by Bodie Thoene
He snapped his fingers. “I was hoping someone had picked it up. It belonged to my mother.”
“The notes are hers then.”
“Oui.”
“She must be a very special lady.”
“Yes. She was . . . Madame Marlow. A dear friend of hers gave me the volume as a gift. I have not yet had the opportunity to . . .”
“Lovely thoughts.” Josie felt herself color. It was natural that she would have looked through the book, but somehow she felt as though she had been snooping. “She must have been a fan of Milton.”
“Perhaps she was.” Colonel Chardon glanced at his watch, obviously in a hurry. “You have the volume here, Madame Marlow? I am grateful.”
“I’ve got to get my story through the censors at the Hotel Continental, and I’m afraid your book is at my lodgings. If you would like to drop by tomorrow . . .” It would be nice to see him again. To share thoughts on Milton’s Paradise over a cup of coffee.
“You are staying at the Hotel Continental?”
Alma laughed.
Josie shrugged. “Nothing that upscale, I’m afraid. Foyer International.”
“Foyer International. On St. Michel.” Colonel Chardon made a note of the address with a slim gold pen. “May I send a courier by to pick it up this evening?”
So coffee and Paradise had not occurred to the handsome Frenchman. “I’ll be out this evening.”
“You can leave it with me, Josie,” Alma chirped. Turning to the colonel, she said, “I’ll make sure you get it. Just ask for Alma Dodge.”
More scribbles and he snapped his notebook closed. “Done. My deepest thanks to you both.” The colonel seemed pleased. He retrieved a fifty-franc note from his pocket and laid it on the counter. “The book is of great value to me. A small reward, Madame. Please. For your trouble.”
“I wouldn’t think of it!” Josie protested.
He left it there, backed up a step, and said cheerfully to Alma, “Take yourselves out for lunch on me.” With that he bowed slightly and exited the AP office without a backward glance.
In silence the two women watched through a nearby window as he stepped into a sleek new Citroën and disappeared into traffic.
“I’d rather have lunch with him.” Alma scooped up the fifty-franc note.
“How could you take that?”
“Of course, lunch on him might be nice, too.” Alma tucked the bill into her pocket.
“He’s not your type.”
“Apparently we’re not his type either. I thought these Frenchmen were interested in American women. Not even a glimmer.”
“We’ve just met a man who loves his mother.” Josie gathered up her papers.
“We’ll have to settle for lunch. Deux Magots? One o’clock.”
It had been a wonderful meal. Jerome had stolen a lovely eel that was on display on a block of ice in the fish market. He had put the thing down his pant leg. His escape had been slimy and cold, but the thought of such a feast made it worthwhile. Papa had caught a catfish while fishing from the quai across from the Louvre. Old Uncle Jambonneau brought potatoes and onions from the kitchen at the Hotel des Invalides, where he lived with the other old wounded soldiers.
Tonight the Stinking Garlic reeked of grease and fish and garlic from the cooking. It was a lovely aroma to Jerome. Marie had eaten so much she had a bellyache and had gone to bed in her tiny bunk.
Alone on the deck, Jerome scrubbed the crusted skillet as Papa and Uncle Jambonneau discussed weighty matters belowdecks. Even in the blackout conditions due to the war, Paris was not entirely dark. Lights sneaked out the slits of blackout curtains here and there. The gendarmes did not seem to mind the violations. Jerome could plainly see the outlines of the buildings on l’Cité. A soft glow penetrated the cracks around the cargo hatch. The voices of Papa and Uncle Jambonneau were plainly audible.
Jerome wondered why Papa burned the lantern since Uncle was blind. His eyes had been burned by poison gas in the Great War. Now he was a grizzled old relic who tapped around the City of Lights with a cane and a canvas rucksack slung over his right shoulder. A very large white rat perched on his left shoulder and whispered things in Uncle’s ear.
