He was still snoring, still on the couch. She wanted to leave, to flee this horrible room and this horrible man. But if she gave him any hint that she hadn’t enjoyed his attentions, if she left to return in the morning for Edouard, or even changed into her clean clothes before daylight, he might laugh at the idea that he had promised her anything. And what recourse would she have?
THE SUN WAS coming up, finally. Voices sounded in the courtyard outside, more than just the murmur of the men waiting in line at the latrine now. She tried to focus on them, to listen, to pick out from those thousands of voices Edouard’s, which she’d heard on a single night nearly three years before.
Appalled, yes. Her father would be appalled. He might have shot the commandant to defend her honor, but it was her humiliation too, her shame—that was the way he would see it. Her mother too. Her brothers. Anyone who knew. She’d put herself in a compromising position. In doing so, she’d allowed this. Invited it, so many people would think. On a Sunday morning, no less. The Lord’s own day. The very day, a dozen years ago, He’d taken her father.
Out in the yard, the roll call began—by number. She tried not to think about anything but the voices. Finally the guard called, “One hundred and thirty-two.” Edouard’s number. Danny had found out that much.
Silence.
Nausea washed through Nanée, the sense that she might have done this for nothing. But Danny had confirmed that Edouard Moss was here. Edouard’s file was here.
“One hundred and thirty-two,” a voice answered finally, uncertain. Was that Edouard’s voice? She would have said he was younger-sounding, his voice deeper and warmer. But of course he would sound much older. Everyone now aged so fast.
She took her overnight case and her gray trench coat into the commandant’s private bathroom. She longed to shower, but there was no lock on the door. She opened the case to the fresh brassiere and blouse, the panties and trousers and socks, and her flying scarf. Only when they were at the ready did she quickly strip off her jacket and blouse. She dampened the end of a sleeve of the soiled blouse, then stripped off her brassiere, wiped her chest, and pulled on the fresh brassiere and blouse. She pulled off her garters and stockings and panties and cleaned herself up as best she could with the blouse sleeve, only then shedding the skirt to pull on her trousers. She shrugged on the gray trench coat and looped the scarf once, loosely.
She might have left the clothes on the floor if she hadn’t imagined the commandant fingering them again. Robe Heir. The sad little robe heir in his grandmother’s ratty old robe. She stuffed them into the case, closed it, and washed her hands. She looked at herself in the mirror only then, when everything he’d touched had been washed off or stuffed away.
A bruise marked the base of her neck, already purple-blue. I said I want you to beg.
She adjusted her flying scarf to cover it, then pulled the collar of her coat up too. Nobody could know about this. It would change the way they saw her, whether they faulted her or not. They would stare at her, trying to see, imagining.
She returned to the bedroom and made enough noise that he couldn’t help but wake.
“I need to get Monsieur Moss to his daughter,” she said. She knew she ought to say something about enjoying the evening with him, but in spite of Varian’s and Danny’s confidence in her talent for lying, she knew it did not extend that far. I hate to hurry your morning, she tried to make herself say, but could not. I’d be grateful if you would . . . But she would be grateful to him for nothing, ever.
She fingered Edouard’s residency permit in her coat pocket, where she’d put it after she freed herself from the sofa last night, after the commandant was asleep. The camp release sat on the table, still with the pen.
He scratched his hairy paunch under the shirt he still wore from the night before, eyeing her trousers with disapproval.
“You need to sign the release and get someone to take me to him,” she said firmly. “You need to tell your men Edouard Moss is to leave with me.”
Sunday, November 3, 1940
CAMP DES MILLES
Men clustered around vats of coffee being ladled into tin cups in the hard industrial space. The commandant hadn’t brought Nanée himself, of course. He’d directed one of the guards to take her to Edouard Moss, who was to be released to her by his order.
“Edouard Moss?” she asked of the first prisoner she came to, working hard not to pull her scarf up against the stench of so many men living together on this uninhabitable factory floor. It wasn’t their fault, she knew that, and yet it was unbearable.
A murmur rippled into a wave of silence, everyone staring at her.
“Edouard Moss?” she called out.
Nobody answered.
“Edouard Moss,” she said. “I’ve come to get him. I have permission to take him to Marseille.”
Another murmur arose, not spreading this time but all at once, many of the men looking toward the center, where one of three harsh lightbulbs lit the wretched space.
Still no one answered.
She made her way toward the lightbulb, afraid of what she would find. Edouard might have died in the night while she was with the commandant. Why had she waited? Why hadn’t she demanded Edouard’s release last night? But she’d had to tread so carefully; the commandant might as easily have changed his mind as not. He might even still.
The men parted to let her through. The guard remained near the stairs, unwilling to wade into the stench.
“I believe he’s at the latrines,” an old man said. He met Nanée’s gaze, then looked to a suitcase sitting upright on the ground between his makeshift bed and another. A photograph sat propped on top of the case—Edouard and a woman so like Nanée herself that they might be sisters. Elza Moss, who would forever remain as confident and young as she was in this photo, even as the child she held grew up, as her husband’s hair grayed, as Nanée herself saw the creep of fine lines at the corners of her eyes.
“Didn’t someone say they saw Edouard in line at the latrine?” the man said to the others around him. And into the din of their response he whispered to Nanée, “He was here two nights ago, but not since yesterday morning.”
Nanée felt she would retch from the loss and the grief and the fury. She was too late to save Edouard, just as she’d been too late to save her father on this same day twelve years ago, or even to see him. And the commandant, the vile little robe heir, had known she was too late. He’d purported to believe she wanted to offer what he wanted to take in exchange for the release of a man he knew to be dead.
“Someone was asking about him,” the old man said. “The Gestapo.”
The Gestapo? But no, that was Danny.
“The Gestapo are coming for him,” the man said. “Don’t let anyone know he isn’t here. Give him as much time as you can.”
“He’s not dead?”
The alarm in the old man’s face. She’d spoken too loudly.
He whispered, “They’ve allowed you to come in here to look for him, Nanée.”