Tell No One Who You Are (15 page)

The
maison communale
was the equivalent of a town hall for the surrounding area. It was not the first time that Pierre went on an errand in Esneux, but this time Régine had a bad feeling which she could not explain. Was it the mention of the ration cards? That was her only proof that she was Augusta Dubois. All morning Régine could not shake the bad feeling. She was scared.

In the early afternoon, Régine was feeding the chickens
out front when Pierre rode up on his bicycle, his wheels spinning on the few icy patches that still lay here and there on the dirt road. As soon as she saw him she knew something had happened. Sylvie stepped out onto the porch to greet him.

Without looking at Régine or saying a word he went to lean his bicycle against the side of the house. Régine watched, and the bad feeling inside of her grew worse. Pierre turned and stared at her for a minute as if seeing her for the first time. Then he walked away, up to the house.

Régine watched as he spoke quietly to Sylvie. Sylvie looked over at Régine as if puzzled. Pierre called out: “Come over here.” Régine noticed he did not call her by name as he usually did. It made the order all the more frightening.

In a daze Régine walked to the porch where the two stood staring at her. Then she heard the question she guessed was coming, the question she feared most, the question she knew she must not answer, no matter what: “Are you Jewish?”

She stood as if frozen, her head bowed, her eyes on the ground. All she could think of were Nicole’s words of warning.
Tell no one who you are
. Tell no one you are Jewish.

Then suddenly, it was all too much, too hopeless. She burst into tears.

Pierre continued with another question. “What is your real name?”

Régine covered her face with her hands, turned, and ran crying into the house. She climbed the stairs to her room as if comfort were to be found there, jumped onto her bed and buried her head in the pillow. It was the first time that she had cried so hysterically since she heard about the disappearance of her mother and brother almost two years before, and now it seemed she was crying for them all over again, and for herself.

What was going to happen now? What would Pierre and
Sylvie do with her? They could be arrested and shot if the Germans found out they were hiding a Jewish child. They would surely get rid of her as soon as possible. They would contact
Aide paysanne
to have her taken away. She was at the end of her three months, in any case. What had happened at the
maison communale
over the ration cards? What if the Germans already knew and were on their way to the house?

It was too much. She felt so tired. I don’t care anymore, she thought.

Her face was so deeply buried in the pillow she did not hear the knock at the door. It was Sylvie.

“Come downstairs. Pierre wants to talk to you.” She put her hand gently on Régine’s back and repeated, “Come.”

Régine dried her eyes and climbed down from the high bed. She walked slowly out of her room, past the basin of holy water, and down the stairs, with Sylvie following.

“Sit down,” Pierre said. He sounded worried now — not like when he spoke to her outside. Was it because he was sorry to have to tell her she must go?

“We’ve reached a decision,” he said, sitting down opposite her. “You will stay here with us. We won’t tell anyone, except Monsieur Le Vicaire. He will have to know. You will continue to go to church like before, so no one will suspect.”

He paused. “We will not have you baptized,” he added. “Your parents would not have wanted it.”

Sylvie smiled at her and nodded.

Régine closed her eyes and felt a tremendous sense of relief. Then she burst into tears again as Sylvie put her arm around her to comfort her.

“No need to cry,” Pierre said. “No need to cry.”

Later, Pierre told the story of what had happened at the
maison communale
. He had gone there to renew the ration cards for
himself, Sylvie and Régine. The
maison communale
was under control of the Germans, but it was staffed by Belgians.

When the clerk checked the names on the ration cards against an official list that he had in front of him, he found the names of Pierre and Sylvie Wathieu but could not find an Augusta Dubois. After checking again carefully, he looked at Pierre and said in a low, secretive voice: “There is no such person as Augusta Dubois, but here is a replacement card all the same.”

Pierre understood immediately. Only Jewish children needed to hide. He gathered up the ration cards and left the office in a hurry. He felt lucky the clerk was a good Belgian like himself who had no intention of turning anyone over to the Germans.

