THIRTY

MARTHE

Chavaniac-Lafayette

Summer 1942

Grief is like thick morning fog.

You breathe it, swim in it, drown in it—or at least you want to drown, but for some damned reason, you keep living, breathing, walking. One foot in front of the other even though you can’t see the path ahead. You tiptoe, and so does everybody else . . .

—poor thing. Fiancé died in a German prison camp. Typhus.

Without Henri Pinton, she’s got nobody now.

—why didn’t she marry him before he went?

Good question. Why didn’t I? I could’ve given Henri, and myself, a few weeks of wedded bliss before he got called up to his regiment. We wouldn’t have even had time to know if it was a mistake. We could’ve rented a little house in the village and enjoyed playful mornings in bed—Henri was always like a kid in a candy store when I let him touch me, like he thought he was getting away with something, even though he was always the one to stop. Since the rationing hadn’t started yet, we could’ve had coffee at the village café with a warm pastry, and when I came home from teaching, he’d be studying by the fire with a baguette, a crock of butter, and maybe a little salted ham.

Hey, blondie, he’d have said, and then we could’ve listened to the radio and argued about dirtied dishes in the sink. It wasn’t the life I’d dreamed of, but we could’ve been happy for all the time we had left. All the time we’d ever have, and I wasted it.

I could’ve had his baby. Now there’ll never be another little gap-toothed boy with Henri’s dark eyes and dark hair. He died, not in battle, but of some disease that he was probably trying to help others fight, and now he is gone like he never existed—he’s left nothing behind but a few photographs and a brokenhearted mother. And me . . . whoever I really am.

Just a nobody from Chavaniac.

“Drink up, Marthe,” Anna says, popping off the cap of a bottle of cold soda pop and trying to coax me to drink by the castle’s pool, where we supervise kids splashing and swimming on a hot day. I can’t figure out where she got the bottle of soda, but she’s been like a persistent herding dog since Henri’s death, nipping at my heels.

You have to eat, Marthe.

—get just a little sleep. Just close your eyes for a few minutes.

—sunshine is just the thing. Dr. Anglade says so!

Well, Dr. Anglade might be shocked to hear it, but sunshine isn’t a cure for grief. The sun just blinds me and sets off that strange buzzing in my ears that makes the sound of the children laughing and playing all seem very far away. Even the soda is tasteless as it slips down my parched throat. What I need is a real drink. The baron keeps a hidden stash of liquor in the cellar—quite a collection of top-shelf hooch—and I’ve been nipping from it on a nightly basis.

As I’ve said, I know all the castle’s secret places.

“Maîtresse!” calls little Gabriella, in a striped swimsuit, waving her arms at me before doing a cannonball into the pool. She’s not a little mouse anymore; she’s made friends other than the mean tomcat. She’s a good student too. If she were living in the Occupied Zone, she’d be wearing a yellow star, but here at the Lafayette Preventorium, she’s just a child like any other.

Her father still doesn’t think it’s safe to visit—not with Sergeant Travert and his gendarmes making spot patrols—so Gabriella comes to church every Sunday and mimics all the prayers. It’s the same church where the curé had a small service for Henri, putting a photo of him on the wall with other fallen villagers of other wars, and everyone lit candles in Henri’s honor.

We don’t know where he’s really buried.

Probably some pig-shit hole, Madame Pinton had shouted the day she learned of Henri’s death. Then she let out a wail that still echoes in my ears all these months later. After her first burst of anguish, she didn’t seem to want to say another word to me. And I don’t blame her.

Now Gabriella comes up out of the pool, grinning, her hair soaked and water dripping down her nose. “Was it good, Maîtresse? Did I make a big splash?”

I clap. “Very good, little squirt! Now try the diving board.”

I’ve discovered that I can just do that. Put on a happy mask and go through the motions, pretending everything’s fine. Of course I can keep teaching. I’m better now. Right as rain!

Acting like a person is like squeezing into some old dress that doesn’t fit anymore—I can breathe shallowly for a few hours, but then the seams start ripping and I need to claw it off and gulp in air. Even here, out in the open summer sky, with the vision of the castle towers on the horizon, I feel that suffocating sensation. So I get up and walk to the church to be alone.

I come here a lot since Henri died; the big wooden doors are never locked. The curé has a note on the door warning against letting in the roaming cats so they don’t knock over any candles. On my knees in the empty pews, I don’t talk to God, because he clearly doesn’t care about me or anyone else—but I like the quiet, which is why I’m annoyed to hear someone come in.

