Also by Gloria Goldreich
The Bridal Chair
Thank you for downloading this Sourcebooks eBook!
You are just one click away from…
• Being the first to hear about author happenings
• VIP deals and steals
• Exclusive giveaways
• Free bonus content
• Early access to interactive activities
• Sneak peeks at our newest titles
Happy reading!
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2020 by Gloria Goldreich
Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover images © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images, Alexandre Rotenberg/Arcangel, Ivan Cholakov/Shutterstock, javarman/Shutterstock
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
A Note from the Author
Prologue
One
Winter
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Toulouse
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Epilogue
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from The Bridal Chair
About the Author
Back Cover
This book is dedicated to the memory of the million and a half Jewish children who perished during the dark days of World War II.
ת נ צ ב ה
A Note from the Author
The Paris Children is a work of biofiction based on the life of Madeleine Levy, the granddaughter of Alfred Dreyfus and a heroine of the French Resistance movement. While I have adhered as closely as possible to the chronology of her too-brief and tragic life, which was dedicated to the rescue of endangered Jewish children, I have exercised the novelist’s prerogative and created scenes and relationships based on my own imaginings. I have relied on many primary sources, but I want to especially acknowledge Dreyfus: A Family Affair by Michael Burns (Harper Collins, 1991) and Suzanne’s Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson (Simon & Schuster, 2017).
Prologue
Red, white, and blue fireworks danced through the cobalt evening sky. The excited shrieks of children and the vigorous patriotic music played by the wandering street musicians mingled with sudden bursts of song. As always during the week before Bastille Day, Parisians flocked to the streets to celebrate. The sounds of holiday exuberance drifted through the open windows of the Levy salon, but the assembled family sat in a silence born of sorrow, indifferent to the gaiety below.
Their hands clasped, their heads lowered, they dared not look at each other, fearful that an exchange of glances might unleash a torrent of grief. They struggled to assimilate the warning words murmured in a measured, muted tone, heavy with regret by Dr. Pierre Paul Levy, who swayed uneasily as he spoke. Alfred Dreyfus’s son-in-law had, during his long medical career, advised many families of the imminence of a loved one’s death, but on this summer night, he was issuing such an edict to his own family.
“I have asked you here to tell you that you must prepare yourselves for the inevitable. He will die. Soon. Very soon,” he said, aware that his voice was barely audible.
His wife, Jeanne Dreyfus Levy, turned to him, her fine-featured face blanched of color, and spoke very softly.
“You are certain, Pierre Paul?” she asked, although she knew the question to be unnecessary. Pierre Paul was renowned for his diagnostic expertise and the accuracy of his predictions. He was all too familiar with the ominous progress of the disease that was slowly and deliberately ending Alfred Dreyfus’s life.
“There is no doubt,” he repeated firmly. “His kidneys are failing. Death is rapidly approaching.”
Jeanne nodded and went to the window, closing it firmly and drawing the crimson velvet drapery, blocking out both the sight and the sound of the revelry that intruded on their nascent sorrow. It was ironic, she thought, that her father, who had survived a wrongful conviction of espionage, five long years of exile and imprisonment on Devil’s Island, and then heroism on the bloody killing fields of the Great War, would now die of a simple abdominal ailment. She sighed and returned to sit beside her mother on the sofa, encasing Lucie’s cold hand in her own and gently massaging each of the elderly woman’s fingers.
“But Grand-père will not die before Bastille Day?” Etienne, the youngest of the Levy children, asked and then blushed with shame at the irrelevance of the question.
“Yes. Almost certainly before Bastille Day,” his father replied sadly.
Pierre Paul Levy would not, could not lie to his family. As a doctor, death, whether sudden or lingering, had long been his constant companion. His own sorrow at this new impending loss was contained, but he grieved for Jeanne; for her brother, Pierre; Lucie, her mother; and the children of the family, his own sons and daughters, his nieces and nephews, whose innocence would be shattered by the death of their grandfather.
Braced for their grief, he rested his hand on Jeanne’s shoulder, but his gaze was fixed on Madeleine, his younger daughter.
She sat opposite him beside her sister, Simone. Her eyes were closed; long, dark lashes damp with unshed tears swept her high cheekbones, and her dark hair fell to her shoulders in a cascade of curls. She was seventeen, a very young seventeen—too young, he thought, to suffer a loss so profound. He had long recognized the special bond between Madeleine and her grandfather, the mysterious tenderness that had comforted and sustained them both from the earliest days of her childhood. Their love was palpable.
