Claude glanced nervously about, then knocked lightly. They heard shuffling footsteps from within, and the door opened only wide enough to emit a slender rib of light. He placed the scrap of paper into an outstretched hand.
“Quickly. Vite. Come in. No noise. Silence!”
“Yes. Of course. Thank you. Merci. Merci bien.”
They entered, weak with relief and startled by the sudden, unfamiliar warmth and the welcoming and surprising aroma of newly baked bread and a simmering pot-au-feu. An elderly woman, her cheeks flushed, blue eyes glinting, snow-white hair twisted into a neat bun, smiled at them and wiped her hands on the large white apron that covered her gingham housedress.
“I am Madame Montand. André Montand, my brother-in-law, told me that you might seek shelter here. Bus drivers, of course, know everything, and what they do not know, they surmise. André is seldom wrong. I imagine that you are hungry. If so, you are indeed fortunate. I have just finished cooking and baking. I cook and bake late at night now so that the odors do not drift out the windows and attract the attention of the gendarmes who might then wonder why so much food is being prepared. I cannot tell them that I must feed my Résistance comrades when they are guests in my home. It is best that I cook while les bâtards sleep.”
She laughed, delighted to have deceived the gendarmes, delighted to extend hospitality to the young couple who stood so uneasily in her doorway.
“We are. In fact, very hungry,” Claude admitted gratefully, and they followed her into the large kitchen where a single candle provided the only light.
Madeleine dipped the warm bread into the rich gravy, struggling to remember when they had last eaten. She was deeply grateful. Once again, she and Claude had been rescued by the kindness of strangers. How was it, she wondered, that this war evoked both the very best and the very worst in those caught in its talons? Compassion and cruelty collided; human nature was as divided as France itself. She abandoned the thought and smiled shyly at Madame Montand.
“My name is Madeleine Levy,” she said, marveling at how simple it was for her to reveal her own identity after so many months of hiding behind aliases.
“I know,” Madame Montand said and held out a flimsy mimeographed flyer of the sort regularly distributed by the Vichy authorities.
Madeleine stared at her own poorly reproduced photograph with the caption that read: The Jewess Who Dares Not Speak Her Name. The badly printed text offered a reward of one hundred francs for anyone with information on her whereabouts.
“That much?” she asked Claude.
“Hardly enough,” he replied, and they laughed. She thought it a miracle that laughter had not deserted them.
She turned to Madame Montand.
“Madame, I hesitate to ask yet another favor of you, but it is important that we reach my parents’ apartment on the rue de la Dalbade tomorrow, and I know that the police and the Milice will be patrolling the streets. Do you think that you and your comrades can help us?”
“We will certainly try our best,” the elderly woman said and carried their empty plates to the sink. She was a Toulouse housewife. War or no war, dirty dishes had to be washed.
Minutes later, they followed her up the stairs to a small room with a large bed on which two young men slept. Madam Montand spread blankets on the floor and shrugged apologetically.
“No more beds,” she whispered.
“No matter,” Claude assured her.
He and Madeleine lay down, and within minutes, they were fast asleep, huddled together in the nest of blankets. They awakened to the pale light of a wintry dawn, the usual silence of that hour shattered by the ominous shrieking of sirens. Claude leapt to his feet, parted the blackout shades, and stared down at the street.
“What’s happening?” Madeleine asked.
“A column of police cars are speeding toward the square. Motorcycles. I see one unmarked Citroën Traction Avant approaching, and now another and yet another,” he said, his voice rising.
“Gestapo vehicles,” the Résistant youth who joined him at the window asserted. “They are never out in such force at such an hour. Something must have happened. Something drastic enough to warrant a reprisal. What do you think, Armand?”
His friend shrugged.
“A Maquis action. Maybe Résistance. But I hope that whatever it was was worth it. That traffic, those sirens mean the Nazi bastards are going to be making mass arrests. We must get out of Toulouse,” he said.
The two young men moved swiftly, trussing up their rucksacks, thrusting knives into their high boots, and grimly checking the magazines of small pistols similar to the one Claude himself carried. The pistols, Madeleine knew, had been seized from a Gestapo supply depot during a Résistance operation and distributed to movement leaders. She had been offered one, but she had refused to accept it.
“I don’t want to carry death in my pocket,” she had told her combat commander. It was a decision she did not regret. Claude would protect her, she told herself as she hastily gathered up their own scattered belongings.
Claude went into the hallway, and through the open door, she discerned only the sound of voices—Claude’s questioning tone and Madame Montand’s terse reply—but she could not hear the words. She cursed her deafness and waited.
Claude returned to the room, grim faced and pale. He faced her and spoke very slowly, his voice raised loud enough for her to hear.
“There were bombings in the night. Two bombings, each at a different location, one Milice headquarters, the other at the Gestapo station on the rue Maignac. The damn Fascist commandant who ran the torture cells there was killed, and of course the Gestapo and their collaborators are out in force. Madame Montand says that they are arresting people at random, even rounding up schoolchildren and threatening them with deportation if they refuse to inform on their parents. No one in the city is safe. All exits are barricaded. Public transportation is suspended, and every car is being stopped,” he said.
