FORTY-SEVEN
MARTHE
Chavaniac-Lafayette
November 11, 1942
All France is occupied now.
It’s Armistice Day, and Nazi soldiers are everywhere; even here in the mountains, where every tree by the side of the road is covered with red and black swastikas and tacked-up posters of the new rules we’re forced to obey under penalty of death.
The threat of American invasion scared the Germans into crossing the demarcation line. So much for the Marshal and his Vichy government. I’d say good riddance, but now all France is at the mercy of soldiers who shout Heil Hitler, change our clocks to keep German time, seize even our hunting weapons, and requisition buildings and supplies.
There are whispers some fat Wehrmacht general wants Lafayette’s castle for his headquarters, and I’m sick to my stomach when the baron calls a staff meeting. It’s the baroness who rises to speak, and she gets directly to the point. “All contact with the United States has been cut off. We can’t get word to the foundation in New York at all.” Which means we won’t be getting any more help from Madame Beatrice or the American Red Cross. “Given these circumstances, we’ve been advised to close down the preventorium, and I know many of you wish to return to your homes and look after your families.”
A few heads are nodding.
“We understand, of course,” she continues. “But we’re going to try to continue on here. This castle has stood in defiance of dark times before. With your help, we mean to follow the example of those who came before us.”
“We can’t defy the Wehrmacht,” one of the nurses says.
“No,” replies the baroness coolly. “That’s true. Still, we can try to discourage them. For those willing to stay, it’s not going to be easy, but we have to try for the sake of the children.”
None of us really knows what this means. I don’t know if there will be money enough to pay my salary, much less to purchase the rest of my sketches—and the sculpture, if I ever finish it.
I don’t have to stay, I realize. I’m respectably married now, to a gendarme. I could probably get a teaching job in Paulhaguet, Le Puy, Brioude, or even Clermont-Ferrand. I always thought I’d jump at the first real chance to leave, but even if I didn’t have the Kohn children to look after, this is the only home I’ve ever known . . . and I’ll be damned if I let the Nazis take it.
So I’m the first to ask, “What’s the plan?”
The baroness and Madame LeVerrier have thought it out. We start by boarding everything up. We create false walls with sheets of paneling to hide the valuable tall gilt mirrors and paintings—ostensibly to keep the children’s sticky fingers off them, but more importantly, to make the whole thing look shabby. Then we start moving the girls from the dormitory into the castle proper.
The Nazis probably wouldn’t think twice about kicking sick kids out of hospital beds, but a building filled with tuberculosis, measles, and scarlet fever shouldn’t be too inviting, even for a fat German general.
Faustine Xavier calls our plan germ warfare of low cunning. Unfortunately, she doesn’t disapprove enough to quit in protest, which means I have to listen to her yammering while Madame LeVerrier hands nails up to me where I stand on a ladder with a hammer. “The German soldiers are so young,” Faustine is saying. “I saw some in a café in Paulhaguet. Very handsome, very correct. Their uniforms are quite smart. If only we could teach our French boys to be so mannerly and well dressed.”
I give her a look, the kind the Italians call the evil eye. “So you’re saying they’ve sent kids to invade us. They’re sending men to fight the Russians, but they think they need only boys to keep hold of France’s leash?”
“Because we’re cooperating,” Faustine says. “As we should.”
Before I throw my hammer at her, Madame LeVerrier intervenes. “I feel sorry for these German boys. How pitiful. What a shame to throw such youngsters into such awful business!”
Well, I don’t feel sorry for them. Not all of us do what we’re told. Our boys—boys like Oscar—paint rebellious graffiti and ride bicycles around to deliver pamphlets for the Resistance. So to hell with these German boys, no matter how young they are!
The children I feel sorry for are the ones I’ve hidden in this preventorium. Josephine and Daniel have been out of quarantine now for almost a month and spend recess with their little sister, who chatters all about her new Girl Guide badges. Daniel has learned Morse code, and the boys have stopped teasing him about his elephant ears. Josephine complains about the hours she spends in the gymnasium doing corrective exercises for her spine, but she’s already leading a Girl Guide troop. But with the German invasion, they’re now terrified for their father, and during recess on Wednesday, Josephine whispers, “Why isn’t Papa sending letters?”
She and her brother and sister all look up at me, and I don’t have the heart to tell them that their father has been sent to Rivesaltes, an internment camp only slightly less dangerous than Drancy. Any letter he sends might lead the police here, so he’s been silent, but I tell Daniel, Josephine, and Gabriella, “I’m sure he’ll write soon.”
