A Bridge Across the Ocean

by Susan Meissner

  “Simone! We need your bed.” Henri spoke her name in a tone that was both urgent and restrained from just beyond the wall of barrels.

  She scrambled off the straw at the same moment that he rounded the corner, accompanied by two men she did not know. The winemaker shone the flashlight in Simone’s direction, blinding her, but not before she saw that the strangers with him were carrying a fourth man covered in blood.

  “Put him there!” Henri commanded, pointing to the mound of straw and the tousled blanket where Simone had been lying.

  Simone watched in stunned silence as the injured man, wearing a uniform she did not recognize, was laid out on the cellar floor. He groaned and pawed awkwardly at his belt, reaching, it seemed, for something strapped to his pant leg.

  “Take the gun,” one of the men said to Henri. The winemaker removed the black pistol the man had been reaching for and tossed it to the straw.

  Simone’s blood ran cold in her veins. “Is he German?” she whispered.

  But Henri seemed not to have heard her. He and the other men were tearing at the wounded man’s clothes to expose his bloody torso. Simone saw dog tags attached to a chain around his neck and nestled in the hollow below his Adam’s apple. They, too, shone with blood.

  “I see it!” one of the strangers said. “He was shot here. Take off your shirt, Henri.”

  Henri began to unbutton his shirt with shaking hands. “Is the bullet still inside him, Sébastien? There is no doctor here we can trust.”

  The man named Sébastien turned the wounded soldier over, revealing his back and a hole, crimson and shiny. “The bullet exited here. That is good.” Sébastien looked up at Henri. “Press the fabric here. I will see if Marie will come dress the wound. François, go find this soldier’s parachute and get rid of it. Bury it if you must. See if he dropped anything else besides the camera. Take someone with you.”

  The man named François nodded and sprinted away as Henri knelt by the bleeding man and pressed his shirt to the man’s side.

  “Is your wife at home, Henri?” Sébastien grabbed the gun on the straw.

  “Yes.”

  “We will need hot water and bandages. Maybe her sewing box. I don’t know what Marie will want.”

  Henri glanced up at Simone. “Come hold this in place while I go fetch Collette.”

  The wounded man moaned. “Can I just go get Collette instead?” she asked.

  “That is impossible and you know it. Come hold the shirt.”

  Simone got to her knees beside Henri. His hands were splotched with blood and she felt her gorge tumble inside her.

  “Press here.” Henri took her hand and placed it over the bloodied shirt. Her hand was instantly sticky. Henri rose to his feet.

  “You have anything stronger than wine?” Sébastien tucked the confiscated gun into his belt.

  Henri shrugged. “We’ve some Armagnac. Not a lot. But some.”

  The man nodded toward the figure on the straw. “He’s going to need it.”

  As Henri spun away to run up the stairs, Sébastien turned toward Simone.

  “So you are the daughter of Thierry Devereux?”

  Simone looked up from her grim task. The man speaking to her seemed like every other Résistance member she had known in her life, aside from Papa and Étienne: angry, driven, and fiercely in love with France. She said nothing. Papa had never mentioned a man named Sébastien before.

  “Your father was a true patriot,” Sébastien continued. “We have heard what he did. He was a very brave man.”

  His words were clearly spoken in admiration of her father, but coming from a stranger they made Simone bristle with a terrible sadness. This man didn’t know her father. And he didn’t know her. “I know what he was,” she muttered.

  The man took hold of his cap, removed it, and bowed slightly. “Sébastien Maillard. People around know me as the mechanic who can fix anything.”

  Could she trust him? Henri did. But Henri never talked about knowing her father. Henri never talked at all about the reason she was hiding in his wine cellar.

  “You’re not going to tell me your name?” He laughed lightly.

  Simone hesitated for a moment. “You already heard my name. Henri said it.”

