“I wanted to talk to you.” He took her arm and they walked along the platform.
Peripherally, Linda could see the airmen falling in behind them. None of these looked English. That was good. She hated leading them across Paris when one of the men was a carrot top or had a broad fair typically British face.
“It’s Friday the 13th,” she said as they reached the main lobby of the station.
“Next Sunday will be the third Sunday in advent.”
It all depended upon your perspective, she thought wryly. How could he always be so equable, so positive? Didn’t the man have sense enough to be afraid? His collar wouldn’t save him if the Gestapo found him. How could he stand in the middle of this teeming lobby with two Gestapo agents manning a checkpoint only feet away and seem totally unworried?
“One of the men speaks good French. I’ve sent him over to get some food for the others. You and I can have a minute here to talk.”
It came to her abruptly. “You’ve found out something about Eleanor?”
He nodded. “She’s still at the Cherche-Midi. A colleague of mine, a Mr. Marvel of the American Quakers, is permitted to visit American prisoners. He saw Eleanor yesterday.”
Linda swallowed. “How is she?”
“He was able to see her for only a few minutes. They couldn’t talk about the charges against her. Actually, there are no charges yet, she is still being held on suspicion. That’s too bad in one way. Prisoners under examination are forbidden extra food. Mr. Marvel said Eleanor is very thin and weak but apparently hasn’t been tortured. More than likely that’s because she is an American. I notified your embassy and I know they have lodged a formal protest. That won’t free her but it may give her some protection.”
“Is there any hope she may be released?”
The priest smiled. “There is always hope.”
“1887.”
Eleanor hadn’t looked round when the peephole scraped open or even when the door swung in. She didn’t respond to the command. She sat, her head slumped forward on her neck, eyes closed, the fur coat bunched tightly around her. Inside her mind, a room glowed with color, the bright green of a fir tree against the deeper green of the velvet curtains, garlands of red and white and pink and green and blue lights that winked on and off, a glisten of snowy white cotton bunched around the trunk, and packages, gold and red and green and white, tumbling out around the tree. Andre was smiling as he knelt by the mounds of gifts, picking them up to hand out. He was leaning toward her . . . She tried to ignore the tug on her arm, but it came again, harder.
“Eleanor, it’s you they want. Eleanor.”
She opened her eyes slowly.
“1887. You are called for examination.”
Her face didn’t change. Slowly, weakly, she began to get up. She wavered unsteadily on her feet, then turned and followed him. She started to ask where they were going but that took too much effort. She concentrated on putting one foot ahead of the other. It was almost Christmas. Mme. Cottin kept a little calendar. She said tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. Last Christmas Eve they had gone to midnight Mass and Andre had carried Robert home, he was so sleepy. Funny, Robert would be too big to carry this year. Andre . . . how long now, more than six months since we’ve heard. There isn’t any hope. Not anymore. Even if he’d been among the Frenchmen who embarked at Dunkirk and she knew him too well to think he would have left them behind, even if he had, they would have heard by now. She stumbled to a stop, staring emptily ahead.
The guard looked back. “1887!”
Once again she started slowly forward, reaching out a hand now and then to brace herself against the cold damp stone wall.
The guard had to stop four times for her to rest on the way down the twisting stairs. At the bottom, he led her to an office just past the booking room.
Eleanor walked in. The door shut behind her. She looked around incuriously then walked to the straight chair and sat down and closed her eyes.
In a moment, the room in her mind was back, a warm room, fire glistening in the monkey stove, radiators hissing with heat. She had been a little too hot last year and had pulled off her robe. Andre had looked up from the gifts and she had loved the look in his eyes. They had both laughed and Robert turned from opening a package and asked, “What’s so funny?” “Nothing, darling,” his mother answered. “It’s just that we’re all so happy tonight.”
The door opened. She still sat, her eyes closed, her face closed.
“Madame.” The tone was harsh.
Slowly, slowly, she opened her eyes.
