“Better?” Nick asked, his eyes searching Sasha’s face.
“Yeah, thanks,” Sasha said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“We should get back to base. Come with me?”
Sasha nodded, and they walked together, not saying much, the dusty streets eerily silent.
* * *
• • •
After Troina, they moved on to Palermo, for two last days of R&R before hitting mainland Italy. Young partisans mobbed the cobblestone streets, roaring with pleasure when the sight of their American green tanks with the white star came into view. They could barely drive forward with the cheering crowd pressing on all sides. A kid even jumped on the back of the jeep, hanging onto the spare tire, shaking his tiny victorious fist in the air. From balconies, women threw garlands of flowers, the white gardenia petals raining down on their helmets like snow. Young men ran alongside the jeep, clasping Sasha’s hand in both of theirs.
* * *
• • •
He refilled his C rations, got new socks and tobacco, and wished he could smoke at least one good Havana cigar. Sitting on the cool church steps, he peeled some oranges from a grocer who had insisted on giving them away for free. An animated back-and-forth ensued between them until Sasha relented; he saw how badly the man wanted to give him the oranges, and that there was power in benevolence, even if it amounted to gifts from a modest fruit stall swarmed by flies off the main square. Even if it amounted to Sasha and his outfit tossing chocolate bars and Spam into a crowd of children as they motored past the pinched, hungry faces.
* * *
• • •
On their last night in Palermo, the army organized a USO show. They all felt jittery, knowing that at dawn they would lead an assault on the mainland to secure Naples, a German stronghold. Shoulder to shoulder, they packed in front of the makeshift stage with a single upright piano and a microphone stand. Sasha joked that at least they’d see Marlene Dietrich’s legs before biting the dust tomorrow. A few guys laughed, but their sunburnt faces seemed ashen and drawn.
First, Al Jolson performed “My Mammy,” a song about traveling a thousand steps just to see your mother’s face. A thin guy accompanied on the piano, his fingers flying over the keys. Jolson outstretched his arms, and sang as if this were his last show, his face upturned to the sky when he held the high notes. Everyone clapped and cheered, and brotherly emotion surged through the crowd, as well as a shared homesickness, nerves collectively sharpening at the prospect of what tomorrow would bring. Sasha swallowed hard, not wanting to think about it, not wanting to think about anything other than this moment.
* * *
• • •
The master of ceremonies then introduced Anna Lee. They had expected Dietrich, but when they saw Lee walk onto the stage in a long columnar dress the color of midnight, Sasha forgot all about Dietrich. She apologized because she couldn’t sing or dance. “Oh, this is embarrassing, isn’t it?” she asked in a quivering voice, but they just smiled stupidly, filled with silent admiration, until someone shouted from the crowd, “We love you, Anna Lee!” and she laughed, shaking her head, and the sight of her laughing made them all start clapping until she cupped the microphone and sang, in a low, uneven voice, “When the Lights Go on Again All Over the World.”
* * *
• • •
After the show, Sasha snuck backstage and found her dressing room door ajar. She sat before the vanity mirror, an army blanket wrapped around her shoulders, shivering slightly in the damp room while applying more blush to her cheeks and sipping a thimble of brandy. In the mirror, he assessed her cool patrician beauty before rapping on the door.
“Yes?” she asked, startled.
“Miss Lee,” he said, growing self-conscious of his unshaven face and dirty fatigues, “I was wondering if you’d be willing to take a message for me back home.”
She shook her head, her dangling earrings swinging gently, and said she couldn’t possibly. So many soldiers had asked her to ring their mothers, their girlfriends, their little sisters back home; if she said yes to one, she’d have to say yes to all.
He explained it wasn’t a message to his mother or anything like that. It was just one word, for Charlie Friedman.
Her penciled eyebrows pinched together. “My agent?”
“He’s also my agent.”
She gave him a disbelieving smile
“I’m a writer.” Just mentioning Charlie and work made him feel close to that life again, the electrifying staccato punch of those keys and the rewarding bing at the start of a new line.
She asked if he’d written anything she’d heard of, and he mentioned Cyclone, which Charlie had finally sold to Paramount last year. George Stevens had directed it, and given the strong anti-German theme, the film had done great. Ironic, Sasha thought, how from one day to the next, a script was either “clannish” propaganda or a great story to fight the Nazi menace, as Variety claimed in a review.
Her easy, lighthearted laughter filled the room, and she poured him some brandy before raising her glass to his. “All right, so what’s this message?”
“Cigars,” Sasha said after taking a long sip, the brandy warming his insides.
“That’s it? No name?”
“He’ll know who I am.”
“Okay, soldier,” she said, her eyes softening. “Whatever you say.”