  Sébastien’s smile diminished, but only somewhat. “Look, I don’t care why you had to get out of Paris. But you need to know that if the Germans find this man here, they will likely kill Henri and Collette, and you, too. You need to understand that. They will kill you if they find you here with him.”

  Simone returned her gaze to the injured man. Despite the cuts and bruises on his forehead and cheek and the grim set of his mouth, he had a nice face. Handsome, even.

  “He is not German?” she said.

  “He’s American. The Germans shot down his plane, and sooner or later they are going to figure out that he survived. They will be looking for him. If you want to leave, now is the time.”

  Simone allowed a slight smile to frame her lips. “If I want to leave,” she echoed.

  “You think I am joking? You think you are safe here?”

  “No one is safe anywhere. And the Germans already want me dead.”

  Sébastien cocked his head and an unmistakable look of approval mixed with equal parts doubt fell across his face. “Is that so? Why do they want you dead? Were you passing secrets for your father before he died?”

  In her mind’s eye Simone saw her father and brother jerking to the ground in front of the shoe-repair shop, their bodies riddled with Gestapo bullets. “You mean before they killed him? And my brother?”

  The look of doubt on Sébastien’s face slid away and his gaze intensified. “Are you Résistance, too, chérie?”

  Simone didn’t know what she was. She didn’t answer him.

  “How old are you?”

  “I’ll be eighteen on my next birthday.”

  Sébastien knelt down to meet her at eye level. That close, and with the weak light emanating from the flashlight, Simone could see that he was younger than Henri, older than her brother, Étienne, had been. Twenty-five, maybe. It was hard to tell. The occupation of France had aged everyone in different ways.

  “What did you do?” Sébastien asked, his tone almost tender. “Why do the Germans want you dead?”

  Simone looked down at her hands stained red.

  “I killed one of them.”

  Four

  Papa taught her how to fire the gun.

  A few months after the German armies marched into Paris, Simone’s father had taken her into the shoe-repair shop’s back room and shown her where he’d hidden a pistol inside a box of old polishing cloths.

  “I do not know what the future holds for us, Simone,” he said. “There may come a day when you will need to know where this gun is and how to use it.”

  She had just turned fourteen. She hadn’t known that her father even owned a gun.

  Her mother, Cécile, had been dead for five years, and while Simone missed Maman acutely, her father had carved a happy life for her and her older brother, Étienne. They lived above the shoe-repair shop in the seventh arrondissement on Rue de Cler. She had a number of close school friends living nearby. She enjoyed art class, and learning English, and the wonderment of imagining her first kiss with Bertrand Ardouin, a fellow fourteen-year-old who hadn’t yet caught on that she liked him. She made the meals for her father and brother, mended their clothes, and decorated the flat at the holidays. In the evenings, the three of them listened to the wireless or played cards or read. Her life had seemed sweetly simple until the Germans came, and the radio was the first thing to go.

  Papa repaired shoes. He was not a man who needed a gun.

  When he lifted the pistol from the tangle of cloths, Simone could not help thinking how sinister it looked, with its shiny, beetle-black paint and trigger like a little devil’s hor
n.

  “I wish I had shown you how to use it when I showed Étienne,” her father had said, shaking his head. “But I promised your mother I’d make sure to remember you were a girl becoming a lady. I knew she wouldn’t have wanted you to go shooting with us that day.”

  He laughed, but it was a sad laugh, as though the memory of that pledge was both sweet and wrenching. He opened the chamber of the gun and shook the bullets into his palm.

  “I keep it loaded, Simone, so you must be very careful to remember that this gun is always ready to shoot. But right now you can practice with it unloaded. I will put the bullets back in when we’re done.”

  Papa held the gun toward her, but Simone did not stretch out her hand.

  “I need you to take it, Simone.”

  “I’m afraid, Papa.”

  His eyes shimmered with tears. “So am I. I am so very afraid. That is why you must take it. You must learn what to do if you ever need to use it.”

  “Why would I need to use it?”

