The Postmistress of Paris(76)

He held up a single finger, then signaled them to come.

“Joey!” Luki cried out.

Pemmy’s kangaroo pouch was empty.

Nanée looked to the chauffeur, who shook his head. No, there was no time to find a baby kangaroo.

She knelt to Luki’s level. “Joey will have to stay here, sweetheart, but Simone will take good care of him and send him when she can.”

Luki whispered to Simone, “Are you a queen?”

“Ah, my husband always said I was. Your Pemmy can write Joey letters. I’m sure he would write her back.”

“He can’t write. He’s only little.”

The chauffeur waved impatiently. Really, they needed to go.

“Could Pemmy stay with Joey and be a princess?” Luki asked. “I’ll have Papa. Joey doesn’t have a papa.”

“It’s up to you, Luki, but you have to decide now,” Nanée said. “It’s time to go.”

Simone met Nanée’s gaze over the child’s head, but Nanée had no idea which would be worse for Luki, to leave Pemmy behind or to carry the mother kangaroo away from her baby. She gave Simone the address of Villa Air-Bel as Luki hugged the kangaroo tightly, then kissed her again and again and again.

Nanée took the things from the kangaroo’s pouch—the photograph and Edouard’s letter with the drawing of the dreaming log—so that Luki wouldn’t have to. “Pemmy would want you to have them,” she said. “She won’t forget you, ever.”

The child kissed her kangaroo one last time and handed her to Simone. “Pemmy can’t go backward,” she said. “Kangaroos can’t. They can only go forward.”

Nanée, holding Luki’s hand, hurried across the gallery to the doors, which the chauffeur slipped open. He poked his head out and looked around, then handed Nanée her traveling case.

She ducked out and hurried Luki up the path, away from the river toward the tomb—a huge old stone thing dripping green and black with moss, carved with a robed woman sitting with one hand on a knee and the other to her cheek as if contemplating . . . not a sadness, but something weightier than the decaying leaves covering the tomb’s base and stairs.

Birdsong rose behind them, alarming Nanée. Someone coming?

Someone shouted, frighteningly guttural words.

She grabbed Luki and ducked up the stairs on the tomb’s far side, even as the birds fell into a frightening silence. She meant to tuck up against the mold-slimed stone, but on further thought ducked into the woods so they might move without being so exposed.

Two German soldiers came running, guns drawn. Germans, although this was free France. Were they the men from yesterday? Would they recognize Nanée and Luki?

The Germans stopped at the tomb, then cautiously circled it. Nanée kept a hand to Luki’s mouth, willing her to be silent, wishing she’d brought the Webley, and rehearsing in her mind the story she’d devised in that first little room at the chateau.

A red squirrel crouching absolutely still a few trees over shot off, zigzagging. The Germans fired their guns again and again.

One of the Germans began to laugh. “Es ist zu schnell für uns!”

The two of them, now laughing together, settled in on the steps to the tomb, just where Nanée and Luki would have been, and lit cigarettes.

They had just holstered their guns when one of the soldiers saw Luki. Nanée motioned her to stay where she was. Leaving the traveling case on the forest floor so she wouldn’t have to explain it, she stood, drawing their astonished looks off of Luki and onto her.

One drew his pistol again and pointed it at her. The other returned his gaze to Luki.





Friday, November 29, 1940

THE AMERICAN CONSULATE, MARSEILLE

You’re not a Communist, I hope, and never have been?” Vice Consul Bingham asked Edouard. He had a file open on his desk.

“Never,” Edouard confirmed.

“And the French Republic interned you in Camp des Milles, then Vichy let you go?”

Edouard hesitated.

“If you escaped, that’s better,” Bingham offered. “We don’t have to wonder if your release means you’re a Nazi sympathizer or even a spy.”

“I did escape,” he said, a truth, if a partial one. He’d both escaped and been released, if Nanée was to be believed.

Bingham examined one document, then another. “You have good friends among the American press.”

Those must be the affidavits in support of his application.

“Married?” Bingham asked.

“Widowed.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Edouard nodded. “My Lucca—”

“Lucca Moss?” Harry Bingham smiled troublingly, and set his pen down. “Ah, now, that is interesting. I recently issued a passport for a girl in Paris named Lucca Moss. An American girl. What an odd coincidence.”

Edouard sat silently.

“Such an unusual name,” Bingham said.

Edouard wasn’t sure whether to agree or not.

“An adorable child, if a photograph doesn’t lie.” Bingham smiled, his cheeks becoming even rounder.

He set aside another document then, to reveal a visa with Edouard’s photograph attached on the bottom left. The top left corner was blank, to mark the details of Edouard’s arrival in the United States, but the top right side was filled in: American Consulate at Marseille, France. Date November 29, 1940. Seen: This bearer, Edouard Moss, who is without nationality . . . The validity of this Immigration Visa expires on March 29, 1941.