The Girl in the Blue Beret

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  One night, they were awakened by explosions followed by sirens. In the chilly dark they were all out of bed, peeking from behind the curtains.

  “It is not far,” said Mme Vallon. “The smoke is across the park.”

  “Whatever happens, I will not consent to leave Paris again,” said her husband. “The exodus in 1940 was shameful. We will not descend to that again.”

  18.

  MARSHALL DINED WITH JIM AND IPHIGÉNIE AT A QUIET bistro and told them about his visit to Chauny. He tried to avoid discussion about the war that might upset Iphigénie, but today she seemed more relaxed with him and asked questions about the Alberts.

  Marshall saw that she adored Jim. He noticed that Jim’s hair was thinning.

  “Retirement’s a hell of a thing, Marshall, but you might say I’ve got a new career here in Paris,” Jim said, touching Iphigénie’s cheek affectionately. “It’s like picking up a new route I haven’t flown before. Remember when we added the New Delhi route?”

  “Oh, do I.”

  The crew of a Connie might be away for as long as two weeks, flying from New York to Madrid or Paris, then resting a couple of days before picking up the next leg to New Delhi. They stayed in New Delhi two or three days before turnaround.

  “What a life,” Jim said.

  For a while, they rehashed the glory days of air travel, but then Marshall declared that sometimes he had fewer regrets than he had expected.

  “Deregulation is going to ruin the airlines,” he said with a momentary flash of anger.

  “We got out at a good time,” Jim said. “I try to tell myself there are other things in life. Tell Marshall about our trip, Iffy.”

  Iphigénie finished a delicate maneuver with sauce, potato, and a fragment of duck leg before speaking. “My niece is getting married, and we’re going for two weeks in the Dordogne.” She became animated, flicking her ring-studded fingers outward. “It will be a very nice country wedding.”

  Jim patted her hands down. “Iffy’s going to see her whole family, and—oh, la la! My God, Marshall, you sit with these Frenchies and their feasts all afternoon and you can’t understand why they’re not all blimps. Iffy is loyal to her family, but then she comes back to Paris.” He lowered his voice to a mock-conspiratorial tone. “She’s very French, very chic. She won’t wear pants, none of those jeans that American women wear.”

  “Disgusting,” said Iphigénie. “Disrespectful.”

  “I’m with you there,” Marshall said. The waiter refilled his wineglass.

  Jim went on. “Iffy wears those heels that make her ankles so slim and sexy, you know what I mean. I’ve known her for five years and she always surprises me.”

  All the while Jim was speaking, he was looking at Iphigénie, teasing her, judging her reactions (she was pretending not to hear him), congratulating himself for his taste in women and, Marshall thought, insulting Iphigénie in an underhanded way. He tried to remember if he had treated Loretta this way. He thought about Annette and her mother, and after a lull in the conversation he began telling Jim and Iphigénie about hiding in the Vallons’ apartment.

  “I keep thinking how brave they were,” he said. “I really didn’t give them credit for the risks they took. It’s only becoming real to me now. Strange, isn’t it?” He swallowed some wine. “I’d love to find them again.”

  “They may want to forget the war,” Iphigénie said, her eyes down. “But they were very kind to you.”

  “Retirement takes you full circle,” Jim said. “A lot of people want to go back to their young days. Maybe that’s true with the people you’re looking for.”

  “Who knows what might have happened to them?” Marshall said. “They could be in Timbuktu. That goes for all of the people who helped me escape. I’d like to find them, to thank them. But I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a good idea.”

  “You were fortunate to find the persons in Chauny,” said Iphigénie, touching a napkin gracefully to her lips. “And fortunate they were happy to welcome you again. As for the others …” She waved her hand ambiguously.

  Later, as they parted on the street, Jim said, “We’ll be back in a couple of weeks, but here’s where you can reach us if you need to.” He wrote the number on a bit of paper. It was Iphigénie’s parents’ home near Brantôme.

  “Au revoir, Marshall,” Iphigénie said, pecking his cheeks lightly.

