by Margi Preus
The two shook hands, and a deal was struck.
3.
MID-DECEMBER 1942
UNWELCOME GUESTS
For a while that winter there was little to disturb the tranquility of the small town but the shoosh of sled runners, the hushed footfalls on snowy sidewalks, the tiny ticking of snowflakes against windows. Except, on this particular day, there was one noisy classroom above a bookstore near the village square.
Class had yet to begin, and students entered the shop, stomped the snow off their sabots, shoes, and boots and shook the snow off their jackets and wool capes before hanging them on the coatrack. Then they bounded up the stairs to their still-frigid classroom.
The teacher had not yet arrived, so the students chattered and joked while Philippe attempted to make a fire in the old, leaky woodstove in the corner. What he mostly got, though, was smoke.
“You finally come to class, and look what happens!” Sylvie teased as she made her way to the window. “I thought you were a Scout.”
“Not a very good one, apparently,” Philippe answered, fiddling with the metal handle that opened the flue.
“Here, I’ll show you how it works,” Céleste said. As she reached for the damper, their fingers touched. She pulled her hand away, blushing. Most schools were either all-boys or all-girls, like the one she had attended in Paris. She’d never gone to a coed school before, and being around boys was, well, different.
Sylvie opened the window, and Léon and Henni waved their hands to try to waft the smoke out of the room.
“Mon Dieu . . .” Sylvie whispered. Her voice was even chillier than the winter wind blowing in through the window. Without turning around, she waved everyone over.
A dozen heads crammed the open window and watched from their perch on the hill as, one after another, several dark green army trucks appeared on the road leading into town.
“O la vache,” Philippe whispered. “Holy cow.”
The trucks bounced over the bridge into town, rumbled by the square, and turned onto their street.
“Maybe they’re just passing through,” Céleste suggested.
For those who could travel the main roads, Les Lauzes was not “on the way” to anywhere. So if there were German trucks, they were probably planning to stop.
And they did. One by one, they parked in front of the hotel across the street from the bookstore.
Henni’s pulse raced. She backed away from the window. Her glance darted toward the stairs. “Are they coming here?” she asked.
“I don’t like the look of it,” said one of the students. “I blame the letter.”
“What letter?”
“Shh,” Sylvie said.
The whole class silently watched as the truck doors opened and soldiers began to emerge. Slowly. Not in any rush. Then they began to hobble toward the hotel, some of them with canes or crutches, others helped along by their comrades.
“They don’t look like they’re going to be conducting raids anytime soon,” Philippe observed. “They look pretty beat-up.” He winced a little at the sight of bandaged heads and arms in slings.
“The Germans are moving in right next door to—” Céleste stopped. Goose bumps rose on her arms as she thought of the children living in the boardinghouse next door to the hotel: twenty children, an unknown number of whom were Jewish. And the director of the residence, also Jewish.
The room hushed as others contemplated this unspoken situation.
Then one of the students chimed in, “Even if these Germans are harmless, having them here can only mean more Germans. It’s the fault of the letter.”
“What letter?” one of the others asked.
“This summer some of us wrote a letter to Vichy’s Minister of Youth,” Sylvie explained. “To voice our outrage about the roundups in Paris when thirteen thousand Jews were arrested—”
“Over four thousand of them were children. Children!” Céleste exclaimed. “All of them rounded up and put in the bicycle stadium, with no food or water . . .”
“The children were separated from their parents. The adults were stuffed into cattle cars and deported,” Sylvie continued. “Then the children, too, were put on trains and deported to Auschwitz.”
“An extermination camp,” Henni whispered.
“They told people it was a relocation program,” said Sylvie, “but word has come from the camps about what is really going on there.”
“We have to do what we can to keep those and others who reach us safe,” Philippe said.
“What we said in the letter,” Sylvie went on, “was that we believed the deportations would soon start in the south. And that we would not give up the Jews in our midst.”
“First of all, if anyone demands that Jews register here, don’t do it!” Philippe said. “The roundup wouldn’t have been possible if Jews in Paris hadn’t registered when the German occupiers demanded it.”
Henni thought about how her family had thought they would be safe if they followed the law. They had thought of themselves as more German than Jewish. Her father fought for Germany in World War I. Surely, her mother had thought, they wouldn’t come for us! And so they had done what the law required of them.
“I still don’t see how the letter has anything to do with this,” Céleste wondered. “I mean, with Germans coming here.”
“The letter told the Vichy minister, and I quote,” Léon said, “We want you to know that there are a certain number of Jews among us. If our friends, whose sole fault is to adhere to a different religion, receive deportation orders, we will encourage them to disobey those orders, and we will do our best to hide them.”
“What?” said one of the students. “Why did you tell him that?”
“Those in power have to hear people calling them out for their immoral policies,” Sylvie said. “They have to hear people saying, ‘This is wrong.’”
“Why does it have to be us?” asked another student.
“Why shouldn’t it be us?” Philippe answered.
“We’re just kids.”
“Maybe we’re the only ones brave enough to do it.”
“Or stupid enough,” mumbled Léon.
