The Last Time I Saw Paris

by Lynn Sheene

  Odette’s mouth was pinched, her forehead creased. She spoke slowly. “I have known Laurent for seven years. Thomas introduced him to us.”

  It took Claire a moment to remember Grey’s given name. She nodded.

  “My husband works at L’Express. He is the foreman for the printing machines. We are simple, Jacques and I. Our social circles, we would never have crossed paths with Laurent, except for Thomas. Perhaps it is because he is English or because he is that kind of man.”

  Claire thought about the possibility of a man like Jacques at one of her Manhattan parties. He never would have been let in the door. “I see.”

  “I understand Laurent. He and I both had the same past. A few generations back, we were important. Some of us marry for love and accept who we are now. Others marry money, trying to get back to the place where we were raised to believe we belonged.”

  “I would say you made the better choice,” Claire said, with a smile.

  “C’est vrai.” Odette laughed. “Jacques can be a beast, and sometimes I think he would be better living in a barn. But he’s good to me.” She considered her words before continuing. “Sylvie is mean-spirited. It was bad enough Laurent was forced to bring her last night. He never should have invited you.”

  Claire shrugged. There were many things about that night she would prefer not to dwell on.

  Ahead rue Rembrandt spilled into a small side entry of parc Monceau. Claire’s eyes were drawn to the stately apartment buildings surrounding the park. In the dead of winter, the dark and shuttered windows looked down on the women through jagged branches of giant desolate oak trees. She shivered as much from unease as from cold.

  Odette glanced back at Claire as she headed for the open gate of the iron-spired fence. “It will feel less exposed inside.”

  True enough. Once inside the park, Claire felt the calm dignity seep into her raw nerves. Hands bunched in pockets, they strolled along a side path tracing the park’s perimeter. On their right, the buildings were a fanciful backdrop. Barren trees lined the paths they crisscrossed. Even dressed in a snowy winter grey, the park’s architectural lines of trees and stone defined beauty. To Claire, parc Monceau was a stately woman, her well-bred bones showing through the ravages of the season.

  Claire had come once before with Madame Palain, not long after the Occupation began. They walked beneath green spreading trees, past the grand rotunda, over a delicate bridge that arched over a finger of pond. Children chased each other along the water’s edge, throwing bits of stale bread to the ducks. The mothers cajoled and ordered, Martine, slow down; Jon Pierre, don’t push your sister, but the words rang hollow and halfhearted. Claire understood they were going through the motions. They were there because they were Parisians and, damn it, it was their park.

  There was just one little boy at the bridge today. He skipped stones across the pond’s half-iced surface. No bread, no matter how stale, could be wasted on birds. A nervous mother hovered behind them.

  Odette turned onto a path beneath towering oaks. “Sylvie and Laurent separated years ago. Before we met them. Sylvie is a connasse, undoubtedly, but also useful, in a certain way.”

  “Really? For bringing your favorite foie gras to parties?”

  Odette snickered. “Yes. But also for more.”

  They continued down a narrow curving lane that opened up onto a large oval pool and crumbling marble columns. Claire stepped up to the water’s edge, breath suspended in her throat.

  Odette smiled at Claire’s reaction. “Good. I didn’t think you’d been here yet.”

  Claire tore her eyes away from the view. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

  Odette watched her a moment before continuing. “You haven’t been able to leave the shop much, have you?”

  Claire shook her head.

  “These are dangerous days.” Odette’s eyes speared Claire. “Even more so if you don’t have papers.”

  Claire started before she could cover her response. “What do you mean?”

  Odette shrugged. “The way you arrived in Paris. At best your papers have expired, no? It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

  Claire burrowed her hands deeper in her coat pockets.

  “There is an option,” Odette said. “We spoke of it this morning.”

  “We? Who is we?”

  Odette pulled a half-smoked cigarette from her pocket and lit it, her hand cupped over the flame. She was either not at liberty or plain not willing to answer. “Sylvie is a collaborator. Her family’s factory—wool, cloth. They are shipping it all to Germany. Not because they were taken over.”

