The Girl in the Blue Beret

45.



MARSHALL HELPED ANNETTE WITH HER EVENING CHORES—taking grain to the horses, shutting in the chickens. Birds were twittering and trembling in the vines on the wall, and the peacock was roosting in a small tree. Annette fed the dog and cat.

“I should probably go find that hotel in Cognac,” he said, with a hesitation that left open a question for her.

“Do not go, please,” she said, touching his arm. “We must dine later. I have prepared some dishes. And I want to tell you what happened. Wait, please.”

She showed him where he could wash up, and he grabbed a clean shirt from his bag in the car. In the mirror above the sink his face was blank, he thought. He combed his hair and went to the terrace. She was still in the kitchen, and then she brought some cold Perrier and an open bottle of wine. She excused herself again to bring food from the kitchen, refusing his offer to help. The dog went with her. Marshall drank half a glass of Perrier, then sipped some of the wine. It had a metallic taste. He watched the cat washing her face. It was just after sunset, and the sky was still bright. A 727 was going over, a domestic flight, maybe from Bordeaux.

Annette returned with a small tray and sat down across from him. He shifted his chair so that he could see her clearly in the late light. She had changed into blue pants and a tight V-necked shirt. She seemed fresh and delicate, not like a country woman who had just hiked five miles. Bernard lay down on the tiles between them, his head on his paws.

“Am I a threat?” Marshall asked, regarding the dog.

“No, no. Bernard accepts you,” she said. “He approves.”

She leaned to stroke the dog. “Bernard knows the story I will tell you now. At least I think he does.”

Bernard groaned and stretched out on his side.

Annette spread some pâté on tiny pieces of toast and laid them on a plate between them. The table wobbled slightly, and Marshall got up to adjust it with a chunk of wood he had spied in the grass.

“So much happened,” she said, arranging her napkin on her lap. “I can’t repeat it all.”

“Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” he said.

“But I do.” She absently folded her napkin and set it on the table.

“One day everything changed,” she said. “I haven’t told it often, except to myself, and there inside I’ve told it so often that it has worn grooves in my mind, like the tracks of a tire rolled through wet cement. In the years since my husband’s death, these memories seem to be stirring.”

She clasped her hands together, intertwining the fingers, and laid her head against the tall back of the chair. Gazing skyward, she continued.

“It was April 27, Maman’s birthday, only a week or two after you left us. We had two more Americans with us, one from New Jersey and one from Michigan. We had completed the work on their papers, and Robert arrived at our apartment just after I returned home from school. He spent some time explaining to these two Americans all their instructions. There was much to remember—the little pine grove at the Jardin des Plantes, the tickets, the walk to the Gare d’Austerlitz, where Robert would meet them. I told you about the pine grove recently.”

“Yes, I went there this week. It was just as you said.”

“My mother was making sandwiches for the boys. Robert had brought some good ham, and she had a small Camembert. She had two small apples. Papa was at work. Then the priest arrived. I do not know if I told you about the abbé, Father Jean. He was our liaison to the Bourgogne. He helped young people like Robert to avoid the forced-labor exile to Germany.

“ ‘I came to warn you,’ Father Jean said. ‘There has been a betrayal. I don’t have time to explain, but you must leave. Allez, allez! I have warned Monsieur Vallon.’

“Immediately, Maman ran to the balcony, where she set a plant in a certain position to warn Papa if he came home. Father Jean put his hand on Robert’s shoulder. Robert was his protégé, the young man he had hoped would enter the priesthood. The priest departed, but he was still in the corridor leading to the downstairs door when the milice arrived, followed very soon by Papa, who saw the flowerpot and should have stayed away! But he had to know what the danger was—and he stepped into its midst, the maelstrom. The milice—the worst of the French police, as bad as the Gestapo—were there, in those dreadful dark navy berets.”

Annette spoke rapidly, as if scuttling the hard memories down a dark street.

