They didn’t understand that, because she was an invalide, her fate was tied to that of the Jews and the Gypsies. Her face burning, she murmured, “Uh, our enemies are the Boche.”
“The Boche are the enemies on the outside, but the Jews are the enemies within.” Monsieur Vincent withdrew a newspaper and read out loud: “‘Jews are the vermin that have crawled to eat the flesh of our French society. Their constitutional nature is anathema to the French culture of decency, as they have brought nothing but graft and thievery.’” He added, “Thankfully, the Vichy police are sending them back to wherever they came from.”
“Where is that?” Claudette asked, thinking of the Jew’s funny accent.
“Who cares? As long as we protect France.”
Chapter Nine
Claudette
Château de Valençay, France
October 1941−February 1942
A pack of dogs barking as if they were out on a hunt awakened Claudette. She rose and looked out the window. In the side field that the duchess’s lover had measured lay what seemed to be a huge elongated bale of hay. Claudette pressed her forehead against the chilled glass until her eyes adjusted and she saw that it was an airplane.
Visitors who had arrived in the night in a plane, not a carriage or an automobile? She wished she could peek into the reception hall, but Monsieur Vincent promptly dismissed any staff member found wandering through the château in his or her off-hours. And Claudette couldn’t move quietly.
Two men unloaded from the plane a coffin-like box. She could tell it was very heavy from the way they struggled to carry it. They disappeared from sight, and two more men came and hauled out another similar box from the plane.
All was quiet. The dogs stopped barking until two men emerged from the back of the château. Claudette recognized the one carrying a lantern as a stable groom. His companion climbed into the plane. The groom set down his lantern and gave the propeller one strong push, then another.
Four men had arrived with two large boxes. Only one man left.
The engine’s blast broke the silence of the night. With cracking reverberations, the plane rolled down the field, wobbly as a drunken goose. It lifted just enough to clear the trees and disappeared into the night sky.
Two days later, on Sunday, Claudette arrived early to the chapel on the ground floor of the château so she could pray at Jesus’s feet before the duchess came in for the Mass. When she did, the household staff who lived on the premises would retreat to the back pews. Tears brimming her eyes, Claudette prayed for her own safety, for the blessed duchess, and for Solange and her family, who, like everyone in the occupied zone, must be going hungry. Kneeling with the brace was difficult on the hard stone floor, but the discomfort was a necessary sacrifice for the petitions she was making to God.
After Mass, she stood outside in the crisp autumn air gazing at the gardens that had lost their lush summer colors. She blew on her fingers in her knit gloves. Four maids who were setting out on a long stroll waved at her, then looped their arms through one another’s. She watched them with the familiar pang of envy, wishing she had two good legs and could just wander around and think of nothing but the smell of the rain. She needed the ease and levity of girlfriends she’d had with Solange and even the customers at Mémère’s home. With no place to go and no one with whom to spend her time, Claudette would pass the rest of Sunday alone in her room. She’d saved yesterday’s newspaper from the kitchen, so perhaps she would finally understand this incomprehensible war.
Édouard, one of the groundskeepers, approached her, his hat crushed between two callused hands. “Would you like to see the new orchids?” he asked, pointing to the nearest greenhouse. “It’s warmer in there.”
Crimson flooded Claudette’s face. No man had ever asked to walk with her. Édouard was a decade older than her, and his forehead was tilted forward, as if it were pulled by a string. She smiled. She loved the greenhouse, with its exotic flowers and smell of damp soil. She eyed the short distance and mumbled, “Yes, thank you.” Perhaps, for the first time in her life, a man would present her with a flower?
But when they began to walk, Édouard’s feet covered the distance as if he were in a rush.
Out of breath, Claudette called out, “You’re too fast.”
He cast a furtive glance around. “Oh, well, suit yourself,” he said, and resumed his quick stride.
Claudette halted, stupefied, humiliated. He wanted only to trap her alone in the greenhouse; he did not want to be seen with her. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat.
Back in her room, she fell on her bed and sobbed until she had no more tears.
* * *
More planes had come and gone during the winter, and with each landing, Claudette’s euphoria at being a spectator in the theater that was the duchess’s world had lost some of its sheen. The duchess’s 1942 New Year’s celebration for her two dozen visitors marked for Claudette only that the war was barreling toward them. The nightly BBC broadcast on Monsieur Vincent’s radio repeated the same message: The Nazis were on their way.
They were surely coming for her. Free France, she prayed more and more frantically. And protect me.
Other staff members must have seen the planes, but no one mentioned them at the lunch table, probably taking heart at what seemed like the arming of the Résistance. But they could do their patriotic part by speaking out against the foreigners who were exploiting France.
“It’s only right that the hundreds of thousands of Jews who have flooded our country should repay us by working at those labor camps,” Monsieur Vincent said at lunch one day.
Claudette hated having nothing to say in defense of the poor Jews. The only Jew she had ever met was hardworking and generous and didn’t exploit anyone. Had she missed what everyone else saw in these people? “What does a Jew look like?” she asked Monsieur Vincent.
“Luckily, I’ve never met one,” he replied.
She pushed herself away from the table, mumbling about needing to get her work done.
Outside the dining room, Lisette, the assistant cook, pulled her aside. “Be at the kitchen back door tonight at ten o’clock,” she whispered.
Claudette stared at her. In the almost two years since Lisette had shown samples of her handiwork to Madame Couture, the two of them had rarely talked. Like Madame Couture, who had a family in the village, Lisette walked or biked back home at the end of every day. What could possibly be required of Claudette at that late hour and in this part of the château?
At ten o’clock, Claudette was in the cavernous kitchen. Hanging polished copper pots reflected light from a lamp fixed over the serving counter that illuminated a bowl of fruit, a plate of crudités, and a tray of cheese and bread protected from mice by a mesh cloche. A bottle of wine and three glass goblets were set as if awaiting people of importance. Claudette gazed around the room and, finding no clues, stepped outside to the kitchen yard. In the dark, she sat on the stone bench where footmen took their smoke breaks. The cold of the air and of the stone beneath her penetrated her bones. She tightened her shawl over her coat. Only the bizarre nature of the request kept her waiting there.
High clouds hid the stars. Cats yowled. An owl hooted. Nearby, a tree branch snapped, startling Claudette. She smelled the mustiness of uncollected fall leaves.
Then she heard the scrunching of gravel. “Who is there?” she asked, her voice weak.
Two figures emerged from the darkness.
Chapter Ten
Sharon
