A sudden knock at the door startled him. He hesitated. His heart pounded. Unexpected visitors were too often the bearers of bad news. He stood very still, paralyzed by fear, cursing his own cowardice. Another knock sounded, stronger, insistent. He knew he could delay no longer. He opened the door, braced to confront whatever disaster awaited him.
Madeleine, her face blanched, fell into his arms.
He held her close, relief coursing through him, his heart surging.
“I was so worried,” he said. “I was mad with worry. I thought you were lost to me, lost before I had even claimed you.”
The unmonitored words rushed forth in a torrent. He kissed her, his cheek pressed against hers, their tears comingling.
She wept in mute acceptance of his words, words that reflected her own thoughts. Feelings that had remained too long concealed had at last emerged. He had given voice to all that she herself wanted to say.
He took her hand and led her into the darkened room. Madeleine lit the lamp, and they sat side by side on the battered sofa in a circlet of golden light. She reached out and touched the amber bowl filled to the brim with the shimmering crimson cherries.
“How beautiful,” she said. “I sometimes forget that there is still beauty in our world.”
She remembered the forsythia, the beautiful flowers she had thought would bring a smile to Anna Hofberg’s face, and sighed to think that even that small gift of beauty had been lost to the child. Leaning into Claude’s embrace, she recounted the events of the day, the tragedy of the Gentilly rafle, the hazardous journey to Paris, and then their journey to the safe house on the Left Bank.
“I’m sorry to have worried you,” she apologized. “But time was of the essence. The children had to be taken care of. I myself was never in any real danger. The one gendarme who stopped me only wanted a match. But I am exhausted and I am famished.”
He smiled.
“That is a problem easily solved. We will go out and have a wonderful meal. You are safe. We are together. We must celebrate.”
“And how does one celebrate in occupied Paris?” she asked, plucking a cherry from the bowl and allowing its sweet juice to run down her chin.
Gently, he wiped it away.
“We will have dinner at that bistro you like on the Champs-Élysées.”
“A very good idea,” she agreed.
A few scant hours of happiness would offer compensation for the long and terrible day. They would pretend that they were an ordinary young couple enjoying a spring evening in the city of love. They had earned the happy pretense. Claude shrugged into his jacket, and she was dismayed to see the yellow felt Jewish star sewn onto the pocket.
“I now obey the edict of our German friends,” he said wryly. “Résistance orders. We cannot risk arrest.”
She nodded, but her own yellow star remained in her purse.
Hand in hand they walked slowly down the hushed city streets. Blackout shades hung at every window. The headlights of the few cars that passed them were covered with lampblack, the streetlamps painted blue. Passersby spoke in hushed tones and walked too swiftly. A miasma of fear hovered over the dark and silent city.
They reached the bistro and stood hesitantly in the doorway. Almost immediately they were aware of the cold stares and the unsmiling faces of the other diners that turned toward them, all staring openly at Claude’s yellow star.
Madeleine smiled at Maurice, the head waiter, who had always been solicitous with her family. Invariably, when she and her grandfather entered, he had led them to the choicest table, never failing to crown her usual chocolat with a double dollop of whipped cream.
“Bonsoir, Maurice,” she said, but he offered neither recognition nor a greeting. He pointed them indifferently to a table in a darkened corner next to the water closet.
Two Gestapo officers seated nearby leered at them and pressed their fingers to their noses. The overdressed Frenchwomen who sat beside them giggled maliciously. Madeleine realized that the false amity of the early days of the German occupation, of la guerre faux, the false war, had vanished. The real war had begun. Enmity was in the air.
“Soon Jews will not be allowed in bistros,” Claude muttered.
“It is of no importance,” Madeleine said. “Let’s leave.”
Hostile glances followed them as they exited, weaving their way past tables shared by German officers and very young demoiselles suggestively dressed. Their laugher shrilled and their voices were so loud that Madeleine had no difficulty hearing them.
“Juden!”
“Juives.”
She ignored them, although her heart pounded. She held her head high, walked slowly, smiled, and touched Claude’s yellow star as though it were a valued adornment.
“You see now that Paris has changed. More rapidly than I had realized,” Claude said sadly as they made their way toward the river. “What happened in Gentilly, rafles and deportations, is happening here in the heart of the city. You must leave the Occupied Zone and return to Toulouse. An assignment awaits you there.”
