Page 26 of The World That We Knew

BLESSING

RHôNE VALLEY, JUNE 1942

THE SISTERS HAD BEEN THE residents of a tall stone convent where there was a boarding school for girls for nearly three hundred years. The spires reached to heaven. The gravel paths were worn down from those who walked there daily as they recited their prayers. In the woods near the convent, Ava could hear the rise and fall of voices from inside. The nuns at prayer, the students at the dinner table, and then, the faintest voices of all, five Jewish girls in the attic who were well cared for, but who still wept at night, longing for their mothers. More and more children had been separated from their parents when the Vichy government decided to arrest Jews, except for children under the age of sixteen. Many of these children, who were now on their own, were living in châteaus and schools run by the OSE, who turned to convents such as this, and to the homes of those good neighbors who believed a child’s life was worth more than adhering to arbitrary laws.

The sisters had originally been lacemakers, but during the Reign of Terror many were beheaded by guillotine or thrown into prison. For the next twenty years they were in hiding, until they could at last be free to live and work as their faith decreed. During the Revolution, when they would not sign documents stating their first allegiance was to France, rather than to God, the congregation was outlawed until 1807. The sisters understood what it was to be persecuted and arrested and murdered, for a crime no worse than faith.

The convent and its grounds were elegant and lush, thanks to several wealthy women who, over the convent’s long history, had joined the order and brought their wealth with them. In their legendary garden grew roses of every color: rouge; noire; blanche; feu, the color of fire; cerise, the shade of cherries; argent, silver; and or, gold. Some varieties had first names and surnames, as though they were elegant women shrouded in vivid color standing between the hedges in silk dresses: Madame Isaac Pereire, created in 1881, Madame Ernest Calvat, first grown in 1888, Bourbon Roses and tea roses of every hue and tone, all grown by the grace of God.

The mother superior, Sister Marie, had grown up in a château outside Paris and recalled the bliss of the garden of her childhood. She’d been delighted to come to the convent as a young woman to find the leggy, half-remembered, and utterly neglected planting of roses. From the start, she vowed to bring the garden back to its former glory. Her first act as mother superior was to hire a landscaper who would teach the sisters to garden.

Sister Marie had been orphaned young and left with a huge inheritance. Her aunt, a grudging and disagreeable caretaker, had initially disapproved when the child yearned for convent life, but when someone is convinced she has a path, it is not easy to dissuade her, and in the end it was a relief for the family to have her safe and sound, outside of their orbit. Sister Marie had been very single-minded even when she’d been Madeleine de Masson, a shy girl who, nevertheless, possessed a fierce independent streak. It was no surprise that she had dedicated her life to teaching. Nor was it a surprise that she didn’t need to think twice when the Archbishop of Nice, Monsignor Paul Rémond, asked her to enroll Jewish girls who had been brought to them by the OSE.

The new girl was discovered camped on the front steps. Lea had barely spoken a word to the sisters; perhaps the convent looked like a prison with its tall spires and weathered gargoyles that seemed neither beast nor man. There was a stone fountain, and green water poured from the beak of a pelican, the bird that signified Jesus, for as pelicans were said to pluck their feathers to feed their young with their own blood, so, too, did Christ sacrifice himself for mankind. Lea felt a chill when the tall woman in a black habit came along the gravel path. Fewer questions would be asked if Lea came to the convent alone, and so Ava would wait a day or two before presenting herself and asking to work in the kitchen. As soon as Ava suggested this plan, Lea suspected she would not return. What would keep her from disappearing, following the heron to the far reaches of the world? And who was to say it would not be best for them both if she did? They would be free of each other, and of the burdens they carried, and of the fate that awaited them.

Sister Marie came to greet the new girl, who was clearly troubled, as so many of these motherless children were. Perhaps this girl, who kept her hands folded in her lap, and her eyes lowered, would like to help in the garden. It soothed the soul to do so and it might serve to remind her of the beauty of the world.

She asked the girl for her name.

“Lillie Perrin, Madame.”

The girl’s eyes were lowered, which led the mother superior to believe this was not the truth.

“Lillie is your given name?”

Lea had been given it, surely, by her own dear mother before leaving Berlin, so perhaps when she said yes it was not truly a lie. Lea had heard that Catholics confessed their sins to one another rather than to God, and she worried she would be expected to do the same. Her greatest sin would be committed in the future, and it was one for which she could never be forgiven.

“And you are Catholic?” the mother superior asked.

“It says so on my papers, Madame.”

