FIFTY-THREE
MARTHE
Chavaniac-Lafayette
August 1943
A black Mercedes-Benz, polished to a mirror finish, rolls into the castle drive, and two Gestapo officers step out.
It’s morning and the sun is already scorching hot, but I go cold with dread. I’m supervising the girls, who are having their breakfasts, sipping from bowls of café au lait in the castle’s dining hall, which no longer boasts of checkered tablecloths, for these have long since been torn up for bandages or washrags. The littlest girls are swinging their feet, because they’re not tall enough for their chairs. Some of the older girls are gossiping or reading books at the table, and Josephine is braiding her sister’s unruly hair.
They’re all so innocent of the evil at our door. And I don’t want to scare them, but I’m already panicked. With sweaty palms, I remind myself there could be simple reasons for the Gestapo’s visit. Maybe they want to requisition the castle for that fat German general after all. I feel a little flare of anger to realize they might even be here at the baron’s invitation, since he’s chummy with some Germans—maybe they want advice.
Still, when the occupying officers at the castle’s door bang loudly with the brass knocker, I jolt, because I know they could be here for the Jewish children. Josephine’s eyes dart to me, then to the window, and I see her struggle to hide her fear. Should I grab her and Gabriella and hurry them out? We’d be noticed—maybe even chased—and we’d have to leave Daniel behind in the boys’ dormitory, because it’s half a mile away.
It might be better to brazen it out.
Of course, the Gestapo might be here for me, but nothing I use to forge papers now can’t be explained away; teachers and artists need ink, pens, compasses, and glue. It’s only the papers themselves that are incriminating. If they search and find the identity cards I’ve been making for the OSE and hiding in Madame Beatrice’s old hatboxes, they’ll not only guess that I’m a forger—they’ll have pictures of exactly which children to hunt down.
If they catch you, they can catch everyone you help, because forgers know all the real names . . .
I should’ve had a better plan for this. I need to get the documents and the kids out of the castle, so I hastily reassure the girls, “I’ll be right back.” Then I race up the back spiral staircase, taking the old wooden steps two at a time. I grab the identity cards—four in all—and stuff them into my girdle. As I race back down the stairway, I’m sure I haven’t been seen, but as soon as the sole of my saddle shoe hits the stone landing, someone calls to me.
“Guten Tag, Madame Travert!” The Gestapo officer touches the visor of his cap with its skull, and I recognize him. A slither of loathing slips through my veins as Obersturmführer Wolff looks me up and down, his gaze as cold as the day I watched him beat a boy to death.
“What a surprise to see you again,” he says. Is it a surprise, or did he come to arrest me? “Surely you remember me . . .”
The fact I want to spit in his eye makes me reckless. “I don’t know. We see so many Germans in France these days . . .”
He laughs. “Well, you are unforgettable. And I have come to know your husband. A good policeman—excellent detective. Very helpful.”
He can’t begin to fathom how sick that makes me to hear.
He’s introducing me to his partner when Anna appears in the corridor, her expression inscrutable. “Gentlemen,” she says, with a tone I’ve never heard before—somehow both softly feminine and absolutely authoritative. “My father will be with you shortly. Would you care to wait upstairs in the library? Madame Travert and I can arrange refreshments.”
I’d like to arrange rat poison in their wine.
Then Wolff says, “Actually, I was hoping for a tour of the facility—particularly your little museum of Americana that I’ve heard so much about.”
I blink. Don’t tell me the bloody Gestapo are here as sightseers!
“I’m afraid it’s locked for renovations,” Anna replies smoothly.
It doesn’t put him off. “I’m sure someone has a key.”
“It’s really not worth the trouble,” she says with a charming little laugh that only I would know is all artifice. “Nothing of real value to interest you.”
“Nothing of real value, she says!” Wolff slaps the other officer on the back. “That’s what my friend says too, but he’s not a civilized man. As for me, I spent a summer in the States. I can’t say much for American beer, but I love their writers. Edgar Allan Poe. Such bone-chilling tales. Who could forget the ‘The Cask of Amontillado’?” Wolff pretends to shiver. “To have such patience to take the revenge of burying someone alive . . . As Madame Travert perhaps recalls, I myself don’t like to put off the satisfaction of doling out punishment!”
My shiver is real, because he says this with the barely suppressed glee of a boy who burns ants with a magnifying glass. Then he continues, “But to return to a more genteel subject, I heard you keep certain American valuables here—possessions that once belonged to George Washington, Dr. Franklin, and so on. Some Great War trinkets from the fabled Lafayette Escadrille. I’m eager to see them. I’m a collector of sorts.”
“Those belongings aren’t on the premises anymore.” Anna delivers this bald-faced lie in a shockingly convincing way. “Renovations, as I said.”
“How disappointing!” says Wolff, coming closer. “I was told the people at this chateau consider themselves guardians of such objects; unlikely to let them out of their sight. I hoped to use this quaint affinity for history to explain to my superiors why the women of this village marched on Bastille Day.”
At this, Anna and I both take a breath, drawing closer together. Despite the brave face, this rattles her. It’s up to me to say, “It wasn’t anything political; only a historical tradition because this is the birthplace of Lafayette.”
“Ah, another great French general,” he says with an edge of mockery. “Remind me of the lands he conquered.”
“He wasn’t a conqueror,” I admit. “He was a liberator.”
Liberator is a dangerous word right now, and Anna gives me an incredulous look. She must think I’m an idiot. And I am, because I am taunting a Gestapo agent while hiding false papers in my underwear. They ought to shoot me for stupidity, but before they can, Madame LeVerrier shuffles into the corridor, eyeing the two officers like they’re dirt tracked in by a careless gardener. “Gentlemen, the baron will see you now.”