A
FEW DAYS AFTER
Régine’s twelfth birthday in March of 1944, she was awakened early in the morning by Sylvie. “Get dressed and come down.” Sylvie tried to sound gentle but Régine recognized it as an order.

“What is it?” asked Régine, still muddled with sleep.

“There are German soldiers downstairs.”

“What!?”

“It’s best if you come down and pretend nothing is the matter.” Sylvie put her hand on Régine’s shoulder to stop her trembling. “It’s safer if you do what I say. Just act normal and everything will be all right.”

Sylvie left the room, closing the door behind her. Régine climbed out of bed and tried to control her trembling as she got dressed. At the door, she stood for a moment and breathed deeply. Act normal, she told herself. But how do you keep fear from showing? How do you stop shaking?

She took another deep breath and descended the stairs, feeling her body tighten with each step.

Three German soldiers were sitting near the stove. They had their backs to Régine and all she saw were their uniforms which seemed to fill the room. She stared at their big boots, and then at the guns in their holsters.

The soldiers were laughing and talking among themselves in German. Pierre and Sylvie were nowhere in sight. Even Marquis had disappeared from his usual spot on the floor.
Régine waited at the kitchen door and tried to swallow her terror.

The talking and laughing stopped when she appeared. Act normal, she told herself as she stepped forward. The soldiers glanced at her, then turned to each other and went on talking. She decided she should speak.

“Bonjour,” she said. Her voice sounded foreign in her ears.

One of the soldiers nodded but did not respond. Sylvie came in from the other room with a bowl full of eggs and set them on the table. Pierre arrived soon after with a milk can which he had filled. Sylvie then went to the cellar and returned with butter which she put on the table. Pierre lit his pipe. It seemed to Régine that everyone was trying too hard to pretend that nothing was wrong. Surely the Germans would notice something strange and start to ask questions. But the Germans went on talking and laughing. Régine should have understood a little because German is similar to Yiddish which she had spoken at home with her mother, but she was too scared to listen, glad they did not seem to pay attention to her.

Then they fell silent and looked around, and Régine felt a stab of new terror. She turned to Sylvie to hide the feeling she had of falling into a deep, black hole.

“Can I help?” she asked in what she hoped was her usual voice.

“No. We’re almost finished now,” Sylvie said. “These gentlemen are about to leave.”

One of them turned to Régine and in German asked her name.

Régine played dumb.
“Je ne comprend pas l’allemand,”
she said, speaking the French words carefully, her eyes lowered.

To her relief, the soldiers turned away and resumed their conversation. Pierre and Sylvie continued to stack the table
with food. It seemed to Régine they were taking forever. She wished they would give her something to do. It would be better than standing there, scared and alone with her back to the wall, just staring at the floor.

When were they going to leave?

They seemed to be making themselves more at home. They broke off pieces of bread and began to eat. One held out apiece of bread to Régine. She shook her head and the soldiers laughed. They tried to sound friendly. But Régine felt as if she were back at the Gare du Midi. She saw the soldiers again, pushing Léon into the station. She must not show the fear or anger. She must behave like a country girl who had not seen them take a brother away.

Sylvie brought out bags and filled them with food from the table. Finally the soldiers got up. Two lifted the bags of food and the third carried the milk can. Régine did not look up as they walked out of the room. She listened to the sound of their heavy boots on the floor. Pierre and Sylvie followed them to the front door. Régine heard it open and close, then the sound of their jeep starting up and moving away.

Exhausted, she walked to the kitchen table, fell into a chair, and rested her head on her arms.

Sylvie came up from behind and put a hand on her shoulder.

“They’re gone,” she said.

T
HAT SPRING DAY IN 1944
was the only time Régine saw German soldiers at the farm. From then on, their presence seemed to lessen. With the coming of summer, Hitler’s Third Reich was everywhere on the defensive. Her three months at the Wathieus’ had long passed. Everyone expected the Allies to land in France any day.

