Crossing the Borders of Time (38 page)

Four years. Almost four tumultuous years had passed since their leaving Freiburg, and now they would have to begin all over again. But she didn’t know Spanish, and she certainly didn’t know what to expect from this destination called Cuba that sounded barely civilized to her. And what if Roland forgot her this time? Senselessly, she turned her despair on the stranger beside her. “
Vraiment
, you spit on the French?” she confronted the man. “I, for one, would much rather be staying in France than be sent into exile here beside you!” He stared, speechless, as if he couldn’t believe such hostile words had come from her mouth.

With that, realizing she had best be alone before she lashed out at somebody else, she moved off and tried to focus her sights on the shore. High above the clay red rooftops of the ancient, sprawling maritime city, she could make out the gilded Virgin and Child atop Notre-Dame de la Garde. Roland had said he would climb the hill to the basilica’s terrace after the
Lipari
sailed in order to keep her in sight as long as he could.

“Keep your eyes on the top of the hill,” he had told her, “and know I’ll be there.” Janine fixed her gaze on the church and tried to pretend they could see one another. “Wait for me,” she whispered under her breath. “Please,
mon chéri
, please wait for me, or come for me soon.”

When the evening sky turned gray and cold, she grudgingly withdrew from the deck and found the stairs that wound down through the ship. Off-limits to her were the impressive common rooms—the bar, the library, the spacious salon—with patterned carpets, inlaid tables and Louis chairs, heavy draperies, potted palms, bronze sconces, and richly paneled wood ceilings and walls. Not for refugees either, the first-, second-, and third-class passenger cabins. Instead, their place on the voyage was the dark, cramped, and windowless hold. A space designed for packing freight, it now held more than two hundred double-decker beds set up in rows. Curtained partitions divided the sexes and a tin basin hung from each bed to accommodate the needs of the seasick. In addition to Jewish refugees, the hold carried red-capped French colonial soldiers returning home to Africa, their wartime service no longer required. Those assigned to the hold were permitted one exterior deck to congregate, while the ship’s fine common rooms were mainly reserved for the use of higher-ranking military personnel traveling in the passenger cabins.

Roland watched Janine’s ship sail out of sight from the plaza of Marseille’s nineteenth-century basilica, situated at the city’s highest point
.
(photo credit 14.3)

Reaching the hold, Janine found Alice and Trudi nowhere in sight near the beds they had claimed by planting their things—upper bunks for the girls and a lower for Alice. She assumed they were trying to give her some time to herself. Her parents had shown no sign they noticed her anguish in leaving and had not even questioned the ring on her finger. To confront her about it would open the issue of why she’d pursued a romance with Roland in overt defiance of Sigmar’s objections. Relying instead on distance to end it, the parents kept silent, and Janine herself would never dare broach the topic with them, either then or, for that matter, anytime later. Relieved for the moment not to be bothered, she climbed into the top bunk of the bed next to Trudi’s—a plank covered with a rough straw mat and bedding limited to one black, foul-smelling blanket—and then, hiding her head in her arms to muffle the sound, she wept until she felt empty. At last, following Roland’s directive, she decided to open the long envelope he had slipped in her pocket just as they parted.

With it she found a small, useful gift of a new handkerchief that coaxed her to smile as she noticed the bright embroidered scene in one corner. It was a childlike view of a jaunty French cock singing the start of a better tomorrow as it summoned that day from over an ocean. A half circle of sun arose from the water wearing a radiant crown of yellow stitches. Beneath the rooster, embroidered letters spelled the name of France’s Resistance leader, DE GAULLE, still in refuge across the Channel in England—a political message expressly designed to wipe away tears. Janine pulled the coarse blanket over her legs and tore open the seal of Roland’s envelope to find twelve neat, handwritten pages. In the dim light of an ugly bare bulb that hung from the ceiling, she started to read, carefully savoring each precious French word.

The brightly embroidered handkerchief that Roland gave to Janine

“Lyon,”
it said at the top of the page, dated three days before.
“This Tuesday evening, the 10th of March, 1942. To my darling Janine, so that she will always believe in me and to help her wait for better days.”
Roland’s letter continued in part:

When I first knew you three years ago, you were still young, and I myself did not know more about love than the word. The affection that I had for you would soon fade with the war but I treasured a memory of you.

