by Ariel Lawhon
* * *
—
I do not have scabies. I feared that my night spent in the barn would have infected me even though I didn’t sleep in the hay. This is the only thing I can find to be grateful for when I climb back onto my bicycle. Otherwise I might just lie down in a ditch and die. Because whatever pain I felt yesterday is nothing compared to what descends upon me during the night as I pedal south. I could not handle this agony and the crawling, oozing, unrelenting itch of scabies as well.
I do not care about Germans or checkpoints or danger. I must get back to Saint-Santin. My only goal is to find the quickest route home and I stop only to consult the map, peering at it in the moonlight. Every kilometer is pure agony. By three o’clock in the morning I am certain that if I get off this bicycle I will never get on again. I no longer stop or look at the map. I rely on memory and instinct and the base desire to no longer be in pain. I have rubbed all the skin from my inner thighs. Blood oozes down my legs, soaking into the hem of my skirt. I can no longer sit on the seat. I can no longer stand on the pedals. I have to do these things anyway. I sit until my thighs are screaming. I stand until my hamstrings are screaming. Then I do it again, alternating back and forth between the two. My breath is fire. My blood is lava. My jaw is clenched. My throat is parched. The kilometers fall away as I press forward in a trance.
By the time I push my bicycle into the French Resistance camp at Saint-Santin, I have pedaled five hundred kilometers round trip. My friends stare at me, speechless, as I take the last excruciating steps toward the campfire. The edges of my vision grow dark, shrinking like a pair of binoculars facing the wrong direction. I see nothing but tunnels with pricks of light at the end.
I let my bicycle fall to the ground beside me as I teeter on my feet, unable to maintain my balance. “London is sending a new radio and transmitter at one o’clock in the morning,” I say.
All goes black and I can feel myself falling through the air, but I have no idea whether anyone moves to catch me.
Lucienne Carlier
MARSEILLE
March 1, 1943
I don’t let myself cry until I am across the street, around the corner, and one block away from our flat. Even then I have to stand tall and walk straight as the tears drip down my chin. With every step I take toward the train station a single thought is berating me: my last words to Henri should have been “I love you.” If I could go back fifteen minutes—just fifteen minutes—that is what I would tell him before turning away with a flippant farewell and going down the stairs. And Picon. Oh God. I can’t even think about that terrified howling of his. He knew I was leaving, possibly forever, and he was trying to call me back.
The train station is ten blocks from our flat and I walk there in a daze. I check the boards and see that the next train for Toulouse doesn’t leave for another thirty minutes, so I find a public restroom, lock myself in the stall, and sit on the toilet, blowing my nose and wiping mascara from my cheeks. My breath comes in hard little hiccups that hurt my back. There is a cut on the inside of my lower lip and I’m stunned to realize it was caused by my own teeth—gnawing—as I walked.
My hands are shaking.
My heart is pounding in my chest.
I am sweating.
It’s done. It’s over. I’ve left. And I have to pull myself together or the last three years of my life and all that Henri has sacrificed will be for nothing. I check the contents of my purse and find my wallet, toiletries, brush, makeup, and papers—Henri has sent me away as Madame Fiocca, though not the British subject of the same name—as well as a good amount of money and all my favorite jewelry. I find my engagement ring in an inside pocket and slide it onto my hand. My fingers are slimmer than they were when we married—everything is slimmer thanks to rationing—and it moves easily over the second knuckle. I spin the ring around on my finger three times—reciting his full name, Henri Edmond Fiocca—as I breathe through my nose. The money I separate into two different stacks and tuck inside the cups of my brassiere, leaving out only enough to buy my ticket and whatever meal they are serving on the train.
I am overwhelmed. Angry. Utterly in love with my husband. I feel everything all at once. But I am no longer crying. Once I am certain I won’t scare anyone, I leave the stall and inspect my reflection in the mirror. I look atrocious. So bad, in fact, that I will draw attention to myself. I brush my hair. Apply a fresh coat of lipstick. Pinch my cheeks until they are so pink no one will notice my bloodshot eyes. Lift my chin. Then I go buy my train ticket.
Fifteen minutes. That’s all I have to let O’Leary know what’s happened. But the Marseille station does not yet have public telephones. I have to charm my way into the ticket office and convince the station manager to let me use the phone.
“I need to speak with my husband,” I tell him. “It’s an emergency.”
He is unconvinced. “What kind of emergency?”
Thank goodness for my pinched cheeks. They give the illusion of a blush. “I am about to make a five-hour journey—”
“—as are most of the other people on that platform—”
“—and my monthly cycle has started.” I look at the floor for effect, gnaw the corner of my lip. “But I’ve forgotten the, ah, necessary…supplies at home…if you take my meaning.” A glance upward, and then back at the toe of my shoe. “And I am afraid that unless my husband brings them to me I will…er…bleed all over the—”
“Fine! But make it quick,” he interrupts, unwilling to hear any more about my imaginary affliction.
