Rachel
Every day, when dawn broke over the city, and Rachel woke to the realities of her life—her father and brother gone, her lost job, Basia’s abandonment—all she wanted to do was burrow beneath the covers and never come out. She didn’t, no matter how powerful the pull. Her mother needed her.
This morning, though, after five days of unemployment, when she heard the clack of knitting needles, the desire to indulge in her own self-pity grabbed her by the throat. But no. She tossed a shawl over her shoulders and let her nose guide her to where her mother sat near the stove, their pitiful breakfast simmering in a foul, sickly stench.
How long, Rachel wondered, would they have gas flowing through the burners? Their very survival hung in the balance. Why, why had Basia left without ensuring they were cared for and fed? Had she not thought, even a little, about them? She claimed she would send for them. Yet they heard nothing.
Bitterness took root, and Rachel watched her mother set aside her knitting in favor of standing at the stove, staring vacantly into the pot. Ilka Berman seemed especially frail this morning. She’d always been a small woman. Now she appeared impossibly petite and fragile, as if she were shrinking inside herself.
The thought had barely settled when her mother looked up. The grief on her face, naked and bare, sent a slice of pain straight through Rachel’s heart. The woman she’d always known was missing. In her place was this broken creature. Alive, yes, but broken. Rachel wanted her mother back, but their roles had reversed. She was the adult now, Ilka Berman the child.
A knock at the door startled them both, and Rachel spun around to stare at the slab of wood, fearing what stood on the other side. Is this it? Have they come to arrest us?
The knock came again, but there were no shouts to open up, or demands to let them in. Not the police, then. Someone else.
Her mother must have come to the same conclusion because she shuffled toward her bedroom without another word. Rachel pulled the folds of her shawl tighter around her shoulders and answered the door. Camille stood in the hallway, an unreadable expression on her face. Rachel blinked in surprise. She hadn’t seen her friend since she’d been dismissed from the hotel. She’d missed their walks home together when their schedules had aligned. So why did she resent the girl’s appearance on her doorstep this morning? Had it come too soon? Too late?
What did it matter? Her friend was here now, and Rachel was being rude. Camille had been nothing but kind to her. Then why did she wish her gone? Why this need for solitude when she’d always hated being alone?
“Camille,” she said, in what she hoped was a pleasant tone. “Come in.”
As she stepped into the apartment, the shadows from the hallway rolled away, and Rachel got a good look at Camille’s face. Her eyes held such utter bereavement that Rachel’s first thought was of death. “Has something happened to your family?” She thought a moment, remembered her friend’s burdens. “Is it your mother? Your sisters? Has one of them fallen ill?”
“No, no. They are well. Or rather—” she pressed her lips together, sighed “—as well as can be expected, considering.”
“But something is wrong. I can see it clearly on your face.”
Sighing again, she glanced away, glanced back. “I have come to tell you something important, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Her nervousness was contagious, and Rachel set a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Here,” she said, pointing to the sofa. “Sit down. And tell me what you’ve come to say.”
“I can’t stay long. I have to—” She cut herself off, abruptly, and her gaze fell to the bag looped around her forearm. “Oh, I almost forgot. I brought you this.”
Rachel took the bag, looked inside, and saw food. So much food. Pastries and salted meats and cheeses and bread that smelled freshly baked. Her mouth watered. Her stomach growled. She didn’t know what to say, except the first thing that came to her mind. “How?”
“I confiscated what I could from the hotel kitchens.”
Again... “How?”
“Yesterday, before I left, I saw that Chef was about to toss these leftovers in the waste bin. I offered to do it on my way home. He seemed happy to be free of the task,” she said, pulling the opening wider. Together, they peered inside the bag. “Or maybe he knew I had other plans for the food and decided not to stop me.”
Rachel stared dumbfounded at her friend.
Basically, Camille had risked her job to steal food for her. She could have been arrested or stopped by a German soldier. Her friend had gone to great risk to supply Rachel with much-needed food. Her generosity was too much. Darkness and silence filled the moment. And Rachel’s shame swelled. But also, her hunger, and the impossibility of refusing this gift.
The words thank you were tangled up inside her pride. She couldn’t seem to push those two simple words of gratitude past her lips. I must.
“Tha—” She clutched the bag of delicacies to her chest, the scent of yeast and butter powerful in her nose. “Thank you, Camille. I’m grateful.”
And she was. So very, very grateful. And yet, also resentful. So very, very resentful.
“I’m sorry it took me this long to come. I have been embroiled in my own...” She trailed off, and silence fell between them again.
Rachel could tell this transaction was as uncomfortable for her friend as it was for her, but she didn’t have it in her to ease the woman’s distress. Camille, with her blond hair and blue eyes and perfect Aryan features, could not know what it was like to be Rachel. She could not know the prejudices and persecutions she endured. She could not know what it meant to be Jewish in German-occupied France.
