Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

The light from the ceiling fixture was dim and gray, but it shone so rarely that when it did, it felt as blindingly bright as the noonday sun. It came on only when someone entered the small windowless room and was switched off again as they left. Otherwise, the darkness was absolute. The Germans were sticklers for a schedule, and by now Lillian knew that the light came on like clockwork every three hours, when someone checked on her. It gave her a rudimentary way of gauging the passage of time.

Physically she was better, a little. Her tongue, while still hugely swollen, no longer protruded through her lips, and with some effort she could actually press her lips together, even if she couldn’t yet completely close her mouth, which was still burnt and raw and so hideously painful and damaged that she had to take liquids and nourishment through the needle they’d inserted in her arm. Her other injuries were better, too, although when she’d thought to pull out the needle—far better to die from a lack of fluids than in any way the Germans might devise for her—she’d found that both arms were restrained, the left one chained to the wall and the right one tied to the frame of the cot. In any case, her hands still didn’t work well enough even to allow her to flex her fingers. The damage done to them terrified her until she realized that she wasn’t going to live much longer, so she wasn’t going to need them ever again. The nurse who cared for her with brutal efficiency assured her that all of her, her hands, her arms, her ribs and even her mouth, would eventually heal. Ordinarily that would have been good news. Here, it was not. The moment she could speak, the moment they thought she was capable of giving them the information they sought, they would torture her until they were convinced they could get nothing more from her. Then she would be killed.

The thought of the former made her nauseated with fear. The latter she welcomed.

Please let me die before they find the girls.

Her worst fear was that at any moment the door would fly open and one of her daughters would be shoved into the room.

Emmanuelle and Genevra, the light and the dark. They’d all been so happy together once. Images came to her in waves. The girls would sing, and put on shows, while she played the piano. The two of them would play dress-up, rummaging through her jewelry, traipsing around in her nicest clothes, while she scolded at the mess they made, then laughed at how absurdly grown-up they looked.

How, how, had they been brought to this, her family? Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined so many blows from fate.

With death looming so close she could almost feel its icy breath on her cheek, she was racked with regret. The worst was that she had allowed society’s strictures—the importance she had placed on society’s strictures—to estrange her from her little one, her Genevra. That she could have allowed such inanities to come between them now seemed impossible. If she could only go back, only have it to do over again, she would have kept her pregnant daughter at home where she belonged, embraced her illegitimate child with open arms, defied the gossip and shaming and condemnation with her head held high.

She regretted her estrangement from her daughter with her whole heart. But there would now be no chance to make amends.

Soon she might be forced to make a choice between her country and her children. Which, in the end, would be no choice at all. What mother would not do anything she could to save her child?

They would be the stick that broke her.

You should not have told me so much, she reproached Paul.

Because Paul was with her, in this dark cold cell of a room. All she had to do was close her eyes and there he was. He paced the floor while the nurse tended her, lay down beside her when she was alone, held her when the fear became overwhelming or the pain was especially bad. With all her heart she longed to shed her broken and vulnerable body and leave with him—but she couldn’t. She was trapped in the prison of her own frail flesh.

The sound of gunfire roused her at what she judged was somewhere around 11:00 p.m. At first she wasn’t sure what she was hearing. The first two loud bangs could have been anything from dropped cooking pots to a backfiring car. But the sharp rat-a-tat that followed was unmistakable: an automatic pistol.

Just outside her door.

Her eyes opened wide. She would have sat up, but even without the restraints, that much movement was impossible for her now. Straining to listen, trying to make sense of what was happening, she stared sightlessly into the dark.

Running footsteps, near at hand.

“Stop them! They’re imposters!”

Boots on hardwood, in the hall outside her door. A lot of commotion, shouting. In German, which convinced her that the voices belonged to the guards.

“Over there, by the window! Dieter, look sharp.”

“Halt!”

A bang. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat.

A cry: someone was hit.

“Got him!”

The thunder of more jackboots racing past.

“There’s someone else on the stairs! Halt!”

Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. The sound of glass shattering.

“He’s gone out the window! Go, go!”

“Look out! In the vestibule!”

Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat.

A man’s scream, from somewhere below.

“Do you see any more?”

It sounded like—an escape attempt? A raid by outsiders on this place, this prison? Lillian’s heart pounded as she struggled to make sense of it, strained to hear more. Just noise now. No more gunfire, loud voices rather than shouts, stomping rather than running feet. In the distance, a siren.

Her door flew open so hard it banged against the plaster wall. She started violently, her heart leaping into her throat. The light came on. As she blinked against its brightness, a German soldier stepped inside, sidearm out and ready. He looked at her cringing in her cot, warily scanned the room. In the background, growing louder by the second, multiple sirens now wailed, which she thought must mean they were racing toward the building. She could see blue smoke from the gunfire in the hallway outside the door.

“This one’s here,” the soldier called to someone she couldn’t see.

“Check the others. Do a count.” It was an order.

“How many got away?” The question was shouted from somewhere farther away.

“One, maybe two” came the reply, from just outside her room, as the soldier turned on his heel and switched off the light.

“Find them,” she heard, and then the soldier, striding into the hall, slammed her door shut behind him.

She was once again left alone in the dark, while the chaos outside the room was reduced to muffled sounds that she tried her best to make sense of with little success. Her mind raced, her breathing came fast and ragged.

Cold tentacles of fear clutched at her soul.

Paul sat down beside her on the cot and held her poor ruined hand.

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