The Lost Carousel of Provence

by Juliet Blackwell

  As they left the office and passed through the museum lobby, Jean-Paul excused himself to make a phone call.

  Cady said to Madame Martin: “You seem to have great influence over Jean-Paul.”

  “He owes me a favor,” she replied.

  “Must have been quite the favor.”

  Jean-Paul joined them, and he and Madame Martin traded glances but said nothing. Cady had been teasing, but realized—too late—that it sounded like she was snooping into something that was clearly none of her business. These two had gone out of their way to help her. That was more than enough.

  As they walked toward the rue de Rivoli, Cady noticed an engraved stone on the side of a building and to break the silence, she said: “I’ve seen several of those around the city. What are they about?”

  The plaque read:

  GEORGES BAILLY

  ETUDIANT EN PHARMACIE

  GE DE 24 ANS

  EST MORT HEROÏQUEMENT POUR LA FRANCE

  LE 25 AOÙT 1944 LA LIBERATION DE PARIS

  “Some of the fighters in the Résistance took to the streets in a sort of guerrilla warfare, as the Nazis were starting to lose control,” Madame Martin answered. “Many of them were killed in the battle to liberate Paris. Their families put bouquets of flowers where they fell, and left little handwritten signs. After the war, many were given official recognition.”

  “Poor Georges Bailly,” Cady said. “Only twenty-four and going up against Nazis.”

  “Many of the soldiers were much younger than that,” said Jean-Paul. “Just teenagers. And there were children as young as twelve and thirteen working with the Résistance.”

  “It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?” said Cady. She often felt as though she had survived a war as a child, but Parisian children had survived an actual war. More than once.

  As soon as they sat down at a table in the café, Madame Martin popped back up, exclaiming: “Oh! I forgot I need to make a phone call. I’ll be back.”

  Cady watched as the woman left the restaurant. With a sense of relief, she switched back to English. “I think you’re right; your tante is trying to get us together. I just can’t imagine why.”

  The waiter arrived, and they placed their orders. Then Jean-Paul leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. He tilted his head, as though assessing her.

  “You do not seem typical.”

  “In what way?”

  “You have no guiles.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Is that not the right word? When you are without . . . guiles?”

  “You mean guileless.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  “Are Americans typically full of guile?”

  “I’m not speaking of Americans. I am speaking of women. You are not a typical woman.”

  She let out a bark of laughter. “I didn’t realize there was such thing as a ‘typical’ woman.”

  He frowned, as though confused.

  “Jean-Paul, I am very grateful for everything you’ve done for me. You have gone out of your way to help a stranger, but I really don’t need a French treatise on who I am, or who I should be, because I’m a woman.”

  “I meant no offense, I promise you. In fact, the opposite.”

  “I get that. I think.”

  “I meant only that you are . . . delightful.”

  She laughed again. “Okay, now I know you have an ulterior motive. I may be a lot of things, but I have never been accused of being delightful.”

  Jean-Paul held her gaze for another long moment.

  “So,” Cady said, clearing her throat. “I’ve found a few references to a carousel in the book, but it seems to become a metaphor for life. The book was written in the 1950s, so maybe the carousel was still there at that time? When was it destroyed?”

  “Sometime during the First World War. I believe the remains of the carousel are still there on the grounds of the château, but the current owner has never allowed anyone to access it. Fabrice Clement is a . . . special sort.”

  “Your elderly cousin lives in a château right outside of town and you’ve never gone to visit?”

  “Of course I’ve gone to visit,” he replied with a shake of his head. “But he’s never allowed me in past the kitchen. It’s very complicated.”

  The waiter brought three tall flutes of champagne, a small bowl of olives, and another of walnuts. He arranged them on the table with paper napkins, then hurried away.

  “Fabrice’s father, Marc-Antoine, was my great-grandfather Pierre’s first cousin,” Jean-Paul continued. “Many in the family—including, very loudly, Pierre’s son, Gerald, who is my grandfather—believed Marc-Antoine should not have inherited the château.”

  “Why is that?”`

  He waved it off. “It’s a moot point, as far as I’m concerned—especially since I now stand to inherit the château, via my mother, after all—but it has caused a . . . problem within the family.”

  “A rift?”

  “Exactly. Four generations of rift, to be precise.”

  “That’s a lot of rift. But . . . why didn’t you tell me before that you were going to inherit the château?”

  “It did not seem pertinent. As I said, it’s a complicated situation. Do you like the champagne? Try it.”

  He watched as Cady took a sip; the bubbles tickled her nose, but the wine was dry and crisp with subtle hints of apple and apricot, unlike any sparkling wine she had ever tasted. It had nothing in common with the cheap, sweet bubbly she’d served at her own wedding.

  “Good?” he asked.

  “Very. Thank you. But back to your family: You aren’t involved in this rift?”

  “I think it’s ridiculous to fight over rumors and accusations based on something that may or may not have happened a century ago.”

  “Sounds like you’re the family peacemaker.”

