Sister Ismerie said something under her breath and massaged the rosary beads on her desk. Then she fixed Lucie with a disapproving stare, and Lucie remembered to take her thumb out of her mouth, wiping the saliva on her skirt.
“Your new name is Lucie Ladoux. This is what Madame Agnes has instructed. You must forget your old name and your old home. These are the rules now.”
Heat flooded Lucie’s face and she felt the urge to protest, but then she sensed Sister Helene’s quiet fearfulness and Lucie knew better and followed along, just as she had acted on the farm, silently accepting the story that she had left behind her father and siblings in Reims to live with Agnes.
Sister Ismerie touched the gold cross resting on her large bosom, which jutted out like a shelf. Lucie stared at the gold against the black, reminded of one of her mother’s evening gowns, Lucie’s favorite, because of the gold against the black, its theatricality and specialness always attracting her.
Sister Ismerie rose up from her chair, and she appeared much taller and wider than before, like a blackbird fanning out its wings. “Do you understand what this means?”
“Yes,” Lucie said.
Even though everything else had changed, at least she could still keep her real name. Lucie.
* * *
• • •
That first night at the convent, she fought against the impulse to cry, telling herself that soon Agnes would come for her, and she would see her parents again. Under the thin woolen blanket, she hugged her knees to her chest, trying to get warm. Spidery tree branches tapped against the windowpanes, a cold wetness seeping into the walls. The heavy breathing of the other girls, as they tossed and turned, their errant coughs accompanied by persistent sniffles rushed into the darkness. She tried to ignore it, but the rustling and sighing of the others intensified the longer she lay still.
Lucie pulled the blanket tighter, wishing she could at least have her doll, but the nuns had burned it. She still saw the doll’s head crackling in the flames, her yellow hair singeing until it turned to black ash. They thought she didn’t see from the hallway, but she had peered around the corner into the kitchen. Sister Helene stood there silently while Sister Ismerie strode around the kitchen energetically explaining that it was for the best; there could be no evidence that they were hiding this child, disobeying Pétain’s orders. “We cannot spare one thing,” she added, also throwing Lucie’s tartan dress, silk underwear, and patent leather shoes, along with some papers and documents, into the fire.
When the nuns emerged from the kitchen, Lucie stared at them, her back pressed against the cool wall.
Sister Helene gave her a sympathetic smile, which Lucie resented, and then handed her a school uniform along with the scratchy white nightgown, which she wore now.
* * *
• • •
Feeling a light hand on her shoulder, Lucie jerked up in bed. A girl stood there, her flat hair falling around her oval face, her round eyes scrutinizing Lucie.
“Don’t worry,” the girl whispered. “It’s just me.”
“Who are you?”
She smiled. “Camille.”
Lucie pulled the blanket around her. “That was my doll’s name.”
Camille perched on the edge of Lucie’s cot, hugging herself to stay warm. “They don’t allow toys during the schoolyear.”
Lucie swallowed down the sharp lump gathering in her throat. “I know. They burned Camille.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl whispered.
Lucie nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. “They thought I didn’t see, but I did see.”
Camille touched the side of Lucie’s face. “It’s not so bad, once you get used to it here. The last time I saw my parents was Easter.”
“Well, I’m leaving soon. Agnes is coming back for me.”
Camille nodded, her eyes round and shining. Lifting up the blanket, she shimmied underneath it, her long legs pressing up against Lucie’s, generating heat. Propping her head up in her palm, she lay on her side, facing Lucie. “Did you know,” she whispered, “that Sister Ismerie makes Sister Helene clean out her chamber pot? Every morning!”
Lucie wrinkled her nose.
“Doesn’t that sound beastly?”
“Yes, beastly,” Lucie reflected, admiring Camille’s light hair, so straight and flat, perfectly parted down the middle. Camille shook her head, burying a muffled laugh into the crook of her arm. Then she took a deep breath. “And did you know,” she asked, her breath close and sweet, smelling faintly of chamomile tea, “that Sister Helene, last Christmas, broke the rules because they found a chocolate bar in her cell, under her pillow. She loves sweets. She can’t help it.”