  “Paris is not the city it once was. Things are different now. There might come a time when you must protect yourself from . . . from bad people who would try to harm you. You are a beautiful young girl, ma chérie, and the world is no longer a safe place for beautiful young girls.”

  He had not said the word rape out loud but she read his meaning. The streets were increasingly full of German soldiers and Gestapo officers—men in power, far from home and fueled by their victory over a defeated Paris.

  She held out her hand and he placed the gun in it. The metal was surprisingly warm.

  “There are only two things you need to remember,” Papa said. “To keep your arm steady and your eyes open.”

  She nodded. The pistol lay in her open hand.

  “Now hold the gun the way you’ve seen it done at the cinema, Simone. You can do this.”

  She righted the pistol so that its barrel faced outward and looped her fingers around the trigger.

  Papa positioned himself so that he was standing just behind her. “Point the gun at the water heater. Use your other hand to help you control it.”

  Simone obeyed. The gun trembled in her hand.

  Papa drew his arms around her. “Aim for the triangle-shaped smudge there, cock back the lever, and pull the trigger.”

  Simone leveled the gun’s barrel toward the spot on the water heater. She pulled back the lever and then stopped. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. You must.”

  Simone closed her eyes. She squeezed the trigger. The gun clicked and she shuddered.

  “Good girl. Do it again. This time with your eyes open.”

  A dozen more times she fired the bulletless gun. Each time she shook less.

  “There now, that’s good.” Papa said. “When there are bullets inside, it will kick back a bit; be ready for that, Simone. But do just as I told you. Keep your arm steady and straight and your eyes open. Don’t close your eyes.”

  She handed the gun back to him.

  “Watch me now as I slip the bullets back inside.” He spun the chamber and dropped them in one by one. When he was done, he put the gun back under the frayed polishing cloths.

  “I don’t want to have to shoot anyone,” Simone said.

  “I don’t want you to, either. I will pray every day that you never have to.”

  “You said you showed Étienne how to shoot it.”

  “I did. But what if he and I are not here? What if something happens and we are not here for you?”

  “Don’t say that, Papa!”

  Her father turned from the box to face her. “There is talk that the men will be sent to labor camps in Germany.”

  She didn’t know what that meant. Her papa had done nothing wrong.

  “Why? What men?’

  “Men like Étienne and me, ma chérie.”

  How could he even think of leaving her in Paris alone? And Étienne was only seventeen. She turned to leave the room. She would not have this conversation. But Papa took her arm and stopped her.

  “Simone, I don’t want that to happen. God knows I don’t. I just need for you to know. In case—”

  “In case what?”

  “In case you come home from school one day and we are gone. It has happened to other men in the Seventh. If it does, I want you to take the gun, hide it in a traveling bag, and go to the address I am going to tell you. You must memorize the address, Simone. It’s very important that you memorize it.”

  Tears were falling freely down her face now. Papa was speaking as if what he feared most was already happening. “Why must I memorize it?”

  “Because it cannot be written down anywhere. Promise me you will memorize it. Don’t write it down. Ever.”

  Up until that moment Simone had not known her father and brother had joined the fledgling underground Résistance. She thought their meetings with other men late at night were devoted to smoking their cigars and drinking all their brandy before the Germans did. And yet she’d overheard the boys at school whispering about a secret movement to oust the Germans and retake the city . . .

  “Where are you going at night with Étienne?” she whispered now, as she began to understand what that kind of activity could mean. The occupational forces had announced early on that any opposition to their rule would not be tolerated. Rebels would be shot.

  Papa’s eyes flashed dread and surprise at the same time. He had no answer at the ready.

  “I know what the boys are talking about at school,” Simone continued. “I know there are people who want to take back Paris.”

  Papa pulled her away from the door and the remote possibility that anyone outside on the street could hear them.

