Paris Never Leaves You

by Ellen Feldman

  * * *

  The next time he comes to the shop he is not carrying his black doctor’s bag. She tries to hide her disappointment. He says he has just been to tea with his superiors at the Meurice. That’s something else she wonders about but will not ask. How has he managed to remain in Paris for so long? As the fighting in Russia intensifies, more and more soldiers and officers are sent to the east. Parisians hear their grumbles, and witness their desperate clutching at pleasure in their last days and hours, and see, almost smell, the fear coming off them. One of the officials from the Propaganda Office was posted there as punishment for taking bribes to steer extra allotments of paper to certain publishing houses, or so gossip has it. But this officer, Julian (as she refuses to think of him), seems to have found himself a permanent perch. She can’t help wondering what unholy act he has committed to earn it.

  He begins drawing slices of lemon from his pockets. “There are no more oranges,” he says, “but I managed to take these when no one was looking.”

  She pushes what he might have done from her mind and carries the lemon slices to the back of the store. When she returns, a man in a blue pinstripe suit that looks improbably new, a strange phenomenon these days, and a carefully brushed homburg is coming through the door. The German officer turns away, goes to the far corner of the shop, and picks up a book. There is nothing unusual about that. He is always discreet when others are in the shop. He knows how dangerous it can be to her if they seem on good terms. He even keeps his back to them now, as if somehow he can obscure his identity, as if the uniform doesn’t give him away. It never occurs to her that he might be hiding for his sake rather than hers.

  The man removes his hat to reveal a broad but low forehead, approaches the counter, and asks Charlotte if she carries a book called Sterilization for Human Betterment. She says she doesn’t. He frowns.

  “It is an important work.”

  “We have no call for it.”

  “I am requesting it now.”

  “I’m sure you can find it in another bookshop.”

  He goes on looking at her, as if he is studying her. “Are you the proprietor?” he asks.

  “The proprietor is a prisoner of war in Germany.” At least she hopes Monsieur de la Bruyère is still a prisoner of war and not a casualty of forced labor.

  He goes on studying her. “Do you have another work, Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding? It was written by an American, Charles Davenport. Until recently, the Americans were ahead of us in sterilization and other eugenics measures, but thanks to the Führer, we have caught up and gone beyond them.”

  She tells him they don’t carry that book either.

  “Do you have How to Recognize Jews?”

  “We have no call for it.”

  His frown deepens. “Do you have any books on eugenics?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, monsieur. We have no call for them.”

  Now he is angry. He thinks she is making fun of him, and maybe she is. She wouldn’t if he were wearing a German uniform, but he is only a Frenchman whose mind has been squeezed into a Nazi straightjacket.

  “These are seminal works on the subject. It is essential that you carry them,” he says, and stands staring at her, as if he expects her to put in an order for them while he waits. She walks to a table of books and begins straightening them. He goes on watching her, then finally puts on his hat, turns, and leaves the shop. The bell rings noisily as he slams the door behind him. Her gaze follows him, and when she turns back, she sees the German officer is still holding the book, but he is not looking at it. He is staring after the man.

  He comes over to where she is standing. “Do you know who that is?”

  She shakes her head. “He’s not a regular customer.”

  “Professor Georges Montandon, the author of one of the books he asked for. How to Recognize Jews. According to him, he is an expert on the subject. He claims he is able to spot a Jew on sight.”

  “A talented man.”

  “He says it is not instinct but science.”

  She wants to ask if he believes that. He is a doctor, as he never lets her forget, a man of science, but she doesn’t ask. She tells herself she doesn’t want to engage him in any more conversation than necessary, but she knows it’s more than that. She is afraid of the answer.

  “The General Commission has hired him as a specialist to unmask Jews who are hiding behind false papers.”

  She wonders why he is telling her this. It doesn’t come to her until later that night. She remembers his assumption that she and Simone are sisters. He thinks she, too, is a Jew, but one passing as a French gentile. He was trying to warn her to be careful of the man.

  * * *

  They come bursting into the shop in high spirits, three university students, a girl and two boys, whom Charlotte recognizes from earlier visits. They want to know where the children’s books are shelved. The girl is looking for a birthday gift for her nephew. Charlotte directs them to a nook in the back of the store. They have to pass the German officer, who is in the philosophy section, to reach it. They lower their voices only slightly as they push past. He has become that familiar.

  One of the boys lifts out Emil and the Detectives and hands it to the girl. “This was my favorite.”

  The girl looks down at it. “No books by—”

  The other boy catches her eye and nods toward the German officer.

  She doesn’t finish the sentence, but the first boy puts the volume back on the shelf.

  Finally they decide on a French translation of Winnie-the-Pooh. They are still trading lines from it about bumping down the stairs, and bumping up the stairs, and climbing and climbing, as the girl pays and they leave the shop.

  Charlotte closes the cash register and goes to the nook to straighten the books they have been looking at. As she is rearranging titles, she hears the voice behind her.

  “‘He could see the honey, he could smell the honey, but he couldn’t quite reach the honey,’” he says in English. The words are whimsical, but his voice is somber.

