The Girl in the Blue Beret (34 page)

Marshall laid his arm around her shoulder, a brief embrace. She went on, “It is not a sequence in time. It is a collection of sensations. Time blurred; it was like sleep. When you have only a scrap for sustenance and you must labor until the dark, then you are already almost dead. My mother, who could hardly walk because of vitamin sores, labored alongside me, and she tried to conceal her sufferings from me, until there was a time when she could not continue. She breathed in sharply and lowered her head and closed her eyes. She clutched her hoe and said, ‘Don’t lose heart, Annette.’

“On the plateau, the
gardiens
watched us like those birds that feed on the dead. When a woman collapsed, the
gardiens
ran to grab her and throw her onto a cart. We were being worked to death. Our numbers diminished, and the bodies disappeared. There was no
four-crématoire
at Koenigsberg. I could not let my mother fall. I had to keep her upright until we could reach the infirmary.

“From the beginning, my mother was my strength. I had the
hantise
, or—how do you say it?—the anxiety to be separated from my mother. We were close, so physically close, her arms around me as if I were still balled—
roulé en boule!
—inside her. And in time, it was reversed, when I had to hold her, when she curled up in her weakness, the loss of strength, and the illness of which she was surely dying. In the infirmary I kept her warm. I gave her my soup. I mashed the bread into a little gruel, a
panade
. Bread and water heated on a fire felt so much more nourishing—to have something warm in our stomachs. She could hardly swallow, but she tried her best to eat, for me. It dribbled from her mouth, and she could not swallow. I lifted her head so she would not choke, and I caught the dribbles from her mouth in her spoon and saved it until she rallied and could get the breath again to try to eat.”

Annette’s voice cracked.

Marshall held her, and he caressed her hair. She turned her head away.

“You are good,” she said, pulling back from him.

“One morning at the work camp we saw a man come from the forest and speak with a
gardien
. Then the
gardiens
pushed us out on the road, but we didn’t march five by five in lines, as usual. It was chaotic, and we did not know where we were going. There was turmoil among the
gardiens
, as if they couldn’t agree on anything. Their discipline was crumbling. Finally, they marched us back to the camp, and they locked us inside again. We did not return to work that day.

“There was no
appel
that evening. There was no noise during the night; usually there was much noise. In the morning also there was no noise. No guards were there!”

Annette rose from the divan and paced back and forth, unable to contain her energy.

“We crept out of our barracks and rushed around. The
gardiens
had disappeared! We ventured farther. There were no Germans anywhere. We broke out of the camp. We went into their headquarters across the road and saw that they had left. They had abandoned everything. They had been living there with their families. There were bottles for babies. And food! We found food!

“We began to eat everything we could find. And we carried all we could back to our quarters, fearful that the Germans would return at any moment. They had left in the middle of a meal—lovely vegetables and meat. We ate everything left on their plates. To see how they had been living—with their families, in luxury—so near to us, it filled us with rage. They had their children there! Can you imagine bringing children to such a place? The children would surely know how we were treated. There were toys and sports equipment—tennis rackets, skis.

“We raided the women’s closets. I found sweaters and coats and blankets, and wool jackets and skirts. I found a beautiful navy wool coat and put it on immediately, for it was freezing that day! I took an ensemble back for my mother, who was too feeble to join the raiding party, but I was still strong enough. I brought back an enormous tin of peaches! I wore the coat back and forth—and filled its pockets with food.

“The water was frozen, but we made a fire and heated ice. We had hot water! We washed ourselves. We changed clothing. In luxury and liberty, we walked out in the sunshine. I can’t explain the joy. We were all together.”

Her arms opened wide, as if to embrace all those she remembered. “We were so happy! It was sunny! We felt free.

“Then at dark we returned to our barracks. A Polish girl wanted to escape—to leave—but we pulled her back. ‘Don’t go out there,’ we urged her. ‘It is too cold. You have nowhere to go. We have plenty of food here now, and the Russians will come to liberate us.’ Some Frenchmen who were prisoners of war at another camp had been exchanging messages, clandestinely, with us at the
Kommando
in the forest, and they had received hints that the Soviet army was coming. But we were afraid the Germans would return, and so we hid carefully all our stolen goods.

