Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  There was one train that traveled out of the city, and it only went as far as thirty of the 120 kilometers to the region where the Maquis waited to meet the airmen and guide them on their way. The airmen were given civilian clothes and new shoes because so many of the men had worn theirs out, and they were given false papers and were moved from house to house along the line. They had to make their way from one safe house, one village or city to another until they reached the Spanish border, where the Germans patrolled the mountain passes with hunting dogs. A French man or woman was sent with them as a guide.

  Cleo said sometimes the line got broken by Germans posing as Allied pilots. These men had gone to British or American schools before the war so they could speak perfect English. When a spy was discovered in the Freedom Line, they were turned over to the other Resistance fighters and tortured or shot.

  Gossie came back with three plates, balanced in her arms. She set them down in front of the men, and then she went off again and came back in a moment with a bottle of half-finished wine and four glasses. She sat on the edge of her chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking. She chimed in now and then as her aunt was talking, saying the work she was doing for the WAC was just a cover. The real work was helping her aunt on the Freedom Line.

  I said, “Are there a lot of you?”

  Cleo said, “On the line?” She turned her gaze on the three men. The men wiped their mouths and shoved their plates away, sitting back, wrists dangling over knees, listening. I’d never seen anyone eat that fast unless they were in a pie-eating contest. She said, “Hundreds. Maybe more. We smuggle Jews too, when we can. But there are thousands of others working for the Resistance. Railroad workers make up the Iron Network. They send shipments to the wrong place and cause derailments. They destroy sections of track and blow up bridges. There’s a line of postal workers that intercepts important German military communications, and telephone workers who sabotage phone lines.”

  Gossie said, “We have signals for the others we work with and for the couriers who take messages between us. If the curtains are open on all sides, that means the coast is clear, come on in. If the curtain above the store is closed—just that one—it means keep away.”

  I said, “Johnny Clay. Have you—has anyone on the line—have you heard anything?”

  “No, honey. I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears out for him.” She said to the pilots, “Her brother’s gone missing. Paratrooper with the 101st. They lost track of him long before D-day.” She took my hand. “Still nothing?”

  “No. I feel like I don’t know what else to do, but I also feel like I’m not doing anything.”

  Gossie said to her aunt, “The best thing to do is put the word out as far and wide as we can.” Cleo nodded. “We make sure everyone in the Resistance knows, from here to Versailles.”

  The talk wandered off then, to Paris and the movies and America. The pilot named Daniel had a wife and two babies back home and every now and then he would tell us a story and sigh as if there were more he wasn’t telling and this was the only way he could say it. It felt so good to be sitting there with Gossie and her aunt and these three young Americans, pilots like me, that I lost track of time. Somewhere a clock struck six, and I said, “I should be going.”

  Gossie said, “You should move in here with us, Mary Lou. We’ve got plenty of room, don’t we, Cleo? Even with all these extra men around.” She winked at the pilots.

  Cleo said, “You absolutely should.”

  I said, “I can’t.” I didn’t tell them I was waiting. Every day, waiting. If I moved in with them, Émile and the others might never find me once they came back. If they came back.

  The pilot called George stood up and put on a record and suddenly there was music, bright and fast. “Not too loud,” Cleo said.

  Gossie walked to the window. She said, “All clear.”

  George said, “Do you know the Big Apple?” For some reason, a homesick feeling had ahold of my throat and my chest. “It’s the latest thing. Just follow me.” He and the other boys pushed aside the furniture. He rolled up his sleeves and held out his hands, and I placed mine in his. He said, “Ready?”

  Before I knew it, he was twirling me and spinning me all over the apartment. The other boys joined in, and then Gossie and Cleo started dancing too. We jumped and dipped and clapped and swayed, and someone said the dance came from Harlem, New York, and that the Negroes had started it. For that one song, I forgot about everything and danced.

