A few heads are nodding.
“We understand, of course,” she continues. “But we’re going to try to continue on here. This castle has stood in defiance of dark times before. With your help, we mean to follow the example of those who came before us.”
“We can’t defy the Wehrmacht,” one of the nurses says.
“No,” replies the baroness coolly. “That’s true. Still, we can try to discourage them. For those willing to stay, it’s not going to be easy, but we have to try for the sake of the children.”
None of us really knows what this means. I don’t know if there will be money enough to pay my salary, much less to purchase the rest of my sketches—and the sculpture, if I ever finish it.
I don’t have to stay, I realize. I’m respectably married now, to a gendarme. I could probably get a teaching job in Paulhaguet, Le Puy, Brioude, or even Clermont-Ferrand. I always thought I’d jump at the first real chance to leave, but even if I didn’t have the Kohn children to look after, this is the only home I’ve ever known . . . and I’ll be damned if I let the Nazis take it.
So I’m the first to ask, “What’s the plan?”
The baroness and Madame LeVerrier have thought it out. We start by boarding everything up. We create false walls with sheets of paneling to hide the valuable tall gilt mirrors and paintings—ostensibly to keep the children’s sticky fingers off them, but more importantly, to make the whole thing look shabby. Then we start moving the girls from the dormitory into the castle proper.
The Nazis probably wouldn’t think twice about kicking sick kids out of hospital beds, but a building filled with tuberculosis, measles, and scarlet fever shouldn’t be too inviting, even for a fat German general.
Faustine Xavier calls our plan germ warfare of low cunning. Unfortunately, she doesn’t disapprove enough to quit in protest, which means I have to listen to her yammering while Madame LeVerrier hands nails up to me where I stand on a ladder with a hammer. “The German soldiers are so young,” Faustine is saying. “I saw some in a café in Paulhaguet. Very handsome, very correct. Their uniforms are quite smart. If only we could teach our French boys to be so mannerly and well dressed.”
I give her a look, the kind the Italians call the evil eye. “So you’re saying they’ve sent kids to invade us. They’re sending men to fight the Russians, but they think they need only boys to keep hold of France’s leash?”
“Because we’re cooperating,” Faustine says. “As we should.”
Before I throw my hammer at her, Madame LeVerrier intervenes. “I feel sorry for these German boys. How pitiful. What a shame to throw such youngsters into such awful business!”
Well, I don’t feel sorry for them. Not all of us do what we’re told. Our boys—boys like Oscar—paint rebellious graffiti and ride bicycles around to deliver pamphlets for the Resistance. So to hell with these German boys, no matter how young they are!
The children I feel sorry for are the ones I’ve hidden in this preventorium. Josephine and Daniel have been out of quarantine now for almost a month and spend recess with their little sister, who chatters all about her new Girl Guide badges. Daniel has learned Morse code, and the boys have stopped teasing him about his elephant ears. Josephine complains about the hours she spends in the gymnasium doing corrective exercises for her spine, but she’s already leading a Girl Guide troop. But with the German invasion, they’re now terrified for their father, and during recess on Wednesday, Josephine whispers, “Why isn’t Papa sending letters?”
She and her brother and sister all look up at me, and I don’t have the heart to tell them that their father has been sent to Rivesaltes, an internment camp only slightly less dangerous than Drancy. Any letter he sends might lead the police here, so he’s been silent, but I tell Daniel, Josephine, and Gabriella, “I’m sure he’ll write soon.”
That’s when Daniel shows me the pin that his father gave him when they last saw him. A tricolor—old and faded. “He said he got it from a superhero, and that it always made him feel brave, and watched over. That it would make me feel brave too. So why am I still scared?”
God knows I’m scared too, so I hug him close. “Daniel, it’s not bravery unless you’re scared.”
He sounds dubious. “You think Lafayette got scared sometimes?”
“Yes.”
Daniel, who, like the rest of the boys, collects old American comics, asks, “What about Captain Marvel?”