Duchess

Chapter 17

     "Are you the owner of this house?" The Nazi captain said in broken French. A group of at least ten soldiers were knocking on the doors of homes across the street and beside us.
     "I am a renter, but yes," I answered in German, causing the man to look up surprise, "this is my house."
     "A pretty Frenchwoman like yourself speaks German?"
     "Ja. I went to a boarding school in Bremen." I was disgusted by his flirtatious manner but I returned it, hoping to use it to my advantage.
     "I am with the German police."
     "Die Gestapo?"
      He shook his head, but seemed to give a small subconscious shrug that indicated I was correct.
"I have always wanted to meet a German officer, Captain. You will do quite nicely."
     "I need your documents and identification, m'lady."
     I nodded calmly and handed him an envelope full of counterfeit documents made by the United States government, trying to conceal my uncontrollable trembling.
     "Frau Anne-Laure Gilbert?" the officer asked quizzically as he read each paper, "Where is your husband?"
     My heart sank. There, on a single food ration card, the man in the front of the breadline had signed my name with a 'Madame' in front of it, instead of  'Mademoiselle.'
     "He just left this morning for a meeting in Paris. He is a doctor, you see, so the medical school where he was trained often hosts meetings for the alumni to share ideas and research."
     "And his papers?"
     I was at a loss for words. I simply could not show this SS officer a photograph of the United States Head of Intelligence and tell him it was my husband, no matter how 'disguised' he was.
     Perhaps if it had been a member of the French police I could get away with it, but this man worked directly for Heinrich Himmler, the man with the ugly glasses and patches of hair that used to storm into the Munich newspaper office and swear like a maniac if someone accidentally published the truth.
     "I believe he took his papers with him," I said nonchalantly, panicking on the inside, "but I will check again. I'm sure you don't mind waiting."
     The captain held the door open and motioned for a few of the men waiting by the curb. "We will check for you."
     He pushed past me and hurried upstairs with about four other men, dispersing into each room. I stood helplessly by the door, cringing at the sound of bookshelves being destroyed and our drawers ransacked.
I wondered if we had cleaned everything correctly, and if the house showed a story of a husband who had left on a business trip that morning.
Benjamin's papers would certainly not be found unless I volunteered them, but I had no idea what else they would find in the house.
Outside, I noticed our next-door neighbors, a husband and a wife, being dragged out of their house in handcuffs, screaming to be let go. This whole time, we had been living next to Jews or Resistance members and we hadn't even suspected it. The idea of the missed opportunity for a friendship and an alliance made me want to cry.
I ran up the stairs and sucked in a sob at the sight of our pillaged home. The captain sauntered in from our bedroom and brandished a small folded letter that I had been in the process of writing to one of my friends in the city.
"Alexandre and I would be delighted," the man read almost gleefully, "to go out with you and your husband on the nineteenth of this month, if your invitation still stands."
     It felt as though the wind had been knocked out of me. Today was the eighteenth and, if my husband had been in Paris, there would have been no way for him to be committed to dinner tomorrow evening as well.
     "Search the house for Herr Gilbert," he called to the others, "and anyone else this woman may be hiding. You are under arrest for harboring Jews and fugitives—"
I threw up my hands. "What? I'm not hiding Jews or anyone else; you haven't found traces of a single other person in this house but me and my husband!"
"We will find them soon enough," the captain said calmly, reaching to tie my hands together, "when we dynamite this whole street."
I wrenched away from his grasp and tried to back away in desperation, but he lunged for me and knocked me to the ground.
Crying out as he slammed my head into the side of an end-table, I tried to imagine Benjamin in agony on the other side of the wall, the others trying to restrain him. I had to stop making noise, or Ben would come out and try to 'rescue me.' I could take it.
They dragged me down the stairs and into an open wagon in the middle of the street, where other neighbors had been arrested as well.
The captain who was once polite shoved me into the wagon, causing me to hit my head on one of the splintered benches before a woman helped me sit next to her.
Tears streamed down my face, but I felt numb. It was then that the fact of what he'd said inside the house registered. They were going to dynamite the whole neighborhood, and Benjamin and the others would be trapped. I had never pressed the bell to let them know to escape through the back door.
Hysteria began to envelop me, and I fought desperately to get off the wagon and run in to somehow warn them. They would burn along with the rest of the house.
