Escape From Paris

by Carolyn G. Hart

  The walk from the Metro station seemed longer than ever. It was getting dark. The Arc de Triomphe loomed behind her, dark, massive. Pedestrians hurried, heads down against the cold wind. At the beginning of their block, Linda paused and looked up. All four shades across the front of their apartment were down. Eleanor had devised a signal to prevent all of them from being arrested should the Gestapo come and find only one of them home.

  At any unexpected knock, a lighter-colored shade, which Eleanor had installed in the second window, could be pulled down instead. They had experimented and the lighter shade was distinct, even at night, but not noticeable enough to attract the attention of anyone not looking for it.

  The four shades were uniform in color.

  Linda walked a little faster. The apartment would be cold, but not quite this cold. She could wrap up in a blanket and there would be hot soup for dinner. And in a month, just a little more than a month, she could start for home. She might be home by Christmas.

  It was icy cold in the dining room but Eleanor smiled happily at her son and sister. Robert wore his heavy plaid jacket. Linda was bundled in a wool blanket and Eleanor wore her thickest tweed suit.

  “Tonight is going to be a very happy night. We are going to have one rule at the dinner table. No one will talk of the war. Not one word. We are going to have dinner and later, over coffee—”

  “Coffee?” Linda exclaimed.

  Eleanor nodded. “Coffee and some other marvelous surprises. The black market is richer tonight but we are going to have a fine meal.” Her tone was almost defiant.

  Linda wondered how Eleanor had come up with the money but she wasn’t going to ask about it or worry. From the minute she had come home tonight, she had smelled the most marvelous aromas. It had been so long since they had eaten anything but watery soup without even potatoes. They hadn’t had any sugar for almost a month. Linda felt a twinge of guilt. She had used up almost the last of their sugar to make Jonathan’s birthday crisp.

  Robert was excited. “What other surprises, Mother?”

  “We received a letter from Uncle Frank today. He sent some money. Thank God he did. Though I’m going to be able to get some money next Monday to help us with our soldiers, but we needed money, too. I went out and bought wonderful food. We are going to have a lovely dinner, thanks to Uncle Frank. I have saved his letter for all of us to read together tonight.”

  A year ago, none of them would have thought this a fine dinner. It would have been a nice supper, but nothing remarkable. Tonight they ate almost in silence, slowly, slowly, savoring every bite, puffy sweet omelets with bits of cheese, potatoes fried very crisp and brown, and, unimaginable luxury, thick slices of ham.

  After dinner, they sat closely around the potbellied stove in the living room. Robert stuffed it full of the paper balls they used for fuel. “We’re almost out, Mother. I soaked all of last week’s papers and mushed them into balls, but this is the last of them.”

  “That’s all right,” Eleanor said recklessly. “At least we will be warm tonight.”

  The balls were more show than substance. They crackled and flared into a brief bright flame, dancing inside the enamel panels of the stove. There was a tiny flash of heat, then too quickly, the fuel was gone and the penetrating cold seemed worse.

  Linda and Robert shared her blanket.

  Eleanor brought them each a slice of yellow cake, sprinkled with sugar, and a cup of coffee with hot milk. Draping an afghan over her feet, she sat in the cane rocker next to the stove and began to read Frank’s letter.

  “Dear Eleanor,

  “We were delighted to receive your letter today. It took three weeks to reach us, but I guess that’s not bad, considering how far it had to come. Did you realize it went by way of Alexandria and Rio? We hope you have had some word of Andre by the time you receive this.”

  Eleanor took a deep breath, continued.

  “I’ve been hard at work settling the estate. The final papers should be approved soon. We have, to put it simply, split the estate three ways. I did take as my share mother and Dad’s house. If Linda should want it someday, we will certainly be willing to talk about it. I would doubt, though, that a girl her age would be interested in maintaining such a huge place. She is, of course, always welcome to come live with us. It is her home.”

  “They didn’t sell it,” Linda said softly. “I was afraid they would.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “There was no danger of that. Frank has always loved that house.”

