Elsa’s hand encircled Vera’s wrist, and in one quick motion, she pulled her behind a crumbling brick wall.
“Now our places in line are lost for the day,” Vera whispered.
Elsa shook her head. “Listen. We can’t stay here any longer. It isn’t safe. Ingrid, you remember Ingrid? She was released after the armistice.”
Vera nodded, recalling the young German girl who had clung to Elsa, seeking instruction on how to care for herself in these primitive conditions, untrained in the ways of women. When Ingrid needed help making a sanitary pad, Elsa didn’t flinch, and after this, Ingrid fashioned herself as Elsa’s little secretary, the others joked, but all of them admired Elsa’s ingenuity and wit, which lightened the gathering darkness, making the sordid surroundings appear a little less so.
Elsa continued, “She risked coming back here a few days ago to tell me very soon we will all be transported to a camp in Poland. The foreigners, political enemies of the Reich, Jews, all the undesirables will go.” Elsa paused.
“If we can make it to the Spanish border, it’s less heavily guarded. Varian Fry, a young Quaker and American journalist and a great admirer of Leon’s, has promised to get us across. We’ll take the night train to Cerbère. Then we’ll have to climb the Pyrenees.” Elsa stopped, noticing Vera’s distraction.
“You’re not listening.”
Vera stared down at her worn shoes, the T-straps fraying. Her head felt light, empty.
Elsa smoothed back her already smooth hair, coiled into a severe bun at the nape of her neck. Economy, Vera thought. Elsa is all economy, and I have nothing to offer but prevarications and doubt. But of course she can afford to act so briskly when she has nothing to lose.
By “nothing,” Vera meant a child.
Elsa said, “There’s the question of Lucie.”
Vera started at the sound of her daughter’s name.
“It’s not safe, or even possible, to send for her.”
“I know,” Vera said, her throat closing up. She tried to swallow, but a mounting thickness prevented her. They’d heard from recent refugees entering the camp about the horror of the roads: thousands had fled Paris and the northern provinces with mattresses strapped on top of cars; farmers had abandoned their fields; once cherished family dogs now roamed the streets. People pawned the family silver for a few liters of petrol. Train stations resembled refugee camps, overrun with families huddled on benches, people sleeping on the floor for days, hoping to make it onto a train that would carry them south.
Vera leaned against the cool brick wall, shaded by the overhanging plane trees, and closed her eyes, the sting of tears pulsing behind her lids.
Elsa ran the back of her hand against Vera’s cheek, and Vera recalled Agnes’s last letter alluding to the plentitude of bread and milk, how Lucie slept peacefully, the new puppy curled into the crook of her arm. She knew what Agnes meant beneath those images of hearth and home: We are much safer staying put, even with the German advance, than leaving and becoming subject to the roads, to the lack of food and petrol, to the chaos of a country in flight. Vera knew Agnes was right, and yet she still thought there would be time to collect Lucie somehow, or that this internment would only last a few weeks and they would reunite. This was what she had believed in the back seat of Leon’s car, staring through the rear window watching Lucie, in her black pinafore, growing smaller and smaller.
“She will be all right,” Elsa whispered, the words as warm and soft as her hand, which had now slid down to Vera’s shoulder. “But Oradour is just below the demarcation line. It’s too far. Too dangerous. On the way here, Lucie could be apprehended and taken into custody.” Elsa’s hand dropped.
“I know,” Vera repeated, opening her eyes, tears blurring Elsa’s severe cheekbones, turning her hawkish nose less distinct.
Elsa glanced around, taking stock of who might be watching. The only face that smiled back belonged to Madame, as she was called in the camp, based upon her former profession in Paris. An elderly woman whose rippling obese body appeared to move in various directions at once, supported on either side by one of her girls. Her black wig wobbled on top of her head, and her crimson velvet dress trailed behind her in the dust. Her face, white and heavily powdered, a slash of red across her lips, reminded Vera of a Kabuki mask, eyebrows arched into manufactured surprise, and Vera, unthinkingly, smiled back.
