“The bad man here is this one,” Nanée said, pointing to the horrible one wielding the whip. “But Thérèse helps them, so they can’t be hurt anymore.”
Nanée flipped further backward. Why couldn’t this be the Pink Library story with the toy store and the beautiful rocking horse?
She glanced out the window, wishing the train would set out before some bad man somewhere changed his mind about letting them go.
She read on, watching out the window too and thinking of the replica of that rocking horse her father had had made for her one Christmas. She’d been too big for it, really, even then. Would home be easier to negotiate now, without Daddy there to disappoint? But it would be impossible to bear Misha in his place.
She turned to the next, mercifully illustration-free page, hoping Luki might fall asleep before they got much further.
“Were the men after we left the castle good men, even though they said the German words?” Luki looked to Nanée with her big dark eyes, which had seen so much more than a five-year-old ought to.
“I don’t know,” Nanée admitted. Had the German soldiers known they were escaping and let them go?
“They gave me candy. Sister Therese used to give me candy. Her name is the same as the girl in the story.”
“It is.”
“Sister Therese is a good person.”
“Yes.”
“She isn’t German.”
“No.”
“Reverend Mother is a good person.”
“Very good.”
“The Lady Mary is good even though she’s stone.”
Nanée wasn’t sure how Edouard would feel about his daughter’s infatuation with the Christ mother he didn’t believe in. Or did he? Nanée wasn’t even sure what she believed herself. Faith. What did the word mean? Her faith was in the selflessness of people like the nuns, the hay wagon driver, the caretaker’s family, Simone Menier. People like Miriam, T and Danny, Varian, Gussie, and Maurice.
“I asked the Lady Mary to ask God to send someone to take Pemmy to Papa,” Luki said. “Then you were standing with Reverend Mother.”
Nanée smoothed Luki’s hair and closed the book. “Your papa is the one who sent me to get you.”
“You’re not an angel?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m just a girl, like you.”
“The queen of the castle is a good person,” Luki said. “She’ll take care of Pemmy and Joey.”
“She will.”
“She’ll send them to live with me and Papa.”
“Yes.”
“Sister Therese says someday Papa and I will be with Mutti again, but we have to wait for God to call us.” The child took the drawing Edouard had given Nanée from her pocket and studied it. “Do you think God calls on the telephone?”
Nanée allowed that she wasn’t sure.
“Papa says Mutti still loves me.”
“Yes.”
“He told me that at the dreaming log.”
Nanée smiled sadly, imagining Edouard on that log overlooking the sea at the cottage at Sanary-sur-Mer, trying to help his young daughter understand what Nanée, at thirty-one, still could not: how she was to spend the rest of her life never able to speak with the parent who’d had a rocking horse made for her just because she wanted it.
“Your papa is a very good person,” Nanée said.
Luki burrowed into Nanée and closed her eyes, her warmth spreading through Nanée, who used to snuggle against her father this way by the bonfire at Marigold Lodge—the Michigan house that belonged to her now but would always belong to the rest of her family too. Her mother and her brothers would be there now, the day after Thanksgiving, playing bridge or charades or backgammon and getting on each other’s nerves. They’d be overfull of leftovers, turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy, pecan pie or pumpkin or some of each, in a world where you could still eat more than you needed and sleep without fear, a world in which one day was lived much like the days before and after, where it still mattered what you wore and who you socialized with, whether they were “our class.” Where a girl was to wear white and become a happy wife to a man who spent his spare time at his club, a mother to children who would bicker and disappoint. Was that why she came to France? Why she stayed, even though there was never enough food and no one, really, was safe?
She watched out the window, stroking Luki’s hair and willing the train to leave. She ought to keep the girl awake to have dinner. They’d barely eaten all day, and there would be plenty here in first class. When they got to Villa Air-Bel, it would be back to rationing.
“I love Papa,” Luki said.
Yes, Nanée thought. I do too.
She might have been thinking of her own father, or Edouard, or both men.
She began quietly singing words she’d all but forgotten, that her father used to sing:
Angels watching ever round thee
All through the night.
They will of all fears disarm thee,
No forebodings should alarm thee,
They will let no peril harm thee
All through the night.
The train whistle sounded, and the train began slowly, slowly, slowly to move, its gentle sway rocking them as, outside the window, the station gave way to poles and swooping wires, to an empty, moonlit road and empty, moonlit fields, and in the distance, a dark shadow of woods.
Friday, November 29, 1940
LYON
Luki was with Mutti. She wished Papa would come, but Mutti said they must leave Papa to make his photographs. A man came, but he wasn’t Papa. He wasn’t an angel and he wasn’t God, and he wasn’t God’s son, the bleeding Jesus who wore the crown of thorns that Luki wanted him to take off so his head wouldn’t be so scary, and he didn’t speak the bad-men words, but he held a whip and he held Pemmy by the neck!
She startled awake. In a bed. She wasn’t with the nuns. Where was she? Where was Pemmy?
A bit of light came through the window, and the door was ajar, with the Mutti Angel who wasn’t Mutti and wasn’t an angel standing in silhouette.
Why was the bad man here? That was who was speaking, the bad man who captured Pemmy. She couldn’t see him, but it was his voice.
She was too afraid to move. She pretended to sleep. If she was sleeping, it might not be real, or maybe the bad man wouldn’t see her.
The bad man said, “But you must have a French transit visa for the child also. We are under the strictest protocol for all trains bound for Marseille.” He was using the regular words. He wasn’t a German man.
Luki peeked just a little. She was on the beautiful princess train, on her way to Papa. Tante Nanée wouldn’t make her disappear, because Reverend Mother had said so, and to lie is a sin.
She peeked a little more. They were at a train station. It was nighttime. Outside the window, people stood in pools of electric light. Tante Nanée was saying something, but her voice was too quiet to hear the words.