Maj. Krause sat down behind a table and spread open a folder “Where did you get the money, Madame?”
“Money?”
“The 25,000 francs.”
She stared at him dully and pushed her hair away from her face. Oh yes, that money. The money in the potato bag. She began to laugh. The potato bag. The potato bag. “The polydore. That’s who found the money, the polydore.”
“Madame.” The anger in his voice cut across her wild laughter.
She stopped as suddenly as she had begun and shook her head. “I’m dizzy.” She had been so weak these last few days. The others had as little food as she but she knew there was something wrong with her. She was too tired to think, too tired to move, everything happened in a gray mist.
Maj. Krause almost signaled Sgt. Schmidt to strike her. He would get her attention. Then, once again, his eyes skimmed over the report and he stopped at the line which said: Nationality—American. If he could beat the truth out of her, he would.
He looked up. She sagged in the chair, her face white, her eyes closed, her hair tumbling down onto her shoulders.
She was the one, yes, he remembered now, she was the one who had been turned in by an informer and, after they had picked her up, kept her overnight, he personally had interviewed her and she wasn’t afraid. Uneasy, yes. No one but a fool wouldn’t sense that horrors could happen. But she wasn’t afraid. Now she must be ill. She wasn’t going to be any use to him.
He read further into the report. The sister and the son had never been found.
That was the strongest evidence against her. But they could have been frightened when she was picked up, whether they were involved in an escape line or not, and sought a way to get out of France.
That could be.
But it is easier to find a way to escape if you are running an escape line.
That was the black mark. That and the 25,000 francs, though her story about the money could be true. She was a wealthy woman and she might have been squirreling money away for emergencies. “Madame, go back to the morning of November 18. Madame, listen to me.”
Once again, groggily, she looked at him. She listened and numbly, expressionlessly, tried to answer. Sometimes she just shook her head. “I don’t remember. Everything’s vague. I don’t remember.”
He was exasperated after twenty minutes. The woman was an imbecile. Or sick. The thought made him impatient. She must be a weak one. It did wear them down, to put them in the Cherche-Midi, but usually just enough to make everything hurt a little more. They could still talk. He could have her put in the prison hospital. But the food wasn’t much better there. If he had her beaten, she wouldn’t make any more sense then.
There was another way. One more test. If this didn’t turn up some answers, there might not be any answers to be found.
He nodded his head in sudden decision.
The climb back up the twisting stairs to the third floor seemed to take forever. Eleanor knew she would have been kicked and pushed by most guards but the shift had changed and the new guard was old and slow and they struggled up the steps together. When she was inside the cell, she shook her head when the others asked if she was hurt but she could just reach the bed to fall upon it.
“Eleanor,” Mme. Cottin was shaking her shoulder, “You must get up. I hear someone coming. If they look in and find you lying down, you’ll be taken to solitary confinement.”
Eleanor wasn’t
quite in a sitting position when the door opened again.
“1887.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Get up.”
It was like trying to move through a swamp to make the simplest effort. Grimly, Eleanor pushed herself to her feet, but this time she started to topple over.
“She is ill,” Mme. Bernard cried. “Can’t you see that?”
The old guard frowned. He reached out, took her firmly by the elbow. “She has to come.”
Eleanor moved down the halls and to the stairs like a sleep-walker. I must be sick, she thought, I must be sick. When they reached the ground floor, she had no memory of the stairs. The guard half-carried, half dragged her into the booking room.
A German guard in rimless glasses looked up. “1887?”
She nodded.
He went to a side room and returned in a moment with a little basket. Eleanor was leaning against the counter. He spilled out the basket’s contents. Her wedding ring, the purse she had carried that night. Her purse had some candy in it. She remembered that. Her hands began to shake. Would the candy still be there? And the money and her ration cards?
“Sign here, Madame.”
She looked blearily at the form on green flimsy paper.
“It is to show that you have not been mistreated and that all your belongings were returned to you.”
