Those Who Are Saved

by Alexis Landau

  * * *

  • • •

  In Saint-Palais, Lucie and Camille spent their days wolfing down a breakfast of chocolate milk and croissants before running barefoot through pine needles to the long flat beach. They collected shellfish in mesh bags for dinner. Lucie rescued cloudy pieces of sea glass that she found beautiful, even though Camille said those pieces were just from old beer bottles, broken down and washed up on the shore, turned into this.

  During the long afternoons, they rode rusty oversized bikes along dirt paths, zooming past low stone walls, wildflowers twined around the handlebars for decoration. The surrounding area had only been liberated two months ago, and they discovered a burnt-out door from a jeep lodged in the forest. They cycled past bombed farmhouses, and along a lavender field cordoned off by barbed wire, they dug up cartridges around the perimeter. They touched the cartridges with curiosity before stuffing them into their knapsacks to be examined later, on their twin beds that they’d pushed together into one.

  On the windswept beaches, they snuck into blockhouses in search of the fabled poisoned candy that the Germans had sprinkled over the countryside to kill French children before their final retreat, but they found nothing.

  When they returned in the evening, Marie commented that the color had returned to Lucie’s cheeks, announcing to no one in particular that it was so good for them to be outside all day, by the sea.

  * * *

  • • •

  At night, they slept with the windows open, listening to the distant waves, to the mosquitoes and crickets, to cats prowling along ivy-covered walls. With the bedroom door ajar, they overheard Marie and Jean-Paul playing bridge with friends, smoking and talking about the future of the party and the great progress that was being made.

  Sometimes Jean-Paul got hungry in the middle of the night and could be found standing at the stove, a faraway look in his eyes as the eggs sizzled and burned. Marie would come in, scolding him, dumping the eggs into the bin and cracking another one into the pan, and they would talk seriously about what would happen when Camille started the Lycée Mondenard in Bordeaux next month. Lucie heard them saying they couldn’t possibly leave her at the convent without Camille. “She’ll wither away there. You see how attached they are,” Marie said. The Sisters would agree to it, Marie explained, because no one had come looking for Lucie, and any link to her family, if they had even survived, had been entirely erased. And as a magistrate, along with his valiant service during the war, Jean-Paul would easily acquire the necessary consent of the judicial authorities to adopt her.

  * * *

  • • •

  You will come live with us, as Camille’s cousin,” Marie said brightly the next morning over buttered toast. “And of course, you’ll take our name. It’s for the best.”

  Camille started chanting “Lucie Bonheur, Lucie Bonheur” in a singsong voice, sashaying around the kitchen table in an irritating blur of light and noise that made Lucie want to hide away in some dry dark place. They’d given her a new last name when she started at the convent, Ladoux, so losing it held little consequence, even though last names mattered greatly to Marie, who kept repeating that a new name was a fresh start. Her name before, the one belonging to her parents, she felt embarrassed that she couldn’t remember it. Only that it was long and hard to pronounce. A name they made her forget, a name she was never supposed to say out loud.

  But it seemed, from her faint memory, that her parents, even if they were Jewish, were no different than the Bonheurs. Her mother also smoked and wore silk slacks and returned in the late afternoon saddled with shopping bags, her peacock-feathered hat slanted at a fashionable angle. Just as she witnessed Camille falling asleep on her mother’s pale sweater last night, she remembered lying over her mother’s coat, the fur delicate and soft against her cheek, the murmur of adult conversation soothing and distant.

  Why had her parents been sent to the camps and not the Bonheurs? Did they not fight hard enough? Why had they so willingly left that long-ago day in the car with smiles on their faces, abandoning her?

  Lemons, sunlight, a low stone wall, the smell of rich smoke floating from a lounge chair where her father puffed on a cigar, the newspaper half covering his face.

  She caught her breath, squeezing her eyes shut, burrowing into dark memory, trying to retrieve more.

  * * *

  • • •

  That night in bed, Camille was overly silly, pinching Lucie’s arm and babbling like a baby, and then laughing about it.

  Lucie kicked off the sheet, scratching at her mosquito bites.

  “Mama,” Camille called, sitting up in bed. “Mama.”

  Marie appeared in the doorway, cradling a glass of wine. “What is it?”

  “Mama,” Camille repeated, creating an awkward silence in the room.

  “I’m here, Camille. What’s the matter?”

  “Mama, please, pretty please sing me the old song, the one from when I was a baby?”

  Lucie pressed one of Camille’s old stuffed animals to her chest, fighting the urge to dig her fingernails into the inside of her wrist until little half-moons of blood emerged. She found herself yearning to do it more and more, ill at ease with the familial chatter, the disorderly flooding sunlight. Camille’s parents touched each other all the time and kissed Camille on the head thoughtlessly. Such displays of affection disoriented her, and she missed the convent’s tomb-like silence, the dusty vestibules, the serene stone saints, how the nuns maintained their own circles of solitude, circles that never overlapped.

