Tell No One Who You Are Read online

  “I will try to come,” Régine said quietly.

  “Irene is seventeen,” said Monsieur Bertrand. “How old are you?”

  “Eleven,” said Régine.

  “Eleven!” the man said with surprise. “You look much older than eleven.”

  Régine did not respond. She had never thought of herself as looking older than her age. She tried to remember Augusta Dubois’s birthdate. Was it on the ration book she had given the Wathieus? She must be more careful.

  The old men soon lost interest in Régine and began to discuss recent reports of the war on the radio and in the newspaper, La Libre Belgique.

  The war had turned in favor of the Allies. The Germans had been defeated in Russia and were now suffering heavy losses in the Allied campaign to liberate Italy. The old men were hopeful that the war would end soon, so that their sons and grandsons would return home. While the men talked Régine helped Sylvie peel potatoes for the next day while the cats hung around waiting for her to throw them a piece of raw potato. Now and then Sylvie would doze off, then wake with a start and continue peeling. As Régine listened to the men talking of the war’s end, she made up her mind: her father would definitely return with the others after the victory.

  Finally, when the potatoes were peeled, Régine said good night and went upstairs to prepare for bed. She was beginning to feel better. Her first day with Pierre and Sylvie had passed without any difficulties. It was a good start, much better than with the other three families.

  In her bedroom, Régine washed with rainwater using the pitcher and bowl and then changed into her night clothes. It was cold in the room. She realized that she had forgotten to bring up one of the bricks that had been warming in the oven downstairs. She opened the door of her room and was on her way down the stairs just as Pierre and Sylvie were coming up. The visitors had left and the Wathieus were on their way to bed.

  They met at the top of the stairs right next to the dish of water.

  “Where are you going?” Pierre asked.

  “Downstairs, to get a brick from the oven,” Régine said.

  “Don’t bother,” said Pierre. “I have them right here.” He held out a brick wrapped in cloth.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Then the two of them did something unexpected. As Régine looked on, Sylvie reached over, dipped her fingers into the dish of water, and touched her forehead and shoulders. Then Pierre did the same. Régine now knew why the dish of water was there. She had often seen Belgians cross themselves, but this was the first time she had seen it done in someone’s house with actual water.

  She turned to go to her room, but Sylvie’s voice stopped her.

  “Augusta, haven’t you forgotten something?”

  Régine turned to face her. “Pardon?”

  “The holy water,” Sylvie said, nodding at the dish.

  “Oh,” Régine said.

  She looked at Pierre and Sylvie and realized she was supposed to do as they had done. She tried to copy them as best she could but must have done it badly because of the way they looked at her.

  She was glad to escape back to her bedroom. She lay on the bed looking at the picture of the mother and child with the halo on the wall and then at the cross on the wall above her head. “I must be more careful and watch everything they do,” she told herself.

  The next day Sylvie asked Régine if she had a rosary. Régine did not know what a rosary was. When she shook her head, Sylvie went to a drawer and gave her a string of beads. “Do you know how to use it?” Sylvie asked. She did not seem surprised when Régine said no.

  Sylvie took out her own rosary and led Régine through prayers: Notre pere qui êtes aux cieux and Sainte Marie, mère de Dieu.

  Later that day in the kitchen, Sylvie said: “We’re going to communion tomorrow. Would you like to come with us?” Régine looked uncertain. Sylvie stared at her suspiciously, then asked: “Augusta, have you been baptized?”

  “Of course she’s been baptized!” Pierre said angrily.

  “Shhh!” said Sylvie. “Let her answer. Don’t be afraid, Augusta. You can tell us.”

  Régine stared at the floor. Tell no one who you are.

  “Have you been baptized or not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She raised her eyes and again saw that this was a mistake. Pierre and Sylvie were only more puzzled.

  “How can you not know?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Didn’t your parents tell you?”

  Régine didn’t answer.

  “We’ll talk to Monsieur Le Vicaire,” Sylvie said. “He’ll know what to do.”