"Shh, it's okay," my next door neighbor, Ruth, whispered to me, pulling me into her arms, "There's nothing we can do."
"You don't understand," I sobbed, "I have to warn my—"
Her husband, Thomas, put a hand over my mouth and motioned to the driver of the wagon just inches away from us, listening to everything we were saying.
The truck began to drive away with us in the back, a melting pot of rebels, American spies, the falsely accused, Jews, Jew-hiders, Resistance members, and those that smart-mouthed the Gestapo.
I was devastated. The sign for Alexandre Gilbert, M.D. slowly disappeared, and I wondered what was happening in that house.
There were probably guards posted, but did they know that? Would they come out of hiding only to be ambushed by Nazis?
We wove through the streets of Old Port Marseille, often coming upon wagons full of prisoners just like us.
People looked at us disdainfully, and one man tried to grab a woman from the wagon and spit in her face. The woman, probably my age, was clutching a bag like her life depended on it, and silent tears streamed down her neck.
We were silent, for the most part. We silently exchanged terrified glances, unwilling to reveal any part of ourselves. It was what had gotten us in this mess in the first place.
I looked down at my hands and realized what would come when we got to whatever police station or prison camp we were headed to.
If they fingerprinted me, I would be recognized as Louisa Tallmadge, and I didn't even want to imagine the torture that would come with that name.
I slowly reached under the seat and found a sharp piece of metal, running my fingertips across it as hard as I could. The pain was miserable, and I felt the rusty steel tear into my tissue, but it was the only way to avoid being fingerprinted.
Pulling my hands back up, Ruth gasped at the sight of what I had done to myself.
"I cannot be identified," I whispered softly, "You wouldn't understand."
She looked down at her feet. I instantly regretted my sharp words.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
"I know. It's alright, my dear."
As we rode through town, I looked around at the interested crowd following closely behind.
Gaston Defferre caught my eye, and his face tightened with worry when he recognized me. Everything in me wanted to call out to him, but I couldn't.
"Where's your husband?" he mouthed to me silently.
Tears welled up in my eyes once again, and I shrugged helplessly. "Trapped," I breathed under my breath in dejected misery.
Defferre took off running towards Rue de Caisserie where Ben and I lived. He turned back just before disappearing around the corner and gave me a reassuring nod, a look of determination on his face.
It felt as though a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, knowing that Defferre would do everything he could to help Benjamin and our guests escape.
Once we arrived at the train station, we were herded into a train car that looked quite like the one I rode while escaping to Stuttgart, and I thought about the fate of those I met there. Executed.
Over seventy of us piled into the single boxcar, people fighting to find a place by the window. I didn't want to fight. I curled up against the wall and put my head in my hands as sobs racked my body.
Suddenly, a young girl's screams of desperation caused me to jump to my feet. A brown-haired girl of about eight or nine years old was being crushed by the crowds of people, her arms reaching out between the feet of the scrambling adults as she tried to crawl away.
I grabbed her hands and pulled her close to me, shielding her from being kicked as I dragged her out of the crowd.
"It's alright," I whispered, letting her catch her breath against my chest, "You're alright. Where are your parents?"
She looked up at me dejectedly. "I don't know."
"When is the last time you saw them?"
"In my house, when the police took me outside and put me in a wagon. I think they're still at home."
In my head, I knew exactly what had happened. They were dead, probably shot right there in their living rooms, and they were deporting her to be used for scientific experiments. She was probably a Jew.
"It'll be okay," I lied, "They probably got caught up in another train. You can sit with me. What is your name?"
"Agatha." She sniffled quietly and buried her face in my blouse, giving me an excuse to hold her tight and ignore everyone else around me.
We sat in that train car for seven hours, according to an old man who was wearing a pocket watch, and only stopped once to get rid of the dead bodies in each boxcar. I was too dehydrated to cry by then, and Agatha had fallen fast asleep in my arms, which had lost all feeling in them.
The screeching of the brakes aroused everyone from their apathy, and the commotion commenced at once.
Reluctantly, I nudged Agatha awake and helped her to her feet.
"Where are we?" I called to a man peering out of the tiny window.
"Royallieu-Compiègne Internment Camp," he answered, reading from a sign.
"Why, that's north of Paris," someone exclaimed, "isn't it?"
