It was late June 1940, in the camp in Gurs. I remember waking up one morning convinced that Paulette and I must flee that day or be captured by the Nazis. There was no doubt about it: The Germans were coming. One did not know where they were exactly, but they were close. You could see them coming, their boots and buttons flashing, in the eyes of the French guards, who had been languid for days, hesitant to command; the stuff that makes a person willing to give an order and stand behind it had been drained from them. They were dummies filled with straw.
“We’re going today,” I whispered to Paulette.
“How can you say that?”
“Going,” I said.
“Going where?”
“South. As far south as we can get.” I knew that south was the only possible direction.
I had managed to steal release certificates from the commandant’s office, and I gave one to Paulette. We wrote our names on them and forged the commandant’s signature: These might come in handy one day for purposes of identification. I doubted that we could really use them today.
“How did you get these?” Paulette asked.
“Nosy people don’t survive in times of war,” I said. “Ask fewer questions.” I don’t know what came over me, but I was no longer in a mood to let events dominate me. I was also a little frustrated by Paulette, who seemed to lack initiative. She wanted to pretend that a war wasn’t really on.
“What are you girls doing?” the guard asked, watching us from a distance of fifty yards.
“I’m writing a dirty novel,” I said. “Do you want to read it, Jacques?” His name was not Jacques, but he looked to me like a Jacques, so I called him that. It seemed to annoy him, which made me that much happier to have found the name.
He just scoffed, turning his back to light a cigarette. I don’t think he had any notion of what to make of us. We were all, in his mind, deeply peculiar.
“I’m not sure about this,” said Paulette. “The Germans are everywhere. That’s what the radio says. Even in the south.”
“You can’t trust the radio,” I said. “It’s propaganda, whatever they say.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “Look,” I said, “if we stay here, we’re finished. At least in the countryside we have a chance. We can hide. It’s easy!”
“I want to find Otto,” she said.
“And I want Hans. But we’re not going to find them here. Not in Gurs. If the Germans capture us, we’ll be shipped back to the Fatherland. We’ll be shot in a ditch. Tortured first, then shot in a ditch, and you know it.”
The rumors from Germany, Poland, and Belgium had been drifting through the air like poison, and we all knew that some of them must be true. The Germans were committing atrocities on a scale new to modern history.
Paulette, who was usually quite composed, suddenly began to tremble. Her lips were blue and tightly drawn. Tears glistened on her cheeks. “I can’t go with you,” she said. “I’ll stay behind.”
I don’t know why I did this, but I slapped her. “You mustn’t lose your nerve, not now!” I whispered loudly. “If you want to see Otto again, you have got to hold steady.”
It was quite unlike me, but I put my arms around her. Paulette was still a child, really. She required comfort, and clear boundaries. I must use whatever authority I had; Paulette needed that. She needed me to remain strong.
“You’re so kind to me, Lisa,” she said, her head on my shoulder.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?” I patted her back lightly.
Jacques, meanwhile, stared at us from his end of the barracks, smoking. I simply stared back, and that was enough to get him to avert his eyes.
That morning the commandant himself came to visit with us; it was the first time anybody had ever seen him here, in a barracks. The women swarmed around him, shouting, “What’s going to happen to us, monsieur commandant? What’s the plan?”
The plan: a comic notion. Everybody wants to believe that somebody is in charge and has a program. This is doubtless why religion is so popular, especially among the masses, who have no sense of being able to control their own fate.
“Where are the Germans?” one of the women shouted above the others. “Tell us the truth!”
“The situation is under control,” he said.
“They say we are losing the war! Is this so?” another woman asked.
He waved at her to dismiss the allegation. “Don’t believe these things you hear,” he said. “There is too much wagging of tongues.”
“The Germans have taken Paris, and they’ll soon be here!” the same woman maintained.
“It’s all rumor, nothing more,” he said with a firmness that revealed a lack of hard information. Like an aging, third-rate actor’s, his chest swelled and his voice grew comically rotund. “You must not panic, ladies. The French government assumes full responsibility for your protection.”
It has always amazed me how platitudinous and empty people in official positions can sound. Having purposefully donned the mask of their function, they quickly lose touch with anything resembling a human voice.
“They will kill us!” the woman shrieked.