That’s when Daniel shows me the pin that his father gave him when they last saw him. A tricolor—old and faded. “He said he got it from a superhero, and that it always made him feel brave, and watched over. That it would make me feel brave too. So why am I still scared?”
God knows I’m scared too, so I hug him close. “Daniel, it’s not bravery unless you’re scared.”
He sounds dubious. “You think Lafayette got scared sometimes?”
“Yes.”
Daniel, who, like the rest of the boys, collects old American comics, asks, “What about Captain Marvel?”
“As sure as you can say Shazam.”
On Thursday, I see Travert. It’s supposed to be my day off, and I’m supposed to spend it with him at his house. It’s the arrangement I agreed to before German tanks rolled into the Free Zone—now there’s too much to do at the chateau. I expect an argument, but he doesn’t give me one. He only asks how he can help.
Meanwhile, his fingers tentatively brush my shoulder. It’s a question. One he doesn’t voice, but he doesn’t need to. I know what he wants, and I want it too, so before returning to the castle, we settle for a few minutes’ diversion in the front seat of his police car on a deserted road.
It’s better this time because we don’t talk or try to examine our feelings. I’ve already learned hard lessons about how dangerous feelings can be during a war, but sex is like getting blackout drunk without the headache or hangover. And thankfully Travert doesn’t make it more complicated than that.
After, we roll down the windows because we’ve fogged them, and pulling my sweater back down, I ask, “Do you think I should tell Mr. Kohn’s children that he’s been sent to an internment camp?”
Travert grinds his jaw. “Not yet. With the German invasion, no one knows who is in charge of the camp. Now might be the time to take advantage. Maybe we can get him out before they ever have to know.”
“How?”
“If you falsify a permit of travel from the prefect in Nice, the French guards are in no mood to question. If I can get the permit to Monsieur Kohn, we might get lucky.”
I don’t hesitate. “I just need tracing paper, ink, and an example of the permit with the stamp of the prefect.”
Travert doesn’t hesitate either. “I’ll get one from a friend at the gendarmerie in Brioude. I’ll have to buy him lunch, so I’ll take you on Sunday morning to buy supplies and send you back on the train with what you need.”
It’s a thirty-minute drive to Brioude, which means that on Sunday morning, I have at least thirty minutes alone with Travert that won’t involve taking my clothes off. We’ve been married for exactly seven days, during which time what remains of my country has been invaded by two different armies, so we should have a lot to say. For some reason, we’re quiet almost the whole way—maybe because we both know the risk we’re taking now. The stakes are higher; if it goes wrong, it’s not the French authorities we’ll have to deal with, but the Gestapo.
I find everything I need at the stationery store, and Travert meets me outside the train station near a poster of Hitler someone has tacked up under the arched green doorway. Travert gives me an old document with the stamp and signature. I put the document in my purse and ask, “You’re not going to invite me to lunch with your friend?”
He looks surprised and a little pleased. “You want to meet my friends?”
I smirk. “Maybe I just want lunch.”
Travert is the hard-boiled type, but he almost laughs. “Better you don’t meet him.”
He’s right. If his friend is questioned, he shouldn’t connect me to this.
In saying farewell, I’m not sure if Travert and I are supposed to hug or kiss. Sex is one thing—the easiest thing. The marital peck he gives me on the cheek is somehow more intimate. I’m not used to it, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be, so I’m relieved when he leaves me alone on the train station platform.
At least, that is, until I notice all the German soldiers. Down the tracks, they’re shoveling coal into a railway car—looting us, loading everything valuable we have onto trains for Germany. Coal, food, lumber, art, people . . .
Well, I hope they’ll get one person less because of me and the piece of paper in my handbag. That’s what I’m thinking when one of the young Germans puts down his shovel and, with an impish smile, approaches me.
“Guten Tag,” he says, leaning against one of the posts and offering me a chocolate bar from his pocket.
He’s shockingly young. Under that uniform is a kid no older than the boys in the preventorium. I’m so incredulous that I sputter, “How old are you?”
“Sixteen for my Führer!” the kid boasts, pushing out his chest.
I’ll eat my handbag if he’s sixteen. He’s no more than fourteen if he’s a day. I’m tempted to tell him so and snatch that chocolate for good measure, but someone barks something at the boy in German and he stiffens to attention.
I turn to see an officer in polished boots, black leather trench coat snapping at the hem as he makes his way to us on the concrete platform. “Hallo, Fräulein,” says the officer, greeting me by touching the visor of his cap, its silvered imperial eagle and swastika glinting in the light. “I see this soldier is bothering you.”
“No, sir,” I murmur, all too aware of people watching us on the platform as they wait for the train. Not only don’t I want to speak to German soldiers—I don’t want to be seen speaking to them, so I turn away.