His every word was weighted with sadness.
“I don’t know what we’ll do,” he added despairingly.
“We can help you. We know a way out of Toulouse through the sewers,” Armand, the young Résistant who had shared their room, said. “Come with us.”
“You must get out of the city,” his friend agreed. “We know who you are, Mademoiselle Levy. Your picture has been taped to every shop window, every streetlight and phone pole. Everyone knows who you are. Someone will turn informant. And you know what that will mean.”
They spoke loudly, urgently. She barely heard them, but she understood the impact of their warning.
“Of course, I know,” she said, surprised at her own calm, relieved that her hands had stopped trembling. Mysteriously, the weakness she so feared had evaporated. “But we cannot leave. There is something we must accomplish before we can leave Toulouse.”
They shrugged but asked no questions. They, too, had been trained to recognize the safety of silence.
“Be careful. Be very careful,” Armand muttered as he shouldered his rucksack. “We wish you bonne chance. Good luck.”
“Bonne chance,” Madeleine and Claude echoed as the two young men who had slept beside them left, closing the door very quietly. She wondered if she would recognize them, should they ever meet again. She thought not.
“What must we do, Claude?” she asked, possibilities and impossibilities roiling through her mind.
She pondered all that had to be arranged and all that could not be arranged, the dangers known and unknown, the questions that could not be answered. How could they reach the rue de la Dalbade without being apprehended on the heavily patrolled streets? And even if they did manage to reach her parents’ apartment and retrieve the winter clothing and boots for the children, how would they manage the journey southward to the orphanage with such bulky burdens? Somehow they might secure transport, but the exits from th
e city would be barricaded. The multitude of obstacles dizzied her. Despair soured her mouth.
She dared not think of how difficult it would be to contact the passeurs they counted on to lead them on the trek through the mountain passes. Later. They would deal with that later. If indeed there was a “later.” She sighed and Claude pulled her close. Speaking directly into her ear, he answered her as-yet-unasked questions.
“I told Madame Montand about what we needed at your parents’ apartment and why we needed it. She contacted a comrade in the Jewish Union for Resistance in Toulouse. Miraculous at such a time, on such a day, but she did it. They promised to have transport of a kind waiting for us at the rue de la Dalbade. Hopefully, the driver will take us and everything we need southward to the orphanage,” he said.
“Hopefully.” She repeated the word. “That is all that is left to us. Hope.”
“It is enough,” he replied. “We rely on hope. As always.”
She nodded. She did not tell him that it was Claude himself she relied on. He had for so long been her loving companion, his tenacity and courage never wavering. Hope was his gift to her. Faith would be her gift to him. Their dreams collided. She smiled wanly and rested her head on his shoulder.
Madame Montand knocked lightly and entered the room. She smiled benignly, as calm as she had been the previous evening. A black lace caplet covered her white hair and a black shawl was draped over her white dress, the classic French country costume of a mourner. An embroidered bag dangled from her wrist.
She held out a tray that contained two large saucers of café au lait and two croissants.
“Eat and drink quickly,” she said with a teasing smile. “We have a funeral to attend.”
“A funeral?” Claude asked as he bit into the croissant, unsurprised that it was still warm from the oven. Had she run a boulangerie before the war? he wondered. Would she resume her baking when it ended? He sighed. Would any of them ever resume their lives? Would the years and months that the war had stolen from them ever be redeemed?
“Yes. A funeral,” she repeated. “And the two of you are the principal mourners. Bereaved children of an aged and beloved father.”
They stared at each other in confusion even as she opened the bag on her wrist and removed a black lace mantilla to which a thick black veil was attached. She handed it to Madeleine, who fingered it tentatively.
“I don’t understand, madame,” she said.
Madame Montand laughed.
“Of course you don’t. But we have a plan. The only safe passage through the streets of Toulouse today, and perhaps for some time to come, is in a funeral cortege. Even the Gestapo dare not interfere with a burial. The Milice and their Vichy partners, devout churchgoers all, oddly enough, respect the rituals for the dead. And so we three will be passengers in a limousine from a maison funéraire, a funeral home owned by a Résistance comrade who proudly helps us. That limousine will follow a hearse. A priest will accompany us. Our small cortege will make its way to the rue de la Dalbade, which is fortunately not far from a cemetery. Compris?”
She smiled, flushed with pride at the dramatic intricacy of her scheme.
“Compris,” Claude said, looking at Madeleine questioningly. He wanted to be certain that she had heard every word.
“Compris,” she echoed. “Merci, madame.”
Madame Montand nodded and draped the mantilla over Madeleine, allowing it to fall to her shoulders but pinning it carefully so that the long, black folds concealed her thick hair.
“You must lower the veil to cover your face before we reach the street. Your photograph has been widely circulated, and you may be recognized. Neighbors whom I have known all my life may well betray us. That must not happen, and I pray it will not, but there are collaborators everywhere. We have learned to trust no one,” she said sadly.
She sighed and left the room.
Claude and Madeleine sat side by side on the bare mattress, drinking the last of the café au lait. Claude placed the last bit of his croissant in Madeleine’s bol because he knew how she relished sweetness.
