He put on his trousers and showed her his moves on the crutches. “I’ve been practicing. I’ll be dancing the fox-trot with you one of these days real soon.”
She was about to burst with her news. Throwing caution to the wind, she said, “Hank, mon amour, I have something to tell you.”
“You can tell me anything, sweetheart. Anything at—”
His next words were drowned by the whine of aircraft and a series of muffled booms.
“Air raid,” Lisette said. “My God—”
He hobbled outside and looked around. “There’s too much ground fog. That’s bad. They won’t be able to see the landing zone.”
“Hank, what is happening?”
“You need to run for cover. The Allied invasion is starting.”
Part 5
Aix-en-Provence
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
–Dorothea Lange, American photographer
Seventeen
“What happened that day?” Camille stepped back from the long table scattered with documents, laptops, and an old-school microfiche reader. She, Finn, and Roz were at the university in Aix-en-Provence going through some barely readable printouts on microfiche, containing news reports about the liberation of the town of Bellerive.
“Depends on who you ask,” Finn said, referring to a narrative accompanied by a photo of an American soldier washing the face of a distraught little boy. “Everybody has a story.”
“It would help if we knew what we were looking for,” Roz muttered.
Camille refilled their glasses of citron pressé. The iced fresh lemon was their only defense against the heat of the day. The archives were housed in a cavernous eighteenth-century building filled with meticulously cataloged files. Many had been rendered in microfiche, and a good number of those were now in digital form. But there was so much raw data, still uncategorized.
“This is Bellerive,” Finn said a few minutes later, showing them a creased photograph. The picture showed a bridge reduced to rubble next to a river. There were no markings anywhere on the photo.
Camille felt a chill despite the heat. “It looks like so many of the others,” she said. “Every town in the district has a stone bridge.”
“This is part of a sign. And here, a piece of a garden fountain.” He turned the photo and indicated a fragment of twisted metal with some print on it, and a broken piece of concrete in the shape of a fish. Then he showed her a picture of a riverside café, dated a few years before the arrival of the Allies. In that shot, the bridge was intact. There were café tables arranged around the fountain under a grape arbor.
“The Café de la Rive,” she said, and the chill intensified. “It just feels so personal. Do you think this photo is from the day of the invasion?”
“Likely,” he said. “Hey, do you want to take a break?”
She looked up at him, startled that he could read her mood. Startled that he cared. She wasn’t used to this. She wasn’t used to anything about this—the feelings he stirred in her, the way she was drawn to him. “What did you have in mind?”
A short time later, they were in his car with the windows rolled down. Fields and fields of sunflowers flanked the highway, the intense yellow creating a glorious contrast with the bluer-than-blue sky. It occurred to Camille to ask where they were going, but she had decided, just this once, to experiment with surrender. For the past five years, she had been so preoccupied with being in control that she’d nearly forgotten what it felt like.
He switched on the radio, and they listened to French pop songs along the way. It was a singular feeling, letting go so completely, the breeze snatching her hair through the window as the deux chevaux trundled through the countryside and with “J’ai besoin de la lune” wailing from the radio. She wondered if he realized how new this was to her, exhilarating and risky, like teetering on a narrow precipice.
After a while, Finn said, “Back in the States, you said you weren’t a photographer.”
“No, I said I didn’t take pictures anymore.”
“Grab that bag from the backseat,” he said.
She turned and picked up a heavy canvas bag. “A camera?”
“Yep. I borrowed this from the photography department. It’s one of the best on the market today.”
She unzipped the bag and took it out, a glorious high-performance Nikon. “It is,” she agreed.
“Thought you’d like to check it out.”
“Oh. Well . . . thanks.” She looked through the viewfinder at the scenery outside and explored some of the camera’s functions.
He glanced over at her. “I like watching you handle it. Like a pro.”
“Really?”
“It’s kind of sexy.”
“Shut up.” She could never quite tell if he was teasing. When she glanced over at him, she caught him in an unguarded moment, his face somber as he watched the road ahead.
“Was your dad a pro?” she asked.
He didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Yeah. Yeah, he was.”
She’d guessed right, then. She was getting better at reading him. “I’d like to see some of his pictures.”
“Sure. I’ll show you one of these days. But today I want to show you something else.” He turned off the main road, following signs to Gordes. There was a monument indicating that the entire village had been awarded a medal for its actions in August 1944. “Ever hear of Willy Ronis?”
“Are you kidding? Yes. He’s one of my photography heroes. He and Cartier-Bresson. I’ve been obsessed with them for years. What made you think of him?”
“Want to go to his house?”
“What?”
The deux chevaux’s gutless engine whined in protest as he drove up a series of steep, ancient streets. They got out and walked up to the top of Gordes, passing ancient stone cottages decked with vines and flowers. He stopped at a neat, unassuming cottage with two weathered wooden doors. One was marked privé and the other salon ronis.
“No way,” Camille said softly. “Willy Ronis lived here?”
“He did.” Finn slipped a donation into the honor box beside the door and held it open. Light streamed through the open window, settling on Ronis’s most famous and remarkable picture. It was a shot of his wife in the nude, turned away from the camera’s eye as she bathed in front of a rustic sink. The interplay of light and shadow gave it a painterly quality. Camille was inspired by the perfect timing and unabashed tenderness of the shot.
“It’s quite a picture,” she said. There were several others on display, shots of everyday life in the Luberon—a fieldworker resting against his panniers, a little boy running past a window, holding a toy airplane aloft, a cat climbing a curtain. “I like his joie de vivre.”
“He lived to be ninety-nine,” Finn said. “That’s a lot of joie.”
She smiled and stepped outside the stone cottage, surveying the winding streets, with their ancient doors and arcades. It was late afternoon, a time photographers called the golden hour, when the light was drenched in deep color, carving out shapes with razor-edged clarity. An elderly couple walked past an arch in the stone that was decked in twining hollyhocks. At that moment, a butterfly flitted past. The old man gestured at it with his finger just as the light touched it. And without even thinking about it, Camille lifted the camera to her eye and took the shot.
Back at the university, they met up with Vivi and Roz, who were cataloging more items from Sauveterre. “Sometimes you find out things you’d rather not know,” Roz said, holding up a picture of a woman whose head had been shaved to punish her for being a Nazi’s mistress. “We can stop if you like.”
“No,” Camille said, wincing at the woman’s shamed expression. “Let’s keep going. I want to know everything about that day.”
“It’s still in living memory for a few locals. One of my students prepared a list of them, with their contact information,” Finn said.
She nodded. “I hope my father’s cousin Petra is willing to share. Where was Lisette that day? Who was she with?”