The French War Bride (17 page)

“When will you leave?” Yvette asked.

“Tonight, if we are lucky. There is supposed to be a truck. But it might not come until tomorrow night—or the night after. We must wait for the transportation.”

“You and the children could be stuck here for two days? In this boxcar, in the heat?”

“We have no choice.” He suddenly held up his hand. “Shhh! Someone is outside.”

I heard the sound of a vehicle door closing.
The transportation has arrived
, I thought. I heard the rumble of low, murmured voices, and then
the door to the boxcar abruptly slid open. A bright light shone into the dark car, blinding me.

“I knew it!” shouted a familiar voice.

“Pierre!” Yvette gasped.

“I knew it,” Pierre's voice snapped like a trap. His flashlight glared at me. “I could tell you knew those Jewish women. So this is your boyfriend, eh?”

Before I knew what was happening, Joshua rushed forward, tackling Pierre's knees. Pierre crashed hard onto the metal floor. I heard the sickening thud of fists on flesh—over and over and over, as the two men rolled. In the dark, it was hard to see who was on top of whom.

And then, abruptly, the boxcar rocked as more men climbed in with more flashlights. I could make out the black of three SS officers' uniforms in the flashlight beams that glared every which way in the boxcar. One of the officers picked up Joshua and threw him against the metal wall. His head hit hard, like a hammer on an anvil.

Pierre staggered to his feet. Joshua lay crumpled on the floor, not moving. The young girl behind me screamed. I hauled her and a younger child onto my lap. Yvette gathered the other three children in her arms.

“Stop!” I pleaded. “Please!”

Pierre walked over to Joshua and gave him a kick. “Filthy Jewish swine.”

Joshua groaned. At least he was still alive.

“Please! Please don't hurt him any more,” I begged.

The SS officer yanked the child from my lap. She flailed at him with her arms and legs. He slapped her hard, full across the cheek. Her head twisted to the side as another German carried her outside like a sack of potatoes.

“Go! Run!” Yvette urged the children in her arms toward the door. Pierre roughly grabbed two of them, slinging them to the floor. The boy rose, and Pierre hit him—hard, with his fist, in his stomach. The boy flew across the railcar and hit the metal wall with a sickening thud.

Yvette and I both rushed toward the child. The back of the boy's head had a deep gash. His blood pooled on my skirt. He was breathing, but just barely.

Yvette looked up at Pierre, her eyes angry blue lightning. “I can't believe you hit a child like that!”

“He's a Jew—the source of our ills, the reason for this war,” Pierre snarled. “Baby rats might be cute, but they grow up to be rats all the same.”

The boy was limp, his eyes closed.

Two SS officers grabbed Joshua and yanked him to his feet.

Yvette whirled on Pierre. “You have let them poison your mind!”

“We should take the women as well,” one of the SS officers said in German.

“You can stop the act now,” Pierre said to us. His eyes held a weird expression, a look I recognized as a warning. “We have them in custody.”

I didn't know what he was implying until Joshua looked at me.

“Act? That's what it was, all this time?” His eyes were a hot glare. “You betrayed me!”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, devastated that he would think that. “No!”

“Betrayer!” Joshua yelled, as he was dragged out. “Traitor!”

I stared, my mouth not working.

“Are we taking the women or not?” A French police officer asked the last remaining SS officer.

“No. They are my sisters,” Pierre said in German, talking to the SS officer. “They knew the Jew from the university, that is all. Like all women, they have a soft spot for children and underdogs. That is why they talk so insolently. But they are on our side. After all, they led us here. They are responsible for this capture.”

“We are not—” I protested.

Yvette's elbow knifed into my side, cutting me off.

The SS officer seemed to weigh the matter. “Let me see your papers.”

Yvette pulled hers from her pocket. When I didn't move, she pulled mine out of my pocket, as well.

The SS officer looked at them, then thrust them back at us.

“Go.” He waved his fingers in a dismissive gesture, then turned to another officer. “Keep someone posted here to arrest whoever was coming to meet them.”

“I'll see my sisters home,” Pierre said.

“Don't bother.” I'd never before heard Yvette's voice, usually so warm and vibrant, sound like a block of ice. “We will go on our own, the same as we came.”

—

I was inconsolable on the Métro ride home, although Yvette tried. She sat beside me, her arm around my shoulders as if I were a child. I leaned against the window and cried. Fortunately the subway car was empty. “I can't believe Joshua thought I betrayed him,” I moaned.

“He didn't,” she said. “He only said that to save us.”

“He looked so angry! So bitter!”

“He was angry at Pierre.” She gazed out the window as the Métro clanged around a corner. “Pierre tried to save us, too, you know. And he succeeded.” The subway swayed and rattled. “We were saved by the lies of the men we love.”

