The Tale of the Rose (29 page)

The day I left Oppède I felt more imperiled than ever. A poorly transmitted telegram from New York was enough to make me imagine that everything there was more dangerous and menacing than my beautiful stones, which were stable and eternal. Once more I was on the road, unable to explain to myself why I was on this new mission or to clarify the mystery of my errant life. I desperately needed to find some outlet for the anguish in my heart.

Once I was on board the airplane, I thought about my reunion with Tonio. It had been more than a year since we had last seen each other. Despite the comfort of the German plane that was taking me to Portugal, I imagined that an accident might still deprive me of him. I so longed to see him again! I’d been told that if I was lucky, once I was in Portugal I’d be able to continue my journey to New York by boat. If I’d been given a choice, I would have preferred to wait for us to be reunited among the stones of Oppède.

I felt weak from lack of food and also from a fear of seeing him again. My inelegant appearance brought a childish smile to my lips—I didn’t feel like an adult. I would have wished to be glamorously arrayed, as if for a ceremony. But my heart was drab. I said to myself, “If only I would turn into a woman made of glass when he looks at me . . .” My mind was overpowered by bizarre images, and I gazed longingly up at the sky. I caught a glimpse of myself in the plane’s opaque windows and saw my poor hair, which was cut very short; I had had to cut it myself in Oppède. I dreamed of the latest hairstyles in New York and was irritated at being out of fashion. My hair wasn’t going to grow back overnight! I was thin, very thin: less than a hundred pounds with my clothes on. I felt ill at ease in the goatherd’s clothes I was wearing. There was a woman on the plane who never took her eyes off me: Was she a spy?

Barely an hour after takeoff, the loudspeaker announced that the flight was being interrupted: we would be stopping in Barcelona. The following day some of the passengers might be able to continue on to Portugal.

The airport restaurant in Barcelona was no great affair, but the meat and soup smelled good, bread was set out on the counters for the taking, and all the passengers who landed rushed there immediately to take the edge off their hunger. I had just ordered a bowl of soup and a plate of rice when the barman asked me what currency I was planning to pay with. I was in the depths of despair, for I had no pesetas. The waiter understood my problem and took the steaming soup, which had just arrived, from under my nose.

The “spy” saw how confused and helpless I was and gave me a hundred pesetas. I used the money to leave the airport and look for a hotel in the city. The concierge’s first question was “What currency are you traveling with?”

I took a box of syringes from my suitcase; at the bottom, underneath some cotton, I had hidden three five-thousand-franc bills. It had been a year and a half since I had had a full meal, a hot bath, or a bed with sheets. That hotel was paradise for me. I would have liked to spend several days there; the staff was very pleasant, and I saw nothing of the legendary misery of Barcelona. There was dancing in the dining room, and lovely women in evening gowns flowed by with that smile of ease that everyone you pass in the corridor of a hotel is wearing. I ordered a bottle of wine, a roast chicken, and an assortment of desserts. I couldn’t help thinking of our garlic soup in Oppède. I was melancholy at the thought of having left Bernard and my friends, who weren’t sharing my chicken, and a whole series of memories flooded over me as I drank my bottle of wine alone. I saw each of their gestures again, weeping as I listened to old waltzes, and told myself that it was as if I’d left my childhood home. However, I had to move onward, forever and forever, until I became an old woman somewhere on the planet.

The luxury of my bedroom felt alien to me. I wished I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t sleep, and I was increasingly feverish. I was about to call for help when the door opened and my companion from the airplane, my “spy,” said my first name and whispered, “I arranged to be on the same floor as you. Let’s run the water in the tub and speak very softly.”

We sat on the floor next to the tub, like two thieves, and began exchanging words, almost into each other’s ears.

“Oh, how lovely of you to have come to visit me.”

“I’m feeling down, too. I’m not allowed to speak to anyone.”

“I could make you lose your job, then?”

“No,” she said, with a bitter smile, “my head, more likely. I’ve had it with espionage. It’s not even dangerous. It’s boring.”

I was rather alarmed to learn that my new acquaintance’s job consisted of informing on people. Meanwhile, she found it merely boring. She took a bottle of liqueur from a small attaché case and poured each of us a glass.

“Yes, it disgusts you to drink with a spy, doesn’t it? I can see that. But it pays. If you want my advice, stay in Spain. You speak Spanish, French, and English well. You can have a good salary, make yourself a small fortune, and retire after the war. In any case, I know it’s not going to last much longer. And that way we could work together . . .”

I had taken a single swallow of the drink she gave me, which had a funny smell. It was odd—I was having a hard time making out what she was saying. Then I realized that there was a powerful narcotic in her liqueur, and that she wanted to go through my suitcases. I had demonstrated my skill at concealing money in my luggage, and she undoubtedly imagined that I was also concealing plans. Panic gripped me as I remembered scenes from spy movies I had watched. What effect would the narcotic have on me? I struggled to make a decision as quickly as possibly. She was habituated to the narcotic, and it no longer affected her. She wanted at all costs to make a thorough inspection of the contents of my luggage. Since I was carrying nothing that was at all compromising, it was best to let her do so. I told her I was going to the hotel pharmacy to buy some cosmetics and asked her to be patient and wait for me if it took a few minutes. I added that I had promised a dark-haired man who had eaten dinner next to me that I would chat with him in the lobby for a bit, but that I wouldn’t be long. She started to laugh, and I thought I heard her say, “You can take care of all of that quickly, because I know how to work fast, too.”

Before I went out, she handed me a glass of cold water and told me, “Drink this down in one go.”

