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PROVENCE, 1987
Gilbert wasn’t the only one with tears streaming down his face as Sister Augustine told them of what had happened. The afternoon had turned to evening, and still they sat in the same chairs, listening to the nun as she told the story of her friend.
‘She told me that if her daughter ever came I was to tell her what she had done, and why. She asked that I look for a family to adopt her, someone local who would love her and treat her with kindness and raise her as a Frenchwoman. After she left that day she returned to Paris and turned herself in to the authorities. It was many years later that I got the chance finally to go to Heligoland to find Jacques’ grave and perform the rites. One of his old research mates was still there and he showed me where he was buried. When we commissioned the headstone we put a Star of David on it too.’
Sabine’s lip wobbled as she listened to the nun.
‘And the rest you know,’ finished Sister Augustine.
Gilbert nodded. ‘But I still don’t understand, why did she do that – turn herself in like that and not come back here for her daughter?’
‘I don’t think she believed that she deserved that. It was the same reason why she felt she couldn’t come to you afterwards – she had made a choice in that moment not to interfere, not to tell Henri to not eat the food and it cost Henri his life. She didn’t think that was something she would ever want you to have to rationalise.’
Gilbert nodded, wiping his eyes. It was a horrible thing, but he could appreciate she might have seen it that way. ‘She was going to eat the poisoned food; she wanted it to be her, not him,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
Gilbert broke down then and through his sobs he heard the nun say, ‘Yes, she always meant to face her sins. I think there are many people who would hear her story and see only the monstrous thing she did. But there was justice too. I believe in the end she saved many lives, with the children who managed to flee as a result of her intervention, and she did what she did thinking she was going to save others too.’
‘And yet no one knows that.’
‘Maybe you could change that.’
Sabine looked at Gilbert and he nodded.
‘That is something we could do,’ she said.