Jerome had been warned that Uncle Jambonneau did not know the rat was a rat. He believed it was a small dog with a long, hairless tail. When some foolish tourist or Right Bank stranger gasped and screamed and called the rat a rat, Uncle Jambonneau became instantly offended. He assumed they were talking about him, not the thing on his shoulder.
Uncle Jambonneau named his dog—which was not a dog—Petit Papillon, which means “Small Butterfly.” All of this could be quite confusing to the uninitiated.
The boy peered down through the cracks at the top of the plank table as Papillon delicately held a bit of eel in his little hands and nibbled.
“There can be little doubt that my mother raised a fool,” Uncle Jambonneau said to Papa. “Why did you have to become a Marxist?”
“I am content with what I am,” Papa replied.
Jerome wondered, did Papa mean that he was content to be a fool or content to be a Marxist?
“Why not a Buddhist?” Uncle asked. “The French government is not arresting Buddhists. Only Communists.”
“That is true. But I know nothing about such things.”
Uncle Jambonneau snapped his fingers, and Papillon skittered up his arm to whisper something in his ear. “Well, little brother. You have one hope to stay out of prison, I think.”
“What is that?”
“Perhaps you are not worth arresting. Not even the Communists of Paris will claim you. They say you are a fool.”
“That may be true. But they are jealous,” Papa said.
“Of what?”
Papa could not think of an answer to that. He leaned his head against his palm and gazed around the cluttered cabin of the boat. “They are jealous of my property.”
“Yes. I can see that.” Uncle Jambonneau nodded his white head and scratched Papillon under the chin. “By owning this boat, you have violated one of the principles of Communism.”
“What right have they to constrain? I won the Garlic fairly at cards. She is mine.”
“If Stalin invades France, you will have to give him the Garlic.”
“If Stalin comes to Paris, by my honor, he may have her.”
Uncle Jambonneau raised a gnarled finger in a gesture that reminded Jerome of an older version of Papa. “But will he want her?”
3
Small Miracles
No one would have imagined that the two old sisters had not always lived in Paris in the big house behind the gate at No. 5 Rue de la Huchette. They looked like any other grandmothers on the Left Bank: gray hair tied back in buns, aprons dusted with flour, run-down shoes, and navy blue dresses faded with many turns in the washtub.
They were spinsters, Rose and Betsy Smith of the Santa Barbara Smiths. That was Santa Barbara, California, USA. Rose was large, squarely built, strong, and fifty-five years old. Betsy, tiny and frail-looking, was nearing sixty.
They were the daughters of a fisherman who, as a young sailor, had nearly drowned in a gale in 1870 off Point Conception, California. He had cried out to God as green water broke over the decks of his schooner. The masts had snapped like twigs. The second mate was washed overboard, and the situation seemed hopeless. When the young sailor looked up, he saw silver angels moving in the sun-clipped clouds. A voice boomed in the thunder, and the sea became calm within moments!
Like the fishermen of ancient Galilee, he had heard the voice of the Lord, and he loved the mighty sound of it! Every day he sang God’s words as he worked his nets off the Channel Islands.
As his daughters grew, he told them that except for the miracle in the storm, they would not have been born. In this way, the miracle came to belong to Rose and Betsy. Through the ears of their father they came to hear The Voice in the thunder. Through his eyes they saw the silver angels riding the clouds over Santa Cruz and the Anacapa Islands in t
he twilight hours.
They believed there was some reason their father had been spared, some reason they were born. They grew to womanhood certain that there was some larger purpose for their lives that they could not yet see.
And so they were not surprised when, at a tent meeting in Ventura in the summer of 1913, they heard The Voice calling them to leave Santa Barbara and serve needy children. But serve where? The dark continent of Africa was in fashion. The Voice was not specific.
Rose had bought a map of Africa and unrolled it on the kitchen table. She closed her eyes and plunged her finger onto the paper.
“Betsy,” she called to her sister, who was sipping lemonade in the yard and praying as she watched the sunset, “God wants us to go to Algeria.”