The commandant pointed a chubby finger at her. “You must not listen to those who try to frighten you,” he said. “If everybody stays put, there will be less trouble. We will guarantee your safety.”
I whispered into Paulette’s ear: “We’re getting out of here!”
By now, she understood that we had no choice. The Germans would eat this petty commandant for lunch and the rest of us for dessert.
At midday, a shiny black Hispano appeared at the gate of the camp: the kind of car only a high-ranking officer would use. Several men rushed out to greet the gentleman, who despite his polished brass and crisp uniform looked quite desperate; his eyes had the wild look of the hunted, and he was hunched and squinting. He was accompanied by two obsequious underlings and a driver.
There was general confusion in the courtyard, with soldiers leaving their posts and rushing about. A current of panic spread among the detainees, with shouts and cries, and the guards, for the first time, seemed not to care. Many appeared to have gone back to their own quarters, perhaps to pack their belongings.
I knew in my gut that the Germans were close and that we must leave at once. “Stay right beside me,” I told Paulette. “When the guard asks where we are going, flash your certificate. Don’t tell him anything, even if he asks.”
“We’re going to do this, aren’t we?”
I nodded, then grinned.
Fortunately, Paulette went along with me. I had not so much convinced her as not allowed her the possibility of opposing me. The idea that she might remain behind, without me, was on another level quite unthinkable. Paulette and I were, for the time being, a couple.
A dozen or so women had gathered in the courtyard, arguing among themselves about the progress of the Germans, while only two guards chatted to each other by the front gate. Dogs were barking, and a few chickens squawked. I remember seeing a red shirt flap in the breeze on a makeshift clothesline. An occasional plane zoomed over. I had not had the foresight to pack my things the night before but, like Paulette, managed to stuff what I really needed into a rucksack.
With studied nonchalance, we strode toward the gate.
“Hey, where are you girls going?” one guard asked us. His voice did not register great concern, however, and he was almost at once distracted by some shouting elsewhere in the camp.
“I have a pass,” I said, waving my certificate. “So does she.” I nodded in Paulette’s direction. “Ask the commandant if you want—he has released us.”
The young man looked temporarily confused, but we didn’t wait for more questions. We just walked out of Gurs, not looking back.
It’s odd how easy the impossible tasks in life can seem, and how difficult the simple ones. The notion of merely walking out of Gurs had never struck me before this morning. But there we were, free and strolling under sunny skies. Not even our shadows followed us.
At last, I could not resist playing Lot’s wife and looking back: The guard was now preoccupied with someone else. Other women were obviously trying the same thing. I could see that nobody was going to come after us, and I made a slight leap in the air. A thrill like I’d not felt in years—part fear, part exhilaration—coursed through my body.
We just kept walking, steadily, heads slightly down, at a fair pace. We walked down a dirt road lined with plane trees. In an hour or so, Gurs had disappeared behind us: a blur of bad memories. We had no food, no money, nothing, but it hardly mattered. For the moment, we were free.
Then I heard a vehicle closing in behind us, and I thought all was lost, especially when this drab military car stopped only a few paces ahead of us. A young officer rolled down the window to greet us in passing. He had sharp blue eyes and yellow hair, parted neatly in the middle. His teeth were ridiculously straight and white. “Hey, girls! Want a lift?” he said.
It was obvious from his tone that he was not taking us back to Gurs, so I got in. It was important to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and Gurs. Paulette, though hesitant, followed me.
“Where are you girls coming from?” he asked.
“We’re Belgians,” I said, making sure to catch Paulette’s eye. She nodded, assuring me that she understood.
The officer grunted, as if my remark explained everything. He soon launched into a monologue about a summer holiday that he had spent, years ago, in Belgium. In time of war, people become obsessed with their own past, with the story of their lives; they begin to live everything all over again, sifting for evidence of a kind that cannot be found.
I was by now exhausted, and nodded off in the back seat, leaving Paulette to listen and respond to our driver, whose name was Lieutenant Ratié. The snatches of talk I overheard did not inspire my confidence in the leadership of the French army.
By the time we pulled into Pontacq, a rural village with long sloping hills rising just beyond it, I was refreshed and wide-eyed. The adrenaline surged as we stopped directly in front of police headquarters, a stone building with shuttered windows. Paulette reached for my hand like a frightened child.
