“They can riot all they want,” Claude said sadly. “They can’t fight the Third Reich in the streets of Paris. The Germans have the soldiers, the weapons, the tanks, all of it.”
“So we do nothing?”
Claude shook his head. “There’s another way.”
Victor looked at his old friend.
“The Scouts are still functioning. Only now, we’re not playing.” Bands of young Jewish renegades, later to be called La Sixième, lived in the woods and did their best to help others escape and work against the Nazis. These young people were fearless and wild and felt they had nothing to lose. “Have you ever shot a gun?” Claude asked.
As a child, Victor had often been taken into the countryside by his grandfather. He’d been perhaps six or seven, too small to hold a proper rifle, so his grandfather had one made especially for him, the correct weight and size. They’d shot at birds, although it seemed a crime to do so; Victor had cried the first time they’d gathered the doves they shot, piled into a white sheet to carry home. Later, he had been given a full-size rifle, and as it turned out, he had perfect vision and excellent aim. Perhaps it had all been for a reason, his embarrassment at having cried in front of the old man on that first hunting trip, the rain of gray feathers that fell from the sky, the fact that he had learned to be so good at something that repelled him. Now it all made sense, as if his fate had been preordained the moment he walked out into the field with his grandfather and picked up the gun he hadn’t wanted to touch.
“Quite a number of times,” he told his friend.
At the hour when night was disappearing, Claire Lévi discovered that her elder son was not in his bed. She looked through the house, then searched the icy street, out in her nightclothes, in a panic, not bothering to think of the curfew that kept Jews inside at night.
When she failed to find Victor, she went to sit in the garden on a stone bench, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She had not thought this was what her life would come to, but now she saw that it had. The professor noticed Claire wasn’t in bed, and when he found her in her nightgown, crying, he sat beside her.
There had been an early storm and the branches on the trees crackled with a sheen of ice. All of the rabbits that had once lived here had been caught and cooked by the neighbors, and the dormice had taken over the empty garden house, where bulbs and cuttings had once been stored under the glass dome of a ceiling. It was silent and dark, and Claire was hopeless. What a fool she’d been to think the world would not touch her or those she loved. André took her hand. For once he was truly beside her, not thinking of anything other than the moment they were in as she told him their son was gone.
“He’ll come back,” the professor insisted.
Claire shook her head. She knew how fearless and headstrong young men were; she just hadn’t realized that Victor was anything more than a boy.
“Of course he will,” her husband insisted. “He’ll be home by morning.”
But when the sun had risen, Victor hadn’t returned and they had no choice but to go inside and lock the door. That day the professor did not go to his study, but instead walked through the neighborhood and crossed the Seine at the appointed hour when Jews could shop, hoping to catch sight of Victor. He had always avoided the Marais, and had felt more connected to the academic Left Bank. Now as he went along Rue des Rosiers, past the bookshops and markets, and along the cobblestones of Rue des Barres, he realized how cut off he’d been.
When he’d had no luck finding Victor, the professor went to see the rabbi, although he hadn’t been to services for a dozen or more years. Neither of his sons had been bar mitzvah, and in the last few years they hadn’t celebrated Passover. He’d considered himself French through and through, but now here he was knocking at doors, asking if anyone had seen Victor. But no one could help him. Sons were missing all throughout Paris. He could search the world over, but when a young man wanted to fight for what was right, there was no holding him back.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RUNAWAYS
VIENNE, WINTER 1941
ETTIE CAREFULLY OBSERVED EVERY CUSTOMER, hoping someone would signal to her, but no one came for her. No strangers waited for her, no notes were dropped beside a table, no customers making eye contact. The only person who seemed to notice that she was alive was the beastly owner of the café, Monsieur Favre, who liked to stand too close while he put his hands on her waist, insisting she was too pretty to be a waitress. She knew he was a liar as soon as he said that. Not wanting to be dismissed, she swallowed her fierce dislike of Monsieur Favre and forced a thin smile onto her face.
“Your wife is much prettier,” Ettie said, even thought Madame Favre was a dumpy, ill-tempered woman.
The café owner backed off once his wife was mentioned, for Madame Favre was working not ten feet away. Still, from then on, Ettie slept with a knife in her cot. You couldn’t trust anyone, really, especially when you yourself were living a lie. Weeks passed and no one contacted her. She began to think Father Varnier had decided she wasn’t worthy of becoming a fighter.
Then one evening she left soon after the dinner hour to take a walk and everything changed. By then winter was closing in. She washed dishes for so long every day that her hands were raw from the harsh soap they used. “Don’t use too much,” Monsieur Favre always told her. He was cheap and preferred dirty dishes to the cost of soap.
Ettie felt free whenever she was away from the café. She often took long walks so she could practice her French with no one near to overhear her mistakes. The night was cold, and she hadn’t a coat, so she walked quickly, quicker still when she heard someone behind her. The more speedily she walked, the closer they followed. She’d left her knife in her cot and was defenseless. She had the urge to run, but on this evening she was Nicole, her alter ego, a French girl who had a perfect right to walk the streets of Vienne, who was as good as anyone, who had no fear of strange men, who had faith and said her prayers, who was convinced that God was looking after her and was there to protect her.
