by Kate Quinn
Eve nodded. It would be over a Sunday; she’d miss no work. “Can you get an extra safe-conduct pass in t-time?”
“My contact hasn’t let me down yet, bless him.”
Eve gnawed at her thumbnail, already bitten to the quick. Perhaps it was Violette’s arrest, or perhaps the vicious cold of October, but she’d been fighting a wave of superstitious dread all week. Was Christine giving her a suspicious look at work, not just a scornful one? That German lieutenant who stopped talking so suddenly when Eve came with his coffee—was he aware she’d been listening? Had René, who had been so solicitous lately, sniffed out one of her lies and decided to lull her into a false sense of security before pouncing?
Get hold of yourself.
It was a late night with René that evening. He built a fire in his chamber against the cold and read À Rebours aloud to Eve, occasionally putting down the book to reenact some of Huysmans’s more depraved passages. Eve was more bored by depravity than titillated by it, but Marguerite was suitably wide-eyed and uncertain, and René seemed pleased. “You’re coming along nicely, pet,” he murmured, running a fingertip around her earlobe. “Perhaps we should retire to the country for a while, like Huysmans’s hero, eh? Somewhere warmer than Limoges where we can enjoy ourselves without all this Teutonic dreariness. Grasse is very pleasant this time of year. The smell of flowers comes on the wind from every direction. I always thought I’d retire in Grasse, once I had my fill of the restaurant business. I have a dilapidated bit of property there already, just aching to be built up into a little jewel of a villa someday . . . Would you like to go to Grasse, Marguerite?”
“Anywhere w-w-w-warm,” Eve shivered.
“You’re always cold these days.” René’s hand slowed, tracing over her skin. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”
That came closer to surprising Eve into an unguarded reaction than anything in a long time. She barely managed not to flinch in utter revulsion. “No,” she said, and added a fluttery laugh.
“Mmm. If you were, it wouldn’t be a tragedy, pet.” He spread his hand flat over her stomach, his long fingers spanning from hip bone to hip bone. “I’ve never considered myself especially paternal, but a man reaches a certain age and begins to consider his legacy. Or perhaps I’ve merely become pensive in this dreary weather. Turn over, will you?”
I was right not to tell him, Eve thought even as she began moving under his touch. He might have sent her off like some pampered broodmare, and where would she be now?
It was nearly dawn by the time Eve slipped away. There would be no time to sleep—she quickly wrapped up a false package to give herself something to juggle at the checkpoint, and set out for the station. Lili was late, and Eve was suppressing panic by the time she saw the familiar figure slip down from a carriage. It was a cold foggy morning, and the droplets of moisture seemed to cling to Lili’s straw hat, her smoke blue coat. She looked extraordinarily small, striding through the wisps of mist. “We have a problem,” she said, lowering her voice to a murmur no passerby could overhear. “Only one safe-conduct pass to be had. It gives permission to travel to Tournai, but it’s just for one.”
“You t-take it. I don’t need to come.”
“You do, for a report like this. They’ll insist on questioning the source.”
“I’ll go alone, then—”
“You’ve never worked a checkpoint on your own before. The guards are very edgy these days, and they aren’t used to seeing you come and go as they are me. That hitching tongue could get you looked at. If you get into trouble, I want to be there to talk you out of it.” Lili hesitated, gnawing on her lip. “We can’t just let it wait till next week’s rounds, not something important like this. If we bluff our way through on one safe-conduct pass here, we can easily get another in Tournai to get home.”
Eve eyed the German sentries at the station across the street. They looked wet and sullen. In a mood to be spiteful, perhaps, but also cold and miserable enough to be careless. “I say we do it.”
“So do I. Take the pass, little daisy, and get in line—stay three people ahead, and don’t look back.”
A few quick instructions, then Eve moved across the street, making her way through a group of little boys playing tag around the square despite the cold mist. Eve juggled her package, managing a covert glimpse as Lili grabbed the end of a green scarf as it whisked by, reeling in one of the dashing boys. A whisper in the boy’s ear—a coin in his hand too, though Lili concealed that deftly—and the child bolted off again. Lili moved to join the line, and Eve was suddenly so nervous she could hardly stand. She hammered the fear flat.
