The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [117]
“That was the wisest thing she did for me. It is the truest mother love to trust her child to be free. I think the independence she forced on me restored me—more than anything else after our return. I felt that whatever happened I could manage. Anything.
“Sister Roza was older than my mother. Maybe she has gone to her rest by now. She was a large woman, rather gaunt. I could tell that she might have filled out her frame during better times. But she was strong, and she could lift my mother. She had a kind face. The headdress she wore was flattering. She was pretty, I thought. Her skin was so white and soft. With her powerful hands, she massaged us, for the circulation. One of our companions, called Jacqueline, from Fresnes, had racking pains in her bones, like growing pains, and Sister Roza massaged her thin legs, sometimes in the middle of the night.
“Then on a beautiful spring day the news came that the Russians had reached the heart of Berlin. Hitler had been defeated. Perhaps he was dead. We hoped he was dead. Even the nuns prayed that he was dead.
“ ‘France! We will have France!’ we cried.
“I held Maman and said, ‘Hitler is no more, Hitler is no more.’
“She smiled and fell back peacefully on her bed. ‘A darkness has lifted from the world,’ Maman said.
“ ‘Vive la France!’ I cried, the exuberant schoolgirl again. We cried and held each other, and then Sister Roza brought out a cake she had been saving. The occupants of the hospital gathered in a large room that had a piano—brought by the Germans, requisitioned from someone’s home. By then we had been joined by several refugees of varying states of debility. We were all improving, and most of us were able to circulate. They had rolling chairs for Maman and for two of the other women.
“Vive la France! We made some decorations. We made a flag for Poland and one for France. The nuns sang hymns, their heads lifted to the heavens. One of us French could play the piano, and so the Frenchwomen burst into ‘La Marseillaise,’ with joie de vivre. We made the nuns weep with the sentiment of it. It was a joyous time! We even tried to dance. But of course you know it was terrible for the Polish people after the Russians came. But the nuns celebrated with us.
“But since then, I have wondered many times about the old camp at Koenigsberg, which is now in East Germany. I ask myself, would anyone ever know what had happened there?”
51.
HE COULD STILL HEAR HER VOICE AS HE DROVE THE RENTED Citroën down small country roads. He meandered along the lay of the land, with no compass headings, no map check. He was flowing aimlessly through the countryside. He circled and wound through vineyards and villages. It was a soft, gray day.
Not far from a military base, he parked on a side road while trios of fighters screamed overhead, mad birds against a gray sky. He stayed a long time and watched for more.
Then, at a small café in a village twenty kilometers south of Angoulême, he studied the Michelin map of the Charentes and drank an express. He had been drinking a great deal of coffee. The strong European coffee agreed with him, sharpened him. The waiter, a small middle-aged man in horn-rimmed glasses, glanced his way.
“C’est tout? Anything more, monsieur?”
“Non, merci.”
He had to think. He couldn’t think. In his mind, Annette was the young girl again. He saw the gentle outlines of her innocent face, her spirited teasing, her panache. The horrors she described had been inflicted on that young girl. As she related her sufferings, he became the young guy she had risked her life for. He had known so little then. There were only faint whispers, averted eyes. He had been ignorant. Maybe he had never learned anything truly important until these last few days.
He was in the car again, driving.
A girl in a summer dress digging sod in the snow, hacking out stumps, shivering with ragged, hungry women.