  Gossie’s bedroom had a table with a chair in front of it, but it wasn’t a desk. She called it a vanity table, and spread on top of it, like a picnic, were lipsticks and powders and perfumes. I sat on the chair and stared into the mirror that hung above the vanity, so you could see yourself if you were sitting down. Gossie said, “I’ve been wanting to do this since I saw you walk into Maxim’s.” And she pulled out a brush and took it to my head, curling this piece of hair, smoothing that one, until I didn’t look so dull and dreary, but actually kind of smart, like someone who could eat at Maxim’s even if she didn’t want to.

  Gossie said, “Christ, that’s better. The day you start looking like a plain Jane is the day I marry Hitler.” Then she picked through the lipsticks, tossing them aside till they lay in a pile. Finally she plucked one out and held it up like she was the Statue of Liberty and this was her torch. She said, “It’ll be easier if you do it,” and she handed the lipstick to me.

  I turned to the mirror and painted the color on my lips. It made me think of the heavy roses on the wallpaper at Monsieur Brunet’s house and blood seeping across a field. There was nothing about it that blended in or made me invisible, and because of this I did two coats.

  Gossie said, “Yes. Take it, it’s yours. It looks a hell of a lot better on you.”

  I turned it over to read the bottom. Révolution Rouge. Behind me Gossie sank down onto her bed, crossing one leg over the other and swinging it back and forth. She propped herself up on her hands, arms back behind her, and said, “Now start talking.” She fixed her eye on me in the mirror.

  I said, “What do you mean?” I pretended to fuss with my hair, my scarf—Perry’s map scarf—the lipsticks, picking them up and reading the bottoms, then standing them back up again.

  She said, “I’m not stupid and I’m certainly not blind. You’re up to something, Mary Lou. Something secret, and you’re not leaving here till I know what it is.” When I didn’t say anything she said, “It takes one to know one. I’m playing a role right now, a kind of cover, so that no one will know what kind of work I’m really doing. I think you’re doing the same.”

  I turned around in my chair and looked at her. There were about ten thousand things I wanted to say, but I didn’t know if I should say any of them. I opened my mouth and closed it, and then I opened it again and closed it again.

  She said, “Mary Lou, you can trust me.” She leaned forward, tucking her feet up under her bottom. Her bobbed hair waved toward her face and she shook it aside. She said, “Go.”

  I thought: I can be Velva Jean here. I can be Mary Lou. This is the only place I can be myself, but out there I’m someone else. I heard Émile’s voice and Delphine’s—where was she now?—telling me it was all or nothing, there was no such thing as halves, that I needed to become another person and stick with that, memorize it, live it.

  I said, “Actually it’s not Mary Lou. It’s Clementine. Clementine Roux. My husband was French but was killed at the start of the war. I couldn’t go home, so I stayed. I eat only with my left hand. I know not to wait more than twenty minutes for my contact. I never sleep anywhere that doesn’t have at least two exits. I know the difference between a Sten gun and a forty-five, and I can shoot both. The top button of my dress is really a compass. The heel of my shoe is really a knife. My lipstick can fire one shot at close range.” I recited every single thing I’d been told about my cover, as if I were reciting a lesson out of a schoolbook. “I’ll go back after the war is over because there’s nothi
ng here for me now. My husband—he was a pilot—he took that with him when he died.” Before I knew it, I was crying, the silent kind, tears running one by one down my cheeks. “I am a singer and a spy. I am a weapon of war.” I’m afraid I am in love with a Frenchman who left me here.

  And then I said the entire thing over, as best I could, in French.

  I’d never known Gossie to go speechless, but for one whole minute she sat staring at me, her mouth open so wide I could see her fillings. After that minute was up, she snapped it closed and said, “I’ll be damned.”

  TWENTY

  Each night, I practiced my French with Monsieur Brunet, and each morning I practiced with Bernadette and the girls. I could still understand more than I could speak, but I was getting better and my accent was improving. When I wasn’t practicing, I delivered messages for Monsieur Brunet and helped Gossie and her aunt take care of the airmen before they were smuggled out of Paris. The three pilots I’d met were gone now, on their way to Spain with a French-speaking guide, and five new airmen had moved into Cleo’s apartment above the bookstore.