Chapter 17
LUCIE
January 1944, St. Denis Convent, Southwestern France
Lucie copied down the Latin conjugations written in slanted cursive from the blackboard. When she glanced out the window for a moment, the raw icy sky made her shiver in her seat, the gray so dense her head felt even heavier this morning, especially after last night’s air raid. In the middle of the night, they had filed out of the dormitory and crossed the courtyard, their nostrils tingling from the smell of burnt wood, before descending into that cold, dank shelter, where they squatted on dirty canvas mattresses. With a heavy wool blanket around her neck, Sister Ismerie explained that they had to stay here until the bombing stopped, but even she flinched at every blast, half hunched over, her face waxen.
When dawn approached, everyone sighed with relief, thinking it was almost time to return to the dormitory, when a shell exploded right next to the shelter. Smoke funneled in through the cracks, and it felt as though the ground beneath Lucie’s feet shook and broke apart. She cried out, grabbing Camille’s arm, thinking that any minute they would fall into a harrowing dark pit.
Sister Margot now pointed to each conjugation with her long wooden stick, its tap-tap-tap running through Lucie’s head like music, the monotony of it almost lulling her into believing that last night belonged to a bad dream.
Next to her, Camille gave her a secret smile because they both were waiting for Sister Margot to lose her train of thought, as she often did, with those spectacles that continually slid down her elongated nose, and her watery brown eyes that squinted out at the rows of girls, searching for the answer to a question she had already forgotten.
“Now,” she resumed after a prolonged pause, “who can tell me which one of these is the infinitive future of ‘religare,’ meaning ‘to bind fast, to moor’?”
Lucie’s hand shot up first, ready with the answer: “religaturum esse.”
Sister Margot sighed. “Perhaps, Lucie, we should give someone else a chance today.”
At the tail end of her sentence, the door swung open and a German soldier strode into the classroom, followed by Sister Ismerie, her eyes combing through the rows before settling on Lucie. She tried to say something about the Feldkommandantur’s visit, but the soldier’s right arm shot out, as straight as a rod, and he barked, “Heil Hitler.”
Sister Margot hesitated, throwing an uncertain glance at Sister Ismerie, before she repeated “Heil Hitler.”
The soldier began pacing the length of the room. He pa
used, scanning the faces of the girls, all of whom sat straight up in their seats, hands folded neatly on their desks.
“As you can see, we only have French students here, from good families,” Sister Ismerie said, motioning to the class. “Their education has remained uninterrupted, as we have managed to remain entirely disconnected from the war, and from—”
He gestured sharply for Sister Ismerie to stop talking and walked in between the rows, surveying each student.
Sister Ismerie stared desperately out at the leafless trees.
He stopped next to Lucie’s desk.
Sweat trickled down her sides, the back of her neck prickling with heat. His cedarwood scent filled her nostrils. This was the moment she had been trained for, the moment when she must recite her name, age, and origin without a hint of hesitation. “You cannot show one ounce of doubt,” Sister Ismerie had coached her. “Otherwise, like an animal, they will smell it. And once they sense something amiss, only God can help you.”
Those words thundered through her now. She sat so still, she almost stopped breathing.
He stared down at Camille’s desk and jerked up her chin with his black-gloved hand, forcing her to meet his gaze. “What is your name? Age?”
“My name is Camille Bonheur. I am eleven years old.”
“Where are your parents?”
She swallowed hard, her cheeks inflamed. “They run a cattle farm in Normandy.”
Lucie knew this was Camille’s story, the one she had to practice, because her parents were fighting in the Resistance, a fact that had circulated among the pupils in hushed admiring tones. No one knew Lucie’s real story, that her parents had left her with Agnes and she had lived on a farm for two years before coming here. Because she was a Jew. No one knew except for Sister Helene and Sister Ismerie. If she told anyone, then the Germans would surely come for her. This is what Sister Ismerie had drilled into her from the very start. But she couldn’t help it. She had told Camille the truth, and Camille only hugged her afterward. Then they pricked their fingertips with a safety pin and mashed them together, and Camille announced that now, they were sisters. Blood sisters. “Anything that happens to you happens to me,” she had said gravely.
The soldier let go of Camille’s chin. “Why are you so far away from your family?”
“This is where my mother is from, originally, and they wanted me to have a good Catholic education.”
Unsatisfied, he moved on down the row.
Lucie wanted to give Camille an encouraging smile, because she had done well, but no one moved. She forced herself to stare at the flaxen braids of the girl seated in front of her. If asked, she could feel the words on the tip of her tongue: her name was Lucie Ladoux, she was from Paris, her parents had an antique shop on Rue de Rivoli, and she had four older brothers.
But she didn’t have to say it because after a few more minutes, the soldier walked out with Sister Ismerie, leaving them all in stunned silence.
Sister Margot shuffled around some papers on her desk, muttering nervously to herself. Then she finally looked up, squinted out at them, and said, “Take out your lesson books. It’s time for dictation.”
* * *
• • •
After this, Sister Ismerie grew much stricter about Lucie and Camille retreating to their hiding place, even when there didn’t seem to be a threat. Just the sound of the front bell, with its piercing aggressive ring, prompted Lucie and Camille to run into the padded alcove behind Sister Ismerie’s bed and close the little door behind them.
