It was all happening so much faster than Nanée had expected, on account of the storm. The wind was blowing something fierce as the foreman closed the trunk over them, and his son drove them off in the first burst of rain, which soon washed so thickly over the car that Nanée could hear nothing else.
Luki touched her face to get her attention. Nanée whispered right into her ear, “Quickly. The rain will hide your voice.”
“Pemmy and Joey can come too?” Luki whispered. “They don’t want to stay in here alone. It’s scary.”
Nanée tightened her hand over Luki’s. “I’m not sure they can pass as kitchen workers,” she said. “But if Pemmy and Joey stay in the car, they’ll get to go in with the lady of the chateau, like a princess and a prince.”
“Do you think the lady of the chateau is quiet and still and listening, like the Lady Mary?” Luki asked.
“I think the lady of the chateau answers prayers,” Nanée said.
A few moments later, the car came to a stop, and the trunk opened. Someone was shouting. German words.
Thursday, November 28, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Edouard took the print from the developer: his own younger face, the man he’d been even before he met Elza, when he’d first tried to capture the watchers Hitler fed on. He submerged it in the water, waited ten seconds, then flicked the flashlight on and off several feet above it. Sometimes a little extra light on a thing showed it for what it was, showed him for who he was.
Voices sounded outside the bathroom door, Aube and Peterkin returning from milking Madame LaVache. They were going to celebrate the American Thanksgiving today, so Madame Nouget would need her pans back for her feast—if you could call anything pulled together on rationing a feast.
Where was Nanée now? Had she found Luki? Were they out of the occupied zone?
He set the print back in the developer, and the image began to rise up, his own face becoming something different, not black and white but eerie silvers that, set against each other, appeared darker and lighter than they were. Sometimes you had to embrace the fact that not everything was as it seemed, even inside yourself. Accept it. Learn to live with it.
He ran the solarized self-portrait through the stop bath and fixer, then submerged it in the pan of water to rinse. He removed the negative from the enlarger then, and inserted another, the real ghost of his own past that had lurked in the enlarger carrier all the time he was in Camp des Milles, that had been there still when Nanée brought it to him. Salvation.
Thursday, November 28, 1940
CHTEAU DE CHENONCEAU
Luki, still in the car trunk with Tante Nanée, kissed Pemmy’s forehead and set her hand on her pouch, where Joey now snuggled safely with the photograph of Papa and Mutti and her and the dreaming log letter from Papa that meant he wasn’t an angel. She didn’t understand. She was supposed to pretend she was a cooker for the castle while Pemmy waited in the car with Joey for her princess entrance, but someone closed her back in before she could get out. Now they weren’t even at the castle, they were back in the garage. The old man with the bulgy eyes was lifting her from the trunk.
“A German patrol came up in the moat just as the car crossed to the door, but they did manage to get your fancy little case into the big house,” he said as he took them into some plain rooms like the nuns lived in.
“You strike me as a good bluffer,” he said to Tante Nanée. “Once the storm’s past, we might slip you through the Orangerie on foot and let you cross through the gardens as if you’re bringing flowers for the house.”
“You have flowers this time of year?” Tante Nanée asked.
“The cottage in the center there, that’s where we grow ’em. Year-round, so’s the chateau is always welcoming. You’ll need nerves for this, though, as you might be questioned by a patrol. Not a lot of folks can stand up to German questioning.”
“I can stand up,” Tante Nanée assured him.
“And the girl?”
Tante Nanée said, “If we go for a walk, Luki, can you promise not to say a word to anyone, not even to me, until we get to the chateau? We might meet some men who aren’t nice, and you will just have to pretend you don’t talk. Can you do that?”
She nodded.
“Not a word?”
She shook her head.
The foreman squatted to her level. “What’s your kangaroo’s name, honey?”
She pulled Pemmy closer and didn’t say a word.