by Richard Wake
When he said, “All right, sergeant. Bring the prisoner,” I had to do everything I could not to break out into a grin. But then, when the captain walked over and picked up the phone on the counter, I had to do everything I could not to aim the rifle at him and tell him to drop it.
He dialed one number, then a second, and then he stopped. I relaxed. It must have been an internal prison call.
“We need another one,” the captain barked. He never identified himself or offered a greeting. He listened and then clearly interrupted whoever was speaking on the other end.
“Just a drunk. Anyone.”
More listening. Another interruption.
“We promised 20, and we will deliver 20. The new ration tickets just came out yesterday. It should be easy to find somebody passed out in an alley.”
More listening. Then, barking.
“A half-hour, no more.” And then the captain slammed down the phone. And then, in quick succession, he walked over to the desk, opened one drawer, then another, until he found what he was looking for. It was a stamp and a red ink pad. Bang, bang, and the paper was stamped: APPROVED. Then he picked up a pen and scrawled his name at the bottom.
The sergeant arrived with Clarisse. She looked haggard but okay otherwise. There was no obvious bruising or other injuries. If they had beaten her, they hid it well.
The captain, hands on his hips, said to her, "Such a pity. I was so looking forward to one more chat this afternoon."
He handed me the paperwork, and then the sergeant walked Clarisse through the gate in the counter. It was only when I was putting the handcuffs on her that she realized it was me.
55
We hadn’t really worked out what was next — not with the same level of detail as the bit at the prison. For instance, we hadn’t identified the precise alley where I would change my clothes. We just drove about 10 blocks and then Leon pulled into one.
I had removed Clarisse’s handcuffs. She squeezed my hand, and Leon’s arm, and we drove along without explanation. I was back into my regular clothes in about two minutes. Leon continued to wear the German uniform. Getting back into my side of the lorry, I wore the German greatcoat and the helmet, but just for appearances. They would be off again at the next stop.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Leon said. He was headed for a rendezvous with a produce truck that would, within about two days, get him back to Paris.
“It’s just supposed to be you,” I said.
“We’ll squeeze in — they won’t turn you away.”
“No,” Clarisse said. No explanation.
“Then maybe I’ll stay,” Leon said. “I can always get another ride. It just takes a day or two—”
“No,” I said. “You go. You’ve done enough. You have people who need you.”
“But—”
“No,” I said. “Go.”
We had decided originally that Leon would wear the German uniform as he drove out to his rendezvous, just in case he needed to talk his way out of a roadblock or another jam. The problem was that he didn’t have any paperwork to assist him, and we hadn’t settled on a story. Talking back and forth, we didn’t come up with anything great.
“Just say it’s a woman,” Clarisse said. “You have a date. No one will question it.”
It was perfect. We rode the last few minutes in silence. As we approached the cathedral, Leon said, “Look, no long goodbyes. Just hop out.” I pulled off the helmet and the greatcoat as the lorry rolled to a stop. I looked around. There was nobody in sight, but that wouldn’t likely be true for long.
“But—”
“Just go,” Leon said. “Right now. You know where I’ll be. Come when you’re ready.” He stopped, looked at Clarisse. “Come if you’re ready.”
As we stepped out, I said, “Wait.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” Leon said. He held up a small piece of paper containing one word: SAFE. “I’ll drop it in his mail slot and then go.”
Then he was back driving around the neighborhood surrounding the cathedral, and Clarisse and I began walking behind it — through the botanical gardens, down the steps, then the next steps, then the next. In the short walk, I explained most of what had happened in the previous few days, from the handkerchief to SAFE. As we walked — and it didn’t take five minutes — we passed only one other person, a man passed out on one of the stone benches. He smelled drunk. Yes, it was the day after the new ration tickets came out.
The heavy door that led to the tunnels opened with an easy shove, and the hinges made less noise than the last time. I suspected someone had oiled them and, just inside, I did see a small oil can. Closed and bolted in, Clarisse and I went about the business of trying to map out the future while simultaneously attempting to ignore our recent past.
We talked for over an hour, in a complete circle. I wanted to go to Paris. She wanted to stay. She never tried to talk me out of my desire. I tried incessantly to change her mind, though. It wasn’t because I loved her, because I really didn’t. In some ways, having her in my life in Paris would add a complication I neither wanted nor needed. But the danger was the part I couldn’t shake.
“You know you can’t go back to your house, right?” I said. “If they haven’t figured it out by now, they will soon — that you never made it to Place Jourdan.”
“I can go back and pack a bag.”
“Your life in a bag? Is that what you want?”
“I’ll get the bag, get the bicycle. I’ll be all right.”
“A bag and a bike. Great. That’s really living.”
