by M. D. Elster
“Let’s see then…” Mr. Kendrick says, glancing over his notes. “You confirmed he was involved in the French Resistance?”
“Yes. I… well, yes. I think so. He did not confide very many details about his service in the Resistance in me or my mother — because he was worried it would expose us to danger — but it was something of an open secret within our home that he had anti-German sympathies, while at the same time being very connected to the top German officers residing in Paris during the Occupation.” I pause. “I imagine, in his own way, he saved many lives.”
“And you said he saved your own life — is that true? You and your mother both?”
“Yes,” I answer. “He did his best to save us both. It wasn’t his fault what happened with my mother. You must understand: He was arranging for us to leave Europe. We were passing through London during the time the Blitz was at its worst.”
“Hmm, yes, this information will be useful to the case,” Mr. Duval chimes in. “We are likely to get a very sympathetic jury with these sort of details.”
He nods to Mr. Kendrick, who smiles appreciatively and settles into his chair a little more comfortably.
“If you could, Anaïs, I’d like for you to recount as much as you can about your time in Paris and London, your stepfather’s heroic efforts to thwart the Germans, and the story of your immigration here to the United States in his care. Tell me everything you can.”
“All right…” I agree. I take a deep breath, and begin.
CHAPTER 22.
People were disappearing all around us. One by one, they vanished, never to be seen again. It began with my stepfather’s business colleagues; Parisians who lived in fine mansions and were often well respected. They were wealthy enough to remain so throughout the war — and as such, had likely been lulled into defenselessness by virtue of the false illusion that they could never be touched. And yet, S.S. officers came marching into their factory offices or their homes, turning everything upside down, escorting these formerly prestigious citizens away in handcuffs. And it always came out not long after: These men had betrayed Germany and the Führer, they had been aiding the French rebels.
Such incidents worried my mother a great deal, for obvious reasons. Each time one of my stepfather’s associates was proven to be helping the French Resistance, my mother paced around our townhouse at night, sleepless, fretting his name would come up in some manner… that it would be scribbled somewhere in a secret document, or else mentioned under duress in an interrogation. She worried it was only a matter of time until the thing she feared most would happen.
And then, other people began to disappear: less prestigious citizens, perhaps, but people in similar circumstances as my mother and me. There were others like us in Paris, of course — people who had gone to great lengths to hide in plain sight. Hiding in plain sight was no easy task under the watchful eye of the Third Reich, but — as my mother and I could attest — it could be accomplished. The question was always how long it could be sustained, as the smallest bureaucratic loose end could spell disaster. And spell disaster it certainly did for more than a few people. Of the people we knew, there was the man who ran my mother’s favorite boulangerie — a kind, grandfatherly man who always winked as if he knew our secret (though we never breathed a word of it) and slipped my mother an extra roll or sweet loaf every now and again. After he was taken away, rumor around the quartier was that he was tripped up by a stray piece of very old documentation he had all but forgotten about, and arrested for having concealed his Semitic heritage and having failed to properly register himself. Others around us followed: My favorite bookseller, a woman who ran one of the bouquinistes along the banks of the Seine. Another was a lovely, fresh-faced young woman who ran the flower shop around the corner from my stepfather’s townhouse, whom my mother liked to visit for the occasional leisurely chat. Next, Max — the stagehand I’d been so fond of at the cabaret during my mother’s singing days — was taken away. And even, eventually, Monsieur Brisbois himself. This was a surprise to all of us, but Monsieur Brisbois, at least, seemed to know what was coming, if only at the last minute — I believe my stepfather warned him. At my stepfather’s urging, Monsieur Brisbois hastily signed the nightclub over, just moments before the S.S. arrived to cart him away.
Having promised Monsieur Brisbois he would, my stepfather kept the nightclub running for a time. As it turned out, he was quite adept at this task. It was surprising to suddenly recognize: Some of the same qualities that distinguished my stepfather as an aristocrat were quite useful to him in filling the role of nightclub owner. After all, his suits were finely tailored, he was well connected to all the important men in town, he spoke several languages with an eloquent accent (his German was impeccable), he knew his wines, his cognacs, his cigars. He took to running the nightclub as a duck takes to water.
