“A clean-cut boy like Gussie would draw attention there,” Varian said, “whereas there are always women on the streets of the vieux ville. A certain kind of woman, yes, but . . .”
There was variety enough among the whores in the Panier that, as long as Nanée didn’t dress too poshly, she would be less conspicuous than sweet-faced Gussie with his jacket and tie and his lucky copy of L’envers et l’endroit.
Varian said, “I understand if you can’t—”
“I can,” Nanée said. “I will.”
She would get a cheap skirt or two at a secondhand shop, since she had just the one skirt from the suit she’d worn to impress Varian, far too nice to blend in there, and a woman in trousers was now frowned upon as a sign of inappropriate female emancipation, Vichy trying to push women back a hundred years on the excuse of not wanting “ladies” to look or act like men. She would enjoy appearing to buckle to Vichy expectations of femininity—behaving as a woman should, which was to do nothing of consequence—while actually defying them.
Varian said, “I’d like to get you used to making deliveries first.”
He handed her an address at Prado Beach, on the opposite side of Marseille from the Panier, and told her the message. “You’ll knock, twice, three times, then once. If you’re in the right place, with the right person, and it’s safe to deliver a message, they’ll respond, ‘Postmistress?’ to let you know, and you’ll respond, ‘Indeed, yes.’ If they say nothing, Nanée, or anything but that single word, postmistress, you leave immediately. Do not enter. Do not try to help them. Get word back to us as fast as you can, preferably to Lena or me. But don’t do anything yourself. Is that clear?”
“‘Indeed, yes.’”
“The fact that you’re entitled to be here in Marseille won’t protect you. Again, the people you’ll be delivering messages to are not.”
“I understand,” she said. “I can’t afford to be caught helping them.”
And I won’t be, she thought. But she didn’t say the words aloud, not wanting to tempt fate.
“Memorize the addresses I give you. Don’t take them with you when you go. Don’t take anything that suggests what you’re doing.”
“‘Indeed, yes,’” she repeated.
He smiled a little despite himself. She was rather proud of that. Prying a smile from Varian’s lips was one of the hardest tasks in Marseille.
“You won’t always be able to take Dagobert with you. You’ll have to strike a balance between when he makes you look innocent and American and when he draws attention. If you need to leave him behind, he can stay with me.”
Nanée, not sure how to respond, knelt to Dagobert’s level and rubbed his ears.
Varian said, “You will likely be followed sometimes.”
“The Postmistress motto: If you can’t lose a tail, don’t deliver the mail.”
Varian actually laughed. It was such a surprising sound that she was sure half the office had turned to the closed bathroom door. It was a surprisingly warm laugh.
“All right,” he said. “Thank you.”
She and Dagobert were already through the bathroom door when Varian said, “You’re not, it turns out, quite the typical American heiress I expected.”
She turned back, astonished.
“Point to you,” he said. “Good luck and Godspeed, Nanée.”
NOT AN HOUR later, Nanée was climbing from a trolley at Prado Beach, the Saint-Pierre cemetery behind her and Dagobert at her side. She knocked twice, then three times, then once, her heart beating like that of a horse in the starting gate at Churchill Downs.
If a boy like Gussie could do this, certainly she could, she told herself.
She waited. Was she in the wrong place? Was she being watched?
She glanced around her. No one. Just Dagobert sitting ever so politely beside her.
It seemed such a long time to wait. Should she leave?
The door opened slightly, stopped by a chain. An eye peeked through the crack.
In a whisper, “Postmistress?”
“Indeed, yes.”
The eye retreated. The door closed.
The sound of the chain sliding. The door opened slightly wider.
An old woman bent in half over a cane pulled her inside, into a room cluttered with art and antiques.
“He’s arrived safely in Lisbon,” Nanée said. “He’ll be on the ship to New York tomorrow.”