It was some kind of truth, if not the whole of it; he could see that in her direct gaze.
“I find,” he said, “that if I’m to turn the camera to the watchers now, I must turn it to myself. I don’t know how I ever imagined I was anything else.”
“But in photographing—”
“No. This is what I told myself for so many years, that I’m different because I have a camera, I turn it to show the watchers that, in giving evil an audience, they encourage violence. But in doing so I too give evil the audience it craves. I . . . I now think this is what people fear more than anything: not that they will be revealed as horrible, but that they won’t be revealed at all, that they will be nothing.”
Nanée peered down into the water again, to this goddess who was once simply a woman in an opera cape.
“I have to see inside myself first,” Edouard said. “I have to rid myself of this need to be seen.”
“You don’t do that by refusing to take photographs. You don’t even do that by refusing to publish them. There is no way out if nobody shows the truth. And maybe it’s in knowing that we’re watched that we behave our best. Maybe we need to be watched more, rather than less.”
He’d followed the caped woman because he wanted to be like her, to refuse evil an audience. And yet Nanée was right too. Evil unchecked by the world’s response might be even more ruinous.
“To be watching others,” he said, “I would have to venture out into the world, which would make it more dangerous for Varian to help Luki and me. I . . . I’m afraid it might make him less inclined to help us get out of France.”
Saturday, November 17, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Edouard was huddled near the fireplace and the smoky mirror and the untimely clock in the Grand Salon with everyone, Danny fiddling with the radio dial, when a terrific crash sounded in the entry hall. Edouard bolted from his chair to find Rose, the maid who had so gently combed the lice from his hair, sprawled on the black-and-white tiles at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded by an alarming amount of foul-smelling liquid the color of dirty blood. Had the girl had a seizure?
André was beside Edouard now, taking the girl’s pulse, saying she was unconscious, but that was probably from the alcohol rather than the fall. “Red wine,” he said of the vomit around them as he lifted Rose. “I’m not sure why we put up with her, but Nanée has a soft spot for drunkards.”
He carried her up the stairs, headed for her room on the top floor.
“André is a doctor,” Jacqueline explained. “It’s so easy to forget, but there it is. He’s the right person to help her. He’ll let us know if he needs any of us.”
Already Nanée and T were emerging from the kitchen with rags to clean up, stooping to the floor as Dagobert sniffed the vomit.
“Let me do this much, at least,” Edouard said, taking the rag from T and kneeling on the hard marble tiles. How often had he done this at Camp des Milles, cleaning up after someone? How often had others cleaned up after him?
“Edouard,” Nanée said with some emotion in her voice.
She was examining something with the keys and the matches that had spilled from Rose’s pocket. She handed him a preprinted interzonal postcard, a form on which the sender checked boxes and filled in short blanks, which was the only mail the Nazis now allowed from the occupied zone.
“That girl, I don’t mind her drinking,” she said, “but I sure as hell wish she wouldn’t forget to give us our mail.”
It was addressed to Nanée, from a friend of hers in Paris she’d sent to Berthe’s apartment there, to see if she could find out anything about where Luki might be. Because the friend’s responses were limited to the choices on the form, he would have to parse what they might mean.
Her friend was healthy—that box was checked and “tired,” “seriously ill,” “injured,” “killed,” “imprisoned,” and “dead” were all crossed out. “The family is fine” was checked. She didn’t need supplies, but she needed money “for rent.” No job news. No new school information. But the line that read “___ aller à __ de __” was filled in to say that Berthe had gone to an address in Dinard, to live with her brother.
Dinard was in Brittany, on the north coast. Berthe must be there, on the English Channel, far into occupied France.
“I’ll leave at once to get her,” Edouard said, already imagining Luki running on a windy Brittany beach. It was all he could do not to weep for this bit of maybe-news.
“You don’t even know if your daughter is still with Berthe,” Nanée said gently. “And even if she is, Edouard, you would never make it there and back.”
Edouard stared down at the card. He wiped off the little bit of vomit splatter with his finger. If he were caught in the occupied zone, or even traveling without papers on this side of the divide, Camp des Milles would look like a spa retreat compared to where they would send him. But he had to get to Luki.
“One step at a time,” Nanée said. “Let’s write to Berthe. Let’s find out if Luki is there.”
“Right now? You’ll write to her now?”
“As soon as we get this cleaned up. But you do know the post doesn’t come at nine in the evening?”
Edouard looked at the card again, the miracle of those words, Berthe aller à 3 boulevard de la Mer, Dinard.
“What does your friend mean, that she needs money for rent?” Edouard asked, focusing on the checkmark beside that line.
“That someone is renting Berthe’s flat?” Then, more certainly, “That the information is probably pretty good, as that is the address to which the person who now lives in Berthe’s apartment sends the rent check.”
“How do you get that from two words?” Edouard asked.
Nanée shrugged. “My friend needs money for absolutely nothing, so it must mean something. What else could it mean?”
Edouard nodded. “So we could resend the returned letter to Berthe at this Dinard address.”
Nanée finished wiping the vomit from the marble tiles and stood. Edouard too stood, and he took a strand of her hair to wipe off a bit of vomit sticking it to her cheek.
“Thank you,” he said.
She kept his gaze.
He nearly kissed her, she with one vomit-drenched rag in hand and he with the other and the vomit-splattered postcard too.
“Thank you,” he repeated. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing for Luki and me.”
Sunday, November 24, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL