The Keeper of the Walls (57 page)

But I'm not going to, he thought angrily. Not this time.

N
ightmare days had begun
. The next day, there were no news bulletins; all had been canceled, the station seized by the Germans. A few days later, a decree came that, in the near future, all pastry shops and sweetshops would be closed down. Bread would have to be made from five grains, including split pea and dried bean. It would be sold stale, and new food cards would specify how much a person, or a family, could buy.

In the meantime, the Soviet Union made an ultimatum to Rumania, demanding Bessarabia and Bukovina, all its oil, and control of the mouth of the Danube River. “There's going to be trouble all over the world,” Jacques remarked.

But the newspaper
Paris-Soir
ran four pages on how well the Germans were behaving in Paris. Bakers would have the right to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and the radio would be French, after all.

Lily and Kira saw one German soldier on a motorcycle, and a German officer in a kind of carriage with a swastika painted on its side. They were arriving in trucks to look for lodgings, evacuating from their homes some of the people that the Walters and Brasilovs had met in Arès.

The German time was one hour ahead, and the French had to set their clocks in concordance to it.

On the third, Great Britain gave an ultimatum to the French fleet in Oran, to go over to them; and when it refused, the British opened fire. Diplomatic relations with England were severed.

Already, during the tenure of Paul Reynaud, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had asked that the fleet of their weakened French ally move to the security of some British ports. He'd feared that the Germans would conquer all of France, and demand its fleet as well—a fleet that the British might put to good use. Reynaud had refused. Churchill had repeated this request, via the proper diplomatic channels, to Marshal Pétain; but the latter had failed to be informed of this, and was therefore unaware that an answer was required. The British, of course, were insulted.

Then, probably motivated by a certain degree of shame, the French had not immediately informed their British ally of the terms of the Armistice. Already on guard, and put out, Churchill assumed that the French had therefore made an arrangement with Germany involving their fleet. And these were the reasons that the disaster of the port of Mers-el-Kébir, near Oran, took place on the third of July. The fleet was sunk, more than a thousand French sailors were killed or reported missing, and hundreds were wounded. A wave of shock swept over France at what was deemed a British betrayal.

Already, anti-British feelings in France had been almost as strong as the anti-Jewish sentiments that had slowly but surely spread over the last years before the Occupation. With the severing of relations between Great Britain and France, those like Vice-Premier Pierre Laval could set to work to actively undermine their former ally from across the Channel. For men like Laval, it seemed far safer for France to come to an agreement with Germany, than to do so with a nation that had traditionally been France's fiercest enemy throughout the ages.

And then, on the fourth of July, the Germans mysteriously disappeared from Arès. Rumors ran rife, that the Americans had threatened them with war; that they had passed over the Spanish frontier to fight the British; that they had left Bordeaux with Orleans as their next destination.

On Wednesday, July 10, a unanimous vote was taken to revise the Constitution of 1875. And on Thursday, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies convened in Vichy, where the French government had transferred its seat, now that Paris was occupied. On the eleventh, Marshal Pétain, who was eighty-four, was named chief of state, encompassing the duties of both the Premier and the President of the Republic. His powers stretched over a vast territory, like those of a monarch. His Cabinet was to be composed of twelve ministers, with Pierre Laval as his vice-premier. The Senate and the Chamber adjourned, and said their good-byes to Albert Lebrun.

“Listen to this: one of Pétain's new laws bars anyone who doesn't have a French father from taking any administrative post.” Nicky seemed disgusted, and tossed the tabloid he'd been reading aside. “Now I wonder if there's any use to pursuing a future in this country!”

Kira took in her breath, appalled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, that on Monday I have to retrace my steps, and start my journey back to Caen, to pass the exams on Thursday. And for what? Our father is Russian. It doesn't matter that he abandoned us like stray dogs. He'll still hold us back, in our careers. It's only the beginning! Pétain may remove all other privileges from us, in time!”

Kira could feel tears of fear and horror starting at the base of her skull. Nicky, the calmest of human beings, her security blanket, her love, her protector, was losing his hold on reality. Or was he? What if he were right? He was standing now, thoroughly agitated, his shirt soaked with undue perspiration. “Maybe Papa was right!” he cried out finally. “Maybe in the United States, there's justice, and freedom. Those goddamned swastikas make my blood run cold.
We're Jewish,
Kirotchka. And a demon, a madman from Austria, is going to try to annex this country, where you and I were born—the same way he did Austria, and Poland. We have to fight him, Kira! We
have
to.”

“But . . . how, Nicky?”

“General de Gaulle, in England, has started a movement of the Free French.”

She was silent. Then, softly, she laid her hand on his arm. “Don't talk like this,” she begged him. “You've got to be careful. I want you to succeed in your exams. And then, Nicky, we'll need you with us. Mama and I—you know we can't manage alone. Grandpa's too old to help.”

“There's always Mark.”

She turned her head aside.
“Don't
. Mark isn't a member of our family. I wish you, and everybody else, wouldn't treat him as such.”

Surprised, Nicky examined his sister circumspectly. “Why don't you like him?” he asked.

“Because.” She bit down on her lower lip, then wheeled about, her prominent cheekbones bright red. “He's in love with Mama.”

For the first time, Nicolas smiled. “And? Doesn't she deserve to be loved by a peaceful, kind, considerate man? Stop being so possessive of our mother, Kirotchka. She's a woman first; and our mother second. And she's had a dog's life.”

Kira said nothing. “But I won't go to England,” he continued gently. “At least, not now that the French and the British are no longer on speaking terms, and now that the Germans are preparing their big offensive. I love my country, and I believe in De Gaulle. But I also want to save my skin, and I'm not prepared to lose it crossing the English Channel at this moment. You don't have to worry.”

