God Speed the Night (7 page)

Marc went back to the table. “You are Monsieur Lapin?”

“I may know his brother,” René said, and Marc knew he had made his contact.

Marc said, “I did not know he had a brother,” the prescribed answer.

Rene shook his hand with an attempted cordiality. Marc understood. There would have been many others before him and the Resistance man was having to operate under the nose of the prefect of police. René” said, “My name is René Labrière. I am a photographer. You may have seen my sign in the window.”

“Marc Daridan. I am an architect—or was about to become one when the axe fell on Paris.”

“Who sent you to Monsieur Lapin?”

“‘Richelieu.’”

“
Reseau Soleil
?”

Marc nodded.

“A dirty business,” René said. “Only tonight I heard ‘Richelieu’ himself is on the run.”

“I botched a job for them,” Marc said.

René shrugged. “It happens.”

Marc felt he had to tell the story to someone. He wanted to justify himself; then it occurred to him that every man who came to Labrière would do the same thing. He waited.

René said, “If it is all over, tell me about it. Otherwise, I do not want to know.”

“It is all over for everyone except me,” Marc said. “Two months ago ‘Richelieu’ discovered that his reseau was being infiltrated by what is now known as the
Milice.
”

Even as the trainman had, René said, “Fascist bastards.”

“’Richelieu’ decided that I was the ideal person to join their corps, to recommend myself to their intelligence and find out who the infiltrator was…”

René stopped him. “You were not a member of
Reseau Soleil
? No, no, of course not. Otherwise you could not have infiltrated the infiltrators.”

“I was not even a member of the Resistance. I knew ‘Richelieu’ in…a different capacity.” To the purpose of telling his story clearly Marc refrained from telling René then that his work up until the
Milice
accepted him had been with the Jewish refugee committee. Or was it to that purpose? He questioned himself even as he passed over the information.

“Go on,” René said.

“The
Milice
needed a man like me. For one thing, I am fluent in German. I lived with them, ate with them, drank with them. I became an interpreter in their school for spies. I memorized thirty faces, finding a particular characteristic in each one—a scar—there were many scars, I can tell you—the shape of the head—the ears. It was the terror of my life that when the time came I might identify the wrong man.”

“And did you?” René said. Then, “Forgive me. Tell it in your own way.”

“There is no point in being melodramatic,” Marc said. “When I was ready I contacted ‘Richelieu.’ The entire
Reseau Soleil
met in the basement of a burnt-out church. There was even a grave ready for the traitor. Almost the moment I walked in I was able to identify one of them as a member of the corps. But you see, there were two, and the second one got away before I saw his face.”

“The
reseau
would have had to break up in any case,” René said after a moment. “But you are a marked man, a particular
bête noir
to the
Milice.
”

“A very particular
bête noir,
Monsieur Labrière. I am a Jew.”

The little man did not conceal his surprise. Then he laughed aloud. “Excuse me, monsieur, but I will explain what I think is very funny. It occurred to me while you were talking why the prefect of police went out of here like a frightened rat when you came in. He would have thought you were Gestapo—it crossed my mind also—and for him to explain to his German colleagues why he was in such a place—very awkward. But here is the funny part: in St. Hilaire, we have always called Moissac the Jew. You know—his nose?” René described the nose with his forefinger, the historic caricature.

Marc managed a faint smile. “Why was he here, monsieur?”

“That is something Gaucher and I will have to ask ourselves, but it would have been better if he had not seen you. You want to reach the Spanish border, is that it?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“What kind of papers do you have?”

Marc showed him his I.D. card and Rachel’s. “There are two of us, monsieur.”

René took them to the light and studied them. He returned to the table. “Surely you have not traveled on these?”

“We traveled on the identity and permit of a man and wife named Belloir who are native to Fauré.”

“And the Belloirs? What has become of them?”

“They will come soon. The permit is to travel for the harvest. Their papers are on the way back to them in Paris.”

“A railway employee?”

“Yes.”

“You are an honorable man to have returned the papers,” René said.

