For Freedom Read online

  Pierre ran into the hall. I followed. He stopped so suddenly that I bumped against his back. Two German soldiers stood in our hallway, their guns pointed straight at Pierre’s stomach. One of them made a motion with the barrel of the gun, and Pierre, who was taller than the soldier, put his hands above his head.

  A third German, dressed as an officer, stood beside the first two. He looked into our parlor, with its beautiful mural, its fine furniture, and Maman’s piano. He looked into the dining room, where we had been eating our meal. He looked at the carpet and the wallpaper, and he smiled to himself. “Get out!” he roared in heavily accented French. “Hurry! Gather your things. You can take what you can carry.”

  Maman and Papa were in the hallway by now. For a moment none of us moved. “Thirty minutes!” said the German officer. He glanced at the big clock in the hall. “Go!”

  Without a word to each other we sprang into action. Papa went to his desk in the parlor and began to dump papers into his briefcase. Maman ran up the stairs, the boys and I at her heels. I ran into my room. I didn’t know what to take. How long would we be gone? Where would we be going?

  Every moment I agonized was another moment gone. I took my schoolbag off the floor and crammed some of my books into it. My hairbrush, my best hat. I pulled clothes out of my dresser and stuffed my suitcase full.

  Maman appeared in the doorway. “Take your winter coat,” she said. “We don’t know how hard it will be to get you another.” She watched me for a moment. “Don’t panic,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”

  I had no room for the coat in my suitcase. I put the coat on my bed, on top of the pretty spread Maman had made for me. Suddenly I knew the Germans could not have that too. I laid more clothing on top of my coat and gathered the edges of the spread together to make a bundle. It was awkward, but I could carry it.

  Papa came bounding up the stairs, a wooden box under one arm and a green and white china demitasse cup in his hand. The box contained our silver set, which had been my grandmother’s. The cup was part of a set Papa had given to Maman that year. Maman smiled at him. “I have a box,” she said. “I think we will take the whole set.” She carried the cup downstairs and began to pack the demitasse cups and saucers in a box padded with kitchen towels. I followed her.

  “Do we need our pots and pans?” I asked.

  Maman shrugged. Her self-control amazed me. “I suppose so,” she said. “We must have necessities, and we should take whatever is valuable that the Germans might steal. I think the everyday things—the personal things—we can come back for.”

  Papa and Pierre were stacking parcels on the curb. I went back to my room and took my gold-rimmed First Communion cup off my shelf. I wouldn’t want the Germans to sell it. I nestled it carefully inside my suitcase.

  The other things I treasured—my movie star photos, my ribbons and music and books, my photograph of the singer Tino Rossi—would be worthless to the Germans. I could come back for them. But I took some more clothing and carried it downstairs, and I took our toothbrushes and Papa’s razor from the bath. I helped Maman choose the essentials from the kitchen. Papa carried Maman’s sewing machine outside.

  “Time!” shouted the German in the hallway.

  We straggled into the hallway, all carrying one last thing. Etienne had a satchel on his back. “You have my wheelchair?” he asked Pierre. Pierre nodded.

  “Good,” the German said when we were assembled. “Now I need your house keys.”

  I didn’t understand why they needed keys when they had smashed the lock. Papa put his suitcase down, searched in his pocket, and removed the keys from his chain. I looked into the dining room. Our dinner sat on our plates, the cider in Papa’s and Maman’s glasses hardly touched. I wondered if the Germans would eat our food after we had gone.

  “My bicycle,” Pierre said suddenly. I gulped. We both had fine bicycles. I loved mine. They were in the garden shed.

  The officer laughed. “I don’t think you can carry a bicycle,” he said. Something in his tone frightened me. Pierre dropped his eyes.

  I looked toward the garden anyway. There was my new dress, the one Maman had made me, hanging on the line. “Sir,” I said to the officer, “my dress—” He frowned. I didn’t think he understood me. “Outside,” I said, pointing.