“But Joshua—and those children! Pierre turned them over, knowing they would be . . .” My mouth could not say any of the words that formed in my mind.

“I know, I know. I will never forgive Pierre. It is over between us.”

I glanced at Yvette, aware, for the first time, of how the events of the night had affected her, as well. “Oh, Vettie! You have lost as much as me, and yet you're so strong!”

“The man I love is not being dragged off to a camp.” The Métro took a sharp turn, throwing us against the window. “Although, after what he did to that boy, I wish he were.”

My feelings about Pierre were too raw and jumbled to untangle. He had saved us from being captured by the SS—but he had followed us from the Vélodrome. He had used us to capture Joshua.

But I was the one who was most at fault. My tears fell afresh.

“I should have done as Joshua wanted and stayed away,” I sobbed. “If I hadn't tried to help him, I wouldn't have harmed him.”

“No. The fault is Pierre's. He is trying to curry favor with the Nazis to advance his career.” She shook her head, her mouth bitter. “I could
never marry a man who could do the things he did—who thinks the way he thinks. I cannot believe he hit that child, and then acted as if it were nothing.” Tears tracked down her face. She angrily brushed them away. “I did not know him.”

“The war has changed him.”

“It has changed us all.”

Her voice was angry—angry and hard. “Without Pierre, there is no reason I can't get more and better information to help the cause.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you before. There are officers at the restaurant—high-ranking officers—who would love to have me as their mistress.”

“Oh, Yvette—you did not mean that.”

“Why not? I would have access to their pockets, to their files, to their conversations. I could gain entrée to dinner parties with other officers. We already know that when they think we don't understand their language, they talk freely in front of us. I could do a lot of good for the Resistance. And I wouldn't have to starve, either. I could be well fed. I could even bring you food. Maybe even get food for the orphans.”

“Yvette, do not talk this way!”

“Why not? I have been giving my love to a man who is cruel, who could smack a child across a boxcar, knocking him unconscious, maybe even killing him.” The Métro rocked hard around a corner. “Not only is Pierre cruel, he is weak and spineless; he let himself be brainwashed by propaganda. He has no principles aside from pursuing his own good. I think it is worse to sleep with a Nazi who is French than a Nazi who is German. At least the Germans are loyal to their own country.” She shook her head. “Your parents would be devastated at what Pierre has become.”

“You don't need to compromise yourself just because Pierre is corrupt.”

“Compromise myself? I was compromising myself with Pierre and I didn't even know I was doing so. No.” She shook her head, her chin resolute. “I am through being emotional and stupid. The next time I take a lover, I will know exactly who he is and what I can get from the situation.
No more sentimental foolishness for me; I will carefully select a man who can give me access to important information that the Resistance needs.”

“Don't do anything impetuous,” I begged Yvette. “Promise me that you will think this through.”

“I will be as cold-blooded about this decision as Pierre was about his decision to let us lead him to Joshua.”

“It is my fault,” I whispered. “It is all my fault.”

“No. No, it is not, and I will not listen to such talk.” She smoothed my hair back from my brow, the way my mother would when I was ill. “You have done nothing wrong. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and no reason to feel guilty.”

“I do feel guilty, though.”

“We all do.” Yvette blew out a hard breath. “It is the price we pay for being alive during this terrible time.”

1942

I
continued to suffer over Joshua. I awoke in sweats from dreams of him. I dreamed that we were trying to reach each other, but the ground stretched and cracked into a ravine that swallowed him up. I dreamed that I was about to eat a thick, juicy steak; my mouth salivated as I drew the knife through the rare meat—and then I realized it was Joshua's thigh. I awoke from that dream screaming, much to the annoyance of the other women in my hotel dormitory.

I dreamed, too, of Pierre—strange, rambling dreams that intertwined images of him as a boy with a monster. He had multiple grabbing arms, like an octopus; he was suddenly three times larger than his real size; he would smile, and his teeth would become razors. The heart-wrenching thunk of the child hitting the side of the boxcar would make me awaken with my heart pounding and my face stained with tears.

Pierre came to see me in August. I was at work at the hotel; I had just finished cleaning my last bedroom, and was pushing my cart down the back hallway when Isolde bustled up. “A policeman is in the lobby asking to see you.”

“What does he look like?”

“Handsome. Tall. He has a romantic little scar on his jaw.”

Romantic—bah! Pierre had gotten the scar from a backstreet boxing match when he was thirteen and I was eleven. My mother took him to get it stitched up by the doctor, and when she brought him home, my
father had whipped him for fighting for sport. Pierre had muttered a violent curse against Papa behind his back. The incident had confused and frightened me. Even as a child, it had made no sense that men would use violence to encourage peace. Where was it all to end?

