The Invisible Woman

by Erika Robuck

  Mimi will serve as Virginia’s travel escort. At Virginia’s advice, Mimi dons a kerchief over her hair and scrubs her face dry and pale, trying to look more like an old woman. Sophie will pretend to be alone but will stay close. Finally, Virginia has a key to Estelle’s safe-house apartment, should they need shelter.

  Their mission: Arrive. Rendezvous. Hide. Rendezvous. Depart.

  If they’re able to make contact at Fresnes, and Louis and his team are alive, they need to find out how much bribe money it will cost to smuggle one or more out, if Louis would even be open to escaping without his team. Or—if deportation is imminent—when that might be and the route they’ll likely take.

  Sunup to sundown.

  Just another day in the field.

  Knowing she survived her last trip to Paris gives her confidence, but when they arrive at the train station, plans already need to adapt. They learn the lines aren’t running because of Maquis sabotage, and they’ll have to take a bus, which not only takes longer but doesn’t leave for another hour and a half.

  “We’ll never be able to get back by curfew,” says Mimi, just loud enough for Sophie to hear, where she stands in line behind them.

  “Then we’ll spend the night,” says Virginia. “Do you still want to go?”

  “Yes,” Mimi says.

  Sophie coughs twice, the signal they agreed upon for yes. No is a single cough.

  They’re the last ones sold bus tickets—lucky to have gotten three. When it’s time to board, they join the end of the line. The MP stationed at the door to the bus is rough with Sophie. He demands to know why she’s traveling at so dangerous a time.

  “My cousin is sick. He may be dying.”

  “We’re all dying,” he says. He looks again at her ticket. “Fresnes. Your cousin isn’t Resistance scum, is he? That’s where all the terrorists are being sent. I keep asking for a posting at the prison there so I can shoot some. They’re thinning the population by the day, you know? Food is scarce. Less mouths to feed.”

  Virginia can’t see Sophie’s face, but she can see that her shoulders are straight and proud. There’s no heaving of breath. Her hands hang at her sides and they don’t shake.

  Good girl.

  “Maybe I’ll let you go if you promise me a dinner when you get back,” he says, reaching for a lock of Sophie’s hair. “After you bathe. I think you’re pretty under there.”

  Virginia has never been gladder to be an old woman. She doesn’t hear what Sophie says, but sees her board the bus. He barely gives Virginia and Mimi a second glance.

  Invisible.

  They climb aboard and see there are no seats left but those in the front rows. The smell of body odor is terrible. The passengers look as if they’re on a death caravan. Virginia and Mimi take one seat, opening the window to let in the air. Sophie sits across the way, next to a toothless old man.

  The trip takes five hours, but Virginia feels safer and more in control than if they’d ridden a train. There are no tracks that might explode, and they’re low to the ground, close to the exit. Also, the Allies don’t bomb buses because they’re almost exclusively traveled by civilians.

  The bus stop of their destination is across from a beautiful public garden: Le Parc de Sceaux. They allow Sophie to get ahead of them, and follow at a distance while she leads them onto the tree-lined trails, where long pools reflect the blue sky and lead to an elegant château. Defiling the gardens are the footsteps and shadows of Nazis escorting women on dates, officers and French collaborators stealing moments they don’t deserve. Virginia wants to spit on their boots and high-heeled shoes, but she holds in her venom.

  They pass a waterfall—its whoosh and spray a welcome coolness in the heat—and follow where Sophie has turned down a canopy-covered path. Virginia notices the slight pause and slip of the hand in the hedge, but no one else would. They continue to follow Sophie at a distance out to the street and to a row of terraced houses, where Sophie disappears in an alleyway. She uses the key she just snagged and opens a small shed. She pulls out three bicycles, locks the shed, and takes off. When the coast is clear, Virginia and Mimi take the two remaining bikes and follow the signs to where they know Fresnes waits.

