Chapter 5
All through August, following the news of the Allies’ invasion of Normandy and the battles all over France, and working at Laporte’s General Store together every day, Arielle and Sebastien became friends, although they were very different. She was more outgoing and at ease with the customers. She enjoyed talking to them, and people warmed to her easily. She had a gentle way with everyone. Olivia had told them all that she was a war widow from Paris, and she had a suspicion that she came from a wealthy family, and had probably been married to an aristocrat, although Arielle never spoke of her family, her husband, or her past. Her name suggested nobility with the particle “de,” and her bearing and manners confirmed it to Olivia. And there was something stylish about her even in the simple clothes she wore. She had a knack for giving something a little twist in the way she set up a display, adding some little colorful touch and making it beautiful. Sebastien had noticed it too. And he liked talking to her at lunchtime. He opened up more to her than he had to anyone. At night, he went back to his rented room and painted, which calmed him and distracted him. They were all waiting for the war to end, and it was taking forever. Even after the Allied invasion of Normandy, the Germans conceded nothing. They refused to give up, on any front.
Sebastien showed Arielle one of his paintings one day at lunch. It was a particularly beautiful miniature of a little girl, and she complimented him on it. He didn’t respond at first, as he stared at it, and then answered in a sad voice.
“It’s my daughter, Josephine.” There were tears in his eyes when he said it. There was always something very deep about him. It was the first time he had shared anything personal with her. It was September, and they had worked together for almost two months at the store, long enough to become friends, in the atmosphere of war.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” She put a hand on his arm, a gentle touch. “Is she…did she…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word “die.”
“I don’t know,” he answered in a hoarse voice. “I hope not. She was eleven the last time I saw her, in 1941. She’d be fourteen now. My wife, Naomi, was Jewish. We met in law school and set up a law office together when we married. They forced her to give up practicing law, as a Jew, and eventually they made me give it up too, for being married to one. Naomi and Josephine were deported in 1941, when the French authorities cooperated with the Germans to clear all the Jews out of Paris. I was out for the afternoon, getting our ration books, and when I came back, they were gone. I haven’t heard from them since. I haven’t been able to get any conclusive information about them. I’m hoping they’re still alive, but I haven’t been able to find out anything concrete or certain. I’ll go to look for them in Germany when the war is over. Josephine was tall for her age, and strong. I’m hoping they spared her, and her mother. I was beside myself when Naomi and Josephine were deported. Since I had lost my license to practice law, and they refused to reinstate it once she was gone, I went to stay with my parents in Lyon, to help them. They were quite old and weren’t well. Then they got sicker and died, one right after the other. I came here to try to clear my mind and wait for it to be over. I realized once I got here that I can’t start a new life until I know what happened to them. Naomi was a wonderful woman. We loved practicing law together. I just want to find them, and to know what happened. Painting helps me, and some other things I do,” he said cryptically, and she didn’t press him about what they were. Having opened up to her, a few days later he told her. She felt as though they were genuine friends by then. He trusted her and she felt comfortable with him. They had dinner at one of the local restaurants occasionally. It was nice to relax and talk to a friend. She missed having someone to confide in. He was still deeply attached to his wife, and Gregor had only been gone for two months. They both still wore their wedding rings. There was no hint of romance between them, which was a relief, and Sebastien was only two years older than Arielle. He was forty-six. They were good friends now, almost like brother and sister.
They were walking home from dinner one night, when he looked at her. He rented a room in a house not far from hers. “I’m going to a meeting tomorrow night. Do you want to come with me?”
“What kind of a meeting?” It seemed like an odd question. He hesitated before he answered, and then he smiled.
“I suppose you could say it’s related to my painting.”
“If it’s an art class,” she said, smiling back at him, “I have no talent whatsoever, I can’t draw a line to save my life.”
