“By the way, did you know that the first Saar participated in the search for Dakar?” the commander asks her through the metallic cacophony of honking horns.
She didn’t but won’t admit it.
“Well, it was nice chatting more.” He extends his hand. “Thank you. Shalom.”
“Okay. I’ll take the job,” she blurts out.
A quick expression of surprise traverses his face, then disappears. “I’m glad to hear that. Sharon, you’ll be channeling your pain into something constructive for Alon’s memory.”
No. She’ll be deserting Alon, walking away from believing that at any moment, the submarine will be found. Despite the heat, a sudden chill zips through her. What has she done? Her emotions are too raw, already too taut, like a boil about to burst the skin. She can’t afford to heap more stress and fear on herself.
Sharon walks back home, joy and regret clashing inside her. Come to think of it, nothing is holding her to her impetuous acceptance.
When someone calls to make the travel arrangements, she should rescind it.
Chapter Three
Claudette
Loire Valley, France
Spring 1940
The winds of war in the east, where Germany had invaded Poland, were distant. They had nothing to do with France, Claudette thought. What felt real to her were the upcoming summer festivities. Young village women flocked to her grandmother’s cottage, where Claudette refashioned and embellished old dresses. Come July, the village of La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois would celebrate both Bastille Day and the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Fête de la Fédération.
Claudette sat on the upholstered chair in the front room stitching, her cursed left leg hidden under the sewing table. Three girls her age chatted excitedly about the young men with whom they hoped to dance. For one of those girls, Claudette would salvage an embroidered bodice from an old dress and attach it to a newer organza skirt. For another, she would stitch pearls around the neckline to emphasize the girl’s alabaster skin. For the third, Claudette would alter the girl’s mother’s bridal dress by weaving colorful ribbons into the white lace.
Claudette kept her head down, bent over the silk roses she was cutting, and wallowed in her sorrow. No one, including herself, expected a cripple to participate in the merriment. She wouldn’t even watch the dance from the sidelines with her grandmother Mémère and be subjected to looks of pity and the mockery of young men. Come the night of the festival, girls wearing her dresses, her creations, would twirl in the plaza and be courted and swooned over by handsome lovers.
All Claudette could do was stitch her sorrow into beautiful embellishments.
Just before nightfall, she grabbed her cane, hobbled out to the garden, collected ripened tomatoes, and unlocked the back gate for the peddler, a Jew, who made weekly rounds with his cart selling women’s toiletries, detergents, sewing supplies, medicines, small tools, and kitchenware. When she was little, Claudette had feared this strange man with the funny accent who never took off his brimmed hat, whose face was covered with a beard, and whose eyes were hidden behind glasses. His people had killed Christ, so what was he capable of? Her suspicion had melted after he had cured Mémère’s coughs with his elixirs.
Claudette was twelve when he began his weekly visits and discovered that, due to her disability, she had never been to school—it was too far to walk. He taught her to read. This medicine man had also given her holy water and instructed her to dab it on her knee twice daily, then lift her cursed leg ten times. Miraculously, the holy water worked and her leg strengthened. Unfortunately, once Claudette turned sixteen and her body filled in, the additional weight made her lose her balance. Her left leg, twisted at birth, had been further damaged from repeated muscle tears. In one of her falls, she had broken two of her front teeth. Since then, Claudette covered her mouth with her hand when she smiled.
The Jew led his cart into the barn, where his horse would keep Rosette the cow company. Claudette had concealed the man’s overnight stays from her best friend, Solange, who claimed that all Jews were crooks. Since he slept in Mémère’s bed, Claudette had a greater reason to keep mum about the Jew’s visits. He was a widower with three kids, he had told them, and Claudette looked forward to the gifts he brought each week.
“I have something special for you,” he told Claudette after he entered the house and politely accepted Mémère’s offer of a meal as if it hadn’t been their routine for years. He unwrapped a contraption of metal and leather buckles. “It’s a brace. It will allow you to put weight on your leg.”
