She wasn’t incorrect, and the fire burning within Hélène roared to life.
“Take mine.” Hélène grabbed her handbag and withdrew her neatly folded papers from its depths. Not only did she include her identity card, but also her food and clothing rations. After all, they were tied to her name. Without her identity card, everything else was useless to Hélène. And perhaps that bit of sustenance and new garments might in some way help Claudine in her escape.
The woman’s mouth fell open. “Yours? But how—”
“We look similar, and we are the same height,” Hélène said, pushing the folded bunch into Claudine’s hand.
Still the woman refused to curl her fingers around the precious papers. “What will you do?”
Hélène ignored the question, not wishing to think of the consequences. “I am not at risk as you are.”
And Claudine was very much at risk. Far too many Jews had been packed into trains and never seen again—families, innocent children, it was more than Hélène could bear and why she fought her husband so vigorously for the chance to join the Resistance. Now she was in a position where she could actually help, and she would not turn away from the opportunity.
“Please.” Hélène held the papers against Claudine’s palm until the woman’s fingers reluctantly closed around them.
“The curfew will begin soon,” Hélène said. “Stay here until morning.”
But Claudine shook her head. “I cannot put you at further risk, not after…” Her voice caught, and she lifted the identity card and ration coupons. “This.”
Hélène wanted to argue, but Claudine was already moving toward the door, whispering her thanks in a profuse rush of gratitude.
But Hélène could not accept her thanks. It was the least any French citizen could do for the Jews who the Nazis so openly and maliciously persecuted. The memory of Lucie rose in her thoughts.
The only woman Hélène had befriended in Lyon, when they waited in a bread line one rainy afternoon. Lucie had an umbrella and offered to share. While the weather had been gray and cold, Lucie’s sunny disposition more than made up for it. Like Hélène, Lucie did not have children either. Rather than allow others’ opinions of her to annoy her as they did Hélène, Lucie waived their censure off with cheerful indifference.
She always saw the light in the world, no matter how dark it became.
It was her brilliance that helped Hélène through so many of those hard days when hunger began to set in, when curfew restrictions edged into their daily comfort and when one couldn’t leave their house without a large wallet full of ration coupons and an identity card.
That was, until Lucie and her husband disappeared in the night, their apartment ransacked and cleared of its valuables. Hélène had been helpless to do anything to aid her friend despite the countless attempts to find her whereabouts. It was around the same time Joseph refused to allow her to engage in any Resistant activity, which rendered her impotent. The outrage had remained with her, simmering.
At least now, Hélène had done something.
She closed the door behind Claudine, and once more Hélène was swallowed up by the apartment’s empty silence.
The repercussions of her decision woke her in the early hours of dawn while the rest of Lyon was still asleep. The curfew had come and gone and still Joseph had not returned.
Only now, she could not go to the police to inquire as to his whereabouts. No one would speak to her without first seeing her identity card, and if she reported the papers as lost, they would be on the lookout for a thief. If Claudine was caught with what would then be assumed stolen papers…