“Th
ey need each other; they understand each other,” Simone had once told him, speaking with the precocious maturity that always surprised him. “Madeleine reads his lips, and Grand-père reads her heart.”
Pierre Paul had recognized the truth of her words. When Madeleine, a child of eight, fell ill with scarlet fever, Alfred Dreyfus had remained at her bedside day after day, night after night. The very first word she had uttered when she emerged into consciousness after that life-threatening sleep was Grand-père. And that grandfather, a man who seldom displayed emotion, had wept as he bent to kiss her cheek. But Alfred Dreyfus had been dry-eyed days later when he told the newly recovered child that her illness had damaged her hearing.
He and Jeanne, her own parents, had been cowardly, Pierre Paul acknowledged, in delegating that difficult task to Alfred. But they had listened as he told their daughter the truth.
“You must treat your difficulty in hearing as a gift. You will learn to concentrate and read the lips of those who speak to you. Such concentration will give you great understanding of both the speaker and the words being spoken,” he had said, and Madeleine, ever courageously accepting, had nodded.
She had not understood his words then but they had remained in memory, to be retrieved when needed. She was perhaps retrieving them now, Pierre Paul thought.
There was, he realized, an odd reversal of roles. Just as her grandfather had sat beside her bedside when she was a child, Madeleine had remained beside his bed during his illness. Throughout the spring of her last year as a lycée student, she had spent long afternoons and evenings at his side, hours scavenged from her studies and her commitment to the children in her troop of Jewish Scouts. The children filled her with joy. Her grandfather’s deteriorating condition filled her with despair.
She had watched him grow thinner and thinner; she had seen how his skin, as brittle as parchment, had yellowed with the onset of jaundice. She, a doctor’s daughter, had known that he was dying.
Pierre Paul, staring at his daughter’s lovely face, marveled that he had thought only of Madeleine’s fragility, never recognizing her remarkable strength. He recognized it now, and taking her hand, he led her into the dining room where the family gathered around the table to sip tea gone cold and discuss all that had to be accomplished given that finality was upon them. Funeral arrangements. Announcements to the press and the military. Alfred Dreyfus was a historic figure, a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Lists were drawn up, responsibilities divided.
That done, inevitably the conversation drifted to the ominous news from Germany that haunted their every waking hour. The cruelty of the Nazi regime, the reality of the evil so close to their own threatened border, could not be ignored.
War, Pierre Dreyfus thought, was as imminent as his father’s death.
“The reports from Berlin are frightening,” Pierre said gravely. “Anti-Semitic legislation is being passed, and Jews are suffering terribly. Professions are closed to them. Children are forced from their schools, terrorized by the bullies of the Hitler Youth. Terrible things are happening, and the worst is still to come.”
“Those laws will be struck down. Hitler will not survive in the land of Schiller, Goethe, Beethoven, and Bach,” Pierre Paul countered. “You are too pessimistic, Pierre.”
“No,” Pierre replied firmly. “I am not pessimistic enough. Perhaps you forget that my father was persecuted in the land of Voltaire and Racine.”
“And exonerated. France is not Germany,” Pierre Paul retorted.
“But Adolf Hitler is now Germany. Only today he said that he supports the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. After all, if Italy is allowed to invade Ethiopia, then why should Germany not invade France? Hasn’t he already said that Germany has a legitimate claim to Alsace?”
They shivered at the mention of Alsace. Alfred Dreyfus had been born in the hamlet of Mulhouse, and their extended family still lived there. Alsace endangered meant the Dreyfus family itself was endangered. Hitler’s threats pierced their hearts.
Pierre’s voice faded, and his shoulders sagged. His own question was rhetorical. The futility of the argument wearied him. Close as they were, he and his sister’s husband had long held opposing political views.
“Even in the unlikely event of a German invasion, Frenchmen will act with courage and honor,” Pierre Paul insisted.
Madeleine shivered. The mention of the cruelty the Jewish children of Germany were enduring filled her with fear. If Germany invaded France, the children she mentored might suffer the same danger. She thought of their bright faces, their high, sweet voices, and was overcome with fear.
She stared across the table at Simone and her brothers. Simone, sensing her distress, pressed Madeleine’s hand reassuringly and the boys smiled. As members of the Éclaireurs Israélites, the Jewish Scouts, the Levy siblings shared their uncle’s perceptions, acknowledged the reality of Madeleine’s apprehensions, but this was not a night to disagree with their father, nor was it a night for the Dreyfus family to be at odds with each other.