She turned to face her follower. They were stopped on a dark corner. He was more a boy than a man, tall and lanky, and she only saw a glimpse of his large, handsome features. He had a strong physique, although his shoulders were hunched, as though he were deep in thought and didn’t wish to be disturbed. He slipped his arm through hers and softly said, “Just keep walking.”
To anyone watching, they appeared to be a couple taking a stroll after dinner. They were similar in age and demeanor. They didn’t speak, but that was not so unusual. Couples often had little to say at the end of the day, yet were happy enough to be together in silence. They got into a car that had been parked not far from the church. The key was hidden under the seat. The car had been stolen in Nice and driven here to use until the time came to ditch it and find another.
“Are you old enough to drive?” Ettie had always been one to challenge boys her age.
“I’m the best driver you’ll ever meet.” He took out a blindfold, pleased to have the upper hand when he saw the shock on her face. “It’s better for you not to know where we’re going. Then you can’t divulge the address.”
Ettie felt a sort of terror slide under her skin, yet she didn’t flinch when he blindfolded her. She thought of the Morning Star, Esther, and how she had rescued a nation when no man could have done so, and as she imagined this heroine, Ettie’s nerves died down. In the car the young man told her about the underground movement of young Jews who resisted in every way they could, trying to rescue the next generation. They had learned to make explosive devices, most often pipe bombs that would stop German convoys or trains. When they could, they procured papers for families or children, whom they transported to passeurs, local people who were lifelong residents of the small villages who knew this wild, mountainous countryside, and could see Jewish refugees to the border. The organization was divided into small groups, cells that worked together, who often didn’t know the names or locations of the other cells so they would
have less information, for the good of all.
“I deliver you, and then, after they train you, if you’re any good, you’ll be my partner,” the young man said.
“Good at what?”
“What do you think?” her companion said. “You went to the priest.”
“I’d like to destroy the people who killed my sister.”
“How do you plan to do that?” he asked.
She had no idea. A knife in her hands would do little.
When she didn’t answer he said, “We’ll show you.”
She turned her head so he would not see that beneath her blindfold she was crying, tears streaming down her face. Whatever she did could never bring her sister back. Perhaps the boy felt for her. “I’m Victor,” he told her despite the rule to keep his identity secret. “From Paris.”
“I’m called Nicole here,” she said. “My family called me Ettie.”
They drove for quite some time, Ettie in the passenger seat as they barreled down the roads at a high speed. She couldn’t see through the blindfold, but she knew they were headed into the countryside, for the roads were now bumpy and steep. They stopped once and the back door was wrenched open. A man got in and sank heavily into the backseat. He stank of cigarette smoke and he brought the cold inside with him. Ettie felt a wave of panic. She didn’t like the idea of being outnumbered. The driver must have sensed her fear.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “He’s one of us.”
So that was it, she was one of them now, and she didn’t even know who they were. They were simply fools the priest had sent for her, who she hoped knew how to do battle. They drove for perhaps an hour. She learned that the fellow in the backseat was Claude. At last the car turned down a rutted road filled with puddles the tires splashed through, coming to a stop in a half-cleared spot in the woods where the parked car would not be seen. Victor got out and came around to help Ettie from the passenger seat. When he took off her blindfold, she saw they had come to a small abandoned house. They walked past it, into the woods. It was nearly midnight now. Ettie knew the café owner would find her empty cot, and the knife she kept there, and curse her. Let him. She was never going back. She had leapt from a cliff and now all she could do was wait to see where she fell.
There were two more young men, and a young woman. Jean and Arno and Bettina. They greeted her, and gave her supper, then asked what she knew about fighting. She knew how to hate, nothing more, so she shrugged. The others were not impressed.
“She’ll be fine,” Victor said. “All she needs is a teacher.”
They laughed because Bettina had been an art teacher in Paris.
“If you’re ready, so am I,” Bettina said.
Ettie nodded, her face glowing. Someone had come for her.
When the snow began to fall, Victor and Claude and the other men piled into the car and took off, saying nothing of where they were going or what their mission was.
“We don’t discuss such things,” Bettina told Ettie. “It’s safer for all of us that way. If one of us is caught, we know that no one can resist torture, and the less you have to say the better.”
The women moved into the old house. The snow was so high it was impossible for a car to get down the dirt road. No one could come after them or blunder upon them. They felt they would be safe, at least for as long as the snowdrifts covered the roads and the fields. There was a fireplace and some wood, as well as a pile of onions and potatoes in the cellar, gnawed on by field rats, but perfectly edible. As it turned out, Bettina was a forger, and soon enough Ettie was in training, her hands blue with ink at the end of the day. Bettina’s knowledge of printing techniques as an artist allowed her to produce a variety of identifications used by the Resistance to help smuggle Jews to the countryside or to the border. Visas, driver’s licenses, baptismal certificates, ration cards, anything that allowed Jews to move about the country or make their way into Spain or Switzerland or begin the journey to find a Jewish state. She had access to ink and paper in Lyon from a sympathetic French owner of a poster factory that was no longer in service.