My mother returned to the stage for a time — mostly in order to stay near my stepfather (and the safety he represented in both our eyes) — and once again, I haunted the nightclub’s backstage dressing rooms. You’d have thought perhaps we might have all felt at home in such familiar surroundings, but we were too aware of the horrific tragedies that had befallen others, and it seemed the invisible scent of fear filled the air all around us. We felt guilty, not to mention tremendously nervous.
But we mustered on like this… for a time.
Eventually, however, as my mother and stepfather discussed the situation late at night in whispered voices, it was decided: We could not stay in Paris indefinitely. My stepfather resolved to utilize his network of sympathetic acquaintances before all of the people who might provide help found themselves arrested, and before the advantage they offered evaporated before our eyes. The plan was to make it to London, and then onwards, to a land I never dared dream I’d visit: America. America! I tried to picture it… my mind replayed a grainy newsreel I’d once seen…crowds of people rushing to the bow of a transatlantic steamer to get a first glimpse of Lady Liberty, the excited waving of their hands rendered jittery and too fast by the shutter speed of the camera. High in the air, Lady Liberty faced them with her Roman nose and milky, unseeing eyes. That newsreel had made an impression on me: All those people, their faces exhausted yet delirious with hope. Could we truly make it all the way to the United States? My mother had never entertained this option previously; it had always seemed impossible. And now here we were, the three of us — my mother, my stepfather, and me — about to try for America in earnest.
Portable wealth, that was what the young man — the one with terrible rotten teeth, the one who’d sold the French papers we’d so desperately needed to my mother — recommended as we sat in the alehouse back in Belgium. It had indeed proved to be sage advice, but once again, and even despite my stepfather’s fortune, we were presented with some difficulty in this category. In order to travel without suspicion, my stepfather was not able to liquidate a single asset. Such a proposition would draw attention — attention we could not afford to attract. If we truly wanted to leave France, we had to leave it all behind: The stately townhouse, the nightclub, all of my stepfather’s vast material possessions. The idea was to pretend to visit friends down south in the Zone libre (on the pretext of seeing an ailing family friend), and once there, smuggle ourselves over the Spanish border and onto a ship bound for Britain. It was a path other Jews and anti-German renegades had taken before us.
I remember the journey south was one full of nerves, the three of us holding our breath at every checkpoint. An ice truck carried us over the border and into Spain, with us hidden in amongst its cargo. I spent the ride shivering and numb, and trying to decide what ice smells like (I had never paid very much notice before, and only just then realized that ice does, in fact, have a scent… something faintly piney, yet gamey and wool-like, and something faintly metallic). And then there was a seafaring journey, a ferry that left as the sun set, and carried us over rough waves all night long. We had booked our passage under false names and thus, f
elt compelled to spend the trip hiding in a cabin. I recall rats skittering through a small dribble of water that tipped back and forth along the baseboards on one side of that cabin, keeping time with the syncopated rocking of the boat.
Just sleep, Anaïs, my mother cooed, stroking my forehead. Think what a lucky girl you’ll be when you wake up in Merrie Olde England… I did my best to ignore the rats. I pictured the open deck above us, the ferry chugging away, belching coal into the air. I closed my eyes in an attempt to oblige my mother, but I got little rest that night. I remember having terrible nightmares about German U-boats giving chase, closing in on our ferry, and shooting underwater missiles at us, blowing us out of the sea. I imagined the ferry erupting in a ball of red fire. I did not want to die like that. Each time I woke up, I was as stiff as a board, and covered in sweat. My mother was convinced I’d caught a flu bug along the route of our journey, but I knew better.