  He strode to the back door, opened it, and looked out. Then he laughed, a hard, vicious laugh. “Yes, of course, mademoiselle,” he said with an extravagant sweep of his arm. “We wouldn’t wish you to be without those.”

  When I went out to the garden I understood his laughter. On the line beside my dress hung a row of my white underwear.

  I gathered it all up and took the clothespins too.

  Maman and Papa and Pierre were already on the front walk, but Etienne had waited for me. I carried the wet laundry through our house, looking neither right nor left. One of the soldiers snickered as I went by.

  “Chin up,” Etienne murmured in French.

  As he spoke, one of the soldiers stuck his foot between Etienne’s leg and the tip of his crutch. Etienne fell hard. He gasped in pain.

  I knelt beside him and took hold of his arm. He pulled away. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Nobody helps me. I’ll do it myself.”

  One of the soldiers said something mocking in German. It was easy to guess what he meant even though I couldn’t understand the words. Cripple . I whirled around, wanting to slap him.

  “Suzanne,” Etienne said softly, “don’t. It will make things worse.” He was on his knees now, struggling with his crutches. Gradually he pulled himself to his feet. My knees trembled as I followed him out the door. He was better than they were; he was brave and good. But they had our house.

  All up and down the street we saw German soldiers. All up and down the street our neighbors were being turned out of their homes too. A few houses away Dr. Leclerc stood on the sidewalk, waving his hands in the air as he talked to a German officer. His son played in the grass near his feet. Dr. Leclerc raised his eyebrows briefly at my father.

  “Well,” said Maman slowly, “now I’ll believe anything.”

  “Papa,” said Etienne, “where do we go?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Germans took over the houses on only two streets in Cherbourg: Rue Lohen, which was ours, and Rue Loubet, which ran parallel to it. They also took over the hotel and the château, and some city buildings downtown, for their headquarters and officers’ barracks. Our street housed regular troops.

  “Sales Boches,” Maman sniffed. “Dirty Germans. Sales cochons, those dirty pigs. In my nice clean house.”

  Maman didn’t seem afraid of the Nazis. She seemed ready to fight them.

  Monsieur and Madame Herbert, friends who lived a few blocks away, took us in. They fed us and said we could sleep in their basement until we found a place of our own. “We’ll find somewhere else as soon as we can,” Papa said, shaking his head.

  Monsieur Herbert lit a cigarette and gave it to him. “Yes, of course,” he said. “But tonight you can stay here.”

  “Tonight, yes, thank you,” Papa said. He looked at his watch. “And I’m late getting back for work. I must go.” He forced a smile. “Otherwise the German dogs might fire me.”

  Meanwhile Madame Herbert rearranged the things stored in her basement to make room for our belongings. She had a small bed for my parents to sleep on, and she brought down blankets and pillows and helped my brothers and me make up beds on the floor.

  It was generous of the Herberts, I know. But their basement was damp and musty. The Germans ordered everyone to hang blackout curtains over their windows so that Allied fighters could not see Cherbourg from the night sky. When Madame Herbert hung one over the tiny basement window, it felt as though we were living in a cave.

  “I wish they’d let us have their parlor,” Pierre grumbled.

  “They would let us,” Papa said. “I wouldn’t take it. We must impose on them as little as possible. Who knows how long we’ll have to stay here?”

>   Pierre shrugged behind Papa’s back, as if to say, How long could it take? I shrugged back. I didn’t know.

  I wished I had brought my baby album. The next morning I decided to see if I could get it from our house. Without saying anything to Maman, I walked the few blocks back to our street. It was barricaded, and the barricade was guarded by Nazi soldiers.

  “Please,” I said quietly, “I would like to fetch some things from my old house. Some personal things. I’ll only take a moment.”

  The guards, two young men with large guns, looked at each other and said something in German. One laughed. Then the other waved his gun down the street and said something to me in German that I didn’t understand.

  I could feel my heart beating harder. I could feel my cheeks begin to turn red.

  “Pardon me,” I said. “May I please go to my old house?”

  Again a German response. I didn’t think they understood French. “Right there,” I said, pointing. “That is my house, right there.”

