The Paris Children : A Novel (2020)

by Goldreich, Gloria

  They returned to the Levy home, where Madeleine had taken control, dashing from one room to another, energetically directing her younger cousins so that the desperate packing became a game.

  “She’s so wonderful with children,” Simone said, glancing at her sister.

  “Yes. I know,” Claude agreed.

  He thought to add that he hoped that one day she would be wonderful with her own children, perhaps even their children, but he was silent. The thought had come unbidden and he banished it, angry at himself that he might think such a thing at such a time. He and Madeleine had an unspoken agreement. Even as they were aware of their growing closeness, they would not discuss the future. Planning was dangerous. Disappointment hovered in a darkening shadow.

  He smiled wistfully at Simone and joined Madeleine and her brothers as they went through their father’s medicine cabinets, laughing at the instructions on each bottle.

  “Here’s a good one,” Etienne called. “One pill every hour with a clear, hot drink. We’ll just have to tell the Germans to hold off while we brew a clear, hot drink.”

  They laughed, grateful for anything that relieved the grimness of their preparations.

  Madeleine’s parents studied ledgers, their faces tight with tension. Patients owed money to Dr. Levy, but there was no hope of collection despite their need for funds. They might be able to access their bank accounts from afar. This was not a time to worry about money. Jeanne slammed her household account book shut.

  Pierre looked up from the documents he was sorting.

  “My friend at the United States Embassy might yet be able to arrange visas for you and your family, Jeanne. Won’t you consider it?” he asked.

  She heard the plea in his voice. She and Pierre had been best friends, as well as brother and sister, from their childhood on, mutually protective of each other. It was Pierre who had calmed and reassured her when she learned that Madeleine’s hearing had been damaged.

  “Do not worry about our beautiful little Madeleine,” he had said. “She is a Dreyfus. She will have the courage to overcome whatever difficulty comes her way.”

  And he had been right. Nothing had ever proven too difficult for Madeleine. Pierre had been prescient then, but his advice was irrelevant now.

  “I cannot leave our country, our France,” Jeanne said. “Do you think our father would have left?”

  “Our father is dead. We must each decide for ourselves. I believe that I can do more to help our people, to help France, by arguing for them in the United States. American Jewish leaders have written telling me that they believe that as the son of Alfred Dreyfus, I might be able to influence President Roosevelt to at least lift the visa restrictions and admit more Jews, to join the fight against Hitler. I must follow my conscience, Jeanne,” he replied.

  “You mean you must protect your children,” she retorted.

  “As you surely will protect your own,” he said. “But be assured: I will not leave until I am sure that Maman and your family are safely settled.”

  They both turned toward Lucie, who was using a double thread to sew her wedding pearls into the cuffs of Etienne’s trousers.

  “I was never fond of these pearls,” she murmured, and Jeanne and Pierre smiled at each other in happy complicity, peace between them restored.

  Claude left, and Madeleine walked with him to the outer gate. They stood together, moonlight silvering their upturned faces as they stared at the star-spangled sky. A soft wind soughed, and the air was suffused with the scent of lilacs.

  “Nature, at least, is at peace,” Madeleine observed wistfully.

  “We too will know peace one day,” Claude responded. “You and I. Do not be afraid, Madeleine.”

  They stared at each other, locking away the words they dared not say, the gestures that they had refused to allow each other. Regret overwhelmed them, and suddenly he held her close, buried his fingers in her thick, dark hair, and with great gentleness, kissed her.

  “Are you all right, my Madeleine?” he asked.

  “Better than all right,” she replied, reading the words upon his lips.

  With his arms about her, he spoke very softly, knowing her eyes would register the words her ears might not receive.

  “When this war ends, we will go to Alsace and climb our pear tree.”

  “And pick its golden fruit,” she added.

  “And we will cook a wonderful sweet compote.”

  They smiled at their own words murmured in unison, their shared promise of hope uttered on a night of leave-taking when hopelessness held sway.

  “Á bientôt, chérie,” he said.

  “Á bientôt, mon cher.”

  He pressed a slip of paper into her hand.

  “A phone number,” he said. “Use it only to assure me that you are safe.”

  She nodded and watched him walk down the road. At the corner, he turned and waved. She smiled even as tears streaked her cheeks. She willed herself to calm and returned to where her mother had set out a pot of fragrant tea and her family was gathered around the table in a room they would never see again.

  Seven

  They left Paris in an odd convoy, each family vehicle laden with trunks and cartons, oversize valises, hampers of food, and containers of water. The Levys and Lucie Dreyfus in one car, Pierre and his family in another, their Mercier and Reinach cousins crowded into the large estate van that had, in happier times, carried them to their Alsatian country homes. They drove through the milky light of dawn, passing slowly through the familiar, prosperous arrondissements of the city, still untouched by the threat of war. But all semblance of urban order and peace vanished as the sun rose and they reached the Hôtel de Ville close to the Pletzl. The poor Jewish quarter had been assaulted by confusion and chaos.