“It’s a different kind of art class,” he said, still smiling, but he looked animated when he talked about it, more so than she’d ever seen him. “I’m not sure if you’d be interested or not.” They never spoke of politics, and although she knew that he hated the Nazis as much as she did, they never openly made comments about them, in case some hidden collaborator heard and reported them. It was hard to trust anyone now, but they trusted each other. Her instincts told her that she was safe with him. He lowered his voice then, to make sure no one heard them, although there was no one around in earshot. “I’m a forger for the Resistance,” he whispered, and she stopped walking and stared at him.
“You’re what ?” He was the gentlest, kindest person, and seemed scrupulously honest, not at all the image she had of members of the Resistance, whom she expected to be powerful men who took enormous risks and killed people when they had to, and enjoyed doing it, on the theory that the only good Nazi was a dead one. She agreed but wouldn’t have had the guts to kill one. She stared at him in disbelief.
“You heard me.” He lowered his voice again. “I forge documents to get Jews out of France,” he explained, “most of them children. I’m surprisingly good at it. I used to defend the law. Now I’m a criminal, for a good cause,” he said, and she laughed. “I wish someone had done that for Josephine and Naomi. I didn’t know how then, or I would have. Now I do it for others. I belong to a cell in the next town. We meet once a week. I was afraid to invite you before. Do you want to come?” She wondered if she would meet her cousin Louis there, but somehow doubted it. She had the feeling that he was involved in more violent pursuits with hardcore cells, as Jeanne’s husband and son had been, blowing up trains.
“What would I do there?” she asked him.
“Whatever you want. There are a lot of different ways to serve the Resistance, like carry letters, transport children, translate documents, work on codes—they change them constantly and some people have a knack for it, like doing puzzles. Or do what I do with the forgeries. Everyone has some kind of talent we can use.” She thought of something then, as he went down the list.
“I have something to tell you,” she whispered back, as they were almost at Nicole Bouchon’s house by then. “I’m fluent in German. I could do translations. My German is perfect.” They were both silent then for a minute, as he looked at her. There were things about her he didn’t know. She had never told him that her husband hadn’t died of tuberculosis, was German, and had been shot as a traitor for trying to kill Hitler. Nor that she was half-German and had grown up in Berlin. He didn’t need to know. In wartime, there were secrets one had to keep to oneself, for everyone’s sake, even if you trusted them. He knew enough now, and could guess there was more. “I could translate documents accurately, if they need that. Would that be useful?” she asked him innocently. This was all new to her.
“Extremely. Some people think it’s too late in the war now to make a difference, but the fighting is still going on all over Europe and in France. We can make a difference and save lives until the last day of the war, until the Germans give up and a peace treaty is signed.” They were outside her house by then. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven, to have dinner ‘at a friend’s house.’ You’ll be back by ten, or eleven at the latest. And every document you work on could save a life. It’s good to know.” He came alive as he said it, and she realized again what a good person he was. She nodded, still stunned by what he had shared with her about his clandestine activities, and now she wanted to help too. She had been feeling useless, going to work every day at the store and not doing anything to help the Allies win the war, just waiting for it to be over, while others fought the battles. And now she realized she had a skill they could use, and he was right, it was never too late. All over France, Resistance cells were still functioning, working to end the war sooner. She was sure that was what Louis was doing too. She understood even better now how Gregor had gotten pulled into the assassination attempt. He had wanted to make a difference, to help the cause he believed in. It suddenly felt worth the risk, even if she died trying. It helped her to make sense of Gregor’s death.
“See you tomorrow,” she said, and kissed Sebastien on both cheeks, “and thank you for dinner.”
He smiled as he watched her go into the house. He was glad he had told her. It made them even better friends. They shared a secret now. And a cause.