The sentry honked his nose in a vast handkerchief, clearly fighting off a cold. Eve kept herself small and deferential, handing over her safe-conduct pass without a murmur. He scanned it and waved her through—her blood leaped and she turned her back to the sentries, pretending to tuck the paper back into her pocketbook, but keeping it folded tight and small between gloved fingers. In a moment the little boy with the green scarf bumped past the Germans—they barely noticed the children, except to swat them out of the way—and ran smack into Eve, knocking himself over and the package from her arms.
“Up you go!” Eve set him back on his feet, brushing the mud off his sleeve, and the folded safe-conduct pass slid invisibly up his cuff. “Be more c-careful,” she admonished, her voice sounding horribly stagy to her own ears as she picked up her package, and the child went careening off again. A sprinted circle round the square—Lili must have told him not to move too directly to his target—and then he was bumping into Lili who seized him by the wrist to administer a scolding. Eve watched through her lashes, and even when looking for it, she couldn’t see Lili slip the pass out of the boy’s sleeve. But she had it five minutes later, when she came to the head of the line.
Eve’s heart beat again like a gong as the German sentry flicked his eyes over the safe-conduct pass. It had no identifying photograph, it was just a piece of paper allowing passage—they all looked alike; surely he wouldn’t notice the same one twice . . . Violent relief pierced her as he honked his nose and waved Lili through.
“See?” Lili whispered under cover of the train’s piercing whistle, coming to join Eve. “They are too stupid. Shove any bit of paper under their nose, and you can always get through!”
Eve laughed a bit too giddily in her relief. “Can you find a j-joke in absolutely everything?”
“So far,” Lili said, airy. “Shall we have time to buy silly hats in Tournai, do you think? I long for pink satin . . .”
Eve was still laughing when it happened. Later she wondered if it was her laughter that drew their eyes, if she was too free and easy. Later she wondered, What could I have done? Later she thought, If only—
A German voice sounded behind them, cutting off Eve’s laughter like a knife. “Your papers, Frauleins.”
Lili turned, blond brows rising. This wasn’t the sneezing sentry, but a young captain with a razor-neat uniform. Beads of mist clung to the brim of his cap, and his face was hard and suspicious. Eve saw the nick in his chin where he’d cut himself shaving, saw that he had very pale lashes, and her tongue turned to stone. If she tried to speak she would not get out a single word before it stuttered like one of those Chauchat machine guns mounding up dead soldiers in the trenches . . .
But Lili spoke, and her voice was easy and impatient. “Papers?” Pointing in annoyance to the sentry. “We’ve already shown them there.”
The captain put out his hand. “You will show me, nonetheless.”
Lili bristled, an offended little French housewife. “Who are you—”
He glowered. “If you have passports, I want to see.”
That’s it, Eve thought, and the terror was so all-encompassing it felt almost calming. There could be no bluffing past the fact that she had no pass. They are going to take me. They are going to take me—
She raised her eyes as Lili handed her own safe-conduct pass over to the captain. As he bent his head to examine it, Lili’
s and Eve’s eyes met. When they take me, walk away, Eve did her best to telegraph. Walk away.
And Lili smiled—that impish lightning flash of a smile.
“It’s her pass,” she said clearly. “I borrowed it illegally, you stupid Hun.”
CHAPTER 25
CHARLIE
May 1947
She was dead.
My best friend in all the world, dead.
It wasn’t enough that the ravenous war had reached out with greedy fingers and stolen my brother from me. The same beast had gobbled up Rose too, taken the girl I loved like a sister and riddled her with bullets.
I think I might have stood in numbed horror forever, there on that patch of tainted grass, pinioned between the church’s bullet-pocked wall and the figure of Madame Rouffanche. She might as well have been a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife, made immobile and monstrous by what she should never have seen. I could feel a scream scraping up my throat like a rusty blade, but before I could release it, Finn shook me hard. I stared up at him, dazed. Charlie, I could see him saying. Charlie lass—but I couldn’t hear him. My ears felt like they’d been shelled. All I heard was a monstrous buzzing.
