Gaëlle nodded silently. She had no intention of doing otherwise, and for her mother’s sake, and even her own, she was more than willing to agree. Her mother would never have survived deportation, or prison, and Gaëlle did not want to face that either. Their rooms in the attic were the safest place for them to be, and she knew that it was what her father would want for them too. And without her father and brother, they had no one to protect them now. They were at the mercy of the occupying forces, and the Germans who had taken over their home. “Do you agree?” the commandant asked her solemnly, and she responded respectfully. They had killed her father, but she and her mother had nowhere else to go.
“Yes, sir. I do,” she said, her eyes huge and her face pale as she looked at him.
“Very well, and you may hold a proper burial for your father in the cemetery on the estate.” The other two officers looked unhappy about that, and objected strenuously in German. He had been a criminal against the Reich, and he didn’t deserve a hero’s death. The commandant answered them in clipped tones and turned to Gaëlle again. “Do it quickly and quietly. Is your mother well enough to attend?”
“I don’t believe she is,” Gaëlle said seriously, and he nodded, and dismissed her from the room. She felt sick as she walked back to the top floor of the château, up the dark staircase that before the war only the servants had used, and she was obliged to use it now, while the army occupied the rest of the house. But she was grateful that he had spared their lives. All she wanted was peace for her mother now, she had already been through too much.
Gaëlle sat down on her bed and gave in to tears of relief and grief after the meeting. She had lost her father that morning, her brother a month before, and her mother was barely more than a ghost. And her beloved best friend was gone. Gaëlle was entirely alone in the world.
She went through some of her father’s things that night while her mother was sleeping, after going to see the priest late that afternoon. He had heard what had happened to her father, news traveled fast. And several others had been shot that day on the estate, for concealing Jews, to spare them from being sent to deportation camps. But they had been sent anyway now, and the benefactors had been killed. They had paid a high price for courage and compassion, and the tides of evil could not be stemmed.
The priest had agreed to bury her father the next day, with a graveside service that only she would attend, at the commandant’s request.
And as she went through Raphaël’s books and papers, she came across a letter, and an envelope of money with it. It was a small amount, but he had put it aside in case something happened to him. It wouldn’t get them far, but it had been the best he could do. And he had been well aware that if Gaëlle was reading the letter, he would already be dead, and he urged her to take care of her mother and to be careful, wise, and safe herself. He had written it only a month before, and made no reference to his activities in the Resistance, lest it incriminate her and her mother, but now she knew. She was devastated that he had died, but proud of him too. She wished that she had known before, and wondered if he could have helped the Feldmanns if she’d asked him to. But once they were in the detention camp, there was little anyone could do.
There had been a few escapes from the camps, but not many, and most of the internees were too frightened to resist or try to flee. A few young men had tried, but most had been shot and killed as an example to the others. And the camps were full of women and children, young boys, and many older men, heads of families, who thought that less resistance once captured would be less dangerous for their loved ones. And they were French after all, they weren’t foreigners. They were citizens, and how could their own country turn on them in this way, and turn them over to the occupying forces to be deported? They were respectable people, many of them with good jobs and money, and fine homes, and had led exemplary lives. They were lawyers and doctors, bankers like Mr. Feldmann, and professional people who had been responsibly engaged in their communities. But they were Jews—the worst crime now of all. No one had fully understood until then how vast the hatred against them had grown. They were to be shunned and feared, and all association with them avoided. Their money and property had been seized, their jobs and professions taken from them, and they had committed no crimes at all. It was impossible to understand.
Gaëlle put the envelope with the money under her mattress, determined not to use it for anything except medicine for her mother, or some unseen emergency she couldn’t predict. It was all they had.
Apolline came to check on her again that night, and Gaëlle didn’t tell her about the money. She trusted no one now, not even their faithful servant. They all had too much to lose, including their lives. And the next day she met the priest at their small chapel and cemetery, and they buried her father in an unmarked grave with a simple wood cross. She vowed to herself to bury him more respectfully after the war, but for now there was no other choice. At least they had returned his body to them, so they could bury him at home. She could have a headstone made for him later. They buried him next to her brother. It had been a summer of heavy losses.
Gaëlle turned eighteen two months later, and Apolline baked her a small loaf of bread, a great luxury now, and put a candle in it, and other than that, the day went unnoticed. She didn’t mention it to her mother, who hadn’t gotten up since her husband’s death, and took the sleeping powder twice a day now, when Gaëlle brought it to her. Gaëlle herself never went far anymore. She took long walks on the estate and visited the farms occasionally. And she went into the village to get small things for her mother, and their food rations. She had to bicycle two villages away to a pharmacy, for the sleeping powder her mother used to avoid reality and lose herself in her own fantasy world, where nothing bad could touch her.