  About two kilometers away, the imposing prison looms over the street. Even larger than Cherche-Midi, the walls of Fresnes are higher and the gate is more formidable. Each of the bicycles has its own padlock, and the women take care to fasten them carefully next to Sophie’s, which they see she has left at the stalls outside the café across the way. Taking separate tables, the women order, and they wait. Finally, after about an hour, a guard walks in, orders a café nationale, and takes a seat near Sophie. The bald man has a fierce face with gleaming black eyes and bad teeth. She can’t imagine how a man with his looks could be an ally to anyone. He drinks quickly, and when he stands to leave, Sophie drops her napkin. He bends to pick it up, and places it on the table. Then he’s gone.

  Sophie gets up to leave, and Virginia and Mimi soon follow. Virginia now takes the lead on the bicycle and starts them on the route to Estelle’s apartment. It takes them a little over an hour. Though Virginia’s body is tired from travel, riding through the streets of Paris for what she knows will be the last time in a long while encourages her to be mindful of this time in the city of her heart. How grateful she is to have survived as long as she has. How badly she wants to be able to help Louis and, by extension, Sophie and Mimi. How happy she is to again get to see her old neighborhood.

  The sacrament of the present moment.

  When they arrive, they come around the back way, and Virginia and her partners lock their bicycles in the building’s underground parking garage. Then they creep, one at a time, to the safety of the apartment. Sophie and Mimi collapse on the couch, while Virginia fetches three glasses of water.

  “I’m so tired,” says Sophie. “But I don’t know how I’ll sleep. I might go crazy waiting until tomorrow.”

  “I know,” says Mimi. “It’s agony.”

  “Especially because the guard won’t get to the library until his lunch break,” says Sophie. “So, it won’t do us any good to arrive before noon. There’s an astronomy book I’ll need to check for his message.”

  “We’ve made it this far and this long,” says Virginia, distributing the water. “And, unless we were found out and followed, presumably we’ll make it another day. Day one hundred and one.”

  “Day one oh one?” says Mimi. “What’s that?”

  “It’s how many days I’ve managed to live as a wireless operator in occupied France.”

  “Oh, that’s something,” says Sophie. “Pianists only average six weeks at this point.”

  “Six weeks?” says Mimi. “And they’re still able to recruit you?”

  “I can’t call myself one,” says Sophie. “I couldn’t even manage a single transmission.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” says Virginia. “You’ve been invaluable to my network as a courier. I couldn’t have gotten this far without you. Without either of you.”

  Sophie beams so brightly and relaxes so completely, Virginia feels both affection for her and shame for being so stingy with her praise. Mimi gives Virginia a smile of gratitude. Virginia turns away, walking to the window to look at her old building.

  Virginia is about to tell the women about her old pension and Johnnie the griffin and a hundred sunrises on the balcony, but she’s jarred to see the flowers are gone. Pots, petals, all of it. Disappeared. She hates to be superstitious, but it seems like a terrible omen. She drops to the windowsill and stares out in silence, feeling a shadow descend upon her mood.

  Night falls fast. The women eat the hard-boiled eggs Mimi packed, and prepare to sleep. Virginia insists Mimi and Sophie share the bed, and she’ll take the couch. She wants to be alone, to keep watch over the blacked-out city. Yet her memories torment her. And it’s so much harder to keep hope a
live for Louis in the middle of the night. She’s certain that, even if given the chance, he’ll never leave his partners. Their best hope, if he is alive, is intelligence from a guard on intercepting a departing train.

  At some point, amid her fitful dozing, the paper with Louis’s handwriting again comes to mind.

  Found him. Home: 16th A. Rue Spontini. Work: Saint-Maur-des-Fossés.

  The tempter’s voice rises.

  Saint-Maur is just a bike ride away.

  She sits bolt upright on the couch.

  You have the entire morning.

  She checks the wall clock. It’s five o’clock.

  You won’t get back to Paris for a long time. You can at least confirm Louis’s intel on the betrayer.

