shouts came from the street, and I broke away to look outside. ‘Jews,’ I heard someone say as I stood slowly from my chair. ‘Undesirables.’ Armoured lorries drove up to the train station, rattling the windows and shaking the trees, infecting the square with the roar of humming engines. Milice jumped out the back, guns drawn, surveying the roads.
‘What’s…’ I looked at Papa, only to turn back to the window. ‘What’s going on?’
The lorry engines turned off, and I heard marching not that far away, getting closer, watching in horror as men and women walked trance-like past Papa’s window and into the train station under the drawn guns of the Milice, handing them over to the police who collected identification papers. Children clung to their parents, bundled in wool coats and scarves for a long journey. The men pleaded with the miliciens to let their families go, calling themselves Frenchman—and ominous word to go with the shuffling of their feet.
Gestapo filed stiffly out of the train station, monitoring.
‘Papa,’ I said. ‘When are you going to believe?’ Sad, desperate faces pleaded for help from the other side. ‘The police,’ I said, looking at him over my shoulder, ‘anyone who works for the regime takes orders from the Reich. Always has, Papa.’
He’d kept his head down. I threw my fists on his table and he jerked, wiping his eyes with a hanky from his pocket. ‘Don’t you hear that sound? Papa!’
He scooted from his chair, and walked out of the room and into his office, softly closing the door behind him, leaving me to boil by myself.
I looked at my pocketbook, and then my keys, grabbing them as I flew out the door.
22
I drove home in a fury, bursting through the front door, crying and sniffling at what I’d seen. Mama turned away from the sink. She stared at me for a second or two standing in the entryway, and then went back to her dish. ‘Mama,’ I said, and she snapped from her fog.
‘Yes?’ she said, and then wiped her hands on her apron, rushing over. ‘What is it? What happened?’
‘Something awful.’
I told her about the Jews I saw walking past Papa’s wine bar. She didn’t seem surprised, nodding. I stopped short of telling her about Charlotte’s miscarriages, knowing Mama wouldn’t be able to handle such news.
‘Are you angry, or just sad?’ she asked. ‘I find I’m both most days.’
I put my hands on the sink and looked out Mama’s kitchen window to the barrel cellar, which appeared to be locked up tight; no sign of Luc, and I needed him. ‘Right now, I’m angry.’ I let out a shrill little scream that scared the sparrows living in the eaves. ‘I don’t know who anybody is anymore.’
I went downstairs into the root cellar and came back up with a tube of paint and a nice-sized brush. ‘What are you going to do with those?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Where will you go?’ Mama suddenly looked worried. ‘I don’t want you painting in open squares. There’re informants lurking around all over the city, now with the Milice handing things. The police are too dumb to think you’ll strike again so soon, but the informants…’
‘I need a better way to get the paint onto the brush,’ I said, remembering how careless I had been the other night dripping paint. ‘I need a palette.’
‘A palette?’ she almost laughed. ‘You can’t do that…’
I eyed Mama’s apron sheers, and used them to snip the top off, making it one deep dish. ‘There,’ I said, tucking it into my inner jacket pocket. ‘Nobody can see.’
‘Where are you going?’ Mama said.
I thought for a moment. ‘The shopping district. I don’t want to be predictable, and you’re right about the open squares.’
‘Promise me you’ll tell me where you go every time you paint. I’m worried about you. Gérard, he’s a tyrant, but he’s also stupid. As strange as it sounds, I think the painting is more dangerous.’ She kissed my cheeks. ‘You’re all I have left.’
‘Mama,’ I started to say, ready to tell her about Gérard leaving for Paris, but she’d gone back to washing her dish in a fog. ‘I’ll be careful,’ I said.
*
The shopping district looked dark and forgotten in the dead of night, shaded windows facing each other from across street. Metal doorknobs glinted, tucked and hidden in even darker doorways. I tightened the scarf over my hair. Watching, waiting, listening, pulling my coat tightly across my chest.