ONE
MARTHE
Chavaniac-Lafayette
The Free Zone
October 1940
I’ve almost made it, I think, pedaling my bicycle faster when I see the castle’s crenelated tower at the summit. I’ve ridden past yellowing autumn farmland, past the preventorium’s dormitories for boys, and past the terra-cotta-roof-topped houses of the village. And despite blistered feet and scuffed saddle shoes, I’m feeling cocky.
As I near the castle proper, I’m no longer worried anyone is going to take what I’ve carried all this way, which is probably why I’m so surprised to see Sergeant Travert’s old black Citroën parked by the village fountain.
Quelle malchance! What shit luck.
Sergeant Travert patrols our village every evening on his way home. For some reason the gendarme is early today, and having stalled out his jalopy, he’s got the hood up to repair it.
I try to ride past, but he notices and waves me over.
My heart sinks as Travert approaches, doffing his policeman’s cap, then resting his hand on his holstered pistol. “What have we here, mademoiselle?”
I pretend to be calm while he peers into my bicycle pannier baskets. “Just some supplies from Paulhaguet.”
That’s the nearest little town, where I bought dried sausage with ration coupons, but I traded on the black market to get sugar, paper for my classroom, and medicine for the doctors at the preventorium.
Black market barters for hard-to-find goods are illegal. I took the risk anyway for a good cause, but I had a selfish motive too. One the snooping constable uncovers with a disapproving arch of his bushy brow. “Cigarettes?”
According to our new leader, Marshal Pétain, Frenchwomen who smoke—not to mention foreigners and unpatriotic schoolteachers—are to blame for France’s defeat.
Personally, I think it had more to do with Hitler.
Maybe it even had to do with military leaders like Pétain who believed in fairy tales like the stupid Maginot Line to keep us safe. I can’t say something like that, though. I shouldn’t even think something like that about the Marshal—the man who saved France in the last war, and, as everyone says, the only man who can save us now.
But merde, what smug idiots got us into this war?
Hitler’s panzer divisions rolled past French defenses five months ago. The Allies fled at Dunkirk, leaving forty thousand French soldiers to cover their retreat and hold the Germans back. All for nothing. Eighteen days later, we surrendered, to the shock of the world. Like almost everyone else, I was relieved; I thought the fighting would stop and that Henri would come home. But now a swastika is flying over the Eiffel Tower, and France—or what’s left of her below the line of demarcation—is neutral while Britain fights on, alone.
Almost two million French soldiers are prisoners of war—including Henri. My Henri. Given all that, smoking is the only thing keeping me sane, so the lie comes easily. “The cigarettes are for the baron.”
The gendarme looks over his shoulder at the castle and says, “I took the Baron de LaGrange more for a man who prefers a pipe.”
The baron is now the acting president of the preventorium. The baroness trained as a nurse in the last war and has a knack for organization, but unfortunately, women aren’t supposed to run anything now, so her husband got the job. And as the founder of an elite pilots’ training school and a senator with connections in the new Vichy government, the baron is too powerful to question about cigarettes.
Travert knows it and knits those bushy brows.
For a moment, I think he’ll shrug and walk away. Instead, he sweeps autumn leaves off the low stone wall and leans against it. “It gets lonely around here these days, mademoiselle, does it not? Tell me, what does a schoolteacher with such pretty blue eyes do when class is not in session?”
“I lie about eating chocolates.” What does he think? There are four hundred sick children to feed at the preventorium—which means growing vegetables, milking cows in the dairy, and helping to raise and butcher pigs.
Every day since the war started has been a struggle, but I don’t think he cares about that. No, I think the gendarme is after something else when he reaches for my wrist and traces it with his thumb. “Your tone is sharp, mademoiselle. You ought to show more respect for an officer of the law.”
I probably should, considering he could arrest me or seize my ill-gotten goods, but I’m too angry that he’s touching me. I don’t think he’d dare if I were wearing my engagement ring. It’s tucked under my scarf, hanging from my neck on a chain because it kept slipping off a finger that has become, like the rest of me, thinner than before the war. Thinking about it makes me combative. “You really want to know what I do when I’m lonely? I kiss the picture of my fiancé, praying for his safe return from his prisoner of war camp.”
That’s enough to shame the gendarme, who shrugs like he was just testing me. “I wish all Frenchwomen were so devoted.”
