“Good,” Dr. Leclerc said briskly. “Go on, then. I expect more patients soon.”
Patients? I thought. Or spies? I didn’t say anything, but my thoughts must have shown on my face. “Remember,” he said very quietly, “always remember: If you, who look like a schoolgirl, can be a spy, then anyone can be. Not just for France, but for Germany too. You can’t trust anyone, not anyone at all.”
“I’ll remember,” I said. I patted my hair once more, straightened my collar, and followed Dr. Leclerc out the examining room door. A young woman with a small, sickly-looking baby sat in the waiting room. Patient? I thought. Or spy?
I had rehearsal at the theater scheduled until six, but I left a few minutes early. Remembering Madame Marcelle’s advice, I didn’t give an excuse. “I have to go,” I said, picking up my handbag and waving to the director. On the way out I stopped in the ladies’ room. It was empty. I sat on the toilet and took the message out of my hair. I unfolded it. The thin handwritten letters looked like this: XTZOM YVHJR ZDVGG TYPHL. A code, then. Something I couldn’t understand. Good. I couldn’t be responsible for what the message contained; I could never give the information away. I refolded the tiny paper and tucked it inside my glove.
My heart hammered. The evening sun filled the streets with golden light, but every person I passed looked like a Nazi to me. I felt sure everyone could see my nervousness. Everyone must suspect me. My hands were moist. A cold sweat broke out on my arms. I tried very hard not to look around as I walked toward the café. But no—I shouldn’t look only straight ahead. That might seem suspicious.
What would I do if I were going to the café for coffee? Would I walk this fast? Would I walk faster? Slower? Would I seem eager to meet my unknown friend, this number seven? Should it look as though we had planned to meet, or should it look like an accident?
How was I going to get that message out of my glove? What a foolish place to put it!
Relax, I thought. Be strong. Don’t panic.
Then I had a thought that saved me. I would pretend I was onstage. I would be an artist.
I would walk at my usual speed. I wouldn’t be planning to meet anyone. I was simply an opera singer, finished with rehearsal and thirsty for a little of the vile, burnt-tasting, stagnant liquid that the cafés served now that real coffee had become more precious than gold. Yes, I was terribly thirsty. I swung my purse and whistled an aria. I walked with jaunty confidence.
I felt terrified. I was an actress and the café was my stage. It was crowded when I went in. Good, I thought. Crowded is good. People weren’t as likely to notice details in a crowd.
I ordered coffee. I opened my handbag to get money to pay for it. As I removed the money from my wallet, I slid the message out of my glove. I did it slowly, smoothly. The clerk never noticed. I gave her the money and took back my change, then picked up the hot cup of coffee. I held the message between the cup and my hand.
Where to go now? What to do? I hesitated, then felt panicky again. Surely I looked obvious—surely I looked like a spy.
Keep all the details true, I thought, except for the inescapable lie. So I was alone, had stopped for coffee—I should find an empty table and sit there. I scanned the crowd, not looking at faces—I wouldn’t be looking at faces—but at tables. I found one and began to move toward it.
Right beside me a woman’s voice shouted, “Hello!” I nearly spilled my coffee on her head.
“Marvelous, my dear, marvelous to see you!” she shouted. She was old and poorly dressed. She wore layers of faded clothes and an old felt hat. “How is your dear mother?”
This woman, this spy, didn’t seem afraid of attracting attention at all. I followed her lead. “Dear madame!” I cried in a tone of happy surprise. The woman threw her arms around me. We kissed, one cheek, then the other. “Seven,” she whispered as she kissed my cheek.
“Twenty-two,” I whispered, kissing hers.
Our enthusiastic embrace knocked some of the coffee out of my cup. She caught my hand, laughing, and took the cup from me in the most natural way. She used her handkerchief to help me wipe up. The message was in her pocket with her handkerchief before anyone could have seen.
“Sit, sit,” she said. “You have to tell me—” Outside, a nearby church bell tolled the hour. “Six o’clock!” she said. “So late! What a pity! I must fly! Give my love to your mother—how nice to see you again!”