  She had her own circle too, one that never opened except for Camille, whom she had clung to from the very beginning, but now other people invaded this circle: Jean-Paul with his scratchy beard when he hugged her, Marie calmly fixing her hair, various friends and relatives who appeared every Sunday, interrupting one another, hugging and yelling and laughing. She also noticed tumblers still smelling of wine were often left on the dining table from the night before, and the half-peeled carrots on the cutting board attracted fruit flies, and various doors were flung open and left that way, inviting anyone to traipse through a room, unannounced. Lucie resisted the impulse to clear away the glasses and finish the peeling and close all the doors.

  * * *

  • • •

  Marie perched on the edge of the bed, looking over at the half-open bedroom door, perhaps fearing the roast would burn or her dinner guests would arrive early. They all heard Jean-Paul opening kitchen drawers and slamming them shut, searching for a corkscrew as he did every evening at this hour. He swore, the corkscrew eluding him.

  Marie sighed. “‘Au Clair de la Lune’?”

  Camille nodded, pressing her cheek against the pillow, and Marie began to sing, her thin high voice filling the room. “Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot, prête-moi ta plume, pour écrire un mot. Ma chandelle est morte, je n’ai plus de feu. Ouvre-moi ta porte pour l’amour de Dieu.”

  Lucie clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms, feeling the enticing pressure. When Marie finished, she glanced over at Lucie, and her eyes clouded over. Lucie started to suck her thumb, an old disgusting habit from childhood that the nuns had stomped out that she now had started doing again. Marie stared at her as if she were some pitiful creature, a wounded bird or a lame dog hobbling alongside the road.

  She touched Lucie’s shoulder. “I know how much you miss your mama and papa.” She paused, giving her words their full weight. “I’m sure they miss you too, very much.”

  Lucie jerked away and inched closer to the wall. She wanted to scream and hurl the stuffed animal at Marie, but then the Bonheurs would surely send her back to the convent. “I don’t have any parents.”

  Marie didn’t move from the bed.

  Lucie squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t bear to look at the woman’s sorrowful face, so full of feeling. Beneath her tightly closed eyelids, she saw dark blue blots
within the black. She imagined Marie deliberating over whether she should remain here on the bed, to see if Lucie would burst into sobs, revealing how vulnerable she was, and she wondered if she wanted to be loved by Marie. She steeled herself against such a saccharine impulse and opened her eyes, scrutinizing the paisley wallpaper. She kept staring at it, debating if the paisley was violet or black, her eyelids growing heavy. The design slowly blended into the darkness.

  Chapter 50

  VERA

  Late July 1945, Southwestern France

  The next morning, they woke up early to reach the convent of St. Denis before midday Mass. It was the last one on the list. She chose her outfit carefully, gabardine slacks and a chiffon blouse, wondering if today would be the day they would find Lucie. The meeting with Jacques had lifted her spirits, perhaps too much, but she greedily grabbed at that hope. Everything felt lighter, pliant with possibility, the sun streaking through the clouds a sign that they were on the right path. She tugged on her pearl earring and took in the passing foliage, bracingly green, still wet from last night’s rainfall.

  During the two-hour drive they barely spoke, but she enjoyed this intimate silence, was calmed by its weight. After meeting Jacques yesterday, the revelation that Lucie had not died in the massacre infused her with manic joy, a rush of it. In the little hotel room later, under the thin coverlet, she and Sasha found each other again, both grateful for the release after so many tense days, because the good news was a shred of something real, something she could almost touch. White moonlight streamed into the room, washing over their bodies with bright desire. His animal warmth surrounded her, and she felt as contained as the safe, warm hush that descends on a concert hall before the orchestra begins to play. When she woke up in the morning, she touched his hand, enclosing it in hers, and for a brief interval let herself believe that the story didn’t end here. They would keep searching until the end became the beginning of something else.

  * * *

  • • •

  When they neared St. Denis, she started getting nervous again, bracing herself for what, if anything, they would find.

  Sasha smoked and drove with concentration, mulling something over.

  She gripped the door handle when he whipped around bends in the road. “You’re deep in thought.”

  He slowed a bit. “It’s just work.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Shrugging, he continued, “Bogart has some notes on the script. Changes he wants made. They want me back in LA.”

  “Will you go?”

  “I’m seeing this through with you.”

  Vera kissed him on the cheek, her mouth lingering there, and then she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “And I’ve been tossing around some other ideas. About the war, about ordinary people who were just trying to survive, and remain human.” He glanced over at her and then added, “Did you know that Madeleine Dreyfus was sent to Bergen-Belsen for over a year?”

  “No.”

  “Toward the end of the war, she’d just had her third child, but refused to stop with the rescue missions. She received a call that the Gestapo was about to raid a children’s home. Of course, she had no way of knowing that on the other end of the line, the Gestapo held the caller at gunpoint. When she got there to save the children, she walked right into their trap.” He pulled off the main road onto a smaller one tunneled by overgrown fruit trees.

  Sasha frowned, glancing at the map for a minute. He strained to see around the bend in the road. “It’s up ahead, a few kilometers.”