Sure, I was so devoted that I made Henri wait until the very last minute, once it was too late to arrange the wedding he wanted. Feeling miserably guilty, I look away, and the gendarme notices. “You’re certain you have nothing to hide, mademoiselle? Your cheeks are pink!”
“The air is chilly,” I say, tugging my old red beret down over my ears. “And I exhausted myself standing in line at the shops in Paulhaguet all morning, and on the ride back.”
This is a stupid lie, because Travert knows I’ve been hiking, camping, and hunting in these rugged woods since I was in pigtails. A bicycle ride isn’t enough to wind me. Then again, everything is harder when you’re hungry.
Travert puffs out his barrel chest. “Exertion is good for you. The Marshal says to stay fit. Get lots of exercise and fresh air.”
I could outrun Travert in a footrace any day, but I’d rather not have to, so I settle on sarcasm. “We must fight the rot of la décadence and restore the honor of France, no?”
He laughs, and I laugh too, but neither of us is amused.
According to the Marshal, the honor of France is so fragile that it was lost to art, accents, women, and wine. Meanwhile, on the BBC, the rogue General de Gaulle says French honor can be restored only by suicidal resistance against the Nazis.
I don’t believe either of them.
These days it’s hard to believe in anything but self-interest. And it’s self-interest that saves me. Tempted by the dried sausage peeking out of its paper, Travert breaks an end off for his lunch and leaves me the rest. “Au revoir, mademoiselle.”
He knows I’m guilty of black market bargaining or he wouldn’t have taken a piece of my sausage, so I don’t argue. “Adieu!”
Once inside the castle gates, I dodge mud puddles in the drive, where the ambulance has been stranded for a week without fuel. The children are at recess wearing scout uniforms; it seems everyone wears a uniform of some kind these days to restore our morals.
A fair-haired eight-year-old who came to us from Lille afflicted with rickets now hops off the swing set, her corkscrew curls bouncing as she runs through fallen leaves to greet me, calling, “Maîtresse! Maîtresse!” She’s followed by an asthmatic fifteen-year-old from Toulouse, who is almost cured and ready to go back to her family.
Both girls are curious about my packages, so I scold, “No peeking. It’s a surprise for the kitchen.”
The littlest’s eyes round. “Did you find cat tongue cookies?”
Our Lafayette kids all love the buttery crisps sent to us by Madame Beatrice from New York; they don’t know our supplies are dwindling because of the blockade. For the children, the war seems far away, and we want to keep it that way, so I say, “We have to save the cookies for Christmas, but you might get a little sausage in your lentil soup. Now, go play before nap time.”
When the girls run off, I stow the bicycle, tuck the cigarettes into my back pocket, and take the parcels to the old feudal guardroom kitchen, which the baroness has all but transformed into a modern canning factory. She’s determined to pickle and preserve every last edible thing before winter sets in, assisted by the school’s doyenne, Madame LeVerrier, and the foundation’s secretary-general, Madame Simon—both of whom are as much a part of the castle as the wooden shutters on the casement windows.
Working beneath old copper pots that hang from the vaulted ceiling, the three women greet me as a heroine for finding even a little sugar. But I don’t stay to bask in their praise, because the last thing I want is to be pressed into making wild strawberry preserves.
I’m in such a hurry to escape canning duty that I nearly plow over poor Dr. Anglade, who is coming down the castle’s winding main staircase with a tray of syringes. When he sees what I’ve got for him, though, his stern expression melts. “Sulfonamide,” he whispers reverently. “Dr. Boulagnon said he didn’t expect a shipment in Paulhaguet for a week. Where did you get it?”
“It’s better you don’t ask too many questions.” Or at least, that’s what Madame Simon told me when emptying the preventorium’s discretionary cashbox to send me on this mission. She also said, When there’s a war on, it’s best not to tell anyone anything they don’t need to know.
Now Dr. Anglade eyes me warily through his round, wire-rimmed spectacles. “Can you get more?”
I shake my head. It’s somebody else’s turn to risk trading on the black market. Doing it once was impulsive. Twice would be stupid. I’ve always believed that you shouldn’t put your neck out for others unless you want it chopped. So, having done my good deed, I trudge to my classroom, a plain chamber featuring rows of wooden desks for little girls and one for me. Over the door hangs a new portrait of the Marshal, white-haired, white-whiskered, and in uniform. Every teacher in France is supposed to enlist children to send drawings and letters and stories to the new head of state as a so-called Christmas Surprise for the Marshal.
