The Postmistress of Paris(17)

“What’s happened?” Nanée called out the car window.

The gaggle of worriers peered at her. Could anyone not have heard?

“Maréchal Pétain has asked for an armistice.”

The war was over. In a single month, France had not only given up, but also squandered any bargaining power it had in forming the peace by begging for it. This was how it started everywhere. In Austria. Czechoslovakia. Poland. People gave up without a fight. And in this little town in the middle of France, everyone seemed relieved.





Monday, June 17, 1940





DINARD


Luki woke to the startling sound of someone pounding. Brigitte still slept beside her in the bed in the big house by the sea, but Tante Berthe was already answering the door. Outside the window, it was still nighttime, but the end of it.

“It’s okay, Pemmy, don’t be afraid,” Luki whispered, patting her pouch with the tiny folded-paper Flat Joey she’d made so Pemmy wouldn’t miss Joey so much; he looked just like a piece of paper decorated with numbers, but Luki could fold him back into shape any time.

Madame Bouchère, who always said hello to Pemmy when they went to the butcher, said to Tante Berthe, “The Germans will be here in two hours.”

No one liked the Germans. That was why Tante Berthe had brought Brigitte and her here, to the house she lived in when she was their age, because she didn’t want to stay in Paris with the Germans. Mutti and Papa were Germans, and so was Luki, but they were a different kind of German than the ones everyone didn’t like. When Luki had asked what kind of Germans they were, Tante Berthe went quiet for a long time, then said Papa was a photographer and not a soldier, and everyone who ever met Luki loved her.

Now Tante Berthe and Madame Bouchère were talking about a boat. A boat was sailing in two hours, and Madame Bouchère could get Luki on it.

“By herself? To England?” Tante Berthe asked. “But she’s barely five.”

“The Kleins would take her.”

Pemmy whispered to Luki that she didn’t want to go anywhere with the Kleins, and neither did Flat Joey. Old Monsieur Klein sometimes shouted things that didn’t make sense.

“You can’t keep her here,” Madame Bouchère said. “It will put us all in danger.”

But how would Papa find her if she wasn’t with Tante Berthe?

Luki very quietly climbed from under the covers with Pemmy and Flat Joey. She opened the trunk at the end of the bed, climbed in, closed the lid, and pulled the sheets and blankets inside over her. She lay there in the muffled quiet, hugging Pemmy. She heard Tante Berthe calling for her, but she stayed completely silent, and Pemmy did too. She missed Papa. She thought maybe he had gone to be with Mutti. Tante Berthe used to remind her that Papa sent letters every week. “People in heaven can’t write letters,” Tante Berthe said. Luki didn’t know why they couldn’t, but it must be true, because Mutti never did write letters to her. But now Papa didn’t write letters either.

“Brigitte, where did Luki go?” Tante Berthe demanded.

Brigitte didn’t know.

Tante Berthe was frantic now, saying they had to find Luki. And still Luki lay silently in the trunk. Pemmy was scared, but not as scared as going on a boat with the Kleins to a place where Papa couldn’t bring real Joey to her.

WHILE TANTE BERTHE watched out the window, Luki and Brigitte sat facing each other in the trunk, looping strings with their fingers to make cat’s cradles and Eiffel Towers; Pemmy didn’t have any fingers, so she couldn’t play with string. Some men would be coming, Tante Berthe had said. They weren’t nice men. When they came, Luki was to play the hiding game again.

“All right, girls,” Tante Berthe said. “Now.”

Brigitte climbed out of the trunk to go downstairs and wait until the men came to the door. Then she was to come get Tante Berthe.

“Remember,” Tante Berthe said to Luki, “these men might be mean to me and maybe even to Brigitte, but don’t you worry, you just lie quietly in the trunk, playing the hiding game. You mustn’t cry or anything. If these men find you, they will take you away.”

Luki lay back on the blankets inside. “Would they take me to the angels, to be with Mutti?” she asked.

Tante Berthe scooped her up out of the trunk then, and hugged her so hard it pressed Pemmy into her bones. “No, Luki, you mustn’t think that,” Tante Berthe whispered, kissing her head again and again. “You mustn’t think that.”

She lay Luki back into the trunk then, gently, like Papa used to. “You just lie here and think about nice things,” she said.

“Like Papa singing to me?”

“Yes, exactly. Lie quietly and imagine your papa singing to you until I come back. But just your papa gets to sing. Don’t sing with him.”

“Pemmy won’t sing either,” Luki whispered.

“You are such a good, good girl,” Tante Berthe said. “All right. No matter what you hear, you stay in the trunk until I open it.”

Tante Berthe set sheets and blankets over her.

Luki held Pemmy tightly, and she touched one of the little flowers on the sheet as it settled onto her face. It was pretty fabric. It was soft. It smelled like Tante Berthe’s laundry soap and also the salty air outside, where Tante Berthe hung the laundry to dry, and it smelled a little of the rocks along the shore here, where the sea sometimes splashed up in great spray clouds even bigger than the ones at the dreaming log.