They had intended to do so. But the Great War of 1914 got in the way. Paris, the City of Lights, was far away from Africa. Their ship was sunk off the Canary Islands, and they were brought to Paris. They could not recollect just why that was, but that was the way it happened. It was a true story.
There were needy children in Paris, too, they discovered. So many little ones with papas killed in the trenches. The young fathers of France dissolved into the soil of Verdun and the Somme. So many mamas dead of the flu epidemic or simply dead in spirit.
The sisters had started caring for one baby, then three and then seven, until they had thirty—so many in need in those early days! The need had never ended.
One generation had grown up. There were always more to take the empty beds and toddle in at night to be rocked and sung to . . . one child at a time, with different faces, different names. Twenty-five years came and went without celebration, without recognition by anyone beyond the Left Bank of the Seine. Day by day needs were met by small miracles. Hour by hour love was dished out in generous helpings to little ones whose souls were in danger of starvation.
Two spinsters: Rose and Betsy Smith. They were an unlikely pair in the Latin Quarter. After twenty-five years, they spoke the language like native Parisians. Nearly everyone thought well of them.
The Jews who lived packed in little houses above the tailor shops off St. Germaine believed that Rose and Betsy were Righteous. Probably secret Jews.
The Catholics believed that they were perhaps doctrinally misguided but still worthy workers for the kingdom of God. Possibly secret Catholics.
There were very few Protestants in Paris. Those who were there either did not know that the sisters were Americans or were not aware of their existence. The pair served no church or ideology. They depended on God to provide for their needs.
They also took in washing.
Over the years Rose developed muscular washboard forearms like a carnival strongman. Little Betsy did the ironing. She remained petite, and unlike the broad-beamed Rose, she seemed to shrink as the years passed.
Their first children, all grown-up now, often came back to visit. Some, who had done very well for themselves, now brought their laundry and their offerings to the sisters.
Ernest Hemingway was a friend. He stopped in regularly to pick up or drop off his shirts. No one starched the way Rose did, he claimed. When his first novel sold and he traveled to Africa, he returned months later to tell the sisters about the wonders of the Dark Continent. After he left, Betsy confided that she was still willing to go to Africa if The Voice so instructed them. But in the meantime she was very glad that they had been shipwrecked like the apostle Paul and cast upon the shores of a city like Paris.
It was the children who kept them there in the hungry years of the twenties and into the thirties. And now, with a new war beginning, it looked as though the cycle was about to start all over again.
Those first few orphans raised by the sisters were now called to serve in the Grand Armees just like their fathers had done in 1914. Rose and Betsy prayed for each by name. They prayed for France. They even prayed for Germany—the new Dark Continent.
Mostly they prayed for the new generation of children who crowded into Paris from whatever country the Nazis crushed. It was always the little ones, the innocent ones, who suffered from the mistakes of politicians and nations, was it not?
Old ladies now, the sisters had come to believe that God had spared their father in the gale of 1870 so they could be here in Paris in 1939. It was a very long-playing miracle. It was not finished yet.
For pilot David Meyer and the handful of other Americans who stepped off the transport ship in Southampton, the arrival at the Operational Training Unit at Aston Down made the Royal Air Force a reality. On that first cloudy evening after David’s appearance at OTU, the RAF was also in for a shock at first meeting the Yank face-to-face.
While the rest of the new men lingered at the tables in the mess, David wandered out onto the grassy airfield to look over the object of his obsession. The Hawker Hurricane was larger than he had figured. It had a wingspan of forty feet and was thirty-two feet long. He reached up to touch the markings. Red, white, and blue concentric circles ominously resembled an archery target.
The Hurricane was not an all-metal aircraft. The front part of the fuselage and the wings were metal covered, while the back of the body and the tail were fabric. The Hurricane had a reputation for being light and highly maneuverable with no bad quirks. The thick wings accounted for a relatively slow top speed of 340 miles an hour even with the powerful Rolls-Royce “Merlin” V-12 engine that produced 1,280 horsepower.
