Lives Paris Took

by Rachael Wright

  Searching for something to look at other than Catherine, David turned to take in the worn-out station and the unceasing line of train passengers that were disembarking, grateful for the distraction. The very air rippled with a strange sort of excitement. As he watched, a few men his brothers’ age disembarked with sober faces. While Catherine oversaw the collection of their luggage, he watched two older men as they walked with their wives. He fiddled with the pocket of his blazer.

  “David.”

  “Yes?”

  “Where were you?” she said with a laugh.

  “Nowhere,” he said, reaching down and grabbing as many bags as he could manage.

  “I have a cart coming.”

  “Monsieur, Madame,” an elderly station attendant tipped his hat as he parked an even older luggage cart in front of them.

  “Merci,” Catherine said, her voice tinkling with favor. She handed over a few francs with a smile.

  “I could have managed,” he whispered as the older man lifted case after case onto the cart.

  “Yes, but why should you? We are on holiday.”

  David scowled and fell into step behind her.

  “DAVID, WHAT IS IT?”

  They were seated at the edge of the hotel restaurant at fantastically placed table that overlooked the sea. David glanced up from his plate. He could hardly remember exiting the train, much less arriving at Hotel la Sapiniére, changing clothes, and sitting down to meadow salted lamb and a bottle of Neuf Châtel.

  “I’m sorry, I dozed off.”

  “I hope I haven’t been that boring.”

  “No … no of course not. I think it was the train ride,” he said, lifting the fork to his mouth, surprised that it was barren.

  “You’ve been preoccupied all day,” said Catherine. “Is it Gilbert? Are you still fretting about him?”

  “Yes … it’s Gilbert,” David said, seizing at the excuse.

  How could he tell Catherine what he had seen or how it had confirmed what he’d known all along? After all, Gilbert did worry him. The man lingered at the back of his mind like a pesky fly he was unable to swat it away. He was so consumed that life was now hidden behind a door and he could only hear murmurs of the conversation behind it. He was cut off: alone on the other side.

  “You’re doing it again,” she said, drawing him out of his reverie once more.

  “It must be the heat. Tell me about your restaurant. Have you made any progress?” he asked, leaning across the white dishes and crystal glasses to reach for her pale hand.

  “As a matter of fact … I have news on that score,” she said, her face brightening, a radiance which transported her to a different world.

  Try as he might, David could not keep his attention on her. Small pieces of the conversation drifted to his ears but he stared past her. Soon, her voice melded with the sounds of the sea. It lulled him, took him away.

  The magic faded. Even as Catherine lay on top of him that evening, her breasts moving in a slow hypnotic dance, he couldn’t see her, couldn’t concentrate. When she rolled off afterward and laid her head on the silk pillowcase, her eyes fluttering closed, he could not tell whether she’d noticed or not.

  Sleep eluded him, every time he drifted to oblivion, another thought, another to-do for the business or memory of his mother settled over his mind like a cloud and he would wake yet again. In full desperation, David rose, shrugged on trousers and a sweater, grabbed his shoes, and left the room.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur,” the bleary-eyed concierge said, with an unsurprised air.

  David nodded in the man’s direction and quickly withdrew from the hotel. The cool sea air met him at the door. It was as refreshing as stepping into a cold shower, with a weary and sore body at the end of a day of harvesting. He closed his eyes, held out his arm, and rose onto the balls of his feet, aching to fly. The wind was there, and with every rumble of sea wave on rock and sand, the freedom of open air called to him. He rushed across the road, down another road, and out onto to the shifting line where the sand met the grass.

  On Omaha Beach.

  On a nearby grassy mound David stashed his shoes. Flexing his toes, feeling the sand rush between them, he closed his eyes, relishing the quiet. The worries vanished, cast into the strong coastal breeze and gone before any hand could reach out to call them back.

  “Fine night for it too,” a quiet British voice said.

  David turned to his left to see a man sitting in the sand, his legs folded demurely underneath him.

  “My apologies, Sir,” David said, beating a hasty retreat.

  “No. Stay.”

  David shuffled across the sand, realizing, to his great astonishment, that the speaker was in fact one of the men he had spotted earlier that day at the train station. He had a kind round face with a host of freckles that streaked across his thin pointed nose, which was quite at odds with the rest of his rounded figure.

  “If I may, ” David said, motioning to the ground.

  “Do, please,” the man said with a gracious smile. “My wife doesn’t know I’m here. Poor old thing is tuckered out from all the traveling, doesn’t know I’m out here. I bet yours doesn’t know either,” he laughed.

  “Were you here during the war?” David blurted out. Then, realizing how rude he sounded, tried to apologize.

  “Please, don’t,” the Brit said. “I was here. Many years ago with many friends who will never leave France.”

  David sat uncomfortably on the sand as the silence drew longer. He had just made up his mind to make his excuses and keep walking the beach when his erstwhile companion spoke again.

  “I forget my manners, Edward Grey,” he said extending his hand, “And you are?”