  “For money,” Claire said. That had been made clear last night.

  The winter, she had been told, was the coldest anyone could remember. Coal prices had gone through the roof; most was hauled away for the German war effort. People froze in their beds nightly. The only way to get a coat was to take it off someone’s back. Now it comes out the textile factories were shipping their cloth to Germany.

  “What do you say to that, Claire?”

  Sylvie left a horrible taste in Claire’s mouth. It would be easy to say what Odette was fishing for. But, Odette deserved to know the truth.

  “I knew industrialists back in New York. Successful, hard men; my husband was one of them. Sylvie’s family is no mystery to me. My husband would let poor Americans die to make a buck.”

  Odette’s eyes squinted as she tried to decipher Claire’s answer.

  “If you are seeking moral high ground, don’t look to me. I have no high ground to climb onto, Odette. I gave that up years ago.”

  Odette nearly spit her reply. “You agree with what they do?”

  “I’m wearing a coat that was probably made before I was born.” Claire tugged on her lapel, shaking her head with a mirthless chuckle. “No. I don’t. Her greed is despicable. It’s just not surprising.”

  “So?”

  “Sylvie and her family are puppets. The money? The Nazis are throwing them crumbs. It is easier to pay them, right now. What does that mean to the Nazis? They print their own money. If they wanted, they could seize the factory today.”

  Odette smiled grimly. “That is true.”

  Claire’s voice softened; selling out was a topic she knew too well. “Sylvie has to spread ’em wide for her masters. She takes the reichsmarks left on the nightstand and pretends she is loved and respected. She’s not.”

  “What Sylvie is doing, what you saw yesterday in front of the hotel—doesn’t it make you want to act?”

  Odette knew about the old man too? Claire took an unconscious step back. “I don’t like any of it. But I won’t get involved.”

  “You aren’t curious about what I may offer you?”

  “I don’t think I’ll like the price.”

  “Everything in life costs, Claire. You should know that.”

  Claire did know. And she was damn tired of paying with her soul.

  Odette glanced about them. They were alone. “You cannot speak of this to anyone, you understand? You would be able to travel about Paris, about France, as safe as any other Parisian.”

  “How?”

  “A false identification card. You would be American, of course, but married to a Frenchman. And gainfully employed. You could have a ration card.”

  The possibilities swam in Claire’s mind. Bread. Meat. Potatoes. “How?”

  Odette didn’t answer. Eyes watchful, she motioned for Claire to walk with her. “You couldn’t be Claire Harris anymore. You would have to become someone else. Could you do that?”

  Odette didn’t know how little she asked. Claire smothered a laugh. “The cost?”

  “We wouldn’t have offered if we didn’t believe you would benefit. We ask little.”

  “Well?”

  “The hotels. Crillon, Lutetia, George V, Emeraude, Meurice, the Ritz. The Germans hold them all, use them all. General von Schaumburg commands all of Paris from Hôtel Meurice. Goering directs the air bombing of England from the Ritz. Important thi
ngs occur inside hotel walls. Things we need to know.”

  “I’m no spy.”

  “No. You’re not. But you do get inside. That’s not easy to do. All we ask is you note what and who you see.”

  “Dangerous.”

  “You’d give us a little report, anonymous, not traceable to you, dropped in a mailbox. What is more dangerous? The papers you have in your pocket right now would get you taken in, no?”

  Claire took a deep breath. A bird chirped in the tree above them. They both watched as a man rode a bicycle down the path behind the ruin.

  “I need to get back,” Claire said.

  Wordlessly, the women traced their way out of the park and down rue Rembrandt toward the flower shop.

  Odette paused in front of the shop door. “Grey said you left your husband to be with Laurent. That is why you are in Paris.”

  Through the window’s frost, Claire could make out the few tins of flowers, the plants, the soft grey walls. Above was her balcony, grey ice outlined the iron scrollwork. “No. Laurent wasn’t the reason I came.” She remembered their afternoons together in New York. “But he would have made a good way to pass the nights.”