“The intrusion was brutal. They threw Papa against the wall. I could see that worse than the physical pain was the assault on his pride. The milice, so puffed up with power, arrested us—Robert, the two Americans, Papa, Maman, the priest, and myself. Monique, as she knew to do, was hiding in the cupboard near the door. One of the officers pulled that cupboard open and saw her huddling there with her poupée, her dear worn ragged doll, terror on her face, and he kicked the door shut again. They left her behind and drove the rest of us to the police station. We were questioned, but we refused to answer. They had searched the apartment and found the incriminating equipment before we had a chance to dispose of it out the back window. After fifteen minutes or so of confusion at the station, the police separated the men from Maman and me. They led us down a corridor and locked us into a cold cell. Maman held her arms around me to make me warm and to comfort me. What was burning into my mind was the sight of Monique, grasping her poupée in the same way Maman was holding me, Monique with her face in terror. I had only a glimpse before the policeman slammed the door shut and we were gone.

“ ‘Will the little door open from the inside?’ I asked Maman. ‘Can she get it open?’

“ ‘Yes,’ Maman said. ‘Don’t worry.’

“Monique had the address book of all the aviateurs we had helped—about fifty of them. We had been prepared, and she knew what to do. She had hidden the little book in the clothing of her doll. Your address was in there. I thought about all of you a great deal after our detainment. I hoped that you would arrive home and that after the war you would have a good life. We were arrested long before the BBC would send its coded message that you had arrived safely.

“There in the prison cell I was frightened for Monique, and for Robert and my father and the priest. And the two Americans we barely knew. I remembered their new false names better than I remembered their actual names.

“Father Jean, who was very courageous, had been recruiting students for the réseau Bourgogne.” She paused. Her hands unfolded and fluttered up beside her ears like birds at a window. “Robert had been a student of Father Jean’s, but he didn’t have a heart for the priesthood. He was too worldly. The life of the escape line was for him irresistible. Everyone thought so highly of Robert. He was handsome, courteous, vivacious …”

Annette faltered then. Marshall waited quietly for her to continue. The summer light was fading, and bats were beginning to flicker above the courtyard. He had told her that he wouldn’t probe her with questions. He didn’t want to say something insensitive. He hadn’t known before that Robert had also been arrested, and now he realized that Robert had probably been sent to the concentration camp too—and that Caroline perhaps did not know. His view of Robert Lebeau kept shifting, like light and shadow flitting across the face of a mountain.

Annette sipped her wine and continued. “My mother and I never again saw the men who were arrested with us. We were told no news of them.

“In the middle of the night we were transferred to a large stone prison called Fresnes, south of Paris, and there we stayed in an overcrowded cell with three other women. We were all French, all arrested for résistance. The other women had left their children, all small children, I think, and they were frantic with worry. My mother commiserated with them, but she would not give up her belief that Monique was safe with our friends. ‘She had her instructions,’ Maman would say. ‘She knew where to go.’ The image of Monique and her poupée would not leave me. Eventually we managed to exchange messages with her, and the other women received messages smuggled in from friends, along with some small parcels of food, which they shared with us. We formed a bond then, after an uneasy start. Yvonne, Marcelle, and Jacqueline—three women we began to know intimately. In prison, the bonds become very strong. You have no one else, do you see?

“We maintained our dignity despite the closeness of our quarters. Yvonne began to withdraw, working herself into a ball and moaning now and then. One morning my mother ordered her to straighten herself. ‘You can’t wash yourself if you stay rolled up like that,’ she said. We had managed to create some privacy by hanging up a bed-sheet in a corner by the toilettes—if you could call it that. Well, never mind. Marcelle told us again and again about her three children who were at her mother’s when she was arrested, how she was innocent of any political activity. She was confused with someone else, she insisted, although her insistence began to break down eventually, and we never knew if she was truly not résistante, or if she had come to believe she was, weakening out of fear.

“Three times Maman and I were taken from the prison in an armored truck to the Gestapo headquarters on the rue de Saussaies for questioning. That was a frightful place. We had to wait for hours in a damp cell, where they had kept horses. The stone floor was covered with filthy straw, and there were no chairs. One day, about the third time we were taken there, I was waiting in the cell while my mother was being questioned, and when she returned, she was smiling. She whispered under her breath, ‘Robert left a sign that he was here.’ She explained what she saw: in his handwriting, on the wall of the waiting room, some lines from Villon.” She paused, seeing the past, her eyes distant. “He was always quoting Villon because we were Vallon.”

