The Paper Girl of Paris

by Jordyn Taylor

  “I expect I’ll be in bed before the three of you return,” Papa says.

  Maman steps forward and smooths Papa’s rumpled edges, starting with his hair and moving to the creased collar of his housecoat, as though she’s holding him together with her hands. When her hands pause at his cheeks, Papa turns his head to kiss her palm.

  “There’s soup on the stove, my love,” says Maman.

  “Odette,” Papa replies, “you are as wonderful as ever. Thank you.”

  “I’ll miss you very much.”

  “I’ll miss you, too.”

  They share a kiss goodbye. When I get married someday, I want us to be like my parents: two people who love each other fiercely, even in the most difficult of times. Papa gives us his two-fingered wave as he closes the front door behind us.

  Maman and Madame LaRoche have been best friends since they were schoolgirls. Madame LaRoche was the one who introduced Maman to Papa, the quiet but charming professor who had fought in the same regiment as Monsieur LaRoche during the Great War. Madame LaRoche divorced her husband a couple of years ago, and she’s since devoted the bulk of her time to planning lavish dinner parties for her expansive circle of friends.

  Before the war began, I enjoyed going to these dinners. It was a chance to see my two dearest friends, Charlotte and Simone, whose parents were also close to Madame LaRoche. But I haven’t seen either of them for months now; Charlotte’s family had the forethought to board a ship to South America last winter, and Simone’s family is staying at their vacation home in Marseilles, in the Free Zone. Tonight, the only other people my age will be the LaRoche twins, with whom I have absolutely nothing in common. Thank goodness for Chloe.

  “Odette! Adalyn! Chloe!”

  Madame LaRoche is a vision in deep blue silk and diamonds. She kisses each of us in turn as we step through the door of her penthouse apartment on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. “You three look ravishing. These tough times are treating you well.”

  “We’re making do as best we can,” Maman replies as a maid arrives to take our coats.

  With a twirl, Madame LaRoche guides us down the mirrored hallway to the drawing room, where her seventeen-year-old daughters, Marie and Monique, sip champagne on the divan. Madame LaRoche has a long face and large teeth like the horses she grew up riding, and her daughters look exactly the same, only younger. They greet us in unison. At their feet, the coffee table is set with a silver tray of bread, cheese, and butter. Maman’s eyebrows disappear into her perfectly coiffed bangs.

  “Ooh, Geneviève, look at all that butter! Wherever did you get it?”

  But everybody knows where Madame LaRoche got all that butter. She must have purchased at least half of these items on the black market, because there’s no way she got this much food on the rationing system the Germans have in place. I’m almost certain Maman has been doing it, too—just the other day I saw her returning home from the market with a very suspicious quantity of salted beef and Papa’s favorite cognac.

  Madame LaRoche smiles mischievously as she slathers butter on a small chunk of bread and pops it into her mouth. “You just have to know where to look,” she says in a low voice.

  Chloe sniffs.

  Madame LaRoche doesn’t seem to notice. “It’s a shame Henri couldn’t come tonight. We would have loved to see him.”

  Maman sighs. “He wishes he could have joined us, but he isn’t well enough, unfortunately. He sends his regards to the three of you.”

  “It’s his nerves, still?” asks Madame LaRoche.

  “I’m afraid so. The nervous spells used to happen occasionally, but since May, they’ve been constant. Even the sound of their boots going by is difficult for him. . . .”

  Madame LaRoche frowns and rubs Maman’s arm. “That must be difficult for you, too, Odette.”

  Maman’s smile twitches, betraying a hint of the sadness underneath. I know it breaks her heart to see Papa suffering. When his nerves are at their worst, she sits by his side and holds him until the panic subsides, whispering words of comfort into his ear.

  After smoothing her skirt, Maman rearranges her face and straightens her posture. “The best thing the girls and I can do is remain positive,” she says, her eyes flitting to me for reassurance. I nod supportively, not because I agree about being positive, but because I know how badly she wants to help Papa. “We have to show him there’s nothing to be frightened of,” Maman continues. “That we can get through this, just as we got through the last war.”