Everything Rachel had been, had dreamed of being, everything she’d planned for herself and her future—it was all cast in a bruised, purplish shade of gray. She felt helpless. Her father and brother were missing, arrested for no reason. She didn’t know what had become of them. All Rachel and her mother could do was wait for news. They waited and waited and waited. For days, weeks, then months. It was as if Papa and Srulka had vanished into a spool of smoke rolling off the Seine.
“It’s dreadful, what Madame Bergeron did to you,” Camille was saying. “She shouldn’t have let you go over something she had to know you didn’t do.”
Yes, dreadful. How easy it had been for the housekeeping supervisor to dismiss her. She hadn’t even bothered to look remorseful. Rachel had been furious at first. But reality had set in, and then lumps of horrid, charred fear had followed. No other hotel would hire her. She’d tried. She’d looked for work in all sorts of places. Restaurants, boardinghouses, even a few seedy bars.
Now Rachel and her mother were reduced to accepting charity. She started to tremble with anger and humiliation, and Camille was still talking about the Ritz. “...I have quit my job at the hotel.”
But why? “Was it...” For me? she nearly asked. Had Camille quit out of solidarity for their friendship? That couldn’t be right. She needed the job. Rachel searched her friend’s face for an answer and saw uncertainty. That couldn’t be right, either. Camille was French-born with the looks of a perfect German. Any number of establishments would hire her.
“I have taken a job as a private housekeeper in Drancy.”
“Drancy? Is it closer to your home?”
“It’s about the same distance.”
“I still don’t understand,” Rachel said.
“I know. I’m not making myself clear. This is hard to say. I have taken the position of housekeeper with Herr Sturmbannführer von Bauer.”
Rachel’s shock came out in a low, horrified growl. Camille was going to work for a Nazi? “What? Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Then explain it to me. Explain, Camille, why you choose to work in the home of a Nazi, when you claim to be my friend.”
“I am your friend.”
“And yet you align yourself with the enemy.”
“It’s not like that.” Camille hopped to her feet and went to stand by the window. She made a show of scrutinizing its wooden frame, scratching at a mark on the glass, turning back around. “He’s paying me three times what I make at the Ritz. My family needs the money, Rachel. And really, when you consider the actual work I’ll be doing, it’s no different than working as a chambermaid at the hotel.”
Rachel recognized the shame in her friend’s eyes, but it wasn’t enough to erase her actions. “It’s one thing, Camille, to clean the rooms occupied by Germans staying at the Ritz. But to move into the home of a Nazi, live under the same roof? This is a foul choice. He could do anything he pleases with you. To you. He could—”
“He won’t. Vivian is moving into the house as well.”
“As his mistress.”
Camille frowned. “Don’t judge her so harshly. She is an ally, not the enemy.”
“You’re telling me that Vivian Miller, that horizontal collaborator, has orchestrated this new position for you in her lover’s house?” The taste of betrayal was back in Rachel’s throat, right there, then on the edge of her tongue. Oh, how she wanted to lash out. Why did Camille trust the American widow so completely?
“I will find a way to continue bringing you food.”
Rachel nearly slapped her friend’s face, so offended was she by her words. It took every ounce of self-control to keep her hand from moving. “You should leave now.”
The seconds that followed were among the longest Rachel had ever endured. Nothing but sound filled the moment, noises from the outside world, where people were living and surviving by any means possible. No different than the two of them.
The thought should have softened Rachel toward her friend.
It did not.
She stood frozen in a tableau of pain and rage. Whatever trust and affection had been between her and Camille was gone. They were both in this war, just as before, but now each was in her own private battle for her family.
It was another terrible loss. Another abandonment. Rachel felt her temples pulse, her vision blur. Eventually, as the sound of a motorcar passed on the street below, she gave up her stillness, as did Camille. They moved in tandem toward the entryway, neither speaking.
The motor grew faint in the distance. An apartment door from somewhere down the hallway creaked open. A baby’s distressing wail came thin and reedy from the floor below. “Rachel, please, I don’t want to leave with you angry at me. I want you to know this wasn’t an easy decision. I have to think about my family. I know you understand that. I—”
“Go.” She yanked open the door. “Go now.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
Camille stepped into the hallway, gave her a sad smile, and was gone a second later. Only once her footsteps faded completely did Rachel let out a slow, quiet cry of regret.
What had she done?
Exactly what she needed to retain what small shred of dignity she had left. Dignity will not fill your belly. But it did feed her soul. She chastised herself for thinking she’d done something wrong by sending Camille away. She gave one short, final sigh then returned to her apartment and the sound of her mother’s knitting.
She’d never felt more alone.