  “David Golike.”

  “And why are you out here at such an ungodly hour?” Edward asked, shaking David’s left hand, with enough good grace not to mention his handicap.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Ah, yes slumber was elusive for me as well. You weren’t here, though,” Edward said, with an appraising eye, ” … you’re a little young for it.”

  David smiled. It was the same with every member of Edward’s generation he had ever come across. They tried to work out whether you were a comrade–whether you too replayed wartime horrors in your mind. Or maybe they thought you might be a survivor from a unit with their friends. Perhaps you knew something they didn’t. Perhaps you were a forgotten friend.

  “My brothers. My brothers fought,” David said.

  “Are they … did they make it?” Edward leaned closer as he spoke.

  “Yes, they made it.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “America.” David said, his eyes drifting longingly over the pitch-black skies and the churning waters beneath. “I doubt they’ll ever come back to Europe.”

  “Why not?”

  “They serve God. They did what needed to be done during the war and they saw their fair share of carnage, but I suppose they have a higher purpose now.”

  “I envy them. I fought here. I fought in the trenches. Fought in so many places I can’t remember them all. I served under so many different officers that they have all merged into the same person. There were three platoons where I was the only one alive at the end of the day. They were butchered in front of me. Butchered. Mowed down by the Germans. Butchered. Still, better to be their armed enemy than a civilian in one of their camps …

  “I used to believe in God. I considered becoming a vicar, before the war. My father was a chaplain during the Great War. But I came home a broken man. I saw too many men die while I stood alone with my rifle. It was a different world, here, during the war. The invasion was a nightmare. Men dropped left and right and the only thing that kept you alive was chance,” Edward dropped his carefully folded hands to pound the sand.

  “Are you all right?”

  Edward Grey was a broken man, clinging to what he hoped would protect him, in a frail effort to keep him grounded and sane. Edward drew such shudder
ing violent breaths, David’s stomach turned, and bile rose in his throat.

  “Quite all right,” Edward breathed.

  “You don’t seem it. Should I take you back to the hotel?”

  “No, anywhere but there. I’ll be all right if I can just catch my breath. All these memories. What can I change? Sitting here almost thirty years later?”

  “Carry on?”

  Edward looked sideways at him, staring down the long nose with furrowed brows.

  “Is that what you do?”

  “I try,” he said, dropping his head.

  The two men were silent as the waves continued their eternal beat. David shivered; the air grew colder by the moment, tearing through his thin sweater. Just as he was beginning to think of walking the beach, his companion stood up.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Edward said.

  David’s erstwhile companion moved gracefully off, as though they were at a cocktail party, and he was moving on to chat with other friends.

  Edward cut a lonely figure as he walked away; his arms swung forlornly at his sides, sand kicking up around his ankles. In a few short moments, he was swallowed by the night, disappearing like a ghost down the shore. David rose abruptly, wincing at the pins and needles that ran down his right leg. He hobbled a few steps, grimacing as the weight transferred back and forth onto the disobliging foot.

  In the pale light of the moon that glistened disjointedly off of the waves he could only make out a few feet of beach in front of him. It was otherworldly here. In the dark, images of the beach storming, where men were killed in droves before reaching land, flashed in his mind. Mortar shells and gunfire peppered the sky and sand, the soft hillsides and foliage obscured by smoke and fear and the smell of blood.

  David stopped at a lone boulder, its many faces covered with mussels and barnacles. The weariness, which had eluded him before, settled now. His eyelids became heavier by the moment. A less forward-thinking version of himself would have fallen asleep then and there. Thinking of the sand fleas and the night chill, he slid off and began his solitary trudge back, retracing his own footprints.

  He reached down to gather his now damp shoes from their hiding place and looked towards the hotel. Behind it the sky was slowly illuminating with the palest shade of blue. He trudged up the stairs, said a weary “bonjour” to a different concierge, and crept back into bed. Catherine was curled into a ball. She looked younger, more at ease, than she ever did awake. A hint of a smile played at her lips. David pulled a lock of hair off her face, setting it gingerly back with its peers. He lay down, placed an arm around her waist, drew her close, smelled her perfume, and drifted to sleep.

  DAVID BLINKED BLEARILY IN the morning light. He flung his arm out to curl around Catherine, but the bed was empty and his fingers grasped the warm silk sheets instead. The morning heat slowed his brain; he shuffled over to the windows and pulled them open. The ocean breeze rushed in and through the room, pulling at the curtains, making them dance.

  “You’re awake.”

  Catherine stood fully dressed at the door. Her eyes were cold and blank. David swallowed.

  “Good morning.”

  “How was your night?”

  “Erm …”

  “You didn’t expect to be gone half the night, without me noticing? Where did you go?”

  “To the beach,” he said, turning to the bathroom.

  Catherine shoes clicked over the floor till they stopped just behind him. David tugged off his shirt with a sigh. It was too early in the morning to be arguing. Somehow sand had gotten between his legs and under his arms. He inched over to the shower and his hands twitched. He had to take off the clothes before he started itching himself in front of Catherine.

