Page 5 of The Moonlight Healers

He nodded.

“And tomorrow, I usually bring a can of tinned sardines to Monsieur Paul. He expects it now. He puts aside the rutabagas that haven’t been bruised.” Helene looked around the kitchen. There was too much, a thousand intricacies of the system she had created for them. He would never be able to do it on his own, lower himself to barter and negotiate for extra skimmed milk or carrots, find salt or sugar the rare times they were available.

“We will get on, my dear.” He stepped toward her, and before she could say anything else, how much she was needed there, he wrapped her in his arms. “I will take care of her. And you will be good and useful, until we are together again.”

Helene buried her face in his coat, and even though the smells were all wrong, wool and soap instead of salt and fish, even though his arms around her were thinner, his back slightly stooped, she felt solid ground return beneath her.

He kissed her on the cheek, once, and without another word he left the room, the blue ration card clutched in his hand.

Helene listened to the sound of his steps on the handful of loose treads, the slight rustle of fabric as he reached for his hat.

“We must be going too,” Agnes said quietly from the table.

Helene knew the time for argument or protest had come and gone. There was nothing to do now but follow her mother.

Agnes and Helene walked down the alley toward the street that ran to and from the waterfront. They turned inland, away from the harbor, its normally lively banks gray and empty, the colorful old wooden fishing boats replaced by the hulking white metal of several German E-boats.

“You have all your documents?”

“Yes, Maman.”

“And your ticket.”

“Yes, Maman.”

Agnes quickened her pace as they turned down another street. At the sharp staccato of boots on cobblestone, they both looked up.

A young officer strode toward them, his dark green uniform crisp and pressed, the gold buttons gleaming. They were always so clean, their clothes spotless, not a single hair out of place, their cheeks round, and it only put into sharper relief how dull and threadbare the townspeople had become.

Agnes and Helene waited as the officer approached. Though they were accustomed to the sight after nearly two years, Helene could sense her mother tense up.

“Madame, mademoiselle,”he said as he stopped beside them, his French accent earnest but stilted.

“Bonjour, monsieur,”Agnes said, her tone courteous. They had no choice but to be small, to take up as little space as possible.

He addressed Helene. “And you,mademoiselle, you are going to school?”

The soldiers often went out of their way to talk to her, and when they were kind and well-mannered, when they fumbled, as this soldier did, for the correct French words, she often wanted to talk back, exist for a moment as simply a seventeen-year-old girl talking to a boy.

She shook her head, ashamed as always for allowing room in her mind for them to be anything other than the sum of their parts.

“To catch a train,” her mother said, a steadying arm around Helene’s waist. “To Rouen to see family. We have our papers and documents, if you would like to see them?”

“No,” he said, his posture straighter. “That won’t be necessary. Off you are then. Good day.”

They moved away up the street. “Come now,” Agnes said when they were out of earshot. “We’ll be there soon.”

A few minutes later, they stood across from the small train station. It had been years since Helene was there, and the modest timbered building was now draped, like so many places in town, with an enormous banner featuring the Nazi flag, its white-and-black center offset by a red so bright and garish her grandfather described it as“la parodie.”There were several vehicles parked outside, black sedans and military trucks, as well as a carriage with two handsome black horses tied up beside it, their shiny tails swishing away flies.

Helene’s hands were clammy. She searched her mother for any sign that she might bend, change her mind. “Maman,” she said.

Agnes reached into her own bag and withdrew her red journal. She placed it in Helene’s hands. “It’s yours now. For when you need to be reminded of who you are.”

Helene couldn’t believe her mother would part from her most precious possession, the closest physical tie to her own mother.

“Keep it somewhere safe.”

Before Helene could argue, Agnes took Helene’s face in her hands. She was only inches away, so close Helene could see the pores on her nose, the lines at the creases of her eyes. “Do as I taught you,” Agnes said. “Nothing more. Nothing else. Do you understand?”

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