Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  That was when I saw the writing, some in French, some in English: words and sentences carved into the walls of the cell or written with a pencil, with lead, or with blood.

  Guillaume loves Marianne.

  I cannot sleep for thinking about my parents and my husband.

  France above all.

  Roger: your father, your cousin, and Colette’s father came through here 24-5-1944.

  I sat up and leaned in and touched the words with my fingers, tracing each letter. I thought of the people who had written them and wondered where they were now. For all I knew, these might have been their last words.

  Never confess.

  Good-bye forever to France.

  I am afraid.

  The words made me think of my brother Beachard, who, before he ever went to war and became a hero, had wandered the woods and mountains carving messages on rocks and trees and railroad ties and barns: Jesus weeps, Jesus waits, You are loved.

  I lay my hand flat against the wall.

  Life is beautiful.

  I reached into my bag and pulled out my lipstick and wrote: Beyond the keep. Then I pulled a bobby pin from my hair and twisted off the dull rubber caps that covered the ends. Two little knife points, sharp as needles. I started scratching over each letter so that the words would still be there long after the lipstick faded.

  Outside the white stone building, number eleven, long black cars without windows were backed up to the door. I was lined up with the old man, the brother and sister, and the rest of my group, as well as fifty or sixty more, including the waiter from the restaurant and others I recognized from the Paris underground.

  People were put into the cars in groups of fifteen or twenty, and as soon as one car was filled, it would drive off and another would take its place. A guard shouted, “Prison du Cherche-Midi.” He read off the names of the people he wanted, and they moved up and into the car, and then it roared off and up came another.

  “Forte de Romainville.” He read the names one by one. My heart jumped. If I was being sent there after all, it would be okay. Just two days early, and Émile would know—he would have to know by now where I was. He might already be in touch with his contact at the prison, to let him know to watch out for me. I would be out by tomorrow, Thursday at the latest. I would be back at Cleo’s by Friday.

  People were herded into the car and driven off. Another car pulled up, its motor rumbling. I watched after the car that drove away, thinking: It’s okay. They can send more than one group to Romainville. I thought about the map I’d swallowed. I pictured every room and cell and hallway in my mind.

  The guard said, “Prison de Fresnes,” and called out names: “André Massaud. Jean-Louise Voison. Luc Voison. Thomas Olin. Clementine Roux...”

  Prison de Fresnes.

  There’d been a mistake. This wasn’t the plan. I said to the guard, “I’m not supposed to be in this car.”

  His eyes were like ice and he said again, “Prison de Fresnes.” Another guard came forward and slapped something cold and hard around my wrists—handcuffs. He cuffed me to another woman and to Jean-Louise, the little girl, and then he pushed us into the car. Her brother started crying, and she lurched for him, pulling me with her. The guard shoved us back, and inside there was a narrow passage down the center of the car. A handful of tiny cells, each no bigger than a broom closet, opened onto this. Each cell was only large enough for one person, but they pushed two or three inside, and the extra prisoners had to stand in the passageway that ran in between. A guard with a machine gun sat next to the driver and another guard climbed in and blocked the rear entrance. An open car followed behind and in it sat four armed police.

  Next to me, the little girl was crying, and I squeezed her hand to let her know that she wasn’t alone.

  I couldn’t go to Fresnes. This wasn’t the plan. I thought maybe I’d heard wrong, that maybe it had something to do with no sleep and only a little food. I said to the guard at the back of the car, “Pardon? Where are we going?”

  “Prison de Fresnes,” he said. And then he smiled, and it was a smile that turned me cold. “For you, the war is over.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I crossed the courtyard at Fresnes prison, still handcuffed to Jean-Louise and the woman. Guards marched behind us and in front of us as we went up a short flight of steps into the entrance hall of the main prison building. The air was close and warm and shut up like a tomb. We lined up as they read our names off a list, and then the women and men were separated, some of them tugging at each other, trying to hold on. The prison matrons came forward for the women, and the matrons wore light blue uniforms with their hair pulled back from their faces in tight buns. They marched us down a wide hallway, and then through a locked door and into another long hallway, this one with ceilings as high as the church in Rouen.