  “What were you doing at the beach?”

  “Walking.”

  “Why?”

  He dropped his head back, looking at the ceiling.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Why?”

  “You sound like a broken record,” he growled.

  “Then tell me what you were doing out on the beach in the middle of the night,” she said, leaning against the doorjamb, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

  He sighed, tucked his arm behind his back, and forced his mind away from the biting sand.

  “I went because I miss them.”

  “Then you should go home and see them.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand you, David. You fought me last year on this and now you say you miss them?”

  “Yes …” he sputtered, falling against the wall.

  Every ounce of fight, of anger, melted from Catherine.

  “What can I do?” she asked, rushing over, taking his face in her hands.

  David looked up, into Catherine’s watery eyes.

  “Walk down there with me.”

  “All right.”

  “It’s more beautiful in the daylight,” he said after the short walk to the water.

  They strolled in silence along the beach. Catherine’s hair had gone wavy in the humidity, and the heat made David’s shirt stick uncomfortably to his back.

  “I imagine so.”

  David looked at her. Her eyes flashed. He imagined that she hadn’t forgotten last night and most likely would take a while to forgive him. But the heat in her eyes was gone. She was no longer on fire.

  “Do you ever get homesick?”

  Catherine stopped, her left foot poised in mid-step.

  “What?”

  “Homesick. Do you ever get homesick for Russia?”

  Catherine gazed blankly across the ocean.

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I’m curious.”

  Catherine stared warily at him, but after a few moments decided he wasn’t being rude and she could answer the question.

  “I suppose I do. At times.”

  “But you can’t go back.”

  “No … but it’s different for me.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I risk getting picked up by the secret police.”

  “My father is cut from the same cloth. No, not beatings and torture.”

  “What are you trying to get at?”

  “My family, they wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t want to. I may miss my brothers, but I cannot go back.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  July 1978

  “EIGHT YEARS …” SHE SAID wistfully.

  David laughed as he watched Catherine’s eyes mist over with the haze of happy memories. She slumped against the black leather seat of the taxi and ran her fingers over the necklace at her throat. He had bought it for her in Normandy; a small intricately wrought silver heart on a thin chain. It had been for sale outside one of the homes that lined Omaha Beach. It wasn’t expensive, but it was cunningly crafted and Catherine adored it.

  “Yes, it’s been wonderful.”

  “It seems like an age since we met,” she said gazing at him sweetly.

  “It has been,” David said although Catherine seemed not to have heard him. “I do have to run into the office before we leave.”

  He had told the cabbie to make the stop before Catherine had come down with her luggage. She wasn’t pleased.

  “Don’t make us late for the train, David.”

  “I’ll only be a moment,” he shouted, as he rushed to the great glass doors.

  “David? What are you doing here?” Georges said.

  The older man was clutching his chest in shock; his back flush against the wall, his eyes wide with terror as David bowled into the office.

  “I forgot my passport, wallet, and briefcase, if you can imagine.”

  Georges sat down as David pulled said items from off the top of the filing cabinet behind his desk.

  “Do you have a moment?” Georges asked, twisting his fingers over themselves.

  “If it is only a moment,” David said. He sat lightly on the edge of Georges’ desk; his leg jigged in time with the clock.

  “One wonders whe
re to begin … “

  “How about the beginning?” David said, sneaking a glance at the clock on the wall.

  “Of course, Sir.”

  David stiffened. Their relationship had always been informal. The use of “sir” was unsettling. As David waited for him to begin, he realized, with a shock, that Georges had grown pale and thin. Dark circles lay heavy under his eyes, his complexion was mottled, and his eyes darted back and forth in fear.

  “I’ve been going through the books. Taxes are due soon and what with you being an American citizen, it’s always a little complicated. I found something untoward.”

  “What is the great mystery, Georges?”

  Georges hesitated. His gaze went from the door to the window and back to David before he blanched. If David thought he was pale before, he’d been sorely mistaken. The older man looked as though he was on the verge of death, so great was the change in him.

  “You’re terrifying me …”

  “Gilbert is skimming money off of the top,” Georges shouted, his hand flew to his mouth, covering everything but his horrified eyes.

  Silence pounded against David’s ears. He could hear everything; George’s frantic heartbeat, the low hoots of the pigeons on the roof, the slow tick-tick-tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. The walls seemed to be listening. Dust mites hung suspended on the air.

  “What?” David breathed. He was afraid of disturbing something, irrationally afraid that Gilbert would choose this moment to saunter into the office.

  “A little, every month. Or else that is how it started.”

  David’s insides turned to dust, he grasped onto the desk for support.

  “My God … “

  “He’s taking more and more and since he has control, with you, over the business accounts, he can take out whatever he wants. He knows you don’t like doing the books.”

  “But this is unconscionable.”

  “What are we to do?”

  “Do we have enough for taxes?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Good. Then we will just have to get through this … but how?” he asked himself. “I’ll have to speak with him.”