  Virginia stands and walks to the window. She sits on the sill and pulls her shawl tight around her arms. She can see ripples of gold on the Seine in the first light of dawn, and thinks, One hundred and one.

  One hundred and one days.

  One hundred and one Paris sunrises.

  Watching the changing light in the sky, she roots herself to her seat and breathes deeply, stilling her heart and mind, and taking care to clear her thoughts. She leans her head back and dozes until the sound of church bells awakens her.

  Is it a sign?

  Clearheaded and openhearted, she decides. She checks her disguise in the mirror, finds a piece of paper, and scribbles a note to Sophie and Mimi.

  I’ll be back.

  In the changing light, the streets begin to stir. Virginia keeps her stare on the pavement in front of the bicycle, lifting her eyes only to check signs. After almost an hour’s ride, and a little before eight in the morning, she arrives at the church in Saint-Maur and locks up the bicycle. The sign says Mass is at eight thirty. From what she has observed with Mimi and the time spent with the nun from Lyon, confessions are often heard before services.

  A bell tower rises over a crucifix, which hangs high over a bricked facade with a large, encircled stone cross at its heart. She passes through the doors, her step faltering as she walks under the chiseled words venite adoremus. Come, let us worship.

  Inside the church, the aroma of incense is potent. The ceiling is lofty—a dome rising over the altar with a resurrected Jesus presiding. Light slants in through the stained-glass windows, illuminating in red, blue, and green light the pews and the wooden chairs lining the perimeter of the space. An altar server lights candles, and the organist plays softly. Virginia’s gaze finds a small queue of women in a dark corner, leading to the carved, wooden doors of the confessional. She takes her place at the end of the line. By appearances, she’s the “oldest” one there.

  Invisible.

  As the women file in and out of the confessional, she recalls a conversation she once had with the nun in Lyon. They were close, so Virginia could ask her anything.

  “I don’t understand how telling my sins to a man who sins just as badly absolves me of my own,” Virginia had said.

  “The priest stands in for our Lord. He’s a channel of the grace of forgiveness.”

  “Why can’t I just think of things I’m sorry for?”

  “Speaking them aloud to another is deliberate. It requires premeditation. It makes you more mindful of your sins and unburdens you. And the Lord gave his apostles the authority to bind or loose us from our sins.”

  Virginia doesn’t know if she believes the nun’s words, but she has thought about them many times since. Over the past few months, she’s certainly experienced a release each time she’s given voice to her burdens, but it’s not easy to do. She’d learned the words to say in the confessional, but she’d never gone. Until now.

  The church starts to fill. When her turn arrives, she glances around to make sure she’s not being watched. In a smooth, silent motion, Virginia slides one of the wooden chairs away from the wall, slipping it under the knob of the priest’s door. She enters her side of the confessional, taking her place at the kneeler. When she sees his profile through the screen, hatred rises in her like a fire.

  The betrayer.

  From this very confessional and that of the prison, abbé Robert Alesch has heard the sins of resistors and reported them to the Gestapo.

  For money.

  Using his power and position, he’d gained the trust of her Lyon network before feeding them to the wolves.

  If she could, she would start his eternity in hell’s furnace by burning him alive in the box, but that would be too kind, too quick. Better to draw out his sentence.

  “Forgive me, Father,” she says. “It has been a lifetime since my last confession.”

  She takes great care making her voice that of the elderly woman, speaking her French as perfectly as possible.

  “Sister, what has kept you away for so long?”

  His German-accented French still makes her skin crawl.

  “I have a priest hatred,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “Many friends have suffered at the hands of an evil one.”

  “One man does not represent the entire clergy.”

  “I can’t help but judge the rest because of him.”

  “There is only one judge: the Lord. When we put ourselves in that place, we fall prey to the sin of pride.”

  “I have many sins. Pride is the least of them.”

  “Confess. Relieve your burden.”

  She takes a deep breath and pulls herself farther back into the shadows. The noise of the church fills outside the box.

  “I want to murder this priest,” she says.

  “That is a grave sin.”