—
Sebastien picked her up at seven the next evening in his battered Renault. They drove to the next town, and saw no soldiers on the way. Their part of Normandy had been quiet lately. The fighting was more acute in other parts of France. Sebastien rang the doorbell of a house on the edge of town, and a young girl let them in. There was an elderly couple playing cards in the living room. It looked like an ordinary family scene. Without further comment, Sebastien walked to a back room and pulled back a rug, as the young girl waited to replace it, and Arielle saw a trap door. Sebastien opened it and Arielle followed him down a staircase into a wine cellar with no windows. There was a duct that let air in from outside. There were a dozen people in the room, each one working on something, wiring radios and working on transcripts. There were three people around a desk, and there was a table with art supplies and special papers, and half a dozen passports waiting for Sebastien’s magic touch. He took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and then introduced Arielle to a tall handsome older man.
“This is Marie,” Sebastien said. “She’s my friend. She speaks fluent German and wants to help with translations.” Arielle realized then that none of them knew each other’s real names. The tall older man was introduced as Pascal. And someone called Sebastien Olivier. Everyone was busy, and Sebastien went to speak to a woman about the work he was going to do that night. He had explained to Arielle that he could do four to six passports a night. Sometimes he stayed late to finish them if they were particularly difficult. They could never afford a delay—lives were at stake, and each one mattered.
Pascal led her to a group around a card table. They were working on a document and showed it to her. She was impressed that Sebastien’s word was sufficient to gain her admittance into the group. If she was a traitor, she could have sent each of them to their deaths, and surely the family that hosted them, but he trusted her, and had waited two months to invite her into their midst. He knew he was safe with her now, and she felt the same way about him.
Arielle read the document they were working on, focusing on it intently. She immediately saw four subtle mistakes in their translation of it, and showed them what they were. They were small and might have gone unnoticed—or betrayed them. Each document had to be flawless. Lives depended on how accurate they were. She read the paper again and again and found one more error of translation. Then they passed it to another table of people who would transcribe what they’d translated, with the right ink on the right paper with infinite precision. They had been working on a travel document for a young woman, and it made Arielle think of her own passport and papers and how they had come about. She didn’t speak to Sebastien all night. She could see that he was concentrating intensely. They didn’t meet up again until after ten o’clock, when his work was done, and she had finished hers. The group had begun to thin out by then. They staggered their arrivals and departures, and the house they were visiting was isolated, and far from the view of other homes. They had been meeting there for the last four years and no one had ever suspected them. The people in the room were of varied ages and appearances, and one would never have guessed them to be members of the Resistance.
“Ready to go?” Sebastien asked her. He looked tired after the intense concentration and minute detail of the work he’d done. One slip, one mistake could cost the life of a child. There was no room for mistakes, or even the tiniest flaw. Lives were in their hands. She wondered how many cells there were all over France. She had never imagined anything like it.
She followed him back up the steps when it was their turn to leave. One gentle knock and the same young girl opened the trap door for them. She was playing with her dog. Arielle thanked Pascal and he thanked her and said he hoped she’d come again. The young girl put the rug back in place as they left. She had been a child when war was declared and was a young woman now. The war had lasted a long time. The grandparents had gone to bed, and the house was dark when they left. They walked to where Sebastien had left his car, and then they drove back to Notre-Dame-de-Courson as uneventfully as they’d come, and he took her home. They talked very little on the way back. She was thinking of what she had seen and the importance of the work. Just being there that night had given her life new meaning, and taught her so much more about Sebastien. He was an amazing person and a sensitive human being. He had suffered a great deal over his daughter and wife, and was trying to make up for what he couldn’t achieve for them by saving others. Arielle couldn’t wait to go back for another evening of translating for them. He had told her that occasionally they had an emergency meeting if they needed a document quickly, but most of it could be handled at their once-a-week meetings. They were all heroes in her eyes.
He had told her that Pascal was a doctor and falsified medical documents sometimes, in order to get a child out of a hospital who had been earmarked for death by a committee because the child was classified defective in some way and not up to German standards for survival, even with minor problems. The parents were told that the child had died of natural causes, after it had been euthanized.