Camille’s silky hair carelessly brushed Lucie’s bare shoulder. “What happened to her then?”
“Sister Ismerie ordered her to fast for three days and three nights. She was not even allowed one drop of water.” Camille’s eyes reflected the stark moonlight filtering in through the elongated windows. “Beastly.”
“Yes, beastly,” Lucie agreed. After a pause, she asked, “How long have you been here?”
“I just turned nine.” Camille paused, calculating in her head. “I’ve been here for two years.”
“Oh,” Lucie said. “I’m only six.”
Camille rolled over onto her side. “Well, good night then.”
She nestled her head into Lucie’s pillow, pulling the blanket up to her ear, her eyes slowly closing.
Lucie whispered, “Good night.”
Chapter 15
VERA
November 1942, Santa Monica, California
Two weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, Max suggested they take a drive. The setting sun cast a wintry orange light over the hillside. As they drove down the winding road to the highway, Vera took in the unruly cacti, dirt with flashes of green, interspersed with magenta bougainvillea that she found overly sensual, lush and loud. The straight blue line of sea framed Max’s profile. Now on the highway, he accelerated and the sudden speed rushed through her. A few clouds, tinged with gold as if a flame flickered within their dense interiors, caught her attention. Only here, Vera thought, were clouds inflamed.
“Have you met any nice women at the EFF?”
She recognized that tone, a gentle, prodding insistence that emerged when he wanted her to do something she disliked, such as play golf with him, or take up bridge. These days, he wanted her to make more “woman friends,” as he called them. She knew he worried about her, immobilized at her desk, flooded with thoughts of Lucie in France, and when Europe would be liberated, as if Roosevelt himself had hired her as a war strategist.
Filtering through the radio, Vera Lynn’s silky voice interrupted her thoughts, singing that horrid song “Lili Marlene.”
“There’s a nice Dutch woman, Afke,” she offered half-heartedly. “Her desk is next to mine. She used to be the first violinist in the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, but now, of course . . .” She leaned forward and angrily switched off the radio.
“What have you got against Vera Lynn?”
“I can’t stand all these romantic war songs. It’s not how it really is. For anyone.”
“No, of course not.” He slowed a bit. “But sometimes people need to listen to music for enjoyment. For pleasure.” He said “pleasure” as if she withheld it from him.
She flashed him a look.
“Take, for instance, the troops. Do you think they would want to listen to Schoenberg’s dissonant notes, like nails screeching over a chalkboard? Or Vera Lynn?”
Staring out the window, she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Fine, then,” he said. “We’ll stick to Mozart.”
* * *
• • •
They ended up going to the pictures that night. Before the film, a newsreel played, showing a hulking US tank rumbling through the North African deser
t, leaving dead German soldiers in its wake, faces slack against a blanket of sand. In the next frame, Italian soldiers begged to join the Allies, the camera panning their soulful faces. US infantrymen marched along dusty roads, brandishing the American flag, as a stiff male voice recounted American victory after American victory in Algiers. Max ate his popcorn loudly, relishing the butter and salt, shaking the bag every so often, something he never would have done in France. In fact, he never even ate popcorn in France. But no one noticed, as they were all eating loudly too.
Shifting in the velour seat, Elsa’s We can’t circled through her mind. It was the same reason why they didn’t show any footage of the Himmler program liquidating the Jewish population of Poland, in particular all the elderly, children, infants, and cripples. They didn’t show the sealed freight cars packed with people, or that when the cars arrived at the camps, half of the passengers were already dead from the chlorine and lime previously sprinkled on the floor. Vera had read this in the New York Times, buried as a special cable toward the back of the paper, buried, it seemed, to everyone but her. Suddenly chilled, she realized that she’d been sweating all through the newsreel, sweating even now as Judy Garland played the piano and sang, with Gene Kelly by her side, about love.