“Two Russian soldiers on a bicycle stopped at the camp. One of our women, who was Russian, told them we were ‘partisan,’ the Russian word for
résistante
. The soldiers left. We knew their units were advancing and they would find us. We waited, praying for liberation. We could hear their cannons in the distance.

“We had two days of freedom. Then a German patrol appeared in the night. We had been sheltering two escaped Frenchmen—two of the prisoners I mentioned—but the Germans discovered them and shot them instantly, then left abruptly. The Frenchwomen had been so happy to have the Frenchmen there. Now our hearts were breaking.

“In the morning we heard shouting and shooting, shouting and shooting. It was thunderous, murderous. Explosions. Yelling. It was dreadful. The SS from Ravensbrück had arrived, and they were pulling everybody out of the blocks.”

Annette had been speaking with Marshall in English most of the time, but now she lapsed into rapid, excited French. Gently, he guided her back.

“Slowly,” he said. “You’re going too fast for me.”

“Désolée.”

“Go slowly.”

She sat down beside him and took a deep breath. “The SS made everybody who could walk go out on a forced march back to Ravensbrück,” she continued, in English. “I could walk, but my mother could not walk, and I could not leave her! I could
not
leave her. I hid in the infirmary with her. We were in the room with a nurse who was very good with my mother. She had been arrested for falling in love with a German. She was a nice girl, and when the Germans routed everybody, she warned them away from the infirmary.

“ ‘They have the typhus!’ she cried. The Germans backed away then.

“There were only a handful of us left behind in the infirmary, and all the others were sent back to Ravensbrück, on foot. Eighty kilometers. I knew they wouldn’t live.

“The SS put out the fires in the stoves and removed the fuel. Then, with the fuel, they set the camp on fire. They locked the doors and left. Our little group, left behind in the infirmary, was going to die in the fire! Frantic, we managed to break the door. And then”—Annette clasped her hands together in a quick gesture of thanksgiving or prayer—“it began to snow, and the snow stopped the fire! Our infirmary survived the fire. But six of us died. We had to bury them, and the two Frenchmen. It was true. We did have the typhus.

“We waited. There were so few of us. The nurse, who stayed behind with us, had reserves of strength, and she built a fire to keep us warm. And she cooked for us. But I slept then for two days. I slept through the Battle of the Oder! The Russians and the Germans were shooting at each other across the camp, near the infirmary. But I was so sick I didn’t care.”

Annette’s hands flew up, quivering, then lighted in her lap. Again she had spoken rapidly, mixing French with her English. It had taken Marshall a moment to decipher “typhus,” which she pronounced
TEEF-us
. He took her hands and quieted them down. She turned her head away from him for a time.

“After two days the Russians arrived, with their tanks and their large guns, and they liberated the camp. It was such joy for us! Oh, they were very good with us. They spoke some English.

“We spent three weeks at the camp with the Russians. They were like children with us. Playing, laughing. One of them shot a cow so that we could have meat. But the nurse told me that my mother should not eat meat because of the typhus—it would make her bleed more. She was losing blood, leaving a trail. But the Russian, a big high officer, wouldn’t obey the nurse. He ordered a soldier to cut a
bifteck
and barbecue it for her. We couldn’t make him understand. He insisted.

“There are two images that stand out in my mind the most strongly now. One is my sister and her
poupée
—dressed in baby-chick yellow!—on the day the
milice
came. And the other is my mother with the
bifteck
—her joy at having it, and the Russians’ delight with themselves for providing it, and my own despair that it was bad for the typhus. It made her dysentery worse. We all had the dysentery from eating so much when we plundered the abandoned German quarters. So much jam! And beautiful vegetables and cans of asparagus and boxes and boxes of crackers.”