Spy number seven grabbed up a giant marketing bag and shuffled out the door. I sat alone drinking horrible coffee, with no message and a feeling of unutterable relief.
At home Maman said, “How was practice?”
“Wonderful!” I said. “I love Carmen.” I danced around the kitchen table, singing my opening aria. “I got a coffee on the way home. It tasted like boiled pencil shavings.”
“Bah!” said Maman. “The junk they sell these days! A waste of money.”
That was all I said; all I could say. But that night I was kept awake by feelings of victory, not fear. I had helped the Allies. I had hindered the Germans. I was fighting for France.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Carmen was a triumph. The few notes that I missed, I missed with brio, with flair. The newspaper review called me “enchanting.” An unknown admirer sent me flowers backstage. So did my brothers, my father, my friends.
I sang the third performance with a message pinned in my hair. On the outside I was lively, mysterious, enchanting. On the inside I was petrified.
“That was your best performance yet,” Maman said when it was over.
“Oh, thank you!” I said. “Can we celebrate? I feel like celebrating. Can we go to a restaurant? Just for a drink and a snack?”
“Eh bien,” said Papa. “Acting the movie star, are you? You feel you deserve to go to a restaurant?” He was teasing. He was proud of me.
“She isn’t a movie star,” said Pierre. “She’s—”
“An artist,” I said. “Yes, Pierre, I know. That joke is growing thin.”
“I wasn’t going to say ‘an artist.’ I was going to say ‘a terrible glutton.’ ”
“Just because I’m hungry—”
“Bah,” said Maman. “I’d be hungry too if I did all that running around onstage. Where would you like to go?”
I told them. We went, sat down, and ordered dessert. I excused myself to wash my hands and had just gotten back when a man stopped at our table.
“I just came from the theater,” he said. “In my lifetime I have seen Carmen six times—six—and this one was the best. Such beautiful singing! Such a talented girl! Please allow me to shake your hand.”
I was to meet number six. We shook, and the message I had pulled out of my hair in the washroom changed hands.
Summer passed, hot and stuffy. I longed for a new opera. I was eager for autumn. I carried only a few messages for Dr. Leclerc. Sometimes weeks would go by without one, and I would begin to worry that he no longer trusted me. Then several would come rapid-fire, more than one a day, and I would worry that I couldn’t keep all my activities concealed.
“Suzanne?” Maman said. “Why did the doctor call again?”
“I’ve been having headaches.” This was true. Carrying messages made my head hurt.
“Meet a woman, number thirteen, in the church of La Trinité on Wednesday at ten A.M.” I cut my singing lesson short and walked to the church. I dipped my hand in the holy water, crossed myself, then clasped my hands together (the message tight between them) as though in prayer. There were two women praying in the pews. Which one? I could not kneel and whisper “twenty-two” to a housewife or a German spy. Which was the right woman? Both knelt devoutly, heads bowed. Of course I did not know what Thirteen was supposed to look like.
I walked halfway up the aisle toward the two women. I genuflected and knelt at the end of the pew, next to the aisle. The two women prayed and prayed. They didn’t move. Certainly one was waiting for a message. The other, I supposed, was waiting for the answer to her prayer. Dear God, I prayed, pleas
e make one of these women go away.
I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my nose. I started to slide the handkerchief back but let it miss my pocket and flutter to the floor while I prayed hard, eyes closed, and didn’t seem to notice. Ahead of me a woman got up, genuflected unsteadily, and came down the aisle with eyes downcast. She looked as though she had been weeping. I wondered what sorrow she had known. Good, I thought. It must be the other one.
The first woman walked three steps past me, then turned slowly and came back. She bent to pick up my handkerchief. “You dropped this,” she said.
“Thank you,” I answered, taking it from her. Please go away, I thought, so I can hand over this message and get out of here.
“Tell your troubles to God,” she said softly. “The Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want. He makes us lie down in green pastures. He leads us beside still waters. He refreshes our souls. Thirteen.”
