Lilac Girls (25 page)

“Madame Doctor, we have run out of paper bandages,” the nurse said, as she shook a thermometer.

“Where is Halina?” I asked.

“I don't know, Madame Doctor. Wardress Binz told me to sit here.”

I went to the recovery room to check on my patients from the previous day, and the smell there was terrible. I knew that meant the cultures were doing their jobs, but the charts were untouched, no vitals recorded. One of the patients was already out of bed, hopping on one foot, visiting with the other patients.

“Please, we need water,” she said. “And more bedpans.”

I left the room and found Gerda in the hallway enjoying a cigarette.

“Keep them in bed,” I said. “Movement prevents the infection from taking root.”

I locked the door and went to locate Binz. After trudging about half the camp, I found her at the Angora rabbit pens, a vast complex of cages heated and kept spotless by the Bible girls. She and one of her subordinates were cooing over a baby rabbit, a white ball of fluff with ears like feather dusters.

“What is going on in the
Revier
?” I asked.

The other
Aufseherin
slid the rabbit back in the cage and beat a hasty retreat.

“You come out here without a word of hello?” Binz said. “Someone had to take charge in there.”

“You have no right—”

“It could not be helped,” Binz said, folding her arms across her chest.

“Make some sense, Binz.”

“You don't know?”

It was all I could do not to shout at her. “Where is Halina?”

“Maybe we should talk about this elsewhere.”

“What have you done, Binz?”

“For God's sake, don't cry. You don't want my girls seeing you emotional. I warned you about the Poles, didn't I? You have no one to blame but yourself.”

“I don't understand.”

“Well, that makes two of us. Suhren couldn't believe what that Pole of yours was up to. Let's just say you'll be needing a new assistant.”

“A
ll the way to the back, and face the front,” said our new elevator operator, Estella.

In her orthopedic loafers and nylon knee-high stockings, Estella was a far cry from Junior Rockefeller's ideal elevator attendant. Since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the previous year, America had finally entered the war, causing young men of all walks of life to enlist, including our elevator boy.

“Any word from Cuddy, Estella?”

“The U.S. Army does not send me updates, Miss Ferriday. Seems you've got big problems in France right now. That's what Pia says.”

Estella was right. Once Germany invaded France's so-called free zone, in November 1942, all of Vichy France had become a puppet state. The French transit camps began sending transports to a complex network of concentration camps throughout Poland and Germany. I was on my third box of red pins.

“That's what Pia says?”

For someone who handled secure information, Pia was playing a bit fast and loose with it.

Once in the reception area, I took the long way back to my office to avoid Pia's desk, but she sensed movement, like a black mamba.

“Roger wants you, Caroline.”

“Fine,” I said, doubling back. “By the way, Pia…must you share our business with Estella? This is supposed to be secure information—”

“When I want your opinion, I will ask for it,” Pia said, bringing to mind a sign on the baboon cage at the Paris zoo:
CET ANIMAL EN CAS D'ATTAQUE VA SE DEFENDER.
This animal, if attacked, will defend itself.

I hurried to Roger's office and stopped short, for it looked as if a squall had blown every book and paper in it about. Below his window on the Rockefeller Ice Rink, a line of skaters followed a scrawny Santa on skates. He stopped short, and they fell like dominoes.

“We have to double our orphan-aid boxes, Roger. I got the new numbers. Over two hundred thousand French children parentless. Hundreds of them with parents lost to the underground.”

“We need a lot of things, Caroline, but Pearl Harbor changed everything.”

“I can use
some
personal funds—”

“You know the rules. Can you close the door?” he said in a voice that could only be described as tremulous.

“What is it?” I braced myself against the cool marble of Roger's fireplace. Please, not Paul.

“A few things. Do you have much information on Drancy?”

“Six files full.”

Drancy, a former housing complex on the outskirts of Paris, had become a clearinghouse of sorts for prisoners from all five French subcamps on their way out of the country. From the few reports I'd read, it was a hellish place, a waiting room for deportation. It was under the control of the French police, but supervised by the Gestapo Office of Jewish Affairs.

