The Postmistress of Paris(71)

It seemed to take forever to cover the eight miles from Amboise to Chateau de Chenonceau, their heads together on Nanée’s overnight case, which was awkward to have on this part of the journey but would help them avoid suspicion as they traveled in the free zone. (Who trained across half of France without luggage?) The cart would turn, and slow, and even stop, and Nanée would hope finally that they were there. But it would be only an intersection or another cart or a dog in the road.

Again, they stopped. She listened. They were at the chateau’s gatehouse, finally. But even at the chateau only a very few knew of Madame’s efforts to help people escape occupied France: the foreman of the chateau’s farm operation, his wife and grown daughters, who worked in the kitchens, and his son who served as Madame’s chauffeur. One couldn’t know who might keep a secret and who might use it to better his own place.

The gate tender circled the cart, then said to the driver, “I’ll need to examine the hay.”

Nanée wished they’d thought to add some manure to the hay just in case, to make the examination more unpleasant. She was a woman hiding in a hay cart, smuggling a Jewish girl into an estate that was an escape route. If they were found, Nanée would have to claim to have slipped under the hay when the driver wasn’t looking, to save him or at least give him a chance.

“Shall I do it for you? I can run a pitchfork through it,” the driver offered, already climbing up onto the back of the cart, his feet close to Nanée.

She let him know by her touch where they were, as they’d practiced. She held Luki tightly, protecting her in case the driver misjudged as she listened to the slice of the pitchfork above her head, the rustle of hay being tossed.

“Again,” the gate tender said.

Again, the driver dug in the pitchfork, farther up the truck bed now. He tossed the hay perhaps a dozen times.

The man, satisfied, allowed the cart to pass on into the estate, and a moment later they turned again. The cart slowed and came to a stop amid the sounds of people in the early morning beginning a day of work.

Their driver said to someone, “I have extra with the hay this morning, at Madame Menier’s request.”

Menier? The chocolate family?

They would have to hurry, the man replied; Madame had requested one of the cars in just a few minutes.

Nanée squeezed Luki’s hand, their signal to remain silent.

A moment later, a small Frenchman with protruding, close-set eyes hurried Nanée and Luki from the hay wagon to a Bugatti Coupé Spécial, the same rare model with the same royal-blue cab that Nanée’s mother preferred to be chauffeured around in when she was in France. A younger man stood beside the car in a tidy chauffeur’s uniform. Beyond the garage, steep-roofed little cottages clustered into a tiny village, each with three sets of steps up to three red-door entrances, where those who worked the chateau farm must live, and perhaps the house staff as well.

“The rain be just beginning,” the older man whispered. “With a bit of luck it will blow in a big ’un.”

He popped the trunk. “At the house, me wife and daughters’ll bring things to load in the trunk for Madame to take into town. As the first girl goes back inside, you go with her. Pretend you’re kitchen girls. Leave everything behind. Just you and the girl.”

It was all happening so much faster than Nanée had expected, on account of the storm. The wind was blowing something fierce as the foreman closed the trunk over them, and his son drove them off in the first burst of rain, which soon washed so thickly over the car that Nanée could hear nothing else.

Luki touched her face to get her attention. Nanée whispered right into her ear, “Quickly. The rain will hide your voice.”

“Pemmy and Joey can come too?” Luki whispered. “They don’t want to stay in here alone. It’s scary.”

Nanée tightened her hand over Luki’s. “I’m not sure they can pass as kitchen workers,” she said. “But if Pemmy and Joey stay in the car, they’ll get to go in with the lady of the chateau, like a princess and a prince.”

“Do you think the lady of the chateau is quiet and still and listening, like the Lady Mary?” Luki asked.

“I think the lady of the chateau answers prayers,” Nanée said.

A few moments later, the car came to a stop, and the trunk opened. Someone was shouting. German words.





Thursday, November 28, 1940





VILLA AIR-BEL


Edouard took the print from the developer: his own younger face, the man he’d been even before he met Elza, when he’d first tried to capture the watchers Hitler fed on. He submerged it in the water, waited ten seconds, then flicked the flashlight on and off several feet above it. Sometimes a little extra light on a thing showed it for what it was, showed him for who he was.

Voices sounded outside the bathroom door, Aube and Peterkin returning from milking Madame LaVache. They were going to celebrate the American Thanksgiving today, so Madame Nouget would need her pans back for her feast—if you could call anything pulled together on rationing a feast.

Where was Nanée now? Had she found Luki? Were they out of the occupied zone?

He set the print back in the developer, and the image began to rise up, his own face becoming something different, not black and white but eerie silvers that, set against each other, appeared darker and lighter than they were. Sometimes you had to embrace the fact that not everything was as it seemed, even inside yourself. Accept it. Learn to live with it.