Madame Rose was a confusing person. Their church was a church but did not look like a church? Well, he could not think of that now. Sun would stream through the portholes of the Garlic. Marie would be waking up. She always called Jerome her hero when there was breakfast waiting when she woke up. Dodging through the trudging shoppers, Jerome happily took off toward the river. This salami would be enough to eat every night until Madame Hilaire showed up again at the end of the week!
12
The Great Problem
The garret room at the top of seven long flights of stairs was ideal for Josephine Marlow. She alone occupied the floor that had been an attic storage space. Tucked beneath the eaves of the Foyer International, two tall dormer windows overlooked slate and green copper roofs and the leafless trees of Luxembourg Gardens. To the left, the golden dome of des Invalides marked the burial place of Napoleon. Above the tangle of chimney pots, the large square towers of Notre Dame marked the center of l’Cité. To the right, the distant hill above Montmartre was crowned with Sacre Coeur.
In their time together in Paris, Josie and Daniel had climbed the north tower of Notre Dame a dozen times to view the city. They had picnicked on fresh warm bread with creamy Brie and washed it down with red wine as they waited for the bells to toll. No doubt they had glanced toward the windows of this very room and yet had never imagined that Josie would be standing here alone one day, waiting for the same bells to ring.
It was best, she thought, to hear them at a distance now. To turn her face to the north tower and imagine Danny there still, looking her way.
The room was small. A single iron-frame bed rested against the wall beneath the sloping ceiling. Madame Watson provided a desk and chair where Josie could write. A tall chest of drawers was maneuvered up the stairs with great difficulty by two sweating deliverymen who were past their prime. The wood-planked floor was covered by a blue floral rug Josie had purchased at the flea market a week after her arrival.
Alma was quartered two floors below and down the hall from two of their friends, Irene and Helene. No doubt Josie’s isolation had been planned by Madame Watson to protect the other residents from the clacking of an Olivetti typewriter at all hours.
Whatever the reason, it was worth seven flights to be spared the constant borrowing and unending chatter of the lower floors that reminded Josie of a college dorm. If someone needed a word with her or a telephone call came in, the message was relayed by banging on the radiator pipes that twisted up to heat her living space. No one, after panting up four or five stories, wanted to climb the rest of the way just to visit Josephine Marlow. Josie was grateful for the privacy and the view.
As a foreigner, she was required to register and be fingerprinted at the police station just around the corner in the Latin Quarter. But she did not feel like a foreigner. Her favorite café, Deux Magots, was a short walk. In spite of the cold, the bouquinists, the booksellers, still displayed their wares in sidewalk bins. There were fewer students poking through the crates these days, but still the old Left Bank neighborhood had the look and feel of Paris before the war. It was good to be home.
Even so, as Josie listened to the conversation of taxi drivers and waiters and shopgirls, she felt uneasy. She lunched with French government officials and visited neutrals and fellow journalists at the Crillon and the Ritz but left each meeting with a heavy lump of foreboding in her throat. It was not the bitter cold of winter that made her tremble in her attic room; it was something else. France did not want to hear that what had happened in Warsaw was possible in France.
She had promised the little priest of the Cathedral of St. John that she would tell the world what had transpired there, but no one wanted to be reminded of war. They wanted only to talk of politics.
As she walked toward Deux Magots to join her friends for lunch, Josie knew she would have to talk of politics again. And she was right.
Delfina and Helene, Alma, Irene and Josie now sat beneath the grinning wooden effigies of two Chinese Mandarin lords and sipped their coffee. They argued with an old waiter who had been pulled from retirement after the young waiters had all been sent to the front.
The old man winked at the young women and proceeded to enlighten them about “The Great Problem Facing France.”
“Russia has a Man. Italy has a Man. Germany has a Man. If only France had a Man, we could beat them all.” He shrugged. “But we have Prime Minister Daladier, who gave Czechoslovakia to Germany’s Man. England has Chamberlain, who did the same.”