  Marshall tucked the paper into his trousers pocket and walked to the Métro, wondering whatever could possess him to call Jim Donegan in the Dordogne.

  MARSHALL FOUND HIMSELF circling Napoléon’s Tomb. The thing was like a sleigh, or a giant baby’s crib with a lid on it. It was highly polished stone, the color of roasted chestnuts. Freestanding in a circle under the Dôme des Invalides, it was downright weird. Inside—a man once, now disintegrated. And he was packed into a set of coffins nesting one inside the other like Russian dolls.

  A vague memory had drawn him here. Napoléon’s Tomb was a safe house, he recalled someone saying. He didn’t know what that meant. Did Nappy have room inside his cave to hide a scared airman with his dog tags in his boot? Marshall wondered why so many people got the idea that they were Napoléon in a past life. Reincarnation—what crap, Marshall thought. But Napoléon was always good for a laugh.

  He had come here once with someone. With Robert on his bicycle?

  NICOLAS WAS ON THE TELEPHONE with news. Marshall had just returned to the hotel from apartment hunting. It was too expensive to remain in the hotel. He was still breathing hard from his walk up five flights of stairs. The elevator was small and busy, and he had grown impatient with the wait.

  “I’ve learned a few things,” Nicolas said. “But I don’t yet know what to do with this information. As you know, the people who helped you before you got to Chauny would be very difficult to locate, but we can start with the family you knew in Paris. My father told me something about the network in Paris that picked up the flyers from this region. It was one of several escape lines. It was called the Bourgogne.”

  “I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning that name.”

  “You recall my father spoke of going to Paris to do the maps for the intelligence service?”

  “Oh, oui.”

  “He made a connection with a convoyeur from the Bourgogne on that trip.”

  Nicolas explained that the escape-line organizers had trained with the Free French in England, then sneaked back into France to find people to establish safe houses, to make the false IDs, and to act as guides. The Bourgogne network led the flyers from Paris south to Pau or Perpignan and linked them there with other guides for the rest of the journey. “All that is very familiar territory to you, Marshall.”

  “Yes and no. I was mostly kept in the dark. After I returned, I was debriefed in London, but I couldn’t tell them much. And after the war, I just wanted to forget it. It was over.”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Nicolas. “But now you want to know. That is normal. I’m trying to contact the man who was principal in the Bourgogne, and I’m waiting for him to answer my call.”

  “Well, I appreciate this, Nicolas. I’ll have to give you more than a Bugs Bunny jacket this time.”

  Nicolas laughed. “It is my pleasure and my duty, Marshall. It would be an honor to me to help you in this quest.”

  “Of course they could all be dead, or citizens of New Caledonia by now.”

  “Ah. Life is an adventure, Marshall.”

  “So it is.”

  “I’m going to check more in the libraries. I may take the train into Paris one day and check some holdings in the National Archives or the bibliothèque.”

  “I could do that, perhaps?”

  “It is no problem to me. Besides, Marshall, you may need better French for research at the very proper and bureaucratic Bibliothèque nationale! I mean no offense.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  MARSHALL BOARDED A TAXI with his luggage and a bag of laundry. He had
found a suitable place in the Fourteenth Arrondissement, south of the Montparnasse Cemetery. The concierge, who lived on the ground floor, was a laconic country woman from the north. Her husband had returned to their village for the summer to help his aged father with his fruit orchard.

  In the lobby of the apartment building two chairs sat in a tiled nook with a potted plant and a wall telephone with buzzers. Marshall had rented a two-room furnished apartment up two flights. He squeezed his belongings into the Tom Thumb elevator and dashed up the stairs to meet it.

  The apartment was spacious enough, with a large living area overlooking a small park, a minimalist kitchen, a shower, and a plain bedroom with a narrow but long-enough bed. There was even a bidet.

  Exploring the neighborhood, he found a small market on the rue d’Alésia and stocked up on supplies, everything from cornflakes to toilet paper. He toted his bags back, then tried to figure out bedding. He had never bought sheets in his life. Where did one buy them in Paris? The concierge was out. Should he call Jim in the Dordogne?

