“This is a wanted poster,” Paul remarked. “I speak some French—studied it in school.”
“Yes. The Germans offered a reward of one million francs to anyone who turned us in.”
“You were in France during the war and you were wanted?” This was more than Ruth could assimilate. She sat back down; so did her grandmother. Paul remained standing for a moment longer as he studied the poster.
“You and Jean-Claude were part of the French Resistance?” Paul asked, but it was more statement than question.
“We were.” For a moment her grandmother seemed to have a hard time speaking. “Jean-Claude was my husband. We married during the war. He was my everything, strong and brave and handsome. His laughter filled a room. Sometimes, still, I think I can hear him.” Her eyes grew teary and she dabbed at them with her linen handkerchief. “That was many years ago now and, as I said, I think perhaps it’s time I spoke of it.”
Ruth was grateful. She couldn’t let her grandmother leave the story untold. She suspected her father hadn’t heard any of this, and she wanted to learn everything she could about this unknown episode in their family history before it was forever lost.
“What were you doing in France?” Ruth asked. She couldn’t comprehend that the woman she’d always known as a warm and loving grandmother, who baked cookies and knit socks for Christmas, had been a freedom fighter in a foreign country.
“I was attending the Sorbonne when the Germans invaded. My mother had been born in France, but her own parents were long dead. I was studying French literature. My parents were frantic for me to book my passage home, but like so many others in France, I didn’t believe the country would fall. I assured my mother I’d leave when I felt it was no longer safe. Being young and foolish, I thought she was overreacting. Besides, I was in love. Jean-Claude had asked me to marry him, and what woman in love wishes to leave her lover over rumors of war?” She laughed lightly, shaking her head. “France seemed invincible. We were convinced the Germans wouldn’t invade, convinced they’d suffer a humiliating defeat if they tried.”
“So when it happened you were trapped,” Paul said.
Her grandmother drew in a deep breath. “There was the Blitzkrieg…. People were demoralized and defeated when France surrendered after only a few days of fighting. We were aghast that such a thing could happen. Jean-Claude and a few of his friends decided to resist the occupation. I decided I would, too, so we were married right away. My parents knew nothing of this.”
“How did you join the Resistance?” Paul asked as Ruth studied her grandmother with fresh eyes.
“Join,” she repeated scornfully. “There was no place to sign up and be handed a weapon and an instruction manual. A group of us students, naive and foolish, offered resistance to the German occupation. Later we learned there were other groups, eventually united under the leadership of General de Gaulle. We soon found one another. Jean-Claude and I—we were young and too stupid to understand the price we would pay, but by then we’d already lost some of our dearest friends. Jean-Claude and I refused to let them die in vain.”
“What did you do?” Ruth breathed. She leaned closer to her grandmother.
“Whatever we could, which in the beginning was pitifully little. The Germans suffered more casualties in traffic accidents. At first our resistance was mostly symbolic.” A slow smile spread across her weathered face. “But we learned, oh yes, we learned.”
Ruth was still having difficulty taking it all in. She pressed her hand to her forehead. She found it hard enough to believe that the sketch of the female in this worn poster was her own grandmother. Then to discover that the fragile, petite woman at her side had been part of the French Resistance…
“Does my dad know any of this?” Ruth asked.
Helen sighed heavily. “I’m not sure, but I doubt it. Sam might have mentioned it to him. I’ve told only my friends Clara and Winifred. No one else.” She shook her head. “I didn’t feel I could talk to my sons about it. There was too much that’s disturbing. Too many painful memories.”
“Did you…did you ever have to kill anyone?” Ruth had trouble even getting the question out.
“Many times,” Helen answered bluntly. “Does that surprise you?”
It shocked Ruth to the point that she couldn’t ask anything else.
“The first time was the most difficult,” her grandmother said. “I was held by a French policeman.” She added something derogatory in French, and although Ruth couldn’t understand the language, some things didn’t need translation. “The police worked hard to prove to the Germans what good little boys they were,” she muttered, this time in English. “I’d been stopped and questioned, detained by this pig of a man. He said he was taking me to the police station. I had a small gun with me that I’d hidden, a seven millimeter.”
Ruth’s heart pounded as she listened to Helen recount this adventure.
“The pig didn’t drive me to the police station. Instead he headed for open country and I knew that once he was outside town and away from the eyes of any witnesses, he would rape and murder me.”
Ruth pressed her hand to her mouth, holding back a gasp of horror.
“You’d trained for self-defense?” Paul asked.
