by Jina Bacarr
All I’ve got are the recordings, the scrapbook, and the diary.
What worries me is I’ve also got films showing Sylvie cavorting with the Nazis in cafés and photos of her riding with the SS in a motorcar with miniature Nazi flags flying.
A picture is worth a thousand words they say… a moving picture has to be even more incriminating.
People will believe what they see with their own eyes.
They won’t believe an actress telling her story on old reel-to-reel tapes. Where’s the proof what she’s saying is the truth?
I feel a soft, weathered hand on my shoulder. Comforting me.
‘It’s getting late, Juliana. I must be off to evening prayers.’
Sister Rose-Celine. Trying to console me. We’ve spent all day making notes, cataloging what we’ve got and trying to figure out our next move.
‘I’m going to stay here for a while,’ I tell her, the twilight breeze keeping me company. I find peace here under the willow tree. It’s become my anchor to both Maman and Sylvie. ‘I want to call Ridge.’
She giggles like a schoolgirl, then she’s off on her motorized scooter. She’s convinced Ridge is my boyfriend and I don’t have the heart to tell her we’re just friends.
Or are we?
Something unsettling is happening to my everyday world since I got here. I didn’t realize till I was thousands of miles away how well Ridge and I work together. How much I look forward to talking to him. Miss him.
I sigh. Leave it to a romance-loving nun to make me see it. I don’t know what I’d do without her. Sister Rose-Celine has changed my view of life in ways I never imagined. That getting older doesn’t mean you have to lose your curiosity, your zest for something new, and you don’t have to be afraid to reopen the past.
I won’t say it’s made losing Maman any easier.
Just different. I think the best explanation I can give is, spending time with this extraordinary nun has made see that I gave up my personal life when my mother was ill. I became trapped in Maman’s world. Yet, I felt that doing anything else was selfish on my part. That if I wanted time for myself or to see a friend – Ridge never stopped asking what he could do to help, but I was too proud to accept his offer – that I was being disloyal to her. Not true. She was a loving, caring woman; she’d want me to have someone. And somehow, I know she’d be proud of me for wanting to clear Sylvie’s name and doing what she couldn’t in her time. And I respect that.
Meanwhile my life back in LA continues down this strange new road when Ridge sends me a text, asking if I need him to start a Sylvie Martone fan club yet. There he goes, making me smile when I’m in a quandary. Still, I have to be careful. He’s helping a friend, I tell myself. I’m reading too much into this.
So then why do I call him?
Because you like him. Always have, but you’re too busy having a career.
‘Hey… Super Stunt Guy,’ I gush into the phone, thinking how lucky I am to have a friend who listens to my crazy ideas. ‘You still driving that motorcycle like a wild man?’
‘You know another way? Hey, it’s lonely tearing up the backlot without you on the back of my bike.’
‘So that’s what I am to you,’ I tease him. ‘A partner in crime.’
‘Yep.’ I have the feeling he wants to say more but won’t. Why did Ridge bring that up now? Because I opened the door the last time we went on a talky taco binge via Skype? I wonder if there’s something else he wants to say, something bothering him he needs to get off his mind. I sense he’s holding back like he always does when the conversation gets too personal. I accept it, always have. For a world class stuntman who lives for danger, the man can sure clam up when it comes to saying what he feels. So I’m not surprised when he gets back to my grandmother.
‘Anything new on Sylvie?’
I bite my lip. ‘I’ve got some amazing first-person accounts from Sylvie on her tape recordings, but no way to prove what she says is true.’ I tell him the latest.
He lets out a low whistle. ‘Sylvie was a brave woman, Juliana. An amazing human being to risk her life like that.’ He pauses a beat. ‘I know a lot of people who’d like to see that film if it exists, including me. I’ve come across heart-wrenching footage of the Holocaust here at the studio, but nothing like what you described. It would be an extraordinary contribution to the remembrance of what Jews suffered during the war.’
