From the bowl of matchboxes, he showed me a matchbox that was really a camera. He picked up the cigarettes and showed me how one of them was a pistol, and then the pipe, which was really a gun. The wine bottle was actually an explosive pump, and he showed me how it was painted with transparent green paint, which made it look like glass.
I followed him into the hallway then, where there sat, on the hall table, a pad of notepaper and an ink pen, and a red bowl filled with keys. He picked up the pen and unscrewed it and showed me how it shot darts, and then he picked up a door key, which hid microprints.
On the top shelf of the hall closet, he reached for a pair of handsome black pumps with high heels. He turned them over and snapped off the heel, which was sharp as a dagger. He reached for another pair of shoes, this one for men, and twisted off the heel, which had a hidden opening packed with bullets.
Back in the kitchen, he brought out a knife that strapped to your forearm so it could be hidden under a sleeve and a knife the size of a safety pin that could be sewn into the collar of a jacket. In the bathroom, there was face cream that could frost glass or write in invisible letters.
We stood in the doorway to the bathroom. I said, “It’s everywhere. Nothing’s what it seems to be.”
“Hidden in plain sight.”
“What about the girls? What if they get hurt?”
“They know what to touch and what not to touch.” He pulled a pack of chewing gum out of his pocket. “This is the only temptation. Each stick is an explosive. I’m afraid it looks so real, they forget, and I have to carry it with me.”
I said, “You should make hairpins that act as knives or poison darts. Or a perfume bottle that squirts poisoned gas with one of those sprayers.” I made a squeezing motion with my hand so he would know what I was talking about.
“An atomizer.”
“Or it could be sleep gas. Phosgene or chloropicrin or lewisite. Not lethal, but damaging. Maybe mustard gas, which gives you blisters and sometimes pneumonia, or nerve gas, which attacks the central nervous system.” I thought about this. Back in WASP training, we’d had to crawl through every kind of gas until we could identify each one. “Or soman, which only takes two minutes to kill a person. The only thing is, you need a liquid if you’re going to put it in a perfume bottle. In that case, you’d want something like CS gas, which is a type of tear gas.”
He was staring at me. “We can use you in our work.”
I said, “I would like to help.”
“But you are waiting for your friend.”
“He knows where to find me.” If he comes. If they come. “I want to stop Hitler from killing people. I want to stop him from blowing up this city. And there is one more thing. I’m looking for my brother. But I need help.”
“I will do what I can to ask, to see if anyone knows anything.” I thought of what Delphine had said about the Resistance messengers being like a chain that linked all of France together, from forest to farm to village to city.
He reached into the pocket of Bernadette’s apron, hung on a hook by the oven. He pulled out a lipstick, sleek and shiny. He twisted off its cap and showed me where the single bullet shot out, right where the colored part was. Then he capped the lipstick and handed it to me. “You are sure?”
“Yes.”
“You know the dangers….”
“I do.” I’d actually known them for a very long time.
“We must work on your French, day and night. Bernadette, the girls—we will all help you.”
I said, “I want to learn as much as I can.”
He said, “In the morning then. I have somewhere to be first thing, before you are awake, but when I am home I will send you on an errand. I must go now.” He brushed past me and then he turned and in the light coming through the kitchen window, I could only see half his face. “Thank you, Clementine. Merci.”
1944
PART TWO
When our hearts are bound in sorrow
And it seems all help is gone….
—“Sunshine in the Shadows”
SEVENTEEN
At noon on Friday, July 28, I left Monsieur Brunet’s house for the Grand Hotel, which sat at 2 Rue Scribe. I walked right past Gestapo headquarters and right past the Germans who were standing outside. One of the buttons on my dress had been switched out with a tiny compass that looked just like a button, and my Rouge Ardent lipstick had been switched with the one that looked like a lipstick but was actually a gun. I was wearing the black pumps with the knife in the heel, and a black skirt and white blouse belonging to Bernadette. I wore the blue map scarf tied at my neck. I had left everything else behind except my papers, Ty’s compass, the seashell, the rip cord from my parachute, and the wooden flying girl. Monsieur Brunet said I must travel light and take my things with me in case something happened to him or to me and I couldn’t go back.
