Thank heaven for Vichy contradictions and inefficiencies.
“Even if they do, what about Luki?” Edouard smiled apologetically. “She’s only five, not quite old enough to enlist.”
Varian looked to the empty plates around the table, not so much as a breadcrumb left behind. Madame Nouget had taken to weighing out the bread in even portions each morning and giving each person their share, to be eaten as wanted over the course of the day.
“Danny didn’t tell me you had a daughter,” Varian said. “And she’s still in France?”
“I haven’t seen Luki in over a year, since I put her on a train to Paris.” Edouard’s willow-green eyes were moist now. “She might be passing as a gentile, and I can’t risk making inquiries in case she is.”
He seemed to be suggesting he would go get her if only he knew where she was, but of course the Germans had forbidden Jews to return to the occupied zone since mid-August. For Edouard to try to retrieve his daughter from Paris would be suicide.
“I can’t leave without Luki,” Edouard said, seeming stronger each time he said her name.
“You’re an escapee from an internment camp. It’s too dangerous for you to stay here, not just for you but for all of us.” Varian adjusted his glasses, a tic Nanée had come to see meant he was tamping down his irritation. “Let me explain to you what we have to do to get you out. For your American visa, I have to get your name from here to the US authorities without alerting Vichy to your whereabouts, lest you end up back in that camp or worse. I cannot simply send a telegram. Those days are over.”
To smuggle the names for visas out, they now copied them onto long, thin strips of paper pasted end to end, which they wound tightly, encased in rubber, and inserted into the bottom end of tubes of toothpaste, which they then re-crimped and sent with refugees; if their bags were searched, they would only be carrying clothes and toiletries.
“Someone in the States will have to submit an application for you to the Inter-Departmental Committee on Political Refugees, which is as cumbersome as it sounds—representatives from the FBI, the State Department, the intelligence divisions of the War Department and Navy, and the immigration section of the Justice Department. They present recommendations and provide assistance to the consuls in considering visa applications. You’ll need affidavits in support of your application to have any hope of consideration by them, preferably from Americans of some stature.”
“I’ve worked with some American journalists, years ago now, but they might vouch for me,” Edouard offered.
“If the committee can be convinced,” Varian said, “then the American consul general might grant you an interview. He has his own opinion of things, and to be honest, he’s a bit of a cold fish, with no affection for refugees. He thinks Germany will win this war, so why offend them? If he doesn’t like your politics or your religion or haircut or the simple fact that you speak German, your visa request is denied. Maybe luck is with you, and the consul general can’t be bothered, leaving Vice Consul Bingham to oversee your case.” Bingham was a great ally for refugees; he’d housed André in his villa and rescued Lion Feuchtwanger from St. Nicola in the most extraordinary way, dressing the famous writer in a woman’s coat, dark glasses, and a shawl over his head, and passing him off as his own ancient aunt. “We of course try to arrange for our applications to end up with Bingham, but we can’t control when or how the committee sends your information to the consulate. And that is just the American visa—the easy part. The hard part is getting you out of France.”
Varian again adjusted his glasses. “Let’s do this. I have a visa list going out tomorrow. Let me have Lena add your name. And I can send a coded cable to initiate affidavit requests from your journalist friends. With the difficulty in communications, we won’t necessarily know what progress is being made until the American consulate here calls you for an interview, if ever they do, but this will put the process in motion.”
Nanée, watching Edouard’s face, was reminded of him sitting in her apartment back in Paris. You are thinking this is not an answer? But it is merely not the answer you wish to hear.
“I appreciate that,” Edouard said. “But I can’t leave France without Luki.”
NANéE WAS SITTING alone in the small greenhouse later that day, tucked up onto a creaky old wicker chair beside the rusted garden tools, when someone tapped lightly at the glass door, startling her. She’d been staring down at her book, Le morte d’Arthur, as if she might make the words mean something, she might lose herself in Malory’s stories of King Arthur, Lancelot and Merlin and Guinevere, and Tristan with the Belle Isolde, his uncle’s wife, the dark side even to chivalry.