“Postmistress?”
“Indeed, yes.”
The door opened wider, her invitation into the room.
Two people looked expectantly at her—two people anyone with any interest in art would know.
“Your Czech passports are ready,” she whispered.
Varian now had a deal with Vladimír Vocho?, the Czech consul in Marseille. Vocho? would provide a passport to any anti-Nazi Varian recommended, and Varian would supply funds to have them printed in Bordeaux, right under the Nazis’ noses. The consul was entitled to have passports printed in France, which came with pink covers rather than green, but the pink Czech passports had become so common that the legitimate green ones were as likely to be questioned as the illegitimate pink ones, or more. Twice each week, Varian joined a friend of the Czech consul for breakfast in the friend’s room at the train station hotel, where he exchanged an envelope of photographs, descriptions, and cash for one with the passports for prior applicants. Varian didn’t give Nanée the passports themselves to deliver, out of concern for her own safety. If she were caught with forged documents, even her American passport would be no protection.
She said to the two artists, “Come to the office tomorrow morning to collect them.”
They thanked her profusely, as if they believed their danger were ended rather than just begun.
Sunday, October 20, 1940
THE CAS OFFICE, MARSEILLE
Danny picked up an identity card from Varian’s desk. Varian, alarmed, grabbed it back. This was not, Nanée thought, an auspicious start for a job Danny needed, since he and T and Peterkin hadn’t been able to survive on the income from selling his uncle’s grapes in the Languedoc markets.
“It’s a forgery,” Danny said.
Varian took him by the sleeve, pulled him into the bathroom, and turned on the tap. Nanée, with Dagobert right behind, followed and closed them in.
“How can you can tell the cart d’identité is a forgery?” Varian demanded.
“When Danny was working with the police in Paris before the Germans invaded,” Nanée answered, “he quietly expedited naturalization papers and residency permits for German refugees. He can translate your correspondence into French officialese that will pass the authorities. He knows how to get permissions no one wants to give. And he knows where to find the people you’re looking for.”
Danny said, “Vichy doesn’t advertise, of course, but I hear through the refugee underground that most are at an internment camp near N?mes or back at Camp des Milles.”
Obtaining American visas for people in the camps was complicated. US authorities suspected them simply for having been arrested, and yet if Vichy or the Nazis released them, that raised concerns they might be Nazi sympathizers or even spies. But Varian already had authority for visas for those on his list.
“Do you think you could get them out?” Varian said.
The whole scene struck Nanée as comic. The toilet. The sink. The sad little mirror. The murmur of voices from beyond the door. Most of the people who worked in the office now had no idea of the illegal activities of the CAS; Varian had built up quite a staff of legitimate volunteers helping refugees in legal ways, as cover for his illegal rescue work.
“Oh, sure,” Danny answered finally. “I’ll just walk in and ask who is there and if they could leave with me.”
Varian’s eyes lit for a brief moment before he registered that Danny was being flip.
Nanée said, “If someone can find out who’s there, I could try to get them out.”
They both eyed her dubiously.
“You underestimate me, both of you,” she said.
AS VARIAN LEFT, Nanée held Danny back and opened the tap Varian had closed. Dagobert, with an impatient groan, sat dejectedly.
“How did you know that identity card was forged?” she asked. Gussie bought real cards from the tabacs, and Bill Freier, who doctored them, could imitate the official rubber stamp with just a few brushstrokes. Freier, who’d been arrested in Austria for anti-Nazi cartoons and caricatures and later escaped the French Le Vernet internment camp, lived under an alias in Cassis, creating forgeries in order to help fellow refugees and to keep his fiancé and himself alive while Varian tried to arrange US immigration for them. No one—no one—could tell Bill Freier’s identity cards without a magnifying glass, and often not even then. His signature was awfully good too, and he did it for the CAS for fifty cents a card when others would charge three hundred times that.