“Why, Roger? What did you find?”

Could Paul be in such a place? True, Rena was Jewish, but did that put him at risk? She was a French citizen after all, but even in the supposedly free Vichy zone, anti-Semitism had become the law of the new state, and foreign Jews were rounded up. The spirit of freethinking France had seemed to disappear overnight.

“Roger, just tell me. Did you find him?”

“Several transports have left with French prisoners, to camps all over Hitler's real estate.”

“Paul?”

Roger nodded.

“Oh no, Roger.”

“A group of French men was taken to Natzweiler-Struthof, Caroline. There is good evidence to suggest Paul may be among them.”

I pulled a chair from the conference table and sat. The dampness from my palms left two silver handprints on the polished wood and then disappeared. Natzweiler.

It was terrible news to be sure, but oddly hopeful, for at least he was alive.

“How can you be sure?”

“There were only a few men in Paul's transport processed at Drancy, and they all went to Natzweiler.”

“In the Vosges Mountains?”

Natzweiler-Struthof was the only permanent Nazi concentration camp in France, located fifty kilometers southwest of Strasbourg. My mind ran ahead to forced labor and corporal punishment.

Roger nodded. “Near a little town my grandparents used to visit. Quaint but isolated.” He tossed a manila packet on the table. I sifted through the documents, scanning for anything about Paul's captors.

From the Royal Air Force reconnaissance photo, it appeared to be a small camp, only twenty rows of barracks and four other buildings, all wedged into a walled area surrounded by thick, snow-covered forest. So much snow. Was Paul freezing to death while I sat in a warm office? I scanned the photo, looking hard at the groups of prisoners gathered outside, trying to spot Paul among them.

“Thank you, Roger. I'll have Pia run a search on it.”

“No more searches, Caroline. Washington has officially broken off diplomatic relations with France.” Roger pawed through the mess of papers on his desk.

“How can that be? You have to call—”

“Call
whom,
Caroline? The embassy in Paris is no more. And
this
office is officially closed. Just heard. I've been ordered to destroy anything of consequence.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

Roger stood and looked out the window at the skaters.

“I've been told to go through the Swiss Consulate.”

“Please. They're in Germany's pocket.”

“Our flag has to come down. I'll keep the lights on as long as I can, but it won't be easy. No more funds will be transferred here until further notice.”

“Will we at least have contact with France?”

“Hopefully we'll get packets from Free France in London, but they'll have a hell of a time finding boats willing to bring them. The Swiss may come through and the Brits have been reliable.”

“I appreciate your help locating Paul, Roger.”

“Well, there's one more thing, Caroline. About Paul.”

I braced myself. What could be worse?

“I found his wife's name on the deceased list. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Rena Rodierre.”

“Rena? Oh no, Roger. It can't be.”

“Typhus. Or so it said. I'm sorry, Caroline.”

I sat stunned. How was it possible? Poor Rena. Paul surely didn't know. Paul. How would he react to Rena's death? It was all too horrible.

I picked up a magnifying glass and searched the photo. If Paul was alive, I would find him. I would be there for him if I had to swim the Atlantic.

I
N THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED,
I made more trips to Snyder and Goodrich. The little money Mr. Snyder provided helped keep my French Families Fund afloat, and Roger didn't seem to notice. But the specter of shutting down the consulate for lack of funds loomed large. With no official contact in Paris and the rest of France in chaos, the shutdown made sense. But closing down just when people needed us most seemed so unfair. Plus, it was my only link left to Paul.

“You're going to tear a retina with all this research,” said Roger one night as he headed home, attaché case in one hand, hat in the other.

“I'm fine,” I said, stuffing the frustration down deep. “I guess it's just hard on the nerves, with our own navy planes bombing German submarines in Long Island Sound. And now this news about Paul.”

“I know, C. Are you going to the Vanderbilt party? You need to get out of here and have some fun.”

Roger was right. I was no use to anyone frazzled and burned out.

