Besides a little box of scented soaps, our most precious find so far is the old radio cabinet with a windup gramophone that still plays recordings, albeit several decades old. The tower room feels like everything I could ever want, and I’d intended to jealously guard the locked door, treasuring creative solitude, but I like Anna’s company.
I like everything about her, actually. She’s been everywhere I want to go—Paris, London, New York. She’s seen everything I want to see—the Louvre, Buckingham Palace, the Statue of Liberty. She’s everything I want to be—rich, worldly, and self-confident.
When we finish moving my easel by the window, we flip through my old drawings—figures in blended charcoal. Hands, faces, torsos . . . other sketches are experimental. Absurd pieces of modernity, dreamlike in quality. As Anna stares at my drawings, I feel so exposed it’s like she’s staring at me. Nobody but Madame Beatrice has ever studied my work with such intense interest before. And when Anna reaches out and traces her fingertip along the jawline of a figure, I feel it on my own face.
“Your style reminds me of Dalí,” she says.
And I positively glow at the absurdly overblown comparison. “Dalí?” I snort dismissively, but it’s hard to keep from preening. “These are just drawings anyway. I’m more of a sculptress.”
“Do you prefer to work in clay or something else?” she asks.
“Madame Beatrice liked clay. Shaping something out of nothing. But stone is my favorite because I like carving something down to its essence and finding what no one else knew was there.”
I worry she’ll laugh at me, but she nods as if she understands. “I’m told stone is the least forgiving. Make one mistake and—”
“You could ruin it,” I admit. “That’s the miracle of the most beautiful sculptures; one continuous piece. Beautiful and unbroken.”
Pretty much the opposite of my life.
When we’re finished looking at my old sketches, Anna puts on one of Madame Beatrice’s old records and says, “It’s been so long since I danced. When I close my eyes, I can still feel the scratch of my husband’s beard on my cheek when we did the tango . . .”
I know she misses him even more than I miss Henri. To cheer her up, I say, “You should host a dance at your next Sunday social in the salon. There’s not a man in the castle who wouldn’t want to partner with you.”
She shakes her head, and glossy dark curls frame her wistful brown eyes. “I wish I could oblige them, but I’ve already heard snide comments about my lipstick from the household management teacher. What would people say if I danced with another man?”
“Oh, don’t pay any attention to Faustine Xavier; she’s twenty-nine going on sixty,” I say to make light of it, but wives of captured soldiers are under special scrutiny. Girlfriends too. People already gossip about Anna just because she’s so glamorous. But if Anna gave anybody a real reason to think she’s stepping out on her husband while he’s in a POW camp, they might spit at her in the village square.
Suddenly, Anna tugs my sleeve. “We could dance.”
I laugh, letting her pull me into a twirl. Then we start dancing a goofy tango, tripping over each other’s feet, cracking up because neither of us knows who is supposed to lead. It’s a laugh riot until she’s laughing warm by my ear, the scent of her perfume making me giddy, and an uncomfortable twist in my belly makes me drop her hands.
“Did I stomp your toes?” she asks, still laughing.
I shake my head, confused. Maybe I’m feeling a little guilty because I’m dancing while Henri’s locked in a cage somewhere near Poland. Or because I haven’t heard a word from him in so long I’ve almost forgotten the sound of his voice. “It’s just . . . I’d just rather dance to jazz.”
Until Anna arrived at the castle, tapping my foot to swing and boogie-woogie blues was the only thing that gave me any hope at all, but jazz is discouraged under the new regime because it supposedly corrupts the soul.
“Maybe we can find some jazz on the radio,” Anna says hopefully. And oblivious to my strange mood, she chirps, “Did I tell you I got a letter from my sister in New York? She’s planning a wedding to her American beau, Henry Hyde!”
“Shouldn’t she wait until after the war?”
“Who knows when it will be over? Papa was sure the British would surrender by winter—he said Churchill couldn’t keep fighting alone—but here we are with no end in sight. Anyway, my sister’s not one for waiting, and a wedding is a good pretext for my parents to travel to New York. It shouldn’t be difficult for Maman, but Papa’s another story. If he wants to leave the country, he’ll need permission from Vichy.”