Anne Frank and Me (15 page)

“There is no time for them to be children now, you have seen to that.” She pulled something from her apron and held out her hand. Nicole stretched to see what she had. Bullets. Her mother was holding bullets. Mme. Bernhardt forced them into her husband's hand. “You use bullets now for medical writing?” She extracted something else from her pocket—it looked to Nicole like a clock, except that there were wires extending from it. “And this? A timer for a bomb?”

“Yes,” Dr. Bernhardt said.

“Have you lost your mind?” Mme. Bernhardt smashed the timer to the floor, where it shattered into a million pieces.

“I didn't want you to worry, Renée.”

Mme. Bernhardt laughed bitterly. “Why should I worry? Just because you are making bombs over the heads of our children?”

“Renée, please—”

“Just because you have taken the one place, the only place that these children can feel safe, and you have turned it into a bomb factory?”

“Perhaps I should have told you sooner—”

“Yes. You are right,” Dr. Bernhardt agreed. “Every single day I planned to tell you. But I kept putting it off.” He removed his glasses, put them in his pocket, then looked at his wife again. “I work in the Resistance, Renée. With Solidarity.”

Nicole gasped as all the color drained from her mother's face. “Jean, Solidarity? They are Reds. Communists!”

“Not all of them. I am not. It's very important work—”

“Important enough to risk your children's lives?”

“I have to do this, Renée—”

“Do you? You foolish man!” Nicole's stomach lurched. She had never, ever heard her mother speak this way to their father. “A scrawny band of underfed Jews and Communists trying to defeat Hitler? He crushed the entire French army in five weeks, Jean. Five weeks!”

“I cannot lie down and die. I won't.”

“So you make bombs?” Mme. Bernhardt's tone was scathing. “And what happens when your bombs go off and kill some Nazis, eh? There are reprisals. You see the posters. For every Nazi you kill, they will shoot one hundred Jews.”

“They will shoot one hundred Jews anyway, Renée. And one hundred more, and one hundred more, until there are no more Jews—”

“Foreign Jews! They are taking only foreign Jews.”

Dr. Bernhardt looked at his wife with more sadness than anger. “You do not mean this, Renée.”

She set her chin defiantly. “I do mean it. We are French. They will not take French Jews who do not bother them.”

“Renée, listen to me—”

“No. I will not listen. Do you realize how foolish you are? By night you shoot Nazis. By day you are a doctor for a Jewish hospital where the Nazis find Jews to shoot in reprisal for who
you
shot the night before.” Mme. Bernhardt threw her hands in the air. “Do you not see the lunacy of this?”

Nicole watched her father's shoulders sag. For a long moment, he didn't speak. Then, finally, he said, “In a war, many things happen which do not make perfect sense, Renée. Perhaps I am foolish. But I must do it. Please try to understand—”

“No. What I care about is my family,” she declared. “And surviving. Surviving!”

“It's going to get worse, Renée. We can't just—”

“We can,” she insisted. “My family has lived in Paris for four generations. My father was wounded at Verdun in ‘17. You are a famous doctor. We are French. And if we are careful, we can survive until the Allies come.”

Nicole had never seen her father look as sad as he did at that moment, when he tenderly touched her mother's cheek. “My darling wife. I wish it were so simple. But it is not.” He turned to his daughters. “You must listen carefully to what I am about to say. We may have to go into hiding.”

Liz-Bette shook her head violently, as if she could will it not to be true. Something tickled the edge of Nicole's mind. What was it? Something that someone had said about her father. But who? And where? Yes! She had it. It was that Gestapo inspector, the one she'd met at the UGIF home. He had said it would be a terrible idea if Dr. Bernhardt were to disappear. And now—

“If we must go into hiding, we must make everyone believe we have been deported,” her father continued.

Nicole was startled. “Even Jacques and Mimi?”

Her father hesitated. “Invite Jacques to my office at the hospital. They may be the ones to help us, if they are willing. But they must never know that I am with Solidarity. No one must know. Do you understand, Liz-Bette?”

Liz-Bette nodded, her lower lip trembling. Nicole was still desperately trying to reconstruct the conversation at the UGIF home. Hadn't the inspector said something about their friends, some kind of threat? Oh, God. Did the lousy Hun already suspect that her father might be in the underground? Was he having their flat watched even now? If they were to disappear, what might he do to Jacques and Mimi?

“All of you, listen to me,” her mother commanded. “Stop this nonsense. We are not hiding like rats in a sewer. It is out of the question.”

Dr. Bernhardt met her gaze. “We will do what we have to do. Now, if my unit gets word to me that I have been denounced, or if I am taken—”

“This is insane, Jean,” Mme. Bernhardt cried. “For God's sake, all you have to do is stop!”

“That I cannot do.”

“Even if it means your life?”

Nicole felt as if she could choke on the silence, waiting for her father's answer. He said nothing, which was the most painful answer of all.

“I don't want to live without you,” her mother told him.

Her father—or someone who looked like her father—pointed to the front door. “If someone should come and say this code word—Nightbird—the code word is Nightbird. Repeat it.” He looked sharply at his daughters.

“Nightbird,” Nicole and Liz-Bette repeated.

“If that should happen, you must leave here instantly You will walk to seventeen, rue Saint Andre des Arts in the sixth district, near the Saint-Michel metro—”

“No, Papa!” Liz-Bette ran to him.

He held her away from him roughly, so he could see her face. “Repeat the address for me.”

“You're scaring me, Papa.”

“Repeat the address. Now!”

Nicole joined Liz-Bette and linked arms with her sister. “It's all right, Liz-Bette. Say the address with me. Seventeen—”

“Rue Saint André des Arts,” Liz-Bette joined in softly.

“You will see a man named Luçon,” Dr. Bernhardt instructed. “Say his name.”

“Luçon.”

Dr. Bernhardt turned to his wife. She was at the window, gazing into the Paris night. “Please, Renée,” he said quietly. “I am begging you. Seventeen ... seventeen...”

Nicole held her breath. Finally, her mother's lips moved, in the softest whisper. “Seventeen, rue Saint André des Arts.”

Relief flooded her father's face. “Luçon.”

“Luçon.”

“He will arrange for your hiding. If I can, I will join you there. You children must memorize the address, in case you are separated from your mother. You will leave immediately. Wear as many layers of clothes as you can. Do not wear the star. Do not carry anything. Make sure you are not followed. Do not tell anyone where you are going—”

Liz-Bette looked up at the stranger who now inhabited her father's body. “I don't want to leave you, Papa.”

He looked down at her. And finally, it was her beloved father who answered. “I don't want to leave you, either, little one.”

Mme. Bernhardt came to her husband. “If we live through this, Jean, I will be mad at you for the rest of our lives.”

Dr. Bernhardt smiled sadly. “When we live through this, Renée, I won't blame you.” With one arm wrapped around Liz-Bette, he held the other out to his wife. She embraced him. Nicole put her arms around all of them.

There was nothing more to say.

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