I ran home and changed into my best black dress, slipped Father's retailored tux jacket on over it, and put my hair up. Did it make me look taller? I took it down. I looked pretty good for forty years old.

By the time I made it to the Vanderbilts' brownstone home at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-first Street, just around the corner from our apartment, I was looking forward to getting out, even if it meant seeing Betty, who'd probably deny knowing me. I shuddered at the thought of seeing Jinx Whitney, for I'd inherited an intense dislike of the fatuous Whitneys from Father. I would simply avoid Jinx and reconnect with old friends. Didn't I owe it to myself to at least stay on speaking terms with society? I couldn't work
all
the time.

The Vanderbilts' home was a lovely old place, one of the last remnants of the Gilded Age, and it was a shame to tear it down, but the area had become somewhat unfashionable, and the Queen of Fifth Avenue needed to downsize after her husband's death. She had cut her staff from thirty to eighteen and moved to an even lovelier mansion. Mrs. Vanderbilt used the occasion to have one last party at the house, a fundraiser. It was a curious mix of bridge tournament, dancing, and feasting, all for twenty-five dollars admission, the proceeds going to charity.

It was the public's first and last time invited into those hallowed halls, and many stood and stared. A young couple, still in their hats and cloth coats, walked about the first floor, mouths agape. They ogled the gold-inlaid woodwork and caressed the onyx pillars. A group stood before a Pompeian fresco in the entryway. That foyer alone could have housed ten needy families.

“Merle Oberon is here,” said a little man, fedora in hand.

The bridge players drifted into the library and took seats at the thirty card tables under the rock crystal chandeliers. The teams were arranged according to group: Junior League. Chapin School. Collegiate. Princeton. The Chapin group was one of the largest.

In front of a fireplace so large I could almost stand upright in it, two waiters in tuxedoes chalked in names on an enormous bridge scoreboard that looked like the pari-mutuel machine at Hialeah. The points of a compass designated the players. North and South. East and West.

As the jeunesse dorée took their seats at the bridge tables, I wandered the dining room, lured by the heavenly scent of rib roast and popovers. Trays of cold meats and seafood on the half shell, a stiff hothouse iris centerpiece, and a silver punch bowl of syllabub big enough to bathe in sat on a landing strip of white damask. The orchestra played Cole Porter and Irving Berlin while a waiter stood guard. Counting the silver?

Since the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, it seemed every young man in New York had enlisted. Some college boys had come home at Christmas break and gone right into the service. Overnight, the armories filled with soldiers gearing up. Mrs. Vanderbilt allowed servicemen free admission to the party, and it was quite a sight to behold all of them in their uniforms. Naval aviators from Floyd Bennett Field in their navy-blue jackets with gold trim discussed war strategy with army reservists.

Most of our set trained at the lovely Park Avenue Armory, drilling in that soaring hall reminiscent of Europe's great train stations. One could always tell those boys from the others, for they often had their uniforms custom made by the best bespoke tailors in New York. As long as they followed uniform protocol, servicemen could have their uniforms made of the best wools and silks, with the finest brass and tortoiseshell buttons.

“Not playing, Caroline?” asked Mrs. Stewart Corbit Custer, Mother's bosom friend.

My lips brushed the smooth powder on Mrs. Custer's cheek. It was especially good to see her that night, done up in aquamarine chiffon. She and Mother loved to tell the story of how angry Father got when they took me to the poultry show at Madison Square Garden a few weeks after I was born. They had brought me home to Southampton in a Moses basket atop stacks of feed bags in the backseat of the car.

“Trying to give the other girls a chance?” said Mrs. Custer. “Good of you, dear. You would surely skunk them all.”

From the looks of the scoreboard, the bridge teams were formidable. Mrs. M. Field and Mrs. Cushing. Mrs. Noel and Mrs. Dykman. Mrs. Tansill and Mrs. Auchincloss.

“I'm sorry Mother couldn't make it,” I said.

“Me too, dear. Would you mind doing the tally for me? Your mother usually does it, and you are the most honest person in this room, I'm sure of it.”