She fingered Edouard’s residency permit in her coat pocket, where she’d put it after she freed herself from the sofa last night, after the commandant was asleep. The camp release sat on the table, still with the pen.
He scratched his hairy paunch under the shirt he still wore from the night before, eyeing her trousers with disapproval.
“You need to sign the release and get someone to take me to him,” she said firmly. “You need to tell your men Edouard Moss is to leave with me.”
Sunday, November 3, 1940
CAMP DES MILLES
Men clustered around vats of coffee being ladled into tin cups in the hard industrial space. The commandant hadn’t brought Nanée himself, of course. He’d directed one of the guards to take her to Edouard Moss, who was to be released to her by his order.
“Edouard Moss?” she asked of the first prisoner she came to, working hard not to pull her scarf up against the stench of so many men living together on this uninhabitable factory floor. It wasn’t their fault, she knew that, and yet it was unbearable.
A murmur rippled into a wave of silence, everyone staring at her.
“Edouard Moss?” she called out.
Nobody answered.
“Edouard Moss,” she said. “I’ve come to get him. I have permission to take him to Marseille.”
Another murmur arose, not spreading this time but all at once, many of the men looking toward the center, where one of three harsh lightbulbs lit the wretched space.
Still no one answered.
She made her way toward the lightbulb, afraid of what she would find. Edouard might have died in the night while she was with the commandant. Why had she waited? Why hadn’t she demanded Edouard’s release last night? But she’d had to tread so carefully; the commandant might as easily have changed his mind as not. He might even still.
The men parted to let her through. The guard remained near the stairs, unwilling to wade into the stench.
“I believe he’s at the latrines,” an old man said. He met Nanée’s gaze, then looked to a suitcase sitting upright on the ground between his makeshift bed and another. A photograph sat propped on top of the case—Edouard and a woman so like Nanée herself that they might be sisters. Elza Moss, who would forever remain as confident and young as she was in this photo, even as the child she held grew up, as her husband’s hair grayed, as Nanée herself saw the creep of fine lines at the corners of her eyes.
“Didn’t someone say they saw Edouard in line at the latrine?” the man said to the others around him. And into the din of their response he whispered to Nanée, “He was here two nights ago, but not since yesterday morning.”
Nanée felt she would retch from the loss and the grief and the fury. She was too late to save Edouard, just as she’d been too late to save her father on this same day twelve years ago, or even to see him. And the commandant, the vile little robe heir, had known she was too late. He’d purported to believe she wanted to offer what he wanted to take in exchange for the release of a man he knew to be dead.
“Someone was asking about him,” the old man said. “The Gestapo.”
The Gestapo? But no, that was Danny.
“The Gestapo are coming for him,” the man said. “Don’t let anyone know he isn’t here. Give him as much time as you can.”
“He’s not dead?”
The alarm in the old man’s face. She’d spoken too loudly.
He whispered, “They’ve allowed you to come in here to look for him, Nanée.”
Nanée started at the sound of her name. How did he know who she was? She peered more closely: a long, familiar face, thinning hair, hooded eyes.
“I was afraid . . . ,” he said. “Sometimes men die in the latrines at night and we don’t even know they’re gone. His photo, his wife and daughter. I was sure he was dead. I could imagine him leaving the suitcase, but not the photo. The fact that they’ve allowed you to come in here to look for him, though, suggests they think he’s still here.”
“He answered at roll call. I heard him.” Realizing even as she spoke that it was this man’s voice she’d heard. “I can’t just leave without him,” she whispered.
“If they find him, they’ll send him to Dachau, as an example to the rest of us. Dachau. It’s a German labor camp.”
Far from helping Edouard, she’d put him in greater danger by exposing the fact that he’d escaped and was on the run.
“Come with me,” she said. “Pretend you’re Edouard.”