The Girl in the Blue Beret (32 page)

45.

M
ARSHALL 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.