  Rumors of the imminence of the invasion of Paris had ignited fear and triggered an explosion of desperation among the Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. They had seen their relatives, their friends, their neighbors arrested, the windows of their homes and businesses shattered, their synagogues destroyed. They had wept when their holy Torahs were burned and their books tossed onto bonfires. They had fled Hitler’s reign, had fled Germany, but they knew all too well what those Jews who had been unable to escape had suffered—the mass arrests, the humiliations, the concentration camps. Terror informed their memories; death haunted their dreams. They were, once again, racing toward survival, intent on fleeing Paris before German soldiers goose-stepped their way through the City of Light.

  Throngs of men and women rushed out of the city, their possessions crammed into clumsy burlap sacks hoisted onto their shoulders. Trunks were uneasily balanced on battered perambulators and rusted bicycles. Women carried babies; men cradled sobbing toddlers. The elderly and the ill were shuttled down the cobbled streets in wheelchairs. Householders stood in their doorways, their faces grim masks of defeat and uncertainty. Should they stay, should they leave?

  Madeleine watched a group of bearded men, wearing the long, black frock coats and the high skullcaps of the Chassidic community, prayer shawls about their bent shoulders as they walked at a leisurely pace to a small synagogue. Her father stared at them, his lips twisted in contempt.

  “They have no fear because they rely on divine protection. They are on their way to the morning service where they will pray to their God who neither hears nor cares,” he said bitterly.

  “He is our God as well, Pierre Paul,” Lucie Dreyfus countered as their car inched its way out of the city.

  He did not answer. He considered himself a proud and secular Jew, but he would not argue with Jeanne’s mother who, despite all that she had endured, had never abandoned her faith.

  “I’m hot,” Etienne complained as they at last exited the city and followed the southbound caravans of weathered trucks and ancient taxis, new cars and old, every luggage rack laden with suitcases and rucksacks.
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  Madeleine opened the window just as two motorcycles streaked by, their engines roaring, their mufflers spurting noxious fumes that caused her to choke. Still, she smiled at the sight of a small blue auto that followed them, a wheelchair and a baby carriage tied to its roof.

  “No generation left behind,” Jean Louis muttered sarcastically as he pointed at the laden vehicle.

  “We should be proud of that,” she cautioned him. “We are different from the Nazis. We care for both infants and the aged.”

  “The voice is the voice of Madeleine Levy, but the words are the words of Claude Lehmann,” Etienne teased.

  Madeleine blushed. Yes, she was quoting Claude, but she would not tell her brothers that she was happy to repeat his words, nor would she tell them that the very mention of his name comforted her. She sat back, grateful that the air cleared as they reached an open country road.

  Their small convoy halted in a small wooded glade. As they ate their long-delayed breakfast, Pierre located a news station on his car radio. They listened to the faint transmission, briefly elated at the news that England had increased its air support. That elation was swiftly deflated with the new bulletin that followed. Winston Churchill had denied Prime Minister Reynaud’s impassioned plea to send ground troops to assist in the defense of Paris.

  “Churchill has no choice,” Pierre insisted. “England needs all its fighting men. If the British are defeated, then France will surely be lost.”

  “France is still free. She will remain free,” Madeleine’s father insisted.

  Madeleine shivered. The dissent between her uncle and her father unnerved her. A divided family, like a divided people, lost its strength. She glanced at Simone, who nodded and held her small daughter close.

  A blue-winged butterfly settled on the child’s golden hair for the fraction of a second. The sisters sat very still and watched it soar beyond their view. They smiled. War might threaten, arguments might erupt, but the delicate beauty of a blue-winged butterfly endured.

  Hand in hand, they returned to the car and the arduous journey southward was resumed. Now and again, Madeleine, who was a new driver, took her father’s place at the wheel. She was grateful for his gently offered corrections of her navigation, a skill which they recognized might prove essential in the troubled times soon to come.

  “By the time we reach Toulouse, you will be an excellent driver,” he assured her, never mentioning that she braked too quickly when she failed to hear the urgent siren of an ambulance or the warning bell of a cyclist. Someone would alert her, he assured himself, unwilling to undermine her confidence by mentioning her hearing difficulty. It was minor; it was of no importance, he assured himself.

  They stayed at wayside inns but even as their journey progressed, the news worsened. Holland fell. French troops retreated from Belgium. Rommel’s army advanced. Hitler had abandoned the Chateau-Thierry-Metz-Belfort triangle as his next objective and directed his troops to Paris. The Dreyfus family stopped listening to the radio. They bought no newspapers. They took shelter in their ignorance.

  On a sun-swept day, they parked their vehicles in a meadow and gathered for the picnic that had become essential to their routine. It afforded them the illusion of normalcy. Food was still relatively easy to obtain in the countryside, and Lucie spread raw vegetables, fruit, and fragrant cheese on a worn blanket.

  Madeleine sliced the apples they had bought at a farm. She had asked for pears, but the farmer’s wife had said regretfully that pears were not yet in season.

  “No matter,” Madeleine had replied and told herself that she would have a surfeit of pears when the war ended. She and Claude would hike through Alsace, and once in Mulhouse, they would climb their tree and pluck the golden fruit, allowing the juice to run free so that they might taste it when their lips met. She smiled. Why should she deny herself the luxury of dreaming on this radiant day? Surely she was entitled to her fantasies.