  Régine swallowed. She knew classmates in Brussels who were Catholic. She knew that they had their first communion all dressed in pretty white dresses and that Jewish girls did not. She knew also that confirmation was not just for one day. It was forever.

  “Maybe she is baptized,” Pierre said.

  “What do you mean?” Sylvie asked.

  “Augusta doesn’t know whether or not her parents baptized her,” he said. “What if they did?”

  Sylvie shrugged. “Better twice than never.”

  She turned to Régine.

  “Don’t worry, Augusta. We’ll talk to Monsieur Le Vicaire tomorrow when we go to church.”

  What should she do if Monsieur Le Vicaire wanted to baptize her? What would her father want her to do? When he returned, what would he say?

  Chapter Thirty-three

  THE NEXT MORNING, Sunday, life changed on the Wathieu farm. No work would be done on the farm that day, except for the essential tasks of feeding and milking the cows, and tending to the chickens and pigs. As soon as the animals were looked after, Pierre and Sylvie changed into what they called their “Sunday clothes.” Sylvie put on a dark dress and a small black hat, and Pierre, a dark suit with a gold chain that ran across the vest.

  Pierre and Sylvie were waiting by the front door when Régine came down wearing her best dress. They put on overcoats and set out on the forty-minute walk along the dirt road that led to the church beyond the village.

  Along the way Pierre and Sylvie discussed how they would meet Monsieur Le Vicaire after the service to ask about a baptism for Régine. Régine kept her hands in the pockets of her coat and walked in silence.

  The church was a small, stone building with a steeple. People were arriving from every direction. Most were old and dressed in dark-colored clothes. Some of the men wore caps, which they removed as they walked through the door.

  Pierre let Régine and Sylvie go in ahead of him. From the back, Régine saw that almost all the pews were full. Monsieur Le Vicaire was standing at the altar in front. He had already begun the service, and his voice echoed, bouncing off the ceiling.

  Régine was about to walk up the aisle when she felt a tap on the shoulder. She turned and saw Sylvie nodding at a dish of holy water on the wall. It was made of brass in the shape of a semicircle, just like the one at the farmhouse. Régine dipped her fingers in the holy water, made the sign of the cross and hoped no one was looking to see if she did it correctly.

  They walked up the aisle and found a place near the front. Régine moved into the pew first. Only then did she notice that Sylvie and Pierre had gone down on one knee in the middle of the aisle and, facing the altar, made the sign of the cross. Then they took their seats next to Régine. Be more careful, she warned herself.

  For the next hour, Régine learned how to behave by watching the people around her. She knelt when they knelt. When they sat, she sat. When they stood up, she got up. When they prayed, she mumbled something to herself. She felt the eyes of Pierre and Sylvie watching her from either side, and she tried not to let it show that she was copying.

  But her motions were always one step behind those of everyone else. Pierre and Sylvie would have no more doubt. It would be clear to them that the parents of Augusta Dubois had not raised their daughter to be “a good Catholic.”

  When they went to take communion, Pierr
e and Sylvie told her to wait in the pew while they went up with others to kneel before the altar. Régine watched as Monsieur Le Vicaire placed the wafer on their tongues. Were you supposed to bite on it or swallow it whole, Régine wondered. What did it taste like?

  After the service, Régine waited outside the church while Pierre and Sylvie went to the rectory to speak with Monsieur Le Vicaire. The smiles on their faces when they came out told Régine everything before they even spoke. Yes, they said, it was settled. The vicar would arrange for the baptism of Augusta Dubois.

  That night Régine lay awake, thinking of how she might talk her way out of the baptism. In the end, she drew a blank. There seemed to be no way out. Pierre and Sylvie were now convinced that Augusta Dubois had not been baptized. At least they still believed that she was Augusta Dubois from Marche and that was more important than anything else. She had played her part so well, it had never entered their minds that she might be Jewish. In their world, everyone was Catholic.

