Tuesday, June 18, 1940
BRIVE
Nanée dressed that morning in her favorite gray flannel slacks and some of her best jewelry—a diamond ring and her emerald earrings—but with her grandmother’s pearls underneath her blouse and the diamond brooch that had belonged to generations of her father’s family pinned inside her trouser pocket, the Schiaparelli fur bracelet that had only ever been hers there too. She packed nothing but a few toiletries, saving the space in the small satchel she could have at her feet for Peterkin’s bunny and his clothes, while T moved through the motions of getting him ready, her voice, which had been so steady, now flat and toneless, necessary words and nothing more. T couldn’t let any feeling creep in, or she would not be able to do this, and she had to do this; Nanée understood that.
At the car that was to take them to Bordeaux—a flivver no American would value particularly—its fascist owner eyed her with disappointment, no doubt wondering whether Nanée was really the kind of American who might open roads otherwise closed. The vile woman’s maid sat in the back seat, surrounded by suitcases stacked so precariously that surely they would whack the poor girl in the head at the first turn. This woman valued her own possessions over other people’s lives.
Nanée offered her most gracious smile. “Thank you for agreeing to take Pierre and me.” Pierre. More upper-class than Peterkin. This silly woman would care about that.
T focused on Peterkin. She put one hand on each of his little cheeks and made him meet her gaze.
Nanée squatted down to Dagobert’s level. She couldn’t watch T saying goodbye to her son. She couldn’t bear it. She could barely bear to say goodbye to Dagobert.
She took her white silk scarf—less clean than it once had been—from around her neck, and tied it around Dagobert’s. It would smell of her. She kissed his little face twice, in the French way, leaving lipstick on his fur.
“I don’t want to go either,” she whispered. “But it’s for Danny.”
He licked her bare wrist, then her face. She petted the mess of his fur and kissed him twice again. “Surely even the Boches will love such a wonderful fellow,” she said.
She was glad he couldn’t understand her words.
She buried her face in Dagobert’s then, her mouth open wide so that she would taste him, taste his fur and his little black nose, his eyes that had not stopped loving her even in her cowardice.
She climbed into the passenger seat then, and accepted Peterkin, and pulled the door shut so that T wouldn’t have to close it. She refused to cry even as they drove off, Peterkin clutching the bunny and looking out the window at T and Dagobert.
Tuesday, June 18, 1940
AMBOISE
Luki didn’t look up to the beautiful colored windows because there was a scary man up there who was bleeding from a crown of thorns on his head. The church had been pretty when she came with Sister Therese earlier, when the man in the robe talked and it was full of music and the nun held Luki’s hand and sang in her beautiful voice. It still smelled like the pipe smoke of Papa’s friends, and the Lady Mary wasn’t scary, she was God’s mutti, except Luki wasn’t supposed to say mutti anymore. Reverend Mother said she must call even her own mutti “Maman,” and nobody else was to know Luki was German.
“I know it’s scary, but this is what good Catholic girls do,” Luki said to Pemmy as she walked carefully up the side aisle where she knew she would find the Lady Mary, staying as far away from the wall and the scary paintings as she could. Pemmy was a Catholic kangaroo professor now and she was a girl too, and Catholic girls came to this place and prayed, which just meant you knelt down and talked to a statue. Luki didn’t like the bleeding man, but the Lady Mary’s face was pretty, so she came to pray to her.
She gasped: the bleeding man was lying here now, and he was reaching out, trying to grab her!
She turned and ran as fast as she could back up the aisle and through the door into the sunshine, which was so bright it blinded her.
IT WAS DARKER in the cellar even than in the church. Luki curled up with Sister Therese. She was so tired. She wanted to sleep, but every boom was so loud and shaking. She buried her face in Pemmy, feeling the edge of Flat Joey Letters tucked with the photograph in her pouch. “Don’t be scared, Pemmy,” she said, trying to sound like Sister Therese. Sister Therese sounded scared whenever she said it, but her voice made Luki feel better.
Another boom came, and rat-a-tat-tats again and again, and more men’s voices, not gentle voices like Papa’s, but shouting. Mean. Some in the old words and some in the new ones, but even the voices using the new words were angry.