  She turns around to face him. “You’ve read the book to your child?”

  “I have no child. I am not married. I read it to my sister when she was small. It was her favorite book.”

  She hears the undercurrent of grief beneath the words and remembers his response when he returned from his home leave. The telegram was too late. They were all gone. Now she knows they were not on holiday. The Germans brought the Allied bombing on themselves, but a young girl cannot be held responsible. She leans toward him, inhaling the smell of leather and cleanliness, and her hand, which knows more of human sympathy than she does, begins to rise to his arm. Horrified at herself, she checks the motion, but she is too late. He has seen it.

  Eight

  This time she didn’t throw away the letter. Strictly speaking, she hadn’t thrown away the earlier one. At least she hadn’t meant to. She’d merely panicked and tossed it in the wastebasket, and by the time she remembered to fish it out, the cleaning woman had come through the office.

  At first she didn’t think this letter had anything to do with him, despite the Colombian stamp. She’d published translations of a handful of South American books. She turned the letter over. The name on the back was Rabbi Sandor de Silva. She sliced open the envelope with the steel letter knife, unfolded the piece of stationery, and started to read. The rabbi wanted to know what she could tell him about Dr. Julian Bauer during the years she’d known him in Paris.

  She sat staring at the page. The real issue was what Dr. Bauer had told Rabbi de Silva about what she’d been up to during those years in Paris. She was so busy worrying the question that she didn’t sense Horace’s presence until he was sitting across the desk from her. Those rubber wheels could be silent when he wanted them to. Her eyes snapped up from the letter and, without meaning to, she shoved it under the blotter.

  He shook his head and smiled. “Don’t worry, Charlie. I can read upsid
e down—one of the tricks you learn working with printers, as I’m sure you know—but I won’t. It’s like the definition of a gentleman. Someone who knows how to play the accordion but doesn’t. Did you have a chance to look at that manuscript I gave you? The one that’s been turned down all over town?”

  “The Red Trapeze? I was going to write you a report today. You do realize there’s a reason it’s been turned down all over town, don’t you?”

  “Because my fellow publishers are a bunch of philistines who lack literary taste.”

  “I think that’s redundant.”

  “Okay, because they’re a bunch of cowards.”

  “For not wanting to tie themselves up in legal battles for God knows how long and possibly end up with a hefty fine, or even in prison?”

  “But that’s the point. It’s been eight years since Doubleday brought out Wilson’s Memoirs of Hecate County, six since the Supreme Court upheld the obscenity ruling. Mores are changing. It’s time for another test.”

  “What if you’re wrong? What if times haven’t changed as much as you think?”

  “That’s okay, too. I can’t lose. Either we make a serious dent in the censorship laws or we end up being raided by a bunch of detectives egged on by the American Legion. That’s what happened at Random House several years ago. About a book of poetry. I can’t even remember the title, but poetry has never sold as well as that collection did after word of the raid got around. But I asked for your opinion of the book, not legal advice.”

  “It’s brilliant. I admit that. But even if you forget the sex scenes, the war parts are pretty raw.”

  He sat staring at her across the desk. She’d never seen his eyes so cold. “I think the word you’re looking for is honest. But that won’t get it censored. War doesn’t offend them. Only sex and the struggle for social justice get under their skin.”

  “Then you’re going to publish it?”

  “You bet I’m going to publish it. I was pretty sure I was going to anyway, but your ‘brilliant’ is the stamp of approval.” He wheeled around and started out of her office. “Now you can go back to that letter. I don’t know what’s in it, but from the way you slid it under the blotter and the guilty look on your face, it must be hotter stuff than this book.”

  * * *

  He didn’t know why he teased her, he thought on the way back to his office. No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly why he teased her. He was trying to make light of things. He had no idea what the letter she’d shoved under the blotter was about or whom it was from, but he did know one thing. It scared the hell out of her. Hannah had a term she used about her more fragile patients: She or he was not too tightly wrapped. Charlotte was too tightly wrapped. In the end, both conditions amounted to the same thing. The ones who weren’t too tightly wrapped came unraveled. The ones who were erupted. Charlotte belonged to the latter group. He knew because he was on intimate terms with the condition.

  * * *

  She didn’t go back to the letter after Horace left her office. She sat thinking about the book he was going to publish. Other houses wouldn’t bring it out because they didn’t want a fight. He was spoiling for one. If he couldn’t get into the physical ring, he’d climb into the moral one. But she had a feeling it was more than that. The war scenes were, as she’d said, brutal, not just the blood and guts and physical toll but the mental horror. She’d never been in war, but she’d witnessed roundups and brutality and, once, a Nazi officer raking a crowd with machine gun fire just for the thrill of it. She’d seen bloodlust. That was what this book he was hell-bent on publishing was really about.

  * * *

  This time she wasn’t fooled. The same patient was standing in front of the mirror in the black-and-white-tiled foyer fixing her hat—a different one with a burst of spring flowers on it—but that’s all she was, a patient of Hannah’s primping, not a concierge holding an imaginary gun to her temple. The woman turned to Charlotte and nodded. Over the years, Charlotte had noticed that some of Hannah’s patients acknowledged her when they passed in the hall; others averted their eyes and slid by as if they’d been caught red-handed. These days, one, a young man, sometimes stopped to chat, though she’d found out recently that he wasn’t a patient but an analyst Hannah was training. Now Charlotte nodded back and started up the stairs.