  The light was the first thing I noticed. After that it was the ceilings, which curved like the palm of a hand and were interrupted every few feet by skylights. Hundreds of narrow doors spread forward and above on either side of the hall on the balconies, and in each one was a window, more like a peek hole. On the second, third, and fourth floors, the two sides were linked by rickety metal bridges, and everything was cement and iron, which made the sound carry up and to the ceiling, bouncing off the skylights and back down again.

  Armed guards marched across the balconies and prison matrons opened and shut doors with a hard clanging sound. I stood looking up through the skylight above my head, knowing there was blue sky beyond it, and then I tried counting the doors. One of the guards shouted names from a list, as if we were deaf or standing a long way off, and the women went forward as they were called. A prison matron would stop at a cell and unlock it, heavy keys rattling, and one by one, the women disappeared behind the doors, until there weren’t many left of us.

  “Clementine Roux,” the guard shouted, and I stepped forward with Jean-Louise and the woman, who I was still handcuffed to. A matron with a nose like a turnip and thick blond hair rolled into braids grabbed our wrists and unlocked us. “Go,” she said to me in a flat, blank voice. Another matron led me down the hall and up the stairs. Her mouth turned downward like a horseshoe and she smelled like onions.

  I followed her up the stairs, her wide bottom waggling from side to side, looking like something that would win a contest at the county fair. We went up one flight, two flights, three flights, to the fourth floor, which was the highest you could get, and then I followed her down the balcony to cell number 401. Her keys rattled and she said to me, “Inside.”

  She pushed me in and the door slammed behind me, and the clank of it was like the echo of a church bell that had just stopped ringing. The room was about three yards long and two yards wide. It had high ceilings and whitewashed walls and a good-sized glass window on the wall across from the door. To the left was a shelf with hooks and an iron cot, which was folded up against the wall, and to the right was a toilet with a brass faucet hanging over it, and a table and chair that looked as if they were made for a child. These were also attached to the wall. Underneath the window were four straw mattresses and on top of this was a blanket and on top of this sat two women playing cards. The younger one was pretty, with a small, pointed face that reminded me of a mink. Her brown hair was short and she looked like she belonged outdoors, climbing trees and taking in the sun. The older one was tall and blond, with a hard, proud face and a judging look.

  The older one said, “Bienvenue à la maison.” Welcome home.

  I said, “Merci.”

  “You’re American then.”

  I wanted to say: No, I’m not. I’m actually French, which shows how much you know. But instead I said, “Yes.”

  She stood, and she was even taller than I’d expected. Her blond hair brushed her shoulders and was pinned back at the top. Her nose was long and her mouth drew in at the corners, and there was nothing pretty about her face but there was something stylish about her. “Mildred Reynolds Wallace. Watertown, Wisconsin. Call me M
illie.”

  I almost said, “Velva Jean Hart, Fair Mountain, North Carolina,” but instead I said, “Clementine Roux,” and I felt like a liar all over again, like I always did when I told someone the wrong name.

  “Not your real name, I’m guessing.”

  I said, “No, it’s not.”

  Through it all, the younger girl was sitting on the mattresses, her eyes moving back and forth between us. I leaned down and held out my hand to her—“Hello”—and she shook it.

  She said, “Annika Vadik,” and her accent was thick. Then she said something in a language I’d never heard before. I thought she looked about my age, maybe a couple years older.

  I said, “D’ou viens tu?” Where are you from?

  She said, “La Russie.” Russia.

  Millie said, “She speaks very little English and very little French, so I’m glad you’re here for my sake, of course, not yours.” But she sounded as if she couldn’t care less if I were there or not. “You don’t have any cigarettes, by chance?”

  “No.”