I resent this. Our sick kids are with us at the preventorium only between six months and two years, until they’re cured. My job is to see they don’t fall so far behind in schooling that they can’t pass the examinations for their certificate of primary studies. I teach them reading, writing, and basic mathematics. I don’t have time to teach them about the Marshal or his so-called new National Revolution. Or maybe I just don’t want to, because my feelings about both are mixed. Not that I have the right to judge. I’m no war hero, and everyone says the Marshal is doing the best he can. After all, with half the country occupied by the Nazis, we’re all held at gunpoint, and it’s impossible to know which of the new laws the Marshal is forcing down our throats and which Hitler is forcing down his.
Brooding about this, I make fifteen copies of tomorrow’s spelling test, spreading the master copy out onto the hectograph tablet until the ink is ready. Then I carefully press paper to the gel and smooth it until it’s a perfect mimic. I’m always particular about making worksheets, because it’s about as close to a creative art as I get now that we’re short on pens, paper, charcoal, and paint. And while the copies dry, I look over the Christmas Surprise assignments.
One of my students has drawn the Marshal as a lion wearing a French military cap, because I told her he was called the Lion of Verdun—and I laugh because she’s given her lion a mustache. I’m less amused by the sycophantic essays written by the older girls about how the Marshal has given France the gift of his person. Maybe I’d be feeling more charitable if Henri weren’t in a prison camp under the terms of surrender the Marshal negotiated.
I’m still hungry after a few slices of dried sausage at my desk. Here in the countryside we still have eggs and fruit and even butter—but it never seems like enough. Cigarettes take the edge off, so I’ll have to find a secret spot in the castle to smoke where I can’t be caught by our household management teacher, Faustine Xavier, a prissy little tattletale, who always wears her starched collars too high and her hair pinned too tight. Fortunately, I know all the secret spots. The old hidden feudal passages are too cold this time of year and I’m too claustrophobic to spend much time there anyway, but the attic has sunny windows, which makes it a favorite haunt of the castle cats—and I like it too.
It’s where I used to sculpt and sketch, but no one goes up there anymore, so when I push the ancient door open wider on its rusty hinges, I’m startled to see a silhouette in the window seat. And the silhouette is equally startled by me. “Sacrebleu!” A dark-haired beauty emerges in statuesque splendor, silk blouse, bright red lipstick, and a cigarette holder between her fingers. “I thought you were my maman come to catch me out.”
“Your maman?” I ask, confused.
The elegant stranger stares. “. . . Marthe?”
I stare back without recognition.
She smirks. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
I feel like I should. No artist should forget cheekbones like hers, but lots of people pass in and out of this castle every day, and have every day of my life. Still, I find something familiar about her long dark eyelashes . . .
“About ten years ago,” she prompts. “Maman brought me with her for some holiday function. You were one of the only girls at the orphanage, so I knitted you a red beret . . . and you took me sledding.”
That jogs my memory. I was thirteen, and she was twelve, sporty and boyish. She’s all girl now, which is why I didn’t recognize her as the baron’s daughter. “Anna de LaGrange?”
Flashing an art deco wedding ring set on her left hand that nearly blinds me with the green sparkle of its big emerald baguettes, she says, “I became the comtesse de Guébriant just before the war . . . not that marriage would stop Maman from scolding me like a child if she caught me smoking near her sacred relics.”
She gestures irreverently to the crates filled with old donations to the castle’s museum that haven’t been sorted yet. Uniforms, maps, flags—tokens of the supposedly unbreakable alliance of Western democracies that helped win the last war. But in this war our British allies left us at Dunkirk, and the Americans let Hitler invade us with a neutral shrug. So as far as I’m concerned, these crates contain the detritus of a democratic alliance in decay. And given the current state of affairs, I don’t think a little tobacco smoke is going to do it any more harm . . .
“So you’re a countess now.” I make a whistle that sounds like la-di-da. “Should I curtsy?”
She laughs. “Don’t you dare. I don’t go by the noble title except to irritate Maman with the reminder that I outrank her, but unfortunately she’s too American to care.”
I grin, stooping to pet the gray cat that circles my ankles. “I actually still wear that red beret. Everyone in the village sees me coming a mile away. And don’t worry about your mother. The baroness is too busy pickling everything in reach to come up here.”