“But I feel you . . . restless.”

“Maybe so. I'm afraid, Kira. Really afraid. These new laws, I told you, are only the beginning.”

“And nobody knows we're Jewish,” she said hesitantly.

His brown eyes narrowed. “It was wrong, what Grandma and Mama did. It was Papa's fault. I wish they'd told us from the start, so we could have been what we are, proudly, openly. But now, perhaps this deception will save us. I worry much more about the Steiners, and Sudarskaya.”

They stared at each other, both of them unsmiling. Then he shrugged, and smiled. “Hey,” he told her. “And what if I fail my
bac?
Will you still love me?”

She wound her arms around his neck and laughed. “I'll always love you.”

On the twenty-third of July, all but twenty customs officials of the Germans stationed in Arès, had departed.

Lord Halifax and Churchill had harsh words for both the Germans and their former French allies.

Later in the week, it was announced that several important Frenchmen had, in absentia, been deprived of their citizenship, for having left their country between May 30 and June 30. These included Édouard Daladier, Yvon Delbos, the directors of the Institute of Art and of the National Library. General de Gaulle was condemned to death; but, if anything, his insurgent movement in London only continued to flourish—as if the general were laughing at the Vichy leaders. Meanwhile, the French fleet was being reorganized.

Kira received a postcard from her brother, from Saint-Aubin. He had reached La Rochelle on Monday night, Nantes on Tuesday, Caen on Wednesday . . . and had now returned to “their” small town with the other
baccalauréat
candidates. He planned to bring home the boxes Lily had left behind in their Saint-Aubin house.

That day, it was declared that no more correspondence would be permitted between the Free and Occupied Zones.

The second of August, Lily received a letter from her son that perhaps, the fifteenth of that month, the entire coastline would be opened up. He suggested that he attempt to return to Paris alone, and that the small group in Arès pack up and try to do the same from their end.

“But Paris is chaos,” Claire countered. “There are no cars, not even bicycles . . . people are stranded in their homes.”

“The subways are working,” Lily reassured her. “Slowly . . . but surely.”

In Bordeaux, the bridge had been so full of troops going northward, that no civilian had been able to pass through. Then, on Sunday the fourth, a great movement of soldiers passed through Arès. People said that the Germans had tried, the previous week, to launch a tremendous offensive against Britain, but that the English had thrown tar into the sea, burning the rubber ship covers, and repelling the magnetic mines. Fifty thousand Germans had perished.

Claire and Jacques found a neighbor, Madame Catti, who was planning to drive home to Paris at the end of the month. She had room to take three other people with her, but no more. So Mark decided that Sudarskaya and the Walters should travel with her, and that he, Lily, and Kira would leave in the middle of the month, by other means of transportation. Nicky had written that he would leave Normandy between the fifteenth and the twentieth.

Madame Catti summed up their feelings accurately. “If we're going to have to live under Nazi rule, we may as well be doing it at home,” she commented. Nicky had added in his note that Trotti's family was also planning to return to their apartment on the Ile de la Cité, so that Trotti might attend the Sorbonne if she passed her
baccalauréat.

In those lingering last days, under the beating August sun, Lily felt that a period in her life was coming to a close. Her year in Normandy had helped her come to terms with the past. Always before, when she'd met Mark, Misha had clouded the issue in her mind. Now, she knew that he no longer did—that she had closed the chapter on their marriage. But the romance that had been flourishing between her and Mark, thwarted by her own fears and her daughter's hostility, was coming to an end. Soon, they would all be once more in the capital. Would there be time to see him? Wouldn't other problems take priority? For here, in Arès, they lived in the same house. In Paris, where transportation was so erratic, they wouldn't be so close anymore.

Almost as if he'd read her mind, Mark suggested that they take a walk through the nearby forest of Andernos. There, in the thick woods, she remembered their walk in Austria, through the shrubbery annexed to Hans von Bertelmann's
schloss.
She'd run away from him then, to escape from her own guilt. And now she felt guilty, too. She'd put him off. Although, even if she hadn't . . . where would they have gone? The house was too small for them to have arranged to be there alone at any time.

The limbs on the tall trees of the forest bent toward each other to form a trellised pattern of strangely shaped leaves, throwing the moss-scaped ground into Chinese relief. Mark and Lily walked slowly, hand in hand, their heads bent down. “It's so beautiful here,” she said softly. “Almost as if there were no war around us.”

He made no reply. Instead, he stayed her arm with his hand, and turned her toward him. Once again, he was breathless before her pure beauty, her face with its extraordinary, wise eyes. He brought his arms around her, and simply held her to him.

It was she who lifted her chin, whose parted lips encountered his like the silky wings of a butterfly brushing against his skin. Filled with the urge to possess all of her, he turned the tentative exploring of her lips into a hungry plunge, his hands moving simultaneously to unhook the back of her dress.

She uttered one small, throaty cry of surprise, then gave herself up to the moment. They could hear children laughing, calling out to one another, in the far distance. But around them, only birds and squirrels chirped and fluttered, their sounds the emissaries of a benevolent god who wished them well.

With fingers that only hesitated for a moment, he pulled the dress off her shoulders, letting it slip to the damp ground. She stepped out of it, and out of her sandals.

She wanted to be with him, but she was afraid. A dreadful nervousness had taken hold of her. She felt his hands on her hips, and turned again to him. He was standing nude, waiting for her to take off the rest of her clothes. And he was looking at her, a serious expression in his eyes.