God Speed the Night

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

“No, madame,” Marc said. The papers they traveled on showed them to have been married for a year. The fact was their marriage had been a compact in the presence of a witness: there was no public record of it.

  “Do not ask questions,” the woman’s husband said. “Leave the questions to the Boches.” He curled the sweat from his forehead with his fingers and whipped it onto the luggage at his feet. The splash of it crawled through the dust like something alive.

  The man at the window stumbled back to his seat.

  “There is no more conversation anywhere,” the woman lamented.

  “Soon it will be different,” Rachel smiled at her. It was almost impossible for Rachel not to smile, Marc thought, and for just an instant he conjured a picture of what she would be like in the daylight of their lives if that time ever came: a laughing girl who loved the sun.

  A whistle sounded, a gutteral command and the soldiers scrambled up the embankment. A moment later the train lurched forward. The soldiers waved. No one in the compartment waved back to them. Those with a view of the aisle began to grope in their pockets for their papers. The team of inspectors soon arrived, the French conductor, a German in the uniform of the French railways, and a national policeman. Marc steeled himself and watched what happened to the couple opposite who he suspected were also in flight. They were passed without question, their papers stamped for arrival at St. Hilaire. Marc gave over his to the conductor.

  The German asked at once his military status. Marc was the only man under thirty in the compartment. He described another’s history. His identity card showed him to be a medical student. The German watched him closely, and in the midst of his recitation, interrupted. “Why do you travel now, monsieur?”

  “It is between terms and we are permitted to go home to assist in the harvest,” Marc said.

  “Let me see your hands, palms up.”

  Marc showed them like a beggar seeking alms, but they were steady. “They will harden quickly,” he said.

  The German moved on to the next compartment, the gendarme following him. The conductor returned the papers to Marc but without the terminal stamp on the travel permit. If the omission was observed by anyone except Marc it was not commented on.

  A few minutes later the conductor returned alone, stuck his head in and announced, “St. Hilaire, the end of the journey. Everyone must exit forward.”

  Over the grumbling of the passengers Marc asked, “Are we on time?”

  “Monsieur, it will depend on what you wish to be on time for.”

  The others laughed, but for Marc the words signaled his next move. While the other passengers gathered their luggage, Marc took the one small valise he and Rachel shared, moved into the aisle and kept the conductor in sight. He saw him try the water closet door, then presumably lock it. Marc moved quickly but not fast enough to pass before two nuns pushed into the aisle ahead of him, shepherding four small children. Time and eternity were but one to them. Marc followed on their heels. He slipped into the washroom and locked the door behind him. The stench was such that he breathed through his mouth, shallow gulps of the foul air. He used the valise as a table, and with his penknife, a blade honed to the sharpness of a razor, he removed his and Rachel’s photographs from the identity cards of a couple named Marie and Jean Belloir. He pocketed the photos and put the cards along with the travel permit—unstamped, so that it could yet be used by the Belloirs themselves—into an old envelope of the French railways.

  He opened the valise, pried away the lining, and took from behind it his and Rachel’s own papers. It had been many months since he had used his, and Rachel’s was new, at least the photograph was, for she had grown from schoolgirl to woman since the Occupation. Both I.D. cards bore the Star of David.

  The conductor tried the door and rapped three hard knocks.

  “One moment, monsieur.” Marc was ready. He closed the valise and unlocked the door.

  The trainman came in loudly abusing him for waiting until the last minute to use the cabinet. He closed the door behind him.

  Marc gave him the railway envelope. “Thank you, monsieur. You have helped save my life.”

  The trainman put the envelope in his pouch among the official records of the journey. “What do they want you for?”

  Marc said, “I am a Jew for one thing.”

  “What else do you need?”

  “The Milice are also looking for me.”

  “Nazi bastards,” the trainman said. “They are worse than the Germans.”

  “Far worse. Do you know where I can find a Monsieur Lapin in St. Hilaire?”