  Vivi was sprawled on the sofa, her brown oxfords on the floor beside her, her navy-blue-knee-socked feet on the armrest. She’d dragged the phone over from the end table in the corner. The sight still gave Charlotte pause. At Vivi’s age, she wouldn’t have dared sprawl on the sofas in the family drawing room, her mother’s boudoir, her father’s study, or anywhere else. Her parents would not have allowed it. And the single phone in the apartment on the rue Vaugirard had been attached to a wall, there for important adult matters, not teenage gossip. But she was not her parents, she was especially not her mother, New York in 1954 was not Paris in 1932, and she had made up her mind the day she’d walked up the gangway in Le Havre, clutching Vivi’s hand because it would be so easy for a child to slip beneath the railing and plunge that dizzying distance into the black water churning around the hull, that they were going to become Americans. Paris was behind them. Nothing held them to France.

  She dropped a kiss on Vivi’s forehead, hung her coat in the closet, and headed to her room to get out of her high heels and suit. On her way, she noticed the light was on in Vivi’s room and took a step in to turn it off. The habit was a holdover from the Occupation. She was incapable of leaving the lights on when she left a room, or letting water run, or wasting anything. She reached for the light switch. That was when she saw it. The article lay on Vivi’s desk among her schoolbooks. Only one word of the title was visible. “Auschwitz.”

  Charlotte prided herself on respecting her daughter’s privacy. They lived too intimately and, she feared, in too much isolation with only each other as it was. So she was careful not to open the pink leather diary Vivi kept in her night table drawer, even when she forgot and left it out. She did her best to tune out those endless phone conversations Vivi had with her friends. She even, and this was the hardest, refrained from asking what Vivi and Hannah talked about on the evenings she got home late and Vivi went down to spend time with Hannah after school or for dinner. But respecting privacy was one thing, turning a blind eye something else.

  She moved the book to see the rest of the title. “From the VIe Arondissement to Auschwitz.” This was worse than she’d thought. “By Simone Bloch Halevy” ran beneath the words. The sudden dizziness made her grip the back of the desk chair. She knew Simone had written about the Occupation. A few years earlier, rummaging through the used books at the Argosy—the inexpensive secondhand volumes on the stand outside the store, not the valuable first editions inside—she’d come across Simone’s memoir. Picking it up carefully, as if it might detonate in her hands, she’d read the dedication.

  IN MEMORY OF MY PARENTS

  AND 75,000 OTHER FRENCH JEWS

  AND FOR SOPHIE

  That was as far as she’d got. She’d closed the volume and put it back in the trough carefully, though the explosion had already gone off. At least Simone and her daughter had survived, she’d told herself on the way home. It had made her feel better about them, but not about herself.

  Looking at the piece on Vivi’s desk now, she wondered what magazine it had been clipped from. There was no identification at the top or the bottom of the page. She didn’t recognize the typeface or layout. The stock was not glossy. This was no Life or Time or Saturday Evening Post piece. It certainly wasn’t Seventeen. So the question was not only where it had run but how Vivi had got her hands on it. She didn’t think she could blame this on Mr. Rosenblum. For one terrifying moment, she thought Simone might have tracked them down and mailed the piece. But if that were the case, she would have sent it to Charlotte, not Vivi. Simone would never blame the sins of the mother on the daughter.

  She picked up the clipping and began to read. The first paragraph was a
description of a privileged childhood in Paris, of little girls playing in the Luxembourg Gardens in their proper navy-blue coats with velvet collars, brimmed hats with grosgrain ribbons around the crown, and kid gloves, all from Jones in the avenue Victor-Hugo. Despite their correct attire, however, they ran wild, braids flying from beneath those hats, ankle boots racing, or as wild as they could under the watchful eyes of their stern English nannies. The image stole up on Charlotte like a thug in the night and hit her hard. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, then went on reading. Some of the little girls were named Bloch and Kahn and Weil, others Aumont and Goderoy and Lefort. Nonetheless, they all played together, the same games, the same language, the same glorious French heritage, or so the little girls named Bloch and Kahn and Weil believed. But those little girls with the names that weren’t really French, the ones who didn’t go to mass, or decide for a week or two to become nuns, or fall in love with their confessors, had been hoodwinked. They had no glorious French past, only a grim future in a Polish town called Oświęcim.

  Charlotte skimmed the rest of the piece. She knew where Simone was going. The article was a rant against the inhumanity of man. It was also a warning against the dangers of assimilation. She came to the author’s bio at the bottom of the column. Simone Bloch Halevy was a journalist who ran an information network that tried to reunite deported Jews with surviving members of their families, if any existed.

  She put the article back on the desk. She was not going to overreact. She was not even going to mention it to Vivi.

  Vivi was the one who brought it up. After she got off the phone, she came into the kitchen, where Charlotte was chopping garlic, and held the piece out to her.