Paris Never Leaves You

by Ellen Feldman

  As she gets nearer, she sees that the line snakes down the street and around the corner. People snarl at her as she makes her way to the front. She waves her special ration card as she goes. Some become apologetic, even wishing her well. A baby is cause for rejoicing in these unrejoiceable times. Others shout that she is an impostor, a cheat, a collabo even.

  She reaches the front of the line and is allowed to pass into the market. The woman whose turn she has usurped mutters angrily. She ignores her. No, she does not hear her. Vivi’s cries echoing in her ears drown out the sniping.

  She moves quickly, determined to get what she can while it lasts. She negotiates for a kilo of butter and some black bread. There is no meat or even rabbit. If only she had friends or relatives in the country nearby she could take the train or even bicycle out for food. A few weeks earlier, Simone’s mother sent a sausage. By the time it arrived it was purple. They’d tried to cure it with vinegar but finally given up. She turns to the sack of beans. They’re not rationed but still scarce. A woman jostles her, making her spill the beans she is trying to scoop. She drops to her knees and begins shoveling them up. She can tell even before she picks over them that they’re full of weevils.

  She produces her ration card, pays, and leaves. The transaction has taken more than an hour. It would have taken far longer without her special card. There would have been no transaction at all without her special card. The meager supplies are already running out.

  As she makes her way back down the line with her purchases in her string bag, she keeps her eyes on the cobblestones. She cannot meet the gazes of the people still waiting, some huddled under torn and broken umbrellas, others resigned to the wet, to one more indignity. Their looks are too full of hatred. Even those who’d murmured about a baby when they’d let her pass before cannot camouflage their envy now. Why should she eat, why should even a child eat, when their bellies are empty?

  She hears the howls before she turns the corner onto the rue Toullier. She tells herself it’s her imagination, but she knows it isn’t. It’s Vivi. She breaks into a run. Her wooden platforms clatter over the pavement. She careens through the few pedestrians who are out. Even in good weather people no longer stroll for pleasure. The flaneur is dead. A woman tells her to stop. “Les boches,” she warns. Sure enough, two soldiers head her off as she nears the bookshop. Standing in front of her, blocking her way, they demand to see her papers.

  Don’t you have anything better to do than stand in the rain, waiting to ambush innocent people, she wants to shout at them. Instead, clutching the string bag in one hand, she fumbles for her papers with the other. The older of the two takes them from her, moves under an awning, and begins studying them. The younger one, so young that his face is still ravaged with acne, stands guard over her, as if she is a criminal about to bolt. The one with the papers says something in German to his colleague. She cannot make out the words. He speaks a mixture of dialect and slang too quickly. Besides, she can’t hear anything above the sound of Vivi’s cries. She tries to explain. Her baby. That is her baby crying. The younger soldier grins as if a child in pain is a joke. The older one comes out from under the awning, hands her back her papers, and tells her not to run. She will alarm people. She will cause a disturbance. When they stand aside to let her by, she can barely keep from breaking into a gallop. It is harder as she gets closer to the shop and the sound of Vivi’s screams grows louder. Then they stop. The silence settles on her like sunshine breaking through the clouds. Simone has somehow managed to calm her. Or she has finally cried herself into an exhausted sleep. Charlotte feels her shoulders relax. She keeps walking, steadier now on the ridiculous wooden platforms.

  She reaches the shop, pulls open the door, and steps inside. The only sound is the bell. Then that goes silent, too. The store is even quieter than the street. Simone is nowhere in sight. There are no customers. The place is empty. But this is odd. There is a metal canteen standing on the counter beside the cash register. She looks around the shop again. In the alcove, sitting in the worn leather chair, still the professor’s chair as she thinks of it, is the German officer. He is holding Vivi in his arms, and—Charlotte cannot believe her eyes—giving her a bottle. Vivi’s rash-covered cheek rests against the rough cloth of his uniform. Her mouth sucks violently at the rubber nipple.

