by Ann Mah
I waited for him to continue, but after several seconds, I hazarded another question. “So there have been other . . . guests?”
“Oui.” His face was grim. “And as long as I am here, there will be more.”
I fell silent, considering this information. The expression on his face told me I needed to tread lightly. “Does my belle-mère know?”
“Absolutely not. She would not look favorably upon this endeavor.” His mouth drew into a hard line but his next words were soft. “Léna, I am not asking you to join me. But I am asking for your discretion. No one can know about this.”
I noticed how thin and haggard his face had become, and I wondered if he had been skipping meals so that he could sneak his portions to his guests.
“Can you promise me?” he asked.
Cher journal, of course I promised him. But already I am regretting it. I am terrified that Papa will be carted away. That is what happened to the older brother of my classmate, Laurence. Of course we all suspected he was a résistant, but one day he simply vanished, leaving his family in an agony of silent speculation. What if that happens to us?
18 AVRIL 1941
Now that I know the truth, Papa’s secret seems so obvious. When he disappears for hours without explanation, I know he is in the hidden cave, or at a meeting of his fellow résistants. When food vanishes from the larder, I know he has taken it for his guests. When he appears in the mornings grey-faced and exhausted, I know he has spent the previous night shepherding his charges—and at this point, after several weeks of observation, I even know that if a night sky is filled with clouds, he will be dropping with fatigue the next morning.
These covert comings and goings terrify me. I wish Papa would stop. If I speak to him, will he listen? Is it worth risking his anger?
21 MAI 1941
Jacques—Papa’s apprentice—has run away. No warning, no explanation. Yesterday he simply didn’t show up for work and no one has any idea what happened to him. (When I expressed my concern aloud at the dinner table, Papa gave me a sharp look, so I actually do have some idea of what happened to him.) As a result, I am to help Papa in the vineyards.
Of course, with Jacques’s disappearance I am more worried than ever that Papa will also vanish. But when I try to raise the topic, he steers the conversation firmly in another direction. I’m beginning to feel like his secret work is the only thing that brings him peace. I’m not sure there is anything I can say that will make him stop.
22 JUIN 1941
Today is the first anniversary of our “Armistice” with Germany, which Maréchal Pétain commemorated with a speech: “You were neither sold, nor betrayed, nor abandoned,” he declaimed. “Those who tell you so are lying, and throwing you into the arms of Communism. You are suffering, and you will continue to suffer for a long time, for we have not finished paying for all our faults.” Papa snapped off the radio, and I felt disgust rising within me, swift enough to choke, as bitter as bile. Pétain’s accusations are atrociously unjust—how could we deserve this suffering?
For the first time, I have been questioning my restraint. Is Papa right? Have I allowed fear to influence my actions? But when I consider the alternative—active resistance—well, that also feels wrong. Sometimes I see boys in Beaune, strutting about with an air of bravado, decked out in bleu, blanc, rouge, or some other silly display of defiance, and it seems so unnecessarily dangerous, so utterly pointless . . . and I wonder, is there a way to endure this war quietly—yet honorably?
30 JUIN 1941
The bitter, wet winter has become a hot, humid summer and as a result our vines are covered in black rot and oïdium—powdery mildew. “We need to spray,” Papa keeps saying. “Mais, il n’y a plus.” The Boches have requisitioned every last bit of metal and without any copper sulfate, the fungicides are no longer available, “Not for love or ration cards,” as Papa likes to say. (And each time, he chuckles a little at this display of “war humor.”) We steel ourselves for yet another dismal harvest.
7 JUILLET 1941
Cher journal,
Something noteworthy happened today, to break this miserable monotony: I ran into Rose in Beaune. I didn’t recognize her at first, she has grown so thin (as, I suppose, have I—as we all have), but her face broke into a smile when she saw me and I immediately knew her voice, calling “Charpin” in a singsongy imitation of Madame Grenoble, our old chemistry prof.
