She hosts Wednesday-night billiard games and Sunday-night socials at which she plays piano for the staff. She teaches the older girls in the preventorium how to roll their hair and walk in heels with books balanced on their heads. She doesn’t seem to have any idea of the effect she has on people, but she’s a swell distraction. She makes it easier to forget the debacle of our continued national humiliation. At least until the autumn day when officials from Vichy show up at the castle to interrogate us. Then gossip flies up and down the square tower and in and out of the schoolrooms.
“Another political purge?”
“But we don’t have any Jews or Freemasons left on the teaching staff!”
“—could they be looking to make arrests?”
We’re eventually told the Marshal is considering a visit to the preventorium come springtime. The aging leader of France likes to bask in the adoration of children, but under the pretext of security, he sends advance men to sweep away adult dissenters and so-called undesirables. That’s why Sergeant Travert and an officious little inspector from Vichy now sit across from me in the castle library, and the latter asks, “Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party, mademoiselle?”
“I’m not much of a joiner,” I say.
From his wing chair, the stately Baron de LaGrange gives me a barely perceptible warning look to let me know that now isn’t the time to wisecrack. I rein in my smart mouth, answering a few more questions before the inspector asks me to start snitching. “Tell me, mademoiselle. Are any of your colleagues at the school foreigners or Freemasons?”
All the foreigners are gone, but I’m pretty sure the Latin master used to be a Freemason. He’s an insufferable old goat, but now isn’t the time to settle scores. “None that I’m aware of . . .”
“Jews?”
“Not on the teaching staff,” I say carefully, knowing the administrative offices are another matter. “Again, none that I’m aware of.”
“Degenerates?”
Having only a vague idea what he means, I stare at the official—whose lardy complexion no one could ever want to carve in anything but wax.
“Sexual deviants, mademoiselle,” he explains. “Women of low morals, corruptors of young people, homosexual men, sapphists, or pederasts . . .”
In my indignance, my mouth falls slack. And as my silence drags on, the baron pointedly clears his throat. This time I don’t think his warning is for me, and the inspector moves on. “Any self-avowed champions of the republic?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I wouldn’t tell you if I did, I think, plastering on a dim-witted smile. “I’m not political.”
At least that much is true. Frenchwomen have never been allowed to vote, so I didn’t see the point. Before the war, everybody was so worried about the communists that I never thought to worry about the royalist imbeciles who read Action Fran?aise—or the fascist crackpots of the Parti Populaire. Now the imbeciles and crackpots have power—or at least as much as the Nazis let them have. And I wonder which kind of imbecile or crackpot this beady-eyed official is . . .
“I’m told, mademoiselle, that you’ve lived your whole life here. Perhaps that’s why your manner is so . . . American?”
It’s true that I grew up surrounded by teachers, soldiers, and doctors from the United States. Still, I snap, “I’m a Frenchwoman.”
“You must’ve been instructed here to revere General Lafayette, no?”
“Oui.” Now doesn’t seem like the time to admit I paid only half attention to those lessons, but everyone knows the new government’s persecutions go against Lafayette’s ideals of democracy, political liberty, and religious freedom.
That must be the problem, because the official says, “Individualism and the myth of human equality have brought France to her knees, mademoiselle. We cannot have our schoolteachers wedded to the old revolution, one aimed to appease the evil-minded mob. Revolution in our new age will nourish the people through discipline. Discipline teachers like you must provide.”
I steal a look at the baron to see if he’s on board with this, but he’s busy adjusting his expensive silk tie, and Sergeant Travert’s expression is like stone. I realize that if I don’t go along, I’m going to get the ax. Since I can’t afford to be fired from the only job I’ve ever had and my only means of supporting myself, I keep smiling until my cheeks hurt. “As I said, I’m not political. I just teach neutral subjects.”