  The officer looks up and smiles. “I found the bottle in the back of the shop. I was careful to wash it first. I thought the child could use some milk. I brought it from the mess.” He points to the canteen on the counter, then drops his eyes for a moment, as if he is embarrassed. How did he know her milk has dried up? “There is other food, too.” He indicates the black doctor’s bag that sits on the floor beside him.

  She opens her mouth to say she can’t take it, but she knows she will.

  The bottle is almost empty. Vivi’s lids are drooping. Slowly, as the level of milk goes down, she stops sucking. Charlotte stands looking at the man who sits gazing down at the child, her child, whom he is cradling. Something in her chest lurches. Who is this man?

  She straightens her shoulders and stiffens her back. She will not be taken in.

  She crosses the room and takes Vivi from him. He stands.

  “I brought the milk and the food because every time I am here the child seems hungry.”

  “All of Paris is hungry.”

  He ignores her and goes on. “When I found her unattended, I gave her the bottle.”

  “She was not unattended,” she says indignantly. “I left her in good hands. It was my day to queue for food. The two of us take turns.”

  “The child was alone when I arrived,” he insists. “Your sister must have gone out for a moment.”

  She starts to say that she and Simone are not really sisters, they simply behave that way, but before she can, the knowledge dawns on her. No, the horror dawns on her. Simone would not have left Vivi alone unless she was forced to. Simone has been arrested.

  She sees the shadow pass across his face as he comes to the same realization. Now he is implicated. Now he is the one who can be accused. The Germans, his people, have taken Simone away.

  “You’ve arrested her.” She’s half shouting, half crying.

  “I have arrested no one,” he answers quietly.

  “Oh, yes, you arrest no one. You can do nothing. You have no authority.”

  Instead of answering, he lays two fingers on Vivi’s forehead. “She has a fever. I took the liberty of giving her half an aspirin.” He nods toward the black bag still sitting beside the chair. “I am a physician,” he tells her again.

  Oh, he’s clever, all right. He has no authority to save Simone or the old professor, but he has the ability to heal her child, he is telling her.

  She opens her mouth, though she doesn’t know if she’s going to thank him or spit in his face. She does neither. She just goes on holding Vivi and watching him as he takes the rest of the food from the black doctor’s bag, puts it on the counter, turns, and leaves the shop. Vivi doesn’t stir at the sound of the bell over the door.

  * * *

  When he comes again the next day, he asks about Vivi. She tells him she is napping in the storeroom. “Thanks to you,” she adds before she can stop herself. He smiles, and she realizes she has been had, again. He has got her to be civil. More than civil, friendly, grateful, indebted.

  He puts the black doctor’s bag on the counter, opens it, and begins taking out food. A loaf of bread, a piece of cheese. They haven’t had cheese in months. He is still putting out food when the bell over the door jingles. She turns to the sound and recognizes the man immediately. He rarely comes into the shop, but she sees him often on the street, or in other shops, or playing cards with the concierge in her loge. He and the concierge are great friends. Every time Charlotte encounters him, she has to force herself not to look away. The man was wounded in the last war, and like so many other injuries suffered in the trenches because only the head was above ground, it destroyed his face. The plastic surgeons did a good job
of giving him a new one. From a distance he looks almost normal. Close up he is terrifying. The replacement face is rigid and waxy. It can express neither joy nor sorrow, rage nor affection. A week or so ago, she saw him on the street berating a young woman who’d said thank you to a German soldier who’d picked up an envelope she’d dropped. His fierce patriotism and violent hatred of the Germans are understandable in view of what they did to him, but something about the contrast between the vehemence of his anger and the impassivity of his expression made him seem like a deadly mechanical doll, capable of destruction but immune to reason.

  She turns back to the German officer. The food is no longer on the counter. He is standing in the far corner, an open book in his hands, the black doctor’s bag on the floor beside him.