“A poet?” Marshall asked.

“A poet, yes.” Annette stopped to spread a dollop of the pâté on a piece of toast. She stared at it and handed it to Marshall. He couldn’t eat it.

“I cannot dwell on how we were treated at the Gestapo headquarters.” She shuddered. “We could hear the sounds of street life outside, mostly German sounds but now and then a French word called through the air, or a child singing. We clung to those French words; we always spoke French to the officers who questioned us. We refused their words. We wouldn’t repeat them.

“A German officer would say, in halting French, something like ‘Did you have a notebook of contacts?’ He would hold up a notebook, a carnet. And he would use the German word. And instead of repeating the German word, we’d say carnet. It was almost funny. It was as though he was teaching the German word and we were teaching the French word. I liked to speak quickly and excitably—nothing incriminating, just something to confuse them.

“They were a type without humanity,” she said harshly. “You would think that in their position, with all the fine accommodations they had in Paris, and the privilege of the finest restaurants and other enjoyments, they would be easier in their sentiments, but no, evidently no. For our part, my mother and I, we had to grab at any stray bits of wit in order to know that we were alive, that we were still ourselves.”

Annette wasn’t looking at Marshall as she talked. She was staring across the courtyard as if waiting to see the moon rise above the rooftop.

“At Fresnes, there were frequent air-raid alerts, and once some bombs hit a factory nearby. The prison was in an uproar. The anticipation was so great that we became riotous as the sounds died away, as the aircraft receded. We knew the Allied planes—we recognized the sounds.

“All the while, my mother held me and reassured me. I realized I was still a child. I clung to her as I did when I was five. I had been so happy going about with Robert. He had told me his wishes for the future. He was determined to fight the Germans. He vowed to join the Free French army if he ever received the opportunity, although he did not want to leave France because of his parents. He was devoted to them and always went to them on Sundays. In his heart, Robert was a man of peace, but it was thrilling to hear what he would sacrifice, how he would dare to change if necessary to regain freedom for France.

“It was dark in our prison. And so hot, with no air circulating. The noises were unending, day and night. Cries, pounding and clanging, boots tramping up and down. We heard rumors and snatched morsels of news. We knew that the débarquement, D-Day, had happened. We heard the bombers. We believed the liberation of Paris was imminent. We heard shouts and fights, and the guards who brought our food taunted us with false, twisted stories, lies. The food was hardly food. Yvonne was rolled in a ball again. Our clothes had become worn, but still we tried to wash them and keep them as clean as we could. At times we were thrown into an exercise yard for some free movement, though there was little we could do. They wouldn’t let us have boules—too much like weapons. For the most part, what we did was cast around for news; we exchanged life stories and gossip. We learned to talk through a system of signals we tapped on the pipes that connected all the floors. Oh, the prison was dreary and bleak and isolated. We could see in the distance the gray ceiling of Paris, as if it were empty and deserted and we were at the end of the world, looking back.

“De Gaulle is coming, we heard. The Free French are coming.

“The Germans are going home.

“Au revoir, les Allemands! We made it into a song. Au revoir, les Allemands, and then it seemed appropriate to learn some of their words, to taunt them and mock them. So we twisted those ugly words, Auf Wiedersehen, Deutsche, singing them vengefully. In the exercise yard, we would burst into spontaneous songs and shouts, but we were quickly dispersed and returned to our cells.

“What happened next is unspeakable. I have gone over and over it my mind, and I never comprehend it. There were two things I held closely for the duration: the image of Monique and her doll, and the presence of my mother, holding me in the same way Monique held her doll.

“I clung to my mother like a baby, and she held me in her strong arms and sang lullabies.”

Bernard lifted his head toward her, but Annette went steadily on.