Madame Rouffanche was still staring at me calmly. She deserved my thanks for bearing witness. She deserved balm for her pain and medals for her courage. But I couldn’t look at her. She’d been with Rose at the end, seen Rose fall. Why her and not me? Why hadn’t I been here, facing the Nazis with Rose? Why hadn’t I been at James’s side either, listening to him rage, telling him I loved him, drowning out the terrible cacophony of his memories? I loved them both so much, and I’d failed them so utterly. I’d let my brother go out alone on a cold night, not going for a beer as he’d mumbled to me, but for a bullet. I’d thought I might redeem that mistake by finding Rose when everyone else gave up hope—but I’d redeemed nothing. In a Provençal café I’d told Rose I wouldn’t leave her, but I had. I’d let an ocean and a war come between us, and now she was dead too. I’d lost them all.
Failed, the harsh voice said in my head, over and over. The litany to which I’d been living. Failed.
I put my hands on Madame Rouffanche’s arm, giving a mute squeeze—all the thanks I could summon. Then I tore away and took off toward the street, stumbling as I ran. I fell over an abandoned flower pot, a broken earthenware thing that had probably been filled with scarlet geraniums on the doorstep of a French housewife who got gunned down on that June tenth. I scraped my hands, but I pushed upright and kept stumbling. I saw the shape of a car through my tear-blurred eyes and veered toward it, only to realize that it wasn’t the Lagonda but the abandoned Peugeot, rusting since the day its owner had been rounded up in a field and shot. I stumbled back from that innocent horrible car, looking wildly around me for the Lagonda, and that was when Finn caught up to me, pulling me into his arms. I buried my face in his rough shirt, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Get me out of here,” I said, or tried to say. What came out was a garble of harsh sobbing sounds, barely words at all, but Finn seemed to understand. He scooped me up off my feet and carried me to the Lagonda, lowering me into the seat without opening the door, then flung himself in behind the wheel. I shut my eyes tight and inhaled the comforting smells of leather and motor oil, curling against the seat as Finn roughly threw the car into gear. He drove as though a horde of ghosts was coming after us, and they were—oh, God, they were. In the forefront, in my mind’s eye, was a baby just old enough to toddle. She was lifting her arms toward me, wanting her Tante Charlotte, but the top of her head was blown off. Rose had named her after me, and now she was dead.
She’d been dead close to three years. I made another inarticulate sound as we bumped and rattled over the river. Everything that had driven me here had been a lie.
Once we were clear of Oradour-sur-Glane, Finn pulled up crookedly at the nearest roadside auberge and got us a room for the night. Maybe the proprietor saw the wedding ring on my hand (Mrs. Donald McGowan, Rose was never going to laugh at my Donald), or maybe he didn’t care. I stumbled into a threadbare chamber, and was stopped, swaying and tear blurred, by the sight of the bed. “I’m going to dream,” I whispered as Finn came up behind me. “As soon as I go to sleep I’m going to dream. Dream of her the way she—” I stopped, squeezing my eyes shut, clutching after my old comforting numbness, but it had shattered utterly. Tears doubled me over in great waves. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. “Don’t let me dream,” I begged, and Finn took my face between his big hands.
“You won’t dream tonight,” he said, and I saw tears in his eyes too. “I promise.”
He found a bottle of whiskey somewhere, and brought it back to the room. We didn’t bother with supper; we just kicked off our shoes, climbed onto the bed, sat our backs against the wall, and started methodically drinking our way through the bottle. Sometimes I wept and sometimes I just stared at the window, which went from daylit to twilight blue to night black and star filled. Sometimes I talked, recounting memories of Rose like rosary beads, and after that it was memories of James, and soon I was weeping again for them both. Finn let me talk and cry and talk some more, sliding my boneless body down so my head was pillowed in his lap. I looked up at some point around midnight and saw silent tears sliding down his still face. “That place,” he said softly. “Jesus Christ, that place—”
I reached up, smoothing his wet cheek. “Have you ever seen a worse one?”
He was silent for so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. Then he drank the rest of his whiskey in a sharp movement and said, “Yes.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what could be worse than Oradour-sur-Glane, but he was already talking.