  “D’accord. Women like him for that.” A knowing grin lit Odette’s face. She glanced at Madame through the glass and her smile faded. She slipped a piece of paper in Claire’s hand. “A phone number. Think about it and let me know.”

  “I will.” Claire stepped inside. She meant no.

  Madame looked up from spritzing a potted ivy with an old perfume bottle filled with water. The air in the shop smelled faintly of roses.

  Claire locked the door behind her. Hell, no.

  December 13, 1940.

  A rare day of clear sky, the sun glared off shop windows. Up to her elbows in dried hellebores, Claire watched through the glass as a woman strolled by in a long fur coat, short blond hair curled tight against her neck. Her hat was ruby red, a frothy little thing perched on the front of her head, a silk ribbon tied around the back to hold it on. She was on the arm of a German soldier in the grey uniform of Wehrmacht. An officer on leave from the real fighting or just lucky enough to be doing his bit for the war while sampling the goods of Paris.

  Behind them, a handsome man with coal black hair, a thick blue scarf tossed around his neck. He walked with an arm slung around the small waist of a woman wrapped in a tailored coat to her knees, a small-brimmed hat pinned on her head. Behind them, two older women in heavy-soled shoes and heavier furs.

  Claire watched out her window all morning as the ice crystals melted from the glass panes and the icy street turned to grey slush. At first a trickle, then a stream of shoppers on their way to and from the shops on the les Champs, as they called the avenue des Champs-Elysées. Reluctantly, perhaps, like a drunkard pulled by his feet from the morning bed, Christmas season had officially begun.

  Madame had excused herself from the shop that morning. To meet with the manager at the Ritz, she said, but Claire knew a full afternoon away was more likely to escape Claire’s mood.

  A broken vase, crumpled gold leaf, a dropped potted ivy, and cursing to go with each. Well, damn. She used to be one of those women in Manhattan in a mink coat, an outrageous hat and an obviously handsome, discreetly rich man on her arm. She had paid dearly for the right, and now she was back on her knees in a shop?

  This should have been the Christmas of dreams. Her first Christmas in Paris.

  Her face ached from scowling. She glared at the cracks in her fingers, her calloused hands. They hadn’t looked this worn since she was a girl. She smoothed the deep blue skirt against her legs. This was the best of two, and she just found a seam starting to fray. Laughter echoed off the window’s thin glass. Claire didn’t look up but felt shadows slide over her as more people passed.

  The sharp pinch she felt in her chest reminded her it wasn’t the flowers in front of her that shrank her world to the size of this shop. A gentleman died in her arms. Shot to death because of what? A cane?

  Claire wasn’t naive; she’d known desperate people in her life and more than her share of thugs. But the world was filling with an ugliness she had never seen before. She hadn’t gone beyond the block in two weeks. And now she was stuck in a little flower shop staring at plants.

  A knock on the window. Georges’ smiling face peered in as he walked by, his arms full of bags. Even Georges was going to take in the Christmas sights of les Champs.

  A flash of irritation, a broken stem, another curse and Claire threw down the half-full dried wreath. She had come too far to sit this one out, she told her conscience as she bounded up the stairs. Smoothing her hair, she painted her lips with a nub of lipstick and reached deep inside her closet.

  Heavy softness enveloped her fingers. The sable. Claire had shoved it into the darkness the day she arrived. Too ostentatious for a flower shop girl, too close to her old life. As the winter progressed, she looked at it like money in the bank. A month ago, she’d even offered to sell it for food. Madame had gazed at Claire for a moment and patted the coat Claire held against her chest.

  “Not yet,” Madame had said. “We are not there yet.”

  Sinking her fingers into the fur, Claire stroked the collar against her cheek. Today, for a few hours, she could be the woman she came to Paris to be. She slipped on the fur and spun to face the mirror. Burying her rough hands in the deep pockets, she twisted from side to side. A hat would be preferred, better shoes, but at least the sable was damn decadent and completely covered her worn clothes. She smiled at the woman in the mirror. She’d missed being her.