  Jean-Paul gave her a slight crooked smile. “I suppose I am. Though I’m not particularly effective in that role, I should add.”

  “Is that why you chose to live in Paris?”

  “In part. I came here for university, began working, and never left. I enjoy visiting Saint-Véran, and have considered moving back there one day. As much as I love Paris, I would prefer to raise my children in my native village. With the TGV it’s a quick trip.”

  “The TGV is the high-speed train?”

  He nodded.

  “I didn’t realize you have children.”

  “I don’t, not yet. But I hope to, someday. And you?”

  Cady’s hand went to her stomach, and it dawned on her that she now went for hours at a time without thinking about the miscarriage. Still . . . she did the math in her head. If she hadn’t lost the baby, she would have been in her second trimester. If Maxine hadn’t died, the old woman would have knitted ten baby blankets by now, and the two of them would have been gathering castoffs from Maxine’s relatives: a top-of-the-line car seat, teensy onesies, a wooden crib. If things had been different, she would have been a mother in a few short months, and Maxine a grandmother.

  But if things had been different, Cady never would have come to Paris.

  Madame Martin breezed back into the restaurant and sat down with a plop, taking a great gulp of champagne.

  “Je suis désolée,” she excused herself. “So, what are we talking about?”

  “Having children,” Jean-Paul responded without hesitation.

  Madame Martin straightened, her eyes wide, looking at one, then the other. Jean-Paul chuckled.

  “Oh, you,” Madame Martin said, slapping him playfully on the arm. “You like to tease.”

  “We are talking about Château Clement and its surrounding drama,” Jean-Paul said. “As usual.”

  “Did Jean-Paul mention to you that he is traveling to the village of Saint-Véran at
the end of next week?” Madame Martin asked. “Perhaps you could go with him and see it for yourself.”

  “Oh, thank you. I’m heading back to California next week,” Cady said.

  “Paris is a world-class city, but there is more to France than Paris. There are many fascinating regions with their own histories and ways of doing things,” Madame Martin continued. “You should see more of the country before you return to the United States. Provence is a different world.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t—,” Cady started to say.

  “Jean-Paul, tell her she would be welcome.”

  “You would be welcome,” said Jean-Paul dutifully.

  “That’s very nice of you, but no, thank you.”

  “You don’t trust me,” Jean-Paul said. It was more a statement than a question.

  “Not really, no,” Cady said.

  Madame Martin looked taken aback.

  “It’s not him, it’s me,” Cady assured her. “I’ve never been particularly good with people.”

  Jean-Paul gave Cady a slow, searching smile.

  “What?” she demanded.

  He responded in English: “You see? Lack of guiles.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  1944

  PARIS

  Fabrice

  Defiance of the invading Germans, and of his own parents, was what first led Fabrice to the meeting of the Résistance. But Paulette was his motivation to return. She was the true reason for the depth of his anti-German fervor, for his willingness to give his life for the Résistance.

  Paulette. She was all he could think about.

  He would not admit this to anyone, least of all to Paulette.

  Fabrice knew he should hate the Nazis for occupying Paris, and he did; he avoided them on the street, refusing to meet their eyes or speak to them unless compelled. In silent protest he carried in his satchel a book, Le Silence de la Mer—The Silence of the Sea—by Jean Bruller; in it, an old man and his niece refuse to speak to the German officer occupying their house. At first Fabrice couldn’t believe such a story had been published during the war, but later he learned it was put out by one of the underground publishing houses set up to circumvent Vichy and German censorship.

  He found the book in the abandoned apartment of their neighbor Monsieur Schreyer, an ancient widower who used to feed stray cats and play his mournful violin late into the night. Monsieur Schreyer had disappeared one day, like so many others Fabrice had grown up with in the neighborhood: the owners of the jewelry shop that was set afire, or the kind woman who used to sneak Fabrice sweets out her window when he was a child. More than twenty students from his school, who simply stopped coming to class.

  German officials claimed these people had been relocated to temporary work camps, but as far as anyone knew, none had ever been allowed to so much as pack a bag before they left, much less return to their homes.

  It was when Fabrice—feeling like a revolutionary—dared to show the book to his school friend Claude that Claude began to speak to him about working against the Nazi occupation. After a few days, Claude took Fabrice to meet an old man below the Arc de Triomphe, who interviewed him extensively about his background, his feelings for the Germans, his talents.

  “You must be very sure, and never mention anything, to anyone. Not even in your own family. It is risky,” the man told him. “There is a constant danger of betrayal. The cells aren’t in contact for fear that if one is brought down, the others will be revealed through torture. We meet in small groups, and we use false names. That way if someone is picked up, they can’t betray the rest, even if they tried to.”

  “I want to help,” Fabrice insisted. “I won’t tell a soul.”

  The meeting took place in the apartment of a doctor named Duhamel, on the rue Paul Valéry, off the Avenue Victor Hugo.

  “A doctor’s office is a useful cover,” Claude explained when they approached, “because so many different kinds of people can come in and out without arousing suspicion.”