“Royal Artillery, 63rd Anti-Tank Regiment.” His big hand stroked my hair. “April ’45. We were in northern Germany, near Celle. You heard about the death camps?”
“Yes.”
“We liberated one. Belsen.”
I sat up, hugging my knees to my chest. He paused. Blinked.
“C Troop, we were the first military through the gates after the medics. We saw a ghost town, like what you and I saw today. But there were living ghosts at Belsen.” He spoke as flatly as Madame Rouffanche had that afternoon, the repetitive cadence of ground-in horror. “Thousands of people, animated skeletons in striped gray uniforms just drifting through piles of bodies. Bodies stacked everywhere like heaps of rag and bone. Even the ones still walking about didn’t look alive. They just—wafted. It was all so quiet.” Pause. Blink. “The sun was shining. Like today . . .”
Tears were slipping out of my eyes again. Useless tears. What good do the tears do all those dead? The ones in Oradour-sur-Glane and the ones in Belsen. James, Rose. Damn the war.
“There was a Gypsy girl lying on the ground,” Finn went on. “I only learned later that she was a Gypsy, because someone told me what her prisoner badge meant. For Gypsy women it was a dark triangle with a Z for Zigeuner . . . She’s not really a woman, though, just a lass. Maybe fifteen. But she looks like she’s a hundred years old, just a wee sack of bones and a bald skull and huge eyes. She’s staring up at me, eyes like stones at the bottom of a well, and her hand is resting on my boot like a white spider. And she dies, right there. Her life slips away as we stare at each other. I’m here to rescue her, my regiment and me—and that’s when she dies. She lives through so much, and she dies now.”
I guessed it was always now whenever he thought of the Gypsy girl. Every time he thought of those hollow eyes and the white spider of a hand on his boot, she was dying in the present, in his head, over and over again.
“I’ve blocked out a lot of it.” His voice had roughened, the Scots burr thick and blurred. “I wasna trying, it just—the details, they blurred. Grave digging, carrying bodies out of huts. Delousing people and trying to feed them. But the Gypsy lass—I remember her. She stands out.”
I had no words to comfort him. Maybe there weren’t any. Maybe the only solace was touch, the warmth that said I’m here. I reached out and took his h
and between mine, gripping it tight.
“The smell—” A shudder racked the whole rangy length of his body. “Typhus and death and rot, and liquid shite lying everywhere in pools.” He looked at me, dark eyes bottomless. “Be glad you got here to Oradour-sur-Glane three years after, Charlie lass. You saw the sunlight and the quiet and the ghosts—but you didna get the smell.”
That seemed to be the end of anything he had to say. I poured us both more whiskey. We tossed it down, seeking oblivion as fast as possible. Salut! Rose said, but no, she wasn’t saying anything, she was dead, and so was Finn’s Gypsy girl. I laid my head back in his lap once the room started to spin, and he sat stroking my hair.
The moon slid over the window, getting brighter and brighter until I realized it was the sun and already halfway up, coming through the window in bright rays that stabbed my eyes like swords.
I blinked, trying to get my bearings. I lay tangled up with Finn on top of the sheets, both of us still fully dressed, his arm thrown loose over my waist and my face against his ribs which were moving in and out in sleep. My head was splitting. My stomach lurched as I disentangled myself, and I barely made it off the bed and over to the sink in the opposite corner.
I threw up, and then threw up again, gagging on the sour taste of half-digested whiskey. Soon, Finn was sitting up. “You look a wee bit ill,” he observed.
I managed to glare between heaves.
He unfolded from the bed and came toward me, shirt half buttoned and his feet bare, and he gathered back my dangling hair as I bent over the sink again. “Any dreams?” he asked quietly.
“No.” I straightened, wiping my mouth and reaching for the water glass, not quite meeting his eyes. “You?”
He shook his head. We couldn’t either of us look at the other as we set about washing up. We were like a couple of unhealed stumps trying not to bump into each other, raw and hurting, and I couldn’t turn my head without a jolt of pain. Rose, I thought, and there was another jolt of pain, dull and profoundly shocking. It hadn’t been a nightmare. I had slept, I had woken, and it was real. There hadn’t been any nightmares, just true horrors. My eyes burned, but I didn’t have any more tears.