Sisters of Night and Fog, page 37
VIRGINIA
VIOLETTE HAS BEEN exuberant since she thought she saw a man she loves.
Manic, really.
Violette’s shouts drew the guards, and when they noticed the broken window glass, they wouldn’t accept Violette’s explanation, and conducted a thorough search of the room. They took all the things that rightfully belonged to the women, including the precious sliver of soap they’d been sharing. Luckily their letters weren’t found.
No one is angry at Violette. It’s impossible to be with a woman whose heart is so fierce. And because Virginia’s ring is still safely in the hem of her skirt, she’s at peace. She somehow feels like it’s her lucky rabbit’s foot. If she can just keep the ring, Philippe will be with her in spirit, and everything will be all right.
Virginia now has to roll her skirt at the waist to keep it from slipping off her shrinking frame. The first weeks of imprisonment were the hardest, while her body adjusted to the gnawing pain of hunger. She’s still hungry, but her stomach no longer hurts, and with the approaching sound of bombs—getting closer to Paris every day—she knows they just have to make it a bit longer. If only she could adapt as well to the sweltering heat.
On August 15, they’re awakened by a blast that’s near enough to shake Fresnes. Virginia knows it’s the fifteenth because they were supposed to be permitted to attend Mass today with Abbé Alesch. The priest has been hearing confessions, ministering to prisoners, and has been allowed to say Mass once a month. Though Virginia isn’t Catholic, she welcomes a religious service not only to feed the soul, but to break the monotony of imprisonment.
In the rumbling, the women sit up and look toward the window, a crude, splintery board nailed across where the broken panes are. Virginia can barely see light in the sky through the frosted glass, but the sounds of battle are distinctly closer. Their happy whispers begin, and soon the entire prison is alive with excitement.
The women rise and dress in their sole outfits, which they wash out each night in the spigot over the toilet, wring dry, and hang on the window board. Thanks to the Red Cross, each woman has two sets of undergarments, so she’s able to sleep in one set and change into the other the next morning. The clothes are always damp and smelly, but it’s better this way than never attempting to wash them, like so many of their fellow prisoners. There’s real strength that comes from rituals of cleanliness and exercise, and they have Violette’s leadership to thank for that.
When the German shouts begin, however, their excitement gives way to anxiety. The women quickly brush their hair, wash their faces, clean their teeth, and put on their shoes. Virginia slips her hand behind the toilet and pulls out the letters, sliding them in her bra.
They become immobilized when they hear shooting in the yard. The firing isn’t haphazard. There are orders to march and line up. There are shouts of “Vive la France,” followed by “Fire!” Then there are blasts. By the third round of executions, Virginia and the women are on their knees, Marie leading them in prayer.
“Today, on the Feast of the Assumption,” Marie says. “Our Lady will watch over us. She will cover us with her holy mantle.”
She leads them in a rosary, the lifeboat to which they cling as the storm rises around them. While they pray, the scrape of iron and metal doors, the pound of footsteps, the shouts of the guards come ever closer until their door is flung open and they’re ordered to their feet.
Virginia looks at her cellmates, and seeing the love in their eyes gives her strength to keep her head up. As they file out, Virginia feels very tired but also proud of herself and these women. They have made a fitting offering of their lives, even if they’re cut short. It’s work to put one foot in front of the other, and not to wail in despair as so many women around them are doing, but Virginia manages. All four of them do, buoyed by one another’s strength.
Virginia exhales when she realizes they’re not being led to the yard, but toward the prison entrance. They’re filed past the processing center, where their belongings—free of any forbidden items, and looted of all valuables—are returned to them. Virginia looks in her old purse and sees her identity papers still there. One has to give the Germans their due for organization. Then they’re pushed out onto the street and commanded into lines. Virginia hears the guards shouting about buses, and the knowledge that they’re trying to deport them before the Allies can reach them threatens to destroy the calm she has willed in herself. At least they aren’t being shot, but what will await them where they’re being sent?