  Fabrice learned that the wealthy Dr. Duhamel dutifully cared for wounded German soldiers in public, while secretly treating wounded British and American airmen, then facilitating their escapes across the border to Spain. This required finding extra food for the wounded at a time when some Parisians were forced to eat cats or “bread” made of chestnuts and sawdust. The doctor’s office became a hub of information and smuggling; messages with ideas for bombing targets were hidden in stinky cheeses from Vichy, then transferred to those who had a radio and could broadcast the messages to London. Rural cells, called maquis, sent information on German troop movements through notes sewn into farmers’ underwear.

  In the meeting were a handful of people of different ages and backgrounds: a student, a communist, a trade unionist, a Polish immigrant. And Paulette. Though Fabrice listened intently to the frightening, thrilling things people were saying during the meeting, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

  She was the doctor’s secretary. She perched on the edge of a desk, a red beret on her head, her clothes old but neat, a thin belt defining her waist. But it was her blue eyes that captured his attention, flashing as she spoke with fiery conviction, determination radiating from her. Later Fabrice would come to realize that others did not find her anything special, and it amazed him; to Fabrice, Paulette was the embodiment of everything he could ever want, ever aspire to. The turn of her wrist, the flash of pale chest where her blouse gapped, the way she tucked a wayward lock of honey-gold hair behind one ear as though slightly annoyed, but continued undaunted with her impassioned speech.

  Fabrice was enthralled.

  Paulette was to be his official contact. She was brave, fierce, unafraid. She had been working with the Résistance since the very beginning of the occupation; as a young woman, she could bicycle through the streets without arousing suspicion.

  “We of the Résistance come together with different visions, and different aims,” said the doctor. “But we are united by love for country, and hatred for an occupying force which seeks to overwhelm and co-opt us. The Allies are working from without; we must help them from within. But bear in mind: You are entering a world of shadows.”

  While they spoke a plump, middle-aged woman sat by the window, peering outside, as though not listening. At first Fabrice thought she was rude; later he came to realize that someone was assigned to keep watch at the large windows overlooking the street. Usually it was this same woman, who turned out to be the family maid, named Carine. The fine furniture, carpets, and oil paintings in the office—and the fact that they still had a full-time maid—were evidence of the Duhamel family’s privilege, and Fabrice’s father used to speak of wealth as the font of evil. But at least with this family, Fabrice decided, their privilege was the basis for educated defiance of the enemy.

  It was a little like being invited to play a part in a theater performance, Fabrice thought, as talk swirled around him: how to obtain false papers, adopting a false name. Paulette showed them all the back ways out of the building, in case they were found out. Even the doctor and his wife didn’t speak to each other about what they were doing, for fear of being captured and tortured for information about each other. Those going undercover had to sever ties with family and friends to achieve clandestinité.

  It was a shadowland fraught with danger. Fabrice had never felt more alive.

  * * *

  • • •

  Fabrice was useful to the cause because he was young, and had inherited his mother’s blond hair. There were very few young men left in Paris—most were in work camps or exiled with the military—but his papers declared him to be too young for obligatory work service, so Fabrice was able to move more or less freely through the streets.

  Also, he had a gift with words.

  The war was being fought not only on the battlefields but in the minds and hearts of the citizenry. Information was key.

&n
bsp; “The Nazis keep control of the media, the Pariser Zeitung,” Paulette told him. He tried to concentrate on what she was saying, and not simply the shape of her cupid-bow lips as they moved. “It is published in German with the occasional single-sheet supplement in French summarizing the news. As the only official source of information for the French people and the German army of occupation in northern France, it has its own correspondent in Vichy.”

  Fabrice was familiar with the paper. The Pariser Zeitung was vehemently anti-British, anti-communist, and anti-Semitic. In a quiet act of resistance, citizens would go out of their way to use this paper to sop up the oil when they cooked or to line the bottoms of birdcages.

  The newspaper flattered the French people and attempted to demonstrate that the two cultures were not only harmonious but complementary. Editorials heaped praise upon the French banking system and the businesses represented at the Leipzig fair and the France Européenne de la Photographie exhibition. Glowing articles raved about Paris, its monuments, museums, cafés, nightlife, gourmet cuisine . . . and the beautiful Parisian women.

  “According to the Nazi line,” explained a man known to Fabrice only as the Belgian, “Paris is to become the playground for the German overlords; this is the role France is expected to play in the New Order.”

  “Pigs,” said Paulette, pretending to spit.

  The Belgian grunted his agreement, then told Fabrice about the resistance efforts in print. An underground newspaper called Le Médecin Français encouraged doctors to approve collaborators for service de travail obligatoire, while medically disqualifying the others. La Terre told farmers how best to smuggle their produce to feed Résistance members, and Bulletin des chemins de fer urged railroad workers to sabotage German trains and other transport. Libération-Nord and Défense de la France, both begun by student groups, had mass circulations in the tens of thousands.

  Fabrice’s favorite example was Unter uns, a newspaper published in German specifically for the occupiers; it printed stories of humiliating German defeats on the eastern front.