I feel the heat of his passion in his voice, his words giving me the push I need not to give up. It’s so important I find enough evidence to complete my mission.
‘You’re right, Ridge, and it could be the proof I need to help prove her innocence, show what she was trying to do, but I don’t see the film anywhere. Just the reel-to-reel tapes she made. I have two more left.’ I’ll be sad when I’ve listened to the last tape. I’m going to miss my interesting conversations with my grandmother. Afternoons with Sylvie, I call it. She talks on the tape and I talk back to her. Sometimes when I turn the tape back on, she answers the question I have on my mind. Strange, but I don’t try to understand it.
‘Didn’t you tell me your grandmother left the box and the tapes in the chateau dungeon?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she was killed in a car accident?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have the feeling she used the dungeon as a storage place until she could make her case. Gathering up her notes, the diary. Then putting the recordings in order. That she never intended to leave her materials there indefinitely. You may not have found everything.’
‘There’s so much stuff down there… it could take weeks to go through it and I’ve got to be back in LA for my meeting with the producers in less than a week.’
I give out a lonely sigh. I can see him in my mind. Smiling, his strong jaw covered with sexy stubble, his dark eyes swimming with ideas about how to help me, but knowing how much it means to me to stand on my own.
‘Hey, call me if you need anything. I’m here for you.’
The possibility of me finding the film rattles my brain with impossible odds, but I embrace the job with a vengeance and go on a treasure hunt anyway.
It’s like winning the lotto. You can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket.
It’s late, but fueled by Ridge’s belief in me, I poke around the convent dungeon to see what I can find. It’s hot down here, no air, my palms are sweaty. Waving my flashlight around, I almost expect to see a ghost. I push aside boxes, get tangled up in old curtains, knock over a rocking horse, and then nearly slip on an old metal roller skate. Before I can grab it, the skate goes flying across the floor and slams into—
A large round, blue model case with the initials S.M.
Sylvie Martone.
I’m beside herself with excitement, not believing my luck. I tear into the hat box and pull out a stylish, black velvet suit with black jet beaded trim, black gloves, black pumps still crusted with dried mud, silk stockings – and movie theater lobby cards in German for Die Dame aus Versailles. Sylvie must have been so horribly affected from her trip to Berlin she wanted to preserve everything as it was so she’d never forget. I imagine she returned the mink coat and hat to the studio wardrobe department.
I also find an old home movie camera from the 1940s in a pristine, brown leather case. I inspect it closer and find a roll of film inside the case never developed. I can’t control the chills running through me. This must be the film Sylvie shot when she saw the prisoners on their way to a concentration camp.
Ridge is beyond excited when I call him.
‘Everything fits, Juliana… the clothes, the muddy shoes. You’ve struck gold.’
Holding the precious film close to my chest, I want to cry.
‘I could kiss you, Ridge, for giving me encouragement when I needed it,’ I tell him, not realizing what I said till I said it.
I hear him suck in a deep breath, then a long pause before he says, ‘Can you send me the film? I want Harper to see it, too. She’s great with restoring old nitrate negativ
es.’
‘Oh, yeah… Harper.’
I almost forgot about her. Nice kid, but the idea of the two of them working together in the darkroom does nothing for my ego. I beat myself up for acting like a ditzy groupie, but I don’t know how to walk it back. Seems I don’t have to. Ridge keeps talking about the film.
‘Send me the film the fastest way possible. We have a guy here who handles our film imports from Europe. He can expedite getting the package through customs.’
‘Oh, that’s amazing, Ridge, thank you.’
We both agree if the film is what Sylvie said it was, along with her personal tape recording of the event, it could help exonerate her.
He’ll get on it right away and send me anything important ASAP. I doubt if he’ll get a moment of sleep till the film arrives.
Neither will I. And it’s not the film keeping me up.
I keep thinking about him… and Harper in that darkroom.