The officer blocks my path with a chilly smile. “I see what attracted the boy’s notice, Fräulein. Your fair hair, blue eyes . . . you are very pretty.”
Trying not to glare, I stare at his inverted widow’s peak, which seems to point, like an arrow, at the skull and crossbones on his visored cap. What kind of brutes would wear that? When the silence drags on, the officer squints his glacial eyes. “Where are my manners? Obersturmführer Konrad Wolff, at your service. May I see your papers, please?”
I don’t want him to search my handbag, where he might find the document Travert gave me, so I quickly fish out my new identity card.
“Congratulations, Madame Travert,” Wolff says, examining the card closely while the younger soldier remains at attention. “I see you’re a newlywed.” Then he narrows his eyes. “You’re missing something, aren’t you?”
I feel a spark of fear, though it’s an authentic document. “Missing something?”
“A father,” he says with a chuckle. “Father unknown. A blond and blue-eyed Frenchwoman born in the last war? It could be your mother opened her legs for a German soldier. Bad for her reputation, but maybe good for you. Maybe you are Volksdeutsche.” Of German ethnicity, he means. Someone who might be given special favors. The officer hands me back my identity card, turns to the boy, and says, “Give her the chocolate.”
Though my stomach is growling, I don’t want to take chocolate from Nazis. “I don’t care for it.”
“Nonsense; everyone loves chocolate! Besides, this soldier won’t be needing it. He must be punished for his incorrect behavior; he allowed your loveliness to distract him and forgot to return his shovel to the stationmaster.”
The child-soldier gulps, then the officer pulls from his boot some sort of collapsible baton. “I could report him for disciplinary action, but I’m not a patient man. I believe in the power of immediate lessons.”
Neither of us has time to react before the officer swings the truncheon against the boy’s jaw, then does it a second time, sending a spatter of blood and saliva to my feet. I skitter back with a cry of surprise and horror as Wolff shouts in German, lashing at the boy again and again. The pathetic young soldier tries to stay at attention, but another vicious crack to the skull breaks him. He whimpers, shielding his face as I scream, “Stop!”
But it doesn’t stop. I’ve seen boys brawl on the playground, but I’ve never witnessed violence like this. It’s a brutal beating that goes on and on until I think I hear teeth crack.
Mon Dieu, is the officer trying to beat the boy’s brains out?
Obersturmführer Wolff keeps hitting and hitting, and I want to snatch that bloody baton and drive it like a stake through his heart, but I’m frozen in shock and terror. None of the other soldiers intervene, but an angry crowd of French people all drop their luggage and begin to surge closer. Too late . . .
As it turns out, a skull doesn’t shatter like a marble bust. It makes a sickening sound, wet and hollow. That’s what I hear when the boy collapses to the ground at my feet. I don’t know how or why, but somehow I’m on my knees on the cold concrete platform, cradling the young soldier’s head—now a bloody mass of red oozing wounds. I scream again as his hot blood soaks my skirt. “Please get a doctor!”
Obersturmführer Wolff only wipes off the baton and slides it back into his boot. “Guten Tag, Fräulein.”
Then he walks away, bloodred boot prints in his wake.
I try to hold the boy together, try to mold his broken jaw back into shape with my fingertips. But there’s so much blood pooling underneath me. Sticky, and steaming into the air with the boy’s increasingly shallow breaths.
At the hospital in Brioude, a nurse gives me a washbasin, a sponge, and the privacy to wash. I scrub my skin clean . . . but there’s nothing to be done for my skirt or my shoes. And I let out a shaky breath because I can’t get the iron scent of blood out of my nostrils.
French people at the train station carried the young soldier to the hospital. We carried him here because we’re not savages, and I held his brains in his head the whole way. Now I don’t want to leave until I know . . .
Travert knocks lightly, then steps into the room, offering me his leather coat. “In case you wanted to change.”
His expression makes my knees wobble. “He’s dead?”
Travert nods. “There was never a chance.”
“But I held him together,” I whisper.
“There was never any chance, Marthe.”
To hell with these German boys, I’d thought. If the boy had been blown up by RAF planes, or riddled by American bullets, or crushed under Allied tanks, what could be the difference?
The difference is that I’ve never seen anyone murdered before . . .
“I want to report that officer. I thought Germans prized correctness!”
“Only in the Wehrmacht. Wolff is Gestapo. Reporting him won’t do any good.” Travert puts a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go. Try to put this out of your mind. I’ll rent a hotel room; we’ll stay the night.”
He’s being thoughtful, but I pull away. “I want to go home.”
