by Ann Mah
“Is it the million slivers of sharp glass? Or something else?”
“It’s probably nothing.” She collected herself and glanced at her phone. “Oh, wow, it’s getting late. Look, I’ll help you get started . . . and then are you okay working on your own this afternoon? Nico’s taking the kids to Dijon this afternoon to buy new shoes . . . and I thought I’d use the time to stop by the mairie in Meursault. They keep the registres d’état-civil for our village.”
“The . . . what? The civil register?” I frowned, puzzling over her words. Suddenly, it dawned on me. “Are you going to look for Hélène?”
She flushed. “I know it’s sensitive—Papi made that much clear at lunch on Sunday. But . . .”
I pressed my lips together. “He’s only made me more curious about Hélène.”
Her eyes flashed. “Honestly? I’ll be damned if Papi thinks he can tell me what to do. And now that we have Great-grandfather Edouard’s livret de famille, it’ll be easier to do some digging. Now let’s pull these boxes away from the armoire.”
We quickly cleared the space around the armoire so the doors could open. After about thirty minutes, Heather peeled off her work gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of her jacket. “You’re sure you’re okay down here alone?” she asked.
“Yes! I’m fine! You’re the one who keeps seeing ghosts, not me.”
“Okay, well . . .” Despite her earlier flash of spirit, she now seemed reluctant to leave. “I should be home for dinner. Nico and the kids are eating at the crêperie in Dijon for a special treat, so . . .”
“Avocado toast?”
“You read my mind.” She grinned. “Text me if you need anything, okay?” And with a bounce of her dark curls, she leapt up the stairs.
I touched one of the armoire doors with the tip of my work glove, wary of the broken shards of mirror. But they remained intact, so I eased the doors open and waved a flashlight inside, finding more old clothes hanging from an interior rod, a rancid odor drifting from the stale fabric. Wide-leg trousers. Men’s suits of tweed and corduroy. Rough clogs with thick wooden soles. I began pulling the clothes from their hangers, pausing only to remove my gloves, which made my fingers too clumsy to unfasten the buttons. I stuffed everything into yet another black plastic sack.
In the center compartment, I found shelves holding stacks of worn linens: faded bedsheets, fine tablecloths riddled with cigarette burns, bath towels, their nap worn threadbare, air-dried to a rough scour. In the drawers below, a heap of mismatched ladies’ gloves in stretched kid, loose threads dangling at wrists once fastened with pearl buttons. I snapped open another garbage bag and swept it all inside.
I moved to the third—and last—section of the armoire, another compartment with double doors that matched the first. As I reached for the filigree latch, something scrabbled near me, a frantic, clawing scratch, followed by a flash of grey fur skittering across my feet. I shrieked and jumped, losing my balance and hitting my hand against the doors. The creature darted around a stack of boxes, and disappeared on the other side. A mouse, just a mouse. My heart pounded in my ears and I took several deep breaths and reached again for the latch. A gasp escaped me when I saw my hand covered in blood.
The cut was on the tip of my thumb, a clean slice from the broken glass, not deep enough for stitches, but bad enough so that the blood flowed steadily. I pressed a thick wedge of paper towels against the wound, hard enough to numb any feeling, and watched a crimson stain seep immediately through. Don’t worry, I told myself. It’ll stop. But a minute later, the bleeding hadn’t slowed. Should I call 911? Did I even know how to do that in France? I struggled to snuff my rising panic. Somewhere the words from an emergency training seminar came to me. Apply pressure. Elevate.
I lifted both hands above my head and closed my eyes, remembering the day of that first aid training session. The restaurant had forgotten to tell us they’d scheduled it and I’d had to cancel coffee with my friend Anjali at the last minute. The entire staff had been annoyed and we’d pretended the CPR dummy was the head manager while practicing the Heimlich. I laughed a little, recalling our vigorous abdominal thrusts. It was barely two months ago, but already it felt like another life.