  Even in the darkness, she felt she could see the mother and child on the wall — “La Vierge Marie et le petit enfant Jésus,” as Sylvie called them. Pierre and Sylvie were the most religious people she had ever met. The only other person who came close was her mother, but that was different. Her mother was religious in a different way.

  She kept a kosher kitchen, prepared meals according to proper ritual, and stored special dishes in a glass cabinet for Passover. And like all observant Jewish housewives, she kept two sets of dishes for everyday use: one for dairy and the other for meat.

  Régine remembered the photograph of her grandfather, her father’s father, who was still living in Poland when the Germans invaded. The photograph showed a distinguished-looking man dressed in black and wearing a long, white beard in the Jewish religious tradition. He looked nothing like her father, who was clean-shaven, modern-looking and not at all religious.

  Régine’s father did not go to the synagogue or observe Jewish holidays. He told Régine that he did not believe in God. When Régine looked at the photo of her grandfather in Poland, she wondered how her father could have gotten along with him. Father and son seemed just so different. As she grew up, she came to believe her father had come to Belgium to escape the religious tradition of his family.

  Sometimes Régine’s mother scolded her father for saying there was no God. “Is this what you’re teaching our children?” her mother would say. “That their religion has no importance?”

  “It’s more important they care about people,” her father insisted.

  On Saturdays, her mother put on her best clothes and walked alone to the synagogue, an old, dilapidated building in the rear of Régine’s school. Twice a year, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Régine and Léon accompanied her to synagogue. Her father never went. As Léon got older, he joined the men and Régine sat with her mother and the other women as the rabbi performed the service.

  Lying alone in her bed, Régine could almost hear her parents arguing. How could her father be so sure that God did not exist? And how could her mother be equally sure that He did? Which of them was right, and which was wrong?

  What to make of it all? Her mother believed in God but her father didn’t. Pierre and Sylvie believed in a different God, three Gods in one. Was there really a God, any God, somewhere, looking after people? If so, why didn’t He stop the war and bring back her parents and brother?

  Régine was finally getting sleepy. She closed her eyes and invented a new game to play in the darkness of her room.

  “If Papa comes back,” she said to herself, “then I will believe in God.”

  It was more a bet than a game. Or maybe it was like bargaining. There were no real rules, and there was nothing she had to do, such as crossing the room without stepping on a crack. To win this game, all she had to do was wait. When she thought about it, maybe it was a bit like praying.

  In the meantime, how could she postpone the baptism? She would say she wanted to wait for spring, that the war might be over and her father would come back. In any case, her three months at the Wathieus’ would be over before then.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  RÉGINE HAD LOOKED FORWARD to going to school but she knew from the first day she attended that it was not going to work. All the subjects that the teacher covered, Régine had learned from Mademoiselle Descotte back at the école primaire in Brussels. Régine was far too advanced for the village school even though she was not one of the older students. The teacher realized this, too. After the first two weeks, as the other students worked on spelling and arithmetic, Régine was granted a special exemption from the regular curriculum and given a desk by herself at the back of the class where she spent her days dipping a nib in ink and practicing calligraphy.

  The following week the teacher sent her home, explaining to Pierre and Sylvie that his one-classroom school had nothing to offer a bright student like Augusta Dubois. Pierre and Sylvie thanked the teacher and gave Régine the kind of smile that proud parents give their children.

  Life at the farm settled into a routine that was some comfort to Régine while she waited for the war to end. She had the feeling everyone — the Wathieus, the old men who came in the evenings, the people in church — was also waiting for what they called “la libération.” For Régine the liberation meant the return of her father. Maybe Léon too. He was young and strong. Maybe Monsieur Gaspar was wrong about him. But her mother? She had been so sick: the pale face in the hospital bed, the frail hand held out, almost pleading. Could she really believe her mother had come through two more years of trouble? She would not think of her mother. Just her father and brother.