The distant bombs, the chaos, and the rising heat are making Virginia feel sick. She takes small breaths because larger ones gag her. She thinks she’ll go mad waiting here, but a woman to her right, in the line ahead of her, loses control and tries to run, resulting in a shot to the back. Virginia can’t comprehend that the bloody corpse just yards from her is real. That any of this is really happening. That the woman would have survived this long to miss freedom by such a short distance.
To have come so close.
Virginia looks up to the sky and pleads in her mind.
God, where are you?
VIOLETTE
VIOLETTE LOOKS DOWN at the corpse—blood pooling under the body and running like a stream into the street—and says a prayer of thanks for the woman who just saved her life. The woman made the bad decision seconds before Violette would have, which has left Violette standing. Violette had just resolved to run. She could almost hear her Scottish commander’s voice from SOE training.
“If you run, you have an eighty percent chance of being hit. Of that, you have a twenty percent chance it will be a mortal injury. When in doubt, run.”
But those numbers had to do with only one shooter and one prey, not legions of panicked Gestapo demons, their fates written on the walls they’ve bloodied. They know they’re going down, and they’ll take as many people with them as they can.
The guards shackle them in pairs. The metal cuffs and chains are heavy and dig into her skin. Her ankle has been better, but this won’t help it. Violette is distraught not to be with one of her cell family, lined up in front of her, but when she notices the woman who has been pushed to her left, she does a double take. The woman has dyed blonde hair, the roots dark. She’s clearly in poor health—all the color gone from her face—but her eyes light up when she recognizes Violette.
“F Section,” whispers Violette.
The woman nods and gives a weak smile.
“Louise,” whispers Violette.
“Ambroise,” the woman says. “Nadine and Odette are there.”
Violette looks to where Ambroise nods, and sees two other SOE agents. Nadine, the aristocrat, is being shackled to Maman Marie, and Odette, the one with whom Tania collided, has been paired with Virginia. The agents look wrung out, but they’re standing.
As the buses arrive, the men the guards haven’t shot file out of the prison, being set into lines like the women. Violette scans the crowd, eyes tracking each face, searching for Henri. All at once, not ten yards from her, in a sweet and holy moment of beauty, he’s there.
This time, Violette doesn’t cry out. She stares at Henri, trying to reconcile the tall, handsome, strong man she knew with the one now bent like an old man, half his weight, limping, and filthy. But alive.
She swallows the lump in her throat and gazes at Henri as he’s led to the line two down from her, and just to her rear. She looks over her left shoulder while he gets in place and is shackled to another man. She stares at him, glowing with the warmest smile she has, until he looks up from his feet and searches the crowd for the attention he clearly senses. When Henri’s eyes meet Violette’s, he gasps and cries. She sees his cracked lips break into a smile and her name whispered on his lips.
She kisses her fingers, raises them to him, and mouths, “Courage,” just before they’re herded onto separate buses.
49
PARIS
VIRGINIA
VIRGINIA SEES VIOLETTE whisper and follows her gaze to where one of the men stares at Violette with open longing. Is this Violette’s Henri/Hilaire? She wasn’t crazy, after all.
Virginia is paired with a woman with bright eyes and a steady gaze, who calls herself Odette, who recognizes Violette, though Violette has called herself Louise. Violette is with one called Ambroise, and they recognize the woman shackled to Marie, who’s called Nadine. All the names are dizzying. She’s glad she’s simply Virginia.
And also, honeybee, she thinks with a sting of pain in her heart.
Virginia’s attention returns to her throbbing, shackled ankle. Learning to walk while chained to another woman while bombs echo in the distance and a dead person lies in the gutter is almost more than Virginia can endure. Odette loops her arm through Virginia’s and the two soon find a rhythm. They’re herded and loaded onto buses that are meant for fifty but are at standing room only, with over a hundred starving, stinking, frightened women and guards. Virginia holds her partner back to let Violette and hers pass so Virginia can be last on the bus, next to the driver.
