He held a photograph.
Varian had suggested Edouard might pack some of his work, although he needed to be careful which photos to risk being caught with. “You won’t be able to carry them with you over the Pyrenees,” Varian told him, “but there’s a chance the Fittkos might find someone to ferry them for you—a small chance, but some is better than none.”
It was Nanée who had the idea to load some of Edouard’s 35 mm film canisters with negatives and hide them inside a hollowed-out baguette they could then wrap in paper and carry in Edouard’s musette bag. He could bring much of his work that way, to reprint it when he got to the US, without the higher risk of a stack of photos being found on him. Nanée wondered which he was taking. Negatives she’d brought from Sanary-sur-Mer? The shots he’d taken in the last few weeks? The ones from being confined in the évêché and on the boat?
Yes, the images from the évêché and the boat. Their publication would help open the world’s eyes to what was happening here, the lives of those frantic to escape France, refugees who could not find refuge. Perhaps he’d also take the negatives from here, their life at Villa Air-Bel—a place Edouard might love, but still a kind of confinement. He could hold those until Varian was ejected from France so he wouldn’t jeopardize protégés like André, whose status as a former Communist was holding up his American visa. If Danny could carry on their work after Varian was inevitably forced to leave, the Villa Air-Bel images might not be published for months or even years. But when that work could no longer be done, Edouard could publish them too. It was what he ought to do. What she wanted him to do.
If he were caught trying to leave France with these negatives, though, he would be arrested for crimes against Vichy and France. Treason. If he were caught just carrying them, not even trying to leave, that would be enough to sentence him to death.
Edouard bent his head forward, revealing the raggedness of his haircut and the hairs growing on his neck, above his collar.
If no one else could be found to take the suitcase over the border, Nanée could do it. She could apply for an expedited French exit visa and take them when she had it. Her luggage might be searched at the border, of course. They might find the negatives of this moment Vichy was hiding from the world. What would they do then? Would they keep the work and let her go on, or would they arrest her?
Edouard ran a hand over the back of his neck as if to rub out a tough decision, turning slightly with the gesture so that Nanée could see the photograph in his hands.
Nude, Bending. Ghost Wife. The photograph he’d printed so many times in Sanary-sur-Mer. She’d pinned all those prints back in place and left them at the cottage. He must have printed it again here, at Villa Air-Bel. Did he mean to take it with him? Would he risk his life, and perhaps Luki’s and hers too, for that single photograph? A naked woman. If found in a search, it would be considered indecent, cause for arrest no matter who he might otherwise have succeeded in pretending to be.
Saturday, December 7, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Edouard stood in his bedroom, staring at Salvation, every sense awash in the grief of leaving behind the only world Elza had ever known, the only world they had ever shared. He breathed deeply, trying to gather himself. It would be for the best, for him and Luki both. To start over. To begin the new life he’d imagined they would begin in Sanary-sur-Mer, only to find himself still mired in their loss. Even now, Elza’s memory was so real that he could smell her in this photo, and with the smell of her, taste her, hear her breath.
He turned then, realizing it was not Elza’s breath he was hearing, not Elza’s perfume, but Nanée’s.
Nanée was there, down the hall, beyond Luki’s door. She was disappearing through her own doorway into her own room, where they’d made love last night and the night before, where he’d painted her back and photographed her after she brought Luki to him. Was that really only a week ago?
He turned back to the photo, Salvation. He folded it in half, and when he heard the click of Nanée’s door closing, he took it out to the fire in the library and set it on the flames. The negative was already sequestered in the baguette, in one of the film canisters. He might print the image again someday, when he thought he could do it right, when it really would heal him.
He set the letters, the one from Luki and the ones he wrote her, in the empty suitcase. He ought to burn them too; they contained too much detail about life in the camps to be carried safely. He removed them from the suitcase and placed them in the pocket of the shirt hanging in his armoire, one Jacqueline had bought for him the day after he arrived at Villa Air-Bel. He would wear it the next day, when they left.
Saturday, December 7, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Nanée returned to her own room, still thinking about Edouard’s photo. Ghost Wife. She was surprised to find the door open; she was trying to be so careful, trying not to signal to those who didn’t need to know that she would be taking him to the border. But everyone at Villa Air-Bel knew that Edouard and Luki were leaving.
T was sitting at the edge of the bed, the Robert Piguet suit folded neatly in her lap. “Wear it for me, Nan,” she said. “The only other decent clothes you have are trousers, and they’ll draw the wrong kind of attention. You need a convincing suit. What you’re doing, it’s so dangerous.”
“Whatever do you think I’m doing?” Nanée protested. T was not someone who needed to know.
T gave her a look. “You’re taking a German refugee wanted by the Gestapo illegally across half of France, if not across the border.”
Nanée closed the door behind her.
“So you do mean to leave France with him then?” T said.
Nanée considered her friend, so much smaller than she was, and somehow so much more accomplished. A wife. A mother. A woman of substance on whom Danny relied.
“You should,” T said. “You should go with Edouard. Take a chance for once in your life. Don’t use the excuse of needing to stay to help Varian. Varian’s days here are numbered.”
Edouard’s voice drifted in from the room next door. He was tucking Luki in, reading from the letters he’d written her, as he did every night. Always funny bits. Light bits. Nanée wondered if that was all he’d written, or only what he now chose to read.
“You’d have me leave France for a man I barely know?” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel. Edouard had been at Villa Air-Bel for barely a month.
“All the work we do here will end soon, whether you stay or you go.”