I looked up at my hands, lifting the paper towel away so that I could inspect the cut. Yes, the bleeding was slowing, though a red thread still welled up steadily along the edge of the wound. With my hand still elevated, I moved closer to the window. And that’s when I saw it. Above the armoire, near the ceiling, a jagged crack ran across the brick wall. Heather hadn’t mentioned any structural damage in the cellar. I squinted a little in the dim light. The wall looked uneven, built from bricks that were almost the same size and color, but not quite. Or was I imagining things?
The throbbing pain in my thumb reminded me that I needed to dress it. Upstairs in the kids’ bathroom, I washed the cut with cool water, sprayed it with something that I hoped was antibacterial, and wound a bandage around the middle. A goofy, bucktoothed snowman grinned from the top of my finger. Before I returned to the cellar, I stopped by the broom closet for a ladder.
Maybe Heather was right, maybe we had made progress with our cleaning, because it was easier than I’d have thought to move the ladder through the cellar. I opened it next to the wall, close enough to the grubby window to absorb a trickle of light. Yes, from this perch, I could see that the bricks were slightly different, the top rows longer and narrower than the rest. Someone had tried to fill in the gaps, but the mortar had split, leaving a curious crooked line that ran horizontally along the wall.
I reached to touch the bricks. But raising my arm caused the ladder to wobble on the uneven floor, and I clutched at the wall as I scrambled to steady myself. Without warning, a few bricks gave way beneath my hands, tumbling to the ground. “Jesus!” I gasped. The last thing I needed was a trip to the emergency room. I forced myself to breathe deeply until my heart had slowed. Then I inspected my thumb, which seemed fine—the bleeding hadn’t started again—before turning to examine the wall. A patch of bricks had tumbled in, leaving a small hole. But what was on the other side? I pulled the flashlight from my back pocket and waved it around, but the beam picked up nothing, not an object or gleam of glass. I stuck my hand through the hole and felt a puff of air—cool, but no colder than the rest of the cellar.
I climbed down slowly, backing away from the wall so I could gaze at it from a distance. Even in the poor light, did I spy the outline of an arch near the ceiling? Like a doorway that had been bricked up? I hadn’t noticed it before because the armoire covered most of the wall. Was the armoire there for a reason?
I reached for the latch of the armoire’s third compartment, holding my breath as the double doors swung open. But the interior was identical to the first, more old clothes hanging on a metal rod. Repressing a sigh, I cleared away the garments, exposing another set of swan-necked hooks, the same horizontal boards at the back.
My thumb throbbed. I was beginning to feel silly. Heather would be home soon and I hadn’t made half as much progress as I’d hoped. And, anyway, what was I looking for? A secret cellar? The Count of Monte Cristo’s hidden treasure? A door in the wardrobe leading to Narnia? This was the stuff of fairy tales. I gave the back of the armoire a hearty shove, if only to prove it to myself, and to my disbelief heard a faint but audible click.
Gripping my flashlight with one hand, I pushed at the back of the wardrobe with the other, summoning all my strength as the four center boards began to move as a hinged unit, creaking to reveal a small panel cut into the back of the armoire—and through the wall. The opening was just large enough for a person to pass through.
Testing the strength of the frame, I swung myself over the ledge, dropping down on the other side. The space was bigger than it first appeared, filled with large, dark furniture. Upon closer inspection, I saw they were wooden wine racks, filled with bottles lying horizontally and covered in masses of fluffy mold. Unwilling to disturb anything, I peered at one of the bottles
without touching it. My flashlight picked out the number “1929”—an exalted vintage in France, and one I always remembered because of the American stock market crash of the same year. I scanned a few other bottles, spotting other distinguished vintages from the 1920s and 1930s.
What was this place? A secret cellar? I had read stories about them, of course—they were legendary in Burgundy—of les caves sealed off during World War II, the walls built to hide precious wine from the Germans. But the war had ended more than seventy years ago—surely all those cellars had been uncovered, the wine happily reclaimed? Why would this one have remained hidden for so long? I edged around the space, my flashlight sweeping over a fallen slate sign, a mass of cobwebs. In the corner, a wine rack screened off a small encampment: a foldout bed covered with a rough blanket, a small desk with an oil lamp, a basin, and a pitcher. Wrenching open the top drawer of the desk, I heard a rattle, and my fingers touched the hard chill of an old-fashioned key. My eyes landed on the lock punctuating the bottom desk drawer. To my surprise, the bolt turned sweetly.
