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 hardest,” 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. “Under Vichy, some of 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 raced 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 in 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 at the memory of that terrifying moment. “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?” Ruth asked, unable to grasp 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 about 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.
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 moved 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.”
“So you weren’t really pregnant?” Ruth asked.
“No, of course not,” her grandmother replied. “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 said, 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, 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.”
“We
