Which was true, of course, but … ‘It’s pretty dark out there, eh?’ It was no mean feat to cross the city and the Seine after curfew. I had avoided two street patrols and managed to walk right by the control on the Pont d’Iéna, both of whom had been laughing and seeing how far they could piss into the river, but … I’d better not tell them this.
Simone was sitting on the arm of a chair in her dressing gown and slippers. ‘He’s right, Lily. It’s no time to be fooling around. But Marcel, chérie? Why go to a man no one should trust?’
André had pulled on his coat. ‘Yes, why? Just what are you involved in?’
Me, I needed to quickly learn how to lie and wisely decided to use a half-truth. ‘A small investment. I’ve some potatoes and things. I was hoping to find a way to get them to you.’
He glanced at Simone then said, ‘Potatoes,’ and lifted his eyebrows. André was typical of the French intelligentsia, thin, greying, sharp-featured, tidy always-even in pajamas and silk dressing gown-dark-eyed, fifty-two, and twenty years senior to his wife. A very good and successful doctor, but with a practice that I knew was falling to pieces: wealthy Jewesses mainly, so he wore a certain stripe the Nazis wouldn’t like, though neither he nor Simone were Jewish and I knew they would not have backed off, not then.
‘I’ll go and get the bicycle,’ he said, ‘and apologize to Monsieur Laforge, not that it will ever do any good. Some coffee, Simone. Maybe something stronger. Lily, really, you’ve scared the life out of us and put us in the soup as well!’
As he left the room, he muttered, ‘Potatoes might help.’
‘Marcel’s not to be trusted, Lily.’ said Simone. ‘You know this far better than we do, so why, please?’
The shoulder-length black hair was wiry and thick and desperately needing its brush and comb, the grey eyes betraying an uneasiness I didn’t realize I was to see time and again in the years to come.
‘Tommy’s at the farmhouse with Nicki.’
‘Ah, merde, you can’t get mixed up in anything like that, not with Jules and the Vuittons! Even we have seen how close they are to the Nazis.’
Sitting at her feet, I folded my arms about her knees. ‘For us, we have to decide.’
‘But … but why now? Why not give us a chance to learn the ropes? Every day there are changes. New ration cards, new ordinances, more and more papers to fill out. This place … They’ve already been here to question André about some of his patients.’
‘The missing ones?’ Those who had gone south during the Exodus and had stayed away, fearing the worst if they came back.
She nodded. ‘Their valuables, their houses … Lily, what are we going to do?’
‘Decide. Tommy and Nicki will be here in the city in three days.’
‘If Marcel keeps his word! How can he? He never has.’
‘I’ll look the ground over first. They’ll both be armed.’
‘You’ll what? Hey, listen, you, I’m not hearing this! What’s got into you? Marcel …’
‘Will you hide them for me?’
Me, I let her cry her heart out, this friend of mine, and tell her, ‘They have to link up with someone. I don’t know who he is, but it must be important.’
Somehow a presence of mind was summoned. ‘Has this anything to do with the auctions at the Jeu de Paume?’
‘Perhaps.’
* * *
Darkness does something to a person after you’ve been in prison for a while. You never know when they’ll come for you. They may give you a cigarette, your last; they may beat the shit out of you, so you try to sleep, but are always wary. Your mind goes round and round asking, Have I told them this; had I better say something else?
Huddling in a corner-shaking-it’s never pleasant, so I’ve walked the six or seven kilometres through the forest, have left the ‘Château’ de St-Germain for a little. The wind is from the northeast out of the Baltic it seems, and I’m standing amid the ruins of my mother’s farmhouse near Barbizon. The ashes lift with the wind when I stir them, and the smell comes to me: old, damp, musty, so many things.
They put it to the torch after having dragged that poor woman out and shot her.
Forgive me. If only I’d known, but let me remember the time before it happened, because I must. A time of warmth, a tenderness I could never have believed possible.
We sit there, just the three of us, and I couldn’t believe what’s happened. I couldn’t! ‘Marie … Nini … How I love you both for this.’
Marie was alive. Nini had gone south to Provence. She had found my little girl safely with her grandmother. Some people had picked Marie up in the confusion and had taken her with them on the Exodus. Marie had run away just as Jean-Guy had said. She hadn’t been killed.
I was a mother again-whole, complete, with two hearts to protect and all the fears that go with such a thing, and I couldn’t keep my hands off Marie. I touched her hair, her back, looked at her, said how much she’s grown. My sister watched me, and finally the daughter she had adopted took a hesitant step towards the mother she’d thought lost. Then it was Nini who couldn’t keep her hands from touching us. It was, of all the moments in a war that was filled with so many, the most profound for me.
Only later did we talk of Marcel, and only later did I tell Tommy and Nicki about the lift I’d arranged. Smoke rose from the lantern on the kitchen table. Marie slept in my arms. Nicki cleaned and loaded the Lebels, checking them over yet another time.
Janine had just made us some sandwiches, big, crusty things of meat and cheese, the last of the food she’d managed to bring from Provence. There were olives, too, and a bottle of wine. ‘Marcel can be trusted this time,’ she said, ‘but maybe not the next. He’s an odd one, Lily. He runs deeper than you’d think.’
Me, I had to tell her how it really was. ‘But he will wait to see what we’re up to. If he must sell information, he’ll make certain of what he has to offer.’
Tommy wasn’t pleased with this analysis. ‘Perhaps we should forget about it and try some other way.’
Nini reached for the olives. ‘Then there would only be trouble because Marcel would feel he had to strike while he could. No, it’s best you go, but give me a couple of days. After I’ve taken Marie to Lily at the house and made a big show of it, I’ll go into Fontainebleau and turn myself in. Those gros légumes will have to send me to Paris where I can then be of much use to you.’
The big vegetables, the brass, the Oberbonzen und Bonzen. ‘And is that wise for yourself?’ asked Nicki.
My sister had a way of smiling at a man she liked. It was very delicate, very subtle, you understand. A slight twist of the lips. Very seductive.
‘It’s the only thing I can do. Oh, for sure, Marie and I crossed the demarcation line from the Free Zone without a permit, but lots of people are doing it. I had to return my sister’s daughter. The Boche can’t all be without heart. Besides, they might not even check. They might be so anxious to see me, they’ll forget all about it.’
‘Which leads us to Michèle and the others. What has happened to them?’ I asked.
She indicated that I should hurry up and eat something, that the time for me being there was running short. ‘Michèle and Henri-Philippe split up with Dmitry and me in Lyons when the van finally packed it in.’
‘And Dmitry?’
Nini could shrug like no other woman. ‘We slept in the fields. One morning, I awoke to find him gone.’
I grabbed her hands. ‘Is he a Nazi, of the SS?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s a Communist. He didn’t tell me this. Ah, mon Dieu, how the hell could he? I found out in other ways-friends, associates of his, a little by following him, too.’
There was the sharp click of a hammer, but when we looked at Nicki, he only shrugged, though he had one of the Lebels in hand and we knew he hated Communists, but all he said was, ‘War makes strange bedfellows. I wonder who he killed for that Luger you’ve still got hidden?’