At the mention of Moulin, Travert lowers his head. “And you want these maquisards hiding in the woods to share his fate? They need guns, bombs, planes, and tanks. Not a damned parade. Maybe you’ll make a few boys brave, but it won’t matter when the Gestapo lines them up against a wall.”
“Yves.” I say his name softly. “It’ll matter especially then.”
Besides, I don’t think it’s so risky. Even the baroness plans to take part. Since the Riom Trial, many people in the village think her husband is a collaborator, and she probably wants to redeem his name, but I don’t mention that to Travert, because he might remind me that I’ve told him Anna always takes her father’s side . . . and that’s salt in the wound.
On Wednesday at the appointed hour, I go down to the village, at the center of which is a Lady Liberty statue. We aren’t as stupid as Travert thinks. None of us wears a tricolor cockade or waves a French flag. No, old Madame LeVerrier sits at the edge of the fountain wearing an all-suffragette white lace shirt over white skirt. I’m in a red dress—one of the few I own. And the baroness is wearing a sensible suit of blue. I grin when Anna strides over to join us in a smart red-checkered skirt and white blouse. And women of the village emerge from their stone houses wearing red scarves in their hair, or blue shoes, or white turbans. Separately, we’re nothing to look at, but standing together we’re a defiant flag of red, white, and blue!
For fear of the Nazis, we can’t light fireworks or sing our national anthem, but we parade in the streets around the church. Children in every window look down as we march, and men in every rough-hewn wooden doorway watch us pass, tears shining on their faces. It feels like hope. I look up at the castle and think each of us is just a stone, but mortared together in common purpose, we might just be a fortress that can’t be ripped down.
I’m still buzzing with good feelings when Travert and his gendarmes roll through on patrol, stopping in front of the mairie, where I happen to be sitting with my sketchbook.
“Everything okay?” Travert asks the mayor. “No excitement today?”
The mayor looks like he doesn’t know what to say with the gendarme’s own wife nearby. Scowling, he tells Travert, “Everything is fine.”
I know Travert waited to patrol until dusk for my sake, and that he’s not happy about it, so that night in his bed, I try to soothe his temper. It never takes much to satisfy him, and he’s more willing to experiment with pleasurable acts than a man of the law probably should be. “Are you happy with yourself?” he asks.
“Oui,” I say, tangled in the sheets. “You were too, just a minute ago.”
He doesn’t crack a smile. “You know what I mean.”
“And you know they’re making us take banned books out of the castle library. That they want us to take the kids to see an anti-Semitic exhibit about ‘racial characteristics.’ And that I had to initial the damned notice to prove that I received it! So I just wanted to be a part of something good on Bastille Day. To remember when French people fought for their freedom. And I felt like I heard their voices today. I remembered that when she was teaching me to sculpt, Madame Beatrice used to tell me, There’s life in the stones . . .”
Travert growls in frustration, grabbing my hand and pushing my palm flat against his chest. “This is life.” Then he pulls me into a kiss. “This is life.” He strokes my bared abdomen. “We could make life, after the war. We could go someplace nice. Travel the world—or what’s left of it. Make a baby. Who knows? Maybe you fall in love with me someday. Or maybe you leave me for someone else. That’s life. But we have to survive to live it.”
FIFTY
ADRIENNE
Paris
Summer 1794
The names of twenty condemned persons were called each morning in the prison courtyard. Upon hearing their names marked for death, some would gasp, faint, or cry. Some even laughed, knowing we would all meet Madame Guillotine eventually.
On two separate mornings I thought I heard my name. I stepped forward both times, cold with fear, but made no sound at all. For death would be a release from the torment of guilt under which I suffocated to know that my mother, sister, and grandmother were imprisoned.
They had been charged with having conspired with Lafayette to massacre citizens that terrible day at the Champ de Mars. It was the flimsiest, most absurd pretext. I was kept in the prison at Le Plessis. The school at which my husband received his education and formed ideas about liberty was now a makeshift jail, with male prisoners packed in the basement and female prisoners stuffed in the attic. In my lonely cell, I struggled to think how I might get a message to my sister, my mother, or even Grand-mère.