God Speed the Night (3 page)

The line moved ahead at a snail’s pace, an ominous sign. The nuns and the children were taken from the line, the children now helping with luggage that weighed more than themselves. They were taken forward, but when some minutes later Marc and Rachel drew near the building, both nuns and children were still on the platform. They were being questioned in French and in German: the children’s papers showed them only to be the adopted wards of the nuns. It did not satisfy the Germans.

Marc shut his mind to them. He was coming close to a window. The waiting room was milling with people because of the delay at the other end. A taller man than most, Marc saw over their heads to the courtyard doors where yet another inspection was to be got through, this time both luggage and papers. He had seen enough of the Gestapo in his time to recognize them among the inspectors. And he had been told that St. Hilaire was a “safe” town. Perhaps it was if they could reach it, but there was no safe passage through the station exit for them. But neither was there escape except through the building. Marc calculated their best chance to lie in the confusion of numbers. He pressed Rachel forward as they approached the door, forcing her to force the woman ahead of her. He had only managed to wedge himself inside the station when guards came up and sealed off the entrance until those inside the building were processed.

Rachel’s face was the color of old newspaper. Marc maneuvered her toward a window as far as possible from the inspection. Children were crying, families abusing one another. The flies swarmed overhead. A loudspeaker blared unheeded instructions. There were but three doors in the room, Marc observed, the street and platform exits, and one to the Departures waiting room. He guided Rachel toward the latter drifting slowly as with the surge of the crowd. There was no barricade between the two rooms, but no traffic either. The departures, from what Marc could see, were a stolid lot, patiently waiting the prod of bureaucracy. Then he thought he knew why: two policemen conducted a protesting woman into the far room. She would go back to the town she came from, her papers not in order. Marc watched and waited, riding the perimeter of the crowd, holding Rachel’s hand. Her color was no better and he saw her bite her lip.

Suddenly she said, “Marc, I have a bad pain in my side. I wish I could sit down.”

“Perhaps it will be useful,” he said coldly. Then he put his arm around her and whispered, “We’ve got to get out of here safely. That’s the first thing.”

“I know. It’s letting up a little. I’m all right now.”

They were near the door when the loudspeaker’s blare of “Attention, attention!” coincided with the removal of another traveler turned back from St. Hilaire. A pretty girl, she was weeping and she had the sympathy of the policeman who was trying to justify himself for doing so rotten a job. Marc and Rachel followed them into the Departures room.

As soon as he passed through the door Marc saw the soldiers out of the corner of his eye. They were armed and stationed along the wall between the waiting rooms. He pressed forward in the close wake of the policeman as though he and Rachel were also to be deported.

Just before reaching the platform gate, Marc held back. He sent Rachel into the washroom, and waited outside the door. The policeman and the woman went on, disappearing down the platform. Marc measured time, his back to the waiting room: he had to be prepared for the hand on his shoulder, the prod in his back. Neither happened. Slowly, taking first a few steps toward the gate, he turned around. They seemed to have passed safely from one room to the other. But no one would pass unchallenged from this room to the Arrivals. Some thirty or forty men were waiting, sullen and silent, under the military guard. Too many, he thought, to be political prisoners. Labor conscriptees, which accounted for the angry women outside the fence. How ironic if they were ordered out at this minute and he were swept with them, probably all the way to Germany. His fear when Rachel was so long in coming became more of his own panic than anything else. His only control was through action. He dropped the valise on the floor and gave it a little kick toward the washroom. He walked toward the courtyard entrance. There were soldiers out there too, but in the entranceway the ticket-taker sat on his stool, his punch in hand. He yawned while Marc was watching him and took out his watch. He put the punch between his knees and wound the watch. It was the normal in the midst of so much abnormality that sometimes panicked a man, and at other times reassured him. A petty official might not question a show of authority, Marc thought, only the lack of it.

He strode back to the washroom door, his head high, his shoulders back. When Rachel came out he said, “Take the bag and do not speak to me until we are outside.”

His hand firm at her elbow, he steered her to the ticket-taker. “Monsieur, this woman is too ill to travel.” He clipped the words as a German might.

