“Yes,” Nanée said.
“Yet she has an American passport?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, it is easy enough. We can send the girl on the train, and send you over the border, Edouard. I can perhaps arrange it with the friend who helps us get luggage out. And Nanée can take the train back to Perpignan and send me word about Lisa.”
“Luki is not a piece of luggage,” Edouard said.
Hans looked affronted, of course he did.
“I’m sorry,” Edouard apologized. “It’s been a long day for us, too. But I can’t send Luki any way other than with me.”
“You cannot go by train,” Hans said.
“Luki can’t go alone.”
“No,” Hans said. “She is so young. This is why I am proposing to arrange it with—”
“We don’t have a French exit visa for her,” Nanée said.
Hans frowned. “But she does have an American passport?”
If anything happens to me, promise me you will keep Luki with you and take care of her, always. The last thing Elza had asked of him, a promise he’d made—too late for her to know of it as she was dying, but no less a promise. Perhaps more. A promise he’d broken once already. He wouldn’t break it again.
“Luki unfortunately shares my name,” Edouard said. “Varian feared applying for an exit visa for her would endanger me. And there wasn’t time.”
Hans nodded. Yes, he understood the difficulty.
“Varian suggested that, with Luki, perhaps we could pass as picnickers?”
“In the bright light of day? No, this you cannot do. The greatest risk is here, leaving Banyuls.”
The Gestapo sleeping in the hotel just down the way, the Kundt Commission here to patrol the border.
“The only way is to leave before dawn, to blend in with the vineyard workers,” Hans insisted. “In the dark, so the sentries can’t tell that one isn’t a worker. But children don’t work in the vineyards. Not children this young, no. Do you really mean to take the child over the mountain?”
“I can carry Luki,” Edouard said.
“I do not mean to challenge you,” Hans said, “but sometimes the fog is so thick that you cannot see your way. You cannot see that the path is slippery, or even that there is a path. And again, it can take ten hours or more. We might send you first, and let your daughter follow on the train. If we arranged an exit visa for her after you left—”
“Walter Benjamin made it over this route carrying a suitcase full of manuscripts that likely weighed more than Luki. I’m younger and stronger than he was.”
Hans looked dubious, but conceded, “Then it would be best to go as soon as possible.”
He devolved into another fit of coughing.
“Yes,” Nanée agreed. “We’ll go as soon as we’re able.”
Hans didn’t like the idea of them going later than early morning, or going without him, and he didn’t like to have them stay another night in Banyuls, allowing more time for Edouard to be caught or the Spanish to decide to close their border. Everything was a risk, but he insisted, finally, that the biggest risks were daylight and time.
“I can get you started,” he said. “But it must be before dawn.”
“You’re sick,” Nanée said. “You’re exhausted.”
He said to Edouard, “If you are going to take the child, you must let me get you to the plateau. I know better what to watch for, how to keep you safe. Edouard, you must keep her close to your side, especially at the beginning. The guards tend to be on the town side. Keep her close to you, on the mountainside, so that perhaps, in your shadow, she won’t be seen. We will go very early.”
When Hans finished drawing the tiny map, he handed it to Nanée. “If you are stopped, it is rice paper, and small enough to eat. You might manage to do so, as the attention will likely be on Edouard. And as you say, you have the American passport.”
They would leave well before dawn. Hans would go with them as long as he was able. It was much quicker and easier coming down than going up, so he could turn back when he began to tire. He didn’t know if he could go as far as the border, but with the map they could find their way. Beyond the border, he could not go. He couldn’t risk being trapped outside France with his wife in the hospital here.
“Now we all must sleep,” he said, “or you will never make the trek.”
Sunday, December 8, 1940