“Will such a plan work?” Madeleine asked, stroking the long folds of the black mantilla, surprised at the softness of the fabric. Pure silk, she thought and wondered to whom it had belonged. A fashionable woman doing what she could for the Résistance, she supposed.
“I hope so,” he said. “It is our only choice. We must have clothing and boots for the children. It is now only the first week of November, and snow has already fallen in the Pyrenees. Within a week, two weeks, there may well be blizzards. We must leave as soon as possible. We dare not wait. And we dare not allow the little ones to risk dying of the cold.”
“I know.”
She pulled the veil over her face as Madame Montand called them to join her.
Once in the street, with Claude walking behind them in somber step, Madame Montand held her arm protectively and made the sign of the cross as two neighbor women stared at her.
“My niece and nephew,” she murmured. “My poor brother’s children, come to Toulouse to bury their father.”
The women bowed their heads reverently as a priest opened the door of the waiting limousine. Madeleine and Claude, followed by Madame Montand, climbed in and sat beside him. He smiled and they recognized Madame Montand’s brother-in-law, André, the bus driver.
“I wear many uniforms,” he said and laughed.
Their limousine followed the hearse in slow progression through the commercial districts of the city. In le marché aux fleurs, the flower market, the vendors offered only the conifer wreaths of early winter. An elderly woman shivered despite her cocoon of shawls and stared up at the darkening sky.
“Hiver, damnable hiver,” she muttered. “Winter, damnable winter.”
Madeleine thought of Anna, who always felt the cold of winter keenly. She remembered that there was a soft blue scarf and matching mittens, the color of Anna’s eyes, in her mother’s storage closet. They would be a welcome surprise, she thought, recalling the delight with which Anna received the smallest indulgences, how she had smiled at the faded clutch of gentians Claude had plucked in the Alps, at the delicate shell Madeleine had found on the banks of the Garonne.
She closed her eyes and retreated into sweet memories of precious hours spent with Anna, blocking out the danger of the moment. She adjusted her mantilla and tried to remember whose funeral they were supposed to be attending. Oh yes, their father, Madame Montand had said.
The shriek of a police siren catapulted her out of her brief reverie. Their driver slammed on his brakes as the squad car, its lights flashing, blocked their way.
A coarse-featured officer stomped out of his vehicle, the peaked military cap of the Milice perched on his oddly flat head and a truncheon clutched in his meaty hand.
“Out. Get out all of you,” he shouted in the harsh accent peculiar to the Languedoc peasantry.
Madame Montand opened her window and stared at him reprovingly.
“Have you no shame?” she asked, her voice quivering with indignation. “Have you no respect for the dead and for those who mourn them? Do you not see that a holy priest travels with us?”
André leaned forward and made the sign of the cross. Madame Montand pointed to Madeleine and then to Claude. She held a white lace handkerchief to her eyes. Her lips trembled.
“These poor young people, my own niece and nephew, have lost their father and I have lost my beloved brother. Why do you add to our misery?”
“Papers. We must see your papers,” the officer insisted. “It is a special order of the Gestapo.”
“Shall we produce papers for a corpse?” she asked angrily. “Do you think we thought to carry papers with us to a graveyard? Step away and let us be on our way to bury our dead, or God will surely curse you. Is that not true, Father?”
André nodded, mumbled an incomprehensible benison,
and flashed his crucifix.
The officer was flushed with indecision. His fat fingers nervously strummed the window. Madeleine shivered. She was certain that he would arrest them. Would she and Claude be separated? Where would they be taken? Claude gripped her hand as tears trickled down her cheeks and her breath came with difficulty, but she dared not lift her veil.
The officer, his forehead now pearled with beads of sweat, whipped out a notebook and copied down the number of the limousine’s license plate.
“Your name!” he barked at Madame Montand.
“Emma Bovary,” she said. “Bovary. B-O-V-A-R-Y. Make sure you spell it correctly.”
Without skipping a breath and before he could ask, she furnished an invented street address.
He shrugged, spoke briefly to their driver and to the driver of the hearse, and waved them on.
Their driver lit a Gauloise, exhaled a perfect smoke circle, and laughed harshly.
“Quel poltron. What a coward, a goddamn coward.”
Madame Montand shrugged.
“How fortunate we are that he was indeed a coward. He may fear his Gestapo masters, but he fears his God even more,” she said. “We are the beneficiaries of his cowardice and of his belief.”
Weak with relief, Madeleine sat back and rested her head on Claude’s shoulder as they drove on, passing pedestrians who doffed their hats and crossed themselves and a Milice unit who stood at attention in deference and respect for the mourners. Continuing on through the city center, they followed the eastern bank of the Garonne until they reached the rue de la Dalbade.
The narrow street was deserted and shrouded in silence. The residents of Toulouse had been driven indoors by the threat of random arrests. A miasma of fear and uncertainty hung over the city. Their car came to a halt in front of the building where the Levy family had lived, and the hearse accelerated and disappeared around a corner, its subterfuge accomplished, the driver speeding toward safety.
The Paris Children : A Novel (2020) Page 31