  A pleasant woman at the counter of the neighborhood tabac directed him to a department store near the Denfert-Rochereau Métro, and without—he hoped—seeming too stupid he selected a pair of sheets, a light fuzzy blanket, and a flat pillow. In the apartment, he arranged his possessions. He set his brain bag and typewriter on the table that would be his desk and stowed his clothing in the plain, massive armoire, which smelled like old shoes.

  He examined his place. The wood floors were worn, the radiator was dusty. There was no TV, no radio, no clock. All he could hear was the murmur of the small refrigerator and the occasional sounds of traffic. This, he realized, was the only home he had made for himself since he arranged his corner of the barracks at Molesworth.

  He was alone. No one back home knew where he was.

  WIDE AWAKE IN THE MIDDLE of the night, he did a preflight walk-around, then ran through a preflight checklist in the cockpit. Instead of counting sheep, he tried to count and name all the switches, controls, and dials in a 747 cockpit—tachometer, fuel-flow indicator, radar altimeter, autopilot trim indicator, airspeed … flap position … hydraulic-system pressure …

  He had to get his bearings. The search for long-lost friends from the war was beginning to seem absurd. He wanted to find Robert and the Vallons, but maybe finding the Alberts was enough. Marshall was officially an old man, booted from his job. Yet here he was, traipsing around France, indulging a pointless nostalgia. Trying to speak French was ludicrous. The Alberts must still be chortling over his awkward American drawl.

  As dawn approached, he sank into slumber at last.

  Late in the morning he bought a telephone, but there was nowhere to set it except on the floor by the window. In search of hardware, he wandered the neighborhood until he came upon an odd little shop that he had passed once or twice before. It called itself a librairie-papeterie, a bookstore-stationery store, but the windows displayed cases of small items—clothespins, light bulbs, shower caps, transistor radios, doll clothes, candles, hedge clippers.

  “Bonjour, monsieur,” said the man behind the counter. He was wearing the typical long blue work smock.

  “Bonjour, monsieur. I see that you have a little of everything here.”

  “Oui, monsieur. Just ask me for anything.”

  It took Marshall a moment to summon the French words. “Shoe polish.”

  “Oui.”

  “Clock radio.”

  “Bien sûr.” The man tapped the counter confidently, his gold ring clicking.

  “Hammer. Nails.”

  “You are a good client! The Americans are the best clients, because they want always everything.”

  “You have everything I need here,” Marshall said. “This is the Everything Store! Le magasin de tout?”

  “It is a bazar,” the man said, smiling. “C’est le bazar ici.”

  Marshall left with all the items on his list, and also a notebook, envelopes, a supply of batteries, a flashlight, an extension cord, a small table for his telephone, and an antique postcard of Napoléon’s Tomb.

  THE CONCIERGE WAS astonished that Marshall’s telephone service was hooked up in two days.

  “People wait and wait,” she said. She was sweeping the floor and smoking. She mumbled something about the weather.

  He called Albert, to let him know where he was, and asked him to call Mary for him.

  “Mary was sick last week,” Albert said.

  “Oh, what?”

  “She had food poisoning—salmonella, I think. She was really sick for about four days, but she’s over it. I never trusted her cooking.”

  “Should I call her myself?”

  “No, I’ll call her. She’s O.K.”

  Albert reported that a tree had come down in a thunderstorm, but he had called the Garden Angels, who had dealt with it promptly. It was the tree in the back outside Marshall’s den. Marshall would miss the shade—if he returned to New Jersey. At the moment, he couldn’t quite imagine living there again. What was there for him in New Jersey?

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Albert. But thanks for dealing with it.”

  “It missed the other trees, and it missed the shed. So I guess we’re pretty lucky.”

  “Yeah. Don’t forget to send me the bill.”

  “I forwarded some mail for you to the American Express.”

  “Thanks, Albert.” After an awkward pause, he said, “Well, gotta go.”