Anna pats the window seat beside her in invitation to me, the cat, or both. “I’d offer you a cigarette, but it’s my last one . . .”
“Thanks, I’ve got my own.” I show her the blue package with its winged helmet, but I don’t have a holder like hers and wouldn’t use one if I did. “Gauloises.”
“Gitanes,” Anna says, snapping shut an empty diamond-encrusted cigarette case.
Well, isn’t she all sparkle? Taking a long drag, she says, “This summer, when the air sirens in Paris sent me scrambling, this cigarette case was the only thing of my husband’s I managed to rescue from our apartment. If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have grabbed the framed picture from the wall. Now all I’ve got to remember him by is this . . .”
She pauses, savoring the distinctive sharp smoke as if tasting a lover’s tongue. I feel as if I’ve intruded upon a private memory until she leans forward to light my cigarette with the glowing end of hers—pulling me into the intimate moment.
And I’m caught there.
“Is your husband—is he—”
“A prisoner,” she says. “Papa tells me your fiancé is too.”
I nod. “Stalag VIII-A, somewhere near Poland.”
Her pretty face twists with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Marthe.”
I nod, feeling sorry for her too. What a lousy thing for us to have in common. “What brings you to these hinterlands?”
She shrugs. “I fled to Biarritz after the armistice, but Maman wants to breathe down my neck, so here I am with nothing to do.”
“Oh, there’s plenty to do here—mostly work, though.” I wonder if Anna knows how fortunate she is to have a mother to worry after her. I envy her, but I already like Anna more than I envy her, and I don’t like many people.
Besides, it’s nice to have someone my own age to talk to again.
“Don’t worry.” She grins. “I’m not expecting a vacation. I have a few tennis and swimming trophies to my name, so come summer I’ll give lessons to the kids. Meanwhile, Maman is putting me to work with Madame Simon.”
“My condolences.”
Anna looks wary. “Simon’s that bad to work for?”
I shrug. “She’s blunt—but she keeps licorices for the kids in that leather briefcase of hers, so she’s not all bad.” But her office is in the square tower where we keep all the Lafayette Memorial Foundation’s paperwork. Accounting books. Admissions applications. Discharge forms. Medical, academic, and employment records. In short, it’s the dullest place in the castle. What I tell Anna is, “It’s just chaos in the records office every fifteenth of the month; that’s the day kids are admitted to the preventorium.”
“Anything else I should know?”
A lot of boring stuff, but I want to impress her, so I say, “There are secret passages in the castle.”
Her eyes brighten. “Really? Where do they go?”
“Nowhere now; they’ve been sealed up at the exit. But as kids we were terrified of getting lost in the walls and turning to a pile of bones.”
“So there must be ghosts . . .”
“Doesn’t every castle have ghosts in the movies?”
She grins wider. “Which reminds me—do you fancy going to the cinema with me sometime? My treat!”
Blowing a ribbon of smoke, I give her an unfortunate dose of reality. “I’m told there are three cinemas in Clermont-Ferrand, but that’s hours away.”
Anna sighs, fiddling with the bow of her blouse. “We really are in the middle of nowhere. Honestly, Marthe, I was surprised to learn you stayed on as a teacher here. I didn’t figure you for the type.”
“I’m not,” I reply, waving my cigarette as evidence. “This year’s letters of instruction say teachers are to serve as a moral example, and are entrusted with the whole future of the nation. Well, if that isn’t just a bit more than I’m willing to take on . . .”
We both laugh, and it’s a real laugh.
Flicking our ashes out the cracked window onto the terra-cotta roof tiles, we fall into easy conversation about books, movies, and art. She remembers that I used to sketch and notices my old easel in the corner. “Oh, no! I’ve accidentally invaded your sanctum sanctorum, haven’t I? Don’t tell me you’re using this icebox your studio.”
“Not since the war.” In agreeing to marry Henri, I’ve given up dreams of a formal education in the fine arts, but that didn’t stop the desire to create, and now I’m fighting off a different kind of hunger. “I’m not really working on anything anymore.”
“Why not?”
I stare at my scuffed saddle shoes. “What’s the point?” We’re all too busy trying to get enough food, enough fuel, enough medicine. I can’t justify using up paper, pencils, desperately needed supplies on artwork that seems . . . somehow . . . trivial. I’d feel like a pretender anyway.
