VILLA AIR-BEL
Edouard stood on the belvedere, Luki in his arms. It had been a grueling few hours, with nothing but a tray of coffee and stale bread for lunch, as Madame Nouget had been detained from her morning shopping. Luki hadn’t left his side since she’d been brought in with Maria. He’d spent every possible moment attending to her so that, if anything happened, her last memory of him would not be of his scattered attention, as it had been when he’d put her on the train to Paris, but of nothing in the world being more important than her.
“I talk to the Lady Mary even though she isn’t here in stone,” she was saying. “I ask her if she could ask God to put Pemmy and Joey on the princess train, like Tante Nanée and me, to come here.”
Edouard looked out to the mist over the valley, the sea nowhere to be seen today. The fact that the police had left them on the belvedere for the moment, the staff watching from behind the French doors, allowed him a small hope that he was wrong about where this police business was headed. He still had his camera too. But he sure could use a Lady Mary to believe in himself.
“Everyone into the van now,” the oversize commissaire said.
Edouard tried to appear calm for Luki’s sake as André protested that he and Jacqueline were French, and everyone’s papers were in order. Anger directed at men who knew what they were doing was wrong was invariably met not with acknowledgment or apology but with anger; he’d seen that time and again at Camp des Milles.
“You don’t really mean to take the children,” T said.
“Papa, I want to stay with you,” Luki whispered.
Edouard too wanted to believe the French wouldn’t take children, but the French could be more German even than the Germans. And a small part of him wanted to keep Luki with him, no matter where he went. But if they were taken to a camp, the children would be sent with the women. Luki would go with T or Nanée or Jacqueline, although none of them were Jewish—surely they wouldn’t be sent to camps.
Nanée said to the commissaire, “Varian and I are American. I’m afraid you might be sorry to have taken us when it comes down to it. And surely our word that these young children and their parents have planned no nefarious Communist plot against Pétain ought to be good enough?”
“It will be only for a short while,” the fat little functionary insisted, a lousy liar.
“Do you have children yourself, monsieur?” T asked.
The man looked to Peterkin, holding T’s hand, then to Luki in Edouard’s own arms.
“Madame Breton has a daughter who is at school, you say?” he asked Nanée, too awed by the beautiful Jacqueline to address her himself, apparently. Then, looking to Gussie, “And the boy is hers too?”
Gussie looked surprised, as if he didn’t realize how young he looked, nor that he was as fair and beautiful as Jaqueline. That did explain why they hadn’t asked to see his papers.
“I will allow Madame Breton to stay with the children,” the commissaire said, chancing a smile at Jacqueline.
Nanée said, “But T’s son and Edouard’s daughter—”
“Madame Bénédite must come; she works at the Centre Américain de Secours. And monsieur is a refugee. I’m sure Madame Breton can attend to the children until you return.”
Edouard hugged Luki to him.
“I want to stay with you, Papa,” she repeated.
“I know. I want to stay with you too, my love,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “But it won’t be any fun. You’ll have a much better time here with Madame Breton and Peterkin and Aube.”
T was similarly soothing Peterkin, and Madame Nouget had emerged from the house to help, leaving Rose and Maria cowering inside.
Edouard whispered to Luki, “Maybe Pemmy and Joey will arrive today. Maybe the queen has already sent them. They’d like you to be here to greet them.”
“But the last time, you said you would come the next day.”
He hugged her to him, choking back his grief. “I know,” he managed. “I know.”
Luki began sobbing, and Edouard nuzzled into her neck.
“I love you, Luki,” he said.
She began wailing then, “Don’t leave me, Papa! Don’t leave me!”
He could not do this again, and yet he had no choice.
“I love you more than anything,” he said, nodding for Jacqueline to take her, as Madame Nouget was taking Peterkin from T. “I love you to the ends of the earth.”
She clung so desperately to him that he had to peel her hands from his neck and hand her, kicking and screaming in terror, over to Jacqueline, who wrapped her up as if in a straitjacket as he hurried away. Even the guards saw they had to let him go ahead if they were really going to put Luki through being separated from him again.
He could still hear her screaming as he hurried to climb into the paddy wagon, to get out of her sight. The others followed, the commissaire at the last minute remembering Varian’s briefcase. Damn. They waited in the back of the van as the officer who’d taken Varian upstairs was sent to fetch it. He returned and handed the case to Varian, who tried to hide his surprise. Was this inadvertent or intentional? There were friends of their effort everywhere.
The officer closed the door, the metal click solid and final.
“Don’t worry,” Varian said. “When Danny gets word of this, he’ll get us released somehow.”
Nanée opened the briefcase, retrieved André’s incriminating manuscript, and stuffed it under her blouse, against her back, where it was caught by the waistband of her slacks and well hidden under her coat.
“If it comes to it, I’ll find a way to dump it at the police station,” she said as they headed down the long driveway.
The van pulled to a sudden stop. Some kind of skirmish was going on. A moment later, the back of the van opened, and Danny was pushed inside.
Edouard took a single photograph before the doors slammed shut again.
“Lena advised me to come back to the chateau,” Danny said. “I thought she said so I wouldn’t be arrested.”
Edouard looked out through the grated window to the villa behind them, the belvedere empty now, Luki mercifully inside and no longer able to see him again abandoning her.
Monday, December 2, 1940
THE éVêCHé, MARSEILLE
The paddy wagon entered the évêché police station in the old Bishop’s Palace through a surprisingly beautiful courtyard not far from the cellar where Edouard first hid here in the Panier. They pulled into an old stable that had been converted into a motorcycle garage. The gate clanged shut behind them, eerily like the gate at Camp des Milles, and they were herded across a courtyard and up a creaky old staircase into an overcrowded, low-ceilinged attic room. Chalked on a board at the front: VIVE LE MARéCHAL.