Chapter 5
VERA
September 1940, Gurs Internment Camp, Southwestern France
On her last night at Gurs, the children debated if they could see their fathers in the moon. Vera lay on her pallet, knowing that tomorrow morning when they filed out with the others, she and Elsa would walk in the other direction.
After Elsa had told her that soon German soldiers would replace the last French ones, they had taken turns digging a hole under the barbed wire fence between soldiers’ rounds and covering it with leaves and brambles. On their final morning, when the soldiers changed, they dove to the ground and wiggled through the space between the fence and the dirt. Sliding on their bellies for hours, they weaved, like water snakes, through the tall grass until they reached the road.
Once on the road, they blended in with all the other filthy refugees escaping the north for the south. Planes flew overhead, and everyone looked up, gasping. Abandoned rusted cars festered in the hot dust. Women and children jumped on the back of German military convoys, leaving their husbands behind. “Meet you in Marseilles,” they yelled into the wind, the men shielding their eyes with the palms of their hands.
In the throng, Elsa clutched her arm, explaining that they had to first locate Leon and Max, get them out of the camp in Nîmes, and from there leave France. “America. America is the only place we can go,” she said.
Franz Werfel’s complaints rang in Vera’s ears, echoing from another time, when they still had a choice: Don’t go to America. Here in Europe we are established, we have renown. Nobody knows us in America.
* * *
• • •
French officers still ran the military office in Nîmes. Somehow Elsa had found this out in advance. The officers said that Leon and Max were not in Nîmes, but at a camp called Saint-Nicolas. The only way to get there was by taxi. No other way. No bus, no train, nothing. “The roads are also very bad,” they added. “You cannot walk. It will take all day, at least.”
Elsa begged the officers for help, saying all the right things about having lived in France for many years, and that Vera—she nudged Vera forward—was a celebrated French novelist. “And of course, you must be familiar with my husband’s work, Leon Freudenberger.” She sighed. “He has a stomach ailment and is unwell.”
The French officers listened, nodding at the appropriate times. After Elsa had finished her speech and the silence in the room grew uncomfortable, one of the officers strolled over to Elsa and sat on the edge of the desk. He held a cigarette between his fingers, contemplating whether or not to light it.
When he finally spoke, his voice sounded like tires crunching over gravel. “I must explain something to you. If the Nazis asked us to sell our mothers, we would do it. That’s how afraid we are of the Nazis. Do you understand?”
* * *
• • •
That afternoon, Vera found herself perched on the lap of a black marketeer in the back seat of an old Peugeot. Next to her, another man smoked a strong cigar while periodically scratching his balls. Elsa sat on the other side of him, pressed against the taxicab door. The roads were bumpy, filled with potholes, and with each bump, the black marketeer’s knee wedged deeper into her groin. She felt oddly aroused. He was attractive. Gray stubble, muscular forearms, reptilian eyes a slate color she couldn’t trust. When the driver swerved and Vera tilted to the side, he gripped the curve of her waist, stopping her from colliding with the car window. The taxi driver locked eyes with Vera in the mirror, but she nodded and his gaze returned to the road.
She had felt dirty and ugly for weeks, and the realization that this man actually enjoyed the feeling of her body gave her brief pleasure, recalling days not so far gone.
Vera ground down on his knee, sharp pleasure rippling through her limbs. She wondered if this is what war did, stripping people down to an elemental state, revealing their true nature. All along, when she was studying Russian literature at the Sorbonne and marrying early and having a child, keeping regular hours hunched over her desk, ensconced in a roomy moth-eaten sweater and searching for the perfect metaphor, underneath such pursuits, certain inherited proclivities that she had believed she was immune to were stirring within her, waiting to burst forth. Yes, it’s happening, she thought, burning with shame. The shame of finding her mother’s torn negligee in the bathroom, the shame of the man with pomaded hair and cedar aftershave who spent the night whenever Vera’s father was away on business.