He looks to be in his late fifties and like he’s trying not to get sick. He uses his handkerchief to wipe his sweat, and mutters prayers.
When the guard pushing them in steps back off the bus to consult with his commander, Virginia reaches into her bra, removes her cellmates’ letters, and touches the driver’s shoulder. He jumps in his seat.
“Monsieur,” she says.
She holds the letters out to him. He grabs them and slides them into his shirt pocket.
“For our relatives,” she says. “Please deliver them.”
“I promise, I will,” he says. “I’m so sorry. They make me do this at gunpoint all day long. God forgive me.”
“It’s all right,” Virginia says. “Where are the Allies? Do we have any hope?”
“Last I heard, Rambouillet.”
Odette curses.
“So close,” Virginia says.
“Not close enough,” says Violette.
The guard boards the bus, and shouts at the driver to go. The driver pulls the door lever and steps on the accelerator. The bus groans to life, and the women groan right along with it. The Gestapo guard shoots a hole in the ceiling, stunning them all to silence.
“For every complaint, I’ll shoot one of you. If you try to escape, I’ll shoot five of you.”
Virginia contracts as far from him as she’s able, huddled toward Odette. She can barely breathe.
The convoy of prisoners starts making its way through the streets of Paris. This time, the pedestrians they pass shout and cry for the bus to stop. Some brave souls bang the sides of it. Virginia feels as if her heart will break. At a large hill, the bus refuses to climb. The weight is too much.
“Off!” the guard shouts, pushing the chained women in pairs until only half remain on board.
At gunpoint, they walk alongside the bus. Laboring up the street in chains, Virginia thinks of Jesus climbing to Golgotha, but instead of jeers from the crowd, from their apartments the people shout words of encouragement to the prisoners and rain curses on the Gestapo, who fire at faces quickly disappearing from windows.
“You will be liberated! Stay strong!”
“Vive la France!”
The encouragement gives the women strength, but all too soon, the bus reaches the top of the hill, and they’re forced back on board.
An hour later, soaked with sweat, Virginia looks up to see where they’ve stopped. Her heart sinks further when she reads the sign.
gare de l’est.
The east. To Germany.
They’re marched to the train yard, where they pass hundreds of frantic German civilians. In the chaos, a tall blonde in a yellow silk suit, carrying a white cat with a black jeweled collar, orders a porter to be careful with her towering carts of luggage and furnishings, crates of wine and artwork. When the filthy prisoners file past the woman, she wrinkles her face in disgust and covers her nose with an embroidered handkerchief. After Virginia passes her, she hears the woman shriek. Virginia looks over her shoulder and sees the woman wiping spit off her face and insisting the guards arrest the perpetrator. But the tide of prisoners moves too fast, and she’s soon far behind them.
All Virginia can see is the grin on Violette’s face.
VIOLETTE
“IT’S TOO BAD I had to waste that spit,” says Violette. “I’m dying of thirst.”
Ambroise can barely muster a smile, but Virginia and Odette stifle giggles.
Violette’s comic relief is short-lived, however. The prisoners are lined up in the railcar yard, with the relentless sun climbing higher. Ambroise can barely stand, so Violette props up her partner. The men soon file in lines beside them, and Violette is again given the sweet reward of catching Henri’s eye. In spite of his obvious discomfort, he does his best to stand up straight when he sees her. She can’t imagine where they’re going, but if Henri is there, she’ll be able to survive it.
Violette observes her cellmates, assessing their conditions. Her beloved Maman Marie is upright, enduring the journey admirably. Janette is strangely pale in spite of the temperatures, and she and Nadine are leaning on each other. Virginia and Odette, with their bright eyes and soft smiles, look the best. Both women still have their strength.