  She flipped open her compact, powdering her face, trying to contain the mounting sense of dread mixed with sharp hope that this could be it.

  * * *

  • • •

  Getting out of the car, she stood before the Romanesque church, dark and low to the ground, surrounded by blooming fruit trees and thick hedges. Gripping each other’s hand, they walked over the pale gravel toward the sky blue door.

  She held her breath, afraid to knock, but then it opened.

  A tall imposing nun filled the entryway, her doughy moon face glistening with sweat. “Hello,” she said. “Welcome to St. Denis. Please, come inside.”

  In the vestibule, the spartan walls gave off a moist chill. Weak light filtered through the arched windows along the corridor, and she heard the faint sound of children playing in the yard. Mother Superior, noticing that Vera was trying to see beyond the enclosed courtyard, informed them that this was a convent school for girls, known for its outstanding reputation.

  The other nun standing a few feet away timidly smiled at them.

  “And this is Sister Helene,” the Mother Superior announced. “She may provide a brief tour of the premises, if you would like.”

  Sister Helene was younger, with freckles over the bridge of her nose, and wore a string of white rosary beads from which hung a heavy wooden cross. The Mother Superior wore an elaborate golden cross that blazed against her black robe, reminding Vera of an evening gown she once had owned, a long time ago.

  For a moment, Vera wanted to pretend that she was only here for a tour; the idea felt seductively real.

  “No, thank you. We aren’t here for that. I’m looking for my daughter, Lucie Volosenkova. She had been living in Oradour-sur-Glane with our governess, Agnes, who might have brought her here, in 1942, toward the end of the year?” Vera stopped short, seeing the muscles in the Mother Superior’s jaw tighten. Sister Helene’s cheeks flushed, and she clutched her rosary beads.

  Sensing the tension in the air, pierced by a stab of expectation, Vera added, “She would have been six years old at the time.”

  The Mother Superior replied, “I’m so sorry. We never had anyone here that fits your description. I thought you were prospective parents, interested in our school.”

  Seeing Vera’s expression, Sasha took her elbow and whispered into her ear to press the nun and explain that Madeleine Dreyfus at the OSE said many convents in this area hid Jewish children during the war. “Ask her more questions,” he added.

  “I’m sure it’s a wonderful school,” Vera began, “but Madeleine Dreyfus at the OSE informed us that many of the convents in this area hid children during the war. Jewish children.”

  Mother Superior turned her face toward the window. The morning sun slanted across her cheek before she smiled warmly. “Yes, we’ve had other parents, such as yourself, knocking on doors around these parts, looking for lost children, but I’m afraid we did not hide any Jewish children here. We had a few French children whose parents were in the Resistance, and we willingly sheltered them.” She paused, giving Sister Helene a pointed stare. “But no Jews.”

  Sister Helene nodded, her eyes trained on the black-and-white parquet floor.

  Vera glanced over at Sasha, and he gave her an encouraging nod.

  “May I ask why not?” Vera said.

  The question momentarily flustered the Mother Superior. “Well, as you can see, our school is quite well-known in these parts, and we were already full to capacity, with French children from Paris whose families wanted them out of the city during the war. We just didn’t have the space to safely accommodate any more children, especially Jewish children, who would have put all of us at risk.”

  “I see,” Vera said, unconvinced, and then she turned to Sasha. “They didn’t hide any Jewish children here.”

  “Really?”

  “Sasha, what am I supposed to do? If that’s what she says . . .”

  “She’s defensive,” he whispered back, his eyes darting around the vestibule, as if he could find some clue in the stained glass nativity scene, or the marble putti in the garden, with their little dispassionate smiles.

  The nuns glanced warily at Sasha now that they realized he was an American.

  “In any case,” Vera rejoined, holding out a piece of paper, “I wrote down my address and telephone numbe
r here, if something comes to mind. If you hear anything from a neighboring convent or from the OSE that would fit our description, please contact me. Please.” Vera’s eyes beseeched them.

  The piece of paper disappeared into the heavy black folds of Mother Superior’s robe. She produced another bright smile, and then announced that midday Mass was about to start.

  “Sister Helene will show you out.” She turned down the whitewashed corridor, her black robe flaring behind her.

  * * *

  • • •

  Sister Helene fumbled with the keys to reopen the front door.

  When it finally opened, a spring wind flooded into the entryway.

  The nun took Vera’s hand, her light eyes watering from the glare of the noonday sun. Watching her meek gestures, Vera shivered at the thought of convent life: the interminable devotion, solitude and obedience.

  “Madame Volosenkova, may I ask if you have tried the Hotel Lutetia? It appears to be a central point of information.”

  “Yes,” Vera replied. “I went there. Many times.”

  Sister Helene watched them carefully. “It must be so difficult, this loss.”

  “We’re not done searching,” Sasha said in English before walking back to the car. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the car door.

  Vera turned toward her. Slight traces of concern lined Sister Helene’s high forehead.

  “Thank you for showing us out, and for taking the time to talk to us. Please do let me know if anything turns up regarding my daughter.”