To smuggle the names for visas out, they now copied them onto long, thin strips of paper pasted end to end, which they wound tightly, encased in rubber, and inserted into the bottom end of tubes of toothpaste, which they then re-crimped and sent with refugees; if their bags were searched, they would only be carrying clothes and toiletries.
“Someone in the States will have to submit an application for you to the Inter-Departmental Committee on Political Refugees, which is as cumbersome as it sounds—representatives from the FBI, the State Department, the intelligence divisions of the War Department and Navy, and the immigration section of the Justice Department. They present recommendations and provide assistance to the consuls in considering visa applications. You’ll need affidavits in support of your application to have any hope of consideration by them, preferably from Americans of some stature.”
“I’ve worked with some American journalists, years ago now, but they might vouch for me,” Edouard offered.
“If the committee can be convinced,” Varian said, “then the American consul general might grant you an interview. He has his own opinion of things, and to be honest, he’s a bit of a cold fish, with no affection for refugees. He thinks Germany will win this war, so why offend them? If he doesn’t like your politics or your religion or haircut or the simple fact that you speak German, your visa request is denied. Maybe luck is with you, and the consul general can’t be bothered, leaving Vice Consul Bingham to oversee your case.” Bingham was a great ally for refugees; he’d housed André in his villa and rescued Lion Feuchtwanger from St. Nicola in the most extraordinary way, dressing the famous writer in a woman’s coat, dark glasses, and a shawl over his head, and passing him off as his own ancient aunt. “We of course try to arrange for our applications to end up with Bingham, but we can’t control when or how the committee sends your information to the consulate. And that is just the American visa—the easy part. The hard part is getting you out of France.”
Varian again adjusted his glasses. “Let’s do this. I have a visa list going out tomorrow. Let me have Lena add your name. And I can send a coded cable to initiate affidavit requests from your journalist friends. With the difficulty in communications, we won’t necessarily know what progress is being made until the American consulate here calls you for an interview, if ever they do, but this will put the process in motion.”
Nanée, watching Edouard’s face, was reminded of him sitting in her apartment back in Paris. You are thinking this is not an answer? But it is merely not the answer you wish to hear.
“I appreciate that,” Edouard said. “But I can’t leave France without Luki.”
NANéE WAS SITTING alone in the small greenhouse later that day, tucked up onto a creaky old wicker chair beside the rusted garden tools, when someone tapped lightly at the glass door, startling her. She’d been staring down at her book, Le morte d’Arthur, as if she might make the words mean something, she might lose herself in Malory’s stories of King Arthur, Lancelot and Merlin and Guinevere, and Tristan with the Belle Isolde, his uncle’s wife, the dark side even to chivalry.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Edouard said as the door swung open. He stood there, not inside the greenhouse but not out of it either, as if he needed to speak with her but didn’t relish the task. “I just . . . I wanted to thank you.”
For one alarming moment, she was sure he somehow knew what had happened at Camp des Milles. She looked down to her book again, the hard black-and-white pages against the soft fur of her Schiaparelli bracelet. She couldn’t say why she’d worn it today. She’d seen it there in her jewelry box, next to the diamond brooch.
“I have your papers,” she said, the thought inadvertently finding voice. The papers were still in the pocket of her gray trench coat. They wouldn’t help him get an American visa, and even with them he couldn’t get a French exit visa, but they might help keep him from being arrested and thrown in a camp again before they could get him out of France.
“My real papers?” Behind the question, perhaps an accusation—it wouldn’t help him to think false papers were real. “No, they can’t be. My real papers are at Camp des Milles.”
She turned again to the book, letter after letter collecting into sentences, paragraphs, pages, a story that wasn’t real but that did reveal a truth. “I . . . The camp commandant gave them to me.”
“He just gave them to you?”
“I did ask nicely,” she said, trying for her best innocent smile, although she didn’t feel innocent. Robe Heir. Bobby. The smell of him was still everywhere, despite the bath T had drawn for her yesterday and another she’d taken just that morning. It was on her hands and in her hair, in her nose and mouth, on the knees she’d crossed so enticingly in her silk stockings, and between her legs.
She looked out through the glass walls of the greenhouse to the outside, the bare branches of the climbing roses. When had the last of the leaves fallen?
“Vile men like him will do the most extraordinary things sometimes when they’re sweet on a girl,” she said.
Edouard studied her for a long moment, as if he could see that the papers were indeed real and what she might have done to get them.
She wished she had Dagobert with her, but he had been so happy to go out with the children.
“Well,” he said, “it appears I can’t leave under my real name, even with good forgeries. Vichy isn’t going to let an escapee go so easily.”
“The release is there too,” she insisted, her sudden anger as thorny as the rose vines. “You don’t have to worry that you’re putting anyone here at risk by staying with us. I . . . I’ll bring them to you when I come back in.” Needing to have him leave before he did understand. “I . . . I’m just reading.”
“Oh course,” he said, an edge in his tone that she thought must be in his eyes and in the set of his square jaw, that single mole, but she stared down at her book, unable to meet his gaze.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” he said.
“It’s no bother,” she said, still staring down at the letters on the page, black against white.
“Well,” he said. “I’ll leave you to your book, then.”
Still he stood there. She could feel his gaze on her as she pretended to read.
Finally the light changed as he stepped back from the doorway, and the greenhouse door clicked quietly closed. The whole time, he hadn’t even stepped inside.
Monday, November 4, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Such a strange thing, to have walls around him and a door that closed, a fireplace to warm him, and food enough, eaten while sitting in a real chair at a real table with china and silverware and wine in a crystal glass rather than squatting at his straw mat on the concrete floor to sip gruel from a metal mug. That’s what Edouard was thinking about—trying to compose in his head a letter to Luki describing this villa—when Nanée appeared at his bedroom door.