She asked no questions and they walked on, savoring the quiet of the evening, striving to reclaim the joy of their togetherness.
They purchased crepes from a vendor’s cart and nibbled at them as they made their way to the Pont de l’Alma, their favorite of all the bridges of Paris. Leaning over the balustrade, as rays of moonlight drifted across the dark water of the river, Claude handed her a cluster of the cherries he had plucked from the amber bowl as they left his room.
“Dessert,” he said. “The first fruits of the season. I remembered how you love cherries.”
He would not tell her of the fear that had impelled their purchase. She smiled and popped a plump fruit into her mouth, savoring the taste of spring upon her tongue. She tossed the pit into the silver-spangled river and turned to him.
“But I must remain in Paris. There is my work in Gentilly. My obligations to les éclaireurs. I belong in Paris.”
And I belong with you, she thought but dared not speak the words.
He shook his head.
“You have done wonders in Gentilly. Your program will run smoothly, and we have others in place who will continue it. But the Résistance feels that you will be even more useful in Toulouse. We are launching a major rescue operation there, and you have been selected to lead it. Your profession provides you with excellent cover, excellent entry. A position as a senior social worker has been arranged for you in the Secours National, the government social service network.”
“The Secours National?” Madeleine asked indignantly. “I will not work for such a treacherous agency. It calls itself a welfare organization for the French State, but we know that it is funded by the Vichy government. It uses money stolen from liquidated Jewish property, money stolen from my own family. Do you expect me to work for Pétain and his Vichy Nazis?”
Her eyes were ablaze with fury, her cheeks almost as red as the cherries she clutched. He thought that she had never looked more beautiful, and he wished he could tell her so. But this was not the moment. There were more important things to be said, vital plans to be shared. He sighed.
“Listen carefully, Madeleine,” he said with a calm he did not feel. “You will not be working for Pétain and Vichy. You will not even be working as Madeleine Levy. You will be leading other scouts in the Résistance. Our people have infiltrated the Secours, and our secret operatives are safe. Social workers are not suspect. As a Secours employee with Vichy documents and clearance, you will have safe passage throughout the south. Escape routes from France are being planned in the Unoccupied Zone. Maps, forged papers, currency—all must be transmitted. You will be a courier, unlikely to be challenged. You will be able to travel from one Résistance cell to another.”
Madeleine trembled.
“It sounds a great deal more dangerous than my work in Gentilly,” she said.
“But didn’t you just say that you are not afraid of danger?” he teased and popped a cherry into her mouth.
“I did,” she agreed. “I am not afraid of danger but…”
She hesitated.
“But what?” he asked gently.
“I am afraid of not seeing you. I am afraid of our lives being at a distance from each other.”
She had the courage, he realized, to say the words he denied himself.
“But we are never really separated, are we, my brave Madeleine?” he murmured.
He held her close and kissed her very gently, tasting the salt of her tears as it mingled with the sweet red juice that stained her lips. His own eyes overflowed. He wept with relief that she was safe and his arms. He wept with grief that they would soon be apart.
She lifted a finger to his cheek and wiped away a tear. She understood the source of his sorrow and matched it with her own.
“We are always together in mind and heart. And yes, one day we will be truly together always. We are young. We have time,” she whispered.
I will fight my fear, she told herself.
“World enough and time,” he agreed, but she had turned away. She did not hear him and could not see his lips.
They walked on in silence.
“I do not deny that there will be danger,” he said.
“Yes. I worry about the danger. But mostly I worry that I will not have courage enough to meet the challenge,” she replied, rewarding his honesty with her own.
“You will,” he said firmly. “You are Alfred Dreyfus’s granddaughter.”
“Yes. I will try.”
A new determination seized her. She would claim the courage that would sustain her. She would battle the fear that weighed upon her heart. Oh, she would try. Of course, she would try.
“Then you agree to go to Toulouse?” he asked quietly.
“You know that I will,” she replied. “You know that I will do anything you ask.” She placed her trembling fingers upon his lips so that they would capture the words he next spoke.
“Je t’aime,” he said.
There was no need for her to reply. Her heart soared. Joy had surprised her at the end of a day wreathed in sadness.
