I inhale sharply—a little shaken, because we are in Adrienne’s place—in every sense of the word. And I feel like an idiot. I’ve been trying to embody her in stone when I should be trying to embody her in my own skin. And this is the closest thing to an epiphany I’ve ever experienced in a church.
That afternoon Sam says they’re rounding up children in our area. They say only foreign Jews, but this is a lie. “I heard it from my girl in Langeac,” he confides. “Her father works at the gendarmerie in Brioude. Trucks are lining up.”
I feel a cold rage that this could be true. And rage is almost a relief from the grief since Henri’s death. It hurts in a new way, and I embrace it, like the boys in the dormitories who punch their legs to give them something else to feel besides growing pains. I’m worried for Gabriella, but her secret is safe in the preventorium. It’s her father and her siblings and Madame Pinton I have to worry about now. And for once, I know just what to do about it.
* * *
—
Madame Pinton looks pained to see me, as if my appearance alone dredges up memories of Henri, and her eyes fall upon the ring dangling from my neck. Her ring. Now that he’s gone, it’s never going to be mine, and in these past few months of drunken grief, I haven’t been worthy of it—so without a word, I return it to her, pressing it into her palm. She holds it—studying my face—and I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
But this isn’t the reason I’ve come. “Where are the kids?”
“Hiding,” she replies. “Their father has them practice in case a stranger comes or they hear dogs bark in the night. They sleep in their clothes, climb down the drainpipe, then hide in the root cellar. Maybe that’s the first place the police would look—I don’t know.”
I swallow at the shame of it. “Monsieur Kohn is here?”
She shakes her head. “In the woods. He visits when he can.”
He’s written letters and sent packages with treats for his children, but given that he’s running with an armed band now, he’s probably right to stay away.
Madame Pinton thinks I’ve come to give a progress report on Gabriella, who loves camping trips, catching fish in the stream, and telling ghost stories under the stars. But that’s not why I’m here either. “I want to place all the Kohn children in the preventorium. Can you get Dr. Boulagnon to say they’re sick? If so, I’ll try to get them in under the name Beaufort, like their sister.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Madame Pinton says. “You’ve already done too much.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I say flatly. And it’s true. The women who lived in Lafayette’s castle before me did important things—things that would outlast them. Hell, they saved me, and for what? Right now, the only thing I’m proud about is getting Gabriella Kohn into the preventorium, so I’m going to help her siblings too.
Madame Pinton warns, “It’s different than before.” She rummages in her drawers and shows me Josephine’s identity card—which is stamped with the word Juif in red. Then she shows me an older one, without the stamp. It should’ve been confiscated, but Madame Pinton explains, “My cousin works at the town hall in Paulhaguet. She quietly gave back the old identity cards, but someone might notice the date . . . unless you can remove the word Juif, it’s no use.”
I’ve got no idea how it could be washed away, but I could get blank identity cards, because they’re sold in various shops. Then I’d need photos and fingerprints. Real stamps leave different impressions based on the position they’re placed and pressure used. There’s no reliable way I can duplicate that unless I carve my own stamp . . .
That could get me jailed as an antinational—or worse than jailed. I’d be an idiot to risk it. And I’d want to chew a cyanide pill if I made a mistake, which, given the fact that I’ve gotten blackout drunk a few times these past months, seems like a real possibility.
But I have to try.
In the frantic weeks that follow, whenever I disappear into my tower room, everyone thinks I’m sculpting. And I am—just not a bust. I’ve got a bright lamp overhead illuminating the delicate work of carving a stamp. Wood was easy to find—pine is soft enough to carve easily—but tracing paper I had to steal from Anna’s desk, along with the key to her files so I could grab an example of a document with an impression clear enough to trace.
Even so, I’m not sure it’s going to work. It’s one thing to slip a school certificate under the nose of the preventorium’s staff. Something else to make identity cards that have to get past gendarmes. This should give me pause, but it doesn’t. I only work harder, faster, obsessively.