‘I don’t know,’ I whispered. ‘Movement. A lot of it.’
The wounds on my chest had started to form pus and stuck to the fabric of my smock when I moved. Each blister held the memory of Barbie’s laugh, the way his teeth gritted when he burned me, and Claudette’s very French voice buoying the German cuss words coming from his mouth.
After the last car sped away a cool breeze blew through the window, and I felt a burst of fresh air on my face. I took it in, holding the air in my lungs, trying to remember what France smelled like—not the smell of diesel, and prisoners’ sweat and blood, iron and metal, but the drifts of lilac and jasmine coming from the flower carts and the yeasty warm smell of baguettes baking in ovens. I sank down onto the floor with Marguerite.
That morning I waited for the clink of keys at my door, the dread of the guard’s footsteps coming down the corridor, but the whole prison was silent. Hours passed; I sat with my back against the wall, an anxious feeling brewing in my gut, telling me that what I had seen and heard last night wasn’t just a prisoner transfer, but something else entirely. I put the back of my hand to the wall, made a fist, and thought about knocking.
Marguerite stared at me from the ground, her eyes a glassy brown. ‘Do it,’ she said, as if she knew what I was thinking.
We shared our walls with many prisoners, but nobody ever made a noise. If you did, they’d shoot you in the courtyard. I’d seen it from my window many times. Women who had shouted out the windows to their children below on the street, begging for signs of life that their résistant-mother was still alive, and men who had whispered secret messages about the guards, planning sabotages even though they only had their hands to fight with—gone in a matter of bullets.
‘Go on, Catchfly,’ she said, her cheek against the floor. ‘Do it.’ We both knew I had nothing to lose, not now, not since Barbie took an interest in us. I held my breath and then knocked two times. The sound echoed like metal ricocheting off metal.
My heart banged in my chest from having broken the cardinal rule of Montluc. A moment passed, maybe even a few seconds of complete silence, before I heard the most amazing, breath-drawing noise in the world: a knock back.
Another knock followed another, low and slow growing into a steady, banging beat. Marguerite lifted her head, her arms quaking as she tried to move her body from the floor, listening to the sounds—knocking, followed by people shouting their names and where they were from.
I wept uncontrollably from the sound of their voices. ‘The guards left—the Germans—’
Something even more extraordinary happened, so extraordinary had I not seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it. Out my barred window off in the distance, among the pure white clouds and baby blue morning sky, a plane flew straight for us. The walls shook like an earthquake from the ground and from the ceiling as it passed directly over the prison, the rumbling pulsating the marrow in my bones. A blasting cheer erupted from the prisoners at the sight of an American star painted on its flank.
Marguerite smiled, settling back onto the ground, exhausted by lifting her own weight. ‘Marguerite,’ I said, holding her hand. ‘We made it.’
More planes rumbled overhead, and I swear the walls were going to crumble to the ground. Prisoners stuck their arms out the windows, waving at a rush of armed résistants storming Montluc’s gates, dressed in black with guns slung over their shoulders, fists in the air, shouting words of a victory.
Doors unlocked, people ran down the corridors, searching for their loved ones in other cells. I stumbled out of my room, people running this way and that, my vision very blurry and grey from having stood so quickly. I heard my name, but many women were named Adèle. Then I heard ‘Catchfly’ yelled in the same breath, and I started to cry.
‘I’m here!’ I screamed with all my might, holding on to the stones in the wall as my sight returned, creeping down the corridor. ‘Luc!’
I felt his arms around me before I saw his face. ‘I thought I’d never find you.’ He held my face, wiping tears away as prisoners ran through the corridor shouting about freedom.