“Rose!” I moved to the back of the boulangerie queue so we could chat while we waited. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for bread, comme tout le monde,” she replied with a little shrug.
“But why aren’t you at Sèvres? Or has the semester already finished?”
“Non.” Her tone did not invite questions, and so I changed the subject, asking her about thermal expansion, which she had mentioned in her last letter. Thanks to our discussion, the queue passed more quickly than usual. After we had collected our dense, dry, brown crusts, she suggested we go to the park, a few blocks away.
“It’s so pretty here—I forgot,” she said, gazing at the muddy waters of the river Bouzaize flowing past our feet.
“I don’t think I’ve come here since our last school picnic. Has it only been a year? So much has happened since then.”
“C’est vrai,” she said softly. “Everything before I went to Sèvres seems like a dream.”
“Can you tell me why you left? Was it because your parents wanted you back home? I don’t want to pry, but . . . Sèvres.” I sighed wistfully.
Her mouth tightened. “It wasn’t my choice.” She turned her head and in her expression I was shocked to see something that looked like fear. “Hélène.” She took a deep breath. “I was required to leave the university—because I am Jewish.”
“Jewish? What do you mean? We sit behind your family at mass every Sunday. We took our First Communion together.”
“Yes, my family attends church. But my mother’s family is Jewish, bankers from Frankfurt; they moved to Paris at the turn of the century. My father’s mother was Jewish, too, from Alsace, though he grew up with the church. Maman converted to Catholicism when she married Papa.”
“But then you are Christian.”
“Not according to . . . them.” Her lips thinned. “Three Jewish grandparents—it is . . . enough.”
“But they are brutes! Clumsy stupid louts! Who cares what they think?” Even as the words left my mouth, I knew how foolish they sounded. We are forced to care what Les Boches think because that is the price of Occupation. “Anyway,” I continued, “what does being Jewish have to do with your place at Sèvres? How could they force you to give it up? After all your hard work? It’s not fair!”
“Are you living under a rock, Hélène?” Her voice sliced across my own. “The Statut des Juifs excludes Jews from universities and most professions. I’m actually one of the lucky ones. My uncle is a doctor in Paris and he was ordered to close his office. There are many others—lawyers, architects, fonctionnaires . . . all forced to quit.”
The injustice of it flashed through me, a wave of anger so violent that it left me shaking. “But we can’t just allow this to happen! It’s not right. C’est pas correct!”
She looked at me, startled. “What can we do, Hélène? They defeated us. We are powerless. We have no rights as individuals—or as a nation.”
Suddenly, I understood what Papa has been enduring for the past year—the helplessness, the fury—the shame. I wanted to tear at my hair, scream with rage, beat a German soldier in the face until he was bloody. But I could do none of those things. I could do nothing.
“What do your parents say?” I finally managed to ask.
She sighed. “They’re arguing all the time. Papa thinks we should find a way to leave France—he believes the situation will only worsen. But Maman doesn’t want him to sacrifice our family’s négociant business—and besides, our home is here. We are French. Or, at least, I thought we were.” She stared at the river, the waters moody under
grey skies, and suddenly there were tears spilling down her cheeks. “I feel so selfish saying it,” she cried. “But I regret the loss of my studies so very bitterly. At this point, I have no hope of ever earning a degree.”
“Don’t say that—the Allies will come.”
“Sure, when chickens have teeth.”
We gazed at the water. Clouds of algae bloomed just below the surface of the river, and it seemed astonishingly cruel that anything could flourish in this current state of misery. The world is so ruthless, I thought.
“I miss it, too,” I confessed. “The laboratory. Madame Grenoble’s lectures. The periodic table, like a secret code. Most of all, I miss that feeling of certainty when you finally understand why a chemical reaction happens. No mystery, or intrigue—just pure science.”
“I keep thinking about the experiment I left behind at Sèvres,” she said. “My copper sulfate was starting to develop crystals—beautiful blue shards, they looked like jewels.”