The engine soon appears, followed by passenger compartments, followed by cattle cars. Seeing each car, Violette’s spirits sink lower and lower. There are no windows in cattle cars, only small skylights at the top of each, and the signs on the side read: 30 horses. 40 men.
Virginia gasps.
“Are we meant to . . . ?” she asks, her question falling off.
Violette feels pity for her friend who is still able to be surprised by Nazi cruelty, especially because Violette senses their conditions are about to get much worse than they’ve been.
Out of nowhere, while dozens of wounded German soldiers are boarded onto the passenger cars, Red Cross representatives appear like angels, passing out parcels to the women, telling them there’s a day’s supply of water in the jugs, and whispering the transport will never reach the German border. Sadly, they run out of parcels before they get to the men.
To Violette’s surprise, the female prisoners are allowed in the third-class compartments, but they’re soon filled, and the men are forced into the cattle cars. In the car behind theirs, there’s a walkway down the center, but the seats have all been removed, and iron bars run, floor to ceiling, on each side of the walkway. The men are stuffed into the cages, standing room only, and locked in. Henri is one of the last pushed in the car behind hers, and Violette feels sick knowing he’s in such conditions. Once the outer doors are shut, closing off her view, and the armed guards are in place, Violette looks out the window, waiting for the train to move.
They sit for hours in oppressive heat. She takes the time to see what’s left in her old satchel, the one that has accompanied her through two missions, two prisons, two lifetimes, really. Her false papers are gone. The linings are empty. All that remains is an official-looking Nazi document, bearing the photograph from her forged identity card and a seal, that lists her real name, true personal information, and the words Politischer Gefangener handwritten in red.
Political prisoner.
She shoves the papers back in and looks at Ambroise. The woman is either asleep or passed out, her head hanging forward at an awkward angle. Violette resists opening the jug as long as possible, but when she sees Virginia take a long, satisfying drink, Violette can stand it no longer. The water is like a drug, and she can barely keep herself from finishing the entire container at once. She forces it away with a gasp and screws on the lid, pushing it back in the box and chastising herself for being such a vampire. She’ll need more discipline if she’s going to keep up her strength.
When Odette has the courage to ask to use the lavatory, they’re all relieved to take turns—humiliating though it is, strapped to another—cooling down with the water from the sink and refilling their jugs. But the men are thirsty, and they are cooking. Violette can hear them shouting, crying out, begging for water, and the longer they sit, the more she thinks she’ll go mad listening to them. Some sound as if they’ve already lost their minds.
When the whistle finally blows and the train lurches to life, some of the women cheer, but others, like Violette, can’t bring themselves to muster excitement for deportation.
As Paris recedes from view, as the train gathers speed, shooting them faster and faster to Germany, it’s all Violette can do not to break open the window and scream. When they cross a tall bridge, she’s glad she’s shackled to Ambroise. Otherwise, she doesn’t know if she’d be able to keep herself from jumping.
She’s glad she didn’t take the L pill, because she might have swallowed it.
50
FRENCH-GERMAN BORDER
VIRGINIA
THE SCREAM OF the bomb, followed by the blast, yanks Virginia from sleep.
As the train lurches to a stop, Virginia and Odette reach for each other.
Another explosion falls nearby, shaking their compartment.
Guards throw open the doors to the next passenger car and push forward, shouting in German. In the rising excitement, Virginia looks out the window into the night to see the shadows of airplanes roaring overhead.
“It’s the Allies!” Violette says. “I knew they’d help us.”
The women cheer, but panic ensues with the men trapped in iron cages. They bang the bars and scream that they’ll be burned alive. In the moonlight and the firelight, Virginia sees that a pair of male prisoners manages to escape a car farther down the line, but a guard shoots them. She and Odette squeeze each other tighter.
Able-bodied German soldiers and Gestapo guards flee the train and race for cover. Another bomb falls. Virginia closes her eyes and prays, but the explosion rocks the passenger car ahead of them, which is carrying wounded German soldiers. Some scream while others crawl off, rolling to put out the fires burning their skin.