Sebastien knew they had saved hundreds of children, and the occasional adult, but he had no idea how many. They had lost very few operatives, although it happened, and he warned Arielle about it. She said she didn’t care. What they were doing was worth risking one’s life for. Nothing else had meaning compared to that. If she died in exchange for saving a young life, it was worth it, and she was willing. Her children were old enough now to survive without her, and might have to anyway, if she was ever caught because of her own false passport and documents. And she preferred to have an active role in the defeat of the Nazis rather than a passive one. She and Sebastien felt the same way and shared a common cause. He was pleased that he had made the right guess with her. He knew he wasn’t wrong.
They said good night in the car, and she was stunned by how tired she was when she got into her bed. The evening had been intense, as was the work on the document they translated. The stakes of what they were doing were so high, and the rewards even greater. She was impressed by Sebastien’s skill as a forger and his dedication. He had put his artistic talent to good use. He had been referred to them by a cell he had worked with in Lyon.
It was the first of many nights like it. Sometimes the documents she translated were complicated medical reports and criminal records, and a child’s medical history in which she had to get all the terminology right. Pascal helped her with those.
Her life as Marie in the Resistance became increasingly fascinating. It was addictive. She and Sebastien never talked about it except on the way there or driving back. The car was the only safe place where they were sure that no one could hear them. Sebastien told her that there were collaborators in the village too, and he knew who most of them were. Most of them were boastful and proud of cooperating with the Germans, sure that they were going to win. They had been promised important positions in town government when the war was over. Sebastien and Arielle hoped that those dreams never came to fruition. Their work was silent and discreet in the Resistance, and for a much nobler cause.
She lived from one meeting to the next, excited about what they were doing. She couldn’t wait to go back each week. She still missed her children terribly, but her life had a purpose now and made sense.
It was at one of the meetings in October that she heard the rumor that the Chateau de Villier, fifty kilometers away, had been abandoned by the Germans as their main headquarters for the region, which was one of the first significant signs of their retreat. According to one of the women who lived ten kilometers from the chateau, they had spent a day burning their records, packed up, and vacated the premises the next day. There had been over a hundred Germans living and working there, by the time they left, and the woman reporting it commented that they had kept the owners of the chateau on the premises, original family members, had them living in a rat hole in the basement and worked them like slaves, but they had probably agreed to it to protect their property as best they could from the invading army.
Arielle listened intently, while showing no visible reaction or interest because the woman was talking about her cousins Jeanne and Louis. It was good news to hear that the chateau had been abandoned by the Germans after four years, and that her cousins didn’t have to live in fear to the same degree, but the war still wasn’t over yet.
The irony was, the woman reporting it went on to say, that two days later, while the owners were up to their ears repairing the damage the German military had left, the American army showed up, offered to rent it from them at a very decent price, and even assigned a detail to help repair the damage done by the Germans. They were housing over a hundred American military men there now, since the owners had accepted their offer. They had traded one army for another. “Soldiers are soldiers, from any country, so I suppose the Americans will make a mess of it too, but at least they’re getting paid for it now, and I hope they got the owners out of the basement. But it’s respectful of the Americans to pay rent for the place. It used to be a magnificent chateau. I don’t suppose it is anymore, once the Germans got through with it, and apparently, they took everything with them that wasn’t nailed down. Bloody Germans. They did the same to my grandmother’s summer house when they requisitioned it. We used to go to my grandmother’s house when we were children. She owned one decent painting, which they stole, and a load of furniture no one wanted. But they stripped the place when they left after the Allies landed in June. My grandmother is dead now, and my brothers and I are going to sell the place when the war is over. Knowing that there were Germans living there, I never want to see the place again. Maybe the de Villiers feel that way too, but their place is a lot to give up. I hope the Americans will help them repair it. It used to be a beautiful place.” Arielle made no comment as she listened to the woman gossip about her family chateau. She wondered how Jeanne and Louis were faring, but the arrangement the Americans had made with them sounded fair. They needed the money, and renting it to the Americans would help them financially after the war, so it was good for them, and the Americans had a reputation for treating the locals well.