The man looked from him to Rachel. “But monsieur, I cannot give her back her ticket. It is not allowed.”

“Then she may apply to the French railways. For now she should see a doctor.” He and Rachel moved out into the courtyard.

The ticket man got off his stool and followed them hesitantly. Marc saw the grey-clad nun even as the railway man called out to her.

Sister Gabrielle was on her way back to the barouche when the man spoke. She and Reverend Mother had been permitted to go through the baggage room to where the northern sisters were detained. Reverend Mother, she was sure, had not expected the children, but Sister St. André spoke as though it had all been arranged and Reverend Mother pretended it was so. The Germans wanted to know who the children’s parents were, where they were, everything about them, but mostly they wanted to know if the children were Jewish. There were three little girls and a boy. Everyone spoke as though the children did not understand what was being said, almost as though they were not there at all. Which was why Gabrielle had suggested that she be allowed to take them out to see Poirot, the horse, and bring them back later. At that point Reverend Mother had sent her back by herself to see that the horse was all right.

When the man spoke, saying, “If you please, Sister,” Gabrielle looked around to make sure that it was she to whom he spoke. There was no other nun in sight.

“Yes, monsieur?”

The man in the railway uniform said, “This woman is ill, Sister. Perhaps you could take her to a doctor.”

The woman did look ill, but she also looked frightened, her eyes darting to the face of the tall man. Gabrielle glanced at him: his eyes seemed to have been waiting for hers. She looked away quickly. “Madame could rest in the barouche,” she said. “I must wait for Reverend Mother.”

“It would be a charity, Sister,” the trainman said. His voice quavered just a little.

Marc realized what had happened: his show of authority to get them past the man had aroused his concern for Rachel, he was trying not to leave her in Marc’s hands. Marc took the valise from Rachel’s hand, and said to the railway man, “I will see that madame is taken care of, monsieur. Believe me, I am not unconcerned.”

The man started back to his post, then stopped again. “Monsieur.”

Marc told Rachel to go to the carriage with the nun, and went back to meet the trainman.

“May I see your identification, if you please, monsieur?”

Rachel, about to climb into the barouche, stopped dead still when she saw Marc take his I.D. card from his pocket. Gabrielle put out her hand to help her. Rachel caught it and held onto it for dear life.

Marc watched the man’s face, the shock at seeing the Star of David. “She is my wife,” Marc said. “We are on the run.”

“Get out of here quickly,” the man said. “Things are bad in St. Hilaire.”

“Can you tell me where to find Monsieur Lapin?”

“Please, monsieur. I have three children. It is against the law to help you.”

Marc turned back and saw the women standing, their hands joined. He went back to them having to move now among the people coming from the station. At the gate to the courtyard they were having again to show their permits. He said to the nun, “We are Jews, Sister, and we must find a place to hide.”

Gabrielle prayed that Reverend Mother would come, but she knew that she would not. The woman still clung to her hand, the first time any hand had touched hers in almost a year. “But madame is ill,” she said.

“I am not that ill,” the woman said, and removed her hand from Gabrielle’s. “It is more important that we find a place.”

“I do not know the town. Wait and I will go to Reverend Mother.”

“We cannot wait,” the man said. “There are Nazis everywhere. Do you know what it means if we are taken?”

“I think so, monsieur.”

Please, dear Lord, let me help, Gabrielle thought. Perhaps to pray instinctively is to concentrate in a way not otherwise possible. Once as a child she had come to St. Hilaire with her father, bringing grain to the mill. While her father drank wine with the miller, she had climbed to the loft with the miller’s son and there from the window they had taken turns spitting down into the canal. She and Reverend Mother had passed the mill. It was a ruin now, but she could see the loft in her mind’s eye as if it were illuminated by the light of God. “There is an old mill with a loft on Rue Louis Pasteur,” she said. “It is not far.”

“Take my wife there, and I will find it.”

“No, Marc,” Rachel said. “I will stay with you.”

“You must do as I say. I am safer alone. If you walk out together the guards won’t question you. Take the valise.”

