Echoes

21

SERGE WAITED FOR THREE WEEKS BEFORE HE CAME DOWN from Paris to Melun. He had heard the news in Paris, and he was pleased at the result of the mission. The Germans had been severely hampered by the damage they'd done. But he was devastated by the news of Jean-Yves's death. He had been one of their best men. And he wanted to talk to Amadea as soon as he could.

He found her grief-stricken and silent in her room at the farmhouse. The British had still been parachuting men and supplies in, but she hadn't been on a single mission since.

He sat and talked to her about it, and told her they were too short-handed now to bring the men and supplies in safely. She looked at him with agonized eyes, and shook her head. “I can't.”

“Yes, you can. He would still be out there if it had been you. You have to do it for him. And for France.”

“I don't care. I have too much blood on my hands.”

“It's not on your hands, it's on theirs. And if you don't continue the work you've been doing, it will be our blood.”

“They killed four young boys,” she said, looking sick. She was as tortured over them as she was devastated over the death of Jean-Yves.

“They'll kill more if we don't stop them. And this is all we've got. We have no other way. The British are counting on us. There's another big mission coming up soon. We don't have time to train more men. And I need you for something else right now anyway.”

“What?” she asked. As he looked at her, she looked gray. He was putting pressure on her because he knew she had to get back out there. She was too good at it to give up. And he was afraid she would fall apart completely from losing Jean-Yves. She was ravaged by grief.

“I need you to get a Jewish boy and his sister to Dordogne. We have a safe house for them there.”

“How old are they?” she asked without much interest.

“Four and six.”

“What are they still doing here?” She sounded surprised. Most of the Jewish children, if not all of them, had been deported out of France in the past year. The rest were being hidden.

“Their grandmother was hiding them. She died last week. We have to get them out. They'll be safe in Dordogne.”

“And how am I supposed to get there?” She felt hopeless and looked tired.

“We have papers for them. They look like you. They're both blue-eyed blondes. Only their mother was Jewish. They deported her, and the father was killed.” Like so many others, they had no family left at all.

She started to tell him she couldn't do it, and then as she looked at him, she remembered her vows, and thought of her mother and Daphne, and Jean-Yves. And she suddenly felt she owed it to them, maybe in reparation for the lives she had cost. She felt like a nun again. Jean-Yves had taken the woman she had been with him. She knew she would never be that person again. But Sister Teresa of Carmel would not have refused to do the mission. Slowly, she nodded. She had no other choice. “I'll do it,” she said, looking at Serge and he was pleased. He had taken on this particular mission as much for her as for them. He didn't like the way she looked since Jean-Yves's death, and Jean-Yves wouldn't have either. In a way, Serge was doing this for him, as much as for her, and the two Jewish children were orphans, Serge explained.

“We'll bring them here tomorrow night, with their papers and yours. You'll have to hide your other papers in the lining of your valise. Your papers will show that you're their mother, and you're going down to visit family in Besse.” It was in the heart of the Dordogne, where her father was from. She had never been there, and had always wanted to go. She wondered if she would see his château on the way, although she had more important things to do. “You'll have to borrow the car from the farm.” He knew that would be no problem.

She spent the rest of the day in prayer in her room, after she did her chores. She had hardly eaten in the last few weeks, and it showed. The next day she sewed her papers as Amélie Dumas into her suitcase. She knew she'd have the others by that night.

After dinner, they arrived. One of the women from the Paris cell had driven them down. They were beautiful children, and they looked terrified. They had been hidden in a basement for two years, and the only relative they had in the world had died. Serge was right. They were adorable, and they looked like her. They made her wonder what their children would have looked like if she and Jean-Yves had had babies. But there was no point thinking of that now. She sat down and talked to the children for a little while. They fed them dinner, and she tucked them into her own bed that night, and slept on the floor next to them. The little boy held his sister's hand all night. And they both understood what they had to do. They had to pretend she was their mother, and call her “Maman.” Even if scary soldiers questioned them. She promised them that she wouldn't let anything bad happen to them, and prayed she was right.

