The Postmistress of Paris(108)
“The border guards and the Kundt Commission—are they likely to venture this high?” Edouard asked, thinking of that limousine.
“I’m afraid so,” Hans said.
Edouard found a fallen branch and broke it off to a slightly shorter length for Hans to use as a walking stick. “Thank you for all you’re doing for all of us, Hans,” he said. “For everybody like me. I hope . . . I’m sure Lisa will be fine, but . . .”
“Yes,” Hans said. “She has to be.”
As Hans set off, limping back down the hill, Edouard raised his Leica and took the shot: Portrait of the Man I Ought to Be.
Monday, December 9, 1940
THE PYRENEES
The climb grew steeper after they left Hans and the clearing. It was hard to have any sense of where they were due to the hills on either side, golden in the morning light, and the cliff ahead. What had been little more than a steep, rocky goat path—goat skulls being, Edouard gathered, what the sun-bleached ones that littered the path were—narrowed to boulders with small trails of gravel in between. More and more often they had to stop and take the measure of what was path and what wasn’t. So much of it was crumbling shale and slippery gravel. A misstep, and you might slide off the side and into the deep ravines. He held so tightly to Luki’s gloved hand that more than once she complained, “Papa, you’re hurting me.”
What had he been thinking, to insist Luki come this way with him?
They could see now the vineyards in the distance—wintering and windblown grapevines on ground sloping so steeply that it seemed to Edouard almost vertical. The sun was full on now, and surprisingly warming. The wind seemed to be letting up, but that might be the deception of hope.
Together he and Nanée eyed the way forward, searching for the path to get uphill from where they stood.
“Up there,” Nanée said.
He could see it now: the path on the mountainside above. But there was no way to get up to it.
He eyed the rocky cliff, then hoisted Luki onto his back. Nanée took Pemmy so Luki could hold more tightly to Edouard.
A spray of gravel rained down on him before he’d even set a hand in place to begin the climb, loose dirt blowing into his eyes. Behind him, Nanée grew suddenly quiet. Luki, too, was now completely still, clinging tightly to him.
He looked up. Heard a rustling above even over the wind, which was definitely less fierce now. He hoped that wasn’t just the shelter of the hill.
A few more bits of gravel spilled downhill.
Was that a man in the shadow of that overhang above, near the top? Near the vineyard they needed to reach? He quietly turned so that Luki would be hidden behind him, protected, albeit with her legs still wrapped at his waist.
Yes, Nanée too had seen the man. She’d seen him first and was already moving, motioning him silently to follow.
More rocks spilled from above, less cautiously now. The man was headed for them. His cap appeared over the top of a boulder, then disappeared again.
They started as the man spilled down onto the path in another spray of rock. A lean, sun-worn man with packages tied all over his body.
“What are you doing here?” the stranger demanded, taking them in. They were not professional smugglers. They were no threat to him, just an opportunity.
The smuggler glanced to Nanée, standing with the kangaroos in one hand and her other in the pocket of her flight jacket. She looked like she might spring at the man.
“I can show you the way over the mountain,” he offered—for a price, he meant. “No one knows these paths like I do.”
He saw Luki then. “You’re taking a child over the mountain?” He backed away.
Edouard adjusted Luki and told her to hold on to him tightly, then returned his attention to the climb. The smuggler, reaching for one of his packages, moved toward them. Eduard turned to fend him off.
The smuggler stopped where he was. Put his hands up to show he meant no harm. “For the girl,” he said.
He untied one of his packages and unwrapped a length of dried sausage, the smell of it mixing with the faint scent of thyme and rosemary and lavender that must be strong here in summertime. The man didn’t hand him the sausage, though. He offered him the length of dirty cloth that had held it to his body.
“For the girl,” he insisted. “She’ll be safer.”
Edouard hesitated.
“Like that,” the man insisted, pointing to the kangaroos Nanée still held, Joey fallen out of Pemmy’s pouch but still pinned to her.
The cloth flapped once in what was now more breeze than wind.
Edouard took it from the man and used it to tie Luki to him at his waist.
“A child. Bon chance.” The smuggler shook his head as he set off down the path they’d come up, the sausage still in his hand.
Edouard reached for one of the rocks above him, set a foot on a low one, and began to climb.
Monday, December 9, 1940
THE PYRENEES
They were close to the road now, on a narrow path between a cliff edge and a wall of rock, not easily visible from the road thanks to the overhang but close enough that they might be heard. They were moving as silently as possible, listening intently. Edouard held tightly to Luki’s hand, worried with each step that he might slip, or Luki might. He would have kept her tied to him the whole rest of the way if she allowed it, but she was her mother’s child, she had her own mind.