But then, suddenly, there we were, pulling into Portsmouth, in all its dreary, workaday glory. I remember seeing the docks with all their cheap, brightly-painted signage, the pastel colors of the old Tudor-era fishermen’s cottages, the brick row-houses, and I remember experiencing a strange mixture of grief and relief. From the ferry we took a taxi, and boarded a train to London. My stepfather had connections there, too, it turned out — “civilized friends,” he called them, which meant people of means — and there was a hired chauffeur waiting to receive us at Waterloo as we pulled into the station. He hurried us off to a very expensive yet very blank-looking, white-faced townhouse in Belgravia. There were rows and rows of that same house, duplicated throughout the streets in Belgravia, eerily all exactly alike. I stared at the street on that first day, dreaded the thought of getting lost in this seemingly faceless maze.
I was also unreasonably terrified that the Germans would somehow still find us. This likely had to do with the fact I’d never seen my mother and stepfather so worried and skittish. It took some doing to arrange for our passage to London, and now it would take more to make it to America. My stepfather explained that it would require at least a month or two to secure the necessary tickets and documents. We stayed on in the townhouse in Belgravia; its owners were riding out the war in the countryside. Some of my stepfather’s acquaintances “loaned” him a spare servant or two, and these were the people who lugged our suitcases up the narrow, creaky stairs; the people who saw to it that the windows were blacked out at night, even as they ensured the fires were lit in the townhouse’s three small fireplaces. I remember there was a washerwoman with an Irish brogue — Patsy, I think she was called — who took me by the hand and walked me around the block in order to point out the nearest bomb shelter.
You run straight to this place here, Young Miss, if you hear those sirens a-wailin.’ Understand?
I remember how she smelled of sweat and antiseptic, and how, in a pinch, she used to scrupulously stretch the usage of a single bar of Wright’s Coal Tar Soap to wash everything in the house.
That day, as we stood there before what looked to me to be an entrance to a Tube station, English was still a challenge for me, and her brogue made it even more difficult. But when she pointed and said the unfamiliar phrase “bomb shelter,” I somehow understood on instinct. I had already seen the pockmarked stone buildings in the city center; I had already glimpsed the charred remains dotted about here and there. One thing was very clear: We were not in Paris any longer, and though we were safer in many ways, we were also vulnerable to new dangers.
Everyone said London was a changed place, that one of the biggest bombings to date — an event that took place only a few days after Christmas — had sapped much of the city’s spirit. I can’t attest to whether this was true or not, as it was my first time ever to London, let alone England. But by the time we arrived, everyone had committed to supporting the war through rationing, committing to a daily routine of austerity, and keeping a stiff upper lip.
And yet… aristocratic habits died hard, and my stepfather still sought out little indulgences where he could. He took my mother and me to the London Ritz for high tea. Furthermore, he was intent on cheering my mother and me up and worked minor miracles on behalf of this cause, bringing unbidden gifts home, finding furriers and milliners for her, and confectioners who were still selling chocolate for me.
“Should you really be buying us such things, Léon?” my mother asked, her voice full of awe and a cautious hesitancy. “Such extravagancy! Don’t the troops need every little extra resource we can give up?”
“Oh, do you mean to say you don’t want these nylon stockings?” he said, looking stung. “After everything I had to go through to get them?”
“It’s not that,” my mother murmured. “They’re lovely. And I appreciate your thoughtfulness. It’s just that… I can’t possibly wear them, can I? It’s gotten so that ladies are using eye pencil to draw seams up the backs of their legs. Everyone will certainly wonder about me — about what kind of woman I might be — if they see me wearing these.”
“The fickle logic you ladies employ against one another never ceases to amaze me, my chére,” my stepfather replied. “I hardly think one pair of nylon stockings will end the war, and I have never understood women who claim fashion and morality have anything whatsoever to do with each other. I remember, not so long ago, it was only indecent ladies who went without stockings, and now you’re telling me it’s the ladies who go about with them who are considered indecent!”
“But… it’s not us, it’s the war-effort,” my mother said in a small, slightly cowed voice. “I don’t wish to be obscene. Or insensitive.”