It was Lucie who raised her hand and spoke very softly. “Let us not argue,” she said. “Instead, let us all pray for that which is important for all of us. Peace of our country and our people. Peace for Alfred.”
Her words soothed them into silence. Madeleine helped Lucie adjust her cape.
“I will see you tomorrow, Grand-mère,” she said.
“Yes. Tomorrow. À demain,” the old woman said and kissed her cheek.
* * *
Madeleine awakened very early the next morning and cycled swiftly from her parents’ home to the small student café on the Left Bank where her close friend, Claude Lehmann, waited for her. He frowned as he turned the pages of Le Monde.
“Bad news again?” she asked, sliding into the seat opposite him and gratefully dipping her croissant into the bowl of café au lait which he had so thoughtfully ordered.
“When has there been good news?” Claude asked and sighed. “These are dangerous times. The éclaireurs must be prepared to confront the difficulties that are yet to come.”
She nodded. His inferences were veiled, but she understood his intent.
“I cannot say more,” he continued, “but you understand. The Jewish Scouts need you, Madeleine. There is work to be done.”
“I know that,” she said, her voice firm, her face flushed.
“Of course.” He lowered his eyes. “Your grandfather is no better?” he asked gently.
“He will not get better, Claude,” she said tonelessly, and he reached across the table and touched her hand.
“Be strong, Madeleine,” he said, rising and gathering up his books. “I’m sorry that I must leave. I have an early seminar.”
He struggled to find words of comfort to offer her, but it was she who found the words that eased their parting.
“Do not worry about me, Claude,” she said. “Study well. We will talk very soon. For now, au revoir.”
“Au revoir,” he repeated and hurried off.
Looking back as he turned the corner, he saw that she sat motionless at the table, staring down at her empty cup. He should not have told her to be strong. Madeleine was strong enough. He should have, instead, kissed her on both her cheeks and placed his hand tenderly upon her head. Regret slowed his steps as he mentally cursed his shyness.
Alone, Madeleine sat in luxurious silence, lost in a whirl of memories.
“Flowers, mademoiselle, flowers for Bastille Day? Special today. Red, white, and blue.”
A small boy, panniers of flowers draped across his narrow shoulders, interrupted her reverie and smiled hopefully at her.
“Yes. Of course,” she said, and reaching for her purse, she counted out two franc notes.
He handed her a large bouquet tied with a tricolored ribbon.
“And I also want to buy those beautiful lilacs,” she added and smiled as he handed her the fragra
nt purple blossoms.
Lilacs, Madeleine knew, were her grandmother’s favorite flower, and she herself favored them. She threaded a single sprig through her long, dark hair, and newly energized, she drained the last of the now-tepid coffee, mounted her bicycle, and sped to her grandparents’ apartment on the rue des Renaudes.
Lucie Dreyfus opened the heavy oaken door, her smile, as always, calm and gentle. Even at this moment of crisis, her quiet dignity had not deserted her. Her thick white hair was neatly gathered into a chignon, and she had affixed a white lace collar of her own tatting to her black dress. Madeleine noted that although Lucie’s fine-featured face was pale with fatigue, her high cheekbones were lightly rouged. She took the lilacs that Madeleine held out to her and inhaled the sweet aroma gratefully.
“They are beautiful, Madeleine,” she said. “I am glad you are here. Only a few minutes ago, your grand-père asked for you.”
“He is awake then?” Madeleine asked.
“A kind of waking sleep. His eyes open. They close. He speaks, then falls silent. But do not be frightened, Madeleine. He does not seem to be in pain.”
“I am not frightened,” Madeleine assured her.
Claude’s words drifted back to her. Dangerous times, he had said. Life, she thought sadly, was more frightening than death.
She took the vase of red, white, and blue flowers into the dimly lit sickroom where her uncle Pierre sat beside his father’s bed.
“Is he asleep?” she whispered, setting the vase down on a small table.
“Not awake. Not asleep. A fugue state, I think your father calls it.”
She nodded and sat beside him. They did not speak again although now and again their eyes met, and now and again they leaned close to the sick man as he whispered words that neither of them could discern. They looked up when Lucie entered and watched as she passed a damp cloth across her husband’s forehead, moistened his dry lips with slivers of ice, and then bent to lightly kiss his cheek.
Alfred Dreyfus opened his eyes and turned to Madeleine.
“Ma petite. Ma Madeleine.” Her name, spoken in his rasping voice, was laced with love.
The Paris Children : A Novel (2020) Page 1