Jeanne Samary’s expression was the look Nini would get when a young man who was foolish would dare to tell her she was beautiful. Nini would compress her lovely lips and stare openly at him. Silently, her eyes would ask, Well, mon ami, what are going to do about it?
The tangled nest of her préfet’s goatee seemed trapped, the mons pouting a little and wanting to be scratched, for Jules was standing at the back of the room, in the other corner. He hadn’t even noticed that I was there.
‘Lily, wait!’
‘No! It’s true. You are in love with her!’
He caught me on the stairs, gripped me tightly and as I wrenched away, I spat at him and raced for the street. Down, down the stairs … down …
Halfway across the Pont des Arts he caught up with me. My Jules. Handsome, arrogant, tall, and thin.
A barge passed beneath us, chugging slowly up the Seine, sending waves off its bow as his hand moved from my back up to my neck and into my hair. ‘Chérie, relax.’ Twice that afternoon I’d been told to do that! How could I?
‘Lily, listen to me. Nothing’s wrong. So I was looking at your sister. Would you want me to lose interest in such things?’
As if his bitte was in danger of falling off!
‘How are the children?’ he asked.
‘Fine.’
The last of the waves smashed themselves against the quays. Old men fished in the sun, one person sketched, and I couldn’t help but ask myself again, How could they do such things at a time like this?
‘What do you say we go to the hotel and settle this?’ he said.
‘So that you can pull me on like an old boot?’
‘Look at me,’ he said, and I knew that if I did, I would weaken. How can I describe it? Every time he smiled at me like that, a fire rushed through me.
He was tired and worried—I could see that at a glance. There were touches of grey in the tousled black hair that had receded a little but was feathered thickly and brushed well back. He had good, strong teeth, my husband. Very white and perfect. Jean-Guy had them, too.
Not for a moment did those dark eyes leave mine. ‘You’re not an old boot. Besides, those are usually far too loose.’
‘Unless they’ve dried out.’
‘Lily, Janine means nothing to me. How could she? Things have been hectic these past few months. I’ve had to take on two more classes and some of the administration. People keep leaving as they’re called up. I’m to do a national inventory of all the paintings and sculptures in private collections. Everything of importance must be listed with its value.’
‘The Boche won’t come here, will they?’
He didn’t shrug or even gesture with both hands but looked at me sternly and said, ‘The times are going to change because they must. Poland will be crushed.’
I hardly noticed how he had said it, but wish I had. Instead, I said, ‘I listened to the wireless last night. I think I should take the children to England until we see what happens.’
‘How long will you be here today?’
No argument about the children because there could be none, not in so far as he was concerned. ‘Until the last train. I … I didn’t bring anything with me.’ No diaphragm, no pessary. Nothing.
That train rushes on. That night closes in and I’m sitting here all alone, listening to the sound of the wheels. Now a gap between the rails, now the briefest of pauses, then another gap. Racing … always racing. Cows and farms, lights winking in the night, the barriers down at a crossing. No lights. None. The blackout …
Jules … and I’m remembering that hotel room of his, us standing naked beside the bed. My right arm rested over his shoulder, that hand not touching the hair at back of his neck, not yet. In uncertainty, I placed the palm of my left hand on his chest and felt the skin and its curly hairs, was a little sideways to him, for it was always best like this at first, and I constantly reminded myself that English women just jumped into bed and went at it hard, but I didn’t. I tried not to.
Hesitantly, we kissed. Lightly, timidly, I explored his lips as he did mine, he with his left hand on my seat and caressing it, smooth, so smooth and soft that skin.
Another kiss followed, still timidly, still exploratory, like first-time lovers—it must be that way, but then my other hand slid up into his hair, and I pulled him towards me, all passion, everything else forgotten.
We fell back on to that bed. I cried out to him, kissed him again and again, felt his kisses on my throat, my breasts.
Came like a rocket. Ah, how can I ever forgive myself? The tension of the day, the fear—that awful fear of knowing you might lose someone you love.