VIOLETTE HAS BEEN exuberant since she thought she saw a man she loves.
Manic, really.
Violette’s shouts drew the guards, and when they noticed the broken window glass, they wouldn’t accept Violette’s explanation, and conducted a thorough search of the room. They took all the things that rightfully belonged to the women, including the precious sliver of soap they’d been sharing. Luckily their letters weren’t found.
No one is angry at Violette. It’s impossible to be with a woman whose heart is so fierce. And because Virginia’s ring is still safely in the hem of her skirt, she’s at peace. She somehow feels like it’s her lucky rabbit’s foot. If she can just keep the ring, Philippe will be with her in spirit, and everything will be all right.
Virginia now has to roll her skirt at the waist to keep it from slipping off her shrinking frame. The first weeks of imprisonment were the hardest, while her body adjusted to the gnawing pain of hunger. She’s still hungry, but her stomach no longer hurts, and with the approaching sound of bombs—getting closer to Paris every day—she knows they just have to make it a bit longer. If only she could adapt as well to the sweltering heat.
On August 15, they’re awakened by a blast that’s near enough to shake Fresnes. Virginia knows it’s the fifteenth because they were supposed to be permitted to attend Mass today with Abbé Alesch. The priest has been hearing confessions, ministering to prisoners, and has been allowed to say Mass once a month. Though Virginia isn’t Catholic, she welcomes a religious service not only to feed the soul, but to break the monotony of imprisonment.
In the rumbling, the women sit up and look toward the window, a crude, splintery board nailed across where the broken panes are. Virginia can barely see light in the sky through the frosted glass, but the sounds of battle are distinctly closer. Their happy whispers begin, and soon the entire prison is alive with excitement.
The women rise and dress in their sole outfits, which they wash out each night in the spigot over the toilet, wring dry, and hang on the window board. Thanks to the Red Cross, each woman has two sets of undergarments, so she’s able to sleep in one set and change into the other the next morning. The clothes are always damp and smelly, but it’s better this way than never attempting to wash them, like so many of their fellow prisoners. There’s real strength that comes from rituals of cleanliness and exercise, and they have Violette’s leadership to thank for that.
When the German shouts begin, however, their excitement gives way to anxiety. The women quickly brush their hair, wash their faces, clean their teeth, and put on their shoes. Virginia slips her hand behind the toilet and pulls out the letters, sliding them in her bra.
They become immobilized when they hear shooting in the yard. The firing isn’t haphazard. There are orders to march and line up. There are shouts of “Vive la France,” followed by “Fire!” Then there are blasts. By the third round of executions, Virginia and the women are on their knees, Marie leading them in prayer.
“Today, on the Feast of the Assumption,” Marie says. “Our Lady will watch over us. She will cover us with her holy mantle.”
She leads them in a rosary, the lifeboat to which they cling as the storm rises around them. While they pray, the scrape of iron and metal doors, the pound of footsteps, the shouts of the guards come ever closer until their door is flung open and they’re ordered to their feet.
Virginia looks at her cellmates, and seeing the love in their eyes gives her strength to keep her head up. As they file out, Virginia feels very tired but also proud of herself and these women. They have made a fitting offering of their lives, even if they’re cut short. It’s work to put one foot in front of the other, and not to wail in despair as so many women around them are doing, but Virginia manages. All four of them do, buoyed by one another’s strength.
Virginia exhales when she realizes they’re not being led to the yard, but toward the prison entrance. They’re filed past the processing center, where their belongings—free of any forbidden items, and looted of all valuables—are returned to them. Virginia looks in her old purse and sees her identity papers still there. One has to give the Germans their due for organization. Then they’re pushed out onto the street and commanded into lines. Virginia hears the guards shouting about buses, and the knowledge that they’re trying to deport them before the Allies can reach them threatens to destroy the calm she has willed in herself. At least they aren’t being shot, but what will await them where they’re being sent?