Marc said nothing, but the phrase ran through his mind: So are we all honorable men.

“And your wife, monsieur? Where is she?”

Marc told him of the mill and how they had come to hide there.

“It was a chance to take, asking the nun. We also have a senior prelate in this town who thinks Vichy is the gateway to heaven.”

“To have recommended such a place,” Marc said, “she would have understood.”

“We must hope so. Since you are there, go back and stay there. The prefect of police must not see your face again, not with these papers behind it.” He gave them back to Marc. “I will come to you. Perhaps we can use the mill again if you are safe there.”

Marc, with more than a little reluctance, asked, “Is there a doctor who would come? My wife has pain. I don’t know what it is.” He watched the lines in René’s face harden. He expected it. He knew how he had felt himself under such circumstances.

“Is she pregnant?”

“We’ve only been married a week,” Marc said.

“Congratulations. First there is the matter of identity papers. Doctors are cautious men…and we need them.”

R
UE LOUIS PASTEUR WAS
deserted. Not a light in the shops, not even a stray cat to stalk its shadow in the moonlight. And with the darkness, an awful stillness prevailed. Marc could hear the rattle of the aspirin in the box in his pocket: it was the best he had been able to obtain for Rachel. The apothecary recommended that he consult a doctor. First the papers, then the doctor, Monsieur Lapin had said, and Marc had more deeply sympathized with him than with Rachel. He closed his hand around the aspirin: it would relieve the fever. That had been a shock to him. He had felt the sudden heat in her and thought it the flush of love at first, and was himself renewed until at last she had cried out. Anger should not follow love, but that was what he had been left with, anger with himself, with Rachel, with man’s fate and its humiliations, the ingredients of being human and yet not human enough: to know, yet not to feel, which to him was worse by far then to feel and not to know.

He lingered cautiously before running down the ramp, and then again within the shell of stone before going up the steps. There, to the purpose of accustoming his eyes to the denser darkness, for only speckles of moonlight found their way through the turret windows, giving light no brighter, nor more constant, than the flickering of fireflies. He trod against the
camionnette
near the foot of the stairs and identified it by touch. The recognition set his heart pounding against his ribs. The police used such a vehicle. He waited, listening. Only the gentle sloshing of water in the cavernous well of the mill. He went up slowly, then hearing a moan from above, he abandoned all caution.

He could have cried out in relief, seeing the two nuns where he had expected the police, but the relief passed quickly and a kind of outrage came over him, as though he had discovered them in some ancient and obscene ritual with Rachel their victim. She was stretched prone on the table, her clothes parted breast to thighs. The nun in black bent over her while the grey one held the candle. Brief as the association was—and reason banished it at once—it left him mute and feeling separate even, or especially, from Rachel. He approached them silently until the grey nun saw him and made a little noise of alarm.

The black one did not lift her hand from where it rested on Rachel’s abdomen, the gold ring with its cross of Christ on her finger glittering as with a life of its own. Go, he wanted to say. Give her back to me and leave us. Instead he said what they must have known far better than he knew: “My wife is ill.”

“Very ill, monsieur.”

“I am grateful to you for coming.” He said it: why or how did not matter.

Rachel opened her eyes and found him. There was no terror in them. She put out her hand to him. When he took it, she said, “Oh, Marc, I am so sorry. I tried to make it go away.”

“I know.”

The nun in black said, “It is necessary for madame to go to a hospital, monsieur. The infection will spread quickly and the appendix—who knows what will happen?” She pulled Rachel’s clothes down and took away her own black shawl with which she had covered Rachel from her thighs down.

“How long do we have, Sister?”

“Only God can tell time under these circumstances, monsieur. She must go at once.”

“She cannot.”

“It will pass,” Rachel said. “The pain will pass.”

“I have brought you aspirin,” Marc said.

“She has already had aspirin, monsieur. It cannot heal and very soon it will not even help the pain. You must understand.”

“And so must you!” Marc said. Then, “Forgive me.” He glanced at Gabrielle. “The grey sister will have told you we are Jews.”

“They know, they know,” Rachel said.

