THIRTY-EIGHT

MARTHE

Chavaniac-Lafayette

September 1942

Sergeant Travert ushers me into the empty boys’ dining hall and closes the door, while another gendarme waits outside to prevent my escape. Then Travert drops his visored policeman’s cap onto the table. “Why don’t we sit down like friends, mademoiselle?”

I try to hide my fright behind insolence. “When did we become friends?”

In answer, with the toe of his boot, the gendarme kicks a chair out for me. Glaring as if my insides weren’t going to jelly, I slide into the wooden chair, keeping my back straight. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s what I’m going to do for you, mademoiselle! Let me start by telling you a story about an armed man I arrested in the woods this morning. Goes by the name of Beaufort. Are you acquainted with the monsieur?”

I stiffen. My first instinct is to lie—to say I don’t know any Monsieur Beaufort—but Travert wouldn’t be here questioning me if he didn’t know something. “Maybe. The name sounds familiar. I can’t be sure.”

“Perhaps this will refresh your memory,” says Travert, pulling some papers from his coat pocket, laying them on the table between us. He unfolds them, very carefully, revealing the papers I forged for the Kohn family.

And I go from stiff to rigid.

I’d say that everything is quiet as Travert watches me for a reaction, but the sound of my own breath roars past my ears as I struggle to keep it steady.

“These are false papers,” Travert says conversationally, as I wonder how he got hold of them. “We see them every day at the gendarmerie these days. Artists are the usual culprits—we have to take a second look at every cartoonist or painter in the Haute-Loire, because they can make remarkably convincing forgeries. But these? No. These were done by an amateur.”

Despite the steady ticktock of the clock on the mantelpiece, time itself slows. Do I confess and throw myself on his mercy or try to bluff? In the end, bravado wins out. “How can you tell?”

Travert actually smiles. “Glad you asked. According to these papers, Monsieur Beaufort was born in this little town,” he says, pointing to my improvised stamp. “Probably the forger believed an obscure birthplace would make it difficult to confirm. In fact, it is as easy as a phone call to the mayor’s office there to cross-check birth records.”

What an idiot I am! Even as I think this, I force myself to feign a yawn. “Interesting.”

Travert arches one bushy brow. “It’s the kind of mistake a small-town person makes; someone who hasn’t seen much. And then the name, of course. Beaufort. It made me think.”

It’s making me think too. I’m thinking: I’m going to jail.

I won’t do well in jail. I hate feeling trapped more than anything.

In the face of my panicked silence, Travert continues, “What are the chances, I wonder, that I would arrest a man who has forged papers that evoke a pretty castle, and that he’d be wearing the missing red hat of an artist I know. An artist who also just happens to live in a pretty castle?”

Merde! That damned red beret. A lump of fear for Monsieur Kohn and loathing for Sergeant Travert makes it almost impossible to speak, so my voice comes out as a rasp. “Are you accusing me—did this Beaufort fellow say I had something to do with this?”

“He refuses to say anything.” Travert takes out his cigarette lighter and holds the flame between us. “I don’t think his silence will last, do you? Our new German friends say it’s easy to make people talk if you hurt them . . .”

I watch his lighter flicker and go cold and clammy. Travert wouldn’t burn me, would he? Not here, where children might hear me scream . . .

If he does, can I keep quiet? I just don’t know! Even Saint Joan cried when they burned her, and I’m no saint.

Travert leans forward, and by instinct, I bolt for the door, but he grabs me by the wrist and yanks me back into the chair. Between clenched teeth he says, “It occurs to me I could burn these, mademoiselle, and erase all evidence of the crime.”

So he’s offering a way out, and my heart leaps at the possibility, but nothing is free in this world. I remember the way he touched me when he caught me with contraband in my bicycle. The way he gave me cigarettes after finding me at the side of the road and drove me home, telling me, A pretty girl like you is worth the bother. So it’s going to be blackmail.