  “Just as well.” Millie sat herself down in the chair at the desk and waved at me with one long hand to take her place on the mattresses. I sat next to Annika, the straw poking me in the legs. “What can I tell you about this place? We take turns sleeping on the bed. You’ll get used to the fleas eventually. They feed us coffee in the morning, soup at noon, and bread at night. We get an extra ration of cheese or meat twice a week, and we get one Red Cross parcel a week to a cell—sugar and jam if we’re lucky, crackers, cheese, some sort of fruit paté, and candy bars. It’s up to us to ration it out and make it last. Of course it’ll be harder now that you’re here.”

  I said, “You’re right. Maybe I should tell them I’ve changed my mind and I don’t want to be here after all.”

  She stared at me and I stared at her, and Annika looked back and forth between us. Millie said, “Sorry,” and I could tell that saying it was as hard for her as chewing nails. “Prison makes me irritable. Why are you in here anyway?”

  I said, “I was picked up after an air raid, coming out of the underground.” I didn’t tell her anything else: I’m a spy working with the Resistance and a group of secret agents, and I’m supposed to be on a mission right now.

  Millie nodded, drumming her fingers on the desk, and I could tell again that she didn’t believe me. There was chipped red paint on her nails. She said she was a reporter, sent by the Chicago Daily News to cover the war. She said she’d had to fight like hell to get the assignment in the first place, but that so far she’d covered the war in Italy with the Free French troops, flown along on a dangerous night combat mission in the skies over Germany, and dressed up like a soldier and stowed away on one of the boats invading Omaha Beach on D-day. Even though I didn’t want to be, I was impressed.

  She pointed to Annika, who sat, legs out and crossed in front of her, ankle over ankle, leaning back on her arms. I thought prison must be so much worse when you couldn’t understand anyone else. Millie said, “That one’s the real hero, better than you or me, I’ll wager, whatever you’re really up to.”

  Annika nodded at me. She blew a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. Millie said, “My Russian is bad, at best, but from what I’ve been able to learn, she was a history student at Kiev University before the war, and when Russia entered the fight she joined the Soviet Army as a shooter for the 25th Infantry Division.”

  “A woman shooter?”

  “Don’t you know? The Soviets are much more evolved than the rest of us. Women are allowed into the army alongside the men. There are some two thousand female snipers fighting in Russia. Of course, at least a thousand of these are already dead or wounded.”

  Millie said something to Annika and Annika said something back to her, and then Millie said to me, “She’s not sure how many Germans she’s killed, but she thinks it’s around three hundred.”

  I stared at Annika, who smiled at me. I said, “What is she doing here? In France?”

  “She was injured last year and the army dismissed her. She came over here to fight with the Resistance.”

  Annika said something in Russian, and Millie said something back, and then she said to me, “She says, from what I can tell, that the key to being a sniper is patience. You have to know how to wait. You have to stay still for hours and know how to blend into your environment.”

  I said, “You have to lose yourself and become invisible.” Just like being a spy. Just like being Velva Jean Hart. You have to forget everything you’ve ever known and everybody you ever knew. You have to give yourself up.

  “Yes.” After a pause, Millie said, “Do you have people on the outside?” I knew she meant did I have friends in Paris.

  I said, “Yes.”

  “Does anyone know you’re in here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A few hours later I sat playing rummy with Annika, when I heard the sound of something rolling along the rails of the balcony floor. Millie closed the book she was reading—something in French—and stood up again from the desk. “We have to stand at the door or else they won’t give us our rations.”

  We lined up in front of the door, and I could hear what must have been the food cart roll and stop and then the rattle of keys, the groan of a door opening, and, after a minute or two, the door closing, and the cart rolling and stopping again before rolling onward. Finally it stopped just outside. There was the clattering of keys and our door swung open. Another girl prisoner pushed the cart and a matron stood over her. The prisoner handed us a chunk of bread, the same exact size for each of us. The door slammed closed again and I could hear the clink of the keys, and the cart went rolling off.

