The Postmistress of Paris(16)

T cheered, and Peterkin cheered with her, his bunny still held by its ear, as Nanée climbed out to bask with them in this small victory. Dagobert put his paws to the window and barked.

A terrific roar sounded overhead, the inverted gull wings of a German Stuka flying low. As they stood watching, it fired.

Surely it wouldn’t shoot at them? Surely it wouldn’t shoot a child? Disbelief flooded Nanée even as she saw that Peterkin was straight in its path.

She ran for him.

T ran too.

Nanée reached him first.

Scooped him up.

Ran for the tree line.

The roar of the planes—several now—was deafening, the rat-a-tat-tat of their guns pure hell.

One of the planes followed them, shooting as if in a carnival game. But not at all like that. Not pretend. Not a nightmare. Real screams filled Nanée’s ears, real wails. T screaming, “Peterkin!” and Peterkin crying in Nanée’s arms. Was he hurt? Was T?

Nanée, still running, glanced back to confirm that T was just behind her.

She dove for the tree line, the sturdy trunks and cover of leaves.

She would not cry. She would not cry.

T was beside her on the ground already, taking Peterkin from her and tucking him underneath her to shield him with her body.

Nanée looked out to the little car pointed in the only direction the road went, toward the German planes already disappearing. Dagobert watched her through the car window, shivering.

She was up again, running back to the car, T with Peterkin close behind her.

The poor dog climbed all over Nanée in the urine-smelling Citro?n as she shoved the gearshift into drive, spraying gravel and dirt as she took off down the road, all the while saying to the whimpering dog, “It’s okay, we’re all okay, we’re okay.”

THE BRIDGE AT Sully was strewn with bodies caught in the German strafing. The line waiting to cross stretched forever: cars with number 75 license plates, the code for Paris; buses and tractors and bicycles; even old tumbrels, those two-wheeled open carts that once carried condemned prisoners to the guillotine. All were loaded with mattresses and dishes, clothes, food, children’s toys, books, even fur coats, despite the desperate heat. But most people walked. If they were lucky, they pushed prams full of their belongings. Everyone was headed south, toward the sea.

They barely made fifty miles that first day, despite driving late into the night, the Citro?n’s headlights—dimmed by the wartime regulation blue paint—reflecting such a nasty drizzle that Nanée drove with her head out the window to better see. They gave up at a dark barn on a dark road somewhere near Vierzon. Nanée explored it, flashlight in hand, and returned to report that there was a hayloft, if they could get Peterkin up the ladder.

“A hayloft all to ourselves,” she said. “That sounds rather deluxe, doesn’t it?”

She set a flashlight, pointed up, at the bottom of the ladder, and they began to climb. They were nearly to the top, Peterkin on his mother’s back, T choking under his grip around her neck as Nanée followed close behind to catch him if he fell, when a rung splintered under T’s foot. Nanée called out, but already the wood was snapping.

A ghost face appeared above them in the shadowed light beam, as if her father had come to call her to the Lord.

“Mon Dieu!” a man’s voice said, his arm reaching from the hayloft to catch T’s wrist as another man reached to grab Peterkin’s arm.

“Ne bougez pas.” His voice firm and direct and surprisingly calm.

Nanée’s mind froze, unable to process the French as the man scooted forward, hanging upside down from the waist, his wide, sturdy hands on Peterkin’s little ribs, carefully lifting him.

T stepped up above the broken rung, a big step, and climbed into the hayloft.

The faces peered down at Nanée.

“Let me . . . let me get the flashlight,” she said.

The faces puzzled.

“Le flash?” she said, searching for the word. “La lampe de poche?” Her hands shaking. Could she really climb down the ladder and back up again? “Et mon chien, Dagobert.”

THE SECOND DAY, even the back roads were slow going, through endless fields and pastures that were hauntingly peaceful despite the retreating French soldiers and the detritus of war: rifles and machine guns thrown in the ditches alongside the roads; abandoned cannons; the occasional military vehicle, invariably empty of gas. That night they knocked on the door of a prosperous chateau outside Le Berry to ask if they might stay in the barn, only to be informed by a pompous butler that the countess did not take in refugees. Nanée hadn’t thought of herself as homeless, but hearing it, she saw that she had been a refugee of some sort for a decade. She was filthy. She was starving and yet unwilling to take food that Peterkin might eat. It turned out her daddy was wrong; money couldn’t buy everything.

They knocked at a modest farmhouse, where a girl not much older than Peterkin called gloriously to her mother, “Maman! Refugees!” as if nothing could delight her more than to finally see these odd creatures she had heard about on the radio. Her mother gave Peterkin a huge yellow bowl of warm milk, and fed them the first proper meal they’d had in two days. Even Dagobert slept well in their cozy house.

In thinner traffic the third day, they climbed hills wooded with broad-leafed chestnut trees, rocky soil, poorer towns. Just after noon, they entered Guéret to find the square filled with townspeople in intense conversation, scattering concern.