Jealous, are you? My, my…
Early the next morning, I can’t believe my luck when I find an overseas shipping office less than a half hour from Ville Canfort-Terre. With Sister Rose-Celine’s help, we box up the film and I hop into my rental car and drop it off (merci for GPS) while the sister takes her nap. I cross my fingers. It could take two to four days to get there but with Ridge’s help, the package will speed through customs.
I settle in and listen to another tape, my heart in turmoil at realizing I want a lot more than a ‘best friends’ sticker from Ridge. What took me so long to see it? I know how Sylvie felt without her love. I gain courage when I hear her recount how she saved Jock and countless other ‘evaders’ by leading them to the Spanish border, always as Fantine so they never knew her real identity.
Except one person.
Sister Vincent.
I wonder, did she ever write down her memories of Sylvie after the war? And why didn’t she come forward with her knowledge of ‘Fantine’ to clear her?
So many unanswered questions.
I listen to the last tape.
33
Sylvie
The final chapter in my life as a spy
Paris
Spring 1944
Ask any actress what her favorite role is and she’ll tell you it’s the one that makes the audience cry.
Ask me… and it’s the one that makes me cry.
Fantine.
My audience consists of downed fliers who never know they’re part of my greatest performance. One or two evaders tailing along with me from the Gare d'Austerlitz in Paris on a crowded train till we arrive at Toulouse and I lead them to the pickup point. There we meet up with their guide to the Spanish border.
When we’re alone without the sniffing Nazis within earshot, I speak in English as I limp along with my lace veil wrapped around my head, making them laugh, telling them about my escapades with two departed husbands, my life as a baroness in a drafty old castle, how I broke the bank at Monte Carlo…
I make up the script as I go along.
When we arrive at the safe house, we chat over bread and cheese with the guide.
‘Where are you from?’ I ask a young man with tousled hair.
‘Manchester,’ he says, his mouth filled with cheese.
‘What about you?’ I ask the other pilot.
‘Blackpool.’ He sighs deeply. ‘I miss my girl Annie.’
‘Annie…’ I repeat. ‘I’m sure she’s lovely.’
‘Take a look.’ He whips an oval-shaped photo of a pretty girl out of his pocket. I see where she wrote on the back, ‘Love you forever, your sweetheart, Annie.’
‘You can’t keep the photo, Lieutenant. You have to destroy it.’
‘You ain’t taking my Annie from me.’
‘I must, Lieutenant, for your safety.’
‘Why, miss?’ asks his friend.
‘The photo could be his undoing.’
‘How?’ asks the lieutenant, disbelieving.
‘If you’re captured,’ I tell him, ‘and the Nazis find the photo, they’ll use it against you. Make your mind spin with doubt and pain and the fear of losing your girl to the guy back home. Enticing you to give them information about planes, dates, missions, so you can get home faster.’
A form of psychological warfare.
Something the Gestapo is good at, I remind myself. How Herr Geller entices me to act my part with a sly glance over my shoulder to see if he’s watching, or the fear on my face when he pops out of the shadows. An overwhelming fear. I’m never sure if this is the day he arrests me and slips on those shiny, silver handcuffs.
I caught sight of them when he pulled them out of his pocket along with his newspaper to work a crossword puzzle. He dangled them in my face then slid them down my neck, over my breasts. A strange, creepy feeling shot through me. A sexual gesture I’ll never forget. A provocative dance he enjoyed playing with me because I upset his orderly mind. He can’t put me into the little boxes on his crossword puzzles and predict what I’ll do.
That intrigues him.
And keeps me alive.
The somber moment passes, then panic causes a major upheaval in my swollen belly when the guide talks about the girl who broke his heart. I’m glad no one else notices when he points out an advertisement in a Paris newspaper for my Versailles film.
A provocative illustration of me.
Lips parted, blonde hair blowing.
‘For years, I was in love with Sylvie Martone,’ he says with a sneer. ‘Ah, so beautiful she is. I went to see her films every Saturday. Now she sleeps with the Boche.’