For an instant I thought she was telling me the number of the psalm she was quoting. “No, twenty-three,” I corrected her automatically. Then, catching myself, almost in horror, I said, “I mean, twenty-two .”
“Yes.” She lifted a gentle hand to my face, and for a moment I gazed into her tear-filled eyes. “The Lord protects and keeps us.” She touched my fingers gently as she turned away.
That was a good one, I thought, bowing my head as she shuffled away. St. Joseph himself wouldn’t have noticed that message pass between us.
That winter was miserable. The opera company sang Le Nozze di Figaro, The Marriage of Figaro, but even Mozart’s wonderful Susanna failed to lift my spirits. We sang Otello, a gloomy story even for an opera. As Desdemona, I died at the end.
“You are always dying at the end,” said Pierre. “Aren’t you getting tired of it? Can’t you play a part that ends happily?”
“It’s opera,” I said. “The good parts are always sad.”
But I could have used some happiness, even if only onstage. Gray clouds hung in the sky, and the wind blew wet and cold day after day. We were all so tired of rationing and shortages. We were all so tired of war. I was too old now to complain about our constant diet of rutabagas and fish, but I wasn’t too old to hate it.
The messages continued. Sometimes I was pleased to have something to do. Other times it frightened me. Once I gave a message to a man right under the gaze of a German guard. My heart beat so fast, I thought it might fly out of my chest. Some nights, after delivering messages, nightmares jerked me awake. I tried never to scream.
Papa worried over my headaches. “Perhaps you’re singing too much.”
“Oh, Papa. My head never hurts when I sing.”
“Perhaps you need eyeglasses.”
“Perhaps. When the war is over.”
“Perhaps she needs some laughter,” said Etienne. “Some parties, some good friends, a little fun.”
Now that I was finished with school I rarely saw Colette or my other friends. I could have, I knew, and Maman urged me to visit them. It was hard to know what to say to them when I did. They didn’t understand my singing career; they didn’t understand why I took it so seriously, why I practiced all the time. And I could never tell them about my messages. Once I arranged to meet Martine for coffee only to be sent somewhere with a message at the same time. I called Martine to cancel our meeting. An hour later, when we were supposed to be having coffee, I ran into her on the street. She was hurt, and I had no way to explain.
I went to Yvette’s house twice a month, on Saturday afternoons, for two hours. Her mother liked to do a little shopping then, and it gave her a chance to leave Yvette without worrying. As time went on Yvette seemed less and less human. She was always dressed and clean, and she went about her chores dutifully, but she never showed any emotion. I came to dread being with her. I went only for the sake of her mother.
I grew taller. My clothes didn’t fit. Papa made good money, as the Germans had left his salary the same, and Pierre and Etienne were both working, and I was paid for my singing performances, but there was nothing to buy. I couldn’t find a new dress, and it was so hard to get enough cloth to make anything new. Maman fretted over my short coat sleeves. “If I could find any decent wool at all . . . ,” she murmured.
“Don’t worry, Maman,” I said. “I don’t mind.” But on the street I tugged at the sleeves, wishing the cuffs of my dress didn’t show.
Just after Christmas Pierre developed a bad cough and had to stay home from work for a week. When I came home from delivering a message, he complained about my absence. “You flit around so much,” he said. “You just leave without saying anything. You don’t keep a schedule. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Of course I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said. “What a stupid thing to say. I have a career.”
“Oh, la, Miss Opera Singer,” he replied with a rude wave of his hand.
“Don’t fuss at me,” I said, “just because I wasn’t here to play chess when you wanted.” I could see how poorly he felt, feverish and flushed. I didn’t say anything more.
But I lay awake that night. Did Pierre really think I was gone too much? Did Maman and Papa wonder? Should I make more excuses when I left the house, or was it best to continue to say nothing?
And what about the Nazis? Did they notice my comings and goings? Did they suspect me at all? I watched the night shadows crisscross my ceiling. I tossed and turned. My stomach hurt, and my head did too.