Jules thrust himself into me one last time, and I felt the throbbing, jerking, hammering of his lovely cock, and wrapped my arms and legs about him. Kissed him, hugged him, didn’t want to ever let go of him—ah, all those crazy things one thinks of at such a time.
Only then, as he raised himself up a little to look down at me, did I reach back under the pillow to lie languidly beneath him with love in my eyes.
There was an earring under the pillow, and I hid it in my fist because it wasn’t mine and I was too upset to confront him. A faceted citrine droplet that dangled from the end of a tiny length of silver chain, the links so delicate, the weave of them the work of great patience and skill.
Old but not that old. Edwardian perhaps. Victorian? The Moulin Rouge, the Alcazar, the Cirque Medrano? The 1920s? I wondered.
Winking in the half-light of that train, it stared up at me.
‘Madame … madame, forgive me for waking you, but there’s a call from Paris. An inspector from the Sûreté Nationale, a Gaétan Dupuis. They must have asked to have your call traced.’
I nod. I shake my head to clear it of its memories. ‘Has my nurse come back yet from her shopping?’
‘Only to leave a few parcels, to check on you and go out again.’
‘Good. Did this inspector ask for me by name?’
‘Ah, no, madame. He has simply asked if the caller was still here and if he could speak with you.’
‘You gave him no details?’
‘Of course not, madame.’
What is it about the sight of a telephone that terrifies? The instrument stands in judgement, the receiver lies as if wounded, and you know that the Gestapo will be listening.
Dupuis … the thinning hair, those mouse-brown eyes whose look could be so intense, the front tooth that was capped with gold, the nicotine stains.
‘Allô? Oui, oui, c’est moi. Qu’est-ce que vous désirez, monsieur?’
That voice comes back to me. It’s like yesterday. I want to scream, to cry out and turn away from the blows. I want to vomit, but they’ve shoved me under again, and I can’t breathe in anything but water and must have air! They yanked me out but only at the last moment …
‘Madame, what is it?’ asks the manager.
‘Nothing! Nothing. Forgive me, please.’
I hear Dupuis breathing at the other end of the line. Paris, 11 rue des Saussaies, the offices of the Sûreté, those also of the Gestapo. The caller asks, ‘Madame, which camps were you in?’
I say it like a confession. I can’t stop myself. ‘Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.’
Dupuis sucks in a breath, and I see him holding it as they’ve thrown me to the floor and lifted me up to face him yet again. ‘What’s your name, please?’ he asks.
Please? Ah, nom de Jésus-Christ, what is this? ‘That I can’t tell you. I’m not the one you’ll be dealing with. I’ve only been asked to contact you people.’
‘Then there’s something you ought to know, madame. Our consciences are clean. We’ve been cleared by the Résistance. The matter’s been settled.’
‘Ah, bon, Inspector, then you have nothing to worry about.’
‘Madame, I must tell you …’
‘Inspector, there’s nothing you or any of the others can tell me that I don’t already know. You’ve received your little black coffin. The post was good, n’est-ce pas
? You’ll get my instructions soon enough.’
I hang up. I stand there shaking so hard I can’t control myself and am afraid I’m going to piss, but then a hand gently touches my shoulder. Startled, I defiantly turn, but it’s only my nurse who says, ‘Madame, what have you done?’
‘Nothing! Can’t you see that I’ve done nothing!’
It’s exactly the answer I first gave them.
2
My refusal to discuss what happened today has put them all on edge. Even though there are grey spots on my lungs and the x-rays aren’t good, Dr. Zimmermann has asked that I think about leaving the clinic if I can’t put my total trust in them.
Dr. Morganfeld is more cautious. After all, he’s Jewish—the juice and diet man—one of the lucky ones who got out of Austria in 1937, so he has, understandably, a monstrous feeling of guilt to overcome.
Dr. Laurier is a woman whose grandparents lived in a little place called Oradure-sur-Glane until the Das Reich, the Second Panzer Division of the Waffen SS, came and destroyed everything. She’s been home to see it, is a specialist in such matters, the only psychiatrist at the clinic, but is still suffering to cope. It’s Dr. Laurier who has asked the others to allow me to decide what’s best for me and who has said, in the privacy of the corridor, ‘I’ll get you across the frontier if you wish.’