She picked up the pen and scrawled her name then looked at him again. He was picking up the basket and turning away. He looked back over his shoulder. “You can go now. That’s the way out,” and he pointed down a narrow hallway.
Eleanor put on her wedding rings, picked up her purse. Was it going to be this easy? Was this all there was to it? Signing her name on a piece of paper and she could walk out? She stopped, reached out to brace herself against the wall. Could that have been a confession she signed? Was this some kind of trick? She shook her head. She was dizzy and weak. Maybe this was all a dream and in a moment she would wake up on that narrow filthy bed, trying to breathe the putrid air.
She pushed away from the wall and walked down the hall. No one paid any attention to her, not two secretaries drinking a cup of coffee near a stove or a private pushing a broom down a wider hall or an officer walking away from her, striking a crop against a high black polished boot. She tried to walk a little faster. It wasn’t until she pushed through the door and came out in a dingy bricked courtyard that she began to believe she was going free.
Weak, sick, dizzy, no matter, she broke into a half run, half stumble and she was through the courtyard and out on the street.
She stopped on the sidewalk. Pedestrians pushed past her, heads lowered. Icy raindrops whirled in the wind and dusted the gutter with a glitter of ice. Eleanor lifted her head and breathed and breathed. She was shaking with cold, but it smelled fresh and clean and free. She began to walk, unsteadily, but purposefully. My God, she was free! It was a miracle. She didn’t care how or why, but for now, this instant, she could walk down the street and the sensation was incredible and wonderful. She stopped at the corner and reached out to lean against the lamp post. Food, she needed food.
She opened her purse, rummaged frantically inside. Her ration cards, yes, there they were and money, enough money. She lifted her head, looked up and down the street. A café sign creaked in the wind a half block ahead. She would eat. It was just on four o’clock. If the café were open, she would eat dinner and then she would have the strength to get home. She would take a velocab. She would go home and get a night’s sleep and then she would think what to do.
Linda was setting the table for breakfast and he came shyly and asked if he could help. She smiled at him. “We are a little informal because we never had a chance to really stock this apartment. But you can put the knives and forks around for me.”
She had saved up some extras for this breakfast. Father Laurent had given back to her the first 25,000 that Eleanor had received. She still had a good store of money so, last week, she had waited several hours in line and managed to get a crock of honey and a pot of peach jam. Treasure of treasures, though it had cost the earth, she had bought a pound of real coffee on the black market.
He watched her measure spoonfuls and draw cold water. He sniffed. “Oh, I say, that can’t be real coffee?”
“Yes, it is.”
“That’s very nice and it is nice of you to share with us.”
She looked up into his blue eyes and she wondered if he could see the pain in her own eyes. Nice of her to share it—the soldiers were the only thing that kept her sane. It still frightened her to pick them up and bring them here, it always did. No matter how many times she did it, she always felt an ache in her chest and her heart thudded wildly. She hated the fear, but she needed to see them, to have them on their brief stopovers. What good is it to have coffee or gold or life, if there’s no one to share with you?
“I’m glad you’re here.” That was all she said. She turned abruptly and put the coffee pot on the stove. When the coffee began to perk, the others filed in. They were very quiet, very reserved until breakfast was underway. Then their faces brightened and they began to talk.
“ . . . should have seen the straw in his hair, Miss, when we dug him out of that haystack . . . ”
“ . . . and the look on his face . . . ”
She smiled , listening to them, and drank the coffee, the real coffee, and a faint pink flushed her cheeks and she looked young and lovely.
“I say, miss,” the youngest one said suddenly, “it’s awfully good of you to give time away from your family to help us, especially today.”
“Today?” She repeated blankly.
“Why yes, Miss. It’s Christmas Eve, don’t you know?”
The silence woke Eleanor. She opened her eyes slowly. The expanse of space puzzled her. Then joy swept her once again. Her own bedroom, her own wide soft comfortable bed with its thick warm layer of quilts and comforts. And to be clean.