“I will carry it,” Gabrielle said, and by taking it from the man’s hand she committed herself.

“If you are stopped say you are taking her to a doctor.”

Gabrielle did not know a doctor, but she nodded. She glanced back toward the station.

“I will tell the sisters if they come and I am here,” Marc said.

They walked, the two women, unchallenged through the gate. The policemen stationed there touched their caps to them. The German guards ignored them. Marc watched them disappear from sight at the intersection. He did not like it that they were going away from the Old Town, but he doubted that anywhere was safe now in St. Hilaire. He saw the ticket-taker watching him and he could feel the man urging him to go. The women of the town had come along the fence from the railway yard to the courtyard and the soldiers had moved along with them. The women were jeering now, not only at the soldiers, but at the strangers coming into the town. A band of men and women came from the station on the march, swinging their luggage, mostly sleeping bags. They were the strangers, he realized, the harvesters, some of them younger than himself, students likely, among them a boy with a guitar. The man in the lead carried a white paper in his hand which he waved at soldiers and police alike. When they came abreast of him, Marc fell in with them. They did not care in the least; one of the women winked at him, and Marc took her bag and carried it. He marched through the gate with them, and at the intersection, he gave the woman back her bag and dropped from the ranks. He followed the way Rachel and the nun had gone.

Gabrielle did not speak to the woman until they had turned into Rue Louis Pasteur. “I wish I knew a doctor in St. Hilaire,” she said.

“You are very kind, but I would not go until we have new papers.”

“I do not understand,” Gabrielle said.

“Papers that will enable us to go on from St. Hilaire.”

Gabrielle still did not understand, but she did not say so. “If the Germans find you, what will happen?”

“I do not know. A concentration camp in Germany. I have heard that most of my family are there. For Marc it is worse: the French collaborationists want him, and they will kill him if they find him.”

The words were strange to Gabrielle. She thought about them, particularly the word “kill.” It was like reading or hearing about the martyrs: you believed it because it was written and because their suffering made them holy; you wanted to believe it, but at the same time you did not really understand. She had seen a woman killed and yet what she had felt more deeply was the cruel way the soldier had hurt Poirot.

In brief glimpses she looked more carefully at the woman. She had never before spoken with a Jew to her knowledge. Neither the woman—the girl really—nor her husband looked like Jews. But what did Jews look like? The only ones she could judge by were the pictures of Jesus and Mary, and nobody else looked like them either. She saw the woman put her hand to her side. She looked around to see if there was a place they could rest. They had just passed the church of St. Sebastien.

“We could go into the church for a moment and rest, madame.”

“No. I must go and wait where Marc can find me, and please, if you see him again, do not mention my illness. I do not want him to have to think of that now.”

Gabrielle said, “If we go to the wall, I think we could see the mill from here.”

They were at the parapet when Marc overtook them. Rachel gave a little sound of joy. Only briefly did Gabrielle look at them, catching the flashing smile of the girl, the dark eyes dancing. She looked down the canal toward the mill. “If you look this way you will see the building,” she said. “I hope you will be safe there. I must go back.”

Marc said, “That black stone building, is that it?” It resembled an old fortress in the distance.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“We shall not forget,” he said.

“Godspeed,” Gabrielle said, and left without looking at them again.

There were not many people on the street, only a few men in work clothes. It was a factory district, brickworks, blacksmith shops, tile makers, a Citroen garage with several of the cars outside it. They all bore official license plates. Across the street was a box factory where, through the open windows, the women could be seen at their work.

Rachel said, “I can wait in the church and then come when the street is busier.”

“Yes,” Marc said, “that’s what I was thinking, that we should not go together.”

As he held the heavy door for her he wondered if she had ever been in a Christian church before. He held the door also for an old woman going out. Her going left the church empty except for the graven images. A spangled haze hung in the chancel, the many-hued light coming through the stained glass. There was the smell of incense. And there was almost a sound to the stillness. Marc left Rachel on a chair near the wall. In the vestibule, he removed his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He ran the sleeves of the coat through the handle of the valise and then slung both over his shoulder, the coat covering the valise, and returned to the street.