A few weeks after the men had departed, Ettie stumbled over some loose floorboards. She knelt down and lifted a board. Hidden there was a cache of gunpowder and batteries.
“I think you could tell me something of what we’re doing here,” Ettie said while she and Bettina worked one afternoon. By then the snowfall was over the windows, and they were eating rice and fried onions. There had been days when Ettie imagined they would starve to death before the men came back or the snow began to melt.
“Our boys interrupt convoys to Montluc Prison and what we do here in this kitchen allows those who escape to have the proper documents.”
“Interrupt?” Ettie said.
Bettina shrugged. “Bomb.”
Ettie wished she were out with the men. She had spent most of her life in a kitchen, and now here she was again. They had been gone for so long, both she and Bettina were anxious. More than a month had passed. It might be possible for the women to hike to a village, or to a safe house Bettina knew about that belonged to a doctor on the other side of the mountain. But it was rough terrain, where people said wolves still roamed.
At dusk Ettie often went outside. She wore a heavy coat and her shoes were stuffed with paper to keep her feet from freezing. She had dug a small path to a stream, and once there had broken through the ice. Ettie crouched down and concentrated, then dipped her hand in the water, ignoring the cold. She caught a fish that was asleep in the frigid water. She carried him up the path into the house and placed him in front of Bettina. Bettina stood up, stunned by the fish flopping about on the table, then she laughed and couldn’t stop.
“This is a miracle,” she declared.
Bettina cooked the fish for dinner, and after they’d eaten the two women felt they had been saved. Every day Ettie went fishing in the mornings, and most days she caught something. She was a better fisherman than she was a forger. The fish swam directly into her hands. She was coming back from the stream one afternoon when an unfamiliar car pulled up the road. Ettie stopped behind a tree, in a panic, until she recognized Arno. She ran through the snow to meet him. She was about to ask if he had thought to bring food with him, until she saw the look on his face. She knew that something had gone wrong. He grabbed his rucksack and they went up to the house. The snow was turning blue. Soon it would begin to melt. Arno had indeed brought food, and he unpacked some bread and cheese and sausage. Bettina was there, her hands covered with ink, and when she saw him she burst into tears. There was no easy way to say what had happened, an explosion gone wrong, the bomb in Jean’s hands. Claude was fine, but Victor had been badly burned and after a doctor had seen to his wounds, he’d insisted on being taken to a farm near a village about an hour away.
“They’ll come back,” Arno said.
“Of course,” Bettina agreed.
Ettie made dinner that night, she was as good a cook as any of them. Afterward she went outside as she always did. Arno came out as well.
“We’ll have to move back into the woods soon,” he said.
He’d been nearby when the bomb had gone off and had seen what it had done to his friend. He now had ringing in his ears, but more than that, he seemed changed. He had a gun that he played with, as if he could never be ready enough for an attack. He’d brought in some rifles from the trunk of the car.
“All of those people on the convoy we couldn’t stop will die because we made a mistake,” he said. “I made the mistake. It was my plan.”
“We all make mistakes,” Ettie told him. It was better to make a mistake than to do nothing. “I think you should teach me some things.”
He looked at her, confused. “Bettina is teaching you to be a printer.”
“That’s not what I want to be.”
He took her in, then handed her the gun.
Vengeance was just beneath her skin, a shadow self, her true self, the one who had been holding her sister’s hand, the one who ran
into the woods, who wanted to learn everything she could be taught, starting now.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE HERON
PARIS, SPRING 1942
THE HERON HAD GONE TO Spain and then to Africa. He simply couldn’t tolerate the cold; his bones were hollow and he needed light and food. But at last he came back for her and one warm night he called to her. Ava heard his voice and she could feel his cry echo inside of her. When she knew Lea was safely asleep, she rose from the blanket on the floor, which served as her bed. She went out the window, through the garden that was covered with blue squill, and then climbed over the garden gate Madame Lévi kept locked. She ran to the river, her breath coming hard. This was what freedom felt like, escaping the bonds that tied her, doing as she pleased, if only for a few hours. It was wrong, and she knew it, but she could not deny herself this one pleasure. She spied the heron in the shallows, in the place where she most wanted to be. Every night she went there, at the same hour, and every morning she returned with her hair streaming down her back, wet from the river.
One night, Lea woke to find Ava gone. Lea had been dreaming of her mother, and when she had such dreams it was as if she’d had a visitation, as if the dream was real and her waking life was imagined. In her dream, they’d sat together on a bench in their courtyard, and Hanni had leaned close to whisper. She is not who she thinks she is, she was made to love you, but she doesn’t know that yet. Every time she looks at you, I see you. Every time she embraces you, you are in my arms.
The World That We Knew Page 10
