by Amy McAuley
A strong gut feeling tells me to trust Dr. Devereux. He’s a good person who only wants to help me.
“The trains and Metro are under constant surveillance. Your papers will be checked numerous times there. Be careful. The nightlife is fun, but whatever you do, do not stay out past curfew. Use your head. Keep your eyes and ears open. Mind who you trust.”
I fold the paper in quarters and slip it into my pocket. Leaving the car, I say, “Thank you again. Good-bye.”
The doctor’s car putters off down the laneway. Once again, I’m on my own.
I backtrack halfway down the street. Stone apartment buildings with sloping dove-gray roofs line both sides of the road, sandwiched tightly together. Only a slight change in color, window height, and ornamental details gives away the end of one building and the beginning of the next. Between the rows of apartments towering above me like sheer white cliffs, I feel downright minuscule.
Across the street, I find the circuit leader’s apartment building. My reflection in the storefront window next door looks a wreck, but not as disheveled as I imagined.
I’ve barely stepped into the lobby when the concierge snaps to attention. His polished shoes clack across the marble floor.
“Mademoiselle, are you here to visit an apartment on the second floor?”
“I am. Has something happened?”
“Tenants on that floor have been arrested.” He glances behind his back. “They are waiting, anticipating further arrests.”
“Have a young man and woman come in this afternoon?” I ask, taking a risk by staying around to ask questions.
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“I’m grateful for the information.” I quickly get together some francs to pay him for his trouble.
“Mademoiselle, I cannot take your money.”
“No, please take it. I’m sure your family needs it.”
He drops his gaze. “Thank you. You are very kind.”
Outside the building, I stand beneath the arched front entranceway. Members of the Resistance circuit I was to work with—possibly my circuit leader and fellow SOE agents—have been arrested. The Gestapo has undoubtedly done a thorough search of the apartment. All it takes is one slip of paper with a name written on it to lead to the arrest of many others. The discovery of a wireless radio or messages, coded or decoded, would be disastrous. Has the entire Paris circuit been compromised? Is there no reason for me to even be here now? I don’t know nearly enough French cuss words to put me at ease.
I wander the street until I come to a café. Its sidewalk patio, crowded with young people, will be the perfect place to blend in. I weave through the tight gaps between chairs to claim the one and only empty table in the corner, feeling curious stares on me.
The conversation between four young women at a nearby table abruptly switches off. They eye me with suspicion. I can only imagine the thoughts behind their upturned noses.
Why is she alone? Where are her friends? Her boyfriend? Her husband? What is wrong with her?
Ignoring them, I set my suitcase beneath the table. It nudges a hard object into my foot. I kick it into my outstretched hand. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I flip through the pages, excited to see English words. The book belongs to the American Library in Paris.
From the café, I have a clear view of two intersecting streets and the apartment building. When Denise and Robbie arrive, they won’t get past me.
The first hour of reading flies by so quickly I wonder if my watch is broken. The second hour slows to a walk. The third hour hobbles. The fourth practically stands still. Customers come and go, and by the end of the fifth hour the sun has sunk below the adjacent building. The café is about to close for the day. I have to admit to myself that Denise and Robbie are not coming.
ELEVEN
A gentle tapping on my shoulder wakes me. Early morning sunlight glints off the train’s metal window frame. I squint to block it out.
“Excuse me, mademoiselle. The train is disembarking.”
In the next seat, a young mother, who looks as exhausted as I feel, and her bright-eyed toddler are waiting to leave the rapidly emptying train.
Apologizing, I lift the suitcase from my lap and groggily rise to my feet. I shuffle into the aisle to let them out ahead of me. The mother hurries to the exit, carrying her daughter on her hip.
I follow behind, rubbing the neck cramp I developed while asleep. The hotels were seized by the Germans, so following orders to avoid them I opted for the train. A single girl on a train probably won’t raise as many eyebrows as a single girl at a hotel.
I turn my head to stretch and catch sight of an attractive man on the station platform—a familiar face within an unfamiliar city. I watch him through each passing window. My heartbeat and footsteps quicken. Can it be? Is that really Pierre, right outside my train?
The instant I set foot on the platform, I see him again, drawing back from the crowds. He walks with such confidence, the same way Pierre does. He has the body of a man who can handle himself in a fistfight. From another train, German soldiers begin to disembark, and I expect him to steer well clear of the rapidly swelling group. My heart skips as I watch his next move. He doesn’t go around. He walks straight through.
I can’t leave the station without first showing my papers. But the man who might be Pierre didn’t show his papers. He went off on his own, as if he knows another way out.
Stepping back from the crowd, I try to see where he went. Throughout the station the lines of passengers waiting to show identification are becoming disorderly, snaking the length of the platform. I quickly check the head of each line. The German soldiers appear overwhelmed by the flood of new arrivals. I glance to my right. A shielded corridor has formed between the tracks and the group of new soldiers. Can I run down it unnoticed?
I put my head down and walk away, expecting to be chased down. Around the side of the building I break into a run, my heavy suitcase banging painfully against my leg. I come to a wire fence. And there he is, on the other side, walking more casually now in the direction of a bistro. How did he leave the train yard? The vicious razor wire along the top of the fence would have sliced him to ribbons.
