“Not cognac.”
“I think there’s some Calvados. Give me a few minutes, then . . . No, I’ll come get you.”
She stopped at the door and turned back. “You did a good thing, Nan,” she said.
Sunday, November 3, 1940
A BROTHEL CELLAR
Edouard sat silently, his back to the wall, the cold wet of the cellar floor thick in his bones now. The bits of scamper in the dark no longer alarmed him, but the unfamiliar footsteps above now did. He quickly folded Luki’s letter, words he couldn’t see in the darkness but knew by heart, and tucked it back into his shirt pocket with the letters he’d written her. He wrapped his fingers around the knife he’d stolen from the upstairs brothel’s kitchen early that morning, after the last of the clients left and the house quieted, just before the dawn.
Reluctantly he removed the iron grille over the hole in the cellar floor and climbed in, his feet instantly soaking in the foul water as he breathed in the underground stench.
The door at the top of the stairs creaked open. Light spilled down the rickety stairs. Not the cook come to get potatoes; the woman’s hacking cough would have alerted him.
Edouard couldn’t see the feet, but he could hear first one heavy step, then another.
He had the advantage, he told himself. His eyes were accustomed to the dark. If no second person followed, he had the advantage. He’d long ago given up the notion that he might not be able to kill another man.
He waded as quietly as he could through the low tunnel, away from the grate so that if it was opened, he wouldn’t be visible from above. He emerged in an abandoned underground chapel, a small cavern at the other end that the brothel owner hiding him said dated from the Reign of Terror, when French revolutionaries visited the kind of violence on Roman Catholic clergy that the Nazis now visited on French Jews. It was odd, the things the mind turned to, to stave off fear. The bare stone here would have been the altar. Jesus on the cross behind it. He’d seen them when the madam sent him down with a flashlight so he would know where he was to hide if anyone came. No one unwilling to climb into the flooded well could know about the chapel. The only other person who knew it existed was the Russian Communist who’d hidden there before him.
Quiet, careful footsteps now in the basement. No light that Edouard could make out, but he wouldn’t be able to see it from here unless it was pointed right down at the grate.
What could Edouard do if someone did climb into the well, if they did come down here to search? He might just submerge himself here. But better to wait at the edge of the tunnel, to have surprise on his side. Even if there were more than one of them, only one person at a time could emerge from that narrow tunnel.
Could hiding in this shit hole be better than Camp des Milles? What had he been thinking when he’d snuck onto Tater’s truck as it carried away their garbage to feed to his pigs? He’d thought it his good luck when they stopped beside another truck loaded with wine, the two drivers sharing a friendly smoke and chat. He used the moment to slip from one truck to the other, with no idea where it was headed, only hoping it would take him farther than Tater’s farm before he was discovered missing.
He ought to have waited for something he knew would take him toward Paris rather than away. That was his big mistake. He was farther from Luki now, not closer.
But in truth he didn’t even know that; he didn’t know where Luki was.
He had no money. No ration card for food. No papers at all. If he was found anywhere in France, he was doomed.
But with the Kundt Commission coming for him, it was better to be cowering in a foul-smelling abandoned chapel in a dank basement than to be a sitting duck. What choice did he have? He’d have been found if he’d wandered the landscape outside the camp. No one who did that lasted more than a day.
He’d been gone nearly two days now. This must be someone looking for him, or looking for refugees generally. There were rumored to be hundreds or more hiding here, looking for a way to leave France. That was why he’d come here when he realized where the truck had brought him. If there were refugees here, there had to be people helping them. Nobody here had much affection for authority, most living afoul of the law in one way or another.
Just one set of footsteps, alone. He was sure of it.
Why were they being so quiet, so careful?
The grate scraped across the cellar floor.
A flashlight shone down onto the black water.
Edouard stood perfectly still, holding the knife.
Sunday, November 3, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Were you your father’s favorite?” André asked Nanée. The question came out of nowhere. No one here knew this was the anniversary of her father’s death. No one knew that she’d been in France when he died, that she’d insisted on going to Paris when he wanted her to come home, that she hadn’t gone back even for his funeral.