“You girls wait here,” the lieutenant said, and went inside.
Paulette’s instinct was to flee, but I trusted our rambling officer, who emerged from the building with two overweight policemen at either elbow. “These women are Belgian refugees,” he explained. “The Gestapo wants to kill them. I will hold you personally responsible for their safety.” For the first time, his manner seemed plausible.
Inside the station, we showed our false certificates of release. (I held in reserve my old Czech passport, which would have complicated our already complex story.) I had become Lise Duchamps. My companion was Paulette Perrier. Nice names, I thought. I should have been a novelist.
The constable in charge assured us that we’d be looked after, and we were. They drove us to a farm at the edge of town, where the elderly farmer’s wife, Madame Derauges, welcomed us with feigned enthusiasm, anticipating a nice subsidy from the police. We were given beds in a rough wooden bunkhouse beside the garden; it had high rafters, a hayloft, and cracked windows, but it was private and not uncomfortable. That night we ate our first decent meal in months: thick bacon slices, fresh bread and salt, turnips, dandelion salad. There was even a carafe of syrupy local wine.
“There’s a village pump at the end of the road,” Madame Derauges said. “Wash yourselves and your clothes there. And don’t forget to close the gate! We keep hens, you see. If they get loose, it’s impossible to find them.”
She pointed to the outhouse that she and her husband used. “Just ignore the outhouse,” she said. “That belongs to us. Use the garden. It’s good for the plants.”
When the police left, the old woman began talking more freely. “Nobody knows where the Germans are,” she said. “There are rumors. I have no idea how safe you are here. How safe am I?” She cocked her head to one side, almost threateningly. “I may not be able to lie to protect you,” she said. “This farm…it’s all we have in the world. I can’t risk it, you see.” Her husband was not to be seen, though she referred to “we” on every possible occasion. Apparently the old man was living with their daughter in a nearby town, having quarreled with his wife very badly just a few days before we arrived.
For most of the week, we stayed put. After Gurs, it was agreeable to return to a semblance of normalcy. We washed our clothes at the pump, helped the old woman around the farm with various chores, did a lot of cooking. In the second week, toward evening, we drifted into the village to sit under a huge linden tree on a bench and chat with locals. Refugees would stagger by, often moving in small clusters like ghosts, and we’d question them about the progress of the war. Several of the women from Gurs passed through, and we heard from them that soon after we escaped the entire camp was broken up. The women were scattered like chicken feed into the countryside. Once, a motley group of soldiers came through the village, but even they seemed ignorant of what was really going on. One of them actually assured me that the war was over! “I am going back to Paris,” he said. “My mother will be so pleased.”
One night a motorcycle pulled up to the bench where Paulette and I were sitting, and we couldn’t believe our eyes. It was Alfred Sevensky, a Pole whom we had both known in Paris. When the war broke out, he joined the Polish Legion and they had fought the Germans on their march toward Paris. He told us they had been thoroughly routed near the Somme; those who were not killed, injured, or captured were on the run, like himself. For the time being, Alfred would come to stay with us. It was oddly comforting to be with someone whom one knew, however slightly, from an earlier, easier time.
One day in the late afternoon the bus from Pau, a neighboring village, stopped in the square at Pontacq, and a small group of refugees got off. Although the chances of knowing any of them were slender, one nevertheless grew attentive. These were people like oneself, after all. My gaze was drawn to a perilously thin old man with long white hair and yellowish eyes; he leaned on a cane as he approached. Paulette suddenly grabbed my arm tightly.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I am seeing things!”
“What are you talking about?”
“My father!”
The old man was indeed her father. Der Alte, as we called him, the Old One. He had made his way to Gurs in search of his daughter, and he had just kept going. It was a miracle that he had found her.
This was obviously a moment of tremendous feeling for both of them, but what surprised me was the casualness of the encounter, the way they suppressed strong emotions. The two walked in slow motion into each other’s arms, and they remained for some time quite still. I could see der Alte’s eyes, their yellowness like the late-afternoon sky, dusty and worn, with a touch of wildness in it, as in a lion’s eyes.
“Come,” I said at last. “Let’s bring der Alte home. He looks hungry.”
“Please,” he said. “We must go quickly to Lourdes. The Germans will be here in a day or two.”