“It’ll be no different in Paris,” she said. “All you can see is that, your life is in a bag, too, but in Paris, you’ll have Leon. Well, around here, I have others.”
We kept going, around and around.
“I could help protect you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Paris will have more places to hide.”
“More than the hills around here?”
“But what life—”
“We choose our lives,” she said. “We encounter circumstances. We make choices. We go on living. If you can’t see that, after everything you’ve been through yourself, you must be blind.” She laughed. “Or dumb. You have choices to make, and you’ve made yours. And I have choices to make, and I’ve made mine.”
“But—”
“But nothing.”
Around and around and around. I could see through the little imperfection in the wooden door that it was night. I was starving but, even more than that, I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept more than four hours in the previous two days. But as our discussion petered out into silence, I grabbed Clarisse’s hand, then I kissed her, and began to unbutton her blouse. She began to say something, but I put a finger up to my lips. It was the reverse of that one night in her flat. She laughed.
We made love in the dark on a bed of our strewn clothes. And then I fell asleep, a coma that was part exhaustion and part satisfaction. I don’t know what time it was when I woke up, but I could tell I had slept for a long time. It was light out — I could see the sun through the little nick in the door. It might have been five seconds before I realized that the door, while closed, was no longer bolted, and that I was alone.
56
The White Oak was pretty much as I had imagined it would be — a little bar along one wall, a few booths along another, and a series of tables and banquettes along a third. There was room for a small musical group — maybe a jazz trio — in one corner, with a tiny wooden dance floor in front of it. I could close my eyes and see the place jumping — sweaty, candles on the tables, carnal anticipation in the booths. But then I opened my eyes and saw what it had become: quiet and a little desperate. Even though there were no German rules against it, Max the bartender said he hadn’t hired a band in over a year.
“I was barely making a living before the war,” he said. “I just can’t afford the music now. And without the music, and with the rationing…”
Max swept his arm across the room. There were only eight patrons, including me.
By the time I arrived in Paris, Leon had been making up for lost time. It was almost as if he was a baker, and the women were taking numbers. It was funny — the women seemed to respect the numbers and never jumped the queue or resented anyone else who was also waiting. The only carnal anticipation was in his booth, and the only sweat was in his room upstairs sometime after 10 p.m.
“I don’t know,” he said, when I asked him if they were wearing him out. “I’m sleeping about 10 hours a day, every day, day after day. I haven’t felt this good in a long time. I promised myself a month to myself, just to recharge. You, too. Then we can talk about what might be next.”
Most nights, he would be in a booth with whoever, or a couple of whoevers, charming them, eating whatever Max put in front of him. They always brought me a plate, too. I don’t know what Leon had told him, about where we had been and what we had done, but no one seemed to resent that both of us were getting a solid meal every day, often with meat. After a couple of weeks of sleeping and eating, I started to feel like a 40-year-old again, not a 70-year-old. Looking in the mirror one morning, I actually thought my face was starting to fill out again, just a little. After a shower and a shave, I looked almost human.
I didn’t get out much during the day, and I didn’t really mind. I slept late, maybe caught a little afternoon sun in the small backyard behind the bar, maybe walked around the block once or twice. It kind of made me sad, in a way. Because while the sunshine perked me up, and the exercise felt restorative, the quiet of the city was almost unnerving. Paris had always been such a bustling place when I had visited before the war. Now, nobody drove, the cafes were half-empty at best, and people mostly just took their bicycles or the Metro to work and school and then shuttered themselves inside at the end of the day.
So while Leon did his business in his booth, I tended to read a book by myself in mine. Max had a wall full of books, mostly crap. But crap was fine. I looked forward to it every night, along with the one glass of wine that Max allotted. Because while he might be willing to feed me without ration tickets, there was a strict limit on the free alcohol. Business, after all, was still business.
One night, as I was deep into a French translation of an American Western writer named Zane Grey, Max walked over with a bottle in his hand. I thought he had gone soft and was going to top up my glass. Instead, he handed me a letter. “I guess this is you,” he said.
The envelope was addressed to “Leon’s Best Friend,” care of the bar. Max said it had not been delivered by the postman, but by a lorry driver in the city with a delivery from Bordeaux. He said he got it from another driver who had arrived in Bordeaux from Bayonne, down near the Spanish border. Where it came from before that, he had no idea. It likely would not have gotten through the regular post. Almost nothing got through from the south, other than those pre-printed German postcards where real writing was forbidden. They were pretty much fill-in-the-blank: I am sick, your father is dead, whatever.
But this was an actual letter, even if it contained only this:
SAFE
And a signature:
C
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About the Author
Richard Wake is the author of the Alex Kovacs thriller series. His website can be found at richardwake.com.