Anne Frank and Me

Nicole stood on a chair and peered over her shoulder at Mimi, who drew a line with an eyebrow pencil up the back of Nicole’s leg.

Liz-Bette put down the book she was reading and came over to pass judgment. “No,” she pronounced. “It looks like someone drew a line up your leg.”

“Who are you, the new style editor of For Her magazine?” Nicole teased, as she stepped down from the chair.

“I would be a very good editor. And then I could have real stockings.” Liz-Bette climbed onto the chair.

“After the war, after the war, everything is after the war,” Liz-Bette complained. “But the war just goes on and on. Do my legs, Mimi.” She posed one palm up, the other on her hip, like a runway model.

“Your wish is my command, mademoiselle.” Mimi dropped to a knee and began to draw up the back of Liz-Bette’s right leg.

Liz-Bette struck another pose. “This is what American girls do, you know. I wish I were American. I could meet Clark Gable and he would fall madly in love with me.”

“Ugh, that’s what Monique always says,” Mimi groaned, as she started to work on Liz-Bette’s left leg. “Nicole, did Jacques tell you that she and André are now officially engaged? He’s bringing her over tonight to celebrate—her director at the City Theatre gave her a ten-year-old bottle of calvados.”

A hard lump of resentment welled up in Nicole’s throat. The party for André and Monique’s engagement would be yet another event that she would have to miss because of the Jewish curfew. “It sounds like fun,” she admitted.

“It won’t be,” Mimi assured her. “Monique is loathsome. I can assure you, you won’t see her getting skinny, because she wines and dines with the enemy. And her best friend, Simone, is pregnant by one of the Boche.”

Mimi rolled her eyes. “He claims to love her for her pure artistic spirit. Personally, I think it’s because she looks like Hedy Lamarr.”

“My twin is supremely juvenile. I don’t know whom he worships more, André or your father.”

Nicole used her handkerchief to rub out the line on the back of her leg. “It’s more than that. Jacques said that last week André was ordered to pick up some Polish Jews. He went to their apartment and told them he was coming back for them in fifteen minutes, so that they’d have time to get away. And they did.”

Mimi shrugged. “Perhaps. But it would be more heroic if he quit the police and refused to work with the wretched Hun pigs altogether.”

“He’d just be sent to Germany to work for the wretched Hun pigs anyway,” Nicole pointed out.

Of all the edicts the Nazis had implemented in France, none were as hated by most French people as the STO, the Service du Travail Obligatoire. Under it, the Nazis were now drafting French young men to work on German soil in place of soldiers who were fighting the Allies.

Liz-Bette nervously twisted the end of one blond braid. “What if we got taken away on a big bus before André could warn us?”

Mimi and Nicole traded looks. “That will never happen to a magnificent French beauty like you, Liz-Bette,” Mimi finally said. “There. All done. You are the epitome of Parisian chic.”

Liz-Bette jumped down and paraded around the room like a runway model while Mimi and Nicole oohed and aahed dramatically. That made Liz-Bette giggle, which made Nicole and Mimi laugh, too. Mme. Bernhardt ran into the living room.

“What is that noise?” she demanded. Exclamation points of anxiety were etched between her eyes.

The front door opened and Dr. Bernhardt wearily entered the flat. “Papa!” Liz-Bette ran to hug him.

He kissed the top of her head. “Hello, little one.” He hung up his hat but kept his coat on against the cold.

“Mimi, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave,” Mme. Bernhardt said. “We have family business to take care of.”

“But Mimi is practically a member of the family,” Liz-Bette protested. “In fact, why don’t we exchange her for Nicole?”

“I am in no mood for your foolishness, young lady,” Mme. Bernhardt snapped. “Please forgive my rudeness, Mimi.”

“It’s all right. I have to leave anyway.” Mimi put on her beret, embraced Nicole, and slipped out the front door.

As soon as she was gone, Mme. Bernhardt turned to her daughters. “Girls, sit down.” Her tone was so abrupt that Nicole was taken aback.

Nicole and Liz-Bette took seats on the couch. Mme. Bernhardt locked eyes with her husband. “It is about your so-called upstairs office.”

“There is no time for them to be children now, you have seen to that.” She pulled something from her apron and held out her hand. Nicole stretched to see what she had. Bullets. Her mother was holding bullets. Mme. Bernhardt forced them into her husband’s hand. “You use bullets now for medical writing?” She extracted something else from her pocket—it looked to Nicole like a clock, except that there were wires extending from it. “And this? A timer for a bomb?”

“Have you lost your mind?” Mme. Bernhardt smashed the timer to the floor, where it shattered into a million pieces.

Mme. Bernhardt laughed bitterly. “Why should I worry? Just because you are making bombs over the heads of our children?”

“Just because you have taken the one place, the only place that these children can feel safe, and you have turned it into a bomb factory?”

“Yes. You are right,” Dr. Bernhardt agreed. “Every single day I planned to tell you. But I kept putting it off.” He removed his glasses, put them in his pocket, then looked at his wife again. “I work in the Resistance, Renée. With Solidarity.”