  “Precisely,” says Madame LaRoche. “Especially with the Old Marshal on our side.”

  “Yes. Marshal Pétain saved France in the Great War, and he can do it again,” Maman says firmly. “If he says cooperation is the best way forward . . . then we must trust him.”

  “I agree,” says Madame LaRoche.

  She dabs at her lips with a cloth napkin and I can already sense the pendulum of conversation swinging in my direction before she twists toward me. “So, Adalyn, tell us: Any exciting young men in your life these days?”

  It’s always the first thing Maman’s friends want to know about me.

  “Nobody at the moment, Madame LaRoche,” I reply. “Although I haven’t been in the mood for romance, anyhow.”

  She shakes her head and sighs. “If only our poor men could come back home. . . .”

  Thanks to the war, there are hardly any young men left in Paris these days, besides the ones who are still in school. It’s a tragedy, and not because I haven’t any romantic prospects. Those who went off to war are either dead now or being held in German prisoner-of-war camps. Our downstairs neighbor, Madame Blanchard, hasn’t had word of her son since he was captured at Dunkirk in June. She looks thinner every time I see her.

  Marie leans into the center of the room. She rolls the stem of her champagne glass between her fingers.

  “You know, some of these Germans are rather attractive,” she confesses.

  “You’re only saying that because you haven’t seen our own men for so long,” Monique says.

  “Perhaps,” Marie muses. “They certainly don’t have that French charm, but they really are handsome. And more polite than you’d think. One of them helped me pick up my spilled groceries the other day.”

  “I’m sure all our men in POW camps would be happy to hear it,” my sister mutters under her breath.

  “What was that?” asks Madame LaRoche.

  Maman shoots Chloe a warning look. “Adalyn,” she says, “why don’t you play us something on the piano?”

  I get to my feet without hesitation, flexing my fingers. I’ve been playing since I was eight, taking lessons twice a week with a woman, Mathilde, who lives near the school. I like to practice on our little piano at home, the same one Papa grew up playing before his injury, but there’s something extraordinary about sitting down at a gleaming grand piano like the one in the corner of the drawing room. In happier times, I would bring my song books to Madame LaRoche’s and play for hours.

  As I open the piano bench and sift around for something to play, I hear Madame LaRoche’s voice.

  “Is she still taking lessons, Odette?”

  “She was, but her teacher is in the Free Zone now. Adalyn, what did Mathilde say in the last letter you received from her?”

  “That she was looking at getting a permit to return to Paris,” I reply.

  “I hope she is successful,” says Madame LaRoche. “A talent like yours shouldn’t go to waste.”

  I find the score for one of my favorite pieces, Mozart’s Piano Sonata no. 16 in C major. Papa introduced me to it; he said the sound reminded him of springtime.

  As my fingers begin to dance across the keys, I let the fluttering notes transport me to a dinner party Madame LaRoche threw early last year; Papa was with us, and we talked and laughed late into the evening, as nobody had to be home before any sort of curfew. We stopped to listen to a band of street musicians on the way home, and Papa asked Maman to dance right there on the sidewalk. My eyes drift tow
ard the window, but of course, the curtains are pulled shut so the light can’t seep out. Somewhere out there stands the Eiffel Tower with a Nazi flag flying on top. Everything in Paris has changed, and I can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever be so carefree again.

  At half past six I finish playing and we migrate to the dining room, where the staff lays out a meal of lamb and potatoes.

  Amid the clinking of cutlery, we hear a car go by in the street below, and our six sets of eyes dart toward the window. The everyday purr of an engine has taken on a hair-raising quality, for it’s not the French who drive cars these days. Nobody takes another bite until the sound has faded away.

  Madame LaRoche looks across the table at Maman. “When you arrived, did you notice all the Germans on our street?”

  “Yes, Chloe was quick to mention it,” Maman replies a little pointedly. “There certainly seemed to be more of them than normal.”