As I turned off our street, away from headquarters, I heard the sound of music coming from the Champs-Elysées, and there was a long line of German troops headed by a brass band, Nazi flag flying, everyone marching in rhythm. Monsieur Brunet said the Germans had been doing this every day at noon since the Occupation began. They always marched the same path—down the Champs-Elysées to the Place de la Concorde—and played the same song, “Preussens Gloria,” which meant “Prussia’s Glory.” Monsieur Brunet said this was done to destroy the spirit and pride of the French people.
I waited for the parade to pass, and when I was able I crossed the street with the others who were waiting, some of them muttering curses at the Germans, others calling out after them and shaking their fists. The sound of the music—too loud, too bright—still rang in my ears as I let myself be carried along from street to street and sight to sight without anyone even noticing me. I felt nameless and faceless in the wave of soldiers and Frenchmen and travelers, and for once I was happy to be invisible.
While I walked, I went over all the things I had learned as a WASP that would help me be a spy: navigation, meteorology, physics, airplane mechanics and maintenance, Morse code, parachute landings. I’d also had lessons in knowing my compass, flying blind, flying the beam, dead reckoning, packing a parachute, and trusting in the instruments and in myself. I knew about fuel systems and carburetion, radio compasses, survival training, how to identify nerve gas, and how to handle emergency situations.
The walk to the hotel took thirty minutes. Monsieur Brunet had given me a French magazine to carry, and inside the magazine were two sealed envelopes. I didn’t know what was inside them, but I knew they were important. I was to go into the lobby of the hotel and give the magazine with the envelopes to a man wearing a hat and carrying a cane, who would ask me how I was enjoying the weather. In exchange, the man would give me two names of key Resistance leaders—men who had infiltrated the German guard—to give Monsieur Brunet. Monsieur Brunet said it shouldn’t take long, and that I would be home well before midnight, which was the city’s curfew.
The Grand Hotel was exactly like its name. It sat on an entire block near the Paris Opera and the Galeries Lafayette, which was a ten-story department store. Throughout the city, trenches had been dug into the grass and flower beds of public parks, and the glass storefronts and showcase windows were covered in paper and sticky tape. Bernadette said the trenches were in case of air raids, and the paper was to keep the glass from splintering when bombs dropped. I stood outside staring at the Galeries Lafayette, forgetting who I was and what I was supposed to be doing. The hotel was just as large. Napoleon himself was responsible for having it built.
But the most beautiful building of all was the Paris Opera. There was nothing homey or small-time about the opera, like there was about the Grand Ole Opry. The building itself was the finest-looking I’d ever seen—the same sand-white stone of the Arc de Triomphe, with seven arched doorways and a balcony of windows on the level above. On the very top was a copper dome aged green and two gold angels, like turrets, on the corners of the roof. It looked like the kind of place where magic
would happen.
I stood staring at it until, somewhere, church bells chimed one. I walked inside the hotel. The lobbies were crowded with soldiers and officers. I pretended I didn’t notice them, and walked past, looking for an open seat. I tried to think of myself as a swan, gliding through the rooms, not nervous, not scared, not wanting to spin my head around this way and that, looking for an empty chair or sofa.
I saw one finally that was free and that you could see from the front doors. I sat down and crossed my legs, and the high-heeled pumps shone blue-black. I opened the magazine, careful that the envelopes didn’t fall out. The magazine was in French, and I ran my eyes up and down the page. I tried to time each line as if I were actually reading it, in case anyone was watching.
I sat there for five minutes. German soldiers came and went. A group of three of them stopped in front of me, lighting cigarettes and talking. I glanced up and one of them was looking at me. I caught his eye, just for a second, and smiled kind of far off and distant, as if I couldn’t be bothered.