  The soldiers looked, smiled, and pointed. “All right, then?” I said. “Is it all right?” I started to step through the barricade.

  “Nein!” the first soldier said. He pushed me backward so hard that I fell to the ground. At least he used his hand to push me, not his gun. “Nein!” He said more, an angry torrent of words, all in German. I didn’t understand the words, but I understood their meaning. I couldn’t go home.

  “Oh, Suzanne,” Maman cried when I told her about it later. “How could you put yourself in danger for a few photographs? You mustn’t think about the things we left behind. They will be there when we return.”

  I don’t know why Papa thought it would be so hard to find another place to live, but he was right; it was. We stayed with the Herberts for over three weeks. Meanwhile France signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany. It divided our country into two parts: occupied France, where we lived, which was under the control of the German army, and Vichy France, the southern part, which had its own puppet French government under Hitler’s control. I was glad not to live in Vichy France, even if life was easier there. Papa called the Vichy government traitors, and I thought they were too.

  Now there were many restricted areas in Cherbourg where only the Germans could go. Now we all had to turn in our radios. Etienne heard that some people were digging holes to hide their radios in their gardens, but since our radio was in our old house we didn’t have that choice. We were allowed to keep our cameras only as long as we didn’t use them—if German soldiers saw someone taking a photograph, they took that person’s camera and kept it. We were not allowed to send mail outside France. The newspapers printed nothing but German propaganda. In the space of two weeks it became very difficult to know how the war was going. It became impossible to learn the truth.

  One Saturday morning Maman and I walked down to the marketplace, only to find it empty. A scattering of soldiers chased would-be shoppers away. “Go home, madame,” one of them called to Maman. “The market is closed. There is no more Saturday market. Go home.”

  “Why would they take away the market?” I asked.

  Maman looked weary. “There could be harm in a market,” she said. “So many French people all together in one place—there could be harm in a market, Suzanne.”

  I did not understand.

  It was hot. The Herberts were tired of us, and we were tired of them. One day Madame Herbert asked Maman if I could please not practice singing that day. Madame Herbert had a headache, and my scales were so loud.

  It was all I could do not to slam the door of Madame Herbert’s house. She got to keep her house. She could let me sing. I went to Madame Marcelle’s apartment. “May I sing here?” I asked.

  Madame Marcelle pushed back a lace curtain to open the window wider. “Of course, my dear,” she said. “It is always a pleasure to hear you sing. I’m glad you thought to come.” She sat down on her sofa and smiled. “Sing all you like,” she said. “Sing anytime.”

  To Yvette I sang the cabbage song. I thought it might jolt her out of her indifference. It didn’t. I might as well have been singing in Swahili.

  Of all the sadness the war had brought, Yvette was the worst for me. I still went to see her often, but I dreaded it more and more. Yvette’s poor mother looked tired and defeated. “Come again,” she always said, and I always promised, “I will.”

  Finally Papa found us a place to live. “It’s a good little apartment,” he said. He held up his hands. “Four rooms, and a nice little closet where Suzanne can sleep.”

  A closet! I was horrified. But poor Maman and Papa seemed so weary, and we were all so tired of the Herberts’ basement, that I held my tongue. The Herberts helped us carry our belongings through town. Papa stopped on the edge of the cemetery.

  Pierre joked, “I’d rather sleep among the living, thanks.” Maman smacked his arm.

  “There,” said Papa, nodding toward a rickety house overlooking the graveyard. “The second floor.”

  The apartment had a kitchen, a living room, a tiny bath, and two bedrooms. My closet was an alcove off the kitchen, meant to be a pantry. It was barely big enough for a cot. The walls were yellowed, and every inch of the floor was filthy; a smell of old grease hung in the air. I lifted the stained curtain from the kitchen window and saw fresh graves dug in the cemetery. I closed my eyes and remembered the clean prettiness of Maman’s parlor, of my own room. Then I opened my eyes. This was the best Papa could do. I dropped the curtain and turned around.

  “We’ll make it better,” Maman said cheerfully.

