The Postmistress of Paris(88)

“Madame Bénédite must come; she works at the Centre Américain de Secours. And monsieur is a refugee. I’m sure Madame Breton can attend to the children until you return.”

Edouard hugged Luki to him.

“I want to stay with you, Papa,” she repeated.

“I know. I want to stay with you too, my love,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “But it won’t be any fun. You’ll have a much better time here with Madame Breton and Peterkin and Aube.”

T was similarly soothing Peterkin, and Madame Nouget had emerged from the house to help, leaving Rose and Maria cowering inside.

Edouard whispered to Luki, “Maybe Pemmy and Joey will arrive today. Maybe the queen has already sent them. They’d like you to be here to greet them.”

“But the last time, you said you would come the next day.”

He hugged her to him, choking back his grief. “I know,” he managed. “I know.”

Luki began sobbing, and Edouard nuzzled into her neck.

“I love you, Luki,” he said.

She began wailing then, “Don’t leave me, Papa! Don’t leave me!”

He could not do this again, and yet he had no choice.

“I love you more than anything,” he said, nodding for Jacqueline to take her, as Madame Nouget was taking Peterkin from T. “I love you to the ends of the earth.”

She clung so desperately to him that he had to peel her hands from his neck and hand her, kicking and screaming in terror, over to Jacqueline, who wrapped her up as if in a straitjacket as he hurried away. Even the guards saw they had to let him go ahead if they were really going to put Luki through being separated from him again.

He could still hear her screaming as he hurried to climb into the paddy wagon, to get out of her sight. The others followed, the commissaire at the last minute remembering Varian’s briefcase. Damn. They waited in the back of the van as the officer who’d taken Varian upstairs was sent to fetch it. He returned and handed the case to Varian, who tried to hide his surprise. Was this inadvertent or intentional? There were friends of their effort everywhere.

The officer closed the door, the metal click solid and final.

“Don’t worry,” Varian said. “When Danny gets word of this, he’ll get us released somehow.”

Nanée opened the briefcase, retrieved André’s incriminating manuscript, and stuffed it under her blouse, against her back, where it was caught by the waistband of her slacks and well hidden under her coat.

“If it comes to it, I’ll find a way to dump it at the police station,” she said as they headed down the long driveway.

The van pulled to a sudden stop. Some kind of skirmish was going on. A moment later, the back of the van opened, and Danny was pushed inside.

Edouard took a single photograph before the doors slammed shut again.

“Lena advised me to come back to the chateau,” Danny said. “I thought she said so I wouldn’t be arrested.”

Edouard looked out through the grated window to the villa behind them, the belvedere empty now, Luki mercifully inside and no longer able to see him again abandoning her.





Monday, December 2, 1940

THE éVêCHé, MARSEILLE

The paddy wagon entered the évêché police station in the old Bishop’s Palace through a surprisingly beautiful courtyard not far from the cellar where Edouard first hid here in the Panier. They pulled into an old stable that had been converted into a motorcycle garage. The gate clanged shut behind them, eerily like the gate at Camp des Milles, and they were herded across a courtyard and up a creaky old staircase into an overcrowded, low-ceilinged attic room. Chalked on a board at the front: VIVE LE MARéCHAL.

Already Nanée was sweet-talking a young clerk. No, please, she and T didn’t want to be separated from their friends, but she did need to use the restroom. She was gone an awfully long time, but returned with a smile that Edouard took to mean that André’s incriminating green-ink manuscript had been torn up and flushed away.

The commissaire flew into a rage on learning that Varian had the briefcase. Varian merely handed it to him.

They were held all day, Edouard growing increasingly alarmed. He knew as well as anyone that an hour of questions could stretch into days or months or years in a camp. How could Varian hold on to his American naivete even now?

He pulled Nanée aside, finally, not wanting to ask but needing to know. “Nanée, the release and my papers. I . . . It’s hard to imagine how you could have gotten them.”

She looked across the crowded little room. “The camp commander didn’t know you’d escaped,” she said finally. “I didn’t know you’d escaped.”

A newsboy interrupted with the evening papers, the headlines announcing the upcoming visit by Pétain, “Victor of Verdun.” Varian bought several, and handed him one to share with Nanée, then offered the boy money with the promise of more if he would fetch them some sandwiches and drinks.

Edouard studied Nanée’s face, her head tilted toward the newspaper. “I . . . If I understood . . .” He made himself say it as directly as he could. “The commandant isn’t a man who releases prisoners just because a pretty woman asks him to.”

Nanée smoothed her hand over the newsprint as if the gesture might make the news disappear. “I entertained him,” she said, not looking up.