The drawer was empty but for a sheaf of tracts with titles like “33 Conseils à l’occupé” (33 Hints to the Occupied) “Vichy fait la guerre” (Vichy wages war) “Nous sommes pour le général de Gaulle” (We support General de Gaulle) and a handful of stickers proclaiming in large type: “Vive le général de Gaulle!”
I stood still for a moment in the cool, moist cellar air. I didn’t need to examine the armoire’s clever carpentry, or disturb the narrow bed, or read the defiant words of the political tracts, to deduce that this was a secret lair. The message was obvious: “Vive le général de Gaulle!” The Resistance had hidden here.
A thrill shot through me, racing to the tips of my fingers and toes. I knew it! My family had been part of the Resistance movement during World War II! It explained so much about the intrinsic secrecy of my mother and uncle, their consistently careful demeanor. If their father, my grandpère Benoît, had been a résistant, they would have learned from an early age to keep their own counsel, to nurture suspicions. As a child of the Occupation, Benoît would have remembered too well the consequences of indiscretion: Deportment. Concentration camps. Execution.
I glanced around the cellar with growing excitement. Had this been a safe house for Jewish refugees? Or maybe Allied servicemen had hidden here while waiting for escape? Or both? I’d never heard anyone talk of it—but then again there were a lot of things my family never spoke about. I fanned quickly through the political tracts, hunting for a name, a date, an address—any clue, no matter how small. But the papers yielded not a single detail and the reason came to me unbidden: It was too dangerous.
Someone long ago had thoughtfully placed a step stool beneath the opening in the armoire and I climbed it now, scrambling through and then hopping down on the other side. The panel at the back of the armoire swung on its hinge, and I closed it by pulling one of the swan-necked coat hooks until the latch clicked shut.
With its doors closed, the armoire appeared as ugly as ever. Who could have guessed the sophisticated cabinetry within? It must have taken weeks, if not months, to build. I thought about the wine hidden behind the wall—even from a cursory glance I could tell those bottles were worth a fortune. And with a burst of pride, I considered the defiant resistance that had taken place just a few feet away—and all the lives my family must have saved, despite the enormous risk to their own. I remembered what Walker had told me last week—we were only miles away from the Demarcation Line that separated the Occupied Zone from Free France. The domaine must have played a crucial role in helping people escape across the border. Suddenly, everything made sense: The complete absence of information about Hélène. Her sparse belongings. A suitcase packed so she could flee in an instant.
Upstairs, a door slammed. “Kate? Hey! Kate!” Heather called, and then her feet began running down the stairs.
“Oh my God, Heather!” I shouted. “Guess what?”
“What?” She rounded the corner and appeared before me, placing her hands on her knees, leaning forward to catch her breath.
“You won’t believe what’s back here . . . I cut my hand and found it . . . secret cellar . . . thousands of bottles of wine . . . worth a fortune! Look!” I grabbed her arm and pulled her to the armoire, opened the center set of doors and climbed inside to show her the panel at the back.
She sucked in a sharp breath. “What is this?”
I explained about the cellar hidden behind the wall. The racks of vintage wine. The hideout in the corner. The Resistance literature. “I think it must have been a safe house during the war.”
“You mean during . . . World War II?” She stared at me in disbelief.
“Yes, of course, World War II. Hélène must have been a résistant—or maybe a spy—and that’s why we can’t find any information about her. It all makes perfect sense.”
Her words sliced across mine. “You’re wrong.”
I laughed. “I know it sounds completely fantastic, but I promise you—I’m not making this up. There is actually a secret cellar on the other side of this wardrobe, and it has a hideout in the corner.”
Heather brushed a strand of hair away from her face with an impatient gesture. “No, not that. It’s Hélène. She couldn’t have been a résistant. Because I just found a photo of her in the library archives. From September 1944. And her head was being shaved.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it. Are you saying she was ill?”
