The Girl in the Blue Beret (38 page)

Annette promised to invite Marshall for a grand family Sunday after they returned from the mountains. It would be an important occasion, she cautioned. Her mother, impatient to see him again, would come from Saint Lô. He met the daughter, Anne, briefly, the day before he and Annette planned to drive toward the mountains. He had been apprehensive about meeting Anne, for fear he would see in her the young Annette who was sent in a cattle car to Ravensbrück. There was something familiar in her eyes, but Anne had a less delicate face, straighter hair. She seemed to be the new liberated woman, with her hair cut severely short, her manner brisk.

“Maman, I plan to take Bernard home with me,” she said. “We will come every two days, and Georges will come the other days. Don’t worry. Everything will be just as you want.”

“Bernard, you poor thing,” Annette said, bending to hug the dog. “You would insist on going with me over the mountains if you knew. But now Anne needs you.”

“I’m going to give his face a trim,” Anne said, ruffling the dog’s fur. “Maman, he can hardly see through that curtain.”

“Don’t tease him, Anne.”

53.

T
HEY WOULD HIKE INTO THE MOUNTAINS ON A WELL-DEFINED
trail in the general region where Marshall had crossed the border in 1944, southwest of Oloron-Sainte-Marie. Marshall never knew the exact location of his night crossing.

They drove straight south down from Bordeaux, through an expanse of farmland and villages with gray spires and red-tile roofs. Annette’s car needed brake shoes, so Marshall had rented another car, a small Citroën 2CV. It was like driving a snail, he thought.

They were easy driving companions, and for long stretches they were quiet, only now and then murmuring over scenery or road conditions. She praised his driving, and he congratulated himself on his new alertness at the wheel. He was starting to appreciate the pace on the small French highways—the numerous stops and detours and villages, alternating with straight stretches of earnest speeding. When they stopped for a picnic, he contemplated the leisure of it, the pleasure of the food. She was teaching him to be French. He was Julien Baudouin, grown up.

Marshall had not counted on plunging in so deeply. Getting together with Annette turned out to be both simpler and far more complicated than he had imagined. He faced something that demanded uncommon understanding and intimacy. He was inexperienced. With Loretta he had simply turned the marriage over to her. She ran the marriage, the home, the children, while he flew away.

OLORON-SAINTE-MARIE
was an old town lodged in the foothills of the Pyrenees. An ancient church was perched on a hill within the old ramparts. As they drove down the main street a second time, having missed the turn for the hotel, Marshall noted the
tabac
, the
boucherie
, the
épicerie
, the
boulangerie-patisserie
—the essentials of a French town. A group of schoolchildren was blocking the street, protected by two guides directing traffic. Marshall recalled a flock of sheep in a road once when he was driving with Loretta and the children in Scotland. He remembered his impatience then, but now he could wait.

They would start their hike in two days. It would be fun, not a hardship, she insisted, as they climbed to their room on the third floor of the small hotel. The wooden steps were scarred and creaky.

“We should have had the fourth floor,” she said. “For practice. We’re mountain climbers.”

“We can trot up and down the stairs a few times,” he suggested.

“Oh, I forgot my little kit behind the seat,” she said when they reached the room. “It has my sewing thread, and I see you have a loose button.”

“I’ll get it.”

“We’ll both go. Trot, trot.”

FROM THE WINDOW
of their room they could see past the town to green forests, golden farm fields, scattered goats. The line of mountains beyond was obscured by clouds.

“I like this view,” she said. “Maurice and I came here to Oloron-Sainte-Marie for a week one summer. I remember it was so restful.”

Maurice had been a prisoner of war in Germany. Early in their marriage, she said, they had vowed not to dwell on the ordeal of their imprisonment. Together, they forged a life, pushing the past into oblivion.

“It was like after the horror movie ends and the lights come on. We French have a way of going on; the past is past. There had to be a forgiveness. Maurice and I, we never told each other the whole truth. My feeling is that there was more. He may have thought the same of me. Maybe we should have spoken more. But now I am telling you.”