The distant bombs, the chaos, and the rising heat are making Virginia feel sick. She takes small breaths because larger ones gag her. She thinks she’ll go mad waiting here, but a woman to her right, in the line ahead of her, loses control and tries to run, resulting in a shot to the back. Virginia can’t comprehend that the bloody corpse just yards from her is real. That any of this is really happening. That the woman would have survived this long to miss freedom by such a short distance.
To have come so close.
Virginia looks up to the sky and pleads in her mind.
God, where are you?
VIOLETTE
VIOLETTE LOOKS DOWN at the corpse—blood pooling under the body and running like a stream into the street—and says a prayer of thanks for the woman who just saved her life. The woman made the bad decision seconds before Violette would have, which has left Violette standing. Violette had just resolved to run. She could almost hear her Scottish commander’s voice from SOE training.
“If you run, you have an eighty percent chance of being hit. Of that, you have a twenty percent chance it will be a mortal injury. When in doubt, run.”
But those numbers had to do with only one shooter and one prey, not legions of panicked Gestapo demons, their fates written on the walls they’ve bloodied. They know they’re going down, and they’ll take as many people with them as they can.
The guards shackle them in pairs. The metal cuffs and chains are heavy and dig into her skin. Her ankle has been better, but this won’t help it. Violette is distraught not to be with one of her cell family, lined up in front of her, but when she notices the woman who has been pushed to her left, she does a double take. The woman has dyed blonde hair, the roots dark. She’s clearly in poor health—all the color gone from her face—but her eyes light up when she recognizes Violette.
“F Section,” whispers Violette.
The woman nods and gives a weak smile.
“Louise,” whispers Violette.
“Ambroise,” the woman says. “Nadine and Odette are there.”
Violette looks to where Ambroise nods, and sees two other SOE agents. Nadine, the aristocrat, is being shackled to Maman Marie, and Odette, the one with whom Tania collided, has been paired with Virginia. The agents look wrung out, but they’re standing.
As the buses arrive, the men the guards haven’t shot file out of the prison, being set into lines like the women. Violette scans the crowd, eyes tracking each face, searching for Henri. All at once, not ten yards from her, in a sweet and holy moment of beauty, he’s there.
This time, Violette doesn’t cry out. She stares at Henri, trying to reconcile the tall, handsome, strong man she knew with the one now bent like an old man, half his weight, limping, and filthy. But alive.
She swallows the lump in her throat and gazes at Henri as he’s led to the line two down from her, and just to her rear. She looks over her left shoulder while he gets in place and is shackled to another man. She stares at him, glowing with the warmest smile she has, until he looks up from his feet and searches the crowd for the attention he clearly senses. When Henri’s eyes meet Violette’s, he gasps and cries. She sees his cracked lips break into a smile and her name whispered on his lips.
She kisses her fingers, raises them to him, and mouths, “Courage,” just before they’re herded onto separate buses.
49
PARIS
VIRGINIA
VIRGINIA SEES VIOLETTE whisper and follows her gaze to where one of the men stares at Violette with open longing. Is this Violette’s Henri/Hilaire? She wasn’t crazy, after all.
Virginia is paired with a woman with bright eyes and a steady gaze, who calls herself Odette, who recognizes Violette, though Violette has called herself Louise. Violette is with one called Ambroise, and they recognize the woman shackled to Marie, who’s called Nadine. All the names are dizzying. She’s glad she’s simply Virginia.
And also, honeybee, she thinks with a sting of pain in her heart.
Virginia’s attention returns to her throbbing, shackled ankle. Learning to walk while chained to another woman while bombs echo in the distance and a dead person lies in the gutter is almost more than Virginia can endure. Odette loops her arm through Virginia’s and the two soon find a rhythm. They’re herded and loaded onto buses that are meant for fifty but are at standing room only, with over a hundred starving, stinking, frightened women and guards. Virginia holds her partner back to let Violette and hers pass so Virginia can be last on the bus, next to the driver.
