God Speed the Night (10 page)

“Divide it,” he said, “and let us eat.”

“I am not permitted to eat in public, monsieur.”

“I won’t look at you. There are times when rules, even religious ones, must be suspended. Who knows when we’ll have the chance to eat again? Eat and give thanks.”

“Thank you, monsieur,” she said almost in a whisper, and broke the bread in two.

Marc cut the cheese with his pocket knife, the only utensil in the loft being one spoon.

They had not finished eating when, without sound or signal, René eased the door open and entered. Marc’s first warning came from Gabrielle who faced the door. “Monsieur Marc…”

Marc swung around, by instinct opening the larger blade of his knife. “It is a friend,” he said to Gabrielle.

René seemed more interested in the room itself than in its occupants. He ran his hand almost lovingly over the door and its latch as he closed it, for no light whatever had escaped. He crossed to the boarded window, the blackout further reinforced by the heavy serge. Finally he turned to Marc and Gabrielle, nodding to the woman and mumbling, “Madame,” by way of greeting. “I cannot believe it,” he said to Marc. “To have come from Paris and found a place like this in St. Hilaire. The nun must be a worker of miracles.”

Gabrielle and Marc exchanged the briefest of glances. Neither of them spoke.

“Or in the employ of the enemy,” René added, seating himself at the table. “It is a
cul de sac
.” He shrugged. “But so is a hole in the ground.” He looked from Marc to Gabrielle. “Madame is feeling better?”

Gabrielle hesitated, hoping Marc would explain. He was silent and she said, “I am well, monsieur.”

René said, “I am relieved to hear it. God knows, it will be difficult enough to get Marc Daridan out of the country without an ailing wife.”

“My wife goes with me.”

“Oh, indeed she does. In fact it occurs to me that she becomes a part of your next disguise. Forgive me, but am I right that in getting married you omitted the civil ceremony?”

“You are right.”

“So neither the government nor the
Milice
has a record of it. What name did you use as a member of the
Milice
?”

“Claude Renard.”

“The fox,” Rene repeated. “How interesting: the fox and the rabbit. We are two different men, eh, monsieur?”

Marc sensed a kind of judgment in Rene’s comparison. “Yes,” he said.

“Let me have your identity cards.” While Rene brought out his knife and tested the sharpness of the blade with his thumb, he said: “What do you think, madame—can a rabbit save a fox?”

Gabrielle was about to say she did not understand, but she did understand the question if not what was said before it. “If the fox is in a trap, yes, monsieur.”

“Good! I hope you are right.” Rene moved the candle closer to himself. His hand trembled with an almost palsied shake until the instant the blade made contact with the card. Then it steadied and he probed the edges of one picture, then the other. The sweat stood on his forehead, his face as rigid as his hand.

Gabrielle could not help watching him. She and Marc exchanged one brief glance. He nodded encouragement to her. Instinctively, and from René’s words about the ailing wife, she understood Marc’s reluctance to tell this man how ill his wife actually was. She thought of leaving the table lest the man look at her and compare her face with that in the photograph. But she was constricted in her feeling of nakedness. She simply braced herself to endure and stared at the hands at work. Then briefly she saw the woman’s picture: she was wearing a scarf, probably the one she now wore herself.

The pictures removed, René stood up and took off his coat. He folded it back to expose the inside of the shoulder and inserted the two photographs in a slit in the padding.

“You will have duplicates, monsieur.”

“Yes.”

“Let me have them. You will need work papers, a military history, God knows. I am still amazed that you sent back the other papers.”

Marc was angered, but he did his best to conceal it.

René tried to amend. “After all, you have done your best for us, and what is France doing for you?”

“I don’t consider honor a matter of choice,” Marc said coldly.

“So little really is,” René said with a sigh. “I have been thinking about your predicament: if you can identify thirty members of the
Milice
, thirty members of the
Milice
can also identify you. Is it not so?”

“Twenty-nine,” Marc said. “One was killed and buried on the spot because I could and did identify him.”

“Oh, yes. They will want you badly.”

Marc gave him the pictures he had removed in the train from the Belloirs’ I.D. cards, René slid them into the lining of the other shoulder pad and put the coat on again.

“These people from Fauré, Belloir, did you know them well?”