He didn’t go up and over, so I look to the ground for answers. To my right, the grass hasn’t been trampled flat. I go left instead, down a dirt path too hard-packed to grow much of anything, pushing on the fence. It has no give until I reach a section concealed by a brick embankment. Then, just like that, a flap of chain link pushes outward. I crawl through the secret door and fit it securely back into place.
I trail him as he passes the bistro and rounds the corner. Almost immediately he cuts across the street. I put some distance between us, remaining on my side of the road. When he turns down an alleyway, I run to catch up. Down the center of the empty lane he continues his steadfast march. Unlike me, he seems to know exactly where he’s going.
From the back, he looks so much like Pierre. It just has to be him.
Suitcase swinging, I jog the span of the sun-dappled cobblestones. As I gather my courage to address him, he knocks at the door of a ground-level apartment. A woman with flowing red hair steps outside in a silk robe.
She kisses him.
I slow to a walk.
“Christian, I have missed you so,” the woman says when they part.
The gap between the man and me closes to a few feet. I can see now that he’s not Pierre.
In a haze of shock, disappointment, and bewildering jealousy I walk to the end of the alley where it opens into a dingy district, as lost and alone as I was yesterday. I have no idea at all where I am. I can walk in any direction and that won’t change. There’s nothing I can do from here but travel the city on foot, looking ridiculous and out of place with a cumbersome suitcase in hand.
At one end of the street, a bus crammed with passengers who peer uncertainly through the dusty windows pulls up to the sidewalk. From the back of the building, German soldiers lead a group of two men, a wo
man, and four children to the road. One of the children stares up at the woman, his small face seized by so much fear it makes me gasp. An older girl tenderly wraps her arm around the little one’s shoulder. Squeezing him closer, she whispers something in his ear.
The soldiers wave the family forward. One by one, they’re herded onto the bus.
I run then, in the opposite direction, desperate to get away. At the next street, I pause to catch my breath. What will become of that family? Where do the Germans intend to send them on that bus? I picture the small boy’s terrified face. Pierre said the Germans were hurting children.
A group of soldiers crosses the street, heading my way. I have to keep moving.
On I walk, impulsively switching one street for another. Above my head, in place of the French flag, red Nazi banners herald a mocking reminder from the rooftops. Faint rhythms of uplifting band music drift from a nearby park, sounding melodious until I hear the accompanying German lyrics. Every newspaper stand I pass sells German newspapers and magazines.
This place is supposed to be the city of my daydreams.
I turn a corner, clearing tears with my sleeve, and stop dead in my tracks.
The small movie house tucked back from the road stands out like an oasis in a sun-scorched desert. It has seen better days, but in those shinier, better days it probably illuminated the entire street. The marquee reads LE CORBEAU. The Raven.
A French film. Not a German one.
For the next few hours, I won’t feel quite so lost.
TWELVE
Through the grimy window of the train I scan faces in the crowd as we pull into the Paris station, a habit I picked up in the five days since I became separated from Denise and Robbie. I’m losing hope that they’re free, that someday I’ll see them again. My mind is obsessed with what might be happening to them. Imprisonment, pulled teeth and fingernails, beatings and burnings, unrelenting questioning. It pains me to imagine agents undergoing that treatment, but for us it’s always a possibility. Whenever I think of Robbie, I see his bashful smile and soft, moonlit profile. It whittles at my heart.
My spirits sink lower every day, as I witness tenants kicked out of their homes to give soldiers housing, and groups of frightened people inhumanely loaded onto trains and buses. Violent arrests seem to happen at random. The Germans are siphoning away nearly everything the people work for and need for daily survival. Frustration, sadness, and loss of hope hang in the air like invisible, choking smog. It’s hard to not be affected by it minute to minute, and I haven’t even spent a week in France. Four years have passed since the country fell.
From the day I arrived in Paris, I’ve stayed under the radar by rotating through candlelit plays, warm museums, and movie theaters—a city-wide game of musical chairs. I might as well have stayed in London. I’m getting no real work done. Several times I considered riding back to the LaRoche farm, but I can only imagine the smug look Pierre would give me. I made a promise to scope out the factory for him. If I admit defeat and go back to the safety of the farm, he’ll believe he was right about me all along.
There’s only one person I can go to for help.
After we’re allowed to disembark, I enter a line of passengers to have my papers checked. I picture the secret door in the fence, as I do after every train ride.
The soldier examining papers at the head of my line strikes up a conversation with the soldier beside him. The Swiss German I learned at boarding school is slightly different than the language spoken by the soldiers, but I usually understand them.
“I received news this morning,” he says. “My wife is divorcing me. Taking our children with her. I have plans for the bitch, let me tell you.”
The cold cruelty in his voice forces me to casually step from his line. Papers shaking in my hand, I pretend to fix an issue with the clasp of my suitcase before joining a different queue. Carried by the momentum of the crowd, I shuffle forward.