Knowing that the Americans were there meant that Arielle still could not go to see her cousins, more than ever now. She was in a very odd position, and still in danger. If the Americans had taken charge of the area administratively, even temporarily, if she presented her French passport to them, it was a criminal offense for having false documents. And if she presented her German passport in her real name, she was the enemy, and could be arrested. The war wasn’t over yet, and wouldn’t be until a peace treaty was signed, and legally she was German, an enemy of France and the Allied Forces. She wanted to reach out to her cousins, but there was no way she could. She had to continue living discreetly under the radar, as she was doing, and stay away from the Americans, until she could come out of hiding and straighten things out as to what nationality she wanted to be. She was leaning toward French, but legally, under her real name. After what they had done to Gregor, and during the war, she didn’t want to be German anymore. But for now, she still was, either that or a criminal using false documents. She was in danger either way.
Sebastien asked her about it that night on the way home. “Is there any relationship between you and the chateau they were talking about tonight? Was that your husband’s family or just a coincidence?” He thought de Villier was her married name, which it wasn’t, of course.
“It wasn’t my husband’s family,” she said, not wanting to lie to him more than she had to, but she didn’t want to tell him the truth either, that de Villier was her mother’s maiden name, and not her name at all. Some secrets were just too dangerous to tell.
“I just wondered. At least the Americans are paying rent to the owners for the properties where they stay. So something is changing.” But the fighting was continuing all over France, and the war was far from over. The Allies’ landing on the beaches of Normandy had been costly but successful, and liberating Paris had been a glorious and symbolic victory which boosted everyone’s spirits, but Hitler refused to give up his grip on France. There were bitter battles all over the country, the Resistance was more active than ever, people were still dying trying to reclaim France from the Germans, and the Allies were fighting along with them.
Germans were dying too. They were retreating in some places but standing firm in others. Arielle was relieved to know that the Germans had left her family’s chateau, even if she couldn’t go back yet. She had her own work to do for the Resistance now. As far as she knew, there were no massive deportations anymore, but the Germans were still killing people randomly when they caught them, even children. That was what she and Sebastien were working to stop, even at the risk of their own lives.
—
They spent Christmas Eve at the meeting, working on getting a group of twelve children out of the area. They had been hidden for four years and were at risk of being exposed now. The nuns who had been hiding them had been killed. People were still dying at German hands. Working for the Resistance was the best way Arielle could think of to spend Christmas. She had no one to celebrate it with. She and Sebastien had painful memories associated with the holidays now, far from their children, and unsure if they would see them again, or even if they were alive. It was comforting to save the lives of other children, since they couldn’t be with their own.
—
The day after the meeting, Arielle and Sebastien spent Christmas together. They went to church, and had lunch together afterward at one of the restaurants in town. It was a quiet day for people who had no families to be with.
She spoke to him of her own children for the first time. Their friendship had deepened slowly, like doors opening one by one, to share the secrets of their soul.
“Viktor has just turned twenty, and Marianna is twenty-two. She’s married to a lovely boy.” She didn’t tell him that Viktor was in Budapest, fighting the Soviets there, or that Marianna was married to a Luftwaffe pilot. She wasn’t sure he would have understood, and she didn’t want to test how broadminded he was. Their friendship wasn’t strong enough for that yet. And his loyalty to France was strong. So was hers now, but it would have been asking a lot to accept that she was German, and it might have put her at terrible risk if he knew and ever let it slip in some way. If they lived through the war, which was never certain, she would tell him when it was over. And then it would be up to him if he felt they could still be friends.
“Are they both safe, wherever they are now?” he asked her about her children. He understood that she was hiding and assumed her children were too, somewhere in France. There were questions one did not ask.
“I don’t know. Not really. No one is safe now.” He was in the same situation with his wife and daughter, with no idea where they were, and the likelihood that they were in a labor camp somewhere in Germany, Czechoslovakia, or Poland, if they were alive. He tried not to think about it, but it snuck into his thoughts anyway. It was always there.
