“There can be no neutrality in the classroom,” the official barks. “As Marshal Pétain says, The teaching of neutrality is the teaching of nothing. You have to inculcate your students with a love—even worship—of the new order.” I nod again, gambling that this guy just likes to hear himself talk. Then he slides a piece of paper in front of me. “Sign this.”
He can’t be serious. The paper says that I solemnly swear I’m not a member of any secret society. Should I confess our old orphanage tree house club where Henri and Sam wouldn’t let me in without a code word?
The official says, “Your oath is required under the law for civil servants.”
Of which, regrettably, I’m one. Sullenly, I sign the rotten thing. Meanwhile the baron pinches the bridge of his nose, and I stand, thinking we’re finished. That’s when the inspector reads my signature aloud. “Marthe Simone . . . What type of name is that, mademoiselle?”
I know what he’s getting at and I don’t want to tell him I was named by and after our secretary-general, who is part Jewish. As the story goes, Madame Simon had to put something down on the forms for orphans with unknown parentage, so she made up some variation of her name. That’s why I grew up with an Armenian boy named Simonian. An Italian boy was called Simonetti, and I became Simone.
Before I can say any of that, the baron puts his pipe down, stands to his intimidatingly full height, and says, “Gentlemen, we’re running late and I can’t have my staff standing in the hall all day. You can go, Marthe.”
I don’t need to be told twice. Sergeant Travert tries to open the door for me, but I reach it before he can, and I want to slam it on my way out. I’m boiling mad for some reasons I understand and others I don’t. I’m in no mood to talk to anybody, but Anna waylays me on the grand staircase. “Maman wants to see you.”
Merde. The baroness probably has a whole new list of chores—the annoying ones that always fall to me because everybody else has husbands or families or something better to do.
“It’s important,” Anna says, so I go. But on my way, I keep trying to remember the exact expression on Anna’s pretty face when she said it was important. She looked serious . . . but did she look somber?
I worry when the baroness waves me into the parlor. “Ah. Ma chère mademoiselle.”
It’s not like the matter-of-fact baroness to be solicitous, and my stomach bottoms out when she comes round the front of the desk to greet me, perching on its edge. Her hair used to be dark like Anna’s, but in recent months it’s gone gray. And she’s never looked older than now. Fearing she has news about Henri, I shudder with sudden dread; I’ve told myself he’s too smart to risk an escape attempt from his POW camp, but what if he’s tried and got himself shot?
This is it, I think. Whatever she says next is going to wreck me.
A memory of Henri in a wild cherry tree flashes through my mind. We were sitting in its branches with our feet dangling when he kissed me the first time. He held his breath like he was afraid I’d pull away. Now I’m the one who can’t breathe as I wait for the baroness to tell me he’s dead . . .
“I’d like to discuss your employment,” she says, and I hiccup with relief, because even if she’s going to fire me, the news could’ve been so much worse. “In light of present political realities, the baron has decided to lock the museum until we can find new homes for the items that invite controversy.”
I don’t know what this has to do with me. Do they want to get rid of Ben Franklin’s ring or Washington’s dueling pistols? Maybe Lafayette’s copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Or perhaps the trouble is the tricolor banner emblazoned with Liberty, Equality, Fraternity now that the Marshal has replaced our national motto with Work, Family, and Fatherland.
I’ve never cared about slogans or the old trinkets in our museum. In fact, I spent my entire adolescence rolling my eyes at them, so I’m shocked by just how much I hate the idea of locking them away. Maybe the baroness hates it too, because she stares out the window at dormant volcanic mountains and trees now dropping their dried, shriveled leaves. And with real anguish she murmurs, “After all we sacrificed in the last war . . . it was supposed to end all wars, yet here we are.”
We’re both silent until she straightens her smart square-shouldered suit jacket and turns to me. “Marthe, I don’t have to tell you the difficulties we operate under here at the castle. The children need food, medicine, and blankets for the winter. Relief ships with supplies from New York can’t get through the British blockade. We’re going to need the French government’s help, and we can’t get it if this institution continues to celebrate Lafayette—whose political ideas are, in the current circumstances, considered dangerous.”