“It is why we came, monsieur,” Gabrielle said. “Sister Agathe is our infirmarian.”

Rachel was trying to get up. Agathe restrained her. “Better to lie where you are for now, madame.”

“There must be something you can do for her,” Marc said, and then, as though to persuade Rachel in their presence was the easier way to persuade them, he told her: “I have found Monsieur Lapin and he will come here. Soon we shall have new papers…”

“How soon, Marc?”

“I do not know how soon! Perhaps tomorrow. How can I know except to beg him on my knees to make it soon?”

She smiled a little and squeezed his hand to quiet him. “Do not be so troubled. When they come, you must go on, Marc, and when I can I will come to you. I will find you…”

“I will not go without you.”

Her face seemed to stiffen like a plaster mask before his eyes. “Then I will die tonight. You have always said it is the only important choice we have.”

“No, Rachel.” He knelt down to be close to her. “The more important choice is to live.”

“God in heaven,” she cried, “why do you permit us to be so tortured?”

Sister Agathe paused in the turning down of her sleeves over the white cuffs of her undergarment. She looked at Gabrielle, being herself touched for the first time beyond the medical urgency of the situation. Gabrielle still held the candle, having nowhere safe to put it down. She knew well that Sister Agathe had taken every step reluctantly; nor had she spoken once to the novice except to give directions in the examination of the woman. God make her see, had been Gabrielle’s constant prayer from the moment Reverend Mother bade them go. That the woman should now join a kind of prayer to hers seemed an answer to her own.

“There has to be a way,” Agathe said almost serenely, “and therefore we must find it.”

Marc raised his head from where he had bowed it near Rachel’s.

“You have identity papers?” she asked.

“We have our own, but they are passports to a concentration camp.”

Agathe drew her dark brows together. “Is that worse than death, monsieur?”

“I have heard that it is death, but I would choose it if it were the only alternative.”

“And the papers you are waiting for?”

“False papers which will say that we are merely French.”

“No great honor under the circumstances,” Agathe said so that Gabrielle knew she too had now embraced the spirit of Sister St. André. It made her bold enough to speak where she was not likely to in the presence of the older and professed nun. “If we took madame to the hospital ourselves, Sister, would they ask such questions?”

“To be admitted,” Agathe said, “she must have identification. Otherwise they would ask more questions, and they would question us.”

Gabrielle groped for her pocket and drew from it the folder with her own card of identity. What she really wanted to see was what an identity card looked like, what information it required. She had never used it, and her own feeling of identity was bound up entirely with the religious life and the habit of her order. Yet the instant she brought out the card she and the others, save Rachel, knew that they had found the way.

Without a word Agathe took the novice’s card from her hand, and the candle, and going to Rachel, she held the card near her face. Rachel opened her eyes. The dark eyes dominated both the face and the picture of the nun. Marc knew that as a nun Rachel would have immediate and the best of care. In Sister Agathe, the caretaker of the sick, the urge to save a life grew very strong. Her bond and Marc’s in this was immediate and fast. Both looked to Gabrielle.

It was to her as though a glaring light were shone upon her, blinding and numbing her. She put her hand to the crucifix beneath the cincture—and felt nothing inside her, and in her hand nothing but a piece of crossed wood with a smooth, cold metal figure on it. No new burst of courage came to her, no inner reassurance that the voice of God was speaking through her; only a deep and terrible sense of abandonment.

Marc, impatient as he was with all religion, nonetheless felt something of what it would mean to this protected child to shed the trappings of that protection. He thought then of what it would mean to Rachel to put on those trappings, Rachel, a child of that other religion. He turned his back on all of them and walked the length of the loft, away.

Gabrielle saw the woman’s hand stretch out toward him and then fall limp at her side when he did not come back. She too felt abandoned, Gabrielle thought. “Is it possible, Sister?” she asked Agathe.

“If we make it so. I can take her in the
camionnette
and you will stay here in seclusion until I have spoken to Reverend Mother.” She went to Marc. “You must explain to your wife what must be done. Do you have scissors?”