The Postmistress of Paris(87)

He approached the washstand, where she’d hidden the Webley. She had never used the chamber pot there, but she feigned mortification, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m not sure my chamber pot from last night has been emptied.”

She was back in the dining room before the typist asked for Edouard’s papers and confirmed the information on his French residency permit. Luki sat in his lap now, snuggled into his chest as if to put as much distance between that typewriter and her as she could.

“Your home is in Sanary-sur-Mer?” the clerk asked Edouard.

“Yes,” Edouard answered without offering anything about the fact that he hadn’t been there in a year thanks to a stay at Camp des Milles, compliments of the French.

“Sanary-sur-Mer,” the clerk repeated.

“Yes,” Edouard answered again.

“My brother-in-law is on the force there. Perhaps you know him?”

“I mean no offense,” Edouard said cautiously as Nanée too tried to gauge whether this might be some kind of trap, “but I hope you’ll understand that I try not to make a habit of becoming acquainted with police.”

The clerk laughed easily, then offered a name.

“Ah,” Edouard said. “A fine man, I’m sure.” Hedging his response so that if there were no such man, he would not have claimed to know him.

Just then, the policeman searching the kitchen emerged waving a piece of paper. “Hidden between two of the plates!” he exclaimed.

Dagobert, startled, barked and barked at him.

It was a drawing from the prior day’s salon games, an Exquisite Corpse rendering that had particularly amused André. He’d labeled it “Le Crétin Pétain,” the Moron Pétain. It must have been underneath one of the plates Rose put away that morning.

“This,” the commissaire said, “is treason.”

“Le Crétin Putain?” André replied nonchalantly, suggesting the French leader’s name clearly written in André’s careful green ink was instead the French word for “whore.” The Moron Whore. It had never before struck Nanée how close the spellings were.





Monday, December 2, 1940





VILLA AIR-BEL


Edouard stood on the belvedere, Luki in his arms. It had been a grueling few hours, with nothing but a tray of coffee and stale bread for lunch, as Madame Nouget had been detained from her morning shopping. Luki hadn’t left his side since she’d been brought in with Maria. He’d spent every possible moment attending to her so that, if anything happened, her last memory of him would not be of his scattered attention, as it had been when he’d put her on the train to Paris, but of nothing in the world being more important than her.

“I talk to the Lady Mary even though she isn’t here in stone,” she was saying. “I ask her if she could ask God to put Pemmy and Joey on the princess train, like Tante Nanée and me, to come here.”

Edouard looked out to the mist over the valley, the sea nowhere to be seen today. The fact that the police had left them on the belvedere for the moment, the staff watching from behind the French doors, allowed him a small hope that he was wrong about where this police business was headed. He still had his camera too. But he sure could use a Lady Mary to believe in himself.

“Everyone into the van now,” the oversize commissaire said.

Edouard tried to appear calm for Luki’s sake as André protested that he and Jacqueline were French, and everyone’s papers were in order. Anger directed at men who knew what they were doing was wrong was invariably met not with acknowledgment or apology but with anger; he’d seen that time and again at Camp des Milles.

“You don’t really mean to take the children,” T said.

“Papa, I want to stay with you,” Luki whispered.

Edouard too wanted to believe the French wouldn’t take children, but the French could be more German even than the Germans. And a small part of him wanted to keep Luki with him, no matter where he went. But if they were taken to a camp, the children would be sent with the women. Luki would go with T or Nanée or Jacqueline, although none of them were Jewish—surely they wouldn’t be sent to camps.

Nanée said to the commissaire, “Varian and I are American. I’m afraid you might be sorry to have taken us when it comes down to it. And surely our word that these young children and their parents have planned no nefarious Communist plot against Pétain ought to be good enough?”

“It will be only for a short while,” the fat little functionary insisted, a lousy liar.

“Do you have children yourself, monsieur?” T asked.

The man looked to Peterkin, holding T’s hand, then to Luki in Edouard’s own arms.

“Madame Breton has a daughter who is at school, you say?” he asked Nanée, too awed by the beautiful Jacqueline to address her himself, apparently. Then, looking to Gussie, “And the boy is hers too?”

Gussie looked surprised, as if he didn’t realize how young he looked, nor that he was as fair and beautiful as Jaqueline. That did explain why they hadn’t asked to see his papers.

“I will allow Madame Breton to stay with the children,” the commissaire said, chancing a smile at Jacqueline.

Nanée said, “But T’s son and Edouard’s daughter—”