I don’t say any of this to Anna, who finds my bust of Adrienne Lafayette and gasps. “Is this yours?”
I nod, embarrassed, and stub out my cigarette. “It’s not any good. It’s all wig and eyebrows . . .”
But Anna’s interested. She stares a long time, really studying my work. I find myself holding my breath, and I don’t exhale until she says, “This piece might be brilliant, actually. It’s not the usual shiny marble. It’s rougher. You’ve given a glimpse into the woman’s humanity, warts and all . . .”
Pleased, but afraid to look at Anna, I say, “I’m not good enough to work in marble yet, but I left the soapstone unpolished, hoping the texture would give it a modern edge.”
“It really does! Where did you learn to sculpt?”
“Madame Beatrice gave me a few lessons.”
The somewhat mysterious founder and president of the Lafayette Memorial Foundation is a polymath—actress, sculptress, and author of a book about an obscure desert queen. I was always flattered by the special interest she showed me on her yearly visits to the castle to oversee the charitable venture. I was touched by her warm encouragement too. “Of course, Madame Beatrice studied and mastered the neoclassical style, whereas I’m just sketching and sculpting by instinct.”
“Then you have a natural gift, Marthe. You can’t let it go to waste just because there’s a war on!”
And with these words, I feel like she’s shaken me awake from a long slumber.
Anna changes everything at the castle. For one thing, the baron’s daughter is the ginchiest girl around for miles. With her movie-star good looks, bold red lipstick, and formfitting sweaters, she’s got men tripping over themselves. Never mind that she’s married; Dr. Anglade and the Latin master nearly come to fisticuffs vying to open a door for her. And fourteen-year-old boys in the preventorium are all suddenly devout Catholics, eager for Sunday Mass at the village church, jostling to get close to Anna’s pew just for a whiff of her sweet and smoky Tabu perfume.
Anna’s also brimming with ideas for the preventorium—which is a shot in the arm, because since the Fall of France we’ve all existed in a state of suspension, breathing shallowly and waiting for our prisoners to come home. France’s defeat has been especially devastating for the older, flag-waving generation, who are teary this Armistice Day, lost in bitter memories of the last war. It’s depressing even for somebody like me, and I was never cheerful to begin with, so Anna’s spiritedness is a proverbial breath of fresh air.
She hosts Wednesday-night billiard games and Sunday-night socials at which she plays piano for the staff. She teaches the older girls in the preventorium how to roll their hair and walk in heels with books balanced on their heads. She doesn’t seem to have any idea of the effect she has on people, but she’s a swell distraction. She makes it easier to forget the debacle of our continued national humiliation. At least until the autumn day when officials from Vichy show up at the castle to interrogate us. Then gossip flies up and down the square tower and in and out of the schoolrooms.
“Another political purge?”
“But we don’t have any Jews or Freemasons left on the teaching staff!”
“—could they be looking to make arrests?”
We’re eventually told the Marshal is considering a visit to the preventorium come springtime. The aging leader of France likes to bask in the adoration of children, but under the pretext of security, he sends advance men to sweep away adult dissenters and so-called undesirables. That’s why Sergeant Travert and an officious little inspector from Vichy now sit across from me in the castle library, and the latter asks, “Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party, mademoiselle?”
“I’m not much of a joiner,” I say.
From his wing chair, the stately Baron de LaGrange gives me a barely perceptible warning look to let me know that now isn’t the time to wisecrack. I rein in my smart mouth, answering a few more questions before the inspector asks me to start snitching. “Tell me, mademoiselle. Are any of your colleagues at the school foreigners or Freemasons?”
All the foreigners are gone, but I’m pretty sure the Latin master used to be a Freemason. He’s an insufferable old goat, but now isn’t the time to settle scores. “None that I’m aware of . . .”
“Jews?”
“Not on the teaching staff,” I say carefully, knowing the administrative offices are another matter. “Again, none that I’m aware of.”
“Degenerates?”
Having only a vague idea what he means, I stare at the official—whose lardy complexion no one could ever want to carve in anything but wax.
“Sexual deviants, mademoiselle,” he explains. “Women of low morals, corruptors of young people, homosexual men, sapphists, or pederasts . . .”
In my indignance, my mouth falls slack. And as my silence drags on, the baron pointedly clears his throat. This time I don’t think his warning is for me, and the inspector moves on. “Any self-avowed champions of the republic?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I wouldn’t tell you if I did, I think, plastering on a dim-witted smile. “I’m not political.”