“We can hide in the forest,” I said. “They’ll never find us.”
Der Alte shook his head. It was quite possible that Paulette and I could blend with the French people, but there was no way to hide him. He was a German Jew: There could be no doubt about his origins.
“It is not safe here,” he said. “Ask the women who were on the bus.”
Paulette did her best to reassure him, and (reluctantly) he agreed to come back to the farm with us. The lure of a good meal and a bunk was not easily resisted. He had been traveling for days on end without sufficient food or rest; indeed, he was on the brink of collapse when he found us.
One of the other refugees from the same bus was Joseph Kaminski, another Pole. He bore horrifying tales of his escape from a camp that was overrun by the Germans. That night, he joined us as well, and we made a campfire and fried bacon and potatoes. Much to my amazement and joy, he said he had seen Hans, and it thrilled me to have confirmed what I already knew in my heart: Hans was alive.
I gave him a letter for Hans, with my address. It was written in code, of course, with a false name that he would recognize. A lot of letters were being passed among the refugee community this way, and it proved an efficient system. I sent messages to a dozen people over the next day or so, and before long I received another confirmation that Hans was alive.
The note came from my brother, himself a refugee, within a matter of days. “Your husband was seen on a bicycle between Limoges and Montauban,” he wrote in his straight up-and-down hand. It was enough.
The decision now rested on when, not if, we should move, and in what direction. A trickle of refugees had started in early summer and swollen to a great river by mid-July, yet before we actually joined this conduit of human misery and fear, we thought it wise to test the waters. One morning Paulette and I hitched a ride into the countryside with two young men who were driving a military supply truck. They quizzed us about our origins.
“So you’re from the north?” the driver asked.
“From Belgium,” I said.
“Where in Belgium? My cousin lives there.”
He knew we were lying, but I decided to play along. I mentioned a town, trying to seem casual about it.
“Ah, that’s where my cousin lives. Do you know the gas station across from the town hall?” His friend grinned ear to ear. They were cleverly attempting to catch us out.
“You are not very nice to us,” I said, with a scolding air whose underside was coyness. “Is this any way to treat the wives of prisoners of war?”
To my surprise, this little ploy worked; their grins evaporated, and the conversation ended. We continued on in what felt like embarrassed silence, but this was preferable to talking with these louts.
It was a dewy morning, with sunlight glazing the hay, the long fields rich and deep in grain. Drab tents were pitched in the fields, and cots were lined up in rows outside them. Most of the soldiers slept out under the stars, by preference. There was maybe something comforting about the stars, whose pinpoint legends never change, despite the vagaries of life on earth. Alfred had talked a lot about the comforts of nature in time of war, and I understood this now. So much is already given, and it cannot be taken away.
We got out at Tarbes, near a crossroad that had become a meeting place for refugees and so a good place to find out about our husbands. I milled about, trying to discover if anyone had seen or heard anything about Hans. I was by now desperate for each morsel, which I devoured greedily. We heard fresh reports of the exodus from Paris, of millions caught in the stream of history and swept southward, with human rivulets cutting into the landscape. Everyone was trying to get out of France, but there were few escape routes left. No one doubted that even these would close soon.
I struck up a conversation with a dashing French officer who was standing by an expensive Italian car. He seemed to like me, so I asked for a lift.
With an easy smile, he said, “Come on, both of you.”
We set off from Tarbes in high style, Paulette and I luxuriating in the red leather seats. It seemed utterly safe to be riding with an officer in such a fine car. The refugees trudging along the road looked at us anxiously as we passed, and one or two of them waved mechanically. In well-bred people, the social forms will survive long after their content has been drained of meaning. On the other hand, it was smart to wave at everyone, friend or enemy. Hedging one’s bet was a good habit to acquire in wartime.
We came to a bridge not three miles from the city, and my stomach clenched when I saw a military blockade. This is it, I said to myself. We stopped, and the guard came over and asked for the officer’s papers.
“You must turn back, sir,” the guard said, having examined the papers. “We have strict orders. No one may pass.”
“I am passing,” the officer said.
“Please, sir. I have my orders.” He glanced warily at the two of us in the back seat. “I have orders to shoot,” he added, lowering his rifle in a threatening way.