He ushers me into the back room and I close the door behind him and snort. Men. I have known them to sit and discuss hemorrhoids, ejaculation, diarrhea, vomit, and countless other bodily fluids without so much as a hint of discomfort. But menstruation? Perish the thought!
I dial the number for the safe house in Toulouse, hoping to get O’Leary, but there is no answer on the other end. I hang up after ten rings.
Then I try again, letting it ring fifteen times.
And again. Twenty this time.
Nothing.
There is a pounding on the office door. A rumble on the tracks as the train chugs to life. The staticky announcement over the loudspeakers that the train to Toulouse will be departing in three minutes.
I have counted another twenty-five rings when someone finally picks up the phone.
“Allô.” A woman’s voice, breathless, as though she has just run up several flights of stairs.
Dammit. “May I speak with Patrick O’Leary?”
“Non. He is not here.”
“Is this Françoise?”
A pause, and then, “Oui.”
The train whistle blows loud and clear.
“Please tell him that Lucienne Carlier called and that I am sorry to have missed him.”
“Should he return your call?”
“No. I won’t be here to receive it.”
I hang up the phone, throw the door open, speed-walk through the ticket office and onto the platform. I step into the train carriage right before the door closes and I stand there, forehead pressed to the glass, hoping that O’Leary will correctly interpret my message.
TOULOUSE
The weather is atrocious. Wet and cold and windy. There is frost forming at the corners of my window and I think that it is about to start snowing at any moment. The damn Pyrenees. It feels as though the mountain range that forms the border between France and Spain has its own climate—different from either neighbor—and pushes all its cold air down into the surrounding countryside. We are less than a mile from Toulouse when I feel the train begin to slow. Then we are all thrown forward as it stops abruptly on the tracks.
I’m not expecting the whistle and, like everyone else in our carriage, I startle at the sound. Then the doors are thrown back and we are boarded by a dozen armed Vichy police officers.
“M
erde,” I hiss under my breath. Even if the window were open, I couldn’t make it out in time.
“What’s going on?” one of the passengers behind me asks. There is a tremor of fear in his voice that makes me wince. Fear is an impossible luxury. Get ahold of yourself, man.
“You are all coming with us,” one of them says, and I take him to be in charge because he is wearing a round black helmet. It’s shiny, like a beetle, as are the buttons on his coat.
“Where?” the man behind me asks, and I want to slap him. The tremor is louder now, and Beetle Cap is looking at him with far too much curiosity.
“To the police station.” He waves an arm and the other officers move forward, guns drawn. “Off the train. Now.”
I was right. It’s snowing. I step off the train into the early-evening air to find the first light flakes beginning to fall. One lands on the tip of my nose and I watch it melt with crossed eyes. Then there is little time for further observations about the weather because we are all loaded onto a series of waiting trucks and driven to the police station.
* * *
—
If O’Leary received my message he will be waiting for me at the Hôtel Paris, which is neither a hotel nor Parisian, but rather the safe house operated by Françoise. It’s where we sent Ian Garrow and hundreds of other displaced, abandoned, and persecuted refugees, prisoners, and Jews. If he did not receive my message, he will not be waiting for me at all and I am on my own.
I’d like to kick something, but the only things near enough are the bars of my cell and that would do no good. The Vichy police put me in two hours ago, along with the other women from my carriage, but they have all been released, so it’s only me now. I sit and bide my time. Because I know what’s coming next.
As it turns out, I don’t have to wait long.
My stomach has just announced that dinner is late when one of the younger police officers approaches the cell, unlocks it, and points at me.
“You,” he says. “Come with me.”
I am taken to a small interrogation room down the hall. It is empty except for a scuffed table and two wooden chairs. Beetle Cap is sitting in one and I am directed to the other.
“Name?” he asks, and his voice echoes off the bare cinder-block walls.
I sit, open my purse, remove my papers, and hand them over.
“Madame Fiocca?”
“Oui.”
“Where were you born?”
Welling-bloody-fucking-ton, New Zealand, you traitorous bag of shit, I think, but do not say, of course. And I am pleased that my voice sounds only tired, and not enraged, when I answer, “In France.”
“Where?”
“Nice.”
“So it says here.”
“Then why ask?”
“Just being thorough.” He taps my papers against his chin. “What are you doing in Toulouse?”
“Getting away from my husband for the weekend.”
“And why would you want to do that?”
“Because he’s being a proper ass at the moment and I wanted a few days to myself.”
“Just a few days?”
“Yes.”
“Why Toulouse?”
“It was the first train leaving when I reached the station.”
“Then where is your suitcase?”
“On the train. With all the others,” I lie.
“What color is it?”
“Brown.”
He snorts. “Half the bags in France are brown.”
“Then it will probably take you a while to find the right one if you intend to search it.”
Beetle Cap shifts in his chair. He studies my papers again. Looks at me over the top of them. “Where are you coming from?”
“Marseille.”
“Interesting,” he mutters. Then he stands and moves to the door. “Wait here. I need to make a phone call.”
