“What are their names?”
Are? He’d used the present tense. As if they were still alive.
“M . . . my husband’s name is C . . . Claude,” she stuttered. “M . . . my son’s is Philippe.” It was the first time she’d said their names out loud since that terrible day in the Hotel Lutetia. Her legs gave way. She sank down onto one of the wooden benches.
“Can you tell me about them?” Father Josef sat down beside her.
Delphine took a breath. Then it all came tumbling out. “Claude was a doctor at the American Hospital in Paris. He used to hide people on the wards—Allied airmen on the run from the Germans. If we had a visit from the Nazis, Claude would pretend that the men were unconscious, so they wouldn’t give themselves away if a German spoke to them.” She pressed her lips together, aware that her jaw was trembling. “Philippe was in the Resistance. He helped the men get out of France—organized a safe house and an escape route via Spain.”
“And they were arrested?”
“Yes.” The word caught in her throat. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I . . . haven’t . . . I’ve never . . .”
“It’s all right. Take your time.”
She nodded, swallowing hard. Now that it was out, she needed to tell him all of it. “By the spring of ’44, too many people knew the secret. Someone told the Germans about the safe house. Claude was there with Philippe when the place was raided.”
“They took them to Dachau?”
“I didn’t know where they were. Not at first. Then I got a postcard. It was months after they were arrested. Claude had smuggled it out via someone in the camp who had a sister in Switzerland—that was where it was posted from. It said that he and Philippe were alive and that they were together.” She paused. Her mouth was so dry she had to swallow again. “That was at the end of August ’44. The Allies had already invaded, and Paris was liberated. I kept hoping, praying that my boys would come walking through the door.”
She told him about the daily vigil at the Hotel Lutetia, and the man who had spotted the photographs she’d pinned up on the wall. “He was in the Resistance—running a safe house in another part of Paris,” she said. “He was arrested the same day as my husband and son. When he told me what had happened, I realized that by the time I’d received that postcard, Claude and Philippe were already dead.” She grasped the hard wooden edge of the bench, the thin skin on the backs of her hands as tight as a drum. “They were together, at least,” she murmured. “That’s what I cling to.”
“Do you have their photographs?” The priest’s eyes had a wistful, faraway look. “May I see them?”
“Of course.” Delphine bent to retrieve a leather wallet from her nurse’s bag. “I take them everywhere.” She tried to smile, but the edges of her mouth felt numb, as if the muscles had been anesthetized. She passed him a picture of Claude with his arm around Philippe’s shoulders. It was a snap that had been taken on vacation in Brittany before the war. She tried not to look as she took it out of the wallet—it was impossible to catch sight of their faces without welling up.
Father Josef angled the image to the light. “I wish I could say I knew them. I would have been there when they arrived. But there were so many of us. Thousands from Poland alone. There was a whole section of Dachau reserved for French political prisoners. We were on the other side of the camp. We rarely saw them.”
“I was afraid of telling anyone,” Delphine whispered, as she took back the photograph and slipped it into the wallet. “The other day, at the hospital, there was a young man who so reminded me of Philippe. I had to go outside. I wandered about, crying, talking to myself, telling myself that if I couldn’t keep these feelings hidden, I was in danger of falling over the edge . . .”
He nodded. “I feel like that sometimes. It would be easier to shut away the memories. But there are other men in this camp who were at Dachau. They say it helps them to talk to someone who lived through it, as they did.”
“I wonder if any of them would remember Claude or Philippe?”
“It’s possible, of course—although, like me, they are all Polish. The Nazis seemed to have an especial hatred of our country. They liked to keep us separate from all the other prisoners.” He raised his hand to his chin, rubbing the knuckles against his beard. “Tell me, did you come to Seidenmühle to be close to the place where your husband and son died?”