The train was only half full. Most of the passengers were well-dressed men—government officials, I suspected, railways administrators, perhaps, maybe some diplomats from countries hostile to the Germans, no doubt a sprinkling of spies among them, and a few of their wives, all making a last-minute exit on the last train to leave a free Paris. I did not speak to anyone for fear of betraying my accent. As the train made its way through the southern suburbs, the dusty window was streaked with thick, oily orange raindrops.

Go here.

The Hotel Room

FOR THE NEXT day and night, the train advanced southward in fits and starts, hurtling forward for an hour or two, then inexplicably grinding to a stop at some tiny village or junction in the middle of fields. We were not strafed or bombed, and the journey had an air of unreality about it, as if I’d fallen asleep and was dreaming of a train journey in a landscape mysteriously emptied of people. It was only when we clattered through Nevers that I realized we were headed into the center of the country. All day and night, we continued in this stop-start way. Under the crescent moon, the train traversed high plateaus, and I could see miles into the distance over somnolent countryside. The thrum of the engine, the swaying of the carriages, and the ricochets of the tracks rocked me to sleep and back again several times. We passed villages I’d never heard of, forlorn little places with poetic names like Montluçon and Ussel, Brive-la-Gaillarde and Figeac. By sunrise the following morning we entered the outskirts of Toulouse, where many of the passengers alighted, but a porter told me through the window that the train was continuing south to Lourdes, in the mountains near Spain, and I remained on board. It was a place of pilgrimage, so I reasoned the locals would be more accommodating than most.

Lourdes was filled to bursting with refugees and Catholic pilgrims glowing with religious fervor. They’d come from far and wide to pray for France. I found a vacant room with a little writing desk on the second floor of a boarding house. From the window, I could see the spire of the basilica and the mountains. Within days of my arrival, the newspapers and radio announced that France was to be divided in two: there would be an occupied zone in the north and west, while the south and east would be a neutral zone governed from Vichy, that wedding-cake spa resort that would henceforth be the capital of the new puppet regime. I thought of my old concierge Madame Barbier and her husband, who’d gone there to flee the Germans, only now to find themselves surrounded by them. At the cinema, a newsreel showed footage of Hitler touring Paris alongside Albert Speer and others. The streets were sprinkled with people cheering hesitantly for the camera. Hitler stood on the Eiffel Tower and surveyed his new dominion. I had to look away.