“If only you could have brought them home as a petit souvenir. Papa was just saying the other day how desperately we need copper sulfate to treat our vines.”
“If we had any hope of finding enough copper, we could make it ourselves. It’s actually not that difficult.”
There were a thousand reasons why I should have pretended I had misunderstood her. But my anger was still simmering and entertaining a subversive plan against the Germans pleased me. I fell silent, dissecting the idea, examining it from different angles. “I know where we could find a few bits of copper,” I said, thinking of the locked storeroom where Madame keeps all her treasures squirreled away. “What else would we need?”
“Sodium carbonate.”
“Pas de problème.” It’s all we have to wash our clothes these days.
“And sulfuric acid. From an old car battery, perhaps?”
“Trickier, but not impossible. What else?”
She began listing other items: earthenware pots, shallow ceramic baking dishes, protective gear like aprons and safety goggles. “And of course we’d need to create some sort of laboratory—nothing fancy, but some place well ventilated and fairly isolated. The initial solution releases noxious fumes, and then it must evaporate over several days, or weeks.”
“Ah.” My shoulders sank. “That is a problem.”
“Ouai,” she agreed.
“Well, it brightens my spirits to even consider such a thing.” I flashed a grim smile. “Though I suppose it would have been terribly risky, considering what they do to résistants.” We’ve all heard stories of torture; they streak through the village, passed along in dark whispers of warning. “And especially given your situation . . .”
Rose sighed, but she nodded in agreement. “I’m sure you’re right. It’s much safer to do nothing.”
16 JUILLET 1941
Rose and I had made plans to meet in the park again this afternoon, but she was late—so late, I had only a few minutes before I needed to fetch the boys from the neighbor’s house.
“Désolée,” she said mechanically when she finally arrived, and as she drew close, I saw her face was pale, blank with shock.
“What is it? What’s happened?” I grabbed her arm and forced her to sit.
She stared down at her lap. “They came,” she said in a quiet voice.
Sudden fear forced the breath from my chest. Of course I knew who had come—the Boches. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head. “They ransacked the house. Maman’s silver, the jewelry she’d forgotten to hide away, the portrait of great-grandfather Reinach, our caves . . .” Her mouth set into a thin line. “They were so furious when they discovered the cellar nearly empty, they went on a rampage, bludgeoning the walls. Eventually they smashed through and discovered the bottles Papa had been hiding.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “They took all of it.”
“But how? What did they say?”
She shrugged. “The head officer claimed it was his duty to”—she assumed a tone of mock pomposity—“eliminate all Jewish influence in the national economy.”
A wave of fury scorched me. “Those dirty Boche bastards.”
Rose gave a start of surprise. “Oh, non, non, non, Hélène, they weren’t German,” she said. “They were Vichy.”
“They were French?” I gasped.
“Oui.”
“But your family—they are also French! How could they do this? How can we do this to each other?” I cried. “We have to do something. We can’t allow this to continue.”
Rose shrugged, and something about her pale resignation brought me close to tears. “We’ve been over this before, Hélène. There’s nothing we can do.”
I closed my eyes against the sun, the light beating red through my lids. The truth is, ever since that day in the cherry tree, fear has controlled almost all my actions—and I’ve tried to use it to control others, too, especially Papa. But after my recent conversations with Rose, my fear has been replaced with a white hot, burning rage. “An act of subversion would be so very, very satisfying,” I said recklessly.
Before she could respond, the church clock started to chime the quarter hour. I leapt from the bench and snatched up my bicycle, well aware that I’d have to pedal hard to reach the boys on time. Still, as we exchanged cheek kisses, I suggested that we meet again at the end of the week. “Bon courage,” I said. “And who knows?” I attempted to lighten her mood with a joke. “Maybe by then I’ll have found a place for a secret laboratory.”
“If you do,” she said, surprising me, “I will help you make the copper sulfate. I’m serious. I have to do something, Hélène—or I fear I will go . . . completely mad.” Her voice dropped, but when her eyes met mine, they were defiant.