In a few moments, they walked away.
Ten minutes.
To pass the time, I made myself think of other ideas for Monsieur Brunet’s inventions. A woman across from me pulled out a compact, and I imagined one that was packed with dynamite powder and another that was packed with sleeping powder.
Fifteen minutes.
An older lady strolled by, dripping with jewels, and I imagined a brooch that was actually a hand grenade or a ring that could shoot a single bullet.
Twenty minutes.
A couple entered through the lobby doors and paused as he lit a cigarette. I thought, What if the lighter wasn’t a lighter at all but a blowtorch? He adjusted his tie, his jacket, and the buckle on his belt flashed. What if the belt was lined with piano wire that could be used as a garrote?
Twenty-five minutes.
I uncrossed my legs and was just getting up to go when a man walked past. He was blond and slim and wore a hat. A magazine was folded under his arm, but I couldn’t see the title. He stopped in front of me to light a cigarette. I thought that instead of a blowtorch, the lighter could be a camera or a recording device. When the man saw me watching him he nodded. In French he said, “A lovely day. Are you enjoying the weather?”
He wasn’t carrying a cane, but I sat back down on the edge of the chair. In French I said, “It’s nice to see the sun after so much rain.”
He settled himself in the chair beside mine, crossing his legs and blowing a plume of smoke at the ceiling, never looking away from my face except to glance once—for several seconds—at my legs. He said, “My flat is not far from here. It has the loveliest view of the city.”
This wasn’t what he was supposed to say. My hand tightened around the magazine. I said, “Pardon?”
He glanced at my legs again. “Just up the street. Only a five-minute walk. You do like exercise?” He smiled a leering sort of smile and blew another plume of smoke.
I said the only French phrase I could think of that was fit to say in public: “You must be thinking of another girl.” And then I stood and headed for the door. I didn’t turn to see if he was following me.
I walked so fast out onto the street that I crashed into a man. He wore a hat and leaned on a cane, and he carried a magazine—the same one I carried. He said, “Ah, bonsoir.”
He kissed me on each cheek, like we were old friends. He smelled of cigarettes and soap. He said in French, “How are you enjoying the weather?”
My heart was racing, but I said in French, “It is nice to see the sun after so much rain.”
He said, “Isn’t it? I was beginning to despair.”
He took my arm and we began to stroll. He was saying the right lines, but I still thought: What if he’s a double agent or an informer? What if it’s a trap? What if the man with the cigarette was a spy or a rat?
There was an ice cream dealer across the street. We darted through the traffic, and the man led me over to the cart. In French he said, “Which flavor?”
I said, “Chocolate please.”
He said to the man selling the ice cream, “One chocolate, one vanilla.”
He bought our ice-cream cones and we stood there a moment eating them. As I put my mouth around the ice cream, feeling the coldness on my lips and on my tongue, I closed my eyes, just for a moment, and suddenly it was summer and I was on Granny’s front porch, my family all around me.
I opened my eyes and looked at the Galeries Lafayette, at the Grand Hotel, at the opera. I wondered if the Germans had put explosives underneath them. I thought these were exactly the kinds of buildings that Hitler must have hated most.
Before I was finished with my ice cream, the man in the hat said, “It has been a pleasure.”
I handed him the magazine and he said, “Christophe Franck and René Pascal.” And then he was off, and I was still standing with my half-eaten cone.
A group of Germans came driving down the avenue, shouting at people on the street. I crossed to the opera, telling myself I would stay only till I finished eating. While I stood there, I stared up at the building.
Christophe Franck.
René Pascal.
I felt a little thrill creeping up my spine. In the end, it had gone smoothly, and it had been easy to pretend, to be someone else. All around me, the Germans and the French people walked by and no one looked at me twice. I thought: I should go to Hollywood. I could be an actress.