“Well, fine then, don’t wear them. But what about this fur stole here? Will that have to go as well?” my stepfather chuckled, rather unruffled by my mother’s protests. “I hardly think the war effort has a use for mink.”
My mother bit her lip. I could see she was thinking, it’s not just that, it’s the money… These were clearly black market goods. Where was my stepfather getting all the money, and why was he insisting on behaving like such a spendthrift? Before we left, he’d warned us both he’d lose a great deal of his fortune the minute he stepped foot outside France, and reminded us again of this fact as we all walked the gangplank of that ferry. It was as if he had needed my mother to understand: Our lives will be safe, but we will no longer be rich. Now he was behaving as if he were made of money.
“Well, my darling Adélaïde… I’m honestly embarrassed by my own miscalculation. It was truly meant in a thoughtful manner; I am sad to see I have failed to please you.” He paused. “I must say, though… at least Anaïs here is enjoying her chocolates,” he turned to gaze at me with an amused smile. I had immediately pulled the ribbon off the box the very moment my stepfather had placed the offering in my hands, and had already made short work of three very delicious dark chocolate truffles. Realizing the conversation had refocused itself on me, I looked up, wearing a guilty expression. I am quite certain there was a smear of melted chocolate somewhere on my face. My mother frowned.
“I’m glad you like those, Anaïs,” my mother said. “Enjoy them, but take a moment, too, to think of the soldiers fighting the Germans, of the men and women in work camps, and about how lucky we are.”
I nodded, and adopted a penitent frame of mind, but our somber moment was quickly interrupted by my stepfather and his loud, amicable laughter.
“No, no,” he said. “Nonsense! You’re taking all the fun out of it; there must still be some joy in our lives! A young girl delighting in a box of chocolates that her father brought her as a special treat — what are we fighting this war for, if not that? Ignore your mother, my dear sweet Anaïs. I say enjoy! Please! For my sake! Enjoy!”
He reached over, ruffled my wispy blonde hair, and gestured for me to keep eating, but I had frozen. I stood stock-still, awed by something he’d said. It was a small slip — possibly he hadn’t meant it at all — but he had said “father” instead of “stepfather.” Immediately upon hearing tha
t, I had felt a surge of emotion, though I hardly knew what any of it meant; it was a strange mixture of sadness and joy. I recalled the one and only other conversation we’d ever had on the matter, back in Paris, when Léon Reynard and my mother were newlyweds.
No ‘Monsieur Reynard’ business from here on out, understand? We are family now, Anaïs. You are to call me ‘father,’ or ‘stepfather’ if you must…
Still feeling shy, and considering it disloyal to the father who my mother and I had buried back in the Blue Forest in Belgium, I’d opted for “stepfather.” The subject of our relation had not come up in conversation since. But now I found myself experiencing a new emotion entirely: I was desperately, deliriously happy to think he might — even slightly — consider himself my father, and me his daughter.
As if reading my mind as I pondered this happy revelation, he turned and smiled at me and I smiled back, and my mother sighed in defeat and left the room to put her unsolicited spoils away in the closet.
That was when the bickering began between my mother and stepfather. I heard them, late at night, as I burrowed deep under my covers. I couldn’t quite hear them clearly enough to catch the specifics, but I understood well enough what the general gist might be. The servants heard them too; I know, because I walked into the kitchen one day to overhear Patsy gossiping about it to Ralph, the man who shoddily served as a jack-of-all-trades — chauffeur one day, butler the next, tailor in a pinch. It was the spring of ’41, and I had just turned ten. I knew our stay in London was going on longer than planned. We had planned to stay only a week or two, but now we had been there for the better part of two months; I knew my stepfather was having trouble securing our passage to America, for reasons he only explained in the vaguest of terms. Without a more precise explanation, my mother couldn’t understand the hold-up, and remaining in London was making her a nervous wreck. I also knew that with every black-market luxury my stepfather brought home, my mother’s frown grew deeper and deeper.
