The World That We Knew(81)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


THE WAY HOME




VIENNE, AUGUST 1944

JULIEN DARED TO RETURN TO the church in Vienne. He went to Father Varnier’s room and knocked at the door, hoping for news of his brother. It was late, but the priest was awake. Neither he nor Julien could find sleep easily. Varnier worried over the souls of his parishioners, and Julien saw the faces of the children at Izieu whenever he closed his eyes. He looked exhausted as he explained that he had not seen his brother for several months and he worried more each day. Usually Varnier was brusque, he had little time for personal complaints, but this time he invited Julien in.

“Perhaps I should stay out in the hall,” Julien suggested.

His clothes were filthy and caked with mud. He had been eating regularly and had put on some of the weight he had lost in the past few years. He was muscular now, nearly six feet tall. But he didn’t bathe regularly and he labored outside and so he was embarrassed by his condition. All the same, the priest insisted he sit down in a leather chair. Julien ran a hand through his long hair, self-conscious. When he thought of the boy who had stood in the hallway in Paris on the day Lea arrived, it was as if he were imagining a younger brother, someone who was forever lost to him, a boy with little experience and too much confidence, who could fall in love in the blink of an eye.

Father Varnier sat back in his chair and asked if Julien believed in heaven, and Julien answered truthfully. He wasn’t sure if he believed in anything anymore. The priest poured them both glasses of cognac, though it was all of ten A.M. When the father offered him a drink, Julien knew something was wrong. He waved his hand no to the drink and leaned forward in his chair.

“We can’t know God’s reasons for what we mortals must endure,” Father Varnier told him. “We can only be grateful for our lives and for his love.”

Julien was then told that his brother had been arrested. There had been a bombing in which a captain of the Milice had been killed, along with a Resistance worker, and the news had gotten back to Varnier. Victor had been taken to Montluc Prison in Lyon, and even though the end of the war was near, and Lyon would soon be liberated, he had been on the last train to Auschwitz on August 11. The Germans were retreating but the deportation was personally overseen by Klaus Barbie. One hundred and thirty-one Jews had been gassed upon arrival, Victor among them. Lyon was to be liberated thirteen days after the convoy was sent east.



Julien stopped listening. He refused to hear any more. Not how the prisoners were chained two by two, Jews on one side, Resistance members on the other, not how the prison was being emptied, with as many as possible killed so there would be no human evidence when the British and Americans arrived. Julien stood and shook Father Varnier’s hand, then walked out without another word, past the flickering candle he had lit for Monsieur Bisset’s son, past the pew where he had slept when his brother had come to take him to Izieu. He didn’t let himself feel anything until he was on the road. Then he called out to God, his shouts shook the sky and he, himself, was made deaf by his own wailing. He fell to his knees, and tore his clothes in a wild fit of mourning, and he did his best not to curse himself for being the only one in his family who had managed to stay alive.



When Marianne came home she was shocked by the damage from the storm and especially saddened to see the beehives were destroyed and, by now, deserted. She went to search for the key, tucked between two stones behind the wall near the old pump. She kept the house locked now, and only she and Victor knew where the key was hidden. She unhooked the latch and pushed the door open, breathing in the musty, damp scent of the house. She had been away for nearly a week. They were trying to get as many children over the border as possible. The closer they came to the end of the war, the more the Germans wanted to rid the countryside of all Resistance workers and Jews. Everything was moving so fast, spinning closer to the end. At the border there were places where the Italians had left and it was possible to walk right into Switzerland, and other places the Germans shot whoever moved in the dark. Marianne had been very lucky. She’d lost no one. She was quite famous, really; everyone wanted to cross the border with her. Some people called her Saint Marianne, they said she wore armor under her dress, that she could walk through fire, that she was invisible to the Germans.

But these were the imaginings of children who still believed in such things. The children would throw their meager belongings over the fence, then crawl beneath the wire that Marianne often held up so they could fit under. She told them to be brave, because when they crossed over the Swiss Border Guard would place each child under arrest, then give him over to the Corps des gardes-frontière, where a military officer would question the child yet again and draw up the formal arrest. Do not break, she told them. They are only questions. Make your statement when asked. Tell them, I crossed to escape the Germans’ actions toward the Jews. Think forward, not back.

She tried to do the same, but when she opened the door, she had a feeling of dread. Someone had been in her house. Perhaps they had climbed in through the kitchen window, which had never closed properly. The intruder had been neat and tidy, and nothing was out of place. Some potatoes and onions had been eaten, but the dishes and the frying pan had been washed and set on the drainboard. Upstairs, the beds had been made. Someone had left some lupines in a glass jar on the long dining room table.

Marianne stood by the sink and drank her tea once it had steeped. For some silly reason her hands shook when she lifted the cup. She was bone tired, of course, but it was more. She felt a wave of panic. In the following days, she went about her business, taking care of the farm, seeing to the damage caused by the wind, but all the while she had the same sinking feeling. The weather was hot and dry and the rows of vegetables needed to be watered. When all of her other chores were done, she saw to the watering, using a bucket to bring water up from a small nearby stream. By afternoon she was sweating through her dress, a bit dazed, suffering through a case of nerves. She was usually calm, and was known among the other passeurs for her patience and easy nature, but when she finished working in the field, she went in and took a bath and sobbed in the soapy tub, staying until the water was ice cold, which frankly felt good in the heat and in her feverish state of mind.