The first thing I saw when I turned on Rue de la Néva was a line of cars outside Gestapo headquarters, and officers marching from the cars into the building, dragging along three men who I could tell were American, even if they weren’t in uniform. I knew it by the way they walked, the way they carried themselves, the way they stuck out their jaws as if they were daring the world. I stopped in the patch of garden and bent down, pretending to fix something on my shoe. The Germans were leading the Americans into the building, and as I glanced up I caught sight of a man with black-rimmed glasses and a square face like bread dough—the same man who arrived at headquarters every evening at six o’clock—and beside him was the German from the movie theater, the one called Fritz.
Seconds later, they were all inside, and I walked fast up the street until I was at the Brunets’ front door. One of the first things Monsieur Brunet had done when I moved in was to give me a key and tell me to always lock the door, no matter what, that the only reason it would ever be left open was if something had happened to him or to them. The door was locked, and I let myself in.
Bernadette was working in the kitchen, kneading bread dough. She said, “Clementine. You’re back. I’ve left dinner on the stove for you.”
I said, “Merci.” I leaned against the counter and watched her. “Madame Brunet? Why do you still live here when the Gestapo is right next door? Don’t you worry? Isn’t it dangerous?” I thought of the weapons her husband made, of the plaster vegetables in the bowl on the table that I was pretty sure were explosives.
She said, “It is, but anywhere we would live there would be a danger. The thing about living here is that we hope it might be the last place they would suspect—after all, who would stay next door to the Germans if they had something to hide?”
The loaves of bread and the muffins were gone. I said, “Is the bread you’re making now for us to eat?”
She stopped kneading, her hands resting in the dough. “My husband says you can be trusted and that you are now working for him. He told me you have worked for the Resistance.” She seemed warmer than her husband but also more cautious. “The bread is made with Aunt Jemima. It is a plastic explosive that looks just like baking powder. We got it from the Americans. It is easier to transport this way behind the lines. But if anyone tastes it, it’s poison.”
“If my aunt Bird saw the muffins, she’d want the recipe, and she never asks for recipes.”
Bernadette laughed. “They are the best-looking muffins I have ever baked. When I am trying to make them with regular baking powder, you shoul
d see how sad they are.” She smiled, but her eyes were tired. “Now eat the food I set out for you. And afterward I will show you how I bake the bread.”
I thought of something Barzo once told me. “You can turn anything into a deadly weapon.”
“Yes. I almost forgot.” She set down the dough and wiped her hands on a rag. “I have this for you.” She pulled something from her pocket and handed it to me. It was a number and the name of a street.
“What is it?”
“The address of your friend at the 3341st Signal Battalion. The one you call Gossie.”
EIGHTEEN
Rue Royale was an important-looking street, as handsome as a man in a tweed coat and hat. In the middle of it sat a restaurant called Maxim’s, with elegant people tripping in and out, even in the middle of the day. When I stepped inside, I felt as if I’d fallen down the rabbit hole, just like Alice, or walked right through the looking glass. It was a world of gold and heavy red velvet, of red leather and deep brown wood rubbed to a shine, of naked women painted on the walls, and mirrors as large as barn doors. The carpet was the color of blood, the lamps on each table glowed a warm, dim gold, and the stained glass windows were etched with flowers. I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the mirrors and adjusted my hat, which was wide and black and hid my face.
When the man at the door said, “Can I help you?” in French, I said in French, “No. Thank you. I am meeting someone.” There were different rooms—he called them salons—and I went from one to another and stood inside the door of each one, scanning the tables and trying not to feel out of place.
Suddenly, I saw Gossie, dressed in her WAC uniform. She hadn’t spotted me yet, and as I crossed the room to her, I thought she looked exactly the same, which made me feel both angry and grateful. I wanted to run right to her and have her wrap her big arms around me and remind me who I was and why I was here. But I was busy blending into the carpet and the velvet and the stained glass, taking my time, pretending I belonged.
Becoming Clementine: A Novel Page 14