The officer suddenly drew a revolver and pointed it straight at the guard. “I will cross the bridge,” he said.
The guard stepped back slightly, and our car zoomed forward.
Half expecting shots to be fired into the back windshield, I ducked my head. But no, we were going to be all right, once again. Another miracle had saved us.
Some miles from Pontacq the officer dropped us off when the road divided. “Please, ladies,” he said, “all you need do is cut through that field. You’ll arrive in Pontacq within the hour.”
We thanked him and began our walk through a field of cornflowers. Bees zummed by our ears and butterflies scattered in our wake. At the edge of a pond, where we stopped to drink, a woman about my age was sitting beneath a large oak, reading a book in German. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw it was Hannah Arendt, whom I’d met several times before in Paris. She had studied in Germany at several universities and was said to be brilliant.
After hearing a brief account of her wanderings over the past few months, I invited her to come back to Pontacq with us.
“I think it’s safer to travel alone,” she said. “In any case, I prefer it.”
I tried to persuade her to join us, but she was adamant. So we left her there, reading in the shade of that spreading oak, her face dappled by shadows. It was one of those peculiar meetings that stays with you in memory.
Der Alte’s frantic desire to go to Lourdes swayed us, and we decided to accompany him. As Arendt said, it was less conspicuous to travel singly or in pairs, so Paulette and I decided to hang back for a few days. We would meet der Alte and Alfred in the city’s main square at a prearranged time. Staying in Pontacq, however comfortable, was not a permanent solution, since the Germans were definitely coming. Nobody doubted this now.
We entered Lourdes on the handlebars of two bicycles, having been picked up on the outskirts of the city by two benevolent soldiers, who claimed we were their girlfriends. This helped whenever we encountered a checkpoint: They waved us through with a wink. Any touch of romance was welcome in these dismal days.
The city itself teemed with refugees, lost soldiers, men and women given up for dead by relatives in distant places. Paulette and I strolled arm in arm along a wide boulevard thick with people, stopping now and then to press our noses against the windows of a pastry shop.
Every major city in France had opened a Centre d’Accueil to welcome refugees, but we had been warned to stay away from them; people without valid passports were being arrested and thrown into holding camps. The lucky ones were merely turned away, homeless, without provisions.
As planned, we met up with Alfred, who had found a hotel room for us by tricking the authorities into giving him billeting slips. I congratulated him on his deceptiveness. We had all become such fast talkers that we thought we could get anything from anybody! If the Germans caught me, I planned to tell them I was Hitler’s cousin from Austria. I had the whole family tree outlined in my head. Why not? Who would risk killing Hitler’s cousin? Or even someone who might be Hitler’s cousin if she wasn’t lying? Was that a risk anybody in his right mind would take?
The hotel room was glorious, with faucets that worked, a full-length mirror with a chipped but gilded frame, a bidet with a curtain around it. The beds were made up with crisp, clean linens that smelled wonderfully of soap, and there were fresh towels for everyone. One could even manage to draw a trickle of warm water from the tap!
Luck was definitely with us, since we managed the same day to find der Alte. When he saw the hotel room, he beamed. “You see, you listen to your father,” he said, “I told you Lourdes was the place for us! I am very happy here.”
It was all splendid, though we knew it was temporary. Even in Lourdes, one could not escape the Germans forever.
Meanwhile, I called at the post office each day to inquire if any mail had come for Lise Duchamps, the name I’d given to Hans for such purposes. This paid off one Saturday afternoon. A telegram had arrived, saying Hans awaited me at Mountauban. It was signed with a false name and addressed to General Delivery.
My sense was that now we must get to Marseilles as soon as possible. This was the only place where one could hope to find passage to America or Cuba or somewhere far from the black dogs of Europe barking at our heels. I wrote explaining this to Hans, and set about getting us railway tickets to Marseilles. I told him to meet us in Toulouse, though such a rendezvous was predicated on our having acquired a certificate of safe conduct. These were currently available, I was told, from the Commandant Spécial Militaire de la Gare de Lourdes, so I set off immediately to find him.
He was a small man, clean shaven, smelling of hair tonic. Paulette and I presented ourselves, as usual, as Belgians.
“May I see your papers, please?” he asked, adding, “I would be much obliged.” The politeness was noticeable and rare. The war had a way of stripping away the niceties, leaving a kind of jungle talk: “Give me this! Don’t take that!”
