Wolfsangel (17 page)

29

Rattling with the cold, still numb with the shock, I climbed into Dr. Laforge’s car.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to find out where they took them.’

‘Did you find out anything?’

The doctor’s eyebrows tightened into the single thick line. ‘Unfortunately, they took the Wolf family straight to the train station. They’ve been sent to Drancy.’

‘Drancy?’

‘It’s a suburb of Paris. A holding centre for prisoners, Jews, resistors –– anyone the Germans consider a “terrorist” –– before deporting them to the camps.’

‘Could I go to this Drancy place?’ I said. ‘Maybe try to see … to help them, somehow?’

‘I know you mean well, Céleste, but I’m sorry, you’d never be allowed to see them.’

‘But surely, just a quick visit. I mean, we did break Patrick and Olivier out …’

Dr. Laforge shook his head. ‘Not a chance. And you going off on some wild goose chase to Drancy would simply be a waste of time and our precious funds.’

‘You’re right, I suppose. But I’d use my own money.’ I fell silent for a minute, thoughts streaming through my mind. ‘And Félicité? You haven’t said anything about her?’

‘Apparently they took your sister and the Reverend Mother straight to the Gestapo headquarters in Avenue Berthelot.’

I gripped the door handle. ‘Oh God, no!’

‘With that cache of arms in the chapel, they’re convinced the nuns are withholding Resistance information, or hiding terrorists, namely your brother and Olivier. The Gestapo are questioning them right now. Then they’ll transfer them to Montluc Prison, for daily interrogation. I’m so sorry.’

My hand flew across my heart. ‘The same torture that almost killed my brother and Olivier.’ As Dr. Laforge took a wide corner, my head started to spin. I teetered on the brink of throwing up, and swallowed hard. ‘What can we do?’

The doctor shook his head. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. I do have one idea though.’

‘What?’

‘Jacqueline told me you’ve accepted her offer to live at her flat and continue our work,’ he said. ‘What would you think about a position with the Red Cross as a nurse in the Montluc Infirmary?’

‘Me, a nurse?’

‘As you know from the Antiquaille, people are desperate for any willing hands in times of war,’ he said. ‘The Red Cross is a respected organisation, even with the Germans, and we have people who could get you a position there; give you the necessary training. It would be a good cover to pass on Jacqueline’s messages to our contacts,’ he said. ‘And it may be your only chance of seeing your sister.’

‘When do I start?’

‘Tonight,’ he said, turning off the main road towards fog-shrouded Lucie-sur-Vionne. ‘I just need to pay a few house calls to some sick patients. I’ll be about an hour. Then we’ll go back to the city.’ He pulled up on la place de l’Eglise, quiet and deserted in the misty twilight.

‘And I’ve informed Père Emmanuel about the arrests. He’s gone to let Claude know his nephew is safe, then he’ll head up to the farm to tell your mother about your sister. And to let her know you won’t be home for some time. Remember, you mustn’t go anywhere near L’Auberge just yet, Céleste.’

‘I remember,’ I said as I got out of the car. ‘Anyway, I need to see Ghislaine.’

***

As I crossed the square to Ghislaine’s home, I took a detour via Au Cochon Tué bar. No note from Martin. He mustn’t have been able to organise the meeting with Obersturmführer Barbie before he left for Germany. Not that I needed it anymore, I’d just hankered after his words, to touch the paper he’d held. More than ever, I chafed for his warm love.

Once in Lyon, when it was safe to return to L’Auberge, I would slip home from time to time and check if Martin was back. I couldn’t imagine what reason I would give him about living in the city, but I would think of something.

I read the sign in the window of Monsieur Dutrottier’s butcher shop: Closed Until Further Notice, and felt the anger boil up inside me.

When Ghislaine opened the door, neither of us said a word. What was there to say for the death of a brother, and a fiancé? I circled her in my arms and felt her heaving shoulders against mine; her quiet sobs.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, tears blistering my own eyes. ‘I don’t know what to say … how to help.’

‘Just you being here helps,’ Ghislaine said. ‘Besides, they did warn us it was treacherous work. Now we know just how treacherous.’

I followed her through to the kitchen, from where I glimpsed her father in the living room. His back turned to me, Monsieur Dutrottier was seated in a rocking chair, his shoulders bent over, a blanket spread across his legs. He looked like an old demented person, staring out the window at nothing. He didn’t turn, or say anything as I sat with Ghislaine at the kitchen table.

‘Poor man,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t I go to him? Say something?’

Ghislaine shook her head. ‘It would only remind him Marc is dead, while your brother is alive.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘But I’m so glad you saved them, Céleste. Père Emmanuel told me. You’re very brave.’

‘I only did what anyone would have. You’d have done the same,’ I said, and told her about the terrible arrests of my sister and the Wolfs.