“Paris was liberated on August 25, although the war did not end for many months yet. I have seen the films. Oh! Such scenes! When the Allied tanks roared into Paris—led by Frenchmen!—there was jubilation, and de Gaulle strode down the Champs-Elysées like a man on stilts, wearing the military hat that always reminds me of a gâteau box. ‘La Marseillaise’ was sung everywhere. There was so much joy. The church bells rang again. The champagne came out of hiding.”

Annette folded her hands across her breasts and continued in a soft monotone.

“However, we were not there. Ten days before, the Germans—who were in retreat from Paris—sent off the last convoy to Germany. My mother and I were in one of those cattle cars, creeping out of Paris toward Germany as the sun was rising.”





46.



IT WAS DARK. ANNETTE WENT TO THE KITCHEN, TAKING WITH HER the plate of toast and the pâté. Bernard followed her, and in a little while she returned. She brought candles but did not light them. Marshall tried to speak. He did not know if, in telling her story, she was offering him a gift or transferring a burden. His ears and eyes and heart were not sharp enough to catch fully all that Annette was telling him. He could not grasp the depths of her story. He felt that his mind was cemented over. She replenished the wine, and the wine made him feel easier with her, drawn to her like someone reaching across an abyss.

When she touched the inside of her forearm, he tried to remember if she had worn long sleeves throughout their visits. It was ironic, he thought, that the Nazis had kept such meticulous records, branding their victims while knowing the numbers would disappear, flecks of ash floating through the air.

He took her hand and—boldly or tenderly, he did not know which—pushed her sleeve up, nearly to the elbow.

“No, there was not a number,” she said. “We wore a cloth patch with our numbers, on our clothing.”

Gently, he kissed the spot where he thought the Nazi mark would have been, and she enfolded his head with her arms.

She held him close to her breast, an endless embrace. There was no time, just this breathless communion. The courtyard was silent.

Eventually, slowly, he raised his head.

“And that was the price you paid for helping us—for helping me.” Marshall was near tears. “I can’t bear it.”

“It was the same—you aided us and we aided you,” she said, touching his face gently. “It is no matter. Whatever I did for you, I also did for myself, for my family, for France. We were crushed, Marshall. Defeated. You cannot know the shame. Whatever any of us did, we did for ourselves—so that we could have still a little self-respect. Just a little.”

“I didn’t know that any of this happened to you,” he said.

“I didn’t want you to know. I have told very few.”

“I was safe back home, and you were still going through the war.”

She rose and gathered the napkins and wine. “I must check the dinner,” she said. “And then I want to tell you the rest.”

He didn’t know if he had had too much wine or too little. Food would not have occurred to him. He opened the kitchen door for her, bringing his glass.

“Please stay here tonight,” she said with a smile. “There is a room upstairs that can be yours. It will be like the old times. You will be in hiding, and I will take care of you.”





47.



THEY MOVED INSIDE, WITH BERNARD, TO HER SITTING ROOM. Marshall noticed that the dog seemed to trust him now, enough to leave Annette’s side and go to his bed in the corner. A table was set in the adjoining dining room, and Marshall could smell food cooking. She said they would eat soon.

They sat on a divan, side by side, and she resumed her telling. It seemed that she was telling her past to him as she had told it to herself for years. It came even more easily as they became more comfortable together. Intermittently, her expressive hands touched him, making contact, drawing him in.

“I don’t speak of it,” she reminded him. “But now I tell you. I want to tell you. I trust you, and you are part of my past. A good part.

“I know you are well aware of the Jews, their terrible fate under the Nazis. There were also thousands of résistants like us sent to Germany during the war. We were sixty women in a train carriage that had room for forty. The train journey was five days, with little food or water or other necessities—space, air.… On the way, through the small vents on the wooden sides of the car, we glimpsed the bombing damage to Germany.

“We expected to go to a labor camp. We also expected that the war would end soon. Maman reassured me. She said, ‘We’re strong. We can work. It won’t last. The war is almost over.’ Her reassurances gave me strength, and my acquiescence and obedience gave her strength.