Then he spits on my picture and tears it up.
The day turns darker.
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to tell the people of France the truth.
Emil yells, ‘Action!’
Sweating under the hot lights on the indoor set, I react to an actor reading lines off to the side. Smiling, a sneer… listening intently. Pickup shots for a scene he filmed yesterday with my stand-in Halette pretending to be me in the long shots.
I notice my acting has a depth to it in the close-ups I’ve never experienced before when Emil shows me the daily rushes later. A crying in my eyes that speaks of pain, loneliness. Yet there’s also a light of hope.
‘You should get pregnant more often, Sylvie,’ he snickers, complimenting me on my scenes when we’re alone.
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I tease him, resting in my dressing room with my feet up. His eyes bug out. ‘Just kidding.’ I smile, then in a serious tone, ‘Have you thought about what will happen to us, Emil, when Paris is liberated?’
He chokes on his cigar smoke. ‘Where’d you hear that?’
‘Backstairs gossip.’
‘I’m in no hurry.’
‘You wouldn’t be. You’ve never had it so good.’
‘Neither have you, Sylvie. I thought we were done when sound came in, then the Depression, but we kept at it, you and me. In spite of the shortages in getting film, raw materials to build sets, and losing talent, the Occupation hasn’t stopped us.’
Talent like Raoul?
I’m still reeling over his arrest, his eyes pooling so deep and dark with an uncanny fear. As if he’d accepted his fate, but he couldn’t let go of a debilitating fear if his little girl – nearly a woman – were caught, she’d face unspeakable horror at the hands of the SS.
Since then, I’ve heard rumors Raoul was sent to Natzweiler-Struthof, a concentration camp in Alsace hundreds of miles east of Paris.
I pray he survives.
A blade cuts through me every time I think about him, making me wonder if I’m existing in a false security believing I’m helping defeat the Nazi war machine by making pictures.
Emil says the head of Galerie Films is so pleased with the record crowds in Berlin promoting Die Dame aus Versailles, he’ll have no problem getting another film greenlighted. I wonder how long I can conceal my pregnancy by wearing boxy coats and voluminous capes. I feel guilty taking advantage of Emil’s insistence his �
�star’ takes up residence at the Hôtel Ritz, lavishing me with great meals while the rest of Paris lives in a state of acute hunger. (Halette remains at my apartment.) I took Emil up on his offer to keep my baby nourished or… no, I can’t think that way. I’ll do anything to secure the safety of my unborn child.
Dealing with lower back pain and fatigue, spotting, and worrying about Jock, I’m filming a nineteenth-century costume drama titled La Dame avec les Yeux Verts (Lady with the Green Eyes). The script isn’t my favorite. What writer can compare to Raoul? We’re shooting the film in Paris where Emil directs me on a closed set. Only my wardrobe designer and cinematographer know it’s not me in the exterior scenes shot around Paris, but Halette wearing wigs and extravagant cavalier hats with trailing, wavy feathers.
The film is shot in less than two months while everyone in Paris holds their breath, waiting for what’s coming.
The Allied invasion of France.
Fortunately for me, I no longer have to deal with the unwanted attention of Captain Lunzer. At first, I believed Karl was shipped off to the Eastern Front because of me. Then I picked up conversations at the Hôtel Ritz from unhappy officers preparing to depart Paris, how the Wehrmacht ordered their top soldiers to leave the city. It seems der Fuehrer needs more bodies to put on a good show and die for the Reich as the battle escalates. I’ve heard hushed talk at the cafés the Germans are suffering the worst casualties of the war.
I shudder. As a girl raised in a convent, I should be forgiving, but I no longer feel compelled to acknowledge my uneasy alliance with that man. Karl would have raped me, killed my baby. I wrap my arms around my belly to protect my unborn child, my body trembling just thinking about that SS madman.
