the fifth floor where they made the interrogations, there was a bathtub like a coffin, with a lid.”
She hid her face in her hands for a moment, then went on. “Maman was terrified that I might be tortured, and I was terrified that she would be, but we knew so little. We knew not to betray Robert or the priest or Papa.”
“Or Broussine,” Marshall said.
“Bien sûr.” She lowered her voice.
“After Maman’s visit, I went to see Robert myself. His mother allowed me in, but she regarded me up and down with disapproval. I was still a student, and my clothes were modest. I was glad Madame Lebeau survived the war with her dignity intact, but I felt right away that she was not good for Robert. Robert appeared in loose garments, not what one would wear on the street, but I did not think he was an invalid. He was pale—and shockingly thin.
“ ‘Can you tell me anything?’ I asked him, after we made some confused greetings. We were both ashamed and filled with pain. I was happy his mother was not in the room.
“He shook his head.
“ ‘Was my father with you?’
“He gazed at his feet. ‘I lost him,’ he mumbled. ‘I did not see the end.’
“ ‘Robert,’ I said. ‘Look at me. Remember what we shared.’
“He turned his head away. I saw the drawings he was making and wondered what his mother thought. I tried not to look at them. There was one that was lurid, and grotesque, and horrible, but also erotic. It was a nightmare. I did not have to ask more. Robert lifted his sleeve and showed me the small black number tattooed on his arm. I put my hand on it and squeezed his arm. I laid my head on his chest.
“ ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I have nothing.’
“That’s what I remember, ‘I have nothing.’ He seemed to mean, ‘I am nothing and so I have nothing for you.’ I remember that it seemed not a rejection of me but a rejection of himself. It broke my heart.”
Annette looked away, toward the hedge, and cleared her throat.
“I saw him again at his parents’ épicerie several months later. We sat and talked in the back room. Robert was not in full health, and his spirit remained low. He was drawing in a sketchbook, and I could see that he was drawing more frightful images like the shadows of hell. His mother interrupted us. ‘Robert is going to take over the épicerie very soon,’ she said with pride.
“ ‘I will sell rutabagas,’ Robert said.
“ ‘No, you will never sell rutabagas!’ his mother said. ‘No one in France will ever eat a rutabaga again.’
“He was indifferent. He bent over his sketchbook.
“ ‘Rutabagas are for pigs!’ his mother said with scorn. ‘Rutabagas tear out the insides.’ She clenched her abdomen and said she still had trouble.
“Robert had a half smile playing on his face. ‘I am useless,’ he said to me.
“ ‘Robert is going to marry Hortense,’ his mother said. ‘Hortense is the daughter of Monsieur “the Hat King.” He has his shop on the rue de Vaugirard. The most chic chapeaux!’
“Robert grunted, as if it did not matter to him whether he be married or not. Or with whom. I did not see how he could marry with anyone, in his bad state of mind. But his mother insisted on the marriage with mademoiselle the daughter of the Hat King. Oh, how his mother complained about the rutabagas she had to endure in the war! But I know she managed to eat well; it was at the camps that the rutabaga reigned supreme. It was her son who was entitled to denigrate the rutabaga.”
Annette’s elaborate gestures as she mocked Robert’s mother would have amused Marshall, but he saw that for Annette the scene was present and alive in her imagination.
She continued. “At the insistence of his mother, I have no doubt, he married this Hortense and proceeded to reproduce like a rabbit! The poor wife—all those children, one after the other, and at the same time Robert fathered an equal number with the mistress! Just think. If he couldn’t be a priest, was he working overtime, such to say, in his secular operation?”
Annette did not laugh at her bitter witticism. Her head sank slightly, and her voice lowered.
“About ten years after the war, I met a man who knew Robert at Buchenwald. I met him at the school where I was training apprentice teachers. Philippe and