“All right then,” he said to Tante Nanée. “Soon as the rain stops. You pretend the girl is your daughter. A girl that age could be helping her maman. We do here. You’ll not know our ways, so you’ll be telling them you’re new, if there is any telling to be done.”
THE MUD FELT heavy on her shoes as they walked a path through trees; they were going to a castle, not through the front door like a princess but she wasn’t a princess anyway. Tante Nanée couldn’t hold her hand because she was carrying the pretty flowers the man brought, but Luki held Pemmy tightly, with Joey tucked down in her pouch so he wouldn’t be scared. Pemmy could come with them, but she couldn’t talk. No matter what, only Tante Nanée could talk.
No matter what, Tante Nanée would take her to Papa; she wouldn’t take her to the angels or make her disappear. Reverend Mother said so, and Reverend Mother didn’t lie because a lie was a sin and if you sinned you didn’t get to go to heaven to be with Mutti and God.
The man with the funny eyes walked with them to a magical glass house all full of trees. It smelled like the oranges Luki used to get at special times. She had forgotten about oranges, but now she remembered. Mutti loved oranges.
The man reached up to one of the trees and twisted off an orange. He didn’t say anything. Even Tante Nanée and the man were quiet in here, just like if they were hiding. But he smiled, which made his eyes nice even though they were bulgy. He held the orange out to her, and she took it. He pulled another one down and tucked it in her coat pocket. He didn’t say anything, but he touched Pemmy gently. He meant for Pemmy to have that orange because kangaroos love oranges.
Luki made Joey peek out from Pemmy’s pouch. The man laughed without making a sound, just with his funny eyes, and he pulled down a third orange and tucked it in her other pocket, then touched Joey the way he had touched Pemmy. Joey got his own orange too!
The man pulled a scissory thing from his pocket and cut a single branch with pretty red berries. It had prickles, but he put it in Pemmy’s hands and wrapped them around the branch, then wrapped Luki’s hand that held Pemmy over it, so the prickles wouldn’t bite into Luki’s fingers. Pemmy didn’t have any fingers, so the branch wouldn’t hurt her. He touched one of the berries, then touched his lips and shook his head. She shouldn’t eat them.
They left the magical glass house through a different door, with the branches and the oranges and the flowers and with Pemmy and Joey, but without the man with the funny eyes. Tante Nanée couldn’t take Pemmy’s hand, but they were in such a beautiful garden now—with fences and paths and a fountain that looked like they belonged in a storybook—that even Pemmy wasn’t scared.
And there were two castles! One was a baby castle, just a circle with a round-y pointy roof and windows only at the top, but the other one was huge and magical, with circle parts like the baby castle at every corner and big blue roofs and chimneys and windows and more windows and more. It sat right in a river, with water all around it. A long skinny part that was almost all windows stretched the whole way across to the other shore. That was where they were going—to that big castle! There was a scary monster spitting water from the bridge, but Luki walked right beside Tante Nanée toward the castle doors they weren’t supposed to go through because they weren’t princesses.
A voice called to them to stop. Luki thought at first it was the water monster, but it was a man below it. He was a soldier in a uniform, in a boat. He used the old words. He didn’t sound nice like a prince would sound.
There was another man in the boat with him. He wasn’t a prince either. They were German, and she was German, but she didn’t like them anyway.
Tante Nanée showed them her flowers and Pemmy’s prickly branch. “We’ve got flowers and greens for the mistress,” she said.
Luki wanted to say and oranges, but she wasn’t supposed to talk.
The man didn’t understand Tante Nanée. Luki could understand the words he said, but Tante Nanée just repeated with her own words that they were getting decorations for the house.
Dekorationen für das Haus. Luki used to help Mutti decorate, things that made the rooms smell good. Pemmy helped too.
The other man in the boat pointed a gun at them.
Luki was startled. She knew the German men had guns, but they never pointed them at her.
She looked to Tante Nanée. She wanted to explain to the not-nice man in his words that they were just bringing pretty things to the castle, so his friend would put his gun away and they could go inside. Pemmy seemed to think this was what the man with the funny eyes meant about not talking, but Luki wasn’t sure. The scary man wasn’t asking Luki a question. He wasn’t offering her a candy she wasn’t supposed to have. He was asking Tante Nanée something, and Tante Nanée couldn’t make him understand, and Luki could make him understand because she knew these kinds of words.
And Pemmy did not like that gun being pointed at her.
Thursday, November 28, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
After a midday Thanksgiving supper of the roasted chicken Madame Nouget had managed to find, they took Varian’s nut pie (with plenty of whipped cream, thanks to Madame LaVache) into the Grand Salon. Edouard forked a bite, imagining Luki warmed by this fire, and carrying her upstairs to tuck her in at night, milking Madame LaVache with her in the morning, and dancing to music all the way from Boston. His thoughts of the future were here, in a place he could see in his mind. What was a place like Boston or New York or Chicago like? Who would they know? How would he manage to house and clothe and feed Luki there?
“Perhaps Nanée might put Luki on the train,” Varian said, continuing a conversation started as they were cutting the pie. “You could meet her in Portbou, on the far side?”
The nuts were gravel between Edouard’s teeth. “I’ve done this before, though. I sent Luki with a friend on a train to Paris, meaning to follow.” It had been well over a year now since he’d hugged Luki.