  “I would look first in what they call the Old Town. But watch yourself. The prefect of police is another bastard.” He opened the door. “Out, monsieur. Out!”

  Marc had now to push his way among the crowd. He saw Rachel twist and turn, trying to watch for him. Alone and unburdened by luggage she had been shoved far ahead. He edged toward her. Everyone had too much luggage, particularly the nuns. There were several of them now and they were trying to get the children to hold onto one another’s hands. Refugees, Marc thought at once; even at that age they did not trust one another.

  He reached Rachel’s side. She prisoned his hand between her arm and her breast as together they stared out at the shabby environs of the town. Some of the buildings had the look of being carried away, piece by piece. And it might be so, Marc realized, for he could see the torn plaster where iron-railed balconies might once have hung, and the unweathered places where shutters had been removed. Like other northerners before the whole of France had been occupied, he had cursed the south as the garden of Vichy, and he had shared in a cruel satisfaction when the Boche knocked down the checkpoints and moved in.

  “Look!” a woman cried and pointed with a desperate repetition, her fingers against the glass. “The trees are gone from the promenade. They’re all gone.”

  The barren stumps, two rows of them, looked raw and somehow obscene.

  “Madame, so are the men,” an old gentleman said.

  The whole town looked to be dying, the houses with their tall chimneys lolled against one another, the limestone yellowing, the roof tiles askew. Only the cathedral stood in high and serene arrogance, a Gothic invader where the Romanesque had ruled in humbler dignity. Once in his student days, before he had taken his certificate in architecture, Marc had wanted to visit St. Hilaire cathedral. Now he doubted he would ever see more of it than this glimpse from a train window, and it no longer mattered a whit to him.

  The train, having only gained a little speed, slowed down again. He was better able to observe what he was sure was the Old Town. The cobbled streets were narrow, twisting into one another, and the two-story buildings hunched over the streets vaguely suggesting old men at chess.

  The train rattled across a viaduct and abruptly they were in the station yard. The sweat went cold on Marc’s back. Nazis were everywhere, green uniforms and black.

  “What does it mean?” Rachel whispered.

  Everyone was asking the same question.

  Marc studied the soldiers. There was something strange about them, something in their stance, in the quality of their alertness; he realized what it was. They were more concerned with a crowd of people outside the fence than with the train and its arrivals.

  “It will not concern us,” he said to Rachel.

  The train ground to a halt, the aftersounds of steam and air pressure like a vast sigh. Everyone pressed toward the platform. The passengers were ordered by the police, military and municipal, to proceed single file into the station building. Marc tested their vigilance by moving up alongside Rachel. He was ordered back into line. A few steps further on he bent down and, on the pretense of retying his shoelace, looked to see beneath the train to what lay beyond the tracks. A cement parapet. He tried to inquire of a French policeman why the people had gathered outside the fence. They were mostly women.

  “Move on, monsieur. Move on.”

  When all the passengers were out of the train, a
civilian official came down the line with a megaphone and spoke to a section of the arrivals at a time: “Messieurs—mesdames, will those with harvest work permits kindly step out of line?”

  Rachel glanced back at Marc. He shook his head. They no longer had such permits. He watched the straggle of workers, men and women, fall out and follow the official to where two policemen were waiting. They entered the building by the baggage entrance.

  The line moved ahead at a snail’s pace, an ominous sign. The nuns and the children were taken from the line, the children now helping with luggage that weighed more than themselves. They were taken forward, but when some minutes later Marc and Rachel drew near the building, both nuns and children were still on the platform. They were being questioned in French and in German: the children’s papers showed them only to be the adopted wards of the nuns. It did not satisfy the Germans.