Delfina, Russian by birth and anti-Bolshevik by religion, flared. “If France and England were run by dictators, then what would make them different from Russia, Germany, or Italy, Monsieur?”
“If we had a dictator,” said the waiter somewhat sadly, “at least he would be our Man . . . a French Man.”
The waiter may have been a secret Fascist, a Socialist, a Communist, or simply a confused Democrat, but he expressed the longing of nearly every Parisian for a strong national government that would inspire national pride. Beyond that, government should leave the common man to live.
This desire—to be left alone to live according to one’s convictions—was common to all French political positions. A strong leader was the one concept that united all parties. It was just that no one in France could agree upon whose point of view the Strong Man of France should represent. Each political faction believed that all the other camps should be brought into line with their own. All that resulted was confusion.
Helene, who worked as a seamstress at Redfern, simply shrugged. “Mais que voulez-vous? We French like our own politics, but we deplore those of everyone around who does not agree. It is not always convenient, but we manage. . . .”
“Oui,” concluded Irene. “When the occasion demands it, we will put aside our differences, to be resumed at a more convenient moment. In the meantime, we all unite to defend our beloved France.”
Josie remained silent through all of this. Her companions did not know, could not conceive, what it was they were defending their beloved France against.
If all that was required for an acceptable existence was to remain alive and relatively untroubled, then what difference would it make to the French if their government was Fascist, Communist, Socialist, or confused Democrat? One was just as good as another, was it not? Laissez-faire; as long as an individual was left alone to live day by day, one set of principles was as good as another. Provided that the Man at the helm of French government was French, perhaps even Fascism could be tolerated.
Josephine had been too quiet. All heads pivoted toward her.
“Well, Josephine?” Helene probed.
Alma added with a laugh, “In England she could not stop talking politics. What’s this? Run out of opinions?”
Josie sat back and drew a deep breath. “You sure you want my views?”
“This is France,” Delfina remarked sharply. “Everyone has an opinion.”
“And every one is different,” Josie interrupted. “All right, then. Unlike France, there is only one opinion in all of Nazi Germany, and here it is: Warfare is as sacred to men as motherhood is to women.”
There was silence around the table for a second and then a nervous giggle.
“Is that all, Josephine?” Helene laughed.
Josie shrugged. “They all agree on that. Or if they don’t agree, they can’t argue with it. Germans no longer talk politics on the Ku’damm in Berlin. They talk about war.”
“Well, is that not what we have been doing?” Irene twittered.
“No!” Delfina shot back hotly. “Politics and war are not the same. It is war that ultimately decides politics, religion, and what your life will be like day to day! Not the other way around. Right and wrong survive every battle. But only the victor has the privilege to choose between the two. The Nazis have known that from the beginning. Hitler . . . Stalin . . . they are all the same. They enslave their own people by giving them something that politics and religion can no longer provide. They give th
em meaning to their existence that is beyond narrow self-interest. Give them a sacred war to fight! A reason to sacrifice! Some unity in a bloody cause! The real degradation begins when people realize they are in league with the devil. But they feel the devil is preferable to the emptiness of life that lacks larger significance. The Cause becomes their god. Right or wrong? What is that? The Cause is everything.”
Josie considered her friend with sympathy. Delfina’s family had fled from Russia to France during the Bolshevik revolution. Her cartes d’identite was still the Nansen Passport—the passport issued to displaced persons after the last war. She had suffered enough to know what she was talking about.
The others sat speechless at Delfina’s outburst. There was an uncomfortable pall over them as she continued. “France is waiting for its French Hitler. The churches are empty. Lives are empty. What is your purpose for existence? Only to exist. To keep breathing and eating and . . . it all frightens me very much.”
“War as sacred as motherhood?” Alma laughed. “Ask any French poilu at the Maginot how he feels about that! He will tell you he much prefers making some woman into a sacred mother to making war. There’s the difference between Germany and France!”
Helene shook her head in horror. “Dreary little Nazis! To imagine men who value fighting over making love!” She put a finger to her temple, indicating the madness of it. “Vive la France! It is them or us this time, girls.”