She sighed. “I was
increvable
. Indefatigable.” She laughed, then hid her mouth with her hands. “So much had happened.” She paused, looked at him, then turned away. “I can’t go further now.”

Marshall’s feelings were whirling. He could scarcely comprehend how she had survived, or that she was here now with her strength and her beauty. He didn’t know how to respond to her words. No response could possibly be adequate.

He put his arms around her. He felt her body relax, and they held the quiet embrace for several long moments.

“We will eat now,” she said, smiling up at him. “And talk of other things. You will tell me about your airplanes.”

48.

“I
T WASN’T UNTIL LATE JUNE THAT WE RETURNED TO PARIS,” ANNETTE
said later, after the dinner was finished and they were again in the sitting room. “We were in a Polish hospital for three months. From there, we traveled through Germany, then Holland, then Belgium. The journey was slow because of all the destruction. We were in a
camion
, a transport truck, and the route was difficult, with many detours. In Germany, the people regarded us with awe. They were reserved and subdued, their land so beaten, but the ordinary people were kind.

“We arrived at the Hôtel Lutetia, where the lobby was now a center for returning
déportés.
” She paused. “The Germans had used this fine hotel for interrogations. But now the boulevard Raspail, with all its air of normality and ease and
bonheur
, was our lovely prewar Paris again. Yet we felt out of place, so humiliated and crazed and ashamed. There were very nice people at the Lutetia, and they tried to be helpful. They had set up tables in the lobby by the fireplace, under a magnificent chandelier, but the place clashed with the memories fresh in my mind such that I was in shock. We were desperate for news of my father and Monique. We had to fill out forms. We put notices on the wall. We read all the notices, people searching for loved ones, wanting news of the returning prisoners. Pictures and pleas. An agreeable young woman at the desk said, ‘Oh, yes! We had news of a Monsieur Vallon, returned from one of the camps.’ Oh, we were so happy! I clasped my mother. We embraced in the lobby and wept. It was an eternity before the young woman returned, and with a long face she apologized again and again. She had made a mistake. It was not Monsieur Vallon, she said. It was Monsieur Ballon.”

Annette lowered her head.

“But soon we learned certain things.”

She ticked off a list on her fingers.

“We learned that my father died at Buchenwald on February 6, the very day the Russians had liberated my mother and me at Koenigsberg.

“That the abbé, Father Jean, had died there too.

“That Robert had survived Buchenwald and was in Paris.

“Much later we learned that the
aviateurs
who had been arrested with us, as I had suspected, went to the stalag and were liberated at the end of the war.”

She paused and looked into the air, as if trying to remember more.
Robert. Buchenwald
. The words sank into Marshall’s mind. After a moment she shook her head and went on.

“Not long after we arrived, Monique came to the Lutetia to find us. We had managed to send a letter to her, carried to the embassy by a French officer who arrived in Poland when the war ended. For weeks, Monique had come by Métro from Saint-Mandé to meet the arrivals of the
déportés
. Our hope of seeing her had helped my mother survive in the hospital. When we saw her we could hardly speak. She had not only grown tall and elegant—now eleven!—but we could see the suffering on her sweet face, as if it had been continuously taut with tears and worry. Her embrace was so tender, as if she thought we might break. We were still extremely thin and weak, and she could not hide her shock.

“Monique had been with our friends, the Mauriacs, and they had cared for her, and she had continued in school. The Mauriacs had managed to retain our apartment, and thus we were able to return to the same home where you were sheltered. The Germans had plundered only the paintings and some of the furniture.

“When we walked into that apartment, my mother, for the first time in the year since our arrest, broke into tears. All her emotion of the year—her fear and worry—had gone into survival, into protecting me, keeping up my spirits, calculating means of survival, enduring the diverse hardships, hating our tormenters. She had never allowed her grief and sorrow to flow until now. My mother dropped to the floor, swooning with release but also with grief—for Papa.

“For some time I had been mother to my mother, and now I found I had to be the mother still and to hold her and caress her and assure her. And I had to do the same with Monique, who must have been both overjoyed and frightened at the sight of us.