“Rachel, are there scissors in the valise?”
She found them and brought them to him. He opened the pleats and the seams and then hung the heavy cloth over the window and fastened it with a strip of molding he had torn loose in the office below. He used a brick for a hammer. When he was done the room had the darkness of night.
“You may light the candle now,” he said.
The flame flickered up and wavered in the draft. She cupped her hands to protect it, the light making briefly luminous her fingers. She glanced at Marc. “I do not even know what day it is.”
“Let us say it is whatever day you want it to be.”
And so she prayed silently with a little bow and the touching of her forehead with her fingertips.
Marc said, “Amen.”
She looked up in surprise, then her whole face broke into a smile.
“Tradition,” he said.
“It will do.”
They washed in the water he had brought up in a borrowed bucket, sipped a little from the flask of cognac given them for their wedding, and ate the plums and cheese and black bread while he told of the gypsy-dark woman at the corner bistro with whom he had exchanged his ration coupons and a little money for all the food she could give him.
“Did you tell her anything about us?”
“I did not even tell her there was an us, but I asked her if she knew a Monsieur Lapin. ‘Monsieur,’ she said, ‘if I did, I would have him in the pot.’ She gave me the matches and the soap—which she makes herself, I must say the place has the smell of it—and the loan of the bucket.”
“You have a very sensitive nose,” Rachel said.
“Is that bad?”
“You must tell me” she said and her own nose crinkled.
He put his hand on hers where it lay on the table and pressed it just a little. They sat silently and looked into each other’s eyes. Very slowly her hand turned until the palm was upward beneath his.
6
IN THE MIDST OF the evening meal that night at the convent of Ste. Geneviève, the electricity failed. The lecturer suspended her reading and there was a small clatter of knives and forks that would not have occurred had there been light by which to set them down more carefully.
Sister St. André broke the community silence to declare: “In Normandy this happened every night. Then very soon we could hear the planes droning like bees in the distance.”
Her words, together with the awareness of the children now having supper with Sister Agathe in the infirmary, gave the nuns of the house an eerie appreciation of the events which had brought their sisters from the north among them.
Reverend Mother said gently, “There will be no planes, so we shall keep our discipline.”
Outside, darkness had not completely fallen, but the walls of the refectory, which was in the oldest wing of the building, were over a meter thick, and the windows so small as to give no more than a necklace of light at the height of noon. Now they seemed but pale stones among those blackened with age. Sister Marguerite, the refectorian, arose from her place and glided toward the vestibule where the lighting staff was kept. She trod with a ghostly quiet, for the flagstones were as familiar as the shoes on her feet.
A vigil lamp burned before the statue of Ste. Geneviève, and on this thirteenth-century sculpture of a seventh-century saint, its colors faintly luminous, Sister Gabrielle gazed in attempted meditation. Reverend Mother had suggested on their return from St. Hilaire that, in order to overcome the day’s distractions, she contemplate the life of the convent’s patroness; perhaps Reverend Mother forgot at the moment that Ste. Geneviève was also the patron saint of Paris where she had foretold the invasion of the city by the Huns and, her prophecy fulfilled, had led the people to safety on the Island.
Gabrielle rarely found it difficult to think about Ste. Geneviève, but now she found herself thinking more about the Huns. Her father had always spoken of the Germans that way and that day she had learned herself how terrible they could be. She would not exalt herself to say that God had chosen her as His intermediary, yet she could not get over the fact that she had seen the mill of her childhood on the way to the station. Nor could she forget the Jewish woman’s face, her fear when her husband had to show his identification. All the way home, with the children sitting at her feet, their legs dangling at Poirot’s rump, she had wondered what their mothers looked like and if they had been as frightened as the woman she had helped.
The refectorian returned and lighted the candles overhead. The lecturer resumed her reading, the other nuns their meal. No sooner had Sister Marguerite returned to her place than the lights went on again. A whisper of mirth escaped the novices. Reverend Mother did not look up.
After the thanksgiving Sisters Gabrielle and Ursula stood up at their places along with Sister Marguerite until the other nuns had filed out. Gabrielle asked the refectorian if she might extinguish the candles. The older nun, rheumatic in her arms, gave permission but in a way that made Gabrielle think she was deliberately giving up an opportunity for greater sanctity. Gabrielle’s motive was sensitive if not holy: Sister Ursula was a robust girl from the Dordogne whose perpetual distraction—and the distraction of all those around her, for her stomach complained loudest at the most solemn moments—was hunger. That she fought her appetite for food, Gabrielle knew. She also knew, although she pretended not to be aware of it, that Sister Ursula often lost the struggle. If there was a scrap of food left on the plates they cleared, Ursula would slip it into her mouth. Gabrielle, putting out the candles, rightly supposed that the other novice would first remove to the scullery such plates as contained so much as the husk of a bean.
Again Gabrielle thought of the Jewish couple. If they were hiding, how would they get food? And more important, if the woman was seriously ill, and Gabrielle felt that she was, how could they hide and find a doctor for her at the same time?
