God Speed the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

joy. Only briefly did Gabrielle look at them, catching the flashing smile of the girl, the dark eyes dancing. She looked down the canal toward the mill. “If you look this way you will see the building,” she said. “I hope you will be safe there. I must go back.”
    Marc said, “That black stone building, is that it?” It resembled an old fortress in the distance.
    “Yes, monsieur.”
    “We shall not forget,” he said.
    “Godspeed,” Gabrielle said, and left without looking at them again.
    There were not many people on the street, only a few men in work clothes. It was a factory district, brickworks, blacksmith shops, tile makers, a Citroen garage with several of the cars outside it. They all bore official license plates. Across the street was a box factory where, through the open windows, the women could be seen at their work.
    Rachel said, “I can wait in the church and then come when the street is busier.”
    “Yes,” Marc said, “that’s what I was thinking, that we should not go together.”
    As he held the heavy door for her he wondered if she had ever been in a Christian church before. He held the door also for an old woman going out. Her going left the church empty except for the graven images. A spangled haze hung in the chancel, the many-hued light coming through the stained glass. There was the smell of incense. And there was almost a sound to the stillness. Marc left Rachel on a chair near the wall. In the vestibule, he removed his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He ran the sleeves of the coat through the handle of the valise and then slung both over his shoulder, the coat covering the valise, and returned to the street.
    Gabrielle went back to the train platform by the way she had come. Only the nuns and the three girls were still there with the officials. The little boy was gone. Down the platform men were lined up, boarding the train. Sister St. André’s large round face was flaming red and there were tears in her eyes. Gabrielle went to the children and the other sisters where they waited with the luggage a little distance apart. She heard, nonetheless, the protests of Reverend Mother and Sister St. André, part of which she would remember and think of many times again: Sister St. Andre saying, “But, Monsieur le Prefet , our Lord Himself was circumcised. The feast is a holy day of obligation.”
    “And our Lord was crucified by the Jews, Sister. That also is a holy day.” This the policeman, and then the German officer saying that he was right.
    Reverend Mother said, “Peace, peace, Sister. The prefect has promised to do what he can.”
    “You will let them have the child, Reverend Mother?” St. André said.
    “They have already taken him, and we may lose the others if we do not go, Sister.”
    “Exactly,” the policeman said.
    Sister St. André came then and picked up two of the roped suitcases herself. “God save France,” she said. “Herods, all of us.”

4
    M ONSIEUR DORGET, THE PREFECT of agriculture, Moissac discovered, had been summoned to St. Hilaire by Colonel von Weber. He had informed Moissac of his coming in order to facilitate, on the same journey, the security processing of the harvesters. It was a matter they discussed first at the station, then in Moissac’s ancient Peugeot on the way to Von Weber’s headquarters in the Hôtel de ville . Monsieur Dorget had witnessed the affair with the nuns, but neither man spoke of it. There was implicit in Dorget’s manner, in the very way he sat in the car, his distaste for the policeman. Moissac did not suggest the luncheon.
    He went round to the police prefecture further disgruntled, for the mayor of St. Hilaire, the local commander of the gendarmerie, and several department officials were gathered for the meeting. He had not been asked to attend. Von Weber often called him in for private consultation, but not when there was anyone important around.
    He was at his desk but a few minutes when a terse communication,