Anna had been to Lyon to bring food to Armand’s sister Rosie, who had just given birth to twins. Even before she learned that France had fallen, she had bad news to bring back to St. Paul. Although Armand’s brother’s wife, Rose, already had been deported from Tours, Armand’s parents, Leon and Gitla, had refused to travel from Tours to Lyon to shelter with their daughter Rosie, saying that no fate could be worse than disturbing her new family. Now I pictured Anna alone in the cold streets of Perpignan, sick with fear.
After eating in a “better” restaurant surrounded by German officers who eyed me strangely, I got even more scared, how to survive the night till a bus to St. Paul. Through the St. P. village doctor, well inclined toward me but unable to help or use my knowledge, I got to know an ophthalmic surgeon (friend of his) in Perpignan who occupied in a fancy quarter, in a beautiful apartment building, a whole floor, part practice part living quarters. I had twice done anesthesia for him and assisted in his operations, so—it was already dark, late fall—I went there carrying my suitcase through the unlit streets. A “miracle” itself to find the house and climbed one? two? three? floors to the apartment. A dark and unfriendly woman opened, standing in a way not to let anyone enter. I stated who I was and my plight. She regretted [to say] the doctor was away (I believe it was a weekend) on his country estate. While I pleaded and envisioned myself at least being hidden in the building, under the stairs maybe, three German officers, one older, two younger, noisily climbed up, startling us both in front of the door to silence. One of the officers in grammatically correct but strongly accented French said to the woman, they must see the apartment and requisition any available rooms for their officers. She stared, looked frightened; I repeated what had been said, and the officers were ready to shovel her aside, so she entered the hall, me after her, and the officers following. She showed them first (smart) the practice room, then, their big bedroom and others definitely not bedrooms, coming to a small—back-looking-out—bedroom, where, tired, I deposited my suitcase, and she said I was her daughter who had just arrived and that would be the only room otherwise available. The officers left, she and I were saved. I was too tired, scared, agitated. Still don’t know if she was the doctor’s wife or housekeeper? I had to ask for a glass of water, I remember, and left very early for my bus to St. Paul the next day, through empty streets patrolled by Nazi soldiers. A miracle!!! Upon return to St. Paul, we planned our escape out of occupied France. This was a labor of love for you. I am not too well and can hardly write anymore. Can you read it?
I pictured my grandfather waiting for my grandmother all through that long night she spent in Perpignan. I pictured him pacing the floor, then seated by the stove with his head in his hands, certain she was lost. I pictured him filled with guilt and regret—it was his sister she was visiting, after all. I pictured their mute relief when she walked through the door and how quickly it must have been replaced by more fear.
If this were a novel, I would say their love shone like a searchlight against this backdrop of heroism and terror and survival. But it is not. I have no evidence there was much light of any kind. All I see now is the tarnished gleam of a little silver dish with AUBETTE stamped in the bottom, which one of them packed in a pocket or bag when it got too dangerous to stay in St. Paul de Fenouillet and they left for Lyon.
One night in late summer, it was insufferably hot. The heat was keeping us from sleep, or maybe it was after a party, or maybe we were on our way back from Le Camping. Whatever we’d been doing, when the heat didn’t dissipate, Julien and I made our way down the footpath and into the darkness cast by the trees over the river. The nighttime in the woods and vineyards and fields was unusually still. We crossed the little wooden footbridge over the Escoutay, clambered up the bank on the other side, and checked for cars. Ahead of us, a glimmer or two escaped from the surface of the municipal pool. We climbed the fence and dropped onto the concrete surrounding the pool, which had been warmed all day by the sun and the slap of children’s feet and still smelled of hot terry cloth and sunbathers. We stripped off our clothes and jumped into the water. It whispered over our heat-cranky skin. I paddled around for a while, and then I flipped over and drifted on my back. Above my head was the awesome hulk of Alba’s castle, where a single light gleamed from a tower window. Beyond that La Roche looked like an old man drowsing in a battered nightcap. The lights of the village and the hamlet gleamed green and gold in the dark sky, where the Milky Way was just barely visible, a silver fuzz of stars stretching through the firmament. The water lapped around my back, my kneecaps, my ears. It was so quiet you could hear the figs growing. I felt something inside me begin to shift, fingers letting loose. Lying in the water, I thought, Maybe despite all my efforts, my grandparents’ story will slip away from me. Maybe I’ll never know all the things I want to know. And for a sliver of a second, I thought, Maybe it doesn’t matter. Right here, and right now, I am happy.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, THE GLASS PANES I HAD ORDERED for the windows arrived, and Julien installed them. The figs had ripened and were beginning to fall off the trees; the grapes in the vineyards had turned dark purple, and tractors towed vats of them through the village to the vintners’ cooperative. The sun was beginning to slide through the day sideways, filling the air with a yellow as rich as lemon bars, and the nights were growing cold. For a week or so, the house felt blessedly quiet and protected, with the plastic gone and the new glass sparkling in the window frames. But the north wind blew hard against the walls, and soon the stones lost all the heat they’d stored up over the summer. Just as I had when I’d first arrived in April, I wore more clothes inside than I did outside. I knew I was going to have to give up.
“Move in with me,” Julien said. “There’s no point in your freezing down there by yourself.”