“We still had not heard what had happened with my father and Robert and the priest and the two aviateurs. Fear for our men had haunted me all the while we were at Fresnes. If the aviateurs were lucky, they would go to a stalag as prisoners of war. But I had a profound apprehension about the others. I did not know what might happen. My mother insisted they would not be shot, but I had seen the posters on the street stating clearly that anyone caught helping aviateur evaders would be punished; the men would be shot, the women would go to prison. At Saint-Mandé we had lived under this threat, and we took the risk willingly. But now the reality of our situation was very bitter.”

Annette fell silent for a moment. Then with a shake of her head, she said, “Others suffered so much worse than we.”

She clasped her hands together, as if to squeeze something out of her memory. “We arrived at Ravensbrück, a camp for women north of Berlin. Ravensbrück was in a beautiful part of Germany. There was a lake and beautiful trees. But then the sight of the camp struck us with terror. We could not comprehend what this place was. There was a high wall all around it, with electric barbed wire strung along the top. Inside were many long rows of rough wooden buildings—like warehouses, with bars on the windows. They were overflowing with thousands of women—women starving, despairing, fighting for survival. It was shocking and so bewildering that we thought we must have lost our sanity.

“The prisoners worked in the Siemens factory, which made armaments. And there were many workshops. We were put to work first filling in a swamp with sand, then hauling wagons of manure to a field. The barracks was terribly overcrowded, and there was not enough food. We were slaves. Women were dying. And more kept arriving.

“I didn’t expect Ravensbrück. The world didn’t know of such places. We didn’t know.

“We were in the night and the fog—la nuit et le brouillard. We were meant to disappear.” She stopped. “The résistants were supposed to vanish.”

She rubbed the material of her sleeve.

“There were no uniforms,” she went on. “We had to sew a cross on the front and back of our clothing, to identify us as prisoners, and we had to sew our numbers on our clothing. I still have my number. I often thought about being a number, whether a person can be reduced to a number—at once the most specific and the most abstract of designations.”

She clasped his knee and continued, “I wasn’t tortured. I was beaten, but … oh, that’s no matter. So many women suffered more.

“The women SS guards, the Aufseherinnen, were monsters. They were brutal. Well, I won’t go into that. Those women—they had a cruel sense of humor. They laughed at us, knowing how that would humiliate us. We were in Block 22, with the French, and the other blocks were Poles, Slavs, and other Europeans. Gypsies. Sometimes our own block leaders, chosen from among us and given privileges, were more difficult to deal with than the SS women themselves. To receive their petty rewards, they closed their hearts to us, their compatriots. But the SS women …”

Annette sighed heavily.

“There were so many of us in our block that we had to form alliances to allocate resources, to protect each other. My mother and I had formed a close attachment to the three Frenchwomen with us at Fresnes, and we were all of a sympathy as women. We slept so close together that we were each other’s blankets and pillows. There was so little food that to save your life you had to steal; to save your humanity you had to share. I must emphasize that although we were in an enfer, there was a goodness in the women who helped each other. This goodness was our survival.

“Each day Maman said we were going to remain brave.

“Then a group of the most able-bodied of us were transferred to Torgau to make ammunition, but many of us refused. The Geneva convention forbade us to make ammunition. So in retaliation we were sent to another work Kommando in Koenigsberg. Torgau and Koenigsberg were satellites of Ravensbrück. Ravensbrück was Heinrich Himmler’s baby! His pet project, you might say. He would sell the women’s services to factories all over Germany.”

Once again Annette stopped speaking. She seemed to summon up courage before continuing. “This is difficult,” she said.

“Do you want to wait?”

“No. Please listen.”

Marshall visualized the young girl Annette at his hiding place in Paris. He remembered seeing her as she bent her head to flip her hair forward, positioned a hair ribbon, then lifted her head and tied the ribbon on top. She shook her hair so that it fell into place, her head beribboned like a package. That memory made him ache.