  The man wanders around the shop, picking up books but not opening them, returning them to the wrong place, staring from the German officer to her and back again. Finally he leaves.

  The officer picks up his bag, crosses the shop, and hands it to her. “Put the food in the back where no one can see it.”

  When did they become conspirators?

  * * *

  The next time he turns up, several days later, she asks him about Simone. When she sees the expression that crosses his face, she knows he has made inquiries but wasn’t going to tell her unless she asked.

  “She is in Drancy. Two policemen—gendarmes, not Germans—took her, first to the station on the rue de Greffulhe, then to the German office to be interrogated. Apparently it went well. She would have been released if it were not for her star.”

  “What about her star?”

  “It was attached with press studs rather than sewn.”

  “She did that so she could wear it on a dress or sweater or coat. She never went out without it.”

  “The regulations say it must be sewn to the garment.”

  “And for that they put her in a camp?”

  “They are scrupulous about such things.”

  “They? Aren’t you one of them?”

  His only answer is the blank stare, the one that says he has no authority.

  “Can I visit her?”

  “Visitors, even relatives, are not permitted.”

  “Can I send her something? Some of this food?” She indicates his latest gift. “Warm clothes?” She knows from what remains in the closet in the back that they took Simone away in only the dress and sweater on her back, and another brutal winter is setting in. “Books?”

  “It is difficult. Now that the SS have taken over the camp from the French.” He hesitates.

  “But not impossible?”

  “Guards can be bribed,” he admits. “If you make a package, I will see that she gets it.”

  After he leaves and the full horror of the situation sinks in, her first thought, after Simone, is of Simone’s daughter and mother. Should she get word to her mother? Which is kinder, information or ignorance? She remembers a day, when they were perhaps thirteen or fourteen, that she and Simone sneaked out of school and spent the afternoon larking in the Bois de Boulogne. When they were found out and given extra essays to write and hours of atonement after school, Charlotte confessed her transgression to her parents, but Simone managed to hide the punishments as well as the crime. Then, Simone was saving her own skin. Now, Charlotte has the feeling, she’d want to save her mother’s peace of mind, or the little of it there is these days.

  She decides not to contact Simone’s mother in the hope she’ll be released soon, but she does put together a parcel. He delivers it and returns with word that Simone is still in the camp. At first she is furious. How long can they keep someone for not sewing on her star properly? Then she interprets his words. He means Simone has not been put on a transport. She has heard about the transports, though like almost everything coming out of the rumor mill, the stories are unbelievable. Salt mines in Poland and forced labor camps in Germany make a horrible kind of sense, but can a crippled and bent old woman, a man who has lost his sight, a three-year-old child work?

  * * *

  He continues to turn up in the shop. If he were a normal customer, if these were normal times, she would discuss the books he buys with him or at least comment that he is a voracious reader. She holds her tongue. Except to say thank you. Oh, you’re scrupulous, she chides herself silently. You keep him at arm’s length, except when you reach out to take the food he brings. But she does not argue with herself too vehemently. Vivi’s legs are no longer spindles. She is beginning to have a small belly. She cries, but not incessantly.

  Of course, the silence cannot last. He is too wily for that. He asks her name. She doesn’t answer. She is fairly sure he already knows her name, but volunteering it in polite conversation feels too intimate. He tells her his own nonetheless. Julian Bauer. He puts no military rank before his name. He does not even say herr doctor, though he mentions his profession and training when he inquires about Vivi, when he reports on Simone, when he asks about certain books, every chance he gets. She understands the ploy. I have sworn to first do no harm, he is telling her. You’re in the Wehrmacht, she wants to scream back at him. The Wehrmacht killed my husband. The Wehrmacht drove my father into hiding. The Wehrmacht is occupying my country. The Wehrmacht has taken away my friend. No, he will tell her about the last. That was not the Wehrmacht. They were French gendarmes. I have no authority.