You see, I have no papers, and if you have no name, only a number, you haven’t got a chance.
‘Will you really do that for me?’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll ask to accompany you tomorrow on your trip into the mountains. I’ll simply say we talked it over and you decided not to come back.’
I think she knows whomever I telephoned will start to look for me, and that it would be best if I went into hiding.
‘I can let you have some money,’ she says. ‘Swiss francs. Good hard cash.’
‘You should have been with us, Doctor. We could have used you.’
‘It’s not going to be easy. Things have changed in France. There’s a terrible bitterness. Brother is now after brother.’
She’s so sensitive, she would never have made it through the camps. ‘Would you send this telegram to Dr. André de Verville, Apartment 7, 34 boulevard de Beauséjour, Paris? If you could do that after I’ve left the clinic, so much the better.’
I hand her the slip of paper on which is written, André, Michèle has asked that you remember how it was.
‘And the sender?’
She still hopes I’ll confide in her.
‘Put something down,’ she says. ‘It’ll be easier that way.’
More information. ‘Just sign it “Simone.” He’ll know who it’s from.’
‘Why won’t you tell us your real name?’
‘I can’t. Not yet. Not until I’ve remembered it.’
Everything I own is packed into one small brown cardboard suitcase. The shoes they gave me after the camps, the skirt, blouse, coat—all such things have been neatly placed in readiness. I won’t sleep tonight. The pills they’ve given me have been flushed down the toilet. In the privacy of my room, even in its darkness, I will remember while there’s still time.
One spiralling leaf fell from a golden beech, and then another and another. In the silence of the forest, the sound of leaves breaking away and coming to rest was all around me. Poland had been utterly smashed in less than fifteen days. Now, virtually the whole of the German army sat on our border and those of Belgium and Holland. When would it come, the invasion? When would the posturing stop?
I remember that I had a feeling I must do something, but there was also a lethargy. I’d been betrayed by my husband’s infidelity with my sister, was mixed up and still trying to sort things out. Then, too, there was a latent danger, a frustration at the butchery, the arrogance, the whole attitude of the Nazis, a hatred, yes, but buried then—hidden just beneath the leaves like the ground.
I had come home from Paris. We’d had a treasure hunt, me and the children. Most successful. The source of the earrings my sister had been given. The faceted citrine droplets.
Jean-Guy had found the jewel box in the attic—pewter-bound, with a lock and, fortunately, its key. The box had been buried beneath some things, wrapped in an old shirt. The treasures of my father-in-law’s mistress, recovered at her death, I supposed, by some lawyer—ah, the French, you have to know them to believe such things.
Had she killed herself? I wondered. Had that been it? There were cameos, bracelets—one of black opals, another of rubies, sapphires, ivory, and jet …
Another and another of rhinestones, the cheap and the gaudy intermingled with the good as if the giver had known the difference, but the recipient hadn’t.
Russian silver. An emerald-and-diamond tiara, a priceless thing. Far too much for even the best of the other contents of that box. Something for a princess or an empress, something especially made by a court jeweller. One hundred or 150 years old, perhaps a little more.
The central emerald was almost round—a broad and stunningly deep green oval larger than the last joint of my thumb. Perfectly matching faceted emeralds, some square, others round or rectangular were all held by finely beaded, very thin wire gold, while scrolls, and swirls of diamonds in silver ran between the emeralds—1,031 diamond brilliants, 46 emeralds.
Now you know why I was worried.
Hidden in the forest, I took that thing out of my canvas shoulder bag. I’d wrapped it in a chamois and, for a moment, I simply stood there gazing down at it.
The sound of the leaves came to me again. Everything in me said to put it back and run—take the children to England and claim no knowledge of it. But, ah, mon Dieu, I didn’t know what to do. It was Jean-Guy’s buried treasure, and he was very angry with me for having confiscated it. Oh, for sure, he wouldn’t tell his father, not for a while. The attic had always been off-limits for the children. Jean-Guy knew this. On pain of death he wouldn’t confess, and if death didn’t suffice, the shame of being ostracized would, but for how long? Soon the whispers would begin. Soon Marie would pry the secret from him and … Would he give the secret away at school?
