The Gown(62)

“You mean what happened to your family?”

“That. And after, as well.”

“What do you mean? I thought you hid from the Nazis.”

“I did. But it ate at me. My parents and grandfather had been taken, and I had done nothing. I wanted to act, to resist, but I was paralyzed. For so long I did nothing . . .”

“You were in mourning,” Ann whispered, her voice fractured by anguish.

“I wasn’t sure what to do. How to begin. But there was a woman at work, Marie-Laure, and I heard that she was involved with the resistance. One day we were alone in the atelier, and I went to sit next to her, and I whispered that my loved ones had been taken, and I wanted to do something. She said nothing. She did not even look at me.”

“And?”

“And the next day, as I was washing my hands, she came over as I finished, and told me where I might meet her. I went, and she was sitting with a man. Five minutes after I had left I remembered nothing of how he looked. He had that sort of face. He asked me why I wanted to help, and I told him it was not his concern. That it would be silly of me to trust a stranger. He nodded to her, and said Marie-Laure would tell me what to do.”

“And?” Ann asked again, spellbound by the tale.

“I carried messages. I would find them in my coat, in a secret pocket in the lining, and I would hide them in my room until Marie-Laure told me the address where I was to go. A café or a shop, or a certain bench in a park. From the beginning it was always the same man who met me. I never knew his real name. If we were questioned, I was to say he was my fiancé. Robert Thibault. We would meet and I would say hello and we would talk of the weather, or what I had eaten that day. Normal things. And then he would look at his watch and say he had to go. I only had to pass the letter to him, usually under the table, or I would slip it in his pocket. And then he would kiss me good-bye. It wasn’t very often. Every few weeks, no more.”

“You were caught, weren’t you?”

“Yes. We were betrayed. Someone else must have been captured, and likely tortured. We were arrested together. They searched my room, and even though they found nothing they did not release me. They were convinced of our guilt. The next day I was sent to the prison at Fresnes, and a few weeks later, when there were enough of us to fill a truck, I was sent to Ravensbrück.”

“When was this?” Ann’s face had gone pale, and she had wound her fingers together in her lap. She always did that when she was upset.

Miriam smiled ruefully. “The middle of June in 1944.”

“After D-Day.”

“They knew what was coming. The man who questioned me certainly did. I can still see him if I close my eyes. His spectacles were so dirty, and he kept cleaning them on the cuff of his shirt, but it only made them worse. He had such dark circles under his eyes, as if he had not slept for days and days.”

“I doubt he had.”

“I said nothing, I admitted nothing, but still he condemned me. He insisted that one way or another I was guilty of something, most likely of being a whore. It was not quite enough to be shot, but it was more than enough for Ravensbrück.”

“He didn’t know you were Jewish,” Ann guessed.

“No. In that, I suppose I was lucky.”

“What was it like there? I’ve read stories, but . . .”

How to describe the indescribable? “I was young, and strong, and once they discovered I could sew I was sent to a sweatshop where we made uniforms for Nazi officers. We had an easier time of it than those in the munitions factories, or those who were made to do hard labor outside. Or those who were forced to work in the brothels. That was the worst of all. Those women never lasted more than a few weeks.”

She stopped, waited until she could breathe again, until her pulse wasn’t hammering quite so loudly against her ears. “They had already begun gassing women when I got there. If you were old, or sick, or if you resisted them at all, they gassed you. At the end, the guards were panicking. They rounded us up, like farm animals being sent to market, and they shot anyone who couldn’t walk, and they made us march. Away from the Americans, away from the Soviets, away from anyone who might help us. My friends died around me as we marched, and in another few days I would have been dead, too.”

“Miriam.”

“We were liberated by some Americans. A few months later I was back in Paris, in a convalescent hospital, and once I was better, or at least well enough to get out of bed, I returned to Maison Rébé, and they gave me my job back.” She looked up and saw that her friend was crying. “Do not be sad. I am safe now. I am fine.” She very nearly believed it, too.

Ann nodded, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief she’d pulled from her sleeve. “It is an honor to call you my friend. Really, it is, and I’m sure Walter will feel the same way.”

“I know. I will tell him.”

And yet. Would it change things with him? Would he be disgusted by the months she had spent hiding away, terrified, mute, inert, after her family was taken? Or would he pity her? Nothing could be worse than his pity.

She glanced at her wristwatch; ten o’clock already, and far too late to ruin another night’s sleep with worries over her past and future. “It is late. Time for us to be in our beds.”

“You’re right.” Ann took the tea things to the sink and began to rinse them out.