“We were sent to Koenigsberg-sur-Oder, across the border in Occupied Poland, where we leveled an airstrip for the Luftwaffe. The hangars were disguised so the Allies wouldn’t see them from the air. We worked on a plateau, in fierce wind and snow. All I had to wear was a thin cotton dress, no gloves or coat or hat, and it was the coldest winter I had ever known. Oh, but perhaps you think I’m exaggerating. It is no matter. As you want. After the first snow they gave us coats. Some were nice and some were ragged. You can comprehend how they collected such garments. Each morning I stuffed my clothing with the straw from my mattress.

“The appel began each morning outside the barracks at four and then again after work. They had to make sure no one had escaped, and they would call the roll again and again. But there was no guard tower there, for it was too cold to escape. We had to stand still in the cold for the appel. We tried to stand as closely together as possible. During the appel we had to be sure to stand straight. If you weren’t strong enough to work, you might be shot. We don’t know why we weren’t shot. There were five hundred women, half of whom were French. At Ravensbrück where there were so many women, the appel went on for hours. The appel was smaller, so we didn’t have to stand for so long, but sometimes they made us stand naked, and they turned the water hose on us. It was the winter. They made us stand there while the water froze on our bodies.”

“My God, Annette. How did you survive?” Marshall blurted.

She didn’t answer that. “The work Kommando—the airstrip,” she said. “We cut out large blocks of frozen sod and lifted it into wagons that ran on rails. The rails were short, and from time to time we had to move them with our hands and then lift the wagons to fit onto the rails. We were moving the sod from one place to another. We were cows!

“We tried to work crowded together, for warmth. We took turns shielding each other from the wind. We hugged and huddled. As our hands began to freeze, we thrust them into each other’s clothing to thaw. We fashioned a system for keeping our blood warm. We blew warm breath on each other and rubbed each other. If someone began to whimper or fall behind, we quickly surrounded her and circulated our meager warmth around her. Our model was the herd animal, the clustering that keeps deer and cattle alive in the winter.

“A truck arrived with soup at midday, and we scrambled to fill our bowls. Sometimes it was hot, but unless you managed to be first in line, the soup quickly became cold. It was watery, just a few scraps of potato or rutabaga. At night there was a piece of bread and sometimes a bit of ersatz cheese. In the morning we had something they called coffee. It wasn’t coffee. It was watery and tasteless. We suspected it was soaking water from old leather.

“The women were all thin and hungry. In our miserable section of the barracks there was a little fire where we could cook what food we could find—that is, if we could find wood or coal. Sometimes we burned our own bed slats. One day Jacqueline smuggled to us a goose egg one of the kitchen workers had let her have. We hunched over the little stove, and we boiled it so we wouldn’t spill any. But when we cracked and peeled it, we found a little goose inside, formed perfectly, boiled alive. For only a second we retched in horror, but then we tore at the food, sharing it equally among the five of us. It was a delicacy!

“The water was usually frozen, so we had little for cooking. We couldn’t wash ourselves. As each day went by, we weakened. We were growing too weak to be useful as labor. We saw so many people die. In their beds during the night, or in the snow on the plateau. My mother fell ill and was allowed to stay in the infirmary for two nights, and two of our friends shared their food with her. She was returned to the plateau during a heavy snowstorm. We found that the snow acted as insulation. We pushed it up to make a little fort that shielded us from the wind.

“After several weeks of this enfer, the commandant asked for volunteers to work in the woods. We could see the forest in the distance. It would be farther to walk, and the work would be more difficult, but the trees would shield us from the wind. It was five kilometers in the direction of Gdánsk. My mother and I and some of our friends trudged to the forest, and our work there was to dig out stumps. The Germans had forced some Russian prisoners of war to cut down trees to make a road through the forest. We dug the stumps out. We had the wagons and the rails, and we had to dig trenches for the rails, cutting through the roots. The ground was frozen, and we hacked and hacked. We had only shovels and axes.”