* * *
• • •
When they got home, there was a letter from Agnes, postmarked in August four months earlier, before the broken armistice. Somehow it had gotten through, even though all mail between the United States and France was now suspended. Vera felt unsettled after reading it, putting down the letter and picking it up again, only to revisit the same words: It’s been a fine summer, filled with long peaceful days . . . We captured butterflies and then let them go again. We made wreaths out of wildflowers. Lucie looked just like a princess. It wasn’t like Agnes to sound so whimsical, to mention nothing of schooling or health or other practicalities. The letter, Vera decided, was intentionally blithe, masking something worse.
Vera wanted to talk about it, but Max was suddenly preoccupied with his own concerns, locking himself away in his study late into the night, cigarette smoke floating up from under the door, the sound of the piano vibrating through the wall.
Standing on the other side of the door, Vera knew he was composing a piece of symphonic music, which was his specialty, but the work was arduous and exacting, as each piece of music was set to a specific scene, as well as a specific piece of film.
Cradling a glass of red wine in her palm, she knocked anyway.
When he opened up, she told him about the syntax of Agnes’s last letter, and he accused her of pouncing on a vague sense of unease with the aim of nursing it into a crisis, which she then would implore him to fix when there was nothing to fix.
“I don’t have the energy for imaginary problems,” he said, pressing a tumbler filled with ice and whiskey to his temple.
“How do you know this isn’t real?”
“I don’t. That’s the problem,” he said before closing her out of the room.
She fumed on the other side of the door, and then threw the glass of wine against it.
He didn’t open up.
She felt nothing after throwing the glass. The scattered shards bathed in wine were only a mess. Kneeling down with a tea towel, she picked up the pieces one by one and threw them into the bin.
Chapter 16
SASHA
August 1943, Troina, Sicily
After a month of fighting in the unrelenting heat, the hot dry air stinging their eyes, the hillsides full of stones, cacti, wandering donkeys, and camouflaged panzers, they captured the strategic hilltop town of Troina, sending the Germans into retreat.
Troina was theirs for a few precious days, the respite as glorious as biting into a ripe fig, or taking that first sip of red wine in the shade of a bombed-out church. Old men and women brought over fruit, pasta, and flowers, and cursed Mussolini, spitting into the dust. In part, it was a show; only recently these same villagers had praised Il Duce, performing the Hitler salute for their invaders, but then again, Sasha knew it was human nature to survive, to want to live. And their joy at the American arrival felt real, as warm and melodious as the Italian language that softened the atmosphere, tinting everything with beauty. It reminded Sasha of how a cameraman once explained the trick of putting silk stockings over the camera lens to diffuse the light into a gentler, more appealing image.
* * *
• • •
When they set up camp, schoolchildren watched them from a distance, but then slowly, they gathered around Sasha and his buddies, who flashed their big American smiles. The children came closer, lightly touching their sleeves and their steel helmets that rested on the ground. One girl traced the red-and-green badge on Sasha’s uniform with her pinky finger.
* * *
• • •
This country was too beautiful, too abundant, for war. Breathing in the scent of alfalfa and jasmine from the surrounding orchards confused him, made him feel as if he’d waded into some thwarted dream instead of taking over evacuated enemy territory. After ambushing seven Germans inside a stone barn, they walked back out and looked up to find plump green grapes hanging down from a wooden trellis. Sweet dusty juice filled their dry mouths, while at the same time, Sasha was acutely aware of all that fresh death on the other side of the wall.
Afterward, they went through the dead Germans’ backpacks for reconnaissance purposes. In one pack, wedged between the pages of a journal, a guy in his unit, Nick Lambert, also from Los Angeles, found letters from the kid’s mother asking him to send her shoelaces from Italy. Nick had studied German in college, and apparently Düsseldorf was out of shoelaces. The guys from Intelligence had trained them to hand over the smallest of details; for example, if the factories that manufactured shoelaces no longer operated, it could mean that other industrial branches in Germany might be stalled.