I cycled back to the village, my mind so full of our conversation that I scarcely noticed the familiar landscape of dry red earth and scraggly vines, the distant cabotte floating on a sea of leaves . . . la cabotte. Our little stone hut amid the vines. It’s about ten kilometers from the domaine—very primitive—and no one ever goes there.
The idea hit me as I jolted over a pothole so deep it nearly sent me flying over the handlebars. La cabotte. Could there be a more perfect place for a secret, makeshift laboratory?
18 JUILLET 1941
At first, Papa dismissed our idea. “Absolument non,” he said. “Under no circumstances. It’s too dangerous. And, anyway, what could two young girls know about making copper sulfate?”
“But, Papa,” I told him, “that’s the beauty of our plan. Even if they do catch us, why would they ever suspect the truth?”
He laughed, a quick, sharp bark. And then his fingers began drumming the kitchen table. “It might just work, ma choupinette, you know that? It might just work.”
With a bit of persuasion, Papa has convinced Madame to part with a surprisingly large box of copper jelly molds “C’est pour le vignoble, chérie, et nos fils,” he said in dulcet tones. It’s for the vineyard, darling, and our sons. Apparently, she had “forgotten” to turn over the box to the Germans, which—frankly—makes me wonder what else she has salted away in those mysterious cupboards of hers. Papa also gave us an old car battery, a final relic of his dearly departed Citroën, which he had tucked away in the stables. Rose and I began our project today with a minor mishap—I splashed acid on myself when removing it to the clay pot, but Rose was quick with the sodium carbonate and I escaped with only a hole in my skirt—a rather large hole, but better on my clothes than eating away at my flesh! We have agreed to take turns bicycling to the cabotte to check on the evaporation.
25 JUILLET 1941
The liquid is a beautiful, unnatural blue, the color growing steadily deeper. Only another day or two, I think, before we mix it with water and sodium carbonate, and spray it on the vines. I am bursting with pride! Rose, ever pragmatic, has also pointed out that though our first attempt has been successful, it’s been very modest. She estimates that we’ll have created enough fungicide solution for only about a hecta
re of vines—which means we need to somehow find more copper if we are to continue. More copper. A leg of lamb would be easier to obtain. A cone of pure white sugar. A pair of fine kid gloves. But Rose says her brother has a friend who deals in scrap metal on the black market, and we plan to make contact next week. I am to ask Papa if he is willing to barter some wine in exchange for copper scraps.
To think a few scarce months ago, it frightened me to read a Resistance newsletter (not even passing it along, mind you, merely reading it). And now I am poised to meet with a professional black marketeer. On the other hand, even Madame—or, perhaps, especially Madame—has been known to bring home a slab of butter, a tube of lipstick, an extra packet of cigarettes, obtained from some slippery source. And I must admit that sticking it to the Boches is awfully satisfying.
Indeed, my fear has given way to anger. And anger has made me bold.
Chapter
10
“Oh, Kate! It’s absolutely remarkable,” Jennifer said for about the thirtieth time. She spun around and whacked me in the arm. “Oops, sorry, darling. I didn’t realize you were there behind me. I’m a bit overexcited. I just can’t get over it. The armoire! That door! These bottles!” She waved her arms and the beam of her flashlight slashed through the gloom. “Is it very different now from how you found it?”
I rubbed my arm where she’d hit it. “I’ve tried to disturb it as little as possible.”
“Well done.” She nodded her approval and moved between two wine racks, stooping for a closer look.
I had forgotten all about Jennifer’s semiannual trip to France until her email had appeared in my inbox two days earlier, announcing her imminent arrival and inviting me to join her meetings with winemakers. She and I had spent the entire day together, and in between appointments I filled her in on the discovery of the secret cellar—though I had carefully omitted details about Hélène and her sordid history. I had also extended Nico and Heather’s invitation to have dinner at the domaine—“And maybe you could come early and check out the cave?” I asked—and she had eagerly agreed.