  “Wait. How’s it going over there, Dad? Did you find those people you were looking for?”

  “Some of them. I found the family that helped me in that little town. They were still there, same house, all these years.”

  “That’s good.”

  “It was great to see them again.”

  “Great. What else are you doing? Going to museums?”

  “Not much. I haven’t had time. But that sounds like a good idea.”

  “Don’t worry about the house.”

  “O.K. I appreciate it. Take it easy, Albert. And tell Mary I’m glad she’s O.K.”

  Marshall left a message for Nicolas, giving his new number, and another one on Jim Donegan’s answering machine.

  Later, as he was walking through the parc Montsouris, he looked up to see a 747 above the city, on its way out of De Gaulle. The gear was up, the wings clean, the nose jacked high. Things would be quieting down in the cockpit, the crew squaring things away, getting ready to hand control over to the autopilot. “Let George do it,” they used to say.

  19.

  A SMARTLY DRESSED WOMAN SAT AT THE SMALL ROUND TABLE next to his on the sidewalk at a corner brasserie on the rue d’Alésia, where he was waiting for Nicolas. Struggling with the diabolical crossword in Le Monde, he was aware of her sitting with her hands resting lightly on the table, a demitasse before her. She had shoulder-length blond hair. Her skirt was short, riding up her thighs. Her legs were crossed, and she was wearing stiletto heels with dark stockings. She was sitting there, doing nothing. She had been there perhaps twenty minutes. When he glanced her way, she looked away. He knew he was still attractive to women, at his age, even without his flight uniform. He wondered if she was waiting for him to speak to her. He heard her let out a sigh. She was waiting for someone who wasn’t coming, he thought. He was stuck on a seven-letter word for échelonner. The crossword was impossible. Abandoning it, he read news from the States. Mount Saint Helens was still belching, and the hostages languished in Iran. Marshall was still angry with President Carter for failing to rescue them. The woman next to him was attractive, and he thought perhaps she was an actress, studying for her role as a woman of the café scene. Or waiting to be discovered by a film director.

  Nicolas appeared, having taken the train in from Chauny, and they did the two-cheek. All smiles, he brought greetings from the family and a gift of damson jam from Gisèle.

  Marshall wanted another coffee, but the waiter, who had seen Nicolas arrive, began clearing another table.

  “I’m too impatient,
” Marshall said to Nicolas. “I’ll never learn your easygoing ways here.”

  “You are so fast, Marshall. Quick to the draw!”

  Marshall forced a smile. “Gary Cooper, that’s me. But you know, when I went back to the States in ’44, still gung-ho to fight the Nazis, I was sent to Texas to train bomber pilots. It was a letdown.”

  The waiter interrupted, and Nicolas chatted with him about an impending football match. Marshall wished he had a gift for small talk. He saw the woman at the next table pay her bill and walk away, not even wobbling on her stilts.

  “I made an interesting discovery, Marshall,” Nicolas said after they had ordered coffee. “There was a youth fascist group who wore the blue beret.”

  “Are you serious? How could the schoolgirl who helped me escape have been a fascist? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know.” Nicolas laughed. “Perhaps it is the French beret that is the problem—it is like a symbol, it can mean anything anyone wants it to mean.”

  Marshall stared at a pigeon eyeing a chunk of baguette the woman in high heels had dropped on the cobblestones. The pigeon came strutting across a large manhole cover wrought in the pattern of a star.

  “Nicolas, I’ve been thinking. I can’t really imagine what it would have been like if America had been occupied and stressed to the limit the way the French were. What would we have done?”

  “You would have risen to the occasion, Marshall.”

  “I don’t know.” The pigeon seemed to be looking at him. He said, “I can’t imagine my children doing what the young people here did.” He wondered about Loretta, what she would have done. “What about your daughters?”

  “I would like to think that they would be strong.” Nicolas smiled. “We speak often of this question.”

  A flock of nuns passed by, and the pigeon skittered away.

  “Do you recall a Robert Lebeau?” Nicolas asked. “Robert Jules Lebeau?”