  Locking the shop door, Claire dropped the keys in her pocket and hurried down the narrow street. As she stepped into les Champs’ wide-open avenue, she felt the first touch of the sun’s warmth in months. She turned right, gazing down the wide, straight line to the Arc de Triomphe. On either side, rows of trees were slender bare fingers curled toward the sky. She moved into the meandering flow of people. The tightness evaporated out of her body as she strolled along.

  A man in a dark suit waited in front of a luggage store. He watched her come and made a show of moving aside so she could pass. She swished her hips and glanced back at him from the corners of her eyes. Another block and the sight of a gown in a dress-shop window stopped her. Silver, shimmering silk, with thin straps. A jeweled orchid blossom in deep blue sapphires rested at the base of the low-cut décolleté.

  Through the window, Claire could feel the touch of silk on her skin, the fabric warming against her breasts, the reassuring weight of the jewels. She sighed and smoothed her hair in the window’s reflection.

  Drifting strains of what sounded like “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful” pulled her away from the window. In front of a building on the pointed corner of les Champs and avenue George V, the red awning over the terrace door read Fouquet’s. Where in the summer diners would have lingered in scattered tables, a five-piece orchestra played in white dinner jackets and black bow ties.

  Claire pushed into the crowd gathered in front. A cello player, a violinist, and three guitarists. So Parisian, this could be any Christmas. A small smile formed at the edges of her mouth, shared by a tall, ageless woman to her right.

  The song ended to applause and calls for more. The next song featured the violin and sounded a bit like “Silent Night.” A pause and the next song started, a mournful tune, led by one of the guitarists. He was dark and thin, leaned over his guitar like a lover. His eyes closed, his face was a shadowed mask.

  No one sang or spoke. The crowd was still as if a single movement would shatter the sound hanging in the air. Claire turned to the woman at her side, meaning to ask the name of the song. The woman stared at the guitarist, her perfectly painted lips mouthed words Claire couldn’t hear, tears ran unheeded down her face. The tune was unmistakably French, like it should be coming from a dark corner of a smoky café. The guitar keened, echoed from the bricks. A chic couple silently passed an embroidered kerchief to the crying woman. Claire glanced to the left. The man next t
o her clamped his cigarette between tight lips, eyes misting.

  Each note wove the crowd together into a living, feeling fabric. Claire felt it too, a stirring in her heart, a warmth pierced with sadness. A certain Parisian melancholy. A weariness to be shared. To be carried together.

  Claire glanced over her shoulders. The crowd had doubled. A car idled at the curb. A man craned his head out the window, his eyes vacant as he strained to hear.

  “Arrêtez,” a loud voice barked. Stop.

  The crowd fell back on each side as a pair of French policemen pushed through. The two muscled men looked like prizefighters, holstered pistols belted over blue coats. The larger of the two turned to face the crowd. His nose had been busted against his face too many times; it was a divided lump plastered between his eyes.

  “Enough,” he said, his voice like grinding metal. “Christmas is for good Christians. Good Frenchmen. Who respect our father, Maréchal Pétain. Who fight the filth of Jews, Communists, immigrants.” His mouth twisted as he looked over at the guitarist. “Gypsies.” He glared out at the crowd, hooked his thumbs into his belt.

  Claire recognized the type. He was a bruiser who had gotten his big break in the new world order and was going to rub these rich bâtard noses in it. These were the worst. They came from the gutters to carry out the work the police didn’t have the stomach for.

  “Play ‘Maréchal, nous voilà!’ ” he said.

  Claire felt resentment ripple through the audience. Marshal, here we are, the song said. An anthem to Marshal Pétain, Chief of State of Vichy France. And whispered to be Hitler’s puppet.

  Claire’s eyes were glued to the guitarist. His face still, he shifted his guitar, took a deep breath and strummed. After a few notes, his band joined him.

  The policeman smacked his hands together and nodded at his partner. Around Claire, faces closed down, eyes became hooded. The woman at her side turned and hurried away. In ones and twos, the crowd dissipated into nothing.