Nicole gasped as all the color drained from her mother’s face. “Jean, Solidarity? They are Reds. Communists!”

“Do you? You foolish man!” Nicole’s stomach lurched. She had never, ever heard her mother speak this way to their father. “A scrawny band of underfed Jews and Communists trying to defeat Hitler? He crushed the entire French army in five weeks, Jean. Five weeks!”

“So you make bombs?” Mme. Bernhardt’s tone was scathing. “And what happens when your bombs go off and kill some Nazis, eh? There are reprisals. You see the posters. For every Nazi you kill, they will shoot one hundred Jews.”

“They will shoot one hundred Jews anyway, Renée. And one hundred more, and one hundred more, until there are no more Jews—”

Dr. Bernhardt looked at his wife with more sadness than anger. “You do not mean this, Renée.”

She set her chin defiantly. “I do mean it. We are French. They will not take French Jews who do not bother them.”

“No. I will not listen. Do you realize how foolish you are? By night you shoot Nazis. By day you are a doctor for a Jewish hospital where the Nazis find Jews to shoot in reprisal for who you shot the night before.” Mme. Bernhardt threw her hands in the air. “Do you not see the lunacy of this?”

Nicole watched her father’s shoulders sag. For a long moment, he didn’t speak. Then, finally, he said, “In a war, many things happen which do not make perfect sense, Renée. Perhaps I am foolish. But I must do it. Please try to understand—”

“We can,” she insisted. “My family has lived in Paris for four generations. My father was wounded at Verdun in ‘17. You are a famous doctor. We are French. And if we are careful, we can survive until the Allies come.”

Nicole had never seen her father look as sad as he did at that moment, when he tenderly touched her mother’s cheek. “My darling wife. I wish it were so simple. But it is not.” He turned to his daughters. “You must listen carefully to what I am about to say. We may have to go into hiding.”

Liz-Bette shook her head violently, as if she could will it not to be true. Something tickled the edge of Nicole’s mind. What was it? Something that someone had said about her father. But who? And where? Yes! She had it. It was that Gestapo inspector, the one she’d met at the UGIF home. He had said it would be a terrible idea if Dr. Bernhardt were to disappear. And now—

“If we must go into hiding, we must make everyone believe we have been deported,” her father continued.

Her father hesitated. “Invite Jacques to my office at the hospital. They may be the ones to help us, if they are willing. But they must never know that I am with Solidarity. No one must know. Do you understand, Liz-Bette?”

Liz-Bette nodded, her lower lip trembling. Nicole was still desperately trying to reconstruct the conversation at the UGIF home. Hadn’t the inspector said something about their friends, some kind of threat? Oh, God. Did the lousy Hun already suspect that her father might be in the underground? Was he having their flat watched even now? If they were to disappear, what might he do to Jacques and Mimi?

“All of you, listen to me,” her mother commanded. “Stop this nonsense. We are not hiding like rats in a sewer. It is out of the question.”

Dr. Bernhardt met her gaze. “We will do what we have to do. Now, if my unit gets word to me that I have been denounced, or if I am taken—”

“This is insane, Jean,” Mme. Bernhardt cried. “For God’s sake, all you have to do is stop!”

Nicole felt as if she could choke on the silence, waiting for her father’s answer. He said nothing, which was the most painful answer of all.

Her father—or someone who looked like her father—pointed to the front door. “If someone should come and say this code word—Nightbird—the code word is Nightbird. Repeat it.” He looked sharply at his daughters.

“If that should happen, you must leave here instantly You will walk to seventeen, rue Saint Andre des Arts in the sixth district, near the Saint-Michel metro—”

Nicole joined Liz-Bette and linked arms with her sister. “It’s all right, Liz-Bette. Say the address with me. Seventeen—”

Dr. Bernhardt turned to his wife. She was at the window, gazing into the Paris night. “Please, Renée,” he said quietly. “I am begging you. Seventeen ... seventeen...”

Nicole held her breath. Finally, her mother’s lips moved, in the softest whisper. “Seventeen, rue Saint André des Arts.”

“He will arrange for your hiding. If I can, I will join you there. You children must memorize the address, in case you are separated from your mother. You will leave immediately. Wear as many layers of clothes as you can. Do not wear the star. Do not carry anything. Make sure you are not followed. Do not tell anyone where you are going—”

Liz-Bette looked up at the stranger who now inhabited her father’s body. “I don’t want to leave you, Papa.”

He looked down at her. And finally, it was her beloved father who answered. “I don’t want to leave you, either, little one.”

Mme. Bernhardt came to her husband. “If we live through this, Jean, I will be mad at you for the rest of our lives.”

Dr. Bernhardt smiled sadly. “When we live through this, Renée, I won’t blame you.” With one arm wrapped around Liz-Bette, he held the other out to his wife. She embraced him. Nicole put her arms around all of them.