The brace had two flat metal rods. A cobbler had fixed them to a shoe and added three buckled leather straps to circle Claudette’s thigh and calf. After Mémère finished helping Claudette strap it on behind the dressing screen, the Jew presented the matching right shoe with a flourish of his palm.
Smiling, he watched Claudette take her first tentative steps. “You see? You’ll stand straighter, and it will ease the pain in your back.”
The contraption was heavy, and Claudette couldn’t bend her knee, but she could put weight on her cursed left leg without it buckling under her. She loved how the new leather shoes shone. She sent the Jew a happy smile of thanks, but the word merci failed to convey the gratitude she felt for his care these past several years.
“Wear it in good health. May God be with you,” he said.
His mention of God used to confuse her. The Jew didn’t seem concerned about being punished for killing God’s son. But Claudette had long since stopped trying to reconcile what the priest said about the evil Jews with this man’s gentle ways.
“Does your son wear this brace too?” Mémère asked him while Claudette paced around the room, basking in the new freedom to move about.
He had told them that his son was afflicted with a similar disability, but Claudette had never met the man’s three children. “Of course,” he said. “At his job apprenticing with a printer, he must stand for hours setting up letters.”
“Would you please bless Claudette?” Mémère said. “To help her walk.” She had told Claudette that Jews, the Chosen People, were close to God.
Claudette stopped pacing. The Jew’s hand hovered over her lowered head. “May God bless you and keep you. May God shine light on you and be gracious to you. May God turn toward you and grant you peace.”
In the morning, as Claudette milked the cow and collected the eggs from the chicken coop, she thought about the Jew’s son. Perhaps, sharing her infirmity, that boy would like her? If he was like his father, his gray, penetrating eyes would gaze at her with fondness, and his soft voice would be filled with kindness.
The warmth that ran through her at the image was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
Later, alone at home, Claudette fixed daisies to a blue chiffon dress and dared to try it on. The airy, sheer fabric felt soft against her skin, rich and sensual. She examined herself in the mirror that the Jew had installed for their customers. A longing swept over her. Her mind leaped into a fantasy starring his crippled son.
In her daydream, the two of them sat at the edge of a vineyard and just talked. If he was like his father, he would be wise and tell her anecdotes about the world outside this village.
She would be wearing this chiffon dress, and away from prying eyes, their bodies would sway in a slow dance. Or they might even kiss.
* * *
A cart heaped with woven baskets of all sizes stopped in front of the house, and Solange climbed down from it. “Wait! I’ll get you,” Claudette called out, happy to show her blind friend her newfound mobility. “Feel my new brace.” She brought Solange’s hand down to the metal rods, then guided her from the sidewalk into the yard and up the three steps to the porch.
“And I got so many new booklets,” Solange exclaimed as they sat down. She withdrew from her skirt pockets novellas with tantalizing pictures on their covers.
Claudette had met the feisty Solange when she had first arrived in La Guerche to learn sewing from Mémère. Her father knew that no one would ever marry his lame child, and his seamstress mother could help Claudette find a way to earn her keep. Now, picking up the first booklet, Claudette was certain that the Jew’s teaching her to read had been an act of benevolence directly from God. She could read to her blind friend the titles of the new booklets and describe the cover art of each. The Stranger’s Touch, A Rogue and a Pirate, Love’s Tender Fury, Velvet and Fire, Unlikely Lovers, Blazing Hearts, A Night to Cherish, and Once More Forever.
“Start with Blazing Hearts,” Solange said. “Like when our princes will come and set our hearts on fire. Figuratively speaking,” she added in a high-society prissy voice. Claudette burst out laughing at the words that Solange seemed to collect while her fingers were forever weaving.
When Claudette finished reading the story, the two of them dissected it and speculated about jealousy and love. Yet hovering in the background was Claudette’s knowledge that neither of them would ever experience any of it. Only heartaches.