Getting out of the car, Vera wondered if Elsa noticed the blood flooding her cheeks, but Elsa was too busy haggling with the driver over the price of the fare, trying to hold on to their last few francs that she had hidden up until now, sewn into the hem of her skirt.
The driver stood with the car door open, shaking his head, his bald scalp pinking in the sun.
Even from here, the camp’s stench was unbearable because the inmates defecated along its barbed wire boundary. Vera hooked her fingers through the rusted metal fence, calling out Leon’s and Max’s names to the men milling around on the other side of the fence. The attractive man from the cab was unloading cases of whiskey from the trunk, his eyes flat.
Vera called out Leon’s name again because he was better known than Max. A murmuring overtook the prisoners, and they repeated Leon’s name, one man calling out to another in an uninterrupted echo until finally Leon and Max waded through the crowd. Even after six weeks, Max appeared as robust as ever, his olive skin darkened, his cheeks tinged red from a sunburn. Vera’s chest swelled at the sight of him. He was alive and healthy, smiling even. She glanced down at her torn hem, her unshaven legs and dirty fingernails. She touched her face, feeling the layer of dirt and grime that had amassed there, and forced herself to smile back at him.
Leon clutched Max’s arm, visibly weak, no longer the well-dressed charming figure he had been in Sanary. Amidst the sun and dust, he appeared drained of his vigorous wit. A young Austrian doctor held Leon’s other arm, and explained that Leon had suffered from dysentery, but luckily his high fever had subsided a few days ago.
“But he needs unripe apples and bitter chocolate. The best remedy.”
Elsa stifled a cry and then announced that she had chocolate from Paris and some unripe apples stolen from Gurs. The men cheered, Elsa’s prescience a sign of grace to them all.
Through the barbed wire, Elsa passed the apples and chocolate to Leon. Their fingers touched.
Elsa whispered, “Not to worry. We have a plan.”
Max motioned for Vera to come closer, his breath stale and bitter. “What is it?”
He didn’t even ask about Lucie, so consumed was he with his own survival. Just like those greedy wives jumping onto German military trucks, speeding away, leaving their husbands to fend for themselves.
“Elsa and I are going to Marseilles. The American consul general is there, and we’ll get our papers in order. We must leave France.” She paused, wanting the effect of this to settle. “America is our only chance.”
She willed him to ask after Lucie. Instead his eyes glazed over, and Vera thought he was imagining his escape, if the berth on the steamer would be comfortable enough, and when he could eat a good meal.
He inhaled sharply. “How will I get out of here?”
“I don’t know.”
She did know, but she wanted to torture him with vagueness, leading him to believe that they might have to leave him behind, in this wretched camp. Of course Vera would relay the details of their plan to get them out, but in these tense moments she wanted him to feel something other than relief.
His face fell. It gave her a strange tingling pleasure.
“And Lucie,” she began, her voice catching. She clenched the metal fence between them. “We can’t take her with us. There’s no way she’ll make it to Marseilles from Oradour, with the roads the way they are, the stalled trains and the checkpoints. I have to write Agnes that we’re leaving, somehow, without saying too much.”
She stopped talking, hoping he would interject, that he would refuse to leave Lucie behind, that he would offer alternatives, no matter how farfetched, or even suggest that they stay in France and remain with Lucie throughout the war, even if it meant going into hiding.
He only looked down at his shoes, the sole separating from the upper tip.
Vera now noticed that Max had sweat through his shirt, and fresh red blood bloomed in the corner of his eye, a burst capillary from lifting heavy stones in the heat.
He looked away and then spat a ball of tobacco into the dry earth. “She’s safe there, with Agnes.”
“You don’t know that,” Vera snapped.
His gaze turned inward and darkened, and that boyish naïveté she had always cherished, now she stomped on it, wanting to smite it.