  High on a gentle hill. Green grass and eucalyptus trees. Soft brown adobe and faded red roof tiles. Her home. It would be there, waiting for her. She wished Jonathan could see it. She would send him pictures, tell him about it. About the stream that curved slowly through the rose garden to empty into a broad shining green pond and the geese who ruled it. They had been Christmas presents, tiny golden balls of fur, the year she was ten. They had grown into huge imperious geese, especially Caesar who considered humans interlopers to be tolerated only if familiar. His head outstretched and lowered, his huge wings flapping, he would immediately attack any stranger, hissing viciously. Caesar liked Linda. When she fished, he would float gracefully on the water, only a few feet away, his dark beady eyes watching her.

  “We should soon receive under separate cover a copy of the final probate decree from the estate attorneys, the firm of Marshall, Levy and Jensen. Eleanor, you will remember Earl Jensen. He was in my high school graduating class. He is active in city politics. Some think he will soon run for the Assembly. His wife is Janey Morris. Remember her? A tiny redhead. Not so tiny now. Betty and I play bridge with them.”

  Linda hugged the blanket a little closer. It sounded like life on another planet. Estates and pleasant gossip and evenings playing bridge. One more month. One more month and she would be on her way there. The Christmas decorations would be up by then. Silver bells, bright red holly berries, strands of lights twinkling downtown.

  “I decided to forward a sum of money to you. In times such as these, you might find ready cash helpful.”

  Eleanor paused and laughed. “Frank can’t imagine how helpful. The first thing I did was pay the rent.”

  “We hope Linda will soon come home and, of course, Betty and I will be delighted if you and Robert can join us, too. Do think seriously about coming, Eleanor. We understand your concern for Andre but I know he would wish for his family to be safe, if at all possible.

  “Our love is with you. We think of you often. Come home to us. Your loving brother, Frank.”

  It was very quiet for a moment. The fire began to fade. Robert opened the little door, pushed in two of the dried paper balls. The flame leaped high.

  Eleanor looked at her son. He was so handsome. His face was just now beginning to take on some of the character of maturity. It would be, when he was a man, a strong face. The high bridged nose, Andre’s nose, was just a little too large. His dark eyes were deep set, his skin a clear smooth olive, his dark hair thick and curly. “What do you think, Robert?”

  “No. It wouldn’t be right.” He reached out, impulsively squeezed his aunt’s hand. “You don’t understand, Aunt Linda. I’m French. I can’t run away. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Linda looked at Robert then at Eleanor. “If you stay, if you keep on smuggling airmen, the Gestapo will catch you. They can’t help but catch you. How does that help France?”

  Eleanor closed her eyes. If the Gestapo took Robert . . . Even to a child, the Gestapo would be vicious. She looked at her son again, her face was white, sick. “Linda’s right. Someday they will catch us. Robert, promise me solemnly, if I am captured or Aunt Linda, whichever of us might be free is to immediately take the escape line. Promise me, Robert.”

  “Oh Mother, Aunt Linda’s just a scaredy cat. She always thinks everything’s going to go wrong. Look how well we’ve done. Jonathan’s gotten well and we’ve passed along almost sixty—”

  “Promise me, Robert.”

  He shrugged. “I promise. But
they won’t catch us. Everybody along our escape route is cautious. None of them will betray us.”

  “I don’t think so either,” his mother said quickly. “But it does no harm to think ahead. We have a lot of planning to do. Robert, what are we going to send to your cousins for Christmas? Since Aunt Linda will be going home, we can send presents after all this Christmas.”

  Frank’s sons, Peter and Bobby, were fifteen and thirteen. They had visited the Massons in Paris three years earlier and Robert and Bobby liked each other immediately. They had corresponded irregularly ever since.

  Robert frowned. “There isn’t anything in the shops.”

  “I thought it might be nice if you made something for them,” his mother suggested. “You haven’t used your woodworking iron for some time.”

  Robert leaned toward the stove, stretching his hands toward the heat, shielding his face from view. Andre had bought the woodworking outfit for him last Christmas. They had worked together, their grandest project a somewhat lopsided vision of Sacre-Coeur for Eleanor’s birthday.

