“What are they doing to the baby?” Luki asked.
Nanée flipped pages, looking for a gentler illustration, only to come upon a jaguar on his back. Was he dead?
“That man is a bad man,” Luki said.
On the facing page, a man stripped to the waist and tied to a tree was being caned.
Nanée flipped pages more quickly, saying, “Now where did we leave off?” Perhaps the illustrations made sense in the context of the story, or perhaps she could finish the page and close the book.
Luki stopped her at a drawing of a man with arms tied behind a tree trunk as another man aimed a cat-o’-nine-tails at his bare chest.
“He’s a bad man, so he has to be punished,” Luki said, meaning the man being beaten.
How did you explain to a child that some people were unforgivably cruel? She remembered another illustration in another Pink Library volume, of a woman flogging a child. How terribly proper and yet brutal these books were, all manners and morals, with virtue always triumphant while bad children got the switch. What a beast she must have been as a child, to love them.
“The Germans are bad men,” Luki said. “I’m a German. That’s why I know the words the bad men say. But I’m a girl.”
Nanée nodded, trying to see where her mind was headed.
“Papa is a German.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Nanée hugged Luki close and kissed the top of her head. “Your papa isn’t a German like that. Your papa is a very good man. He’d never hurt anyone.”
“Even if they were bad men, like in the picture?”
“The bad man here is this one,” Nanée said, pointing to the horrible one wielding the whip. “But Thérèse helps them, so they can’t be hurt anymore.”
Nanée flipped further backward. Why couldn’t this be the Pink Library story with the toy store and the beautiful rocking horse?
She glanced out the window, wishing the train would set out before some bad man somewhere changed his mind about letting them go.
She read on, watching out the window too and thinking of the replica of that rocking horse her father had had made for her one Christmas. She’d been too big for it, really, even then. Would home be easier to negotiate now, without Daddy there to disappoint? But it would be impossible to bear Misha in his place.
She turned to the next, mercifully illustration-free page, hoping Luki might fall asleep before they got much further.
“Were the men after we left the castle good men, even though they said the German words?” Luki looked to Nanée with her big dark eyes, which had seen so much more than a five-year-old ought to.
“I don’t know,” Nanée admitted. Had the German soldiers known they were escaping and let them go?
“They gave me candy. Sister Therese used to give me candy. Her name is the same as the girl in the story.”
“It is.”
“Sister Therese is a good person.”
“Yes.”
“She isn’t German.”
“No.”
“Reverend Mother is a good person.”
“Very good.”
“The Lady Mary is good even though she’s stone.”
Nanée wasn’t sure how Edouard would feel about his daughter’s infatuation with the Christ mother he didn’t believe in. Or did he? Nanée wasn’t even sure what she believed herself. Faith. What did the word mean? Her faith was in the selflessness of people like the nuns, the hay wagon driver, the caretaker’s family, Simone Menier. People like Miriam, T and Danny, Varian, Gussie, and Maurice.
“I asked the Lady Mary to ask God to send someone to take Pemmy to Papa,” Luki said. “Then you were standing with Reverend Mother.”
Nanée smoothed Luki’s hair and closed the book. “Your papa is the one who sent me to get you.”
“You’re not an angel?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m just a girl, like you.”
“The queen of the castle is a good person,” Luki said. “She’ll take care of Pemmy and Joey.”
“She will.”
“She’ll send them to live with me and Papa.”
“Yes.”
“Sister Therese says someday Papa and I will be with Mutti again, but we have to wait for God to call us.” The child took the drawing Edouard had given Nanée from her pocket and studied it. “Do you think God calls on the telephone?”
Nanée allowed that she wasn’t sure.
“Papa says Mutti still loves me.”