He looks to be in his late fifties and like he’s trying not to get sick. He uses his handkerchief to wipe his sweat, and mutters prayers.
When the guard pushing them in steps back off the bus to consult with his commander, Virginia reaches into her bra, removes her cellmates’ letters, and touches the driver’s shoulder. He jumps in his seat.
“Monsieur,” she says.
She holds the letters out to him. He grabs them and slides them into his shirt pocket.
“For our relatives,” she says. “Please deliver them.”
“I promise, I will,” he says. “I’m so sorry. They make me do this at gunpoint all day long. God forgive me.”
“It’s all right,” Virginia says. “Where are the Allies? Do we have any hope?”
“Last I heard, Rambouillet.”
Odette curses.
“So close,” Virginia says.
“Not close enough,” says Violette.
The guard boards the bus, and shouts at the driver to go. The driver pulls the door lever and steps on the accelerator. The bus groans to life, and the women groan right along with it. The Gestapo guard shoots a hole in the ceiling, stunning them all to silence.
“For every complaint, I’ll shoot one of you. If you try to escape, I’ll shoot five of you.”
Virginia contracts as far from him as she’s able, huddled toward Odette. She can barely breathe.
The convoy of prisoners starts making its way through the streets of Paris. This time, the pedestrians they pass shout and cry for the bus to stop. Some brave souls bang the sides of it. Virginia feels as if her heart will break. At a large hill, the bus refuses to climb. The weight is too much.
“Off!” the guard shouts, pushing the chained women in pairs until only half remain on board.
At gunpoint, they walk alongside the bus. Laboring up the street in chains, Virginia thinks of Jesus climbing to Golgotha, but instead of jeers from the crowd, from their apartments the people shout words of encouragement to the prisoners and rain curses on the Gestapo, who fire at faces quickly disappearing from windows.
“You will be liberated! Stay strong!”
“Vive la France!”
The encouragement gives the women strength, but all too soon, the bus reaches the top of the hill, and they’re forced back on board.
An hour later, soaked with sweat, Virginia looks up to see where they’ve stopped. Her heart sinks further when she reads the sign.
gare de l’est.
The east. To Germany.
They’re marched to the train yard, where they pass hundreds of frantic German civilians. In the chaos, a tall blonde in a yellow silk suit, carrying a white cat with a black jeweled collar, orders a porter to be careful with her towering carts of luggage and furnishings, crates of wine and artwork. When the filthy prisoners file past the woman, she wrinkles her face in disgust and covers her nose with an embroidered handkerchief. After Virginia passes her, she hears the woman shriek. Virginia looks over her shoulder and sees the woman wiping spit off her face and insisting the guards arrest the perpetrator. But the tide of prisoners moves too fast, and she’s soon far behind them.
All Virginia can see is the grin on Violette’s face.
VIOLETTE
“IT’S TOO BAD I had to waste that spit,” says Violette. “I’m dying of thirst.”
Ambroise can barely muster a smile, but Virginia and Odette stifle giggles.
Violette’s comic relief is short-lived, however. The prisoners are lined up in the railcar yard, with the relentless sun climbing higher. Ambroise can barely stand, so Violette props up her partner. The men soon file in lines beside them, and Violette is again given the sweet reward of catching Henri’s eye. In spite of his obvious discomfort, he does his best to stand up straight when he sees her. She can’t imagine where they’re going, but if Henri is there, she’ll be able to survive it.
Violette observes her cellmates, assessing their conditions. Her beloved Maman Marie is upright, enduring the journey admirably. Janette is strangely pale in spite of the temperatures, and she and Nadine are leaning on each other. Virginia and Odette, with their bright eyes and soft smiles, look the best. Both women still have their strength.
The engine soon appears, followed by passenger compartments, followed by cattle cars. Seeing each car, Violette’s spirits sink lower and lower. There are no windows in cattle cars, only small skylights at the top of each, and the signs on the side read: 30 horses. 40 men.