I said, “I’m afraid they were lost in flight.”
He looked at me with sympathy. “Have you got anything I can see?”
I handed over our moldy certificates of release from the camp at Gurs and der Alte’s dog-eared carte d’identité.
He looked at us with genuine sadness. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I wish I could help. You see, I’m in charge of military transportation, nothing more.”
Something in his voice, his hesitancy, encouraged me to press on. “Listen, mon capitaine,” I said. “You must help us. I will tell you the truth: We are running from the Nazis. We were forced to flee our homeland, and we came to France because it has always welcomed political exiles. Hitler is our enemy as much as yours.”
The man wearily drew a stamp from his drawer and marked our papers one by one. He wrote pour marseilles in large blue letters on each page and signed his name. “This may work, but on the other hand it may not. I can’t say. In any case, you must try. Good luck to you.”
I began to thank him, but he waved me off. “You must not insult me with your thanks. I am a citizen of France and an officer in its army. We’ve behaved so badly in this war. In fact, it is I who am in your debt.”
I will never forget this lovely man. He was a real Frenchman, not a traitorous swine like Pétain or Weygand or Laval. He gave me courage.
That evening I wrote to Hans to explain our plans, and we left several days later on the train for Marseilles, stopping in Toulouse well before lunch; the idea was that Hans should join us there. To my horror, he was not at the station as planned.
I told Paulette, Alfred, and der Alte that I was not going anywhere without Hans, and they knew I meant it. They agreed to wait at the station while I made my way by train to Montauban, which was close by.
“If you aren’t back in time for the last train,” Paulette said, “should we assume you’re not coming?” The poor girl wrung her hands.
“Assume I’m dead,” I said, keeping a straight face.
In Montauban, an hour or so later, I ran into an old acquaintance, the brother of a friend, who told me that Hans was living in a half-built villa in the hills to the west of the town. I set off on foot, intermittently running and walking. In my head, I kept rehearsing what might happen. It was a scene I had already played a thousand times in the theater of my mind, with a thousand different scripts.
I turned a corner to see the villa in the near distance, a structure that recalled a Greek ruin. The owner had apparently begun the project with grandiose plans, laying out elaborate gardens and creating a paved courtyard, but the war had frightened him, or bankrupted him, and he’d run away. Hans stood on the front steps, his arms crossed, the walls of the villa roofless but brilliant.
The reunion plays itself out in memory like a series of time-lapse photographs: Lisa running, knees high, head back, tense. Hans, eyes fixed, white eyes, burning. Sun-glazed walls, long cypress trees. Lisa’s head on his chest, crying. Hans folding arms around Lisa. Big hands on shoulder blades. Big hands on sides of face. Lisa and Hans, kissing. Lisa crying. Hans laughing, looking over her shoulder at the camera.
A long time passed before I remembered how angry I was. “Why didn’t you meet us as planned? We all could be in Marseilles by now!”
He had a good explanation, of course. I’d almost forgotten how nimble he was with words. He needed a few more days to acquire a safe-conduct pass, and in any case, he wasn’t at all sure that going to Marseilles was the right plan. Everyone was going to Marseilles, even the Germans. Shouldn’t we lose ourselves in the countryside? France was a big country, and the French peasants were hiding refugees rather well in lofts, in cellars. One could also disappear into the woods and live like primitives: eating roots, hunting small animals, drinking rainwater. Notions tumbled from his lips, played off the cracked smile.
“Why didn’t you write to me with your objections?” I asked. “This is holding everybody up.”
“There wasn’t time.” He stood back, offended. “You’re so bossy, Lisa. You just issued a command for me to appear in Toulouse. It’s not so easy.”
I should have guessed that Hans would not be told what to do. It wasn’t his way. You would think I hadn’t lived with him long enough to know this.
It also must be said that Hans had a good point. Rumor had it they were arresting people right off the train in Marseilles. Without the right papers, they would simply turn us over.
I saw at once that we must stop Paulette, Alfred, and der Alte, who would be boarding the last train for Marseilles at five p.m. It was already three-thirty, so we didn’t have time to chat. “Let’s go!” I shrieked, grabbing his arm.
“Where?”
“Don’t ask questions! Hurry!”
