59.

“ARE YOU AWAKE?” ANNETTE ASKED, REACHING FOR HIM ACROSS the narrow crevice between their beds.

“Sometimes I don’t know the answer to that even when I am awake,” he said.

“Can’t you sleep?”

“No.”

“I can’t either. I want to tell you something more,” she whispered. She scrunched across to his bed, bunching back the covers, and snuggled in with him.

“What is it?”

“It’s Robert. You see, the war brought us closer,” she said.

“I see. But that is normal, n’est-ce pas?”

“Maman trusted Robert. She wanted me to be safe, and Robert kept me safe when I went with him to Chauny or to Noyon on the train. At first we played the lovers, a common stratagème, so no one would suspect our mission. But then we found retreats, places to be alone.”

Even in the dark Marshall could tell that she was glad that he could not see her face.

“It’s all right,” he said, pulling her closer to him. “I don’t have to know.”

“It is such a small thing. It is not important. But I want you to know.”

Her voice was low, the whisper of a secret.

“On one Friday afternoon, Robert and I went to meet aviateurs at Noyon, but they were not there. There was some slippage in the network. We had made our contact, and then we were told to stay the night in a barn in order to convoy the men the next day. Oh, la la la la, the barn was cold! But we kept each other warm. We did manage to fulfill our duty and guide the aviateurs to Paris the next day. We did our job well, but …”

“C’est la guerre,” he reminded her softly.

She was silent for a long moment, her hands pulling at the covers.

She said, “We would have had a baby—but it wouldn’t grow in me.”

She nestled her head against his neck, and he encircled her shoulders—clumsily, with the two sets of rumpled covers intruding.

“I loved Robert, but our hope was destroyed.”

“But you weren’t destroyed,” he said, feeling her tears. He stroked her hair, trying to soothe her.

“I was always an optimist, as you know. And I was happy, relieved, that I lost the baby. I could not have had it taken from me and murdered. To lose it naturally, this was more acceptable. But still the ache of loss has never dissolved.” She laughed softly, sarcastically, through sobs. “There was a law encouraging family expansion! But there was no food! And then the deportation. The babies born in France had the rachitisme. I don’t know the English word. It was so cruel. I’m sorry if I trouble you.”

“It’s O.K. Go on.”

“Before the war, girls didn’t wander about unchaperoned, but in the war, anything could happen. To misuse my liberty distressed me—the betrayal of my parents. Maman understood, though.”

“Did you ever tell Robert?”

“No, I never told him. I didn’t tell Maurice. I was so content to have a husband who didn’t probe or pry, who loved me, who worked for me. I was so glad to have a son and a daughter. I was so privileged.”

“Did Robert love you?”

“Bien sûr. I know he did. He promised me … he gave me such gifts. He was artiste, you know. He made the pastel portrait of me that you saw in my salon. It survived the war.”

She spoke in whispers, into his ear. He stroked her hair, her cheek.

“When Maman and I arrived at Fresnes prison I was with child, but I did not know it yet. Although I did not have a healthy glow or signs of swelling and bloom that would be natural, Maman soon knew. We lived so closely, and she saw that I did not bleed after we arrived at the prison. On the train out of Paris to Ravensbrück, some weeks later, it pushed from me quickly, with pain no worse than the pain of blisters on the heels, or the frostbite on my nose and fingers. I knew I should have suffered deeper cramps as the little creature tried hard not to let go. But the scraps of food we were fed in prison could not sustain it, and it withered and sloughed from my body. My mother held me as it happened. Later, at Ravensbrück, we learned the fate of the children there. Women had to watch their children starve, or they were forced to see their babies killed. The SS women smashed a newborn’s head against the wall.

“In the end, I felt that so many children died, my not-yet-made being inside me was only a small loss. Yet it was mine, mine alone, and after we were liberated I still felt its empty little spot inside me for a long time. It is still there.”

She lay on her side, facing away from him, curved into him closely, and he held her, steadied her shoulders against her sobs.

“It is very painful to tell you this,” she said.

“I know. It’s all right.”

“I want you to know.”

Annette grew quiet. He had expected more tears, but there seemed to be none.

AS THEY WAITED for sleep, in each other’s arms, he made a mental survey. The field in Belgium. Henri Lechat’s father shot on his bicycle. The woman who taught him French in a barn. The women in black. Claude blown up in his barn. The cat Félix. Chauny and the remarkable Alberts, still there. Nicolas wearing the Bugs Bunny jacket. Pierre offhandedly taking out the “isolated boche.”

The valiant Vallons.

Robert, the ardent youth smuggling costly nutriments to the fallen flyboys.

Odile ordering the schoolboy to tell his parents to cut down the tree to rescue the airman whose arm was torn off. Marshall tried to reconstruct that incident in his mind. If the parachutist’s arm had really been torn off, he would have bled to death before the tree was down, but the guy lived long enough to ask for a cup of coffee. Marshall could almost feel the excruciating twist at the shoulder as the arm caught on a pine branch and the man’s body flipped.

Georges Broussine. Annette had told him more about this elusive figure who had himself crossed the Pyrenees more than once. He was a Jew, she said. A Jew in German-occupied France.

Broussine, the Vallons, the women in black, the Alberts, Odile, Robert Lebeau, the priest, all of them working to save airmen. Now Marshall had to help Annette, even if it meant reuniting her with her sweetheart, Robert. He couldn’t forget the pleasure on Robert’s face when he brought the goose to the Vallons. That eager young face got burnt out, a light gone dark.

So many thousands of stories. Lost. Disappearing.

Webb. The brusque Basque. Hootie.

He intended to search for Odile’s parachutists somehow. But he wouldn’t leave Annette. Sleep was coming. He would figure it out. He knew he would.

Annette had sheltered him; now maybe he could assist her. He looked ahead to helping her bear witness. He saw her standing before a blackboard in a classroom, writing essential words for schoolchildren to remember, showing them the symbols. The ration card. The swastika. The cloth number sewn at her breast. She could speak, firsthand, of the unspeakable.

He could be there.

A soft peacefulness settled over Marshall. The Dirty Lily was fading away, like a mishap in his youth. But the war itself had grown more real to him—so many new questions, like newly discovered photographs. The decades that followed the war, when he went winging around the world dressed up in a blue suit with a gold-braided cap, seemed like a bubble now—an illusion, a fleeting interlude between the war and his retirement, when he circled back to Europe and to the war and to Annette.

He thought about James Ford meeting the sweethearts—Annette and Robert—at the Gare du Nord. Marshall could picture the youthful résistants on bicycles, speeding alongside the Seine, laughing, the breeze snapping her Scottish scarf, her blue beret snug on her head, her cheeks rosy. The boy is looking back to make sure the girl is there.

Le petit Albert, he thought as sleep finally came.

WHEN THEY WOKE AGAIN, she said, “Are you dreaming?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“I was remembering the joy I felt when I heard from you, my big American.” She kissed his cheek lightly.

“Are you warm?”

“Mmm. After today, we will remember the Pyrenees fondly.”