Three days’ leave in Paris! The only way the prospect could have been more exciting was if it had been London, or if Annie had somehow managed to be in Paris, too. Hewitt had teased David when he said this. “The last place you want your regular girl to be is in Paris, Tinman!”
The train pulled out of Rouvres at noon; the trip would take only a few hours. David had never been to Paris before. He made a mental vow to store up sights and sounds to share with Annie. She had never been to the City of Lights either. He would take her there someday and be her tour guide to the most romantic place in the world.
The countryside of eastern France rolled by. Hewitt and Simpson were asleep as the train pulled away from the platform at Chalons-sur-Marne. David leaned on the window ledge along the corridor outside the compartment, looking at the Marne River. He compared the twin towers of the church of Notre Dame de Vaux to its description in a guidebook. “Romanesque nave,” he read. “Gothic choir and vaults.”
“What’s this?” a gravelly voice belched. “Trying to improve your mind, assassin?”
A reedy, high-pitched tone agreed. “Sure he is, Badger. That’s it exactly.”
It was Badger Cross and his toady friend, Dinky Mertz. From the slur in both their voices it was clear they had been drinking. David wanted to ignore them, hoping they would go away. The last thing he needed was to get into an altercation with Cross and maybe get put off the train.
Badger snatched the volume out of David’s hands. “Too high-and-mighty for the likes of us, eh, Tincup? Can’t be bothered to speak to an old acquaintance?”
“Give it here, Cross,” David said as Badger passed the guidebook to Dinky. “I don’t want any trouble with you.”
“He doesn’t want any trouble with me. Isn’t that sad, Dinky? Is that any way to speak to a comrade in arms?”
“No, not at all polite.” Mertz hiccupped.
David tried to reach past Badger and grab the book, but Cross swatted his arm aside and wheezed his beery breath in David’s face. “Didn’t know I lost me cushy instructor job on accounta you, did you, Teacup? Someone ratted on me for the little tussle we had in the pub . . . was that you, Tincan, Buttercup—whatever your name is—was that you?”
“It wasn’t me. Now get lost, Badger. I don’t want to fight you again.”
“Well, shall we let bygones be bygones then?”
David regarded Badger’s meaty, outstretched hand with suspicion. “Sure,” he said at last. “Just as soon as you give me my book back.”
“How thoughtless of me. Dinky, the book.” Badger reached his right hand back over his shoulder as if to take the guide from Mertz. But when his fist reached shoulder height, he threw it straight forward, toward David’s nose.
David had expected something of the kind, and that instinctive warning, combined with Badger’s drunken reflexes, was enough to get David’s nose out of the way. The punch did land on his ear, though, flinging him sideways into the window and knocking out the glass.
He lashed out with his leg as he fell and hooked Badger behind the knee. The big man also tumbled against the window, catching Dinky with a flailing forearm and whacking him to the floor as well.
Quickly on his feet, David said, “Okay, so we still have something to settle. But not here, you idiot! Do you want to get thrown off the train?”
“Ha! Did you hear that, Dinky? The Yank has got no stomach, besides no heart. He’s yellow.”
“Sure he is, Badger.” Mertz wiped his bloody lip with his sleeve. “But c’mon, he’s right. We don’t want to get put off.”
“You little traitor. Just have to get the job done quickly then.”
Badger put his head down and charged, more bull-like in his actions than his namesake. David caught him around the neck with one arm and brought an uppercut into the center of Badger’s mouth. The force of the rush carried the pair down the corridor till they impacted the wall at the end, breaking out another glass panel.
Having Badger’s twenty-stone weight behind the shoulder in the center of David’s chest took the American’s breath away. Badger threw his head back and brought his hands together up under David’s chin. “I’ll throttle you good, Tinfoil,” he said, squeezing David’s throat. Cross braced himself against the motion of the train with a wide stance.
