Nanée and Luki were well settled in a first-class sleeper compartment with a private bath, just a wealthy American and her niece who was raised in France by her mother, now deceased. The full bed was already made, and Nanée had declined turn-down service. The sitting room had a sofa, a chair, and a table at which they could take meals so they wouldn’t be seen in the dining car. It was late, somehow still the same day that Luki, with the German’s lemon candy in her mouth at that tomb, had taken Nanée’s hand and waved goodbye to the soldiers. It hadn’t been a long walk, nor was the man repairing equipment at the farm to which Simone Menier sent them surprised to see them. He drove them to a town several miles away, each inch from the demarcation line distance well gained. There they caught a local train to Vichy, where they transferred to this night train to Marseille.
“Pemmy would like this,” Luki said. “A princess train.”
Outside the train widow: the Vichy station. It was past time to leave. Still the train didn’t move.
Nanée tried not to worry. They’d cleared their documents before they boarded, simply handing the two American passports over with the single transit pass as if of course the child didn’t need her own. She hadn’t been questioned.
She opened the book Simone Menier had given Luki, and pulled the girl closer. They admired the perfectly detailed illustration facing the title page, young Thérèse and her mother in rich fabrics and gorgeous hats walking together along a harbor. “‘It was 1789,’” she read. “‘A cold autumn rain darkened the city of Le Havre. And yet a great stir reigned on the quays because one of the vessels which made the crossing to America was preparing to set sail.’” Thérèse à Sainte-Domingue—Nanée had read this a hundred times. A French girl with her family in Haiti was terrified by the dark-skinned slaves. She almost dared not touch the black hands reaching out to her. By the final page, though, Thérèse would be helping her mother end slavery on the island, which had always left Nanée longing to do something more important than reading books in a dull house in a dull town where she was to master nothing beyond the foxtrot and needlepoint.
A knock at the door startled them. “We have need of checking your papers before the train can depart,” a Frenchman called out.
Their papers specifically, or were they double-checking everyone? Nanée squeezed Luki’s hand, then opened the door slightly and said they’d cleared documents before they boarded.
“It is an extra precaution due to Maréchal Petain’s visit,” the attendant apologized.
She handed him her passport and the French transit visa that allowed her to move about the free zone.
“And the child’s papers?”
“Pétain isn’t to visit Marseille until Tuesday,” Nanée said. “It’s only Friday.”
“It will be Saturday when the train arrives,” the man said. “We must take precautions. I’m sure you will understand. The lengths these troublemakers go to. An anarchist put a bomb in an underpass near la Pomme in hopes of killing the Prince of Wales.”
Nanée tried to hide her alarm: La Pomme was where Villa Air-Bel was. “Was nobody hurt?”
The man smiled indulgently. “I’m afraid the Prince of Wales has not visited France lately. This was perhaps eight years ago.”
“I see.” She laughed more easily than she felt, wondering what an attempted bombing nearly a decade ago could have to do with anything. “Well, you don’t imagine a five-year-old girl will blow up a bridge, I hope!”
“Truly, we must check everyone,” he apologized.
She fetched Luki’s passport, tamping back the temptation to ask how an anarchist attack years ago could possibly cause him to now need to confirm a child’s passport, far too aware that Luki had no French transit visa.
He gave the passport a cursory glance and handed it back. “I apologize that you may be bothered once or twice again on the journey.”
Nanée wondered how many stops there would be along the way, how many document checks, really. She would have to order coffee to keep herself awake. She couldn’t afford to be caught off guard along the way. But at least they were out of occupied France, with only Frenchmen now to be fooled or bribed.
“How long we will be delayed?” she asked.
The man shrugged. “You will arrive when you arrive, and not a moment earlier.”
Nanée snuggled again with Luki, who’d turned the book’s pages to an illustration of two jaguars. In the background, a dark-skinned boy held a baby jaguar by the back of its neck as a white man pointed a rifle at the poor thing.