Unable to keep the disgust out of my voice, I ask, “What do you want?”

He brings his face close, dark eyes boring into mine. “What I want, mademoiselle, is your promise that if you do something like this again, you won’t be so stupid.”

I blink as he lets go of my wrist and sets the forged identity cards on fire. Tears of confusion spring to my eyes, and my every limb goes weak with relief as the paper curls and burns to ash.

“Don’t be cute, Marthe,” he says. “If you’re making false papers, don’t use birthplaces that can be verified. Don’t let people know who you are—protect your identity so no one can give you away. Do you understand?”

I nod dumbly. But then I have to ask, “Without papers, what’s going to happen to the man you arrested?”

“They’ll check if he’s circumcised. He had an unauthorized weapon. They’ll want to send him to Drancy and then some place called Auschwitz.”

Not wanting to reveal Monsieur Kohn’s name, but still wanting to protect him, I blurt, “But he’s French.”

“Good. Then I’ll charge him with being part of a thieving ring, and it’ll take time to get through the court system. Maybe time enough to arrange it so he’s sent somewhere else. It’s the best I can do.”

Poor Monsieur Kohn! It’s a terrible solution, but I can’t think of a better one. “Thank you . . . but I have to know why you’re helping . . .”

“You think I like rounding up people like cattle? Up until now, we knew the camps were harsh—bad conditions. But they were French camps, not Nazi death camps . . .”

“So it’s true.” I almost choke on the words. “They’re killing deportees.”

His expression is bleak. “The Germans claim they’re resettling Jews in the east—but it’s not all Jews they’re taking, and no one hears from these people again once they board those trains. You tell me what I should think.”

I can’t wrap my mind around it. “I don’t know.”

“All I know is that if I quit, they’ll put some gendarme in my place who won’t look the other way. And even I can’t look the other way every time, because if I’m fired, they’ll send me to jail or to Germany. It’s a box. There’s no way out but small acts of defiance.”

I understand the dilemma. Blowing out a breath, I admit, “You scared me half to death!”

“I was trying to. Being scared will keep you from being stupid.”

If I were smart, I’d wash my hands of this whole forgery business now—but with Monsieur Kohn under arrest, getting his children admitted to the preventorium with new papers is more important than ever. I have to start again. New cards, new photographs, new stamps, with only days to spare. Maybe I should ask Anna to help, but then she’d be in danger too. Maybe she would help me, or maybe she would tell . . .

That thought has a venomous bite, and I squash it like a stinging insect. “The baroness is going to have questions. How am I going to explain your coming here? Am I supposed to tell everyone I know something about a thieving ring?”

“No.” Travert clears his throat. “As it happens, there’s a simpler explanation for my visit.”

“Which is?”

“I’ve come to make you an offer of marriage.”

I give him a look that should wither his balls. “Just when I was beginning to think you were a hero . . .”

“You’re too smart to think that.” Travert lights his cigarette. “The age of heroes is over, even if their castles still stand. Nowadays, we’re all just savages willing to do terrible things to get what we want.”

“And you’re saying you want me?” When he nods, my fists clench. “So this is a bargain for your silence . . .”

“Mon Dieu, what does a man have to do to earn your trust? I’m offering a free choice! At least take a little time to think it over.”

I laugh. “You think I need time?”

He winces like my laughter hurts his feelings.

On the off chance he might be sincere, I say, “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to admit, this is out of the blue.”

His dark brown eyes meet my blue ones. “Is it really, mademoiselle?”

I think back.

You’ve always been the most interesting girl in these mountains . . .

Mademoiselle, for you, I can keep a secret . . .

Now he stiffens like a man trying to hold on to his pride. “I have a house. A steady paycheck. Marry me and you don’t have to register for the Service du Travail Obligatoire. What’s more, I admire you and what you’re doing, and if you want to keep doing it—well . . .”

“Well, what?”

“No one suspects the gendarme’s wife.”