At the head of the line I abandoned, the disgruntled soldier barks a sharp call for assistance, waving a passenger’s papers in the air. Two more soldiers dash across the platform. A man is forcibly led away through the parting crowd.
“Papers,” I’m asked.
My miraculously steady hand rises. The inspection goes on for the longest time. The soldier’s assistant looks on, surely eager to learn my papers are fakes.
How many times can I expect them to believe I’m a twenty-two-year-old French widow named Adele Blanchard who has come to Paris to look for secretarial work before my luck runs out? They’re not stupid people, these soldiers. All they have to do is study my face for more than a few seconds.
The sergeant points to my papers. Expressionless, I await his verdict.
“This is what real papers look like,” he says to the assistant.
He returns my identification. And I very nearly float away.
At the city’s center are two islands. The Île de la Cité is home to the stunning Notre Dame cathedral. The smaller island, Île Saint-Louis, is home to Dr. Devereux.
Entering Île Saint-Louis is like stepping back in time to a seventeenth-century village plucked out of the earth and deposited into the Seine. I take my time following a shopkeeper’s directions, fascinated by the shops, fromageries, bakeries, and the aristocratic mansions where Voltaire and Marie Curie once lived.
I dawdle outside the impressive double doors of François’s home after I arrive. Will my decision to come here lead to help or to capture?
When I finally go ahead and raise my fist to knock, the door swings open. A slender woman dressed in culottes and a blouse resembling parachute silk stands before me, inches from my hand. I draw back the punch in the nick of time.
“Bonjour. Je m’appelle Adele,” I say. “I am looking for Dr. Devereux.”
She cocks an eyebrow, scowling as if I’m a mangy stray cat that crawled out from a trash heap and showed up on her doorstep. The door promptly slams in my face.
I stare at the door, dumbfounded and hurt. Maybe I misinterpreted my conversation with the doctor. If he’s not willing to help me, I don’t know who else to turn to.
The door reopens. This time Dr. Devereux greets me with a welcoming smile. The woman—I assume she’s his wife, the poor man—peers out from behind him in the foyer, blatantly keeping tabs on us.
“Adele, how lovely to see you! Do come in.”
The woman blocks my path. “Really, François! Why must you help each and every needy person who comes to our home?”
He looks her in the eyes to say, “Because I am a doctor.”
“I am leaving to do my shopping. You know how I feel about strangers in our home.”
With an exasperated huff she slides outside, her back pressed to the door to avoid contact with me. Reeking of expensive perfume she strolls away, one of the last women in Paris unwilling to give up the haute couture lifestyle the war stole from the city.
“Adele, please come in,” Dr. Devereux says. “I apologize for my wife’s behavior. She isn’t usually like that.”
I enter his home, cheered by how clean it smells. I could twirl about like a little girl in a meadow of pink and yellow flowers. And I’m not even the twirling type.
François closes in to get a good look at my face. “Have you eaten?”
My pride tells me to lie, but my hunger begs me to confess. “I’ve eaten, but only a few proper meals. I don’t have the correct ration booklets.”
“There are ways to get around that.”
“Yes, I know about the black market restaurants.”
“Would you like to wash up?”
I look down at my arms, smudged with dirt and train soot, wanting to shout, “My God, yes! Lead the way!” I take a calming breath. “I don’t want to impose on you.”
“Nonsense. Come with me.”
I tiptoe downstairs, combing my fingers through my damp hair.
“Adele, I’m in my study,” Dr. Devereux calls. “Can you come here a moment?”
I follow the sou
nd of his voice to a small, dusk-lit room off the front foyer. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases line the walls, filled with exotic souvenirs and books. I’ve never seen so many books in a home. I study the framed bird-watching chart on the wall, wondering how many of those beautiful birds Dr. Devereux has seen with his own eyes.
“Take a seat,” he says, nodding toward a chair on the opposite side of his desk.
I sit and fold my hands on my lap.
“Adele, if you don’t mind me asking”—Dr. Devereux leans forward, his kind eyes pinched with worry—“how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-two,” I say as convincingly as I would to a German interrogator.
“Do you have a safe place to stay the night?”
I don’t know what to say. His wife will never let me stay in her lavish home.
“I don’t have a place to stay.”
“Tonight?” he asks, settling back in his chair. “Or no place to stay at all?”
“I don’t have any place to stay.”
“My wife is spending the night at her sister’s home. You are more than welcome to stay in our guest bedroom.”
If I turn down a night of luxurious sleep in favor of the train, my aching body will never forgive me.
“Thank you. I will stay, but only tonight. You’ve been too kind to me already.”
“There is no such thing as too kind,” he says. He removes a tablet of paper and a pencil from the center desk drawer. “I can help you, Adele, if you’ll let me. My good friend, Estelle, takes people in. You will be safe there. She is an extremely conscientious woman.” He slides a sheet of paper across the desktop. “That is Estelle’s address. I will telephone her in the morning to make the arrangements. She has many contacts. She may be able to point you in the direction of someone who can help you more than I can.”
“Thank you,” I say, shocked by how drastically my luck has turned. If only I had reached out to Dr. Devereux days ago.