“To say nothing is to tacitly agree with their policies,” Sylvie said. “It’s the same as saying that what is taking place is acceptable.”
“If we don’t speak out against what is wrong, we are contributing to the problem,” Philippe said.
The teacher arrived and, after hanging up her coat, explained in a grim voice, “The hotel’s been requisitioned for convalescing soldiers who’ve been wounded on the Eastern Front.”
“Maybe it’s not appropriate,” Léon said, “but that reminds me of a joke.”
“It is not appropriate!” Sylvie snapped.
Léon plunged ahead anyway. “Hitler asks a soldier at the Eastern Front what he wishes for when he is under artillery fire on the front line.” There were groans, but Léon forged on. “And the soldier answers, ‘I wish that you, my führer, were next to me.’”
»«
When class ended, the students left their bookstore classroom and began walking to their next one.
“Don’t worry, Henni,” Céleste said, touching Henni’s arm. “You’re one of us now.” Céleste and Sylvie stood on either side of their friend as they walked.
Henni didn’t answer, because the sound of drumbeats and shouts caught their attention.
“Avis à la population!” the garde champêtre shouted, banging his drum on the street corner. The somewhat unofficial town crier wore something that vaguely resembled a uniform, though a uniform for what, it would be hard to tell. He was a funny little man with a black mustache that he nervously smoothed before speaking.
Villagers gathered around to hear what announcement he had to make. Céleste and her friends stopped, too.
“What now?” Céleste wondered. “More bad news?”
“What could it be?” Sylvie said. “Germany is already occupying the whole of France—so that can’t be
it.”
“They’ve already instituted compulsory work service for all the young male adults. Maybe they’ve decided to send everybody to work in German factories!” Céleste said.
“First they send us a policeman. And now the Germans.”
What could possibly be next?
“Avis! Avis! Notice! Notice!” the garde champêtre cried again. He banged his drum, smoothed his mustache, then announced in a loud voice, “It is forbidden to slide down the village streets on sleds!”
The three girls couldn’t help it—they burst out laughing. The villagers who had been expecting some important announcement threw up their hands in disgust and walked away, back to their errands.
Henni listened with one ear to her friends discussing their evening plans—plans she knew included sledding on the village streets—but she had the distinct feeling someone was watching them, as if the heat from someone’s stare was burning a hole in her back. She brushed snow from her shoulder so she could take a surreptitious glance behind her, and noticed a German soldier standing outside the hotel, looking at her.
He pulled out a white handkerchief with which he began to clean his spectacles.
Henni’s skin prickled. A hard lump lodged somewhere in her chest. Her friends’ voices seemed far away, their words as distant as the sound of the river running under the ice.
All she noticed was that white handkerchief.
Her mind flew to the last day she’d seen her mother that past August. She’d been sent word from Gurs, the camp where her mother was still being held, that her mother was sick and Henni should come quickly. She arrived at the camp, only to be told that it was on lockdown—no one was allowed inside. Her mother, along with many hundreds of others, was to be deported the next day. Perhaps she could see her mother then, an aid worker suggested.
It had been dark, though the summer night still warm, by the time Henni had walked the nineteen kilometers to the rail yard. The tracks were empty; warehouses lined the lonely platform. Was this it? A freight yard?
Exhausted, Henni curled up on a scrap of dry pavement next to one of the warehouses and tried to will herself invisible as rail workers slipped by like shadows. Deported, she thought again, hearing the voice of the aid worker. “East,” she’d said.
East was not good. East was Poland. East was extermination camps.
The next morning, Henni awoke to a nightmare worse than anything she could have dreamed. A long line of cattle cars stood along the platform, each car filled with ghosts. Through the open doors, she saw that the cars were crammed with people, people so transparent a gust of wind might have carried them away.
If only she could do something, Henni thought. If she had a sorcerer’s power to call down the fierce winds of the plateau! To call down the snows to bury the rail lines! To call down fire, lightning! If she had such power, she would do it.
She did not need to remind herself that she did not. The feeling of powerlessness overwhelmed her. She was powerless even to find her mother among so many people.
One of the gendarmes approached her. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“I’m looking for my mother,” she explained.
“Do you know where she is?” the policeman asked.
“No. How could I know among a thousand people?”
“What’s her name?” he asked.
Henni looked at him, wondering why he wanted to know.
“I will find her for you,” he explained. “What was the number of the barracks where she lived?”
Henni told him her name and the barracks number.
He started to go but turned back. “What goes on here tears my heart out,” he said, then offered her a drink from his hip flask. When Henni declined, the policeman took a swig himself, then walked away.
After a short time the gendarme returned and said, “Follow me,” then led her through the crowd until they reached the car that held her mother. The gendarme helped Henni up inside.
When her eyes adjusted to the gloom, the full horror of the situation struck. The rough, wooden car was obviously meant to carry cows and pigs, not people. A few shreds of straw lay scattered about on the floor, and a single bucket stood in a corner.
“Mama?” Henni said.
