, a man carrying them, two men, their separate angular darknesses broken by splashes of pink and yellow and purple. The man carrying the bouquet looks at her—Elizabeth feels as if she’s waking from a dream; here is Ernst vom Rath and the Polish boy beside him. Vom Rath stops, stands perfectly still, trying to get the meaning of it, Elizabeth in Gare Saint-Lazare, feeding an infant while a gendarme looks on. Now I am done for, Elizabeth thinks. She knows she should bow her head, hide her face somehow. But she can’t. She finds it impossible to look away from these two men and all the flowers. The longer she stares at vom Rath, the more completely he will understand that they are two people who find themselves in a moment that has outrun them, engulfed them, that they are moving pieces in a frightening, hideous game, and they must keep moving, silently, or else everyone, many people they do not even know, will be undone, betrayed, and killed. Vom Rath is the only person who might talk about what Elizabeth is doing, but in this moment, they reach some agreement. He points at something on the other side of the arrivals hall, and the Polish boy turns that way, and vom Rath follows.