At least that much is true. Frenchwomen have never been allowed to vote, so I didn’t see the point. Before the war, everybody was so worried about the communists that I never thought to worry about the royalist imbeciles who read Action Française—or the fascist crackpots of the Parti Populaire. Now the imbeciles and crackpots have power—or at least as much as the Nazis let them have. And I wonder which kind of imbecile or crackpot this beady-eyed official is . . .
“I’m told, mademoiselle, that you’ve lived your whole life here. Perhaps that’s why your manner is so . . . American?”
It’s true that I grew up surrounded by teachers, soldiers, and doctors from the United States. Still, I snap, “I’m a Frenchwoman.”
“You must’ve been instructed here to revere General Lafayette, no?”
“Oui.” Now doesn’t seem like the time to admit I paid only half attention to those lessons, but everyone knows the new government’s persecutions go against Lafayette’s ideals of democracy, political liberty, and religious freedom.
That must be the problem, because the official says, “Individualism and the myth of human equality have brought France to her knees, mademoiselle. We cannot have our schoolteachers wedded to the old revolution, one aimed to appease the evil-minded mob. Revolution in our new age will nourish the people through discipline. Discipline teachers like you must provide.”
I steal a look at the baron to see if he’s on board with this, but he’s busy adjusting his expensive silk tie, and Sergeant Travert’s expression is like stone. I realize that if I don’t go along, I’m going to get the ax. Since I can’t afford to be fired from the only job I’ve ever had and my only means of supporting myself, I keep smiling until my cheeks hurt. “As I said, I’m not political. I just teach neutral subjects.”
“There can be no neutrality in the classroom,” the official barks. “As Marshal Pétain says, The teaching of neutrality is the teaching of nothing. You have to inculcate your students with a love—even worship—of the new order.” I nod again, gambling that this guy just likes to hear himself talk. Then he slides a piece of paper in front of me. “Sign this.”
He can’t be serious. The paper says that I solemnly swear I’m not a member of any secret society. Should I confess our old orphanage tree house club where Henri and Sam wouldn’t let me in without a code word?
The official says, “Your oath is required under the law for civil servants.”
Of which, regrettably, I’m one. Sullenly, I sign the rotten thing. Meanwhile the baron pinches the bridge of his nose, and I stand, thinking we’re finished. That’s when the inspector reads my signature aloud. “Marthe Simone . . . What type of name is that, mademoiselle?”
I know what he’s getting at and I don’t want to tell him I was named by and after our secretary-general, who is part Jewish. As the story goes, Madame Simon had to put something down on the forms for orphans with unknown parentage, so she made up some variation of her name. That’s why I grew up with an Armenian boy named Simonian. An Italian boy was called Simonetti, and I became Simone.
Before I can say any of that, the baron puts his pipe down, stands to his intimidatingly full height, and says, “Gentlemen, we’re running late and I can’t have my staff standing in the hall all day. You can go, Marthe.”
I don’t need to be told twice. Sergeant Travert tries to open the door for me, but I reach it before he can, and I want to slam it on my way out. I’m boiling mad for some reasons I understand and others I don’t. I’m in no mood to talk to anybody, but Anna waylays me on the grand staircase. “Maman wants to see you.”
Merde. The baroness probably has a whole new list of chores—the annoying ones that always fall to me because everybody else has husbands or families or something better to do.
“It’s important,” Anna says, so I go. But on my way, I keep trying to remember the exact expression on Anna’s pretty face when she said it was important. She looked serious . . . but did she look somber?
I worry when the baroness waves me into the parlor. “Ah. Ma chère mademoiselle.”
It’s not like the matter-of-fact baroness to be solicitous, and my stomach bottoms out when she comes round the front of the desk to greet me, perching on its edge. Her hair used to be dark like Anna’s, but in recent months it’s gone gray. And she’s never looked older than now. Fearing she has news about Henri, I shudder with sudden dread; I’ve told myself he’s too smart to risk an escape attempt from his POW camp, but what if he’s tried and got himself shot?
This is it, I think. Whatever she says next is going to wreck me.
A memory of Henri in a wild cherry tree flashes through my mind. We were sitting in its branches with our feet dangling when he kissed me the first time. He held his breath like he was afraid I’d pull away. Now I’m the one who can’t breathe as I wait for the baroness to tell me he’s dead . . .