  “Not only do I want to murder him, but I go through the motions of how I will do it, how I will slit his soft, white throat while he sleeps.”

  “No.”

  “I know where he lives. Sometimes I stand outside his house, watching through the window. Once, when I was sure he was out, I picked his lock and wandered through his home.”

  A lie. In the confessional. But it’s worth it to watch him squirm.

  “It’s full of fine things,” she continues. “Why would a priest have such fine things?”

  “I’m alarmed you would do such a thing,” he says.

  “But I think God wants me to kill him.”

  “God would never tell his daughter to murder a priest.”

  “But doesn’t God say, ‘Woe to those who lead my flock astray’? Doesn’t he want justice where there’s grave sin?”

  “The Lord’s hand is the only one that should administer that justice.”

  The noise of the congregation and music continues to rise outside the box.

  “This priest betrays resistors to the Nazis for money,” she says. “I hear he keeps a mistress. Maybe two. Can you imagine a priest like that?”

  Abbé Alesch snaps his attention to her, peering through the screen with his white-blue eyes.

  “I could kill you now, Robert Alesch,” she says. “The music of the choir will drown out the sound of your struggle.”

  She hears him try the doorknob, and the small, weak whimper he makes when he realizes he’s trapped.

  “I know where you live,” she says. “The sixteenth arrondissement, on the rue Spontini. I know what you’ve done. And I will be watching you until I decide to administer the justice you deserve.”

  He pulls back from her, as if slapped, and shakes the doorknob. Banging and pleading.

  She leaves the confessional, ducking into the crowd filing in, and slipping out to the streets of Paris.

  Invisible.

  * * *

  —

  When Virginia strides into the apartment, the hall mirror reveals her flushed skin and wide, alert eyes flashing behind her fake spectacles. She places her hands on her cheeks to cool them.

  “You look like Diana, just in from the hunt,” says Mimi.


  You’ve no idea.

  After taking several deep breaths to clear her mind, and drinking a large glass of water, Virginia helps the women tidy the rooms. She again leads them as they set out and, an hour later, they arrive at the library to wait for the guard. Sophie browses the shelves. Virginia and Mimi read the newspapers. It’s now noon. They’re taking the one thirty bus home. Time is running out.

  At one o’clock, the guard from the café enters the library and heads to the section on astronomy, disappearing briefly in the stacks before reemerging and hurrying back out. Shortly afterward, Sophie emerges from the same aisle looking pale, the circles under her eyes more pronounced. She makes brief eye contact with the women and shakes her head before leaving the library. Virginia and Mimi wait only a beat before they follow.

  When they’re only a block away—Sophie just ahead of them—Virginia feels the hair on her neck rise. She glances over her shoulder, and the sight that greets her makes her draw in her breath. Mimi follows her look, and they see three Milice racing out of the library looking left and right until their stares find the women.

  “Go!” says Virginia. They stand and pedal with all their might as the Milice race on foot, trying to catch them.

  Sophie is stopped at the crosswalk ahead of them. Mimi calls to her, “Go!”

  Sophie turns her head and sees the women pedaling swiftly toward her, the Milice on the chase. The men blow their whistles and yell, “Halt!” Sophie’s eyes widen. She shoots forward the moment there’s a break between vehicles. Virginia and Mimi follow, horns blaring as they weave in and out, racing along the road against traffic, until they get to the shed. Breathless, they stow the bikes, lock them, and hurry through alleyways back to the park. The whistles of the Milice tell them they’re still in pursuit.

  “Separate!” Sophie yells.

  They don’t want to leave her, but three women in a hurry together are more suspicious than one. Virginia and Mimi break off and rush to the station, barely able to breathe by the time they arrive at the ticket counter, and Virginia’s knee stump feels as if it’s on fire. The man selling passes regards the sweating, breathless women with narrow eyes, but when a pair of Milice on the hunt appear at the door, he moves fast, winking at Virginia and Mimi as they hurry back outside to the waiting bus.