With crisp farewells, both Gestapo officers go upstairs. Anna and I both collapse against the locked museum door in relief, and she hisses, “I was afraid he’d find the guns.”
Now it’s my turn to be incredulous. “What guns?”
“George Washington’s dueling pistols.”
It’s laughable that the Germans could be afraid of flintlock pistols from more than a century ago—but they’ve been confiscating everything from hunting rifles to old bayonets. I assumed the baron had a permit for these antiques, but I don’t know what the laws are now in what used to be the Free Zone, and I’m equally sure people have been shot for less.
Anna checks the door to make sure it’s locked, then asks, “Why do you think the Gestapo is here?”
I shrug. I’ve heard German soldiers visit French doctors for treatment so their commanding officers don’t find out they’ve got a venereal disease. If that’s why Wolff’s here, I hope his prick rots off. The important thing is that he doesn’t seem to be here for me or the kids. “I have to get to class . . .” Anna was so poised a moment ago, but now she’s shaking, so I add, “It’s going to be fine.”
In that, I couldn’t be more wrong.
Long after the Gestapo officers drag Amaury de LaGrange out of the castle, the baroness stands at the window with her hands over her face. The baron went with dignity, everyone agreed—angrily yanking his arm from the Gestapo officers so he could straighten his jacket and don his fedora. Then he stooped to fold his tall frame into the backseat of the Mercedes-Benz, and with a little wave, he was gone.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t arrest me,” the baroness says again, as we all try to comfort her. “I’m the American. I’m the one who helped found this place and marched on Bastille Day . . .”
I marched too, and now my stomach is in knots.
Before he was taken, the baron assured everyone that it was a simple misunderstanding and that he’d be back in a few hours. But a few hours have already come and gone.
I stay with Anna and her mother that night—though I’m not sure how much comfort I am. And by the next morning, when we wait in the library by the silent telephone, the baroness has circles under her eyes. She starts pacing, then suddenly stops by the walnut desk where her husband’s pipe is still where he left it. Then she throws open the desk drawer and fishes out a set of keys.
Anna’s head jerks up from the sofa. “What are you doing, Maman?”
I think I know exactly what the baroness intends to do—something we should have done at the first whisper of the occupation. “Let me do it,” I say. “My husband is a gendarme. If the pistols are registered, he’ll know. If not, he’ll know that too. I’ll get rid of them.”
The baroness takes the measure of me, then confesses, “I don’t want to get rid of George Washington’s dueling pistols. I want to hide them.”
Anna blanches, and maybe she’s right to. We see lists in the newspapers of people who have been executed for hiding weapons every day, or just failing to denounce those who do. Maybe this is why Anna says, “Better to turn them in, Maman. There have been amnesties . . .”
“The Germans don’t always honor them,” I say. “You’d be handing them evidence to use against your father. If they needed any.” Then I turn my attention back to the baroness. “Which is another reason to let me do it. If I’m caught, I’m not so closely associated with him.”
Anna’s eyes mist over in both gratitude and shock. Two years ago, I felt like she was the only person left in my life who really knew me at all. Maybe she did. Two years ago I wouldn’t have risked my neck for stupid flintlocks that belonged to George Washington.
I wouldn’t have done it to protect the baron either, but here we are . . .
Anna wraps her arms around me in thanks—and I let her. Her closeness and her perfume still dizzy me, even though my feelings for her are all twisted up because of my guilt over Henri and my marriage to Travert. My longing still exists, even if we’re not as close as we used to be. Even as I’ve tried to push her away. “Marthe, we can’t let you take such an awful risk for us.”
“Better me than you,” I say. Besides, though she doesn’t know it, I’m already hiding children and forging documents, so what’s one more secret? After all, the Germans can only kill me once . . .
I roll the pistols into an old dirtied rag. I take them into the secret passages and dig out a stone from the wall to make a pocket, which I cover with a shallower stone and seal with dirt. The Germans aren’t going to find them, and even if they do, they might think the pistols have been hidden here for years. I’m feeling pretty proud of myself.
Almost proud enough to tell Travert, but that night he has news for me. “I wasn’t able to find a current address for Maxime Furlaud. But an old neighbor said he moved to New York sometime after 1918 and married an American sculptress.”
That’s curious, and more than anybody has been able to tell me before. I’m so grateful to Travert, and I wish I had time to think about it, but what I really need now is for him to find the baron.
Unfortunately, the Gestapo doesn’t even try to respect the jurisdiction of French police anymore.
Another day passes. Another day without word. Finally, the baroness comes down from her room with a suitcase, and announces, “I’m going to Clermont-Ferrand.”
Anna darts in front of her mother and tries to block her path. “What can you do there, Maman? We don’t even know why Papa was arrested. You’re only going to put yourself in danger too!”
“I’m not going to let your father be disappeared,” she says, kissing Anna’s cheek with surprising tenderness. “I’m so sorry, my darling. I thought our family did enough in the last war. In this war, all I wanted was to keep quiet, but look where it’s gotten us.”
“Don’t be crazy.” Anna looks to me, desperate. “Tell her she’s lucky the Germans didn’t arrest her too. She might not get so lucky this time.”
Anna’s right, but I don’t argue with the baroness. I think she knows her money and title aren’t going to protect her. For the first time in a long time, I think she’s remembered exactly who she is and knows exactly what she’s doing. I think she’s going to try to save her husband, because she loves him.
And maybe even because we’re all living in the house of a woman who did the same.