“I’d like to discuss your employment,” she says, and I hiccup with relief, because even if she’s going to fire me, the news could’ve been so much worse. “In light of present political realities, the baron has decided to lock the museum until we can find new homes for the items that invite controversy.”
I don’t know what this has to do with me. Do they want to get rid of Ben Franklin’s ring or Washington’s dueling pistols? Maybe Lafayette’s copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Or perhaps the trouble is the tricolor banner emblazoned with Liberty, Equality, Fraternity now that the Marshal has replaced our national motto with Work, Family, and Fatherland.
I’ve never cared about slogans or the old trinkets in our museum. In fact, I spent my entire adolescence rolling my eyes at them, so I’m shocked by just how much I hate the idea of locking them away. Maybe the baroness hates it too, because she stares out the window at dormant volcanic mountains and trees now dropping their dried, shriveled leaves. And with real anguish she murmurs, “After all we sacrificed in the last war . . . it was supposed to end all wars, yet here we are.”
We’re both silent until she straightens her smart square-shouldered suit jacket and turns to me. “Marthe, I don’t have to tell you the difficulties we operate under here at the castle. The children need food, medicine, and blankets for the winter. Relief ships with supplies from New York can’t get through the British blockade. We’re going to need the French government’s help, and we can’t get it if this institution continues to celebrate Lafayette—whose political ideas are, in the current circumstances, considered dangerous.”
I’m tempted to ask which of Lafayette’s ideas are dangerous, just to see if she has the stomach to name them. But I don’t, because I didn’t have the courage to argue with the Vichy official when he said more or less the same thing. Now the baroness explains, “My daughter has suggested a way you might be able to help . . . and pursue your art at the same time.”
“You want me to paint over the masonic symbols on Lafayette’s walls?”
It’s a dark joke, but she’s serious. “Nothing so dramatic, but your sculpture gave her an idea. Yes, this is the house of Lafayette. Still, here also lived his wife, Adrienne—a good Catholic, a loyal spouse and devoted mother. A woman to whom the new government should raise no objection. If we were to commission you to replace some of Lafayette’s portraits with new ones of Adrienne . . .”
I finally understand the direction of this conversation, and why it pains her. I’m shocked by how much it pains me. Thanks to Anna, for the first time in my life I’m being offered a commission—my first commission—yet it’s for a terrible reason. And I’m being given the opportunity when seemingly every other woman in France is being told her purpose is to get married and breed. I don’t like it, but can I turn down a chance like this?
“To start with,” begins the baroness, “the foundation would like to purchase from you the sculpture of la femme Lafayette that you made last year. I’m sorry I didn’t think to do that sooner. So if you’re willing to sell it . . .”
I nod, because of course I’m willing. It’d be hard to find any art collectors interested in Lafayette these days, much less willing to buy a bust of his wife—even if I filed her eyebrows down. So I’ll take whatever’s on offer. “Merci,” I say, realizing with a little thrill that it’s my first sale. Beyond that, though, I want to tell the baroness I’m not interested in glorifying a dowdy eighteenth-century wife as an example for modern-day Frenchwomen, and I’m not interested in sanitizing this castle for the Marshal’s visit either. But after such a long time of feeling purposeless and without an excuse to create anything, I feel my resolve cracking even before she offers me the key.
“Anna tells me you’ll need a better workspace,” the baroness says, sliding the key onto the desk between us. “This opens the room our Madame President called her own when in residence at the castle. Beatrice used it as a studio at times, and I know she won’t mind if you make it yours.”
A studio of my own. My first real work as an artist. I stare at the tarnished old key like it’s an apple in the serpent’s garden. And knowing that it’s really Anna who rolled it in front of me, I’m not sure if she’s an angel or the devil. Like she already knows I’m not going to refuse, the baroness explains, “We’ll want a series of sketches portraying Adrienne Lafayette. To really understand her life. Particular emphasis on her devotion as a wife, as a mother, as a persecuted Catholic, and so on.”
And so on . . .
The way the baroness says this, I don’t think she’s a true believer. Oh, she believes in God, but not in Marshal Pétain’s so-called National Revolution—which seems like it’s aimed to undo the revolutions that came before. No, I think the baroness is a pragmatist like me. So I take that key, knowing it’s going to open the door to my future, even though I’m not sure what it’s going to unlock . . .