  Every Sunday was the same. Going to church was only part of the day’s ritual that started early in the morning and ended late at night. As time passed, she knew it by heart.

  After the morning service she returned with Pierre and Sylvie to the farmhouse for lunch, which Sylvie prepared in the morning and left to simmer on the stove while they were away.

  Sunday dinner was the most important meal of the week. It was the only meal for which a chicken was killed. Pierre, it turned out, was far too squeamish for such things, so it was always Sylvie who went into the barn. Sometimes Régine went with her. She was convinced the chickens knew what was coming the minute Sylvie came through the door. It was an eerie feeling, being watched by all those knowing birds. Sylvie seemed aware of this, too, and tried to act nonchalant. She would take the chicken outside before strangling it, but Régine was certain the other chickens sensed what was happening. Later, she always had a hard time swallowing her Sunday dinner.

  After dinner, the three of them walked back to the church for afternoon services.

  Later in the afternoon, they would sit in the living room, still dressed in their Sunday clothes. Pierre would read the Évangile while Sylvie and Régine brought out their rosaries. Together they recited the prayers — both prayers for each bead — until suppertime.

  After supper, they read and prayed some more until bedtime. The Wathieus permitted Régine to read the two or three books they had in the house, which all had something to do with Jesus. No other reading was allowed. Régine put away Uncle Tom’s Cabin after Pierre and Sylvie saw it and deemed it was “not fit for a Catholic household.” That left nothing but stories about children loving Baby Jesus, which she read and reread. In retrospect, her stay with Madame André in Boitsfort seemed less bleak. The old woman might have been cold and indifferent, but she did have a wonderful room full of books. Even better, Régine thought, she did not have to pretend she was someone else.

  Sylvie also gave her a blue-enamel medal of the Virgin Mary — Notre Dame de Lourdes — along with firm instructions to carry it with her at all times. Sylvie had been to the shroud of Bernadette in Lourdes in southwestern France many years before and brought back the medal as a good luck charm. Régine accepted it and kept it in her pocket. It might help bring luck to her father, and maybe even Léon, she thought.

  By Christmas, Régine had not o
nly learned the prayers but also the service at the village church. She no longer had to watch the others to know when to sit, stand or kneel and when to reply “amen” during the sermon by Monsieur Le Vicaire. On Christmas Eve they went to midnight mass. Régine thought it was beautiful. From her pew, she had a good view of the life-size manger in front of the altar with the figures huddled around the baby Jesus. It was a family. The animals were lovely, too. She sang hymns from her song book, along with the choir whose voices resounded in the church. At home she tried to go up to bed ahead of Sylvie and Pierre to avoid crossing herself with the holy water. But when either was nearby, she no longer needed to watch them to know what she had to do.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  FARM WORK took up the days of the week while everyone waited for the war to end. Italy had surrendered but everyone knew the war could not end until the Allies landed somewhere in France or Belgium and drove the Germans out. When would that be?

  Régine helped both inside and outside the house. There was milking La Blanque, sweeping the barn, shoveling dung, finding the eggs the hens had laid. After that, there was feeding the chickens and bringing up water from the spring in two buckets strung across her shoulders. She was glad Pierre’s special preserve was the latrine, which he cleaned out himself.

  One day, Pierre said it was time to choose a pig. He explained that every year one pig was slaughtered to provide food. When the time came, Pierre was no braver than with the chickens. He called on the village veterinarian to do it for him. After the veterinarian left, Pierre cut up the carcass, and Sylvie cured the meat in jars of salt water which she kept down in the cellar. No part of the pig went to waste. Even the blood was used to make blood pudding.

  When Pierre announced it was time to “service the sow” and said he knew of a farmer who had a hog for that purpose, Régine volunteered to accompany him. She had no idea what was about to happen.

  With the help of Sylvie, Pierre tied a rope around the sow’s neck. Régine walked it along the road as if it were a dog, while Marquis ran around barking at their feet. At the farm, Régine had her first lesson in sex.