“You’re right,” he finally rejoined. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
Vera pulled on the fence, willing it to rattle, but it barely moved.
* * *
• • •
They left Leon and Max in the camp and boarded the first train they could find to Marseilles, where the American consul general was located. It was a military train full of drunk French soldiers, laughing and swearing and elbowing one another, delivering dirty joke after dirty joke. A lieutenant stoically smoked a cigarette, staring out at the French countryside. “How devastating. We’ve already lost the war.” He flicked his cigarette out the window.
* * *
• • •
Stretching at least a mile, a line of people curved around the American consul general for exit visas from France and immigration visas to America. Elsa and Vera were instructed to stand at the rear. People murmured that they had already been sent back three, four, five times.
In an imperious flash, Elsa marched to the front of the line and thrust a note at the doorman, who nodded and disappeared into the building.
“What did you write?” Vera asked.
“I wrote ‘Leon Freudenberger.’ The American government, notably Eleanor Roosevelt, knows he’s interned, and they’ve promised to get him out. Varian Fry, you remember, the American journalist I told you about in Gurs? He’s heading the Emergency Rescue Committee in France. He’ll get us the right papers. He’ll get us out.”
A few seconds later, the door opened and they were ushered inside.
* * *
• • •
Varian Fry stood before them in a cream linen suit holding a glass of seltzer in one hand, his thick tortoiseshell glasses in the other. Vera passed Elsa a look, acknowledging the shift in the air, a sudden fluidity permeating their surroundings. Guiltily, she thought of all the others still outside, locked in an eternal wait. The other refugees might not get out, and yet, if they were able, they would have done the same, grasping after survival as she grasped after it now. If nothing else, she must survive for Lucie.
Elsa repeated her name, and he instantly asked them both to sit down on the plush sofa, motioning to the tea service nearby and offering Vera and Elsa cigarettes, coffee, and plum cake all in the same breath.
Vera took in the slender brass lamps, restive and serene, the oil paintings of landscapes along the paneled walls, the rose-colored carpet, the trilling of telephones and banging of typewriter keys echoing down marbled corridors, the click-clack of high heels and the rustle of thick creamy paper, paper she had once used in abundance, her penciled notes filling pages and pages.
Her eyes stung with tears as she settled into the sofa, and in the s
ame moment, Elsa stifled a sob that was both strategic and authentic. The possible outpouring of emotion, of female distress, caused Fry to lean forward, push his glasses onto his face, and in a stern, conspiratorial tone explain that he would personally get Leon and Max out of Saint-Nicolas, as well as arrange for their escape to America. “It will be done,” he concluded, looking them both in the eye.
In a flurry, in a daze, the plan was assembled. Vera watched the paneled walls change from cream to violet, late-afternoon light seeping through the arched windows. She half listened, drinking cup after cup of tea, her body loosening, her mind accelerating, planning the moment when she would ask Varian about her daughter, if there was any way to get her now. In the baroque padded comfort, all seemed possible, the Germans ineffectual, the bureaucracy of escape an afterthought.
She smiled and smoked a cigarette, crossing her legs. And yet she knew the silk sofa was a dream, and the ease with which Varian now explained the plan a fantasy that hinged on the impossible intersection of luck and strategy. Why else were those poor people still squatting outside the consul, in front of the locked iron gates?
“Tomorrow, I’ll travel by car to Nîmes, to Saint-Nicolas camp. Only the American consul has petrol. As you said, Elsa, around five o’clock in the afternoon the prisoners are taken to the river to wash themselves. The men are lightly guarded because who would try to escape half naked and wet? Yes?” He paused, his light eyes expectant. “This is when I approach Max and Leon with Elsa’s note, written in her hand, that Leon will recognize, convincing them to come with me.”
He produced a note from the inside pocket of his blazer and read it out in perfect German. “‘Komm jetzt mit mir, es ist sicher, geh mit.’” (Come with me now. It is safe. Don’t ask any questions.)
Those Who Are Saved Page 5