At last, the hoped-for landing took place in June. When this announcement was broadcast, Pierre turned up the volume on the old radio. Pierre and the old men who had come to listen that night,
pour la soirée
, were very excited. The landing at Normandy signaled the beginning of the end of the war.

That same month, the Allies took over the rest of Italy and Russian troops were pushing hard from the east. The Germans were trapped in the giant vise that would ultimately crush them. Every news broadcast brought hope, and Régine, after more than two years of waiting, could actually think about her father returning soon. And her brother. Yes, he would return, too.

But the war was not over yet. The summer of 1944 was a strange and dangerous time. The German army was retreating across Belgium. Some days the fighting seemed closer to Régine than it had been in 1942 when air-raid sirens wailed over Brussels and bomber planes roared above the apartment on rue Van Lint. Other days were so peaceful and uneventful
that Régine helped Pierre and Sylvie with chores on the farm without hearing the sounds of distant guns.

The pattern of work was different in summer. A woman still came from another village to do the washing in the back room, but now Régine helped spread the wash on the grass where it was bleached by sunlight. The laundry took a full day and Régine loved the smell of freshly washed clothes.

She helped Sylvie bake pies and fruit tarts using plums and apples from the orchard at the back of the house, and for Pierre they made his favorite sugar pie. Sometimes they baked waffles on a waffle iron.

Régine worked in the fields, spreading dung with a spade and helping to gather beans, gooseberries, raspberries, lettuce and potatoes from the garden. Picking vegetables brought back memories of the early days of hiding when Régine worked in the garden of Madame André and then made jam with her neighbor, Madame Charles.

Every evening Pierre lit his pipe and sat down to read
La Libre Belgique
, which came in the mail. Then the old men knocked on the door and spent the evening by the radio, talking about the war. Régine helped Sylvie peel potatoes for the next day and the cats still gathered for Sylvie to throw them a little piece of raw potato.

Pierre and Sylvie continued to take Régine to church although she resented this more and more. Most of all she resented Monsieur Le Vicaire. Ever since he learned from the Wathieus that she was Jewish it seemed he was on a personal mission to convert her. In church he seemed to address all his sermons to her personally. Sometimes she felt she was the only person there as Monsieur Le Vicaire stared down at her from the altar and described the terrible sufferings that non-believers would have to endure in hell.

That summer, Régine began to menstruate. Sylvie said it
happens to every girl, it makes them women. Régine wondered if her mother had menstruated. She must have, Régine decided, and she felt a sudden longing for her mother that she had tried to keep in control for many months.

The cramps always seemed to start in church during the sermons by Monsieur Le Vicaire. She would hold on, gritting her teeth until the end of the service. Then there was the long trek back to the farm with Pierre and Sylvie. As soon as they were home, she went up to her room, closed the door and lay on the floor until the cramps stopped.

Sometimes the daily routine in Lagrange was broken by the noise of gunfire. Then Régine, Pierre and Sylvie ran into the nearby woods with Marquis limping along close behind. They stayed there until the shooting stopped. A house was a dangerous place. Retreating German soldiers could take it over to hide in and shoot from.

Throughout the late summer of 1944 villagers also came from Lagrange to take shelter in the woods, sometimes staying for hours. Régine met up with her friend Irene and her family among the trees, and the group of them would stand, on the lookout for the rocket bombs that lit up the sky. The new German rocket bombs always took them by surprise. They were called V2s, and approached in deadly silence before exploding with a terrifying noise. At least with the old V1s you could hear them coming.

Brussels was liberated by the Allies in early September. Two months later, all of Belgium was free. American tanks rolled victoriously through the communities of southern Belgium, now liberated from Nazi control. In the tiny hamlet of Lagrange, the advancing troops received a solemn welcome from the farmers and villagers who lined the roadsides, watching with a mixture of anguish and relief.

The soldiers were in a festive mood. Everyone called them “Tommies.” They smiled and handed out chocolate and candies to the children who ran up to touch the tanks. Régine, too, got some chocolate, which she had not seen in years. And now she could really hope for the return of her father — and her brother, even.