Sister Ursula turned off the tap and tested the water in the tub. “Why did Reverend Mother take you with her today?”
They whispered. Sister Marguerite was mending linens while she supervised them.
“Because I am strong and I can drive a horse.”
“Anybody could drive Poirot. You are Reverend Mother’s favorite.”
“That’s not so. It would be a sin.”
Sister Marguerite looked at them over the top of rimless glasses. She spoke with resounding clarity: “Sisters, do you think we are deaf?”
“Mea culpa,” the novices murmured, glancing over their shoulders toward her.
A few minutes later Ursula whispered again, “Then why did she take you?”
It no longer seemed important to Gabrielle, so much had happened. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe it was because of the children.”
Gabrielle did not say anything.
“Will they stay here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know, but you aren’t telling.”
“Truly I don’t,” Gabrielle said. “The Germans may come and take them.”
“Reverend Mother would not permit it.”
Gabrielle thought of the little boy and the words she had heard at the station, and she thought of Reverend Mother in her stall in chapel that afternoon when the novices and lay nuns had filed out after vespers. She had never before seen her bowed down, her face concealed entirely from view. Gabrielle did not mention the boy to Sister Ursula.
They did not speak again until the tub was drained and the places set for morning at the polished refectory tables. By then the nuns were passing from the chapel through the cloisters into the recreation room in the new building. The two novices hurried to be on time for recreation, but in the end they had to wait while Sister Marguerite put away her linens and inspected their work, almost dish by dish.
“I wish it had been me who went,” Ursula said, and then added, “Mea culpa.”
At recreation Sister St. André did not mention the boy either. She described the bombings in the north and
the flight of the refugees as the Germans pressed their security measures in the coastal cities. She told how her convent had hidden as many as twenty children at a time. “And when we had to leave, ourselves, we decided to take along as our wards the ones that were left. Our chaplain, God keep him safe, made out baptismal papers for them. ‘If Our Lord wishes them baptized,’ he said, ‘they are now baptized in His eyes.’ And so we brought them. We commend them as well as ourselves to your loving hospitality.”
Gabrielle, making only a gesture of her sewing, looked down the long table at Reverend Mother.
Reverend Mother tapped her ring on the table for attention. It was the one time of day when everyone in the community had permission to talk, and sometimes it seemed that everyone spoke at once.
“Dear sisters in Christ,” she said when it was quiet again, “we must tell you that there was another child, a little boy, who was taken from us at the railway station. We must pray that he is returned to our care. We have spoken to Monsignor La Roque, asking him to intercede on the child’s behalf. But we must guard even at our own peril the lives of those given into our hands for safety. We welcome our sisters from the north, and embrace both them and their charges.”
Gabrielle knew that she must speak to Reverend Mother about the Jewish couple at the first opportunity. After recreation, kneeling in turn for Reverend Mother’s blessing, she asked if she might come to her. It was, strictly speaking, an infraction of the rule: she should have asked permission of the novice mistress.
Reverend Mother said, “With Sister’s permission, you may come to our office before the great silence.”
“But why do you come to us only now, Gabrielle?” Gabrielle sat on the stool, shoulder-high to the wide desk on which stood only a pen and inkwell and an ivory crucifix.
“Because, Reverend Mother, I did not think I should come at all. I tried not to think of them.”
“But you can think of nothing else, is that it?”
“Yes, Reverend Mother. The harder I pray the more I think of them.”
“Ah, child, child, Our Lord tests us in many ways, and the devil tempts us sometimes in equal measure. Where the Lord says be humble, the devil says be proud. Where the Lord says, Without Me you can do nothing, the devil says, You can do anything you want to do. Do you understand me?”
“I think so, Reverend Mother. I am trying to do the Lord’s will.”
“But first we must try to know Our Lord’s will.”
“Can we ever? I mean, can we be really sure?” The older nun was silent for so long that Gabrielle dropped her eyes and murmured, “Excuse me, Reverend Mother.”
“We can submit our own wills to the Lord’s, beg His guidance, and then proceed according to the light He gives us.”
Gabrielle thought again of how she had remembered the mill when they passed it. She told all this to Reverend Mother.
“Let me ask you, Sister: does it not seem strange to you that these two people would have come to St. Hilaire with no hope of help except for their chance encounter with you?”
“Perhaps, Reverend Mother, they came with hope and lost it on the way.”
Reverend Mother’s eyebrows went up in spite of herself.
Gabrielle went on: “Tonight, in recreation, when you said we must guard even at our own peril the lives given into our hands, I knew I must come to you.”
“I question that you are the guardian of these people’s lives, Gabrielle, but you may tell me now what it is you feel we must do for them. That is why you have come to me, is it not?”
“Yes, Reverend Mother,” she answered almost in a whisper. “The woman is ill and they are afraid to go to a doctor. If I could take Sister Agathe to her…” Sister Agathe was the convent infirmarian.
“When?”
“Tonight—in the camionnette. In the daytime it would not be safe.”
“And you think that you are safe in the nighttime?”
