Her grandmother folded her arms and stared up at Daisy from a pair of narrowed eyes. Daisy knew her cheeks were hot, that her eyes blazed, and she didn’t care. This fury, where had it come from? She’d been simmering with it all morning. She’d been simmering ever since—oh, let’s be honest, Daisy, at least be honest inside your own head—ever since Pierre had prodded her awake in the coal-flavored dawn and pulled down her drawers, without any preamble, without even the pretense of a kiss or two, a caress, and stuck his thing inside her, morning-stiff. Because he had drunk so much wine last night, his breath was foul, and Daisy had turned her cheek and tried to breathe in the scent of the pillow instead. The sound of his grunting, the smack of his belly on hers, the creak of the bedframe repelled her so much, she squeezed her eyes shut, and because it was dawn, because she was still half-asleep and living inside some dream or another, God forgive her, God forgive her, she thought of somebody else. Without trying, without summoning him at all, she imagined thick brown hair and clever blue eyes, she imagined lanky shoulders and a smiling mouth, and as she burrowed her nose in the pillow to escape Pierre’s ecstatic puffing, she didn’t smell linen or sweat or laundry soap. She smelled—almost as if it existed—the sultry echo of tobacco smoke, drawn through a pipe. God forgive her.
And now she stood before Grandmère and the guilt flushed in her cheeks and her eyes, and this grandmother of hers, what did she do? She folded her arms and gazed at Daisy and smiled. Not the joyful kind of smile. The smile of a mother cat witnessing her kitten catch its first mouse.
“Now, that’s more like it,” Grandmère said.
Daisy turned and stalked to the window. Outside, a pair of women strolled wearily along rue Cambon, glancing through the windows as if their hearts weren’t in it. They passed a German soldier, who turned to stare after them, and Daisy wondered what he was thinking. Whether he stared because they were pretty and French, or because he suspected them of something, some infraction of the rules.
Behind her, Grandmère’s footsteps made soft noises on the rug. Daisy smelled the familiar perfume, the blend of roses and skin that was her grandmother. She heard her grandmother’s low voice over her shoulder.
“Daisy, listen to me. I received some interesting news this morning.”
“From Monsieur Legrand, perhaps?”
“It seems,” Grandmère said, ignoring the question, “that Berlin wants to remove Monsieur Vallet as head of Jewish Affairs in occupied France and replace him with someone else.”
“With whom?”
“It’s not clear. But I assure you, Daisy, the Germans don’t mean to replace him with someone more lenient.”
Daisy turned her head from the window. Grandmère stood a meter or so away, watching Daisy carefully. “Lenient?” she said. “Monsieur Vallet is hardly lenient.”
“No, he is not. But apparently that’s not enough. Apparently they’re planning something bigger, some great crackdown. They want every Jew out of Paris, every Jew out of France.”
“But where? Where will they keep them all?”
“Them?” said Grandmère. “You mean me, Daisy. Us.”
“Stop. We’re not . . . I mean, you are, we are, technically, but not . . . not . . . nobody knows—”
“They will know. That’s what this is all about, don’t you see? To discover who’s Jewish, to find out who has even a pint or two of Jewish blood and eliminate him.”
“Not eliminate, surely. The camps . . . they go to camps—”
“And what do you think happens in these camps, hmm? What do you think has happened to my dear friend Madame de Rothschild at Ravensbrück? Do you think they’ve been serving her coffee in a silver pot?”
“Of course not.”
“I used to think I could keep us safe. I used to think our rank, at least, would hold them back, so that I could help those who aren’t so fortunate. But poor Elisabeth . . . and she’s a Rothschild. A Rothschild! And she wasn’t even born a Jew, she married into the family, she’s estranged from Philippe. So you see, nobody is safe. We are all rats in a cage, waiting our turn to die.”
Daisy said nothing. She turned back to the window and ran her finger along the crease where the frame met the cool glass. Grandmère’s hand reached out to cover hers.
“Come with me,” said Grandmère.
Daisy allowed herself to be led from the window and across the room. The cognac had found her brain by now. A pleasant numbness dulled away the guilt and the rage, the unsettled nerves. Grandmère stopped before the curio case and reached beneath the cabinet to grope for something or other. Daisy gazed through the glass, the way she used to do as a child. The velvet was now so old and dark, you couldn’t tell which color it once was, sapphire or emerald or burgundy. Nestled inside its folds, the talisman had not recently been polished—by design, Daisy thought, because you didn’t want to draw attention to such a thing these days—and the jewels and the gold and the glass no longer sparkled. Still, it was a beautiful thing. Gazing down on it always gave Daisy a sense of peace.