Chapter One

One

Marseilles, March 1939

Ilse held her suitcase safe between her knees. There was a continuous loud crackle of announcements, which she could not understand. After an hour she moved to the corner seat beside the frosted glass window, for this gave an angled view of the Gare St. Charles. There she watched the constant flickering of single and multiple blurs against the yellow advertisement for Amer Picon. Any one of those blurs might open the door from the huge vault of the station and solidify into the person collecting her. This was distracting. Each time the door opened and it was not for her, she could not settle. In the guidebook, the tour of Marseilles occupied twelve pages, whereas Paris took up thirty-three. Marseilles was a mighty port, the oldest of the cities of France. Ilse shut her eyes and conjured up the map of the harbour which, facing west, was defended by its two great forts, Saint-Jean, to the north, and Saint-Nicolas, to the south. How happy her mother had been to find a guidebook in French in the tiny foreign language section of the Wuppertal public library.

Greeks from Asia Minor had landed here twenty-six centuries ago, dark men in galleys with long oars. Centuries passed. Another hour went by. The city of enthusiasms welcomed the revolution, sent five hundred volunteers to Paris. The soldiers from Marseilles electrified the crowd with their rendition of a new marching song. It became the hymn of the revolution and was renamed in their honour. The guidebook had printed all the verses. She sang them in her head: the day of glory has arrived. People came and were collected and were replaced. Yawning, she feared to sleep. Marseilles, she rec