Marshall laid his arm around her shoulder, a brief embrace. She went on, “It is not a sequence in time. It is a collection of sensations. Time blurred; it was like sleep. When you have only a scrap for sustenance and you must labor until the dark, then you are already almost dead. My mother, who could hardly walk because of vitamin sores, labored alongside me, and she tried to conceal her sufferings from me, until there was a time when she could not continue. She breathed in sharply and lowered her head and closed her eyes. She clutched her hoe and said, ‘Don’t lose heart, Annette.’

“On the plateau, the gardiens watched us like those birds that feed on the dead. When a woman collapsed, the gardiens ran to grab her and throw her onto a cart. We were being worked to death. Our numbers diminished, and the bodies disappeared. There was no four-crématoire at Koenigsberg. I could not let my mother fall. I had to keep her upright until we could reach the infirmary.

“From the beginning, my mother was my strength. I had the hantise, or—how do you say it?—the anxiety to be separated from my mother. We were close, so physically close, her arms around me as if I were still balled—roulé en boule!—inside her. And in time, it was reversed, when I had to hold her, when she curled up in her weakness, the loss of strength, and the illness of which she was surely dying. In the infirmary I kept her warm. I gave her my soup. I mashed the bread into a little gruel, a panade. Bread and water heated on a fire felt so much more nourishing—to have something warm in our stomachs. She could hardly swallow, but she tried her best to eat, for me. It dribbled from her mouth, and she could not swallow. I lifted her head so she would not choke, and I caught the dribbles from her mouth in her spoon and saved it until she rallied and could get the breath again to try to eat.”

Annette’s voice cracked.

Marshall held her, and he caressed her hair. She turned her head away.

“You are good,” she said, pulling back from him.

“One morning at the work camp we saw a man come from the forest and speak with a gardien. Then the gardiens pushed us out on the road, but we didn’t march five by five in lines, as usual. It was chaotic, and we did not know where we were going. There was turmoil among the gardiens, as if they couldn’t agree on anything. Their discipline was crumbling. Finally, they marched us back to the camp, and they locked us inside again. We did not return to work that day.

“There was no appel that evening. There was no noise during the night; usually there was much noise. In the morning also there was no noise. No guards were there!”

Annette rose from the divan and paced back and forth, unable to contain her energy.

“We crept out of our barracks and rushed around. The gardiens had disappeared! We ventured farther. There were no Germans anywhere. We broke out of the camp. We went into their headquarters across the road and saw that they had left. They had abandoned everything. They had been living there with their families. There were bottles for babies. And food! We found food!

“We began to eat everything we could find. And we carried all we could back to our quarters, fearful that the Germans would return at any moment. They had left in the middle of a meal—lovely vegetables and meat. We ate everything left on their plates. To see how they had been living—with their families, in luxury—so near to us, it filled us with rage. They had their children there! Can you imagine bringing children to such a place? The children would surely know how we were treated. There were toys and sports equipment—tennis rackets, skis.

“We raided the women’s closets. I found sweaters and coats and blankets, and wool jackets and skirts. I found a beautiful navy wool coat and put it on immediately, for it was freezing that day! I took an ensemble back for my mother, who was too feeble to join the raiding party, but I was still strong enough. I brought back an enormous tin of peaches! I wore the coat back and forth—and filled its pockets with food.

“The water was frozen, but we made a fire and heated ice. We had hot water! We washed ourselves. We changed clothing. In luxury and liberty, we walked out in the sunshine. I can’t explain the joy. We were all together.”

Her arms opened wide, as if to embrace all those she remembered. “We were so happy! It was sunny! We felt free.

“Then at dark we returned to our barracks. A Polish girl wanted to escape—to leave—but we pulled her back. ‘Don’t go out there,’ we urged her. ‘It is too cold. You have nowhere to go. We have plenty of food here now, and the Russians will come to liberate us.’ Some Frenchmen who were prisoners of war at another camp had been exchanging messages, clandestinely, with us at the Kommando in the forest, and they had received hints that the Soviet army was coming. But we were afraid the Germans would return, and so we hid carefully all our stolen goods.

“Two Russian soldiers on a bicycle stopped at the camp. One of our women, who was Russian, told them we were ‘partisan,’ the Russian word for résistante. The soldiers left. We knew their units were advancing and they would find us. We waited, praying for liberation. We could hear their cannons in the distance.