‘Dr. Laforge says it’s a waste of time to rush off to this Drancy place, but I feel so useless staying here, not doing a single thing to try and help them.’

I laid my hand on Ghislaine’s forearm. ‘But that’s not the only reason I came. I wanted to say sorry for … for what happened to André and Marc, and I wanted to tell you something; something I can’t say to anyone else, but I’ve always trusted you with all –– well most –– of my secrets.’

‘Tell me what, Céleste?’

‘I’m leaving Lucie, to go and work with the Resistance in Lyon. Properly I mean, not our half-baked village efforts. Dr. Laforge is arranging everything.’

‘I understand,’ she said, her eyes glistening. ‘I’d have done anything to save Marc and André. And of course, I won’t breathe a word.’

‘I know you won’t.’

‘My father’s shop’s closed now,’ Ghislaine said. ‘I no longer have work here in Lucie, or anything much to do. And as you can see,’ she said, with a bitter nod towards the living room. ‘My father’s a sick man. He still won’t speak; doesn’t even recognise me sometimes. My aunt –– his sister –– is coming from Auvergne tomorrow, to take care of him.’

She gestured at the chair creaking rhythmically into the tragedy-tinged silence. ‘I can’t bear to sit here and watch him slide towards the grave a little more each day. I have to do something.’

Her hands bunched into fists, Ghislaine pressed them into her belly, kneading and twisting as if trying to unravel a hard knot.

‘Before you came –– just now –– I didn’t know what,’ she went on, the blue eyes filling with a rage I’d never seen before. ‘But now I do. I’m coming with you to Lyon.’

30

‘You’ll be just fine in a few days,’ I said to the prisoner, his face twisting in pain as I gently scraped off the dead skin.

I was thankful I was wearing a mask to hide my grimace and my gagging at the foul rust-coloured discharge from the prisoner’s wound. The first three toes of one foot were black, edged in a mustardy-yellow from which dead skin sloughed off, while the fourth toe was a swollen, navy hue and I knew it too would soon blacken and die. After only one day as a nurse at the Montluc Prison Infirmary, I recognised the terrible sight and smell of gangrene.

Jacqueline Laforge had quickly found false papers for Ghislaine, codename Lucie, which I was certain neither of us would forget. Another Red Cross Resistance nurse from the Montluc Infirmary trained us in a day, our willing hands only too welcome in such desperate times.

‘Thank you, dear,’ the man said with a weak smile. ‘You’re a great comfort to us, you good Red Cross people.’

I dressed his foot as best I could with our scant supplies but I knew that type of infection was beyond any treatment a novice nurse could provide. He would soon lapse into shock and coma. The wretched man would be dead within days. The SS only insisted we keep him alive as they were convinced he was concealing vital information.

I left the desperately-ill man to rest and moved across to Ghislaine, who was dabbing antiseptic onto the facial wounds of another prisoner.

‘That should feel better,’ she said with a comforting pat on his arm.

The man grabbed Ghislaine’s hand and held onto it. While the prisoners’ stomachs craved food, their bodies craved the touch of friendly human hands.

‘Thank you, mademoiselle,’ he said, finally releasing her hand. He shuffled out of the Infirmary, where a guard was waiting to return him to his cell.

‘Everything all right?’ I whispered to Ghislaine, with a glance at the armed sentry, visible through the open doorway.

‘It’s so frustrating, isn’t it?’ Ghislaine murmured, resting the back of her hand against her brow. ‘When all we can do is offer a bit of antiseptic and a few soothing words, knowing our work will be undone as soon as those SS bullies torture them again.’

‘The doc warned us it wouldn’t be easy.’

Ghislaine’s hands shook as she wrung them. ‘Yes I know, but I still don’t see how you’ll manage to get to the women’s section,’ she said with another nervous glance at the guard. ‘You know he won’t leave his post for a second, or ever let us out of here.’

‘I’ll find a way.’

‘Duties will be carried out in silence!’ the sentry shouted as our next patient shuffled in, a scarlet trickle from a gash staining one cheek.

‘Lie down, we’ll take care of you,’ I said, and began to bathe the fresh wound.

‘Bless you,’ he said, as I slid our copy of the underground newspaper ––
Combat
–– within his view.

I kept one eye on the guard as the prisoner quickly scanned the newspaper, containing mainly articles criticising the actions of the Vichy government, Nazism and collaboration.

‘Thank you, mademoiselle,’ he said, shuffling off to return to his cell, where he would pass on the precious information he’d gleaned about what was truly happening in the war.

Ghislaine and I worked together to plaster a man’s arm, which the SS had twisted and broken.

‘Sorry, it’s a bit messy,’ I said, the mixture slopping over the floor and our white aprons. ‘It’s our first plaster.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do a great job,’ the prisoner said, his eyes scanning the articles of another underground paper ––
Libération
–– I’d slid beneath his gaze. His arm in an untidy sling, also our first, he thanked us and left as the bell sounded midday.