  It was August already—August 2, Granny’s birthday. I tried not to think about my family celebrating back home on Fair Mountain as I went to the market for Cleo. She bought most of their food on the black market, but once a week she shopped at an open market on the Left Bank, which the Germans let the public use on Wednesdays. There you could trade in your stamps to buy two eggs, two ounces of margarine, three ounces of cooking oil, and a share of meat that was smaller than a subway ticket. Cleo had a friend at one of the stands who put aside all the food that the Germans didn’t want—bread and vegetables that were too old and stale, and maybe a rabbit or a chicken that was too scrawny. The Allies were cutting off northern routes in France, which meant food was even harder to come by. The Germans were using up as much of what they could find in the markets and the restaurants, and the people of Paris were hungry.

  The Luxembourg Gardens had been taken over by the Luftwaffe, which was the German air force, with cannons and machine guns and tanks sitting smack in the middle of the flower beds and the pathways and the little pond that was there. The gardens weren’t far from Cleo’s apartment, and around eleven o’clock each morning, the German tanks rolled out of the gates and on down Boulevard Saint-Michel, shooting at random at the people walking by.

  I did my best to stay in the middle of the crowd, to walk a zigzag so that I would make a harder target, to keep my eyes and ears open for the patrols. Men and women fighting for the Resistance were setting up roadblocks throughout the city, which made it difficult for the Germans to drive in their cars and trucks and tanks. The barricades were made of piled-up stoves, wardrobes, dustbins, and other furniture, and members of the Resistance sat behind them wearing armbands and pointing their weapons at the Germans. Cleo said that of the twenty thousand Resistance fighters in Paris, not even half were armed. The ones who weren’t cut communication lines, pierced the tires of German vehicles, destroyed road signs, and bombed gasoline depots and railroads.

  The day was fair and warm, and on the way back to Cleo’s I walked through the street as gingerly as a cat so as not to trip because my arms were full of groceries, as many as I could buy with the ration stamps—real and counterfeit—in addition to the vegetables her friend had given me.

  I was three blocks away from her apartment when a man ran into me, running down the street after someone. I lost hold of the bag, and it dropped onto the sidewalk, margarine and cooking oil and bread rolling in all directions. I bent down and, fast as I could, tried to fetch everything. I didn’t look up because I was afraid of the police stopping me and seeing what I’d bought and how much of it there was.

  A boy walked by and handed me the margarine. A group of women stepped around me, crushing one of the eggs and kicking two of the potatoes into the street. I couldn’t hear the traffic rushing by or the people talking around me because my heart was beating so loud in my ears.

  A hand reached down and held out the loaf of bread. It was a large hand, with long fingers and round, clean nails. For one minute, I let myself think that it belonged to Émile or Barzo or Ray. I was always looking for them in the faces of men on the street. Every day, I read the newspaper and sat by the radio, waiting for reports of a raid on Fresnes prison, where I knew they must be headed.

  I looked up and it was the German from the movie theater. He kneeled beside me and gathered the last of the groceries, handing them to me one by one.

  He said, “Clementine.” I didn’t say a word, just put the vegetables, the oil, the bread into the bag. He said, “I am Fritz. Remember? We saw the play.”

  He was talking in English, but I replied in French, “Of course, thank you for your help.”

  He smiled. His eyes moved to the bag. He said in English, “You are cooking a big meal. An American Thanksgiving?”

  I said in French, “Oh no. It’s for my friends. One of them is sick and she can’t shop for herself, so I’m helping her.”

  He said, “You are a good friend.”

  “I try to be.” I thought, Go away, go away, go away.

  He said, “I would like to take you for coffee sometime.”