  “You must never, ever mention this to anyone. Ever.” His whispered words were laced with anger and fear. “Do not talk to those boys who are saying things that could get them killed. Swear you will not!”

  His gaze was tight on hers and his grip on her arms bit into her flesh. Simone was surprised into silence by the violence of his reaction.

  “Swear to me! Swear that you will not speak of that to anyone!” he said.

  “I swear I won’t, Papa. You’re hurting me.”

  His eyes widened in shock and he pulled his hands away. A second later he drew Simone into his arms. “I am so sorry this is the world we have created for you, ma chérie. So very sorry.”

  For several moments father and daughter stood in a tearful embrace in the cramped room.

  “I just want you to be safe,” her father finally said.

  He released her and took a step back. He placed his hands back on her shoulders, this time more gently. “The address you need to remember is twenty-three Rue de Calais. You are to ask for Monsieur Jolicoeur. Say it back to me.”

  “Twenty-three Rue de Calais.”

  “And the name.”

  “Monsieur Jolicoeur.”

  “Say it again.”

  “Twenty-three Rue de Calais. Monsieur Jolicoeur.”

  “Say it to yourself every day so that you do not forget. I will remind you.” He squeezed her shoulders.

  “I will.”

  “And what did I tell you about the gun?”

  “Keep my arm steady and my eyes open.”

  “Good girl.”

  He placed one hand under her chin and smiled at her. “You look so much like your mother, my Simone. I promised her I would take good care of you.”

  “You are taking good care of me, Papa.”

  He removed his hand. “One more thing about the gun. Tell no one we have it. And I mean no one. Not your friends, not your teacher. Not even the priest. No one can know. We aren’t allowed to have them.”

  After returning to the shop, which Papa had closed for the day, they went into the back room, where Étienne was standing at the window in case a German sold
ier came by to demand his boots be shined, despite the Closed sign over the door.

  He tipped his chin to Simone—a wordless affirmation that he knew all that she now knew.

  And then her brother asked her what was for supper.

  Six months later, when Papa and Étienne were told they were bound for a labor camp in northern Germany, Papa was able to convince the officer in charge that he and Étienne would much better serve the Wehrmacht by staying in Paris and making sure the officers had professionally polished boots for when Nazi dignitaries and high-ranking officers came to call.

  Simone had no need of the gun that first year of the occupation, nor the second or third. Somehow the three of them found enough food to eat and enough coal for the furnace. They endured muttered insults and rebuffs from neighbors who begrudged them their now strictly German clientele. But Simone knew her father gleaned much information from the officers who spoke to each other while having their shoes shined, never realizing that the proprietor who pretended to speak only a little German actually knew quite a bit. Her closest Catholic girlfriends from school had fled to southern France with their families. The few Jewish friends in her neighborhood had been rounded up by the French police and sent to German and Polish labor camps. Bertrand, the boy Simone liked, had already been sent away with his father, who died of pneumonia after a year. As far as Simone knew, Bertrand was still alive, building tanks and bombs for the Germans.

  As 1943 neared its end, Simone’s existence had been reduced to three activities: avoiding the shoe-repair shop during business hours, keeping Étienne and Papa fed and their clothes mended, and counting the days until the war would be over.

  The monotony she endured left her unprepared for surprises, however. On the third of December 1943, at two in the afternoon when she was alone in the flat, she’d heard angry shouting downstairs. She had been keeping up with her schoolwork on her own, opting not to attend classes anymore—too dangerous—and she laid her pen down to listen. The shouts were in German.

  She had been instructed by Papa never to come downstairs when the shop was open, but she cracked open the front door to the flat and peered down the flight of steps that led to a frosted-glass door and the back room of the shop. More shouts. Simone could not distinguish the voices, but she thought she heard her father’s and Étienne’s in the mix. She crept down the steps and listened at the glass door. The voices were sounding farther away and there was the sound of scuffling. The shop was quiet and the yelling seemed to be only coming from one man now, a German, outside on the street.