“He didn’t get to know a side of you that I knew—the schoolgirl with the leather book satchel.”

“That time was ours,” she said, busying herself with his loose button. “That is what you have given me again. And with you it is bearable.”

In a few minutes she came to him at the window, her thread extended between the shirt in her left hand and the needle in her right.

“I need more light,” she said.

She finished the button decisively, then sat down on the bed and kicked off her shoes. She sat cross-legged against the pillows and tugged at her bare feet. She was like a young gymnast, he thought.

“You’re staring at me,” she said.

“Every movement you make is extraordinary,” he said. “Annette, how did you manage to come out of the camp with your good nature intact?”

She brought her knees up and hugged them.

“At Koenigsberg many women kept their spirits alive by making things, writing, sewing little things, dolls. It was all clandestine, of course, but as long as we could express ourselves with our hands, we still knew we were women.”

“You were very strong.”

She shrugged. “I was always the optimist,” she said, adjusting the pillow behind her. “Speak about your wife. Was she pretty? Were you proud of her?”

To his surprise, he was glad to talk about Loretta. Framing her in a way that brought her to life for Annette helped him to see her more clearly himself. It occurred to him that his marriage had been similar to Annette’s—two people agreeing not to reveal the worst of themselves, being strong for each other. He was glad to have this thought.

“I couldn’t have had with my wife what I have with you. She could never have understood. I feel bad about that.”

“You will feel guilt over your wife for a long time,” she said. “That is most ordinary—even when there is no reason.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Grandchildren,” Annette said. “It is very sad to me, Marshall, that you have no grandchildren.”

LATER, THEY WALKED OUTSIDE
. They found a long stairway up to a high promenade leading to the medieval church at the top of the hill. From the promenade they could see the mountains, a natural fortress rearing along the border between France and Spain. Marshall thought he could see snow but decided it was only the glitter of the afternoon light.

“It is beautiful,” she said.

“Yes, from a distance.” He shaded his eyes and stared toward Spain.

“Are you sure you want to go?” she asked him.

“I’m willing to go—with
you
.”

“But do
you
want to go?”

No, he didn’t, but he didn’t say so. He just pointed and said, “It
is
beautiful.”

54.

M
ARSHALL WAS BECOMING ACCUSTOMED TO WINE IN THE
evening. He liked red wine better than white. Annette had taken a brief nap, and she seemed refreshed, quick-witted, and positive. Her throat was soft, her voice a murmur punctuated with sharp little pings of enthusiasm.

They were drinking aperitifs at a small table in a faintly lighted corner of the hotel terrace. They had ordered their dinner, and she had selected the wine. A thick hedge sheltered them from the side street, and they had a view of the waning moon over the dark, silhouetted hillside to the south. Specters of the mountains lay in the back of his mind.

“Tell me more about Robert,” he said. The abruptness of his question surprised him, and he regretted asking when he saw the pain on her face.

“I can’t help wondering,” he said apologetically. “He is such a grand figure in my imagination.”

“Robert. Robert. Robert.” Her hands flew up as if to hold a headache. “He is such a trouble to me.”

“To everyone, it seems,” he said.

“I knew the real Robert,” she said. “Your Caroline may never understand this history, but I know it well.”

“Maybe she should hear it from you.”

Annette sipped her drink. She said, “One of his other daughters came to me once, pleading for information about him. She passed the night with me. She had come on the train from Paris, and we stayed up until late. She was troubled because she had seen him in the hospital. I did not know how I could help her. I was trembling. I could not visit the past for so long.”

“Can you speak of him now?”

She nodded slightly. “You may remember him enough to know that he was
gentil
, and sincere, and passionate about his work for the Bourgogne.”

She spoke slowly, her face pale in the candlelight.

“I told you that Robert hid at our apartment once because the French police had arrested him on his way back from Perpignan. They were suspicious of his papers, but they let him get away. We were afraid someone had followed him, but he assured us that he had taken several Métro trains, crisscrossing the city, and he had walked a random route before arriving at Saint-Mandé. He was hungry and frightened.