They left right after breakfast the next morning, in Jean-Yves's uncle's car. She knew she could make the trip in six or seven hours. She brought food with them so they didn't have to stop anywhere. They passed one checkpoint, and she handed the soldiers her papers. They looked at her, glanced at the children, handed the papers back, and waved them on. It was the easiest mission she'd been on so far, and the children slept in the car, which gave her time to think. She felt better than she had in a while, and she was glad she had agreed to do it. They were sweet children, and she felt sorry for them. She was taking them to meet a member of a cell in Dordogne, and he was going to deliver them to the safe house that had been provided. He had said Amadea could spend the night there before she went back. It was a long trip.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when they arrived in the rolling countryside that seemed not to know there was a war on. It looked lush and green and luxuriant. She drove to the address she'd been given, and found it easily. There was a young man waiting for her, who was as blond and blue-eyed as she and the children. He looked as though he could have been their father as easily as she could have been their mother. He thanked her for bringing them down.

“Do you want to come with me, or stay here?” he asked. The children looked panicked at the thought of leaving her. She was the only person there they knew, although they hadn't known her for long. But she had been nice to them. She tried to reassure them, but they both started crying, and she looked at the man she knew only as Armand.

“I'll come.” He got into her car with the three of them, and told her where to go. Five minutes later, they were driving past an imposing château, and he told her to turn into the courtyard. “Here?” She looked surprised. “This is your safe house?” It was a beautiful old house, with many outbuildings, stables, and an enormous courtyard. “Whose house is this?” she asked, suddenly curious. They were not far from her father's boyhood home, although she wasn't exactly sure where it was either.

“Mine,” he said, and she stared at him, as he laughed. “One day. In the meantime, it's my father's.” She smiled in open admiration as she looked around and they got out. The children were staring up at the château in wonder. After two years in a basement on the outskirts of Paris, this was like going to Heaven. She knew they had papers for them that attested to their aristocratic birth. They were allegedly distant relations of the châtelain.

An old housekeeper led them away to get them dinner, as an older gentleman came down the steps of the château. Amadea assumed he was Armand's father. The distinguished-looking man shook her hand and was very pleasant to her, as Armand introduced them. All he knew of her was the name on her most recent set of papers. Philippine de Villiers. Which was how he introduced her to his father, whom he then introduced to Amadea. “May I introduce my father,” he said politely, “Comte Nicolas de Vallerand.” Amadea stood staring at him, and as she did, she saw the resemblance, although he was older than her father had been the last time she saw him. Her father was forty-four when he died, and would have been sixty now. As she looked from Armand to his father, she looked shocked, but said nothing. Armand could see that something had disturbed her severely, as the count invited her inside. They had prepared a meal for her, and served it elegantly in the dining room, as the two men joined her. She was quiet as she looked around, and the count noticed her pained silence but didn't comment.

“It's a beautiful old house. It was originally built in the sixteenth century. And rebuilt about two hundred years later. I'm afraid it's badly in need of repair these days. There will be no one to do it until the war is over. The roof leaks like a sieve.” He smiled. He was looking at her as though there was something familiar about her too. She knew what it was, she was the image of her father. She wondered what would happen if she told him the truth. But things must have changed, if he was hiding Jewish children. It seemed the ultimate irony now, since her father had been banished and never seen again by any of them because he had a Jewish wife.

They finished dinner, and the count invited her to walk in the gardens. He said they had been done by the same architect who had designed the gardens at Versailles. It was a strange feeling walking through the same halls and rooms and places where her father had lived as a boy, and as she walked outside, the thought of it brought tears to her eyes. These same rooms had been filled with the sounds of his voice and laughter as a child and as a young man. They were the echoes of her past, which she shared with these two men, although they didn't know it.

“Are you all right?” Armand could see that she was deeply moved by something. His father was already waiting for them in the garden. She nodded as they went outside, and he showed them around.

“You're a very brave woman to bring those children down on your own. If I had a daughter, I'm not sure I would let her do that. In fact, I'm sure I wouldn't.” He looked at Armand then, frowned, and lowered his voice. “I worry about Armand as well. But none of us has any other choice these days, do we?” In fact they did. There were others who made different choices. She liked the one she was making, and theirs.

As they walked around through the once-beautiful gardens, the count asked her nothing about herself. They were all better off not knowing too much. Everyone was careful these days. It was dangerous to say too much to anyone. But as she sat down on one of the ancient time-worn marble benches that had been rubbed smooth by the elements, she looked up at him with sad eyes.