I ran my thumb over the encrusting stones. I tried to think of where it might have come from. Marcel? I wondered. Jules himself? Had my husband found it in some forgotten drawer at the Louvre and simply brought it home?
Marcel was a pal of his, an artist of sorts, a freeloader. I could never understand why Jules and he got on. Always smoking, always gassing about, that one—both the mouth and the other. Posturing. Of all of my husband’s friends, I had liked him the least.
Jules would miss the tiara if I were to take it from him and go to England, but I couldn’t do that, not yet. First, I had to find out the truth.
‘Madame, my apologies. It’s the weather, the times. Perhaps if I might come in? A cup of coffee, a glass of wine?’
The weather … the times … The local people always blamed one or the other. The war. ‘Monsieur le maire, what is it you want with me?’
Self-consciously, the portly mayor of Fontainebleau took off his fedora and ducked his shoulders as if to launch himself through the door. When I didn’t step aside, he let me have it. The English … they had no respect. I could see this in his expression. ‘It is not you I wish, madame. It is your husband.’
‘Jules …’
‘Oui.’ Picard mopped his florid brow and tugged uncomfortably at the knot in his tie. I would not be easy to deal with. ‘The taxes, madame. They haven’t been paid in some time.’
The taxes. Anxiously wiping my hands on my apron, I stepped aside. ‘I was in the kitchen, you understand. We’re canning pears. Please, you must forgive me.’
Preserving pears in a place like this! The mayor went to put his fedora on the Louis XIV side table then thought better of it. A pair of small, alabaster baigneuses caught his eye. He couldn’t help but look at them. The naked bathers were magnificent. Such breasts, such hips … ‘Madame,’ he managed, hurrying after me until those shoes that had taken him everywhere, to the
farm of his brother, the slaughterhouse of his cousin, even to the council chambers, scuffed a carpet of exquisite design. There were tapestries, too, and paintings. His wife would badger him for details.
We entered the kitchen, he to exclaim, ‘Ah, merde alors, what is this?’
Having blurted it out of shock, he quickly retracted the exclamation. ‘Pears,’ he laughed. ‘But, of course, it’s that time of year.’
The kitchen was a shambles. On the tiled floor to one side of the cluttered table, a freshly shattered jar of preserves had spread shards, juice, and halves of fruit nearly everywhere, while on a stool in front of the big cast-iron range my son, wearing a giant bib and worried frown of an alchemist, stirred an all but overflowing cauldron.
On her hands and knees a blonde-haired, weeping child of three made futile attempts at mopping up the mess but had miraculously not yet cut herself. Chocolate sauce, half-eaten, sampled bowls of stewed pears, mounds of peelings … his eyes settled on the neat rows of jars. There was an army of them.
Pears … the sweet aroma of them was everywhere, and outside in the courtyard, there were bushels still to come.
I shrugged and gave him a sheepish grin. I thought to say ‘provisions for a siege,’ but didn’t dare. ‘It’s their first time at canning, you understand, but they’re doing such a good job I’m going to have to reward them.’
Surprisingly, the pears were tasty—he had realized I’d put cinnamon sticks in with them—and when the chocolate sauce had been added by the little girl … ‘Do you like cooking, Marie-Christine?’ he hazarded.
The spoon dribbled sauce on the floor. Shyly, hesitantly, she looked up at him and then mysteriously away and all around the room. After a moment, she whispered, ‘Je préfère les chats, monsieur.’
Jean-Guy was more direct. ‘It’s fun,’ he said seriously, ‘but not so much as picking them.’
I sent them out to gather windfalls. Nothing was to be wasted. Responsibility had to be delegated to give them a sense of self-worth.
Over a glass of wine, a Château Coutet, a Barsac and not inexpensive, Alphonse Picard apologized profusely and wiped his handlebar moustache. ‘Between us, madame, it’s those people in Paris. They’re always after money. A little here, a little there. They never stop. Now more than ever, of course. If there’s some reason …’
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