“But Robert was a bold person. He had a tendency to court danger, even though his emotions were in turmoil. On an earlier occasion, a terrible thing happened that haunted him dreadfully. He had escorted a group of
aviateurs
to Perpignan, and after they were transferred to the local
convoyeur
, he went on a mission to set up a new safe house in a village outside Perpignan—one of those hilltop villages, very remote. Apparently the Germans were not bothering themselves with that town. The family—a man and woman and their three children—had very modest means, but they were eager to shelter our
aviateurs
. Their house was conveniently set near the bottom of the hill, away from the street. Robert was satisfied, and he left to meet his ride on the main road. As he made his way in the darkness, he heard a foreign vehicle approaching. He jumped back from the road into a bank of bushes, and he wasn’t seen, but he could identify the car—a grand chauffeur-driven Horch touring car.
Mon Dieu
, it was likely the Gestapo. Robert saw the auto proceed into the village, and in a while he heard loud noises. He heard gunshots. He reached the main road, and in moments an old Citroën appeared, his ride to the train station at Perpignan.

“Robert didn’t know until some time later that the Gestapo had shot the family that night—the mother, the father, and the three children. He didn’t know why.”

“The Nazis didn’t always need an excuse,” Marshall said.

“Someone, probably a resident in the village, had denounced the man. The family must have resisted arrest. I don’t know the whole story.”

“For the Nazis, it might have been random,” Marshall said. “Or something to do that evening.”

“
Bien sûr
. And I ask you, what kind of neighbor would willingly see his neighbors killed? How could such a person live with himself? Did he even think of the children? For Robert, the torment was all-consuming. He had been with that family only five minutes before.”

“If I thought a massacre like that was my fault … I’d never get over it,” Marshall said. “Imagine—an entire family.”

“It was not Robert’s fault. He learned later that the man had been involved with some other project of the
Résistance.
”

“But wasn’t the Bourgogne exposed then?” Marshall asked.

“No. Robert was confident that he had covered his own tracks because he had given no names. Oh, I don’t know.” She passed her hand over her head. “But he was ravaged by the memory of that family in that village! And he did not even see the reality. It was in his imagination. I remember how he prayed and prayed over that. ‘Why?’ he kept asking. There was a certain fragility in Robert, although he took chances. As long as he was successful in his projects, he had confidence, but when something bad happened, I think he crumpled in his emotions.”

Annette paused, and Marshall reached for her hands, but she moved them away.

“What was it about Robert?” he asked. “What drove him?”

“His religion. Both good and bad, it was his religion.” Her sigh seemed to take an enormous space on the terrace.

“His parents wanted him to be a priest, but he had self-doubts. I think he looked up to our priest, the abbé at l’église de Saint-Roch, Father Jean, so much that he could not imagine himself in so lofty a spiritual position. Father Jean was very gentle with Robert. He desired to see him become a priest, but Robert feared a hollowness. He felt unworthy.

“Robert’s parents had said, ‘Go to the seminary! You’ll make a priest!’ ”

Annette laughed. “I cannot imagine Robert as a priest. He was devout, yet he was so worldly! He liked to draw and go to the cinema. He liked to draw pictures of women. He showed me pictures of nude women he drew in art class! Should I have gotten mixed up with him? I ask myself. Maybe he wasn’t so good for me.

“He confessed to Father Jean his doubts about the vow of celibacy. He said, ‘When I desire something, my reason is attacked!’ He emphasized his fantasies of women! But Father Jean had a solution for him, something for Robert to do so that he could serve usefully.

“Father Jean had recruited a group of students from the Lycée Henri-IV, near the Sorbonne, some
khâgneux
—students who were preparing for higher learning. They were desperate to avoid the work-service in Germany and they were filled with anger. That was such a difficult situation for many young men. Robert’s father wanted to send him to hide with an uncle in Lyon, but Robert did not want to hide. He wanted to be active.