“No,” she said sharply. “September 1944. After the Liberation. Her head was being shaved.”
“But what does that mean?” I crossed my arms, completely mystified. Next to me, Heather’s face had turned to stone.
When she finally spoke again, her voice was like ice. “It means Hélène was a Nazi collaborator.”
Part II
Chapter
8
I stood completely still, my eyes fixed on the cellar’s rough floor until it grew blurry. Somewhere in the darkness a series of sharp clicks popped, followed by the roar of the boiler flaring to life. Heather shifted her weight, found a tissue in her pocket, and dabbed at her eyes. The naked bulb dangling from the ceiling cast her face in a wan light.
“A Nazi collaborator? But”—I shook my head, bewildered—“how? What exactly did you find at the mairie?”
Heather took a deep breath and began explaining. She had started at the local registrar’s office in the village, requesting the actes d’état civil for Hélène Marie Charpin. But the woman behind the desk had taken one look at the year of Hélène’s birth—1921—and refused, saying that unless the documents were over a hundred years old, she could only release them to a direct descendant. Undeterred, Heather asked to see the records for Edouard—my great-grandfather, born in 1902—and the woman had produced his acte de naissance, or birth certificate. “Most of the information we already knew,” Heather told me. “But when I took a closer look, I saw notes written in the margins—the clerk called them ‘ mentions marginales’—apparently they’re pretty common, a way to reference other documents.” In Edouard’s case, these lines recorded his marriages—including his first, in 1920, to Marie-Hélène Dufour—as well as the product of their union, a daughter, Hélène Marie Charpin.
“So Hélène was our great-aunt?” I asked.
“Technically, she was your great-half-aunt. Benoît and Albert were her half brothers . . . it’s confusing, I know. Look, I scribbled this little family tree to help figure it out.”
“But what does any of this have to do with”—I could scarcely utter the word again—“collaboration?”
“When I returned the acte de naissance, I told the clerk I was disappointed that I wasn’t allowed to see any other documents. She was very correct and firm, but I think she felt a little sorry for me, because she suggested that I try searching the archives at the library in Beaune.”
At the Bibliothèque municipale de Beaune, Heather started sifting through the microfiche of the local newspaper, but
information was sparse, and almost certainly censored during the war. “At this point, I was getting really frustrated,” she said. “So I started just trying any old search—Edouard Charpin. Marie-Hélène Dufour Charpin. Edouard and Marie-Hélène. Edouard and Virginie. Finally I typed Hélène’s name into a database for academic journals. And this article popped up. Here, I printed a copy.” She pulled a wedge of folded papers from her bag and handed it to me. The article, titled “The Punishment of Guilty Female Collaborators After the Liberation,” was from a scholarly journal and written in dense, academic French.
“Look.” She pointed to a paragraph. “The authors refer to Hélène and her trial for collaboration.”
My hand crept to my mouth. “She was put on trial? For collaboration?”
Heather crossed her arms. “I only had time to skim it—the language is very dry—but, yes, it was an ad hoc trial right after Liberation. And there’re these pictures . . . she’s here.”
Even in grainy black and white, the village square looked the same. Two women were seated amid an angry crowd. They had thick black swastikas smeared in greasepaint on their foreheads, downcast eyes, and grim expressions; behind them, two men in white barber coats brandished razors, sneering as they shaved all the hair from the women’s heads.
A surge of horror washed over me. I had formed an impression of Hélène from the items in her suitcase—a serious girl who hid a sentimental streak—but the photograph in front of me depicted a savage young woman with a hard set to her mouth.
Heather’s voice shook with barely controlled fury. “I just can’t believe it, Kate. I feel completely sick. She was a Nazi. Do you realize what that means? This family— they’re anti-Semites. This blood is running through my husband . . . and my children . . .”
And me, I thought. Instead, I said: “But people aren’t genetically predisposed to be bigots or xenophobes. We don’t know anything about Hélène or the circumstances that surrounded her choices. Not that I’m defending her,” I added quickly. “What she did was unforgivable. All I’m saying is that we’re not doomed to repeat her mistakes.”