“We had two days of freedom. Then a German patrol appeared in the night. We had been sheltering two escaped Frenchmen—two of the prisoners I mentioned—but the Germans discovered them and shot them instantly, then left abruptly. The Frenchwomen had been so happy to have the Frenchmen there. Now our hearts were breaking.

“In the morning we heard shouting and shooting, shouting and shooting. It was thunderous, murderous. Explosions. Yelling. It was dreadful. The SS from Ravensbrück had arrived, and they were pulling everybody out of the blocks.”

Annette had been speaking with Marshall in English most of the time, but now she lapsed into rapid, excited French. Gently, he guided her back.

“Slowly,” he said. “You’re going too fast for me.”

“Désolée.”

“Go slowly.”

She sat down beside him and took a deep breath. “The SS made everybody who could walk go out on a forced march back to Ravensbrück,” she continued, in English. “I could walk, but my mother could not walk, and I could not leave her! I could not leave her. I hid in the infirmary with her. We were in the room with a nurse who was very good with my mother. She had been arrested for falling in love with a German. She was a nice girl, and when the Germans routed everybody, she warned them away from the infirmary.

“ ‘They have the typhus!’ she cried. The Germans backed away then.

“There were only a handful of us left behind in the infirmary, and all the others were sent back to Ravensbrück, on foot. Eighty kilometers. I knew they wouldn’t live.

“The SS put out the fires in the stoves and removed the fuel. Then, with the fuel, they set the camp on fire. They locked the doors and left. Our little group, left behind in the infirmary, was going to die in the fire! Frantic, we managed to break the door. And then”—Annette clasped her hands together in a quick gesture of thanksgiving or prayer—“it began to snow, and the snow stopped the fire! Our infirmary survived the fire. But six of us died. We had to bury them, and the two Frenchmen. It was true. We did have the typhus.

“We waited. There were so few of us. The nurse, who stayed behind with us, had reserves of strength, and she built a fire to keep us warm. And she cooked for us. But I slept then for two days. I slept through the Battle of the Oder! The Russians and the Germans were shooting at each other across the camp, near the infirmary. But I was so sick I didn’t care.”

Annette’s hands flew up, quivering, then lighted in her lap. Again she had spoken rapidly, mixing French with her English. It had taken Marshall a moment to decipher “typhus,” which she pronounced TEEF-us. He took her hands and quieted them down. She turned her head away from him for a time.

“After two days the Russians arrived, with their tanks and their large guns, and they liberated the camp. It was such joy for us! Oh, they were very good with us. They spoke some English.

“We spent three weeks at the camp with the Russians. They were like children with us. Playing, laughing. One of them shot a cow so that we could have meat. But the nurse told me that my mother should not eat meat because of the typhus—it would make her bleed more. She was losing blood, leaving a trail. But the Russian, a big high officer, wouldn’t obey the nurse. He ordered a soldier to cut a bifteck and barbecue it for her. We couldn’t make him understand. He insisted.

“There are two images that stand out in my mind the most strongly now. One is my sister and her poupée—dressed in baby-chick yellow!—on the day the milice came. And the other is my mother with the bifteck—her joy at having it, and the Russians’ delight with themselves for providing it, and my own despair that it was bad for the typhus. It made her dysentery worse. We all had the dysentery from eating so much when we plundered the abandoned German quarters. So much jam! And beautiful vegetables and cans of asparagus and boxes and boxes of crackers.”

She sighed. “I was increvable. Indefatigable.” She laughed, then hid her mouth with her hands. “So much had happened.” She paused, looked at him, then turned away. “I can’t go further now.”

Marshall’s feelings were whirling. He could scarcely comprehend how she had survived, or that she was here now with her strength and her beauty. He didn’t know how to respond to her words. No response could possibly be adequate.

He put his arms around her. He felt her body relax, and they held the quiet embrace for several long moments.

“We will eat now,” she said, smiling up at him. “And talk of other things. You will tell me about your airplanes.”