WHEN THEY WERE let up to the deck again, Varian wrote a message for Vice Consul Bingham, wrapped it around a ten-franc coin, waited carefully until it seemed no one was looking, and tossed it onto the dock, toward some delivery boys. “Maybe one chance in ten that some boy doesn’t pocket the coin and toss the note,” he said.
“What an optimist you are,” André replied. “I wouldn’t take that bet at a hundred to one.”
But a few hours later, a package arrived, addressed to Varian—a good number of decent sandwiches, with Bingham’s calling card.
“What exactly did you tell him in that note, Varian?” André asked.
“I said, given a choice between freedom and a good roast beef and tomato on rye, I’d take the roast beef, of course. What did you think I would write?”
André said, “Next time, make clear you need a fifth of good whiskey with that, would you?”
Edouard laughed with them. Laughter was, like art, a way to survive.
Wednesday, December 4, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Luki wanted to cry with Peterkin as the men put the rope around Madame LaVache’s big neck, but Aube wasn’t crying and Luki was bigger than her. For two nights now, Papa had been gone, and Aube and Peterkin’s papas too. Peterkin’s maman, who’d gone with Papa but then came back, was like Sister Therese. She poured Luki milk and tucked her in at night and sang to her, and when Luki woke to the bad men coming, she came into her room—with Dagobert too—and promised her the bad men weren’t real. But Peterkin’s maman wasn’t Papa. Luki wished Papa would come back. Papa had promised he wouldn’t go away again, and now he was gone.
She fingered the ribbon Aube’s mother had put in her hair, a green one she’d picked because it was almost the color of the ribbon at Pemmy’s neck and of Papa’s eyes. She wished Pemmy would grow tired of being a princess and ask the queen to send her to Luki. She wished she could ask the stone Lady Mary to bring Papa back, and Mutti too. She wished they could all sit together on the dreaming log and sing.
She blinked, trying to make the tears go away.
Cold fingers intertwined with hers, Aube’s maman’s hand. Madame Nouget took her other hand as Peterkin’s maman hugged him. Rose and Maria too watched the men make the cow walk up the plank onto their truck.
“Goodbye, Madame LaVache-à-Lait,” Luki whispered. “You’re a good cow.” She would have waved to her, but she didn’t want to let go of the hands holding hers.
Wednesday, December 4, 1940
ON THE SS SINA?A
On their third day, Nanée managed to persuade the poor pock-faced, gawky boy-guard to take a note to the captain. To their astonishment, she and Varian received in response an invitation to the captain’s cabin. He poured them beer, apologizing that he didn’t have anything better, nor any way to help them.
“The administration has requisitioned my boat,” he said. “The matter is not in my hands.”
Nanée, even after days on board with no real opportunity to clean up, didn’t fear this captivity, exactly. She didn’t imagine they would send an American woman to a camp. And no one relied on her except Dagobert, who would be well cared for by T and loved by Peterkin and Aube and Luki, although he must be as confused as when she’d left him in Brive with T just before France fell. How much more horrible it must be for Edouard, to have a five-year-old daughter missing him.
Really, she didn’t see why this captain couldn’t at least let them send word to the consulate, and she was just suggesting that when the cabin boy showed up at the door to announce a visitor, and Harry Bingham entered as if Nanée had miraculously summoned him.
“Varian,” the vice consul said, “how the devil did you get caught up in this mess?” He registered Nanée, and chuckled. “Nanée,” he said as they exchanged kisses despite her disreputable state. “The last time I saw you, you were off to Paris. I thought you meant to go home directly from there.”
“Pffft. And leave this extraordinary hospitality?”
“Hospitality,” the captain said, unlocking a cupboard and extracting a bottle of good whiskey and four crystal glasses. So much for having nothing but beer. “A votre santé,” he said.
Bingham had been trying to find someone with authority to release them since Gussie came to him with the news they’d been arrested. With so many arrests, it was impossible to determine where they’d been taken, though. And even after he got Varian’s note, his influence was limited, as the French were falling all over themselves to avoid blame for anything that might go wrong while Pétain was in town. The Vichy leader was leaving the next day, though, and Bingham hoped to have more luck come morning.