  “The bed will look nice with my spread on it,” I replied. “It’ll cheer up the whole room.”

  “It’ll be the whole room,” muttered Pierre.

  “We can make curtains,” Maman said.

  “Pah!” said Papa. “It isn’t a good place.” He sat down on the sagging couch in the main room. The apartment was furnished, sort of. “It’s the best we can do, so we’ll make it do, that’s all. But I have good news too.”

  He waited until we were all listening. “General de Gaulle is safe in England,” he said. “He is organizing a government there. The Free French.”

  “How do you know?” Pierre asked.

  “Pah! I know. Don’t ask questions,” Papa said.

  “How can he run France from England?” asked Etienne. “He doesn’t have any power.”

  “Power, no, but he has authority,” Papa said. “The Allies will listen to him. They will let him make decisions that might help us later on.” Papa shook his head. “De Gaulle is a good man, the best we have. It’s a blessing he is among the Allies.”

  Supper that night was an old fish our new landlord had not wanted, and rutabagas Etienne found when he went to the shops late in the day. We did not have enough plates, so Maman put my food into a bowl. “Only for tonight,” she murmured. “Tomorrow we will find another.” Even with her kindness it was such a contrast to our usual meals that I pushed the bowl away.

  “Eat,” Papa said.

  “I can’t eat,” I said.

  “Suzanne, for shame,” murmured Maman.

  “They have taken everything,” I burst out. “They took our house, they took our food, they took our bicycles—”

  Papa put up his hand. I ignored him. “Madame Montagne’s life—”

  Papa’s hand came down on mine, softly, not hard. “They have not taken anything that matters,” he said.

  “Madame Montagne,” I whispered furiously.

  “No,” said Papa, “our lives belong to the Lord. The Nazis have not taken our work, Suzanne. They have not taken your voice. They have not taken our courage or our faith. We haven’t lost anything of value.”

  Pierre and Etienne stared at their plates. I pulled my bowl closer and picked up my fork.

  “We will continue,” said Papa. “We will be strong. Eat your supper, Suzanne.”

  I ate.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Maman and I cleaned the cemetery apartment. She tried to make it look che
erful, but the ugly, ramshackle furniture and our few possessions kept me longing for home. Every day I remembered something else left behind: my scooter, my dressing gown, my favorite dolls, outgrown but still beloved. I went to our street once more. It remained barricaded. I didn’t go back after that.

  On Sunday Aunt Suzanne and the battalion came as always. Aunt Suzanne must have said something to my young cousins to silence them, because not one of them so much as mentioned the fact that we were living somewhere different. They looked around with wide eyes, but they didn’t say a word. Pierre took them outside to play soccer in the graveyard.

  “So,” said Aunt Suzanne, sitting down at the table, “it will do.”

  I was pleased she had not said something untrue, like It’s not so bad.

  “I couldn’t get lamb,” Maman informed her. The rationing was becoming more strict. “Dinner is only a poor piece of beef.”

  “So, then,” said Aunt Suzanne again, “it will do.” She turned to me. “Will you sing for us, little Suzanne?”

  “Of course.” I closed my eyes and imagined myself not in the apartment but in Madame Marcelle’s clean, bright home, where there was always room for me to sing. I sang the Magnificat she had taught me.

  “Beautiful,” Aunt Suzanne said when I had finished.

  In many ways our apartment was not as nice even as the Herberts’ basement, but at least it was somewhere I could sing. I smiled at Aunt Suzanne. I said, “It will do.”

  I often saw German soldiers march by. Civilians scuttled out of their way. A few days after we moved to the cemetery I saw a French soldier for the first time since the Germans took over. His name was Guillaume, he was my roommate Odette’s older brother, and he was dressed in civilian clothes. I knew he had been a lieutenant. I started to call out his name, but he shot me a look of such alarm and walked past so brusquely that I stopped short and stared at him.

  Then I realized what I had almost done. If the Germans knew he had been a soldier, they would capture him. They would take him to a war camp, who knew where.