German soldiers still occupied the street behind ours. They walked past our house daily. I tried not to see them; I avoided looking at them even when I had to show them my papers, which was often. Sometimes one of the younger ones would call out to me or whistle. I always pretended not to hear. “Stay out of their way,” Maman said, and Papa would repeat, “Do what you are told and you won’t get hurt.”
Meet number twelve at the Place Napoléon, in front of the statue, at noon. This was what I was told. I tried to tell myself that if I did it right, I couldn’t be hurt, but I knew better.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
One day in early spring Madame Marcelle and I went to Saint-Lô to see about borrowing some costumes for me for the company’s latest performance, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, The Barber of Seville. Maman had made Carmen’s costumes over for Susanna, and Susanna’s over for Desdemona; we could not see how she could possibly make them over again for Rosina, my new role. The theater manager in Saint-Lô was polite but would not loan us a thing. “We need our costumes for ourselves,” he said. “Anyhow, moths have gotten into them. We have nothing you would want.”
“How does he know?” I sniffed as we headed toward the bus stop. “I would take just about anything to avoid walking onstage in that yellow baize again.”
“The baize is beyond redemption,” Madame Marcelle agreed. “It can be used for a servant girl in the chorus, to show how desperate and poverty-stricken her station is.” She sighed. “Perhaps we can find someone who would be willing to sell an old wedding dress. At least that would give us enough material that your mother would have something to work with.”
“We could dye it,” I agreed.
We reached the bus stop and fell into a discussion of the perfect costumes for Rosina as we waited for the bus to Cherbourg.
It didn’t come. We waited one hour, then two. Because of the war, the buses were often off schedule. The spring breeze was chilly and we had begun to be uncomfortably cold; also, it was getting late. Finally a bus trundled by and I flagged it down.
“Going to Cherbourg?” I asked.
“I can get you almost there,” the driver said. He named a crossroad just outside town.
I looked at Madame Marcelle. She shrugged. “Close enough,” I said, and we climbed on.
When I was getting the bus fare from my purse, I realized something that chilled my blood. “Madame,” I whispered, “I left my identification papers at home.”
“Suzanne!” she said. “How could you?”
It was beyond stupid, I knew. “I borrowed this purse fro
m Maman because I was sorting through all my things. I was in a hurry. I’m sorry.” Any trouble for me could be trouble for her.
Madame Marcelle shrugged. “It’s not likely to matter. And it’s not as though you’re carrying . . .”
She let her voice trail off. I bit my lip and looked out the window. I was carrying a message in my hair. I had to hand it over that night.
Madame Marcelle took a deep breath and blew it out again. “Well. We’ll be careful, that’s all.”
It was dusk by the time the bus let us off. I climbed down the steps and started to wave a thank-you to the driver. Madame Marcelle poked me hard in the back, and I froze.
A pack of Nazi soldiers was holding up traffic just ahead. There must have been an accident of some sort at the intersection; a German jeep was in a ditch. Half a dozen soldiers swarmed around it, their guns slung across their backs.
They hadn’t noticed us yet. The bus wheezed and started to pull away. I grabbed Madame Marcelle’s arm and we ducked behind the only thing near the road that would shelter us—a farmer’s ancient haystack, taller than us and nearly as wide as a house. We leaned against it, out of sight.
“Do you think they’ll check us if we try to walk past?” I asked.
“Are you crazy?” Madame Marcelle whispered. “What do you think?”
I knew she was right. German soldiers with time on their hands were bound to make trouble for civilians. And if they discovered I didn’t have papers, certainly they’d take me in for questioning. They could easily search me then and find the message in my hair.
The Germans might suspect me already; I knew that. As time went on Dr. Leclerc looked more and more careworn. I had always believed that the messages he gave me were important. I knew also that the more important they were, the more danger I was in. I tried hard not to ask him questions, but one day I had blurted out, “Does General de Gaulle know who I am?”
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