“I was not thinking of us,” Gabrielle said, somewhat ashamed. Sister Agathe would become in a way her responsibility, and she had not had responsibility for the person of anyone since her father’s death. For a moment her confidence wavered.
“But we must think of you,” Reverend Mother said. “Are you not afraid after what we saw today?”
“Yes, Reverend Mother.”
“What will happen if you are stopped by the military or the police?”
“Sister Agathe can wear her medical armband. And I shall pray that we are not stopped.”
“So shall I,” Reverend Mother said, getting up. “We must consult Sister Agathe. Then we shall decide.”
7
THE PREFECT OF POLICE had not enjoyed his supper. Not only had Maman overcooked the roast, but she had overseasoned it to the purpose, he suspected, of his not being able to taste if the meat were tainted. He still felt a certain distress in his stomach. Nor was there bicarbonate in the house and Maman refused to borrow in this neighborhood. But René actually had photographed a wedding couple and he had probably received the loin of pork as compensation. Unless Maman had lied to him about the price, and Moissac doubted that, René had sold it to her much too cheaply. Why? He could have got much more for it on the black market.
He sat in the garden. The night was warm and Maman had heated the whole house with her oven. He pulled at his pipe and listened to hear how far along she was by the clatter of utensils in the kitchen, the gurgle in the drain. The moon had risen, a day or two off full, and he found himself staring at a ladder propped against the apple tree. It reminded him of the times in his childhood when Maman had taken him with her to the Convent of Ste. Geneviève where the nuns permitted the poor of the town to gather the last of the plums from the trees. And this reminded him of Reverend Mother St. Charles and the position she had put him in at the station. He had tried his best not to get involved, but the nun had demanded his intervention. Afterwards Mittag had wanted to know what made a young Jew different in his eyes from an old Jew. The matter of Jewish refugees was one on which he and the Gestapo had had no friction until today. He hoped the issue was settled: a convent was no place for a boy anyway.
He got up and went into the kitchen. The old lady was hanging the last of her pots on the wall beside the stove.
“Put on your shawl, maman. We’ll go down to Michelet and you can have a glace.”
“I cannot walk, Théophile. I am too tired.”
“But you can still go up a tree like a monkey.”
She broke into a grin that showed every tooth left in her head. “How did you know that?”
“I know my maman. Come. We shall go in the car.”
He drove first to Madame Fontaine’s pension where the harvesters were being housed as they arrived. Madame herself, whom he had visited during the day, had been delighted when the syndicate chose her house: she had always protested it was not her fault that the Germans favored her premises and table. What could she do? Burn down her own house? Moissac was sympathetic. What could anyone do? The Germans had come. If the great French Army had not stopped them at the Seine, who had there been to stop them at the Garonne? But hearing the raucous singing when he cut the car motor, Moissac wondered if madame was still delighted. His own mother wanted to go in at once.
“No, maman, for shame.”
“For shame,” she mimicked.
One of his men on duty there came to the car window and saluted.
“What’s going on in there?”
“Vin ordinaire, but a lot of it, Monsieur le Préfet. Bonsoir, madame.”
“You are not to drink with them,” Moissac warned his man.
“There are women?” Maman asked, for they were singing one of those wild Gascon songs where the high soprano takes off somewhat like a flute obbligato.
“Yes, madame.”
Moissac felt the creep of the flesh at the back of his neck.
“She is a wild one, monsieur,” the policeman said and rolled his eyes.
Moissac could feel the song in his very loin
s. “Keep them off the streets,” Moissac said, and started the car motor again.
Maman gave a little groan of disappointment.
He parked the Peugeot at the head of Rue de Michelet, and they descended the narrow street on foot. The clock in the Hôtel de ville struck nine. There was but one street lamp burning, and as well, Maman remarked, for it made her sad to see how badly the street had run down. The harnessmaker’s shop was boarded up, Monsieur Garreau having died of pneumonia that spring and his son disappeared, Moissac thought, to the Maquis. There was a light in the back of the baker’s shop. The baker was rolling his dough, his undershirt as grey as the walls of his shop.
“Let us stop, Théophile.”
“No, maman. He will think we expect something without coupons.”
“I do expect it. We are old friends. I remember the time you warned him of the complaints on his measure.”
“He will not remember it now,” Moissac said, and propelled her on.
Further down the street people sat in doorways, people Maman kept peering at, trying to remember, and the light as dim as her memory. “Bonsoir, Monsieur le Préfet, madame.” There was no warmth in their greetings, but no particular hostility either. They believed of him on Michelet what they wanted to believe, and for the most part he did not want to hear it. Even the baker whom he had saved from arrest had told it around that Théophile Moissac had stolen sweets as a child: it was his conscience, not his heart, weighing the measure of compassion. That it was true only fed his melancholy.
Somewhere in one of the flats that protruded over the shops a child was crying. It was a rheumic cry, interrupted at intervals by a cough.
Maman stopped and put her hand to his arm. “That’s the Lebel child.”
God Speed the Night Page 4