“Only what we had to know. There was so little time.”

“And do you know the village?”

“No.”

“Let me tell you, monsieur, if all of France was like Fauré there would not be a German on our soil today.”

“I can believe it. It was no small thing the Belloirs did for Rachel and me. Now they are holed into a Paris cellar until they get their papers back.”

René put his knife in his pocket. “Stir up the coals and burn your cards, monsieur. For a while you will be Monsieur-Madame Nobody—on your honeymoon at the top of the world. Do you have food?”

“For how long?”

René shrugged. “Why do you care? When does a bride and groom have such privacy in times like these? Let me tell you, my friend, I envy you.”

Marc forced a smile. He needed all the time he could have here now for Rachel’s recovery.

“Let me have your ration cards,” René said.

Mark went to the valise to get them and René gave his undivided attention to Gabrielle. “Stand up, if you please, madame.”

With the stiffness of a doll, Gabrielle got to her feet.

René went close to her. He put his hand on her shoulder; his fingers probed the muscle of her forearm. Gabrielle clamped her lips in silent terror.

Marc looked around. “What are you doing?”

René laughed softly. “Believe me, monsieur, it is an innocent appraisal. Madame is as strong as an ox. Good.”

As Marc returned Gabrielle pleaded with him with her eyes. Her look was that of one at the stake. “Do not touch her again, monsieur.”

René pulled himself up to his full height, not much above that of Gabrielle. His eyes blazed in sudden anger. “If I touched her, it is to save her life, not to violate her. How do I pass you from here? As Parisian intelligentsia? Students perhaps of…what is it that Jews study?” His voice was staccato with derision.

“I am sorry,” Marc said.

“So am I, monsieur. You speak of honor, but you live on pride. Look at your hands, monsieur, and get them dirty, for it is the work of a laborer you will have to do to pass in this part of the country.”

“I am strong,” Marc said, “but my wife is not.” It was useless to protest on any other point.

“Again may I correct you? There is a tradition in our province of the strength of the women of France and I say thank God for it.”

“Amen,” Marc said. “Amen, amen.”

Gabrielle said to René, “Do not be angry with him, monsieur. I am not angry with you.”

“Nor am I,” Marc said. “You have misunderstood.”

René ruffled his shoulders. “I hope that is so. You, monsieur, have the arrogance to pass for a German, but your wife has Jewish eyes.”

Oh, Christ, Marc thought: this was another kind of nightmare, reinforcing those before.

René, his anger spent, turned to Gabrielle and with ridiculous gallantry, bowed as he explained: “Which is to say, madame, that they are very beautiful.” He tore the coupons from the ration books. “So many books and so little rations.”

Marc noticed that his hands were trembling again. He went to the valise and brought the bottle of cognac. René drank like a man in deep need. He pocketed the coupons. “If I am caught with these, they will think I am about my more respectable commerce, a far safer occupation, let me tell you—the black market.” He handed the covers of the books to Marc and told him to burn them as well. He was ready to go. “To survive: sometimes I wonder if it is so goddamned important.”

“Having been born, it is,” Marc said, “but I consider that to have been no great luck.”

Gabrielle clung to the table’s edge, her knuckles white, and then sank down in the chair.

René said, “You are afraid, madame. So am I. Let me be truthful. I was angry because I could afford to be angry with you. With the police, with our enemies, I am all smiles and bows and scrapings. If they trust me it is because they think I do not have the guts to resist them. And maybe they will soon be right. I have chosen my own cover name: I am a rabbit.”

At the door René and Marc shook hands. Marc came back to where Gabrielle sat, now utterly withdrawn. “Thank you, my kind friend.”

She covered her face with her hands and wept silently.

R
EVEREND MOTHER ASSURED THE
prefect of police that it was not necessary for him to wait for her, but he insisted. Borrowing a week-old copy of
Paris-Soir
from the orderly, he seated himself and pretended not to listen while the hospital man drew from the nun further information on Sister Gabrielle. The novice’s parents were dead, her nearest of kin a sister now married and living in Marseille. Reverend Mother did not hesitate: to do so would serve no purpose, for she saw Sister Gabrielle’s card of identity attached to the admission file. When she said that the hospital might bill the Convent of Ste. Geneviève for the patient’s care, the dour little clerk completed the form and cheered up considerably. He himself conducted Reverend Mother along the dim corridor. The ward doors were open, emitting the smells and sounds of the restive sick. A statue of Our Lady of Perpetual Help stood vigil, a candle flickering at her feet. At a
prie-Dieu
alongside the shrine an old man knelt in his bathrobe, bare from the knees down, the toes of one foot folded beneath those of the other.

