Nanée stood cowering in her cabin, holding Luki close, already exclaiming to the inspector about a spider. “Right there,” she insisted. “He was right there.”
Much fuss was made moving cushions and searching everywhere.
No spider surfaced. There was, Edouard knew, no spider.
“There is an empty compartment at the far end of the carriage that perhaps would better suit?” the attendant offered.
Nanée, holding Luki’s hand, squeezed it and said to her, “Did it frighten you, sweetheart?”
Luki shook her head.
“It didn’t? But it was as big as my hand. And hairy. Did you see it? I hate hairy spiders.”
Again, Luki shook her head.
“You didn’t see it?” Nanée said, seeming astonished. “It was like something from a Surrealist painting.” She looked quite confused. “Was I . . . Was I sleeping?” Then to the inspector, apologetic now, “I’m terribly sorry. Perhaps I dozed off? It does seem, now that I think of it, that it was too impossibly terrible to be real. I . . . How mortifying.”
The inspector said it was no trouble at all, he was there to serve her. But perhaps if she was truly all right, then he might check her travel papers?
Edouard backed away, only to have the inspector say, “Oh yes, I do still need to see your documents, sir.”
Edouard was astonished to hear himself say, “But you did just examine them. My ticket to Banyuls? My identity card and French transit visa. If you need to see them again, though, they’re in my cabin.”
“I did, yes, of course,” the inspector said, and Nanée apologized for being such a terrific pest as a neighbor, saying she would promise to have better dreams if she dropped off again. Edouard waved his hand as if to say it was no bother and backed out of Nanée’s compartment.
Luki smiled a little as she watched him go. The whole time, Nanée had held tightly to her hand, and she hadn’t said a word.
Sunday, December 8, 1940
PERPIGNAN
If there was anyone at the Perpignan train station who wasn’t a refugee on the run, you could have fooled Nanée. A fierce wind bit at her fingertips even down here on the plain, making her wonder how cold it must be in the mountains already tipped with snow. Still, the nearby cafés were full, with hawkers openly shouting out black-market dollar exchange rates—outrageous ones—and even the people-smugglers openly offering for a price personal guides over the border, diplomatic limousines, and passages on ships to Gibraltar, from which one was expected to jump off and swim the last leg of the trip. Everyone here hoped to leave quickly; the few remaining ways to escape France might close any day, any minute. But of course one had to be careful. More than one of the hawkers would take you up the mountain, strip you of your possessions, and leave you stranded. More than one would collect payment for the promise of transit over the border, then turn you over to Vichy to collect a reward.
Nanée sat next to Luki on a bench in front of the brick-and-limestone station, waiting for the local train on to Banyuls-sur-Mer. Edouard sat at the far end of the bench as if he had nothing to do with them. Gussie’s book was open on his lap, but he was watching the pétanque players in the square, men laughing together as the little balls they tossed rolled toward the smaller target ball, and chattering in Catalan—Spaniards who’d escaped Franco. Were they headed back now, the threat of Hitler in France worse than the fascist ruling Spain?
Edouard stood and raised his Leica. He photographed the bowlers. He walked a few paces, then turned back to frame a shot of the bench and the station behind it—an excuse, Nanée assumed, to photograph his daughter.
Nanée breathed deeply, sea air with an undertone of the lingering coal exhaust from the trains and the human smell of travelers too long on the road. She huddled closer to Luki, to keep her warm as they waited. So much of the journey through life is spent waiting.
“They have different words,” Luki said.
Nanée looked again to the bowlers. “Yes, they’re speaking Catalan.”
“How come some people have one kind of words and other people have another?”
“I’m not sure,” Nanée admitted.
“Some of their words are like the words we use now. Not like the words Maman used.”
Edouard moved closer, looking at them through his camera. Too familiar, Nanée thought. But perhaps she knew too much. Perhaps others who noticed them, if anyone did, would think him photographing the station and, with it, strangers on a bench.