A mademoiselle came into the corridor from the far end. When she saw the struggle, she screamed and ran back out the door. “Hurry, Badger,” urged Mertz, “’fore the gendarmes get here!”
Though David’s head was swimming, his early dirty fighting skills had not deserted him. He brought his right knee up into Badger’s crotch.
Badger grunted once and dropped his hands. David wound up his right and fired, smacking Badger in the eye and flinging him backward into the just-arrived train conductor.
That worthy was knocked down, breaking his glasses and a gold watch. But the French damsel’s screams had brought assistance: Two stewards from the dining car and an off-duty policeman had come along as well.
Dinky Mertz disappeared.
When David and Badger were hauled before the magistrate in the town of Epernay, the judge was an understanding man. He was willing to let the two brawlers go, he said, provided they pay for the damage to the train, the glasses, the watch, and Monsieur the conductor’s nose. Five hundred francs should cover it.
It was more than both had, put together.
“Trois jours,” he said. “Three days in jail.”
Luxembourg City was an anachronism—a hodgepodge of architecture and ages that somehow managed to live together in harmony. It was the city where Elaine Snow had lived. It was the place where Andre and Elaine’s child now resided with her grandfather, steel magnate Abraham Snow, in a tall, Gothic house overlooking the Petrusse River.
Andre’s official trip to Belgium was reason enough to make a detour back into Luxembourg City on his return to Paris from Arlon. This time he spent the night at the Brasseur Hotel in the same room where he had often met with Elaine.
The staff recognized him at once. Henri, the proprietor, and his wife, Agnes, greeted him solemnly. Did they sense that he had returned to their establishment on a sort of pilgrimage dedicated to Nazi-executed Elaine? They did not mention her name. Henri simply handed Andre the key to their room.
Agnes, who sat knitting in the shadows beside the lift, turned her eyes upward in pity for an instant as he passed. The needles clicked like those of Madame Defarge watching the condemned climb the scaffold of the guillotine. Her eyes seemed to ask, “Are you putting yourself through this ordeal willingly? Poor fo
ol.”
He took his meal, roti de veau and asperges, alone in his room. He was hardly able to swallow. What little he ate was washed down with an entire bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pap. It was a mediocre vintage, but he drank it all. The wine did not help him sleep as he had hoped. He lay on the bed and closed his eyes and saw Elaine.
Blue satin negligee. The thin strap slipped down, revealing her shoulder. Her lips parted in a smile of expectation. He reached out for her, but she was gone. . . .
He hardly slept, and when he did, his dreams were full of her. When she was alive, he had still held some hope that one day they would be together again. Now there was nothing but the ache of longing.
At last his thoughts turned to the child, to Juliette. She was no more than a ten-minute walk from the hotel. Ten minutes away, yet Andre had never laid eyes on her. And so, in the morning, he got up determined to see the child that he and Elaine had created.
It was raining. At eight o’clock Andre ate a croissant and gulped a cup of coffee in the small dining room of the hotel. He left his car in the garage and borrowed an umbrella from Henri for the short walk to Boulevard de la Petrusse.
Andre crossed the street and walked along the quai. With the river at his back, he stared up at the tarnished stone of the great house. Six smoking chimney pots topped the steep slate roof. The window shades were drawn as if the structure had closed its eyes in grief. The black crepe of mourning was hung above the massive door. Would Juliette come out and walk to school? Or should Andre go boldly up the steps, knock on the door, and ask to see the child? Should he risk being refused by Abraham Snow, who had good reason to hate him? That could mean a scene in front of Juliette. Hadn’t she been through enough?
Andre could not make himself move toward the house.
Rain drummed hard on the umbrella, like impatient fingers drumming on a tabletop. It splashed up from the stones until the cuffs of his trousers were damp. How long had he been waiting? A lone man beneath a black umbrella on the riverbank. He must be a curious sight. He thought he saw the edge of a curtain of an upper-story window stir and then fall back. Was someone watching him even as he watched the house? Perhaps it was little Juliette behind the glass.