  Her brothers and her younger cousins tossed a ball to one another.

  “I think it would be wise for us to listen to the news,” Pierre said reluctantly.

  Jeanne nodded and they sat side by side in the one car with a working radio as Pierre turned knobs and at last elicited a transmission. They opened the windows so that the newscaster’s voice could be heard by the others. Madeleine and Simone drew close and strained to listen as the transmission faltered and then regained strength.

  They conditioned themselves to remain unafraid of the snippets of news. The Germans, they heard, were in Dijon, but that they had known. Reims was occupied, but that too they had known. Verdun, where Pierre had fought with such courage in the Great War, was once again in jeopardy, but that too they had known.

  It was the sudden announcement that the German army was marching into Paris that caused them to cling to one another in a paroxysm of terror, to listen, frozen in disbelief, to the news. Their worst nightmares were their new reality.

  “France has fallen!” The newscaster’s voice trembled and drifted into silence.

  The airwaves went dead. Static spurted from the radio. Choked by grief, the family could not speak.

  “What is today’s date?” Simone asked.

  “Juin, Quatorze. The fourteenth day of June,” Madeleine replied.

  It was a date they would never forget.

  Transmission resumed. The newscaster continued to speak, but he stumbled over each word that he uttered. They feared that he might weep before he completed his broadcast.

  “Marshal Philippe Pétain, the deputy prime minister, speaks of forming a new government. He calls for an armistice with Germany.”

  “Never!” Pierre shouted. “What a betrayal an armistice would be. France cannot submit to the Nazi bastards. We must resist.”

  “And from where will you resist, Pierre? From the streets of New York? From the halls of Washington? Will Roosevelt hear you? Will your words save your country?” Madeleine’s father asked angrily.

  Madeleine turned from her father to her uncle.

  “Let us not quarrel,” she said quietly. “This is our precious time together. It is not a time for anger.”

  “It is a time to pray,” Lucie added. “A time to pray for France, to pray for our people and for all who suffer in this terrible war.”

  Standing between her son and daughter, Lucie took their hands in her own, and one by one, the rest of the family joined them, forming a circle bathed in the golden light of the noonday sun. With their eyes closed, silent prayers were offered, their love for each other and for their country affirmed. The future might be threatening and uncertain, but they were together, pledged to keep each other safe.

  Madeleine looked up at the cloudless sky and wondered what Claude was doing at this moment. She hoped against improbable hope that he was with Anna Hofberg on this sad day when France, the child’s promised land of refuge, had become a war-haunted nation, a haven abandoned and under siege.

  Eight

  Heavyhearted, saddened by the image of German boots thumping insolently beneath the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs Élysées, they traveled on. The roadway teemed with cars and motorcycles. Petrol was in short supply, and there were long delays as they scavenged for fuel. Lucie plucked franc notes from her bustier and handed them, damp and fragrant, to scowling farmers who agreed to sell the fuel they hoarded for their tractors at exorbitant prices.

  “Now we know that we are actually at war,” Pierre said wryly, as he passed a wad of currency to a taciturn woman who, with great reluctance, sold them eggs and cheese.

  They reached Bordeaux and found rooms in a small pensione owned by a Jewish family. Madeleine placed a call to Claude at the number she had committed to memory. The phone rang again and again, then drifted into an ominous silence. Her heart sank. Had Claude been arrested? Had he been hurt or forced to flee Paris? Then what of Anna, whom he had pledged to protect?

 
Dire possibilities crowded Madeleine’s imagination, and to dispel them, she walked through Bordeaux which had so swiftly become a fortress city. Food shops were shuttered, cafés and bistros deserted. Blackout cloths covered the windows of the elegant homes on the Grand Boulevard. The night fliers of the Luftwaffe would encounter a darkness that obscured their targets. Road signs had been painted over with lampblack in an odd attempt to deny German invaders directional assistance when they entered the city. The French Résistance had begun its work. Madeleine felt herself lost in a wasteland of war and hurried back to the pensione.

  Once again, with little hope, she dialed the number and gasped with surprise when Claude answered after the very first ring. Her heart soared as she heard him say her name.

  “Madeleine. Is it really you?”

  “Claude. Claude.”

  She smiled and listened to the swift intake of his breath, his sigh of relief, startled that she heard them with such clarity. It had long bemused her that she found phone conversations easily audible. Something to do with brain wiring and nerve endings, the soft-spoken audiologist had explained, but she could not remember his words. It was enough that she could hear Claude so clearly.

  “Was the journey difficult? Is everyone all right? And your uncle Pierre. Is he safe? Here in Paris, we have been concerned about him.”

  “We are all well. But why are you so worried about my uncle?”

  Claude paused and then lowered his voice, as though fearful that their conversation might be monitored.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that your uncle was on the board of many Jewish organizations, including the Éclaireurs Israélites, the Jewish Scouts. He kept his files of such organizations in his home. Before he left for the south with your family, he gave me the key to his flat on the rue l’Alboni so that I would have access to the éclaireurs materials. There were rosters of names, meeting places, financial records. It was important that such confidential information not fall into the hands of the Nazis.