  “Your father would like to know that you were using it.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Robert stared moodily at the stove. “I was going to wait until Daddy came home.”

  “He will be excited to see how you’ve improved.”

  Robert jumped up. “There is a special one we talked about doing,” and he hurried off toward his bedroom. In a few minutes he was back, carrying a rectangular wooden case. He put it down on the floor beside the stove and opened it. “Here it is.” He held up a thin piece of wood with ink markings. “What do you think, Mother?”

  Eleanor smiled. “The Eiffel tower. Could there be a nicer gift from France? Robert, it will be a lovely present.”

  Robert lifted up the iron and set out the tray with the different points. “I’d better get right to work on it. We don’t have much time. When are you supposed to leave, Aunt Linda?”

  “The thirteenth. December thirteenth.” It still seemed impossible, but every time she repeated the date it took on a little more reality.

  They stayed up later than usual, enjoying a rare glass of wine, watching Robert work on the picture. He held the tool carefully, delicately edging the main outline of the Tower. The acrid smell of burning wood overlay the light scent of wine and peculiar odor of the paper balls. Eleanor and Linda talked softly, cheerfully, watching Robert, remembering years ago the doll house that Frank and Eleanor had built together for Linda’s fifth birthday.

  “We had so much fun with that.” Eleanor smiled. “Frank built the house and I decorated it. Do you remember the rumpus room? He paneled it with tiny pieces of pine and even built a little pool table.”

  “And you painted two little miniatures of Mother and Daddy and hung them in the dining room. It was the most marvelous fifth birthday any little girl ever had.” When she got home, she would search the attic for that dollhouse. She wanted, suddenly, to see it again. Oh, it would be wonderful to be home. She hated Paris now, hated the dark gray cold streets, the tired and anxious faces of the passerby, the sleek, well-fed, well-dressed Germans. If only Robert and Eleanor could come, too. She almost brought it up again, but Eleanor was smiling and she looked young and unworried. For the moment, her eyes had lost that haunted look. She wasn’t thinking of Andre or the War or what had happened to her adopted city. She was laughing and bending forward to look at her son’s handiwork. Linda folded her lips. Not tonight. She wouldn’t mention Eleanor and Robert leaving Paris again tonight. This evening was happier than any she could remember since Andre went away.

  The last puffy ball had burned to a crisp of ashes. “You’ve made a good start, Robert. We’ll help you put it all away for tonight.”

  “Must I stop now, Mother?”

  “It’s getting late and I have to start out very early. I have several hospitals to visit.” And Mme. Leclerc to meet at the Arc de Triomphe. But she didn’t say so aloud. The less anyone knew, the safer they were, all of them, Linda, Robert, Mme. Leclerc. But the meeting mattered. With the money from Frank and the help from Mme. Leclerc, there would be money enough to pump a new vigor into their escape line. The count of soldiers passed through stood at sixty-two. Sixty-two men sent toward England, back to their families.

  Would someone, somewhere help Andre?

  When the apartment was quiet, Linda and Robert settled in their rooms, asleep, Eleanor wandered slowly about the icy cold apartment, hugging her fur coat to her. She should sleep. But it was no pleasure to sleep alone, to wake in the night and reach out to nothingness. She walked into the kitchen. There was half the small pound cake she had made that afternoon. She reached for the cake knife then let her hand drop. It seemed another world, the life when she had been plump and a midnight snack nothing special. She would save the cake for Robert and Linda. She turned back into the living room. She was very tired. She must go to bed. The alarm would ring at six and it was past eleven now. She walked restlessly to the front windows, pulled the shade out a little to look down into the darkened street and saw the hooded lights of a car. Germans.

  For an instant, her breath held in her chest. The car slid past their apartment house. But it was stopping. A truck of soldiers followed the car. Soldiers dropped off, one by one, at twenty-yard intervals.

  Oh, God.

