The Postmistress of Paris(113)

He searched for a reason he might offer to change her mind: It was too dangerous for her to stay, more dangerous for her even than for him, because she’d shot the Germans; if any of them had survived, they would be looking for the woman who had planted two feet firmly on that path and shot them, not the man and the child tucked up against the cliff behind her. Varian would surely be evicted from France soon too, and what would she do then, even if she was allowed to stay? Luki would want her to come with them. He wanted her to come.

He said, “If those Germans have been found—”

“I know, but I’ll be able to see the approach from above, I think.”

She’d thought it through, then, this turning back.

“It’s too dangerous,” he insisted.

“No one suspects American women of anything but needlepoint. Men so seldom imagine us capable of the things we’re capable of.”

“I—”

“Everything good I’ve ever done,” she said, “I’ve done here.”

She looked at him then, watching him so closely in this moment of freedom and despair, the way he’d watched her all that first night they’d met, from that moment after he’d demanded André take Salvation down.

He wanted to ask if she would leave France when Varian did. But nobody could replace her. He knew that. The work she did as the Postmistress put her life at risk every day, and nobody else at the CAS could do what she did.

He held the tiny map out to her, wanting to ask if he would ever see her again.

“You’ll need it to find your way,” she said, refusing it. “Me, I would only have to eat it.”

He laughed a little. How had she known that would make him laugh? And that he needed either to laugh or to cry.

All the life he was leaving behind. The sense of belonging.

“I could stay too,” he said. Nobody could do what he did either, really. If he stayed, the photographs he could take would make the world see. He had always been afraid; it was there in that first self-portrait, and still he’d taken his photographs and published them, knowing he was taking impossible risks even if he couldn’t imagine the consequences: that he would lose Elza and the child they made together, that he would have to abandon everything of the life they’d built, taking only his cameras and as much of his work as he could gather, and Luki. He was carrying his photos with him even now.

He said, “I ought to stay.”

“You would endanger everyone who knows you,” she said. “Varian. Danny and T. Gussie and Lena and Maurice and Beamish.”

Her cheeks were red from the wind and the cold, and her nose too, and she had never looked more beautiful.

And you, he thought. If I stayed, I would endanger you.

She took her canteen from her musette bag and made him take it. “For Luki,” she said.

“I—”

“The photos you’ve taken already tell the story here.”

She took from her musette bag his letters, and she handed them to him. “These too. Use them for good whenever you can.”

Luki said to Nanée, “The angels still need you,” as if she had sorted this out in her own way.

“Yes,” Nanée said. “Yes, I suppose the angels do need me here in France. They appear to need all the help they can get.”

Luki said, “And Dagobert.”

“Yes,” Nanée said. “Yes, Dagobert needs me.”

“He will take care of you, like I take care of Papa and he takes care of me.” Looking to him now.

“Yes,” Nanée agreed.

“But you will watch over us, like the Lady Mary?”

Nanée touched a finger to Luki’s cheek, then trailed it down her arm to Joey and to Pemmy, to her scarf around Pemmy’s neck. “I will always be thinking of you, Luki,” she said.

Luki began to unwrap Nanée’s white silk scarf from her kangaroo’s neck, but Nanée stopped her.

“You keep it,” Nanée said. “I would like you to have it, so Pemmy won’t get cold.”

“But you can’t fly without it.”

Nanée pulled Luki to her then, and hugged her desperately. “You keep it for me, Luki,” she managed. “You keep it for me, and someday when this madness ends, I’ll find you and I’ll take you flying with me.”

Luki said, “And Papa?”

Edouard looked to the hawk floating on the wind, lest Nanée see his devastation, lest Luki too see it.

“And your papa,” Nanée said, “if he wants to come.”

“But not to heaven,” Luki said. “We would come back to earth.”

“I’m afraid we always do come back to earth.”

Nanée stood then, and said to Edouard, “Be careful. The rest of the way, be careful. The Gestapo are in Spain too.”

“Let me . . .” He looked to the pocket of her flight jacket, where she had the pistol. “You don’t want to be found with it.”

“You can’t show up armed at the Spanish border check.”

“There’s that foul pond up ahead that Hans warned us not to drink from.”

Nanée stooped to Luki’s level again and pointed to the sky. “Look,” she said. “I think it’s a golden eagle. The most elusive of creatures. They can spend hours or even days perched in a tree. Motionless. Impossible to spot.”