  Marc shut his mind to them. He was coming close to a window. The waiting room was milling with people because of the delay at the other end. A taller man than most, Marc saw over their heads to the courtyard doors where yet another inspection was to be got through, this time both luggage and papers. He had seen enough of the Gestapo in his time to recognize them among the inspectors. And he had been told that St. Hilaire was a “safe” town. Perhaps it was if they could reach it, but there was no safe passage through the station exit for them. But neither was there escape except through the building. Marc calculated their best chance to lie in the confusion of numbers. He pressed Rachel forward as they approached the door, forcing her to force the woman ahead of her. He had only managed to wedge himself inside the station when guards came up and sealed off the entrance until those inside the building were processed.

  Rachel’s face was the color of old newspaper. Marc maneuvered her toward a window as far as possible from the inspection. Children were crying, families abusing one another. The flies swarmed overhead. A loudspeaker blared unheeded instructions. There were but three doors in the room, Marc observed, the street and platform exits, and one to the Departures waiting room. He guided Rachel toward the latter drifting slowly as with the surge of the crowd. There was no barricade between the two rooms, but no traffic either. The departures, from what Marc could see, were a stolid lot, patiently waiting the prod of bureaucracy. Then he thought he knew why: two policemen conducted a protesting woman into the far room. She would go back to the town she came from, her papers not in order. Marc watched and waited, riding the perimeter of the crowd, holding Rachel’s hand. Her color was no better and he saw her bite her lip.

  Suddenly she said, “Marc, I have a bad pain in my side. I wish I could sit down.”

  “Perhaps it will be useful,” he said coldly. Then he put his arm around her and whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here safely. That’s the first thing.”

  “I know. It’s letting up a little. I’m all right now.”

  They were near the door when the loudspeaker’s blare of “Attention, attention!” coincided with the removal of another traveler turned back from St. Hilaire. A pretty girl, she was weeping and she had the sympathy of the policeman who was trying to justify himself for doing so rotten a job. Marc and Rachel followed them into the Departures room.

  As soon as he passed through the door Marc saw the soldiers out of the corner of his eye. They were armed and stationed along the wall between the waiting rooms. He pressed forward in the close wake of the policeman as though he and Rachel were also to be deported.

  Just before reaching the platform gate, Marc held back. He sent Rachel into the washroom, and waited outside the door. The policeman and the woman went on, disappearing down the platform. Marc measured time, his back to the waiting room: he had to be prepared for the hand on his shoulder, the prod in his back. Neither happened. Slowly, taking first a few steps toward the gate, he turned around. They seemed to have passed safely from one room to the other. But no one would pass unchallenged from this room to the Arrivals. Some thirty or forty men were waiting, sullen and silent, under the military guard. Too many, he thought, to be political prisoners. Labor conscriptees, which accounted for the angry women outside the fence. How ironic if they were ordered out at this minute and he were swept with them, probably all the way to Germany. His fear when Rachel was so long in coming became more of his own panic than anything else. His only control was through action. He dropped the valise on the floor and gave it a little kick toward the washroom. He walked toward the courtyard entrance. There were soldiers out there too, but in the entranceway the ticket-taker sat on his stool, his punch in hand. He yawned while Marc was watching him and took out his watch. He put the punch between his knees and wound the watch. It was the normal in the midst of so much abnormality that sometimes panicked a man, and at other times reassured him. A petty official might not question a show of authority, Marc thought, only the lack of it.

  He strode back to the washroom door, his head high, his shoulders back. When Rachel came out he said, “Take the bag and do not speak to me until we are outside.”

  His hand firm at her elbow, he steered her to the ticket-taker. “Monsieur, this woman is too ill to travel.” He clipped the words as a German might.

  The man looked from him to Rachel. “But monsieur, I cannot give her back her ticket. It is not allowed.”

  “Then she may apply to the French railways. For now she should see a doctor.” He and Rachel moved out into the courtyard.

  The ticket man got off his stool and followed them hesitantly. Marc saw the grey-clad nun even as the railway man called out to her.