  “No number of Germans is normal,” Chloe interjects.

  Maman pretends not to have heard her. “Is there a reason for it, Geneviève?”

  “There is,” says Madame LaRoche a bit nervously. She glances toward the window again. “The Germans have been moving into a number of homes in the Eighth. Some of the places they stay in like houseguests; others they seize altogether.”

  I shudder at the thought of a German in our home—his boots on the carpet, his jacket hanging over the chair in Papa’s study. A classmate of mine, Anette, has one of them staying with her family. He claimed the master bedroom, which forced Anette’s parents to sleep in her bedroom, which forced Anette to squeeze into bed with her two little sisters. “It’s lucky that you were spared,” I say to Madame LaRoche.

  “It’s the first time we’ve been happy to have one of the smaller apartments on the block,” she admits. “But as I’ve been saying to the girls, just in case it does happen, we must try to keep a positive attitude about these Germans. It’s like you were saying, Odette: There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  “A positive attitude is the best way to get through this,” Maman says in agreement.

  “And in any case, they aren’t all big bad wolves,” Madame LaRoche says. She waits until she is satisfied that everybody at the table is listening, and then she launches into a story. “I was walking home with my shopping the other day, and it was so sunny out, so I thought, Why don’t I take the long way home and enjoy the weather? Well, I turn the corner, and the first thing I see is my favorite bistro—a place I’ve been eating at since I was a little girl—with German signs on it. Some ridiculous long name. And I didn’t recognize anyone inside—they were all men in uniform. And, well, it just hit me like a train. I can’t explain what came over me—I was weak in the knees! I thought I might faint right there in the middle of the road!

  “But then I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I look up into the face of a German. I tell him, ‘No, no, please leave me be’—I’m already frazzled enough—but he invites me to sit down at a table with him. I didn’t want to be rude, so I obliged, and I have to say, we ended up having a pleasant enough conversation. He spoke excellent French, and he told me what a beautiful city we live in. He even asked for sightseeing recommendations.”

  “And he gave you the champagne,” Marie points out.

  “Yes,” Madame LaRoche says with a mischievous smile, raising her glass. “And he gave me the champagne.”

  Across the table, Chloe bristles.

  With a smile plastered to my face, I listen as Marie and Monique muse about the other rationed items they could try to get from the Germans. I wonder how they would react if they knew what I did on Friday. It’s the kind of thing people would expect from Chloe, maybe, but never from me, the one who typically follows rules to a tee. I keep the memory to myself, turning it over and over like a shiny coin in my pocket.

  Back at the apartment, when we’ve both changed into our pajamas, Chloe flops face-first onto my bed.

  “That was terrible,” she moans into the comforter.

  Gingerly, I lie down next to her, thinking about how to respond. Chloe is my best friend in the world—closer to me than Charlotte and Simone combined—but these days, it’s hard to know how much of myself I should share with her. I know the way she is, and my worst fear is that I’ll somehow encourage her to do something reckless and stupid again, like confronting another Wehrmacht officer head-on. Yesterday she got away with it, but the next time it could be different.

  “I agree that parts of it were terrible, but it wasn’t all bad,” I say.

  Chloe flops over onto her back like a fish on dry land, disbelief written across her face.

  “Yes, it was all bad! I had to sit there and listen to stupid Madame LaRoche go on about how much she loves the Germans. She probably wants one of them to move in with her. More champagne to go around!”

  “Chloe . . .”

  “Why doesn’t everybody hate the Germans like I do? Why doesn’t everybody feel this . . . damn . . . angry?” She flings a pillow across the room, and it knocks over a pile of books next to the window. “Why don’t you feel this angry, Adalyn? You just sit there all the time with that smile on your face.”

  “I don’t know, Chloe.” I fidget with the hem of my nightgown because I can’t look her in the eye. Then, smiling wryly, I say, “The day the war is over, I’m going to tell Madame LaRoche she’s insufferable.”