  I wondered if I could be shot right here on the street for saying no. I said, “I’m sorry.” I hoped it was enough. I hoped he thought I was missing my dead husband, that this was why I couldn’t make a date with him. I thought, Please don’t ask me again.

  He said, “It is a no then?”

  “No.” I held my hand out. I said, “Thank you again.”

  “Fritz,” he said.

  “Fritz.”

  He took my hand. I hoped he couldn’t feel it shaking. I wondered why he didn’t ask to come with me to meet these friends of mine, why he didn’t take me into headquarters right now for questioning. He held on to my hand and looked down at me without blinking, the smile fixed on his face, and I could tell he was reading me, trying to see what was there behind my own smile. I concentrated on thinking of the most innocent things—Ruby Poole’s baby, Russell, or the stained glass window of the Virgin Mary in the Little White Church back home. I thought if I could think of something like this he would see it in my face and let me go.

  I said, “Bonsoir, Fritz. Merci.”

  “Bonsoir, Clementine.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  On August 5, I sat in the lobby of the Grand Hotel, across from the opera, a handkerchief in my hand. It was thin as a razor and made of fabric you could eat if you had to. Monsieur Brunet said it would dissolve on the tongue in seconds. I knew that the handkerchief contained a grid for decoding messages, and that whatever I did, I had to make sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. If anything about the exchange seemed off, I was supposed to get out of there and swallow the handkerchief and make sure I wasn’t followed.

  My contact was an older man with a newspaper under his right arm and a blue beret. The man seemed nervous, watching left and right over his shoulder. He sneezed and I offered him the handkerchief, and he walked off without saying good-bye.

  I waited three minutes before leaving, and out on the street I saw two Germans in uniform step from behind a streetlight and stop the man in the beret on the sidewalk. I started walking at once in the other direction, fast as I could. I didn’t look back, but I kept imagining the Germans chasing me down and dragging me off, the way they’d done with Coleman.

  Just in case they were following me, I took a zigzag route back to Monsieur Brunet’s house. When I reached Rue de la Néva, I walked past the house, down to the corner, and stepped into a dress shop. Then I went next door to the little store where they sold makeup and jewelry, and then the one next door to that, which was a bakery.

  After an hour or so, I stepped out of the shops and back onto the street, which was empty except for a man and two children, walking away from me. The little girl had a yellow balloon, and I watched as it bobbed in the air above their heads, swaying when a breeze blew past, tugging at its string.

 
I walked back to Monsieur Brunet’s house, and there was Bernadette standing in the doorway to the living room, as if she’d been watching the door. She said, “Clementine, are you all right?”

  I said, “Yes. Is Monsieur Brunet at home?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “He went out.” She was worrying her hands, fingers clasped, turning them inside out and outside in. She had been worrying since last night, when we heard the news that Warsaw was burning after the people there rose up against the Germans. She said, “So much noise next door. They have been shooting their guns in the back garden and walking up and down the street knocking at the doors.”

  I said, “Do you think they suspect?” I thought of the man with the newspaper and the beret, led away by the Germans—did he have time to swallow the handkerchief? I thought of George with the looping grin, and Daniel with the wife and two babies, and the other pilots arriving in Nesles, trying to get to Spain.

  “Je ne sais pas.” I don’t know.

  That evening, Cleo hosted a party downstairs in the bookstore. The latest group of pilots had left that morning, and so the place was free of airmen, at least for now. The guests would be people Cleo had known for years. She said they were freethinkers and artists, but some had become Nazi sympathizers to make it easier on themselves. She had invited some of the German officers too, because she needed to do whatever she could to keep them from suspecting her and her work on the Freedom Line.

  I stayed to help get ready for the party. As we swept and dusted and rearranged the stacks of books I said to Gossie, “How can the Germans go to parties with these people, eating their food, drinking their wine, when they must know we hate them?” The day before, the Germans had bombed and destroyed five of the six bridges in Florence, Italy—including one designed by Michelangelo—before they ran away from the Allies.

  She said, “These parties are a kind of truce, don’t you know.”