  Annika sat back down on the bed and ate her bread, one small piece at a time. Millie set hers on the desk untouched. She said, “I don’t have the stomach for it anymore. You won’t have the stomach for it either after a while.” I looked closer at the bread and it looked like there was something moving in it. I pinched it off and held it in my hand.

  “What is that?” But I already knew because I’d seen what happened to dead birds and squirrels left too long in the woods, and I knew what sometimes happened to the hog meat that we dried and stored in winter.

  “Maggots,” Millie said.

  I picked one out, pinching it between my fingers, and then picked out another and another until the bread was full of holes, just like cheese. The maggot bodies lay on the floor, squished and shriveled. I didn’t even feel bad for killing them. I tore off a piece of bread and stuck it in my mouth, trying not to think too much, trying not to feel sick. I decided right then that I would eat everything they gave me because I needed to keep up my strength. I wasn’t staying here one more minute than I had to.

  That night, Millie and Annika gave me the cot, even though I told them I was fine on the floor. Millie said, “Don’t be ridiculous.” Then she dragged one of the other mattresses into the corner across from the door and lay down. She closed her eyes and stretched out, feet hanging off the end, but I could tell she wasn’t asleep.

  Annika handed me the one toothbrush they had between them, the one the guards had let Millie keep when she got there along with a bar of soap and a washcloth. Annika said something and made a motion like she was brushing her teeth. Then Millie, eyes still closed, said, “You’re welcome to share the toothbrush. Just wash it clean when you’re done.”

  Afterward, I lay down on the bed, facing the window. Our one light was out and there was no way to turn it on, so there was nothing to do now but sleep. Outside, it was sunset, and through the glass you could see the outline of the iron bars. The air was so close and stale, I could barely breathe. It smelled like a springhouse on a hot summer day when all the fruit lay rotting. I said, “Do they ever open the windows?”

  “No.”

  Annika said something. I said, “What did she say?”

  “We could open them if we only had a knife.”

  I thought: I can’t sleep like this. I can’t stand it
another minute. It’s bad enough to be in prison, but this isn’t even the prison I was supposed to be in. I can’t even breathe.

  The prison matrons were called les souris—the mice—by the prisoners. Except for my hairpins, the wooden singing girl, the seashell, and Ty’s compass, which was still hidden in the shoulder pad of my blazer, the mice had taken everything—my money, my lipstick, my identity cards, the chewing gum, even my rip cord. They had sealed up my bag in an envelope and made me sign a receipt for the money they took from me, which was over fifty francs.

  If only I could breathe.

  I reached up and pulled a bobby pin out of my hair. In the half dark, I slid the rubber tips off the end and felt the sharp points against my finger. I stood up and went to the window and let my eyes get used to the fading light. With my fingertips I found each screw that held the window shut and I reached up and started unscrewing them, one by one.

  I heard shifting behind me and Millie said, “What are you doing, Clementine Roux?”

  I said, “I’m getting us some air.”

  Millie said, “If they catch us they’ll send us to the dungeon.”

  I didn’t know what the dungeon was, but I could imagine. I said, “I’m only doing it for a minute and then I’ll put it back.”

  Annika pushed herself up off her mattress and walked over, saying something to me in Russian and reaching up her hands to help. A moment later Millie was there. She hissed, “What did you smuggle in?”

  I ignored her and kept working. I worked until I’d unscrewed all the bolts for one of the panes, and then I swung the window open. The bars on the outside were as thick as arms, and made of a cold black iron. I wondered if I could fit through the spaces between them, but they were too narrow.

  On one side of me, Annika stood with her eyes closed, the breeze blowing her hair. On the other side, Millie was staring straight into the row of courtyards that ran past the building. The corners of her mouth were turned down and her head was thrown back in a proud way, but her eyes were watering. The air hit me in the face like spring, and I leaned my head out as far as I could and breathed.