Crossings (35 page)

n November 11, 1940, the Vichy government was officially formed, with Pétain as its President, and Armand de Villiers in its highest ranks. His alleged perfidy to the old France was no longer a secret anymore. By then, Liane was accustomed to being shunned. She had long since become a pariah in Washington. She never expected the phone to ring, there were no invitations anywhere. On many days now she just sat at home, waiting for the girls to arrive from school. In many ways it reminded her of the days in Paris after war was declared and Armand was at the office fifteen hours a day. But then at least, no matter how late, she knew that eventually he would come home to her. Now God only knew when they would be together again. There were times when she wondered if she had been mad to tell Nick they couldn't go on. What harm would it have done? Who would have been hurt by it? Who would have known? But she would have, and perhaps eventually the girls, and one day Armand. She had done the right thing, but it tasted bitter in her soul as she thought of Nick. She had been tormented now for four months over thirteen bright days on a freighter, following a zigzag course from France to the States.

Armand's letters were infrequent and brief, brought out by members of the Resistance now, and left unsigned. They reached her through intricate, elaborate underground routes, eventually reaching London or some British port, and sent to the States on freighters or troop ships or whatever was coming across. There were odd gaps in the letters also at times, and she wondered always if the messengers had been killed or the troop ships sunk. There was no way to know. But what she did know, or sensed, was that Armand was in constant danger now. He was so high up in the ranks, that were his treason to Pétain and the Nazis known, he would have been killed at once.

… We are very busy now, my love. We have been salvaging treasures as well as lives, spiriting pieces from the Louvre and having them disappear into barns and sheds and haystacks all over France before they can be shipped to Berlin. It may take us a lifetime to retrieve them again, covered with hay and goose manure, but it is one thing less for them to steal from us … even one tiny piece of history remaining ours is a victory for our side … that and the people who have managed to disappear, in order that their lives be saved. Knowing that we have done this, saved even one life, makes it bearable to be without your gentle touch, your love, your smile …

The letters tore at her heart now, and made her wonder again if what he was doing was worth the risk. One painting, one statue … one piece of history … and all of that perhaps in exchange for his life? Could he really think it worth the risk? And yet she sensed in his letters the same devoted passion he had always had for France. His country was truly his first love, above all else. He had served her well all over the world, and now he was saving her from those who would leave her bleeding and dead, squeezed dry and lying by the roadside.

Liane admired the principles behind Armand's work, and yet now as she began to see their daughters shunned by their friends, she once again questioned the wisdom of what he had done. Better to have gone to North Africa or London with De Gaulle, to fight there, to work with the Free French openly, than to remain in France to undermine the Nazis at every turn, but earn no glory at all, wearing the banner of Pétain. She knew that there was far more important work he did than saving the artwork of France, yet she also knew that just as he had been forced into secrecy in the year before Paris fell, now it was even more important that he share none of that with her, lest it risk other lives and his as well, so she had almost no way of knowing what agonies he really suffered, what risks he ran.

And at his desk in Paris, with the swastika spread across the wall, Armand would look out at the Paris sky, remembering Liane's touch, her face, the sunshine in her voice, the way she had looked at nineteen and twenty-one, and then he would force her from his head and go back to his work. He had grown deathly thin since she had left France, from overwork, from lack of sleep, from strain. He had developed a nervous tic in one eye, but other than that he always appeared steadfastly calm. He appeared to believe in the Vichy cause, and by November of 1940 he was carrying an important load of trust, placed on him by both sides. His only fear was the knowledge that time wasn't on his side. He had aged fifteen years in the last two, and the mirror didn't lie to him. He was approaching fifty-eight, and felt more like ninety-five. But if he could give his last days to France, and serve her well, he knew that he would die with honor on his side. And he felt sure that Liane knew it too. He hinted at that to her in letters once or twice—
“Si je meurs pour ma patrie, mon amour, je meurs en paix”
—If I die for my country, I die in peace. But the words made her hands tremble each time she read something like that. Losing Armand was not what she had in mind. But at other times there were anecdotes, or reports of funny things they'd done, an artistry of confusion committed by the comrades of the Resistance. She marveled now and then about the things the Resistance did, and the tales that Armand dared to tell. She marveled too that the Nazis rarely found them out. But “rarely” still made it a dangerous game. There were constant close calls, far more than she knew.

In November there was one that almost cost Armand his life. He was delivering a series of important papers he had copied in minute detail, carried taped to his chest, and he had been stopped by the police on his way out of town. He explained that he was going to visit an old friend, and had rapidly shown the documents, which proved him a henchman of Pétain. The German officers had hesitated for a time, and then waved him on. The papers had been delivered into the right hands, and he had returned that night, almost limp with fatigue, but he returned to the house he and Liane had shared, and he sat down slowly on the bed, aware of just how close he'd come, and that the next time might be his last. But even as he looked at her empty side of the bed, he had no doubts. He never had.
“Qa vaut la peine, Liane … ca vaut bien la peine … pour nous, pour la France,”
he said aloud. It's worth the pain … well worth the pain … for us … for France….

But that was not a sentiment shared by Liane as the doorbell rang in the Georgetown house on a Friday afternoon. The girls had been due home from school half an hour before. And she had glanced at her watch several times. Marcie, the maid, had told her to calm down, but there was no calming her once she saw the girls. They had walked home alone, as they often did, but as they stood now on the front steps, their dresses in rags, with red paint in their hair and ravaged looks on their faces, Liane gasped and began to shake as she led them inside. Elisabeth was trembling from head to foot and hiccuping through her sobs, but Liane could see that there was more than grief to Marie-Ange's tears, there was also fury.