I nodded, stunned. I had filed papers in the OSS considering the intelligence gathered about this camp, and I remembered reading that it primarily deported to Auschwitz.
That would mean nothing to the propaganda-saturated men and women around me, but this place was like the prison cell before a death sentence.
German soldiers slid open the wooden doors and began pulling people out, screaming instructions in German which had to be translated into French by people like me who spoke both languages.
I gripped Agatha's hand as though my life depended on it and got in line with the rest of the women and children. My heart raced.
The internment camp used to be French army barracks, whitewashed buildings with red-orange roofs. Tangles of barbed wire were strewn about all across the camp, and the barracks were situated in a U-shape.
"If we get separated," I told Agatha, "you must find another compassionate-looking woman. Just stay quiet and blend in no matter what happens."
My grief had turned into resolve, at least for the moment, and I was determined to stay alive and help as many other people as I could.
"Folge mir!" a Nazi officer screamed at the line I was in.
"He's saying 'follow me,'" I translated into French for those around me.
The man led us into a dingy building where we were stripped of all our clothes and belongings. I removed my wedding ring and locket necklace and placed them under my tongue, avoiding turning in my precious jewelry with the rest of my things. Once they had finished searching me, I put them back on.
"In die Duschen!" Into the showers. My heart sank.
I thought about the report I had read at my desk in the OSS about gas chambers disguised as shower rooms.
At the time, I had been disgusted by it, but consoled myself that there was nothing I could do to help. Now I was here, desperately wishing someone had done something to help me.
The showerheads above looked normal, but I was hysterical with the fear that gas, not water, would come out of them.
I had been gassed before in training, but we had only taken our masks off for a second, breathed it in, and ran outside choking and crying in pain.
"Imagine," Benjamin said at the time as we washed our mouths and eyes out with water, "having no escape in a room like that. How terrible." I had agreed.
"Agatha," I said urgently, "stay close to me. If I tell you, you mustn't breathe anything in for as long as you can, alright? And squeeze your eyes shut."
"But why?"
"You—you will see later."
Everyone else seemed tense but naive as the doors were locked behind us, but I caught eyes with another young woman with the same fear in her eyes that I had.
"Hold your breath," she mouthed to me.
I shook my head. That wouldn't be good enough. 

I motioned tightly shutting my eyes and plugging my nose, and she nodded.
Suddenly, I found myself drenched in freezing cold water. Real showers.
I exchanged glances with the woman and we both grinned with dirty, rank-smelling water pouring down our faces.
     "Do I need to hold my breath?" Agatha yelled over the din of hundreds of women.
     "No, my dear. You'll be quite alright I think. Wash yourself well; this may be the last shower we get in quite a long time."
     We filed out of the showers and were handed dingy white pants and shirts to wear, and I gagged at the smell as I put it on over my head. Someone had died in these clothes.
     "Get in line," a German shouted at us as we came back outside into the sunlight, "Schnell!"
     Standing as still as I could so as not to be noticed, I gripped Agatha's arm as a uniformed woman picked out men and women from the group.
     It was then that I realized why they were dividing us: those that were not chosen were to be deported straight to a death camp, or perhaps shot right here in Compiègne. Those chosen by this woman were being sent to barracks to survive a little longer.
     "You," she said harshly, pointing at me and then to one of the Nazi soldiers waiting by the distant buildings, "follow him."
     My eyes widened. I couldn't just leave Agatha to suffer whatever fate they had in store for her, but it seemed I had no choice.
     "Schnell!" she dragged me by the arm and shoved me roughly, causing me to lose my balance and fall face-first into the dust before catching myself on my hands.
     I looked back and nodded reassuringly to Agatha, and she forced a smile. It will be okay, I breathed as I stumbled towards the barrack A4.
     The tears began to fall as I realized the gravity of all that had happened. My hope of getting out of this place was all but gone, and I marched determinedly towards the building I would probably die in.
     It will be okay, I kept repeating to myself, finding it harder and harder to breathe as I became overwhelmed with grief and frustration, It will be okay.

GERMAN WORDS:
Ja- Yes
Die Gestapo- The Gestapo (German secret police)
Herr- Mr.
Folge mir- Follow me
In die Duschen!- Into the showers!
Schnell!- Hurry!