Lunch break, and my only chance to catch a glimpse of Félicité; perhaps a hurried word.

***

As Ghislaine –– Lucie –– and I stood in the dining area ladling out soup to long lines of haggard prisoners, I scanned the room for my sister.

‘Thank you, dear,’ one man said with a small smile. ‘This German soup isn’t too bad. Shame the Boche are so stupid, spoiling it with all that cumin. At least it’s better than their other one, though.’ His mouth twisted in a grimace. ‘Tastes like bitter almonds.’

‘Nothing like the good Red Cross evening soup, eh?’ the next prisoner said, with a weary wink. ‘At least you get something in the water –– a potato, a carrot, maybe a leek.’

‘Prisoners will cease to speak!’ the guard snapped, standing stiffly beside the queue. ‘Or you’ll be back in the cells with nothing at all in your miserable bellies.’

My eyes kept skittering across the desperate faces. None of them was Félicité.

‘She must be here somewhere.’

‘We’ll keep looking,’ Ghislaine muttered, as we continued spooning out the stipulated half-litre of soup into bowls marked with
Secours National
and
La Croix-Rouge
.

‘Just the sight of that insignia alone is a comfort,’ another prisoner said to us as he moved off.

By the end of lunchtime I was certain my sister had not been in the eating area.

‘Maybe they’re keeping her locked up like they do some of the prisoners?’ Ghislaine said. ‘Giving her soup in her cell?’

I shuddered at the image of Félicité beaten and lying on some cockroach-infested straw mattress.

***

‘I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted,’ Ghislaine said, as we left the sour stench of Montluc Prison after our first gruelling day. There had been no news, or sight, of Félicité.

‘Not too tired to come to the station with me, I hope? I want to see if I can get a ticket to Drancy. I can’t bear the idea of not doing a single thing to try and help the Wolfs. Of course, I wouldn’t think of using our funds though, I’ve got enough of my own money.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous to go near the holding camps?’ Ghislaine said,
as we squeezed onto the crowded trolleybus.
‘They might throw you in there too. But I suppose if you insist, we could go and see.’

Amidst the crowd at the Perrache
railway station
, I glimpsed flashes of the Germans’ almond-green uniforms amidst the drab garments of the Lyonnais people.

‘Let’s find the ticket-office,’ I shouted over the screech of axles and the hiss of steam. I took her arm and we fought our way through the cursing, crushing throng.

‘You must be joking, mademoiselle?’ the man said, when I asked for a ticket that would get me to the Drancy holding camp. ‘Why ever would you want to go there?

‘My friends are being held in the camp,’ I said. ‘I must try and see them.’

The ticket man shook his head. ‘They don’t let visitors in,’ he said. ‘Ever. You’d be wasting your time and money, mademoiselle.’

Ghislaine touched my elbow. ‘It would be silly to go chasing off to Drancy for nothing. Let’s go home.’

‘All I want is to try and help them,’ I said, clutching Ghislaine’s arm as we made our way out of the ticket-office. ‘I didn’t get to see my sister and it seems I won’t get to see the Wolfs either.’

As we started walking away from the station, a jumble of suitcases and bundles on a siding caught my eye.

‘What are all those things?’ I looked about us. ‘Nobody seems to be guarding them, or the least bit worried about them sitting out there in the open.’

‘I’m amazed someone hasn’t already made off with them,’ Ghislaine said as we took tentative steps towards the pile.

Many of the suitcases gaped open, the contents spilled out onto the tracks in a muddle of dirty clothes, single shoes, books, a child’s doll –– its china face cracked and grit-stained. The bags and items littered the ground over a wide area, surely many more things than from one single trainload of people. Much of it was sodden and flattened, as if it had been sitting there for days.

‘Who do all these things belong to?’ Ghislaine said.

I shook my head as we kept walking amongst the mess, trying not to step on anything. ‘I have no idea, but I can’t imagine any little girl abandoning her doll.’

In the lamplight, a flash of something bright caught my eye. I looked closer, bent down and plucked it from the debris. It was a little wooden soldier, with a red coat. The face of the toy was crushed, almost split in two, as if a careless heel had trampled on it.

It was a little newer-looking, and larger than the soldier Papa had carved for Patrick, but my fingers tightened around the figure as I lifted it to my chest. With my other hand, I groped about for my angel pendant. There was nothing, only a great, gaping emptiness where it normally sat. But, as if it were still around my neck, the leather cord seemed to tighten, so much that I felt it was strangling me.

I gulped in breaths of air, one hand grappling with that invisible choker, the other still clutching the soldier with the red coat.

My tears came, dripping silently onto the pile of abandoned belongings, and the first snow fell, light and soft as a ballerina’s step.