Her mother stepped out of the gloom. Though it had been only a few short months since Henni had last seen her, it was as if decades had passed. Gone were the bright eyes and hearty laugh, the robust figure, the glossy hair. Her dress, her only dress, hung from her bony frame, and her hair was gray and lusterless.
Henni thought of how she’d wanted to leave Gurs, even though she’d had to leave her mother behind—and her grandmother in the cemetery there.
“I should have stayed with you,” Henni whispered.
“No,” her mother said, shaking her head. “It’s good you left. They have taken away everything else. Little by little they took away our right to work, to go to school, to go to movies, concerts. Each time, we said, ‘Now they will be satisfied—what more can they take?’ Each thing must be the last, each time, the worst insult. They took our silverware and jewelry, our savings, our houses, our businesses. How was it we kept believing it would end? Finally, all that is left is our lives. And it seems they must have those, too.” She clutched Henni’s shoulders and whispered, “Don’t let them take you.”
The metallic clang of a steel door sliding shut on one of the cars startled them both.
“Go, go!” her mother said. “Quickly, before they close the doors.” She peeled Henni’s arms from around her waist and pushed her toward the door.
Henni backed away. People in the car helped her down to the platform. She was barely out of the car when a policeman came by.
“You!” he barked at her. “What are you doing out here?”
“I just came to see my mother,” she managed to squawk.
Behind her, she heard the loud grating squeal as the doors began to slide shut, then the heart-stopping clang as they closed with horrible finality. One after the other, after the other, after the other.
The policeman looked up at the sound, and the gendarme who had helped her earlier appeared, took her arm, and led her toward the gate.
“Shoo!” he said. “Run!”
Henni dashed outside the gate, where she turned and clung to the metal fencing. The train began to roll away, car after car filled with people: someone’s father, mother, sister, brother. Finally, all she could see of her own beloved mother was a little white hankie through the slats of the boxcar, waving goodbye.
“Henni?” Her friends stood looking at her. “Henni?” Céleste repeated.
“Sorry,” Henni said. The entire memory had taken only the amount of time it took for the soldier to clean his glasses. “I was just thinking about something else.”
“You were miles away,” Sylvie said.
I should be miles away, Henni thought. She had been safe here for a time; she had loved being here. She looked at her friends. They were kind. But how much longer could they protect her and the other young people sheltered here? Perhaps it was time to think about getting out.
CHRISTMAS MAGIC—DECEMBER 25, 1942
On Christmas Day the church was transformed from a drab stone building into a wonderland of flickering candlelight, perfumed with the sharp, sweet scent of freshly cut fir. Earlier that day, children watched as a draft horse dragged a huge fir tree right into the church, its hooves ringing on the granite floor, its breath white clouds of steam in the cold air.
Now the flames of a hundred candles glowed on the tree’s branches, filling the church with warm light. The congregants had arrived on sleds or skis, by horse-drawn sledges, on foot. The pews were filled, children in the front with their faces tipped up to listen to the pastor, who was telling a Christmas story of his own devising.
Under the reign of Caesar Augustus, the story began, two men lived in Bethlehem, a town in Judea. The first man was immensely rich, the second was very poor.
Inspector Perdant tipt
oed in after the service had begun and slipped into the back pew. He watched as the pastor paced back and forth in front of the tree, bouncing a bit on his toes, his bright blue eyes shining in the candlelight.
It happened that a census was to be taken, the pastor said, and everyone in that land was required to register, each in his hometown. The rich man flung his doors wide, welcoming all strangers—as long as they could pay for their room and board, of course. He couldn’t be expected to host people for free, after all!
The poor man swept out his humble abode and waited, hoping to welcome strangers. But no one wanted to stay with him because they would have had to sleep in the barn.
Jean-Paul listened to this story from the other side of the back pew from Perdant. He’d never attended a service before, and he wasn’t sure why he was here now. But as for taking shelter in a barn, Jean-Paul well knew there were people hiding this very night in barns all over the plateau. In fact, his own room was separated from the animals by a wall so thin that he was awakened every morning by the cow butting her head against it.
Céleste was thinking about what was coming next in the story. She thought she knew: Joseph and Mary would be turned away by the rich man and would end up in the poor man’s barn.
Sure enough, that’s how it turned out.
The poor man was thrilled to welcome them, the pastor said. He invited them in, gave them something to eat, and prepared a straw bed for his guests.
Henni, sitting with some others from the Beehive, knew only too well about beds of straw. She, herself, had slept on straw on the floor of the barracks at the internment camp. Just thinking about it made her shift uncomfortably in her seat, her bones remembering the cold, hard floor she’d shared with dozens of others. She thought of her mother. And all those who had been taken away on that or other trains.
That night, the story went on, a baby was born, and since there was nowhere else to lay the babe, he was laid in the manger.
The message of this story could be, Henni thought, you never know who might be God’s child, so you should treat all strangers as if they are. But, then, aren’t we all God’s children? She remembered her grandfather saying that in each person—even the poorest, even the most unlikely—there is a divine spark. The difficult thing was to be able to perceive that spark in others—it could also be hard to see it in oneself.