He nods. “Okay. I have a little bread at my house, some tea.”
That’s his home, not mine. “I mean Chavaniac.”
It’s still daylight when we set out for the castle, and in the front seat of Travert’s police car, I open my handbag to inspect the signature I’ll have to copy to save Monsieur Kohn. Instead, I find myself fingering a photograph. Travert turns the steering wheel as we pull onto the road home, and asks, “What’s that?”
“A picture of Maxime Furlaud.”
“Furlaud? Like the brand of cognac?”
Cognac. Not my drink, but that’s where I recognized the name from. “The baroness tells me he was a banker, but I don’t know much about him.”
“Then why do you have his picture?”
“Because he might be my father.”
It’s the first time I’ve voiced that suspicion, and Travert slants me a glance. But my attention is now riveted on the smooth texture of the snapshot. The way Madame Beatrice wrote Furlaud on the back, first in smudged pen, then in pencil as she realized the ink would take too long to dry on the coated paper. Photography paper. Why didn’t I think of it before? “I might have just figured out how to duplicate a stamp without having to carve one . . .”
When we get to the castle—which is now crowded with beds—I leave it to Travert to explain to everyone why my clothes are stained with blood, and Anna rushes to me in sympathy. “Mon Dieu. You must be so shaken. Let me put you to bed.”
“I can’t sleep,” I murmur.
She nods sympathetically. “I’ll sit with you. I’ll read to you until you nod off, if you like.”
What I mean is that I won’t sleep. Not yet. She’s already tugging me gently to the stairs, and I want to go with her. I want to put my head on her shoulder, and curl up in bed nose to nose, and be lulled to sleep by her voice. So it’s hard for me to pull away, but I do. “Travert can stay with me.”
Anna looks as if I’ve slapped her. I wish it were jealousy, but I know it’s just the natural hurt when a close friendship must make way for marriage, and because I need to accept a deeper hurt and get over it, I let Travert lead me upstairs. While I strip off my bloodstained clothes, Travert doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself in this frilly, feminine tower room with its crystal chandelier.
“I just need you to keep everyone away.” I explain that as long as he’s here, I’ll have privacy, because no one will want to walk in on a married couple. “I have to make Monsieur Kohn’s permit. We may be running out of time.”
At first, Travert sits in Madame Beatrice’s armchair, laces his fingers, and holds them between his knees. I know he’s thinking Uriah Kohn could already be on his way to Auschwitz. Still, we have to try. I turn away, wrap myself in a bathrobe, and switch on the desk light. To test my theory, I quickly trace the stamp with a little pencil. Then I turn the tracing paper over to transfer it onto the back of Maxime Furlaud’s photograph and fill it in with ink. A different sort of paper would lose shape and ruin the impression, but photography paper might just be firm enough.
Please work. I don’t even breathe as I press the still-damp ink onto a piece of paper, but I can hear Travert breathing over my shoulder as he watches. With the side of the pencil, I gently rub the impression, then check my work.
“Sacrebleu,” Travert mutters. “It’s perfect.”
“A little blotting paper and it will be!” I want to throw both my fists in the air with triumph. This is an amazing discovery. I can forge stamps this way in a fraction of the time, without the incriminating evidence of a wood carving.
I explain this to Travert, who is wry. “You’re becoming a better criminal.”
“I have to stay one step ahead of your ilk,” I say, riffling through the desk, scattering old sketches of Adrienne Lafayette, looking for anything that will work as blotting paper. “Can you hand me that newspaper on the kindling pile?”
He reaches for it, then stops at the photograph of the girl in pigtails. “Him again . . . the man you said might be your father.”
I turn over the photograph of Furlaud I’ve been using to forge a stamp. This is a clean-shaven man in a suit, whereas the French officer has a thin mustache, but with my artist’s eye, I knew they were the same man. “So you see it too . . .”
“I’m good with faces,” Travert says. “Lineups. Wanted posters. That’s the same man in both photographs.”
I nod. “The baroness has been avoiding me ever since I asked about him and what I think was his love affair with Madame Beatrice.”
“I’m not surprised,” Travert replies. “The women here are devoted to Madame Beatrice. They’d want to protect her reputation. Back in their day, a love affair was still a scandal.”
“Maybe if I could find him, I could ask.”
“I’ll do some digging,” he says, meeting my eyes. “But right now, you need rest, Marthe.”
I can’t rest. I can’t think about Furlaud either. “Right now, I need to work.”
Because it’s one thing to hear of the terrible things Nazis do; another to have held a kid’s cracked skull in my hands. That’s what they’re willing to do to their own children. If we don’t stop them, they’re going to desolate the whole earth . . .