Edouard stared, clearly as stunned to see Nanée as she was to see him.
“You might have been here yesterday if you hadn’t fled, by the way,” Danny said. “Nanée went to fetch you from Camp des Milles, only to find you weren’t there.”
Edouard looked from Nanée back to Danny. “I . . . Nanée, what a surprise. I . . . I had no idea you were still in France.”
Nanée, with a hand to her scarf, said, “Wherever did Danny find you?”
“We got word at the office yesterday that Edouard was here,” Varian said, “hidden in a cellar in the Panier.”
Nanée, feeling dread sinking into her exhausted bones, managed, “Yesterday?”
“Not an hour after your train left,” Varian said. “If we could have gotten word to you to call you off, we would have.”
Yesterday, while she sat in her little blue suit at that café by the Palais Longchamp, passing the time until she could take the later train.
“We felt we’d better get him somewhere safer than the Panier,” Danny said, “so we brought him here to the chateau.”
“We fear, Nanée, that your visit may have alerted the camp to the fact that Edouard had escaped,” Varian said. “Not your fault. Of course not your fault. Just bad luck. Danny tried to get him last night but the streets were teeming with police.” He turned to Edouard. “We’ve set aside one of the chateau’s best rooms for you. Second floor. I’m afraid all the ‘library suites’ are booked this evening, but there is a nice room down the hall.”
Still Edouard stared at Nanée as she stood in a splash of light from inside the house.
“You’re shivering, Nanée,” he said, stepping toward her and beginning to take off his jacket to give to her.
His face as the light hit it was even squarer than she remembered. Thinner. Far more deeply lined. His thin lips were even more set in sorrow than they had been that January she’d first met him, just after his wife had died. The mole at the end of his left eyebrow was the same, though. His eyes were the same compelling green even in this dim light.
He stopped himself just short of her.
He ought to be the one shivering, she thought. His pants were wet up to his knees.
“Danny, I’m filthy,” he said. “Give Nanée your jacket, will you? She’s shivering.”
Part III
NOVEMBER 1940
We went, changing our country more often than our shoes.
—Bertolt Brecht, “An die Nachgeborenen”
Monday, November 4, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Nanée watched little Peterkin carefully carry his mug of milk, still warm from the cow, to Edouard; even the child could see from the sharp bones of Edouard’s face and shoulders and wrists that he was nearly starved to death, but he did look better this morning thanks to a bath and sleep in a decent bed. Miriam was off to Yugoslavia and most everyone else was off to their days, with only T, Peterkin, and Nanée lingering in the dining room while Varian and Edouard discussed with Bill Frier whether Edouard’s documents ought to be under an alias. Nanée looked into her ersatz coffee, afraid the guilt would show on her face. She ought to have told them immediately that she had Edouard’s real French residency permit and the release from Camp des Milles, but she’d had no idea that Varian had already set Bill Frier to the task of making Edouard forgeries, nor how she would explain having his real documents. To leave France, Edouard still needed so many documents she didn’t have, anyway. French transit and exit passes, Spanish and Portuguese transit visas, a destination visa, and passage on a ship from Lisbon.
Varian was explaining that men younger than forty-two were often nabbed at the border even when their papers were in order, to prevent them fighting for the British. “We might explore getting you a demobilization certificate,” he said.
“I wasn’t in the military,” Edouard replied.
Nanée petted Dagobert, who sat quietly in her lap, as Varian described the scheme. There had been a dear little sergeant at Fort St. Charles who, for two hundred francs, would set anyone up with a certificat de démobilisation et route de marche. You gave him a French-sounding alias and a few details about where you fought for France—although of course if you really fought, you wouldn’t be talking to him—and he issued a certificate confirming that you were a French soldier whose residence was in North Africa. Voilà, not only were you in line to be transported “home,” but your passage on a ship to Casablanca—neutral ground from which a refugee could get anywhere—was paid by the Vichy government.
“But I understood that escape route was shut down,” Nanée said. “And that the sergeant was arrested, along with every ‘soldier’ showing up at the Port Administration to ask about available berths.”
“There are always enterprising individuals looking to make an easy profit,” Varian said. “We’re hopeful someone will take up the task.”
Thank heaven for Vichy contradictions and inefficiencies.
“Even if they do, what about Luki?” Edouard smiled apologetically. “She’s only five, not quite old enough to enlist.”
Varian looked to the empty plates around the table, not so much as a breadcrumb left behind. Madame Nouget had taken to weighing out the bread in even portions each morning and giving each person their share, to be eaten as wanted over the course of the day.
“Danny didn’t tell me you had a daughter,” Varian said. “And she’s still in France?”
“I haven’t seen Luki in over a year, since I put her on a train to Paris.” Edouard’s willow-green eyes were moist now. “She might be passing as a gentile, and I can’t risk making inquiries in case she is.”
He seemed to be suggesting he would go get her if only he knew where she was, but of course the Germans had forbidden Jews to return to the occupied zone since mid-August. For Edouard to try to retrieve his daughter from Paris would be suicide.
“I can’t leave without Luki,” Edouard said, seeming stronger each time he said her name.
“You’re an escapee from an internment camp. It’s too dangerous for you to stay here, not just for you but for all of us.” Varian adjusted his glasses, a tic Nanée had come to see meant he was tamping down his irritation. “Let me explain to you what we have to do to get you out. For your American visa, I have to get your name from here to the US authorities without alerting Vichy to your whereabouts, lest you end up back in that camp or worse. I cannot simply send a telegram. Those days are over.”