Her grandmother laughed. “No. How could we? There was no time for such lessons. But I realized that I didn’t need technique. What I needed was nerve. This beast of a man pulled his gun on me but I was quicker. I shot him in the head.” She paused, as if the memory of that terrifying moment was as clear as if it had happened only hours before. “I buried him myself in a field and, as far as I know, he was never found.” She wore a small satisfied look. “His mistake,” she murmured, “was that he tightened his jaw when he reached for his gun—and I saw. I’d been watching him closely. He was thinking of what might happen, of what could go wrong. He was a professional, and I was only nineteen, and yet I knew that if I didn’t act then, it would’ve been too late.”
“Didn’t you worry about what could happen, too?” Ruth asked, not understanding how her grandmother could ever shoot another human being.
“No,” Helen answered flatly. “I knew what would happen. We all did. We didn’t have a chance of surviving, none of us. My parents would never have discovered my fate—I would simply have disappeared. They didn’t even know I’d married Jean-Claude or changed my name.” She stared out at the water. “I don’t understand why I lived. It makes no sense that God would spare me when all my friends, all those I loved, were killed.”
“Jean-Claude, too?”
Her eyes filled and she slowly nodded.
“Where was he when you were taken by the policeman?” Paul asked.
Her grandmother’s mouth trembled. “By then, Jean-Claude had been captured.”
“The French police?”
“No,” she said in the thinnest of whispers. “Jean-Claude was being held by the Gestapo. That was the first time they got him—but not the last.”
Ruth had heard horror stories of the notorious German soldiers and their cruelty.
Helen straightened, and her back went rigid. “I could only imagine how those monsters were torturing my husband.” Contempt hardened her voice.
“What did you do?” Ruth glanced at Paul, whose gaze remained riveted on her grandmother.
At first Helen didn’t answer. “What else could I do? I had to rescue him.”
“You?” Paul asked this with the same shock Ruth felt.
“Yes, me and…” Helen’s smile was fleeting. “I was very clever about it, too.” The sadness returned with such intensity that it brought tears to Ruth’s eyes.
“They eventually killed him, didn’t they?” she asked, hardly able to listen to her grandmother’s response.
“No,” Helen said as she turned to face Ruth. “I did.”
Five
“You killed Jean-Claude?” Ruth repeated incredulously, her heart hammering wildly.
Tears rolling down her cheeks, Helen nodded. “God forgive me, but I had no choice. I couldn’t allow him to be tortured any longer. He begged me to do it, begged me to end his suffering. That was the second time he was captured, and they were more determined than ever to break him. He knew far too much.”
“You’d better start at the beginning. You went into Gestapo headquarters?” Paul asked, moving closer as if he didn’t want to risk missing even one word. “Was that the first time or the second?”
“Both. The first time, in April 1943, I rescued him. I pretended I was pregnant and brought a priest to the house the Gestapo had taken over. I insisted with great bravado that they force Jean-Claude to marry me and give my baby a name. I didn’t care if they killed him, I said, but before he died I wanted him to give my baby his name.” She paused. “I was very convincing.”
“You weren’t pregnant, were you?”
“No, of course not,” her grandmother snapped. “It was a ploy to get into the house.”
“Was the priest a real priest?”
“Yes. He didn’t know I was using him, but I had no alternative. I was desperate to get Jean-Claude out alive.”
“The priest knew nothing,” Ruth repeated, meeting Paul’s eyes, astounded by her grandmother’s nerve and cunning.
“The Father knew nothing,” the older woman concurred, smiling grimly. “But I needed him, and so I used him. Thankfully the Gestapo believed me, and because they wanted to keep relations with the Church as smooth as possible, they brought Jean-Claude into the room.”
Ruth could picture the scene, but she didn’t know if she’d ever possess that kind of bravery.
“Jean-Claude was in terrible pain, but he nearly laughed out loud when the priest asked him if he was the father of my child. Fortunately he didn’t have to answer because our friends had arranged a distraction outside the house. A firebomb was tossed into a parked vehicle, which exploded. All but two Gestapo left the room. I shot them both right in front of the priest, and then Jean-Claude and I escaped through a back window.”
“Where did you find the courage?” Ruth asked breathlessly.
“Courage?” her grandmother echoed. “That wasn’t courage. That was fear. I would do anything to save my husband’s life—and I did. Then, only a few weeks later, I was the one who killed him. What took courage was finding the will to live after Jean-Claude died. That was courage, and I would never have managed if it hadn’t been for the American soldier who saved my life. If it hadn’t been for Sam.”
“He was my grandfather,” Ruth explained to Paul.
“I want to know more about Jean-Claude,” Paul said, placing his arm around Ruth’s shoulders. It felt good to be held by him and she leaned into his strength, his solid warmth.
Her grandmother’s eyes grew weary and she shook her head. “Perhaps another day. I’m tired now, too tired to speak anymore.”