Anna has followed me. She makes the sign of the cross, kneels beside me, and clasps her hands beneath her chin. But she doesn’t speak to God either. “I wish it wasn’t me who told you Henri died.”

“Someone would have.”

“You’ll always remember it was me . . . it’s tainted our friendship.”

Is that what she thinks—that I blame her for telling me? No. I’m the one who tainted our friendship with sinful thoughts . . . that didn’t even feel sinful. But they were disloyal to Henri, and I don’t know how to forgive myself for that. I let her get too close, and now I want to put distance between us.

We can’t be friends like before.

“I have some news,” she says.

It’s going to be bad. There’s been nothing but bad news all summer. The shortages are worse than ever. Flour. Sugar. Petrol. The Vichy-controlled newspapers blame it on Jews. They’re supposedly hoarding for profit. We all know better. It’s the Nazis who are starving us.

On May Day, the Nazis lined up and shot French boys for painting anti-German graffiti. On Bastille Day, defiant crowds came out shouting for liberty, equality, and brotherhood. People were again shot dead for it. At least in nearby Clermont-Ferrand, protestors managed to sing the “Marseillaise” without being stopped by the gendarmes, because of a band of armed men from the nearby forests.

They fought back.

Remembering what Monsieur Kohn said, some part of me wonders—hopes, even—that the armed men I stumbled over in the forest were the ones who fought back in Clermont-Ferrand.

There are now open reports of death camps—some say more than a million Jews have been murdered already in the east. And here in France, thirteen thousand Jews in the Occupied Zone—fathers, mothers, and children—were shoved into Vélodrome d’Hiver, the indoor bicycle stadium, to await internment at Drancy, and then deportation. Even knowing what that might mean, our own policemen in Paris helped the Nazis do it. So when I ask Anna, “What news?” I’m half wondering if the British RAF is going to bomb us into hell, and if we deserve it.

But what she says is, “I’ve been thinking about the Relève.” She means the new program through which French people can now volunteer to work for Hitler in Germany. In return, they’ll release some French prisoners of war. It’s a grotesque idea—Sam’s been ranting on about it, and everywhere in the village we hear people cursing it, so I just stare at Anna.

“Don’t look at me that way,” she says. “The Nazis are executing French officers in retaliation—just pulling them out of prison camps and shooting them. My husband wasn’t shot for these latest incidents, but he could’ve been. Next time, he might be.”

She’s not wrong. The Nazis love to shoot people they think will make big news—and a French nobleman will send a message that we’re all just sheep to them, no matter what airs we put on. Even so, I can’t believe what she’s considering. “You think they’ll set your husband free if you go to Germany in his place? You’ve lost your mind! He’s a high-value hostage; they’re not going to make that trade. Even if they would, you’d be helping the enemy.”

“But the chief of the government says—”

“To hell with him!” I don’t care that I’ve said it in the middle of a church. “And to hell with you if you’re going to—what—work in one of their factories making guns for the Nazis? Your husband would never be able to look you in the eye again, and neither would I.”

She slides back on the bench and puts her face in her hands. “I don’t know what to do, Marthe! I feel so guilty.”

“For what?”

She’s quiet so long that I begin to wonder—or maybe even hope, in spite of my anger and distrust—that she’s felt about me the way I feel about her. But in the end she says, “For being alive, when your Henri is dead. For being free, when my husband is in a cage. For not being able to do anything that could make the least bit of difference to the world.”

That’s not what we were taught here at Chavaniac. It’s not what Adrienne Lafayette believed when she lived here. It’s not what Madame Beatrice believed when she made this place a haven for desperate children. And I don’t believe it either. I want to make a difference. More of one, anyway. I’m just not yet sure how.

I retreat to my turret. To my escape at the bottom of a bottle, where I won’t feel anything. But once I’m good and drunk, I stare at the block of translucent marble the baroness procured for me. I’ve been studying it for days, thinking about the veins. Studying my sketches, deciding which one best captures Adrienne Lafayette. Wishing I could bring her to life again. I should make a clay model first, but tonight I just want to hit something, so I grab a hammer and point chisel to rough it out even though it will get grit, dust, and chunks of stone everywhere. I should be doing this outside; it’s messy and hard work. Hard on my arms, shoulders, and back. It hurts . . . but I find that I want it to.