In spite of that, the wing construction gave it an amazingly tight turning radius of something near eight hundred feet at three hundred miles an hour. This fact alone would make the plane a match for nearly any German craft in turns. Three summers performing aerobatics with a flying circus made David eager to try her out.
He climbed up to peer at the controls. Inside she was a single seater, with an austere, unlined cockpit. At his six-feet-one-inch height, it would be a tight fit for David. He was glad that he was slender. At the mess tonight he had spotted two pilots who, much broader than he, would have a tough time fitting into the plane. This could also mean serious problems if the time ever came when they had to bail out in a hurry.
David opened the canopy and, wanting to check the space for fit, slid in like a man trying to get the feel of a new car. He settled in easily, becoming part of the aircraft. He was instantly in love.
The Hurricane was controlled by a spade-grip stick that moved laterally about halfway up. The reduced play from that of a straight stick provided better aileron control than David had been used to in the old Jenny biplanes. He grasped the spade grip, which was a circular ring about eight inches around and an inch thick. On the grip was a large firing button and a ring with which the pilot could arm the guns. There were eight Browning machine guns with fourteen seconds of ammunition for each gun and a precise concentration of fire.
David planted his feet on the rudder pedals. He peered through the gunsight and moved the spade grip until an imaginary ME-109 was dead center. And then he pushed the brass button on the spade grip.
What happened next was not imaginary. The still evening of Aston Down was shattered as a burst of machine-gun fire tore into the rear fuselage of the Hurricane parked directly in front of the plane where David sat. Passing through the canvas structure, the .303 caliber bullets pierced a pattern in the wall of the mechanic’s hangar one hundred yards farther across the field.
The two-second burst sent men tumbling out of the buildings in terror. Heads craned back in search of the airborne enemy who had disrupted their evening meal. They scrambled toward the slit trenches, and then a voice boomed in outrage, “It’s the Yank! It’s the new boy!”
A string of curses followed from Badger Cross, the largest and most gruesome assistant instructor at the OTU. “Look what the bloody fool’s done to my Hurry! I’ll kill ’im!”
The French tricolor waved proudly over the great cobbled square in front of the main buildings of the Ecole de Cavalerie.
The sun beat hot on the black uniform and two-cornered hat of Cadre Noir instructo
r Captain Paul Chardon. A darkly handsome, compactly athletic man of twenty-seven, Chardon had begun his education here as a small child and had eventually graduated to the riding school at Saumur. There he had become a horseman of international reputation, winning gold medals in Olympic competition in 1932 and 1936.
Now he was écuyer en chef, chief riding instructor of the school on the River Lys. Because of his Olympic triumphs, he was secretly called Apollo by the students. He also possessed authority that could not be ignored. It was Captain Chardon who had the power to recommend promotion to the great cavalry school at Saumur, an honor enjoyed by only a handful of students each year. It was his dream to one day return to Saumur as chief instructor, but his youth and ability to work with youngsters kept him here for the time being. Today he inspected the long, straight lines of miniature soldiers for the last time.
Two thousand gray-uniformed boys, ages five to twelve, stood with their backs to the left wing of the massive four-story building that had once been a summer palace for Louis XV. Facing them on the right were 909 upperclassmen in the dark blue uniforms of the Cadre Bleu. These older cadets would remain at the Ecole de Cavalerie.
All of Northern France was on the move. Five hundred thousand civilians had been evacuated from military zones already. The train stations at Arras and Lille and Strasbourg were jammed with children being relocated. Some of these two thousand young cadets would be going back to their homes in the south of France or Switzerland or Monaco. The others would be resettled in a far less spacious school near Marseilles, where there were no horses or lessons in equitation. The majority of the staff were likewise being evacuated, leaving Paul with nine lieutenant instructors to govern nine hundred cadets. None seemed happy about breaking up the school.
Head held high, boots polished to a glossy sheen, spurs glinting in the sun, Paul Chardon walked among the little ones like a Gulliver among the Lilliputian army.