After a breakneck journey, we arrived in Toulouse with ten minutes to spare.
“Get on the train, anywhere!” Paulette shouted, her head sticking out the window. “It leaves any moment!”
I explained quickly that we must not go to Marseilles.
“If I believed every rumor I heard, I’d do nothing. I would die on the spot,” said der Alte. “I am going to Marseilles.” Despite this declaration of independence, he stayed with us. At this point in the war, he’d had enough of striking out by himself.
We went straight back to Montauban, to the villa. It was idyllic there: a camp with nobody to bother us. We got provisions from the town, and the weather was perfect: warm but not sweltering, rainless. I didn’t mind sleeping out under the stars, and there were flowers blooming everywhere. The natural world seemed wonderfully ignorant of the war.
A week later, news spread that the inspection of trains coming into Marseilles had become lax again, so we decided to move while movement was possible. Hans, in particular, was eager to get back in touch with the anti-fascist elements of the emigration. And der Alte was champing at the bit, sure that the Nazis were just over the hilltop behind the villa. “If we sit here, we are dead, kaput,” he said. “They will shoot us on sight.” Alfred, too, was afraid to stay any longer. Only Paulette seemed reluctant to risk the venture. “It is so quiet here, so peaceful,” she said wistfully. “I don’t want to go anywhere, not again. I want to stay.”
“You can’t stay,” I said. “They will kill you if you do.”
Paulette sighed. “I wish, Lisa, you were not always so goddamned reasonable. It is boring.”
The journey into Marseilles was uneventful, but as the train approached the station everyone grew tense and silent. We had agreed beforehand to separate upon disembarkation, so as not to draw attention to ourselves.
“Let me go first,” said Hans.
“No, I will go first,” der Alte insisted, pulling his suitcase from the luggage rack overhead. “Old men are perfectly useless.”
We knew there was no point in arguing with him—that would only attract stares. Nervously, we followed him with our eyes as he stepped onto the platform, adjusted his tie, and began to walk toward the gate. Within moments, he was approached by two policemen, who asked him to produce his papers.
“Nix comprend, nix parle!” he shouted.
He was arrested on the spot, but with amazing presence of mind he did not look over his shoulder as they led him away.
Paulette settled back into her seat, trembling. She was convinced that she would never see der Alte again, but Hans and Alfred reassured her. “They will take him to the station, then to a staging point for refugees. I will get him back,” Hans said with his usual authority. One simply believed him when he said these things, and it certainly reassured Paulette.
Der Alte had, in effect, created a distraction. The rest of us passed through the station as if invisible. Aware that hotel rooms were impossible to find, we went straight to Belle de Mai, a school where refugees were encamped in the high-ceilinged auditorium. There, no papers were required, no questions asked. It was unspeakable in every other way, however, with few sanitary facilities, no fresh drinking water.
“The good side is there are no rats,” I said to Hans, who had insisted we come here.
“Even rats have a little dignity,” Hans replied.
Everyone at Belle de Mai had the same wish: to get out of Marseilles as soon as possible—to Portugal, Casablanca, Cuba, Santo Domingo, even China. One heard outlandish stories of escape, a fair portion of which I dismissed as dangerous fiction. I consistently argued that we must bide our time and await the right opportunity.
The days grew steadily hotter and more miserable. Hans and Alfred searched, without luck, for der Alte. Paulette fretted, making us all frantic, while I stood in line at the Spanish embassy, hoping to acquire exit visas from France. Rumors of a German invasion of Marseilles spread like a late-summer grass fire among the refugees, putting even more pressure on everyone to get out.
My brother’s wife, Eva, was taking her small daughter to Montpellier, near Port-Vendres, a small seaport close to the Spanish border, and Hans thought it best that I join them. “You could take them over the border,” he said. “Get them safely to Portugal.” In the meanwhile, he would help the others in their search for exit visas while Paulette continued to search for her father.
“But Hans,” I said, “this is ridiculous.” It was just too awful to think of leaving him now.
“It’s really better this way,” he said, “and safer. We’ll meet in Cuba or Portugal, somewhere.”
“But when? How?”
“Soon,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “It won’t be a problem. We’ll stay in contact.”
I don’t know why I always believed him, but I did. Hans Fittko was like that.