She nods, and he gets up to greet Dominique.
Sharon feels her tongue pressing against the roof of her mouth, and her teeth clench. She rises for Dominique’s la bise and says her goodbyes.
As she mounts her bike, Sharon ponders Danny’s declaration. She admires his life philosophy and understands his rebuke. She has become a pest.
His increasing annoyance aside—and their agreement notwithstanding—the star tattoo remains a puzzle. What if he has living
relatives? Somewhere, there’s an answer.
Chapter Thirty
Claudette
Barcelona, Spain
Summer 1945
Liberation! It had been a year since the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy. Claudette could barely breathe at the thought of finally being able to return to Valençay, to her baby. Four months short of his third birthday, Benjamin had to be talking by now. With his two perfect legs, he was running around, reaching with pudgy fingers to catch a butterfly. His eyes were surely green. Was his hair, so fine at birth, still light-colored like hers? Had it taken on a darker hue, the shade of Raphaël’s? Did he have a favorite animal at Léonie’s, perhaps a dog with whom he curled up? Léonie had to be telling him that the mother who loved him so much was coming back soon. Monsieur Vincent was paying the nursemaid for Benjamin’s keep even if he couldn’t transfer funds outside the country to Duchess Silvia de Castellane.
When Claudette first arrived in 1942, Spain was recovering from a civil war, and spirits were high. The duchess’s relatives attended private concerts, flamenco performances, and bullfights. Set free from the solemnity of war raging in the rest of Europe, Claudette let her imagination soar as she created colorful and exotic embellishments for the women’s wardrobes.
Overnight, though, political winds shifted, and the de Castellanes lost their wealth. Claudette had to move out of the compound and take in mending in order to survive. She lived alone for the first time in her life.
For months now, she had wanted nothing more than to set off on the road home. She listened daily on her landlady’s radio to the transmissions from France—no longer from the UK—a great sign of France’s liberation. Yet travel had been impossible while sporadic battles still raged in the South of France, and the German and American armies were exchanging prisoners after ending their war in North Africa. The Pyrenees crossings were dangerous; the main passes were clogged by refugees, and the local guides who ran the more treacherous routes through the mountains were themselves robbers. Nevertheless, Claudette had to rush back, not only to Benjamin but also to Raphaël, who would be looking for her in Valençay. All this time she had hoped that he and his father had stopped running and were safe in one of the labor camps. At least they would have had food and shelter.
Before strapping on her brace, she adjusted the two flat cloth pouches under each leather strap. They held all her money in paper and coins. No matter how harsh the circumstances, she had guarded this cache. On the duchess’s advice, Claudette had exchanged the old francs for pesetas, reichsmarks, and American dollars. This money was her future; it would fund a new printing shop for Raphaël. For the expenses on her journey, she would carry only a few Allied-issued banknotes, because their value diminished as soon as they were printed.
The duchess fetched Claudette in her family’s car, which was driven by Carlos, the chauffeur who doubled as a bodyguard when the de Castellane females left the compound. At the train station, he went out to purchase the ticket with Claudette’s money. She watched with trepidation the hordes of people streaming in and out of the massive building that was about to swallow her into its cavity and spit her out on some train to a frightening journey, alone. Her stomach tightened at the thought of the bodies about to jolt her and knock her to the ground.
She wanted to pray to Mary and Christ and remind them of her years of devotion. But she had learned from Mathéo’s tutor, who had escaped with her and turned out to be Jewish, that to adopt his faith, she must forsake Jesus and Mary. She must stick to the one and only God.
It had been a monumental decision. Declaring a wish to become Jewish was meaningless, Jules Hallberg said, confirming what Madame Galvin had hinted at. Claudette first had to give up Jesus and Mary.
How could she? They had been her saviors. They had comforted her throughout her growing-up years when she had been subject to the cruelty of her family and strangers alike. Jesus and Mary had stood up to both priests’ hard judgments of her. She couldn’t stop believing in their love; she could only force herself not to pray to them.
“Give this to Monsieur Vincent, please.” The duchess’s eyes reddened as she handed Claudette an envelope. “My late husband’s German pension evaporated with the Third Reich’s defeat. His title is worthless. I won’t return to Valençay.”
Not return? Disappointment flooded Claudette. She had counted on resuming her former employment and enjoying again the duchess’s patronage. “Will you stay here?”
“Paris. Remember my old friend who married into the Galvin family? I’m waiting for word that I can sell cosmetics in their department store.”
Claudette couldn’t imagine the elegant duchess as a saleswoman serving her former high-society friends, who would sigh or snicker at her downfall.
“I was delusional to think that my good fortune could last forever. Whoever imagined that one day I’d be broke?” The duchess’s voice caught in her throat.
Claudette held her hand. Broke. Broke wasn’t the same as poor; it just meant rich people had less money than they were used to. “You still own Valençay,” she offered.
“And how can I maintain it? With what money? My advisers tell me that I must gift it to the state in order to waive the taxes I owe.”
“What about all the fine furniture and silver we hid? And the art? Can’t you sell them?”
“I don’t even know what the Nazis stole and what’s left.” The duchess blew her nose with a muslin handkerchief that Claudette had embroidered with her initials. “Anyway, who can afford to buy such relics? And the Louvre will soon claim back its own collections.”
For a while, neither spoke.
Claudette broke the silence. “What happened to Madame Galvin? I saw her the afternoon she was taken. The officer shot an older woman who tried to help her.”
“Her mother. It was a horrible day.” The duchess dabbed at her eyes. “Luckily, her husband’s family rescued her from the French labor camp and sent her to America before she was transported.”
“Transported to where?”
“To a death camp in Germany or Poland.” The duchess looked at Claudette. “Haven’t you heard? The Nazis exterminated the Jews. Like cockroaches.”
“Jesus and Mary.” Claudette clamped her hand over her mouth in horror. “Killed them?”
“The news is coming out as concentration camps are being liberated. A huge number of Jews were murdered. Many of my Parisian friends were among them. Writers, musicians, painters, patrons of the arts—”
Tears filled Claudette’s eyes. Raphaël had been correct to distrust those labor camps. How wrong she had been when she prayed that he and his father had found safety in such a place! Where did they hide, then? “That’s awful,” she whispered, now convinced that the Nazis had indeed murdered invalides too. But not Raphaël. He had understood the danger. He and his father must have hidden in some cave. Now she had even more of a reason to hurry back and set up house for them all.
The duchess’s face was pale. “How naive we were when we saw the Jews being rounded up or just disappearing.”
“But Madame Galvin had her baby in safety?”
The duchess dabbed at the corner of her eye. “A boy, may his soul rest in peace.”
Shock radiated through Claudette’s body. “She was planning to name him Benjamin.” Her own boy would forever carry the Jewish name for them both.
A beggar banged on the car window, showing an oozing amputated arm. Claudette waved him off before the duchess could glimpse this hideous display. He thrust his swollen stump against the glass, then stepped away.
The duchess turned her gaze toward the armed soldiers guarding the entrance to the terminal and sighed.
