Fear of the Wehrmacht was overshadowed by the wave of refugees that turned into a flood. People were fleeing with no destination other than France’s free zone. Some refugees rented rooms in people’s homes. Many slept in the church at night on the condition that they would leave in the morning. Others built tents in the surrounding fields, now uncultivated, or camped and washed by the river. The quiet forest where Claudette had led Solange to pick mushrooms and fiddleheads in the spring now teemed with tents, people, and cooking fires. Drying laundry hung on tree branches.
Farm trucks chugged into the village; their drivers asked for petrol, but the station had run out of it. Luxury cars from Paris carried finely dressed people trying to find an open route to Tours or Orléans. Unsuited for all this traffic, the main streets became clogged. Mémère no longer kept the pail of water filled for the newcomers.
Their vegetable garden was picked through time and again. One by one, the chickens disappeared. Claudette kept vigil on those that were left so she could snatch their eggs before someone sneaked into the yard and stole them. Even though Monsieur Lefebvre’s night patrol guarded Mémère’s home, one morning the cowshed was empty. Rosette was gone.
Mémère broke down. “I raised her since she was a little calf,” she said, sobbing. Claudette cried with her—for Rosette, who might be butchered for her meat, for their garden and chickens, for all of France’s troubles.
On market day, few farmers’ wives came—their husbands had gone to war—and there was little to sell. Claudette searched in vain for some produce so Mémère could start preparing for winter, but vendors from farther villages couldn’t get through the checkpoints, and those in the free zone risked being robbed en route. How would Mémère pickle vegetables, cook her marmalade preserves, and layer containers of beef-and-goose pâté without ingredients?
Solange and her mother had one of the few stalls in the market. Everyone used woven baskets made of willow and seagrass to store or transport food, and now evacuees were buying large rattan ones to repack their belongings. Today, Claudette sat by her friend and listened to her amusing chatter while Solange’s fingers danced on the straw and raffia she was weaving. In her blindness, Solange was attuned to people in ways that fascinated Claudette. She knew which customers were desperate and could use a discount and which ones were rich and could pay double.
That night, with no fresh produce, Claudette brought up from the cellar some of their cache of potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and string beans—the food they had stored for winter.
The next morning, she faced another disaster. The old baker, who kept his door locked and allowed only townspeople to enter—and charged them twice the price for half the number of baguettes—didn’t open. A sign on the door explained that with no crops of wheat, the flour mill’s supply had been depleted.
Except that smoke escaped the baker’s chimney. Angry housewives banged on the door, accusing him of hoarding flour. He was still baking for his family, they yelled—and for those refugees who could pay an exorbitant price.
Claudette walked away, baffled by the prospect of the coming days without bread, the staple of life. She entered the pub, hoping to find an answer from Monsieur Lefebvre. At this early hour, he was already drunk. Worse, he had stopped planning new military strategies.
“The Nazis round up Jews, Gypsies,” he said. He looked at Claudette pointedly. “And the crippled.”
Her heart flipped. “What do they do with them?”
“You mean what do they do to them?” Monsieur Lefebvre raised his eyes heavenward. “You’d better hide.”
Where could she hide if the Nazis swept into this village with their tanks? Could she climb up to the attic? What use did the Nazis have for invalides?
Not for the first time, Claudette compared her affliction with Solange’s. The day they met, she had decided that blindness was worse—to be unable to thread a needle or bask in the beauty of perfect stitches; not to see the lush colors of silk or the intricacies of fine lace. Now, for the first time, she wished she had Solange’s long legs to run fast.
“Don’t listen to Monsieur Lefebvre,” the tavern keeper told Claudette. “The French spirit and might will prevail.” His voice turned to a whisper. “Mark my words. We’ll organize a second army and defeat the enemy.”
Two old men at the bar nodded and lifted their glasses, but their gesture was meek.
“The worst is yet to come,” Monsieur Lefebvre said, his speech slurred. “The worst is yet to come.”
Chapter Six
Claudette
Loire Valley, France
August 1940
The downturn in Mémère’s health was sudden. Each coughing fit left her gasping for air. Her skin wasn’t just pale; it was gray, as if she had ingested ashes. She no longer left her bed, and Claudette tucked a chamber pot under her a few times a day and fed and washed her. In church, she placed candles at Christ’s feet. Aware of how preposterous it was to ask Him for this particular favor, Claudette nevertheless beseeched God in His mercy to send over the Jew and his elixir. Or, if the Jew had enlisted, could Mary at least protect him?
Before dusk, Claudette picked blades of sorrel weed in the garden for their soup. She straightened up and was arrested by the sight of the luminous orange-and-pink ribbons cast by the lowering sun. The beauty of the sunset never changed, regardless of the misery of the world below, and Claudette imagined assembling remainders of fabric in sunset hues to create a beautiful cape for a princess in one of the romance books.
Her reverie broke when a black car stopped by the back gate, the one through which the Jew used to enter to avoid detection. A mattress, a trunk, and suitcases were tied to the roof of the car. A man dressed in a cream-colored city suit stepped out, took off his hat in a respectful manner, and approached Claudette.
“Good evening, Mademoiselle. May I secure your kind permission to park here for the night? Perhaps use your well and outhouse?”
No one had ever spoken to her in the language of the romance books. Three months after the disheveled refugees had begun to stream in, a man more refined than anyone she’d ever met was standing in front of her asking for a favor.
He took out a thick roll of bills and peeled off two. Claudette stared at the beautiful woman in the front passenger seat wearing a fashionably tilted hat with a feather. Her arm rested on the open window, and the sleeve of her blouse was of expensive white silk. Curious to see the rest of the elegant woman’s outfit, Claudette nodded her assent to the man but didn’t reach for the money.
He took a step forward, holding out the bills. “Would you happen to have a room to let?” When she shook her head, he said, “We’ll sleep in the car. Tomorrow I’ll go search for petrol.”
Claudette accepted the money and pointed to the cowshed. “It’s empty.”
After the man drove the car into the yard, a boy and a girl, about five and seven years old, bounded out. Just then, Mémère called for Claudette.
She rushed in to explain the visitors’ presence. Mémère coughed and soiled herself.
By the time Claudette managed to come out again, it was almost dark. The family was seated on a blanket, sharing an open basket of food. The mattress and luggage were no longer on the car roof. Someone was moving about in the barn.
“Thank you for your generosity,” the woman said. Her plaid skirt was spread wide around her, and Claudette could see that it had been cut on the bias. The woman had upturned lips that were finely carved, and her brown eyes were lovely. “May we ask you for another great favor?”
“What is it, madame?”
“Would you please let our children sleep inside? My boy is prone to colds.”
There were two unused rooms upstairs. Claudette had been sleeping on the front-room couch since the start of the war, when the Jew’s visits ended and Mémère needed her nearby. Claudette missed the Jew’s quiet presence in the evening by the fireplace, where he read from his little book, his lips moving.
“Yes, madame,” Claudette said.
An hour later, a heavyset woman led the children in. “Who are you?” Claudette asked.
“Their nanny.” The children bounded up the stairs. With her heft, the woman could squeeze through the narrow stairwell only by turning sideways.