They exchanged an open gaze. A lie was a lie, papers or not. The mother superior understood that the girl was Jewish, carrying a false name and identity. “We’re glad to have you with us, Lillie,” she said warmly. “We ask only that you obey the rules and pay attention to your studies.” Usually, Sister Marie was told a bit of background, where the child had previously resided, perhaps, or the fate of her parents, but this girl had come on her own and her arrival was a bit of a mystery. Still, they turned no one away. They’d made that decision after the monsignor had first come to talk to them. Every child was equal in their eyes. “I’m sure you will learn the prayers easily.”

“My mother taught me several already,” Lea told the sister.

“Then I think your mother would approve of you being here. She would be happy to have you safe in our midst.”

Lea was given a uniform consisting of a navy blue dress, black stockings, and a pair of laced shoes. There were new undergarments and a nightgown as well. A younger girl called Pauline had been asked to show her the dormitory. It was a special section for the Jewish girls, hidden in the attic behind a wrought-iron gate and a heavy wooden door. The room was guarded by an old nun, Sister Félicité, a very deep sleeper who snored quite loudly. The sister slept with a broom in her lap, there to defend herself and her girls if the need arose. She claimed to be fierce, but she was nearly eighty and walked with a limp and she didn’t even manage to scare her own students when she threatened they would have to clean the stone floors with a scrub brush if they didn’t behave.

Pauline, also from Berlin, was to bring Lea to their room. She was eager to show off her French.

“The sisters practiced with me until I lost my accent. It’s best to do as they say.”

Remember your own room, the blue rug on the floor, the way the light came in through the curtains in the morning, the sound of my voice as I called to you in the park, my darling, my girl, light of my life, come here and give me a hug, eat this apple, sit on this bench, watch the birds above us, and the sky that’s so bright, take the love that I have for you that will never end.

Lea quickly dressed in her new uniform. She did her best not to think, she pushed away dark thoughts until they were folded into a tiny corner of her mind, behind a locked door. At night the heron came to Lea’s window and stood on the ledge, so close she could feel his heart beating. She knew that Ava had told him to watch over her. She is nothing to me, Lea told herself. She is not my mother, she is not my cousin, she may not even be a woman. She is here because she has to be, because she was made to be, because she cannot make her own decisions or cast her own fate.

Lea found her way along the confusing corridors of the convent, but her stomach twisted with nerves. She had already decided; Julien would be her only friend. She needed no others. Tu me connais, she would have told him if she could. You alone know me.

At lunch, Lea was so famished she could barely restrain herself from reaching for the hard heels of bread until all of the prayers were recited. Then the other girls chattered away about the baker who had left; there’d been nothing to eat but old bread all week, although they knew they should be grateful. After lunch had been served Sister Marie stood to announce there was a new student. Lea had no choice but to stand as well and be introduced as Lillie Perrin. Everyone greeted her in unison, in perfect French, except for a petite, dark girl called Renée, a recent arrival from Berlin who refused to speak anything but German. She had been rescued, fortunate to have been among a group who had managed to escape when being moved from one camp to another. She had a tattooed number on her arm that she rubbed at when she thought no one was looking and she never undressed in front of the others. The OSE brought her to France, and to this convent. Her name had been Rachel. Her mother, father, uncles, aunts, grandparents, sisters, and brothers had all been on the trains. She was older than Lea, perhaps already fifteen. In the attic, her bed was next to Lea’s. That evening as they prepared for bed, Renée glared at Lea. She looked fragile, but there was a core of fire inside her. “Rühr mich nicht an,” Renée said. Never touch me. “Und schau nie unter mein Bett.” And never look under my bed.

It was difficult to follow the rules, much less understand them, and now, after Lea’s encounter with Renée, she felt even more unsure of herself. No one dared to break the silence before going to chapel in the morning or at breakfast. There were scores of prayers to recite, many more than her mother had taught her. The sisters looked sterner than Sister Marie in their stiff black habits. She thought of biting the soldier in the alleyway, of the wolves in the snow, of the blood on their shoes, of how fast she had run. After a while she wasn’t afraid, but she kept her eyes lowered when she greeted the sisters, and she stayed as far away from Renée as possible.

In class, she did her best to follow along as they studied the stories of the martyrs, including the Carmelite nuns of Compiègne, who went to the guillotine. She was imagining the death of the first and youngest sister to die, Sister Constance, who was said to face her fate with the grace of a queen, when in the midst of the lesson, she heard the heron on the roof call out with joy. Lea gazed out the window, and there was Ava, coming into the courtyard.

Lea raised her hand even though she was meant to be silent in class. When the sister approached, she asked to leave the room, claiming to have an upset stomach. She quickly took the stairs, making her way past several stained-glass panels representing scenes from the Bible in which angels climbed into a cobalt blue sky. She wanted to witness how Ava managed to get herself into the convent.

The young nun at the door was thanking Ava for her gift of wild berries. “I don’t know if we need anyone in the kitchen,” the nun said.