“That is my brother,” I explained.

“He said it was urgent and most important.” Isolde was nearly breathless with the drama of it all.

I rolled my eyes. “Pierre is prone to exaggeration. He probably wants me to sew buttons on his coat.”

Isolde giggled. “Tell him I will gladly sew on his buttons.”

I could not, of course, simply refuse to see him; Pierre was the police. Whispers swirled around me as I made my way through the hall to my supervisor. I explained that Pierre was my brother, that he had requested to talk to me, that he probably had news about someone in my family. She let me go, but insisted I follow the rules and first change out of my hotel uniform—to avoid, I am sure, bringing the slightest hint of scandal to the hotel.

I sent word that I would meet him at the employee exit, and then changed into one of my two summer dresses. It was hot and humid, but it was not the heat that made my palms sweat as I walked toward him. The very thought of Pierre made my insides boil with anger—anger and guilt and self-loathing.

Despite what Isolde had said, I thought he looked terrible. He had lost weight, and his skin had a sallow look. I was glad to see it.

I held myself at my most rigid as he gave me la bise. “Have you brought word of Joshua?” I asked.

“You know that is not possible.”

“I know no such thing. I did not know that my brother would arrest a man trying to help innocent children—nor that he would kill a child so casually.”

Pierre's back stiffened. “I did not kill that boy.”

“No? He was barely breathing when last I saw him. What is his current state of health?”

“I have no way of knowing.”

“Of course you don't, because the Nazis took him. But I'm sure he's just fine, because nothing is better for a severely wounded child than being dragged to a Nazi camp.”

His brow furrowed. “This sarcasm, this bitterness—it is most unbecoming.”

“Is that so? Well, then, perhaps you should throw me against a wall and call the SS to arrest me.”

He looked at me, and for a moment his eyes were those of the Pierre of my youth, the brother who longed for affirmation from our father for his athletic abilities, but only got criticism for his poor grades. His eyes begged for acceptance. “The boy only had the wind knocked out of him.”

“Is that what you tell yourself in order to sleep at night?”

“I did not come to see you to be berated.”

“Too bad. So why did you come? To ask me to help you win back Yvette?”

His lack of an immediate response told me I had hit the nail on the head. I knew that she had refused to see him since that fateful night. I knew that he had repeatedly gone to the café where she worked, and that each time he sat down in her section, she arranged for another waitress to serve him. I knew that one time she had told a Nazi customer that he was her brother, that he was trying to shake her down to pay off his gambling debts, and that she was afraid of him. The Nazi and two of his cronies had thrown Pierre out of the café and escorted her home.

“She will not see me. I cannot explain myself to her if she will not listen.”

“There is no explaining away your behavior, Pierre.”

“I wait outside her apartment, but she is never alone.”

“I know this about Yvette: you cannot forcibly change her mind. Any efforts you make to coerce her will backfire.”

“I know, I know. But I cannot live without her.”

“You must, because she is done with you.”

“Do you think that, in time, she might change her mind?”

I did not, but I could see that was not an answer he would accept. “I do not know. But right now you are doing more harm than good, trying
to force your attentions on her. Perhaps after the war is over, if you show proper remorse . . .”

He scowled. “When the war is over, she will be the remorseful one.”

“Ah. Well, then, you have your answer.”

He looked at me, unsure what I meant. “Can you talk to her?”

“And say what? That you are sorry?”

“Yes. Tell her anything that you think will help. Tell me what to say to her, and I will say it.”

“But would you mean any of it?”

The tight set of his mouth, the impatience in his eyes told me he saw no reason that should matter. I held up my hand before he could form a lie or excuse. “You know what, Pierre? There is truly nothing to be done.”

“I cannot accept that.”

I could see that I would never extract myself from this conversation without giving him some course of hopeful action. “Well, then, if you must do something, do this: give her some time. Because one thing is certain—the more you push her right now, the more you push her away.”

“I am doing that, aren't I? I am pushing her away.” He gazed down, blinking hard. He truly loved her; it was clear to see. “Yes, yes, I know I am, but I can't seem to help myself.” He blew out a long sigh, looked up at the sky, turned away from me, then turned back. “How long must I wait?”

“At least six months.”

“Six months! That is a lifetime.”

In this war, it well could be. “You asked me what I thought, Pierre. I cannot help it if you don't like the answer.” I rose. “I need to get back to the hotel.”

He started to walk with me.

“I can make it on my own,” I said. “Good-bye, Pierre. Don't contact me again.”

“You don't mean that.”

“Oh, but I do. I do.” I turned on my heel and walked away.