Not like I have any choice in the matter, since he locks the door behind him.
Beetle Cap is back in less than two minutes. Far too quickly for him to have called anyone. I notice that my papers are now tucked into his shirt pocket and it is a struggle to keep my hands wrapped around the handles of my purse instead of reaching across the table and yanking them away.
“You are lying,” he says once he’s seated again.
“Non.”
“I called my associates in Marseille. There is no one by the name of Fiocca in that city.”
Ah. Okay. So this is the game we’re playing. I loop my purse over the crook of my arm, get up, walk to the door, then turn to him with the most pompous look of expectation I can muster.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Going back to my cell. You don’t believe me. And I have nothing of interest to tell you.”
He stands and takes three steps toward me. “You could start with the truth.”
“I’ve told you the truth.”
“Non. The truth, Mademoiselle, is that you match the description of a known prostitute from Lourdes.” His mouth twists into a lascivious grin as he looks at my chest. “Black hair. Blue eyes. Excellent figure.”
My eyes are green. It’s a common mistake that people make—particularly from a distance—and while it irritates me, it does not offend me. The insinuation that I trade sex for money, however, well…it takes a moment to gather a full head of steam, but my voice is properly outraged when I say, “I am no—”
The slap is so quick that I never see it coming. It knocks me to the side and I stumble into the door. Stars explode across my field of vision and I taste blood in my mouth—the cut from this morning, no doubt. My teeth are throbbing. The skin on my left cheek is on fire. My eyes begin to water.
Beetle Cap lifts the whistle from around his neck and blows it, hard, as though I’m some pickpocket trying to get away. It sounds like hell and damnation inside my already ringing skull. The door is thrown back a moment later and two officers wearing vice squad arm patches step in and grab me. Clearly they’ve been waiting outside the door this entire time.
“Take her back to her cell,” Beetle Cap says.
* * *
—
After thirty minutes of begging, I am finally allowed to use the toilet. And even then, one of the vice officers follows me into the tiny water closet. I am exhausted. I am hungry. And my bladder is so full and heavy one sneeze could leave me drenched. But having an audience is just too much.
“Get out.”
“I was told to watch you. Whether you piss or not is none of my concern.”
I would very much like a gun right now. I would like to shoot him in the crotch so he has to pee sitting down for the rest of his life.
“You could at least turn around.”
“I could. But I won’t.”
My only alternative is wetting myself. And since I have no idea how long I’ll be here or if I’ll ever get a change of clothes, I do the thing that has to be done. A contortionist would be proud of the maneuvers I take to keep myself covered—as much as possible at least. The humiliation of it, however, leaves me red in the face and shaking, and I think that perhaps I’ve never heard anything so loud as the prolonged trickling that fills the toilet bowl. I am so aware of how vulnerable I am in this moment, how easily I could be overpowered and assaulted, that I swear that I will never be put in this situation again. Not by anyone. Ever.
The cleanup required is every bit as demeaning as the act itself, and I make quick use of the toilet paper and drop my skirt, choosing to arrange my undergarments the best I can from the outside, never once breaking eye contact.
“Happy?” I ask.
He throws open the door. “Wait in the hallway. They want to question you again.”
I have done nothing but think of all the things that could go wrong. Hundreds. Absolutely hundreds of
things could go wrong. No doubt O’Leary would qualify my current predicament as a big Belgian backhander. I have been forced to leave my home, arrested, interrogated, slapped, and subjected to gross voyeurism. But things could be worse. The Gestapo could have me in custody instead of the Vichy police.
I lean my head against the wall and turn it to the side, so my bruised cheekbone is against the cool plaster. My eyelids weigh a hundred pounds and I have to drag them open after a particularly long blink.
At first I think I’ve imagined him since he’s just been running around my thoughts, but no, Patrick O’Leary really is there, and he’s standing a few feet away between two Vichy police officers. He says something to one of them, then smiles at me. It’s an expression I’ve never seen on his face before, and it makes a pit open at the bottom of my stomach.
* * *
Henri
Henri is surprised at the number of people crowded into Antoine’s tonight. He came here to escape the deadening silence in their apartment, only to find the bar filled to capacity. It’s the kind of evening Nancy would love. No doubt she would be holding court, regaling this group of strangers with some funny story and he would be next to her, both marveling and keeping an eye on her admirers. For once, he is not cheered at the thought of his wife.
“Another,” Henri says, raising his glass and motioning to Antoine.
The barkeeper limps over to him, bottle of Rémy Martin in hand. He pours two fingers into Henri’s glass but says nothing. Antoine has always had a good sense of when he doesn’t want to talk. Henri isn’t feeling kindly toward him at the moment anyway. Antoine is the one who got Nancy into this in the first place. Not that it matters much. She would have found her way into Resistance work regardless. That’s just the kind of woman she is.
As promised, Ficetole came by the apartment an hour after Nancy left and took her trunk to the train station. If all goes according to plan, it will arrive in Barcelona shortly after she does.