As I’ve said, I know all the castle’s secret places.
“Ma?tresse!” calls little Gabriella, in a striped swimsuit, waving her arms at me before doing a cannonball into the pool. She’s not a little mouse anymore; she’s made friends other than the mean tomcat. She’s a good student too. If she were living in the Occupied Zone, she’d be wearing a yellow star, but here at the Lafayette Preventorium, she’s just a child like any other.
Her father still doesn’t think it’s safe to visit—not with Sergeant Travert and his gendarmes making spot patrols—so Gabriella comes to church every Sunday and mimics all the prayers. It’s the same church where the curé had a small service for Henri, putting a photo of him on the wall with other fallen villagers of other wars, and everyone lit candles in Henri’s honor.
We don’t know where he’s really buried.
Probably some pig-shit hole, Madame Pinton had shouted the day she learned of Henri’s death. Then she let out a wail that still echoes in my ears all these months later. After her first burst of anguish, she didn’t seem to want to say another word to me. And I don’t blame her.
Now Gabriella comes up out of the pool, grinning, her hair soaked and water dripping down her nose. “Was it good, Ma?tresse? Did I make a big splash?”
I clap. “Very good, little squirt! Now try the diving board.”
I’ve discovered that I can just do that. Put on a happy mask and go through the motions, pretending everything’s fine. Of course I can keep teaching. I’m better now. Right as rain!
Acting like a person is like squeezing into some old dress that doesn’t fit anymore—I can breathe shallowly for a few hours, but then the seams start ripping and I need to claw it off and gulp in air. Even here, out in the open summer sky, with the vision of the castle towers on the horizon, I feel that suffocating sensation. So I get up and walk to the church to be alone.
I come here a lot since Henri died; the big wooden doors are never locked. The curé has a note on the door warning against letting in the roaming cats so they don’t knock over any candles. On my knees in the empty pews, I don’t talk to God, because he clearly doesn’t care about me or anyone else—but I like the quiet, which is why I’m annoyed to hear someone come in.
Anna has followed me. She makes the sign of the cross, kneels beside me, and clasps her hands beneath her chin. But she doesn’t speak to God either. “I wish it wasn’t me who told you Henri died.”
“Someone would have.”
“You’ll always remember it was me . . . it’s tainted our friendship.”
Is that what she thinks—that I blame her for telling me? No. I’m the one who tainted our friendship with sinful thoughts . . . that didn’t even feel sinful. But they were disloyal to Henri, and I don’t know how to forgive myself for that. I let her get too close, and now I want to put distance between us.
We can’t be friends like before.
“I have some news,” she says.
It’s going to be bad. There’s been nothing but bad news all summer. The shortages are worse than ever. Flour. Sugar. Petrol. The Vichy-controlled newspapers blame it on Jews. They’re supposedly hoarding for profit. We all know better. It’s the Nazis who are starving us.
On May Day, the Nazis lined up and shot French boys for painting anti-German graffiti. On Bastille Day, defiant crowds came out shouting for liberty, equality, and brotherhood. People were again shot dead for it. At least in nearby Clermont-Ferrand, protestors managed to sing the “Marseillaise” without being stopped by the gendarmes, because of a band of armed men from the nearby forests.
They fought back.
Remembering what Monsieur Kohn said, some part of me wonders—hopes, even—that the armed men I stumbled over in the forest were the ones who fought back in Clermont-Ferrand.
There are now open reports of death camps—some say more than a million Jews have been murdered already in the east. And here in France, thirteen thousand Jews in the Occupied Zone—fathers, mothers, and children—were shoved into Vélodrome d’Hiver, the indoor bicycle stadium, to await internment at Drancy, and then deportation. Even knowing what that might mean, our own policemen in Paris helped the Nazis do it. So when I ask Anna, “What news?” I’m half wondering if the British RAF is going to bomb us into hell, and if we deserve it.
But what she says is, “I’ve been thinking about the Relève.” She means the new program through which French people can now volunteer to work for Hitler in Germany. In return, they’ll release some French prisoners of war. It’s a grotesque idea—Sam’s been ranting on about it, and everywhere in the village we hear people cursing it, so I just stare at Anna.