When I returned, there was no one in the room. I found only a note, in Spanish. “I like you because you’re not an idiot. Thanks. Don’t worry about your trip to Portugal. You’ll leave tomorrow. Signed, Liliane.”

T
HE PLANE LANDED
in Lisbon on a windy day. My body was numb. Drunk with fatigue and emotion, I couldn’t control my limbs, and I sprained my ankle getting off the plane. I limped through my entire stay in Portugal.

The evening before my departure, I finally succeeded in phoning Tonio, but we couldn’t talk because no one was allowed to speak over the phone in any language other than English, which Tonio didn’t speak. I heard only “Consuelo,” and I answered “Tonio.” The operators left the line open a few minutes longer, but we were as mute as young lovers who are transfixed with each other.

Just as we were boarding the ship, a rumor made the rounds: there was a fire on board and the ship wouldn’t be able to leave port until the following morning. Several travelers went home with their wives, children, and luggage, but I had seen no smoke so I stayed close to the boat, waiting for the end of the story. I had my reward: we left the port that evening.

We had no electric light during the entire trip. We were forbidden to use a match or possess a camera. Every morning, floating on the gray winter sea, we saw bits of wood and debris, all that remained of the boats that had been destroyed a few nights earlier or that very night as we slept on the bridge. We were usually roused two or three times a night by a bell, an exercise intended to keep us on the alert, so we would get used to the gymnastics of running for our lives and be able to take our places in the lifeboats in orderly fashion should the torpedoes the German radio broadcasts threatened us with come down and surprise us on the open sea. Preposterous rumors circulated among the passengers: the boat would not be sunk because it was carrying spies to America. A few of the bolder and more imaginative gossips claimed that the entire boat was a pack of spies. Or they said that the ship’s prisons were choked with travelers and that it wasn’t seasickness that was diminishing the number of sleepers on the bridge. . . . I knew that the captain was in fact uncompromisingly severe with people who broke the rules by turning on a flashlight or even striking a match. Even so, a strange feeling of security prevailed; we were not afraid.

As we arrived in Bermuda, a pregnant woman gave birth in the darkness of the bridge, not far from me. The doctor did his duty: it was a difficult case, a pair of twin girls whose mother had the courage to name Bermuda. Our twins were the great event of the day. When we arrived in port, we were forbidden to go on land; we were held there on the boat for several days because it was the last American ship to leave Lisbon since the war broke out. The orders were strict; all books and letters the passengers were carrying with them had to be examined. We all had to hand over our papers. Jean Perrin, a great French scholar, was on board; he saw all of his calculations and equations confiscated and watched in despair as they were crumpled up by ignorant, unscrupulous hands. His poems were cause for great concern, as were his geographic maps and the little doodles he would make in the margin of a book when something he’d just read suggested an idea.

We were all afraid of being ordered to leave the ship in Bermuda. We had already suffered so much in France that we felt like guilty sinners. Three anguished days passed, but the inspection of the scholars’ and writers’ papers turned out to be completely fruitless. We set off once more our journey.

Every hour brought me closer to Tonio.

T
HE DAYS WERE GROWING COLDER
and grayer. Winter was on its way when New York finally came into view. We were very far north. The water seemed denser, as if made of steel. The boat glided gently toward the city lights, reflected in the clouds. Our minds were blank. We passengers had nothing more to say to one another. We were in a hurry to arrive: the final minutes of a journey are always the hardest.

While we were still in the choppy waters of the bay, I was called over to the table where the officers were checking our passports. It’s always unpleasant to be asked if you are indeed yourself and to have your signature verified. The boat had stopped moving. No one spoke. I admired the orderly way in which our arrival took place, the American sense of organization that presided over everything. We poor sheep, lost in the storm on the other side of the Atlantic, had by the greatest of good fortunes been sent to a safe land.

I’d grown friendly with one of the other passengers, S., a man in his forties, tanned as a Portuguese, levelheaded, full of good health and good spirits. He too was traveling to be reunited with his wife, whom he adored. Not a day had gone by that he didn’t show me a photo of her and of their little cat. Smiling, he told me with some embarrassment, “Yes, I have great affection for that little beast. We call her Maria—I don’t know why. A cook gave her the name. I must confess that I’m a little ashamed of my feelings for a cat at a time when thousands of children are dying of hunger in Europe. I was employed by an organization that worked to save people, especially Jews. We were ordered to save the intelligent men. How was I to know who was intelligent and who wasn’t? How could I possibly intuit such a thing when a man stood there pale with terror, stammering incoherently and begging, ‘Save me, save me, give me papers, otherwise I’ll be sent to a camp’? I sometimes asked people their profession, and they had forgotten even that. All they could do was live and hope to save their remaining hours on this earth.”

As he spoke, he was looking for his wife through a pair of binoculars. Suddenly, he caught sight of her.

“Ah! I see her, and it looks as if she’s holding Maria in her arms. Let’s hope Maria doesn’t scratch her!” He let out a hearty laugh.

“I’m afraid my husband won’t be at the dock and I won’t be allowed off the boat,” I confided.

“I’ll take care of you,” he said. “If they lock you up in Sing Sing I’ll soon come to your rescue. I will prove who you are. I will find your husband. Don’t spoil your arrival in New York—have faith. America is a good country.”

In the end my fear won him over, and by some means he sent his wife a telegram from the boat, asking her to warn my husband to be at the dock when we landed. I believe we received an answer, but the wait on board the boat alongside the lone seagulls floating on the oily water was still an anguished one.

Toward four in the afternoon, we were finally allowed to set foot on land, but only within a space closed off by barricades. We were locked in like hens in a henhouse, and only those who were claimed from the outside by a husband, a father, a friend were allowed to go free.