  She stood, rigid with horror. This was the hour when the Gestapo struck, while people slept, battering down their doors, pulling their victims out into the night, just partially dressed, their minds fuddled with sleep, their hearts racing with fear. She craned forward, trying to see. Cautiously, slowly, so that it wouldn’t squeak, she raised the window, leaned out into the night.

  Not their apartment house. Thank God, it wasn’t their apartment house. She could see now. The troops were surrounding the smaller apartment house at the end of their street. There was a narrow alleyway, oh perhaps three or four feet wide, that divided that building from their own. A German soldier stood at the entrance to the alley, another soldier plunged into its dark depths. Two men in plainclothes, heavy overcoats and hats, walked up the apartment house steps. At one’s nod, a soldier began to pound on the door with the butt of his rifle.

  When the door opened, the two plainclothesmen and four soldiers went inside. Eleanor waited until she began to shake with cold then pulled down the window but still she stood and watched. Were they searching the apartment house for someone? Or was one particular apartment their objective? Were they even now pounding on an apartment door and, within, were people waking to the violent knock, waking to terror?

  Five minutes passed. Seven. Ten. The door opened again. Eleanor pushed up the window. A soldier came out first. Eleanor strained to see. Two more figures, one supporting the other. A man and a woman? Another soldier. Then a single slender figure wearing a scarf. It must be a girl. She paused on the top of the steps to look back. One soldier motioned with his bayonet. She hesitated. He poked her with the blade and she started down the steps. Two soldiers appeared with someone struggling between them, struggling and screaming. The thin screams cut through the heavy silence of the icy night. A girl or a young woman. She struggled and kicked and screamed. The soldiers paused at the top of the steps then, together, they lifted the struggling girl high into the air, swung her back and forth, back and forth, threw her out into the night. She flew up, trying desperately to turn herself so that she could land facing forward but her balance was gone. She went so high that Eleanor knew she must be small, must weigh very little. She seemed to hang in the air for a long moment, a pathetic flailing figure before she plummeted heavily down, crashing into the back of the Gestapo car, then slipping sideways to land heavily on the pavement and lay inert.

  “Hilda!” The woman cried. She tried to push through the soldiers to reach that still figure.

  “Nein, nein.” A soldier herded the woman and the others to a paddy wagon waiting just past the car. When they had been pushed up the ramp, two of the soldier
s picked up the girl and tossed her in after them and slammed shut the door.

  The Gestapo car left first. The paddy wagon followed. The last of the soldiers climbed aboard the open truck and it slowly rumbled away.

  The street was silent now, dark and cold and silent. Not a light showed. Not a voice sounded.

  Eleanor still stared downward. The back of her hand, balled into a fist, pressed against her mouth. Dear God, she was so afraid she knew what had happened. Hilda. That was what the woman had called. Hilda. But there had only been the two older people and two girls. God, please, don’t let it be Franz’s family. But he did have a sister named Hilda. And another sister. Please God, please don’t let it be Franz’s family.

  Eleanor was slumped in the rocking chair, her hands clamped onto the arms, staring sightlessly into the darkened room, when she heard the knock.

  It was such a small sound that she thought for a moment she had imagined it.

  A dull tentative ghost of a knock. Almost like an animal scratching to be let in. Eleanor jumped up, ran across the room, undid the bolt and yanked open the door.

  He was huddled on the floor in front of the door. She heard the uneven hiccups of his breathing, saw him shaking. Kneeling, she slipped her arm around his thin shoulders. He was shaking with cold and more than cold, wearing only his worn flannel pajamas.

  “Franz.”

  His hands shook, his body shook. He tried to speak but his breaths fluttered in his throat.

  Eleanor bent, scooped him up. He was so much smaller than Robert. Near in age but still a little boy in frame. Tonight he felt heavy, leaden. Eleanor pushed the door shut with her foot and carried him to the rocker. She picked up the afghan and wrapped it around him. She sat in the rocker and held Franz in her arms.

  “My . . . uh . . . my . . .”

  “Don’t try to talk, Franz. I saw. From my window. Don’t try to talk.”