Virginia gasps.
“Are we meant to . . . ?” she asks, her question falling off.
Violette feels pity for her friend who is still able to be surprised by Nazi cruelty, especially because Violette senses their conditions are about to get much worse than they’ve been.
Out of nowhere, while dozens of wounded German soldiers are boarded onto the passenger cars, Red Cross representatives appear like angels, passing out parcels to the women, telling them there’s a day’s supply of water in the jugs, and whispering the transport will never reach the German border. Sadly, they run out of parcels before they get to the men.
To Violette’s surprise, the female prisoners are allowed in the third-class compartments, but they’re soon filled, and the men are forced into the cattle cars. In the car behind theirs, there’s a walkway down the center, but the seats have all been removed, and iron bars run, floor to ceiling, on each side of the walkway. The men are stuffed into the cages, standing room only, and locked in. Henri is one of the last pushed in the car behind hers, and Violette feels sick knowing he’s in such conditions. Once the outer doors are shut, closing off her view, and the armed guards are in place, Violette looks out the window, waiting for the train to move.
They sit for hours in oppressive heat. She takes the time to see what’s left in her old satchel, the one that has accompanied her through two missions, two prisons, two lifetimes, really. Her false papers are gone. The linings are empty. All that remains is an official-looking Nazi document, bearing the photograph from her forged identity card and a seal, that lists her real name, true personal information, and the words Politischer Gefangener handwritten in red.
Political prisoner.
She shoves the papers back in and looks at Ambroise. The woman is either asleep or passed out, her head hanging forward at an awkward angle. Violette resists opening the jug as long as possible, but when she sees Virginia take a long, satisfying drink, Violette can stand it no longer. The water is like a drug, and she can barely keep herself from finishing the entire container at once. She forces it away with a gasp and screws on the lid, pushing it back in the box and chastising herself for being such a vampire. She’ll need more discipline if she’s going to keep up her strength.
When Odette has the courage to ask to use the lavatory, they’re all relieved to take turns—humiliating though it is, strapped to another—cooling down with the water from the sink and refilling their jugs. But the men are thirsty, and they are cooking. Violette can hear them shouting, crying out, begging for water, and the longer they sit, the more she thinks she’ll go mad listening to them. Some sound as if they’ve already lost their minds.
When the whistle finally blows and the train lurches to life, some of the women cheer, but others, like Violette, can’t bring themselves to muster excitement for deportation.
As Paris recedes from view, as the train gathers speed, shooting them faster and faster to Germany, it’s all Violette can do not to break open the window and scream. When they cross a tall bridge, she’s glad she’s shackled to Ambroise. Otherwise, she doesn’t know if she’d be able to keep herself from jumping.
She’s glad she didn’t take the L pill, because she might have swallowed it.
50
FRENCH-GERMAN BORDER
VIRGINIA
THE SCREAM OF the bomb, followed by the blast, yanks Virginia from sleep.
As the train lurches to a stop, Virginia and Odette reach for each other.
Another explosion falls nearby, shaking their compartment.
Guards throw open the doors to the next passenger car and push forward, shouting in German. In the rising excitement, Virginia looks out the window into the night to see the shadows of airplanes roaring overhead.
“It’s the Allies!” Violette says. “I knew they’d help us.”
The women cheer, but panic ensues with the men trapped in iron cages. They bang the bars and scream that they’ll be burned alive. In the moonlight and the firelight, Virginia sees that a pair of male prisoners manages to escape a car farther down the line, but a guard shoots them. She and Odette squeeze each other tighter.
Able-bodied German soldiers and Gestapo guards flee the train and race for cover. Another bomb falls. Virginia closes her eyes and prays, but the explosion rocks the passenger car ahead of them, which is carrying wounded German soldiers. Some scream while others crawl off, rolling to put out the fires burning their skin.