A few weeks later, after the bell rang, they were sure the German had returned with that gruff voice and heavy footfall from what they could hear in the alcove. And it wasn’t just him. They heard at least two others speaking German. Clutching Lucie in the darkness, Camille whispered, “He’s come back for me.”
“Don’t worry,” Lucie whispered. “They’ll never think to look behind Sister Ismerie’s bed. Who would ever want to get that close to her!”
Everyone joked about how unattractive Sister Ismerie was, with her broad shiny forehead and awkward gait, her hands as big as a man’s. But in that moment, Lucie saw that Camille couldn’t laugh. She only gripped the hay sprinkling the floor, convinced she was going to die.
Lucie held her close. “Think of something else.”
“I can’t.”
Lucie started to tell Camille a story, about how a magical fairy cast a golden net over the convent whenever danger neared, protecting them. “The net makes the convent invisible to anyone wishing to harm us.”
Camille shook her head, a tightness spreading through her chest. “He’s here now, and it’s only a matter of time before—”
Lucie interrupted, “Let’s play the remembering game.” She smiled, trying to block out those menacing sounds reverberating from the kitchen. First, they would raid the kitchen, confiscating all the flour and milk, and then they would come for them. She felt the urge to clench her fists and dig her nails into her palms, but she must be strong for Camille.
“What kinds of dresses did your mother wear?”
“I don’t know,” Camille whispered, her voice catching in her throat.
“Just tell me something.”
“She didn’t wear so many dresses. But there was one . . .” She stopped at the sound of Sister Ismerie coming down the hall, the Germans walking with her. They couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Lucie tugged on Camille’s sleeve. “What was it like?”
Barely able to get the words out, Camille said in the faintest of whispers, “Blue velvet, the color of the sky, with a black sash. She wore it on Christmas.”
Then they heard the front door open, and after a few suspended moments, filled with Sister Ismerie’s high, affected voice bidding the Germans good day, it closed again.
Both of the girls exhaled, relieved in the dark. After a pause, Camille asked, “What did your mother wear?”
“I remember a long black silk dress, embroidered with golden threads. She only wore it on special occasions.”
“Where do you think they are now, your parents?” Camille’s large eyes shone expectantly.
“I don’t know. But I always imagine them in a sunny place, warm and peaceful, close to the sea. Far away from here.”
They heard the approach of Sister Ismerie, and then the little cubby door opened. The Sister’s face shone with sweat, but she was smiling.
“Girls, you can come out now. They only took some food. It was very good of you to hide so quietly. You must always do this.”
Chapter 18
VERA
June 1944, Santa Monica, California
With every day that passed, the Allies won another city. The Americans had just taken back Rome—a photograph in the paper showing Italian peasants tossing flowers at US tanks plowing through rubble. Last night on the wireless, that reliable British voice reported that the Nazi rail lines were in chaos. Every major yard from the Bay of Biscay to Cologne had been blasted to pieces. As Max and Vera listened together on the living room sofa, the windows open to the sea-scented air, Max gripped her hand, his eyes lit with euphoria, the same euphoria that Vera saw on every other face wherever she went; in the elevator, on the streets, and especially at the office, the other women carried that tense, hopeful gleam in their eyes. She could tell they were afraid to trust it entirely, but the shared feeling was infectious, all of them tingling with the sensation that the war was nearly over, and the Americans had won it.
She wanted to believe it too, but she didn’t dare get caught up in it. No mail had come in almost two years, and to fill in this blank absence, she’d come up with the most gruesome stories of what had happened to Lucie, the worst scenarios parading through her dreams, which continued to haunt her during waking hours, of what she might find when the war finally ended, when she could go back to France. One dream she couldn’t sh
ake: Lucie had drowned, and when Vera found her, all that was left was a shred of cloth mixed together with skin and bone that she could tuck into her palm.
She remembered listening to the wireless in Sanary, alone on the couch that evening in June four years ago, when the German advance on Paris was inevitable, and witnessing the dark eclipse the light. But now, Max believed, for the first time, the tide was shifting, the Allies undoing much of the damage and maybe even reversing it, pushing back the Germans. He gripped her hand tighter. “We’re going to win.”
Their next-door neighbors Pauline and Conrad were already talking about a trip to the English countryside, a honeymoon put on hold because of the war. Max was whistling again, composing a symphony in three movements: flight, struggle, and rebirth, with a choral section at the end. “It’s shorter and lighter than what I’ve done in the past, without the fourth movement. I would say it’s a sinfonietta,” Vera heard him explaining to Michel over the telephone.
Even the mailman moved with a lighter step after months of trudging down the street, his canvas bag dolefully banging against his side as he went from door to door, everyone dreading what bad news he carried; now they opened their doors before he was even half up the block. He tipped his cap with a flourish after he handed over the mail and announced that by way of England, some letters from France were making it through, and it wouldn’t be much longer now, she’d see.
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