The orderly opened the last door. It was to a room no larger than a nun’s cell and equally austere. “It is the only private room. The Germans have the second floor, you see.”

Reverend Mother’s eyes were drawn to Gabrielle’s habit, the veil, the coif, all neatly folded in the proper order. “Thank you,” she said. “I shall wait here until they come.”

After he was gone a muted bell sounded twice. Reverend Mother looked at her pocket watch. Two o’clock. Another hour had passed before she heard the shuffling of feet and the squeaking wheels of the carrier.

Dr. Lauzin and Sister Agathe accompanied the patient and assisted the nurse in lifting her onto the bed. The woman was beginning to regain consciousness. It was across her prone figure that Reverend Mother’s and Agathe’s eyes met, Reverend Mother seeking to reassure the tired and now somewhat frightened infirmarian. Only with the emergency passed was Agathe beginning to comprehend the responsibility she had assumed without even seeking permission. She sighed deeply at Reverend Mother’s calm and compassionate gaze.

“So! You will sleep well,
ma soeur,
” Dr. Lauzin declared, offering his hand in congratulations to Agathe. He was plainly pleased with himself and his assistant. Sister Agathe allowed her hand to be shaken. Indeed, sharing in his exhilaration, she would have danced around the room with him.

Reverend Mother studied the pale young face moving from side to side on the pillow. Her head was covered with a white handkerchief which was fastened beneath her chin. Choppy strands of black hair showed at the temples. The woman opened her eyes. Her lips parted and then shaped a name she did not speak aloud.

“This is Reverend Mother St. Charles,” Agathe said clearly. The introduction was to the doctor, but her intent was also to register the presence with Rachel.

Dr. Lauzin said, “Let me tell you, madame, I have never been so ably assisted. The sister belongs in the surgery.”

“It is kind of you to say so,” Reverend Mother said. “How long must the patient remain in the hospital,
Monsieur le Docteur?”

“It will depend. A healthy girl, but we had work to do in there, let me tell you. If I may say so, madame, your charges would be better off making known their discomforts. This could not have come on without warning. Suppose I had been out of town? You might have lost her. Very bad.” He patted Rachel’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine now. A good sleep and tomorrow will be better.”

“I’m sorry to have been so much trouble,” Rachel said, turning her head toward Agathe.

“It is all right, Sister.”

“How long,
Monsieur le Docteur?”
Reverend Mother repeated.

“A week perhaps. I’ll look in tomorrow. We shall know better then. Now for her a strong sedative and we can all go home to bed.”

“May I stay with her, Reverend Mother?” Agathe asked.

“It is not necessary,” Lauzin said. He went on confidentially: “The staff is competent enough—and very touchy. Take my advice. Visit, but don’t stay. She will get better care that way.”

Again Rachel spoke. “I will be fine, Sister.”

“We shall make arrangements,” Reverend Mother said. “You are not to worry.” Then, since the doctor had reached the door and was instructing the nurse, Reverend Mother ventured a further assurance: “You will find the Convent of Ste. Geneviève an excellent place to recuperate. Do you understand?”

“Yes…Sister.”

“Reverend Mother,” the nun corrected, but kindly and only to the purpose of proper identification. Saying it, she laid her hand on Rachel’s. The sick woman pulled the nun’s hand to her pillow and brushed it with her dry lips.

The doctor turned back to Sister Agathe. “I will not say it was a pleasure,
ma soeur
, but it was a privilege.
Au revoir.
”

When he was gone and before the nurse returned, Sister Agathe began to explain. Reverend Mother stayed her, inquiring with words she chose carefully: “Is Sister Gabrielle secure?”

Rachel unexpectedly responded, “I am secure.”

“Yes, my dear, you are,” Reverend Mother said, but her eyes demanded an answer of Agathe.