Eleanor stretched, arched her back and felt her toes press against the footboard. Oh God, to be clean and free. The air smelt a little stuffy though she had thrown open the two broad windows last night. The smell of that cell . . . a rush of nausea surged within her. She raised her head and breathed deeply, a mixture of dust and wool and the faint overlay of her perfume.
She had bathed last night. After heating pan after pan of water, and then she had splashed cologne and gloried in the sweet fresh smell.
Why was it so quiet? A sense of unease stirred her. She reached for Andre’s wool robe. Her robe was of silk but that was for the long ago days when their apartment had been heated.
The apartment was ghostly, of course. She expected that, overcame it. And Paris, ever since the Occupation, had been only a shadow of herself, a gray and ancient reflection of a voluptuous woman. Still, there were noises, German staff cars, the slam of doors, pedestrians walking to work, walking to find a place in the long line at food shops.
Why was there no sound from outside?
She stood to the side of the window, looked down into the bleak street with the frozen puddles. Such an empty street. Almost like a holiday but . . . Oh. Today was Christmas Eve.
Eleanor turned away from the window. Christmas Eve and the apartment dusty and cold and quiet. Always before she had fixed hot chocolate, thick and sweet and steaming, and tiny brioches with raspberry jam. Breakfast was long and leisurely and they never counted it a miracle, Andre with his hair ruffled and his eyes tender, Robert excited and voluble. Now there was no one . . .
She measured water to boil for ersatz coffee and cut a generous slice of bread for toast. Last night the café owner had known her for what she was. He must have become used to the occasional appearance of filthy, weak, disoriented just-released prisoners. He had heaped her plate with food and sold her a fully cooked chicken and loaf of bread to take home. “All the shops will be closed tomorrow.” She had tried to pay him double but he had waved it away.
As she ate, she could feel strength returning. It was la
ck of food which had made her weak and dizzy. It hadn’t seemed to affect the others so horribly, but they all had hunched on their beds in a stupor, their minds in limbo or clinging to remembered happiness. Thank God, she had the extra food. She would be able now to reach Father Laurent. She had felt so weak and ill the night before that she hadn’t been sure. But there wasn’t any hurry.
After she had eaten and washed the few little dishes, she wandered restlessly around the living room. She must stop thinking about Christmas Eve. It did no good to grieve for days that wouldn’t come again. She should be grateful. She was grateful. Robert and Linda must be in England by now. They might even be on a ship en route to America. Frank would take care of them and Franz, too. That was worth everything. But she couldn’t rest. If she sat in Andre’s chair, she looked toward the corner of the room where the tree always stood. When she moved to her own chair, she remembered the Christmas morning that Andre had come up behind her and bent down to kiss her gently and slip a lovely matched pearl necklace around her throat.
On Christmas Eve, before they left to go to midnight Mass, Andre always lifted down the huge Bible that had belonged to his maternal grandmother and read, in his clear and resonant voice, the story of that Christmas Eve so many years ago.
Eleanor walked to the glass fronted bookcase. She carried the Bible to Andre’s chair and sat down. When it was opened, she began to read and she could once again hear Andre’s voice and the year slipped away and a sense of peace filled her.
She was so immersed that she almost didn’t hear the tiny knock, but it was so quiet, the city lay so silent beyond, that the sound quivered and hung in the still air.
When she opened the door, the concierge, tiny Mme. Sibert, slipped in like a shadow and immediately closed the door behind her. She looked fearfully around. “Are you alone?” she whispered.
Eleanor nodded.
“Oh, Madame, I am so glad you are free. I’ve brought you some food,” and she thrust a plate with a napkin over it into Eleanor’s hands. “I was afraid you wouldn’t have any food here at the apartment and you can’t buy any today.” A footstep sounded in the hall way and she waited, rigid, her fear communicating itself to Eleanor, until it was quiet again. She bent close to Eleanor, whispered even more softly, “Did you know, Madame, they are watching you?”
Escape From Paris Page 27