  Chloe and I made up a game when we were cooped up at Uncle Gérard’s farmhouse last spring. The rules are simple: You go back and forth naming all the fun things you can’t wait to do when the war is over.

  Chloe rolls her eyes. “You know you could do that now, don’t you?” But then, grinning back at me, she says, “I’m going break every bottle of champagne the German soldier gave her.”

  Soon, she and I are listing our grand plans: eating pains au chocolat until our stomachs hurt. Riding to the top of the Eiffel Tower on the lift, which is currently out of service. (Someone sabotaged its wiring so the Germans would have to carry their flag up on foot.) Strolling along the bank of the Seine in the evening and marveling at the blanket of light over Paris—“with a handsome boy,” Chloe adds.

  “Yes. With a handsome boy.”

  When Chloe finally leaves half an hour later, I am relieved. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath this whole time. I race to my desk drawer and pull out the leather-bound black notebook I found at Gérard’s. It’s been helpful to have a diary around. These days, it’s the only place I can be completely honest about how I feel.

  I begin to scribble out an entry about Madame LaRoche’s dinner. Chloe was right: It was terrible. It was one thing for Maman to keep her spirits up for Papa’s sake, and to trust in Pétain, the old French war hero; many who lived through the Great War still hold him in high regard. But it was another thing entirely for Madame LaRoche to speak so favorably of some polite German she met—and for Marie to be attracted to them. How could they look at the Germans and see anything besides evil infesting our streets? As soon as the tip of my pencil touches the paper, a floodgate opens. The anger spills out like a roiling river. It washes over everything around me.

  When I’m done, I collapse onto the pillows, spent but at least somewhat calmer now. I’ve been writing about nearly every wretched aspect of our new reality, from fleeing Paris in the throng of refugees to returning home to find my beloved city with the life sucked out of it. I write about the curfew and the rations and the shock of seeing Germans in the places that used to be ours. It feels good to let it out—sometimes.

  Other times, the diary isn’t enough to contain my rage.

  Two days ago, Friday, I was walking home from an after-school study session when I spotted three German soldiers around fifty paces ahead of me, snickering. The sound of it made my blood turn to ice. I sensed right away that it was cruel laughter, for they all had mean looks in their eyes, and one of them was jabbing his finger at something across the street.

  It was a terrible sight. Monsieur de Metz, the friendly man wh
o owns the neighborhood kosher grocery store, was kneeling helplessly on the ground in what I first thought was snow but was in fact hundreds of thousands of tiny shards of glass. Someone—or three, more like it—had smashed in the front window of his shop. Looking back on it now, I wish the LaRoches could see what some of their polite Nazis are really like.

  Instinctively, I dropped my book bag to go help him. But just then, Monsieur de Metz looked directly into my eyes. (The soldiers were too busy laughing to take notice.) With a quiet sense of urgency, the grocer gave me a look and a twitch of the head that seemed to say “thank you” and “you should get out of here” all at once. I nodded at him, not wanting to make it worse, then scooped up my bag and hurried down a side street before the soldiers knew I’d ever been there.

  I trembled with anger as I made my way down the side street, away from Monsieur de Metz’s vandalized store. In that moment, I was fed up with putting on my polite smile around Maman and her friends—around anyone, really. I felt as though I couldn’t do it anymore. Not when things like that were happening in Paris. The next thing I knew, tears were flowing freely down my cheeks.

  When I looked up from the ground, I noticed the awful German posters hanging along the brick wall to my right. The smiling blond-haired families with swastikas hovering around their heads. Adolf Hitler—the Germans’ Führer—hoisting a Nazi flag into the air. My rage was too powerful to contain. I wanted to destroy them. And there was nobody around to see me do it.

  The paper came off the wall with a satisfying rip. In one fell swoop, months of pent-up fury exploded from my fingertips. The first one felt so good, I couldn’t possibly resist a second. Two became three and then four, and pretty soon, I’d torn down every damn Nazi poster in the whole alleyway. I was panting by the time I reached the end, my nails jagged from being raked across the brick.