Still, confronted with the fact that this German kid had a mother somewhere, writing to him, expecting shoelaces, expecting him home alive, gave Sasha the shivers every time he sat down to write a letter to his own mother on V-mail stationery. He kept it light and brief, as they were instructed to do. He wrote that the vino wasn’t half bad, the mosquitoes so bloodthirsty he slept with a net over his face inside the pup tent. He signed off: I’m getting all your letters. Hope you’re getting mine . . . Love, Sasha.
He also kept a notebook for ideas and details he didn’t want to forget, like the German mother who wanted shoelaces, or the American deserter who had been caught pretending he was an Italian POW, only to get thrown back into combat and killed the next day, or the way a woman silently watched him from a doorway, her son’s arm in a cast. The kid incessantly tugged on her skirt, asking for something, but she kept watching Sasha and the other troops, her eyes dark, distrustful.
There were other things he wished he could forget, plaguing his dreams, things he couldn’t bring himself to write down for fear that, once committed to paper, the images would never go away, a gruesome looping merry-go-round burning a hole through his head. The senseless brutality he witnessed every day, the sheer scale of it, was worse than any crime scene he’d reported on, and for the first time, he found himself wordless, all language melting away.
The shock of what he’d seen could flatten his mind into a numb, humming blankness, and once, when he was in this state, he chanced upon a schoolroom, the doors flung open because of the heat. He stopped, watching the kids hunched over their desks, writing. The teacher leaned over a thick book propped up on the lectern, mumbling out phrases in Italian, pressing his finger into the page to keep his place.
Sasha’s chest went tight with something he couldn’t at first identify, but the way the man hunched over the book, his long beard skimming the pages, hurtled Sasha back to the drafty yeshiva basement on Rivington Street, the teacher intoning that today they would review the fifth book of holiness in the Kedushah, the Issurei Biah: forbidden s
exual relations. Sasha and the others stirred with nervous excitement. The teacher explained that the outlandish coupling between members of the same sex, between a man and an animal, between a man and his stepmother, and so on, were strictly forbidden. Sasha’s sides hurt from suppressing his laughter, and Zundel looked as if he were hyperventilating—he kept gulping down air—while another kid nearly fell off the bench trying to contain his laughter. The teacher continued, “But the most common sin is adultery. If a child is born out of an adulterous union, especially if the woman is already married, such a child is a mamzer, and the curse of this sin will last for ten generations, forbidding the mamzer and his offspring from entry into the congregation of the Lord.” Sasha stared at the yellowed pages of his prayer book, at his bitten-down fingernails, at the scarred wooden table, to mask how naked he felt, stripped of every shred of clothing, as though the teacher were speaking about him in front of the entire class, pointing to various parts of his anatomy in a sarcastic, knowing manner.
Sasha hunched over, shivering in the dry hot air, and opened his eyes to Nick’s mouth, too close to his face, saying, “Hey, you okay, buddy? Here—” He took out his canteen. “Drink some water. You look dehydrated.”
Sasha rubbed his forehead, feeling slightly sick, but he couldn’t help remembering that after the incident, he ran home in such a blind confusion that he knocked into an apple cart, overturning it, the peddler swearing, unable to erase the word from his mind, unable to stop thinking about the first time he’d heard it, back in the old country, just before they left for America. He was about six, and through the wall, he heard Aunt Raisa thank God that Leah and Sasha were finally leaving because their house would be tainted, cursed, if anyone ever found out that a mamzer lived under their roof. Uncle Isaac retorted that she couldn’t blame a little boy for the sins of the past, and when she challenged him, he nearly shouted: “Do not wag that evil tongue of yours!” Sasha froze against the wall, holding his breath, his face hot, knowing that the dirty word she had used was meant to describe him. Something he had done wrong. Something inherently corrupted.
Those Who Are Saved Page 14