God Speed the Night Read Online Free Page B

mill. It was a ruin now, but she could see the loft in her mind’s eye as if it were illuminated by the light of God. “There is an old mill with a loft on Rue Louis Pasteur,” she said. “It is not far.”
    “Take my wife there, and I will find it.”
    “No, Marc,” Rachel said. “I will stay with you.”
    “You must do as I say. I am safer alone. If you walk out together the guards won’t question you. Take the valise.”
    “I will carry it,” Gabrielle said, and by taking it from the man’s hand she committed herself.
    “If you are stopped say you are taking her to a doctor.”
    Gabrielle did not know a doctor, but she nodded. She glanced back toward the station.
    “I will tell the sisters if they come and I am here,” Marc said.
    They walked, the two women, unchallenged through the gate. The policemen stationed there touched their caps to them. The German guards ignored them. Marc watched them disappear from sight at the intersection. He did not like it that they were going away from the Old Town, but he doubted that anywhere was safe now in St. Hilaire. He saw the ticket-taker watching him and he could feel the man urging him to go. The women of the town had come along the fence from the railway yard to the courtyard and the soldiers had moved along with them. The women were jeering now, not only at the soldiers, but at the strangers coming into the town. A band of men and women came from the station on the march, swinging their luggage, mostly sleeping bags. They were the strangers, he realized, the harvesters, some of them younger than himself, students likely, among them a boy with a guitar. The man in the lead carried a white paper in his hand which he waved at soldiers and police alike. When they came abreast of him, Marc fell in with them. They did not care in the least; one of the women winked at him, and Marc took her bag and carried it. He marched through the gate with them, and at the intersection, he gave the woman back her bag and dropped from the ranks. He followed the way Rachel and the nun had gone.
    Gabrielle did not speak to the woman until they had turned into Rue Louis Pasteur. “I wish I knew a doctor in St. Hilaire,” she said.
    “You are very kind, but I would not go until we have new papers.”
    “I do not understand,” Gabrielle said.
    “Papers that will enable us to go on from St. Hilaire.”
    Gabrielle still did not understand, but she did not say so. “If the Germans find you, what will happen?”
    “I do not know. A concentration camp in Germany. I have heard that most of my family are there. For Marc it is worse: the French collaborationists want him, and they will kill him if they find him.”
    The words were strange to Gabrielle. She thought about them, particularly the word “kill.” It was like reading or hearing about the martyrs: you believed it because it was written and because their suffering made them holy; you wanted to believe it, but at the same time you did not really understand. She had seen a woman killed and yet what she had felt more deeply was the cruel way the soldier had hurt Poirot.
    In brief glimpses she looked more carefully at the woman. She had never before spoken with a Jew to her knowledge. Neither the woman—the girl really—nor her husband looked like Jews. But what did Jews look like? The only ones she could judge by were the pictures of Jesus and Mary, and nobody else looked like them either. She saw the woman put her hand to her side. She looked around to see if there was a place they could rest. They had just passed the church of St. Sebastien.
    “We could go into the church for a moment and rest, madame.”
    “No. I must go and wait where Marc can find me, and please, if you see him again, do not mention my illness. I do not want him to have to think of that now.”
    Gabrielle said, “If we go to the wall, I think we could see the mill from here.”
    They were at the parapet when Marc overtook them. Rachel gave a little sound of