“I don't know why,” he said gently, “but I have the feeling I know you, that we've met somewhere.” There was no one around but Armand. “Have I?” He was in his late fifties, she knew, and not old enough to be senile. But he looked confused, as though he heard voices from another time, and wasn't sure what he was hearing, or seeing. “Have we met?” he asked her again. He didn't think it likely, but he might have forgotten. And as she sat there, looking at him, she looked remarkably like Armand.

“You knew my father,” she said in a gentle voice, never leaving his eyes with her own.

“Did I? What was his name?”

“Antoine de Vallerand,” she said calmly. Nicolas was his brother, and her uncle, and Armand her first cousin. There was absolute silence between the three of them for an endless moment, and then without saying a word, tears began to roll down his cheeks, and he took her in his arms.

“Oh my dear…oh my dear…” He couldn't say anything else for long minutes. He was overwhelmed by the memories she had brought with her. “Did you know when you came here?” He wondered if that was why she had taken the mission. But she hadn't known.

She shook her head. “Not until we drove in here, and Armand said your name. It was a bit of a shock, as you can imagine.” She laughed through her own tears. “I wanted to say something at dinner, but I was afraid you'd ask me to leave. I wanted to savor it for a little while. My father always talked to me about all this, the place where he grew up.”

“I never forgave my father for what he did. I hated him for it, and myself, for not having the courage to defy him. We were barely civil to each other after that. And when he died, I wanted to ask your father to come home and forgive us. He died two weeks later. And my wife died the year after. I wanted to write to your mother about how I felt about what happened, but I never knew her, and I felt sure she hated all of us.” Instead, he had written a proper letter of condolence, and nothing more.

“She didn't hate you,” Amadea reassured him. “Her family was even worse to her. They wrote her name in the family's book of the dead, and wouldn't let her see her mother when she died, or go to the funeral. My grandmother had come to us two years before, and we got to know her. I never met the others.”

“Where are they now?” he asked, looking concerned, as Amadea took a breath before she answered. The rest was all bad news.

“The entire family was deported on Kristallnacht. Some people thought they were sent to Dachau, but I don't know for sure. My mother and sister were deported to Ravensbrück two years ago. I haven't heard from them since.” He looked horrified by what she had said.

“And you came here?” He looked confused as Armand watched her intently. She was an amazing woman. Armand had no sisters, and wished he had one like her. He was an only child, with no relatives other than his father. They had made the decision to join the Resistance together, all they had in the world was each other, and this house, which was in a genteel state of disrepair as was the property all around them.

“I was in Theresienstadt for five months. Friends hid me before that, after my mother was deported. I was in a Carmelite convent for six years before that.”

“You were a nun?” Armand looked shocked.

“I still am, I suppose,” although that had been questionable for a while. But she was sure again now. Ever since Jean-Yves died. She had found her vocation again. She wasn't sure now that she had ever lost it. She had just taken a brief detour, in extraordinary circumstances. “Sister Teresa of Carmel. I'll go back after the war. I had to leave the convent so as not to endanger the others.”

“What a remarkable girl you are,” her uncle said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Your father would be very proud of you, if he were alive. I am, and I hardly know you.” And then he looked at her wistfully. “Could you stay longer?” They had a lifetime of catching up to do. And he wanted to hear all about the years he had lost with his brother. There were a thousand things he wanted to know.

“I don't think that would be wise,” she said sensibly, showing Carmelite good judgment, as Serge would have said. “I'd like to come back, if I may,” she asked politely. He could see that she was beautifully brought up.

“I'd be heartbroken if you didn't.” They walked back inside then, and spent the rest of the night talking. They never went to bed, and then finally she went to lie down for a few hours before she left.

She went to kiss the children good-bye, and they cried when she left them. And she, Armand, and Nicolas all cried as she drove away. She had promised to come back, and her uncle had begged her to be careful and take care of herself. She could still see them in the rearview mirror, standing in the courtyard, waving, as she turned and they disappeared out of sight. It had been one of the best nights of her life, and she wished that Jean-Yves and her father could have been there. But as she drove back to Melun, she felt them close to her, along with her mother and Daphne. They were all part of an unbreakable chain, linking the present, the future, and the past.