Roland’s letter to Janine

Later, when we met again in Lyon, I did not retrieve this memory, and the idiotic principles that I had adopted during a year of war turned our meeting into a banal adventure, one more sorrow for you, one more remorse for me, because all the same I was aware of my cowardice. You must know, however, that I never completely forgot you. In Villefranche, I thought of you from time to time, but never without a pang of anguish and disgust for myself. It was necessary to have last summer together for me to discover the young woman you are. Everything I lacked the courage to say, I now will say here. I ask your pardon, Janine, because you loved me and as a result, there was a great deal I caused you to suffer.

Happily for me, I fell sick and if my operation brought mainly ennui, it also succeeded in bringing me close to you, and since then, I could love only you. But one is forced to believe that actions and their consequences do avenge themselves. Scarcely have I found you back once again than you must flee, but now you are not alone in suffering, and destiny sends me a just punishment for all of my weakness.

Still, we share a love that is strong enough to triumph over all obstacles and to arrive at its most perfect expression in marriage and a life together. I consider you from this present day as my fiancée and future partner. You ask only to belong to me. We must wait for that reality. Our sole enemy is time! Whatever the length of our separation, our love will survive it, because it depends on us alone. I give you my vow that
whatever the time we must wait
, you will be my wife. Never forget, never doubt.

Believe in the fulfillment of our happiness, believe in it with all your strength, all your will, all your love, and our test will end as we desire. Time will change nothing. I am sure of you, be equally sure of me, and we will have overcome half our pain.

You will tell me that it is a long time, two years without seeing each other. But there is no reason to think that our separation will actually last that long. The war may end in Europe in a few months, and nothing will stand in the way of regular correspondence and telegrams. In any case, the hostilities will end by winter. And as soon as normal communications are reestablished, our separation will be less difficult.

Please believe,
ma chérie
, it is absolutely untrue that you might not be able to return to Europe. One way or another, as soon as the war is over in Europe, even if it is lost, you will come back to France. If you can’t get permission to stay, you can get tourist papers, and that will be enough for us to regularize our situation and for you to become my wife. Under the worst hypothesis, if the war is lost and you are forbidden entry to Europe, I can obtain a permit to reside in or visit the USA, which will enable us to pursue our most cherished plans. There is no reason to worry about this. I give you my word that
I will come to find you
, and no law could forbid a foreigner from coming to a country if his intention is only to marry the woman he loves!

All that remains now is the matter of your family. No one,
ma chérie
, can force you to marry a man you don’t want. Don’t let yourself be discouraged by anything your family will tell you. It is normal for parents, only wanting the best for you, wishing and believing that they are acting to secure your future, to try to make you marry the man they choose. It is normal that they should combat in you that which they dismiss as puppy love. It is for you to show them enough ferocity, enough energy, to make them understand that you will create your own happiness.

With time, your parents may also try to sow doubts as to my love for you. They may not want to believe that I still love you and that time will have changed nothing in me! Have faith in me and do not let yourself fall into despair over these arguments. The foundation of our love and the fulfillment of our happiness depend upon
mutual trust
. Don’t ever forget,
ma chérie
, that you have my complete confidence, you have it completely, and that I count on you
for all of life
. I give
you my word that we will be married
.

You see,
ma chérie
, fate has sent us a test so that our love will achieve its full greatness. You are everything for me, and I do not want to speak here of all my pain in letting you leave, going so far from me, but know that if I had to lose you, nothing good would come of my life. You are my goal. And this reward, do you see,
ma chère
Janot, I want to merit it. I must make something of myself to deserve you and deserve at the same time my own happiness. I would like you to realize the entire sum of love and of tenderness that I have for you and that I do not dare to let you know for fear of frightening you. But this love can do much in a life. It is love that influences everything else. Guard this love for me,
ma chérie
, and
believe in me
. You are now my fiancée; remember that when you see me again, it will be to become my wife, never to leave me again. Already I am entirely yours.

I embrace you,
ma chérie
, with absolute faith in you and in the future. Reread these lines on the days when nothing goes right in the hope that they may be able to give you a bit of courage and convey all the dreams I can put in a kiss. Receive all my kisses, the very little ones and the most profound and the most passionate, and guard them well until the day when we see each other again. This love is a precious deposit that I leave with you. May you be able to return it to me intact and without blemish on the day you come back. And then, you know, we will never be alone in struggling, because in addition to those we love, there is God in whom we both believe, and when one is sincere and true, God never abandons those who have heart. He will lead me back to you, you will see. Of that I am sure. And the most beautiful day of my life will be the one when I will be able to embrace my little
Moumoutte
, never to lose her again.