“My God … what happened?” She was about to lead them into the kitchen, where she was going to peel their clothes from their backs, but she stopped as though she had been slapped when she turned Marie-Ange around. There on her back, in a broad slash of red paint, was a swastika. And without a word she turned Elisabeth around too and saw another one there. And choking on her own sobs, she clutched them to her, their painted little bodies smearing red all over her, and the three of them stood in the kitchen like that as Marcie watched with tears pouring down her own withered black cheeks.

“Oh, my babies … what they done to ya?” She pulled them slowly free of Liane and began to take off their dresses, but the girls were crying harder now and Liane had to fight to regain control. She was crying not just for them, but for herself, and France, and Armand, and what the horrors there had done to them all. There was no turning back now. And she knew too that there was also no staying. She couldn't go on exposing the girls to that. They had to leave. They had no choice now.

Liane walked them quietly into their bathroom and ran a warm bath. Then she tenderly bathed both of them. Half an hour later they looked like the same little girls they had always been, but she knew they weren't, and would never be quite the same again. She threw away the ravaged dresses, her brow furrowed in anger and fear.

She brought them dinner in their room, and they sat and talked for a long time. Elisabeth looked at her as though her entire childhood had melted in one afternoon. At eight she knew more than most children at twice that age, she knew pain and loss and betrayal.

“They said Papa was a Nazi … Mrs. Muldock told Mrs. McQueen and she told Annie … but Papa isn't a Nazi! He's not! He's not!” And then, with a look of sorrow, she asked Marie-Ange and Liane, “What's a Nazi?”

Liane smiled for the first time that afternoon. “If you didn't know what a Nazi was, why were you so upset?”

“I think it means a robber, or a bad person, doesn't it?”

“Kind of. The Nazis are very bad Germans. They're on the other side of the war from France and England, and they've killed a great many people.” And she did not add, “and children.”

“But Papa isn't German.” To the pain in her eyes, she now added the obvious fact that she was completely baffled. “And Mr. Schulenberg at the meat market is German. Is he a Nazi?”

“No, that's different.” Liane sighed. “He's Jewish.”

“No, he isn't. He's German.”

“He's both. Never mind. The Nazis don't like Jewish people either.”

“Do they kill them?” Elisabeth looked shocked as her mother nodded. “Why?”

“That's very hard to explain. The Nazis are very bad people, Elisabeth. The Germans who came to Paris were Nazis. That's why Daddy wanted us to leave, so we'd be safe here.” She had explained that to them before, but it had never really sunk in until this moment, until it touched them, having had red paint in their hair and swastikas on their backs. Now the war was theirs too. But now Elisabeth had an added worry.

“Will they kill Papa?” Liane had never seen her eyes so wide, and she wanted to tell them it could never happen, but should she? She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

“Your papa won't let that happen.” She only prayed that it was true, that he would outwit them for as long as he had to. But at tea, Marie-Ange knew more than Elisabeth, and tears slid slowly down her face again as she sat on her bed, still in a state of shock. She hadn't touched her dinner.

“I'm never going back to school … Never! I hate them.”

Liane didn't know what to answer. They couldn't give up school for the duration of the war, but she couldn't let this happen again either.

“I'll talk to the headmistress on Monday.”

“I don't care. I won't go back.” They had bruised something deep within her soul, and Liane hated them too, for what they had done to her children.

“Do I have to go back, Mommy?” Elisabeth looked openly scared and they both tore at Liane's heart, each in her own way, each cut to the quick by something they didn't understand. How could she tell them that their father was not a Nazi, not what he seemed to be, a henchman of Pétain, but a double agent? One day, when it was all over, when it was too late, then she would be able to tell them. But what would it matter then? They needed to know now, and she couldn't tell them. “Do I have to, Mommy?” Elisabeth's eyes pleaded with her.

“I don't know. We'll see.” She kept them close to her all weekend. The three of them were quiet and subdued, they took a long walk in the park, and Liane took the girls to the zoo, but neither of them was her usual self. It was as though the children had been beaten, which was exactly what she told the headmistress on Monday. The girls had stayed home, but Liane appeared at the school before nine o'clock, and when the headmistress, Mrs. Smith, reached her office, Liane was waiting. She described the condition the girls had come home in and what it had done to them, and she turned to her with an expression of grief. “How could you let something like that happen?”

“But I had no idea, of course …” She was instantly defensive.

“It happened here at the school. Marie-Ange said that seven little girls in her class did it, and they even did it to her younger sister. They took scissors and paint and they dragged them into a room. It's like hoodlums in the ghetto, for God's sake, only it's worse. The children are punishing each other for things that they don't understand, that have nothing to do with them, because of gossip that their parents circulate.”

“Surely you can't expect us to control that?” The headmistress looked prim.

And Liane raised her voice. “I expect you to protect my daughters.”

“Outwardly it may appear that your children were the victims of other children, Mrs. de Villiers, but the fact of the matter is that they are suffering because of your husband.”

“What in hell do
you
know about my husband? He's in occupied France, risking his life every day, and you tell me that my children are suffering because of him? We lived through a year of Europe after the war was declared, we were there when Paris fell, we spent two days on a goddamn fishing boat sitting on a load of stinking fish in order to meet a freighter and come home, and then we spent two weeks dodging U-boats on the Atlantic, and we watched almost four thousand men die when a Canadian ship was torpedoed. So don't tell me about my husband or about the war, Mrs. Smith, because you don't know a goddamn thing about either one, sitting here in Georgetown.”