  Nonetheless, he begins addressing her as if they are on friendly terms. Bonjour, madame, he says, bon soir, madame, always with a small bow. Funny about that bow. Slight as the gesture is, it manages to stir the air, and that particularly German military scent of leather and cleanliness, especially cleanliness—she is so tired of unwashed flesh and dirty hair and soiled clothing—is more dizzying than the most intoxicating perfume.

  Then one day as he is taking another piece of cheese, two potatoes, and milk, always milk for Vivi, from his black leather bag, he asks her casually, as if they are both thinking about the food, which she is, where her husband is.

  She does not answer. Of all the subjects she will not speak of with him, Laurent is first on the list, especially since she started having the dreams. Night after night, Laurent returns to her, but each time something goes wrong. He tells her he no longer loves her. He accuses her of infidelity. He says Vivi is not his.

  “He is here?” the officer asks.

  She is silent.

  “A prisoner of war?”

  She still doesn’t answer.

  As the realization dawns on him, the shop goes quiet except for the ticking of the clock that she has kept set to German time since the day he noticed it.

  “I am sorry,” he says, as the bell over the door jingles and a customer steps into the shop. She turns to put the food back in the doctor’s bag, but he has already done it. He is protecting her. Her and Vivi. She tries not to think of what Laurent would say to that.

  * * *

  He stays away from the shop for more than a week. She tells herself she notices only because of the food. She and Vivi have grown accustomed to eating again. Two nights earlier, Vivi spit out the turnips she made for dinner. Last night, she pushed the spoon away with her small hand and cried, but finally ate some.

  Then late one afternoon, when a downpour has lowered the sky and draped the shop in shadows, when Vivi has gone down for her nap in the back room and Charlotte is sitting at the cash register struggling to read in the gloom, the bell above the door vibrates, the door opens, and he comes in on a gust of wet wind. She is relieved to see that he is carrying his black leather bag, and ashamed of the sentiment. She thinks of Simone, still in Drancy. These days she prays that Simone is still in Drancy. Anything is better than deportation.

  He puts the bag on the counter, takes off his cap, shakes it out over the floor, careful not to spatter the books, and smooths his dark non-Aryan hair. Then he removes his glasses, takes a handkerchief from his pocket, dries and polishes one lens, the other.

  “I am sorry,” he says. She thinks he is talking about the r
ain he has brought into the shop. Then he goes on. “I was sent home.” He pushes the bag closer to her.

  She doesn’t understand his dejected air. It’s kind of him, or wily she thinks again, to apologize for not bringing the food she has come to expect, but surely he can’t be sad about having gone home on leave.

  “You must have been happy to see your family.”

  “No one was there.”

  “You didn’t have a chance to tell them you were coming?”

  “I wired, but it was too late.”

  She does not ask too late for what. If they were on holiday, she will be furious. If they perished in an Allied bombing, she will be sympathetic, and that is even more dangerous. She refuses to feel pity. They brought it on themselves. But she cannot sustain the heartlessness. He may have lost people he loved. She knows how that feels. And are he and his family really responsible for the war? Perhaps they had been no more eager for it than she and Laurent.

  Again she pulls back from the thought. Sometimes she thinks he is too cunning for her. But why should he be cunning? If he is after sex, it’s easy enough to find. The amount of food he brings would buy him a different woman every night or the same woman for as many nights as he likes. She is not thinking of prostitutes but of nice Frenchwomen, hungry like herself. Sometimes she thinks he is just lonely. Again she pushes the thought from her mind. She will not sympathize with him. She will not humanize him. But the memory of Laurent once again undermines her resolve, though there is no similarity between the husband she is trying to hang on to and this man she is trying to keep at a distance. What if Laurent had lived? What if the war had gone differently? She tries to imagine him in Berlin, walking the streets, going to concerts and the cinema, befriending a woman in a bookshop. She cannot. But then with all that’s going on, with the constant struggle to survive, she finds she can remember less and less the way things used to be.