Free Skating with the Statue of Liberty by Susan Lynn Meyer Page B

to go over the reading from the night before. Gustave managed to answer some of Mr. Coolidge’s questions about African art. “Good!” Mr. Coolidge said. “You understand a lot! Why won’t you ever answer when I ask a question in class?”
    Gustave shrugged and looked away.
    By the time he got back to his apartment building, it was late and the lobby was dim, lit by just one lamp near the door. Gustave went as he always did to the bank of mailboxes, dialed the combination, and reached in. When his fingers felt an onionskin envelope, his heart skipped a beat. He pulled it out. It was pale blue, definitely airmail, though it was too dark to see more. He tore up the stairs, fumbled through his bag with cold fingers to find his key, and unlocked the door. No one else was home. He flipped on the light.
    “N.M., La Chaise, Saint-Georges-sur-Cher,” it said on the back triangle of the envelope. It was from Nicole! But the envelope looked strange. Both ends had been ripped open and resealed with official tape. It had been opened on one end in France by a censor working for the Nazis. Then it had been opened again on the other end as it came into the US.
    It was a disgusting feeling. A Nazi soldier had read his personal letter. Gustave felt as if he had been handed a chocolate bar, and then, just as he was taking a bite, hesaw that there was a gigantic cockroach squatting on top of it.
    Fighting down nausea, Gustave tugged the letter out of the envelope. As soon as he started reading, he could tell from Nicole’s wording that she had known unfriendly eyes were going to slide over her letter before he got it.
30 January, 1942
    Cher Gustave
,
    I’m so glad you got there safely! We hear reports all the time about ships sinking while crossing the Atlantic Ocean, so I was worried. I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to your question. Everyone in Saint-Georges is fine, but we heard there was an arrest yesterday in
    We have a new teacher at school, Monsieur Faible, who tells us all the important things the Germans want us to know. Studying with Monsieur Faible is very educational. War, he says, is good for the character. It promotes discipline. It helps us learn new skills. He’s definitely right. I, for example, am learning to cook. I try to invent new things to do with rutabagas. The Germans don’t like them, so that’s what we French people eat. I’m so sick of rutabaga soup and mashed rutabagas. So yesterday I made rutabaga pancakes. They still have that same insipid taste, but at least they looked kind of like real pancakes. Papa ate them with enthusiasm. He said I hadn’t burned them too badly
.
    Papa was hungry because he works very hard. All farmers do. I didn’t think the pancakes tasted very good myself. But I’m sure you’ll be glad to know Papa has been working so muchthat even my rutabaga pancakes taste good to him. Because he is such a diligent worker, someday I might be able to tell you what you want to know
.
    Spring is on its way
.
    Je t’embrasse
,
    Nicole
    Gustave read the letter over and over, hearing Nicole’s voice in the words. He could just imagine the mocking glance Nicole would give him as she told him about the “very educational” things she was learning from her new teacher, Monsieur Faible, who sounded like a mouthpiece for the Nazis. Gustave laughed out loud at the thought of Nicole’s poor father wolfing down burnt rutabaga pancakes. And Nicole was writing in a kind of code about her father working hard. He was a farmer, sure, and that was hard work, but Nicole meant his other work, for the French Resistance, fighting the Nazis, helping people escape from Occupied France. That was why his “hard work” might bring information about Marcel.
    But there was no news about Marcel. And there had been an arrest Nicole was trying to tell Gustave about, but the words had been blacked out by the censor. Had Jews been arrested? Or someone in the Resistance?
    “Spring is on its way,” she wrote.