It was Arielle’s first Christmas without Gregor. It had been five months since he was killed. Sometimes it felt like only days, at other times it felt like centuries. Her work for the Resistance gave meaning to her life when it felt like there was nothing left to live for, except her kids.
—
The war wasn’t going well for Germany and it was a harsh winter. The battles they lost made them even more savage against their enemies. And the British were struggling too.
The Americans were continuing to press into Europe, gaining ground slowly. Sebastien hoped they would make headway in the spring when the weather improved. The French were tired and hungry and wearing down, but the Resistance was attacking the Germans whenever they could. The Allies were fighting nobly to free Europe from the Germans. Strasbourg had been liberated in November, the battle to free Belgium was being fought in December. And the Battle of the Bulge raged through December too.
—
It was comforting having a friend like Sebastien, someone she could talk to. They exchanged small practical gifts for Christmas. She knew his favorite kind of cookies now, and the cologne he liked, which Madame Laporte had managed to find for her on the black market, although at a ridiculous price. Arielle bought Sebastien a warm scarf and gloves, and he had given her a soft white sweater, several books by authors she liked, and a Christmas candle that smelled delicious. She smiled when she thought of Christmas a year before, when she had worn a beautiful Dior haute couture gown to their Christmas Eve dinner, with friends in evening clothes and women in jewels all around their table, and Gregor had bought her a pair of jeweled black enamel cuffs designed by Coco Chanel that she loved. She had taken them to Paris, so she still had them hidden in her locked suitcase. She would have traded all the jewels she had to have her family back and her husband alive. And the trappings of their old life were gone forever, except for the few jewels she had left to sell if she needed to. All she wanted now were her children, and safety and peace for all of them. The war had taught them all what mattered and what didn’t. Material comforts and luxuries had lost importance for all of them.
Arielle tried not to listen to the war news during the holidays. It was too depressing. The fighting was continuing endlessly, and she just hoped that Viktor and Marianna were all right. She had no way of knowing how they were. From what she heard on Radiodiffusion Francaise and Ici la France, broadcast from Bordeaux, Berlin sounded grim.
Madame Laporte had closed the store for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Arielle and Sebastien went for long walks, and when they were totally alone, they talked about the next Resistance meeting they were going to. They both hoped that the group of twelve children whose documents they had worked on had made it out of France safely. They were being taken to a convent in Switzerland. They were all children who had been hidden until then, and were in danger of being discovered, so the team had worked through the night on it and got their papers into the hands of the right people in time. A priest was coordinating the operation.
Although the holidays were nothing like the ones Arielle and Sebastien remembered from the past, there was a quiet peace to them, and hope for the new year burning in their hearts, like a candle that lit the darkness around them. Life was simple and quiet in Normandy.
“Do you miss Paris?” Arielle asked him on a walk on New Year’s Day.
“Sometimes. I kind of like it here.” Both his parents had died in an influenza epidemic in Lyon after he left Paris, so he had nothing to go home to in Lyon now either. He wasn’t sure where to go when the war was over. It all depended on whether he could find Josephine and Naomi when he went to Germany to look for them. If he did, he would take them back to Paris, and planned to practice law again. If he didn’t find them, he had no idea where to go. Arielle was in the same situation. She wanted to go back to Berlin to find Marianna and Viktor. And after that, she wasn’t sure. She and Sebastien were refugees, having lost their bearings, their families, and their homes. The only way to get through it now was to live day-to-day, which was what they were doing, in an uncertain world. They were anchors for each other in the meantime. It felt good to get back to the routine of work at the store when the holiday was over. Olivia Laporte was happy to see them, and there was plenty to do to keep them busy. And they had their Resistance meeting once a week, to give their life depth and meaning. All Arielle could do now was hope that her children were safe wherever they were. She was safe enough in Normandy, and grateful to have a job, a room, and Sebastien as a friend.