  Sister Gabrielle was on her way back to the barouche when the man spoke. She and Reverend Mother had been permitted to go through the baggage room to where the northern sisters were detained. Reverend Mother, she was sure, had not expected the children, but Sister St. André spoke as though it had all been arranged and Reverend Mother pretended it was so. The Germans wanted to know who the children’s parents were, where they were, everything about them, but mostly they wanted to know if the children were Jewish. There were three little girls and a boy. Everyone spoke as though the children did not understand what was being said, almost as though they were not there at all. Which was why Gabrielle had suggested that she be allowed to take them out to see Poirot, the horse, and bring them back later. At that point Reverend Mother had sent her back by herself to see that the horse was all right.

  When the man spoke, saying, “If you please, Sister,” Gabrielle looked around to make sure that it was she to whom he spoke. There was no other nun in sight.

  “Yes, monsieur?”

  The man in the railway uniform said, “This woman is ill, Sister. Perhaps you could take her to a doctor.”

  The woman did look ill, but she also looked frightened, her eyes darting to the face of the tall man. Gabrielle glanced at him: his eyes seemed to have been waiting for hers. She looked away quickly. “Madame could rest in the barouche,” she said. “I must wait for Reverend Mother.”

  “It would be a charity, Sister,” the trainman said. His voice quavered just a little.

  Marc realized what had happened: his show of authority to get them past the man had aroused his concern for Rachel, he was trying not to leave her in Marc’s hands. Marc took the valise from Rachel’s hand, and said to the railway man, “I will see that madame is taken care of, monsieur. Believe me, I am not unconcerned.”

  The man started back to his post, then stopped again. “Monsieur.”

  Marc told Rachel to go to the carriage with the nun, and went back to meet the trainman.

  “May I see your identification, if you please, monsieur?”

  Rachel, about to climb into the barouche, stopped dead still when she saw Marc take his I.D. card from his pocket. Gabrielle put out her hand to help her. Rachel caught it and held onto it for dear life.

  Marc watched the man’s face, the shock at seeing the Star of David. “She is my wife,” Marc said. “We are on the run.”

  “Get out of here quickly,” the man said.
“Things are bad in St. Hilaire.”

  “Can you tell me where to find Monsieur Lapin?”

  “Please, monsieur. I have three children. It is against the law to help you.”

  Marc turned back and saw the women standing, their hands joined. He went back to them having to move now among the people coming from the station. At the gate to the courtyard they were having again to show their permits. He said to the nun, “We are Jews, Sister, and we must find a place to hide.”

  Gabrielle prayed that Reverend Mother would come, but she knew that she would not. The woman still clung to her hand, the first time any hand had touched hers in almost a year. “But madame is ill,” she said.

  “I am not that ill,” the woman said, and removed her hand from Gabrielle’s. “It is more important that we find a place.”

  “I do not know the town. Wait and I will go to Reverend Mother.”

  “We cannot wait,” the man said. “There are Nazis everywhere. Do you know what it means if we are taken?”

  “I think so, monsieur.”

  Please, dear Lord, let me help, Gabrielle thought. Perhaps to pray instinctively is to concentrate in a way not otherwise possible. Once as a child she had come to St. Hilaire with her father, bringing grain to the mill. While her father drank wine with the miller, she had climbed to the loft with the miller’s son and there from the window they had taken turns spitting down into the canal. She and Reverend Mother had passed the mill. It was a ruin now, but she could see the loft in her mind’s eye as if it were illuminated by the light of God. “There is an old mill with a loft on Rue Louis Pasteur,” she said. “It is not far.”

  “Take my wife there, and I will find it.”

  “No, Marc,” Rachel said. “I will stay with you.”

  “You must do as I say. I am safer alone. If you walk out together the guards won’t question you. Take the valise.”

  “I will carry it,” Gabrielle said, and by taking it from the man’s hand she committed herself.

  “If you are stopped say you are taking her to a doctor.”