Toulouse
Eighteen
The very next morning, Claude requisitioned a battered Citroën from the Résistance’s clandestine armada of vehicles, and he and Madeleine drove to the safe house on the Left Bank where Anna Hofberg awaited them. They looked away as Anna and her brothers parted, their faces wet with tears, their voices coarsened by sorrow. They spoke softly of their parents so newly vanished from their lives. They spoke with subdued hope of their future. Samuel and David embraced Anna.
“Palestine,” they whispered. “We will be together in Palestine.”
“Palestine,” she repeated, struggling to contain her sobs, her narrow shoulders quivering.
Madeleine tried to find words of comfort but realized at last that all she might offer was her own embrace. Anna slept in her arms throughout the journey to Toulouse, where the entire Levy family welcomed them.
Madeleine was overjoyed to greet Simone, now returned from Grenoble. The Résistance leadership had asked her to train a select team of forgers in Toulouse, using Adolfo Kaminsky’s unique methods. Documents establishing false identities were urgently needed as German reprisals intensified. It was said that Kaminsky himself often worked through the night. There were nights, Simone confided to Madeleine, that she herself worked until daybreak.
The apartment on the rue de la Dalbade was a hive of Résistance activity. In the small kitchen, forged passports were piled up next to sacks of potatoes; identity cards, the ink still wet and shining, shared counter space with newly baked baguettes. The salon, a frequent gathering place for regional underground fighters, was now and again transformed into a clandestine clinic where Pierre Paul and Jean Louis Levy, father and son, tended to ill and wounded. Résistants.
Jeanne spent hours in the bedroom storage area where she sorted through the donations of warm outer clothing and sturdy footwear for children. Given the freezing temperatures of the mountain passes of the Pyrenees during the winter months, Jeanne wanted to be certain that each small trekker was protected. She maintained a careful and orderly inventory, cartons labeled, every item recorded in the ledgers she kept beneath her bed.
Anoraks. Ten children’s. Twelve adult, she wrote.
Hiking boots. Four size six. Two size eight. Six size twelve.
There were columns for sweaters, for mittens, for heavy socks. She kept careful count, ever aware that the clothing she collected and dispensed might save young lives.
Madeleine was greeted with great enthusiasm by the concierge of the building, Madame Leonie, a dour elderly widow who had enlisted in the Résistance on the very first day of the German Occupation.
“My husband did not die in 1917 so that les Boches could march into France in yet another terrible war they incited,” she said grimly.
Claude was surprised and pleased that his close friend Serge Perl, a renowned Résistance leader now in charge of Résistance units in Toulouse, was a guest of the Levys and a frequent visitor.
“Un fils de maison,” Jeanne whispered. “A son of our household.”
Craggy featured, tall, and muscular, Serge, like many men of powerful build, moved with leonine grace. His voice was gruff, but his laughter was contagious. His long-lashed gray eyes softened when he looked at Simone.
Madeleine was quick to notice that her sister blushed and smiled whenever Serge entered the room. Simone was careful to reserve a place for him next to her when he joined the family for a meal. He, in turn, sprang to his feet and accompanied her when she took her small daughter for a walk.
“Now with Madeleine and Simone home, we Levys are the four musketeers,” Etienne proclaimed.
“Can’t I be a musketeer also?” small Anna asked and then frowned. “What is a musketeer?” she asked.
They all laughed as Jean Claude offered her a garbled and wholly inaccurate reply and laughed again as they assured her that four musketeers had now become five.
Madeleine winked at her.
Listen, she wanted to say. This is what laughter sounds like. You must not forget how to laugh.
It was bad enough, she thought, that Anna had lost her family, that the war had robbed her of innocence. She should not, would not, be deprived of the legacy of laughter.
And Anna, ever resilient, did laugh and planted a very wet kiss on Madeleine’s cheek.
“I am so happy to be a musketeer, whatever that is,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are all one family,” Madeleine replied, and Claude smiled at her.
“The day will come,” he told her that evening as they walked along the banks of the Garonne River, “when we will truly be one family.”
“Soon. Let that day come soon,” she said and clutched his hand.
The next day he returned to Paris and her new life in Toulouse began.
* * *
Her masquerade was launched, her costume the dark suit and white blouse deemed suitable for a social worker on the Vichy payroll. She wore her thick, dark hair twisted into a tightly wound chignon. Following instructions, she met with officials of the Secours National and pledged her allegiance to the benevolent government of Márechal Pétain. She herself was surprised by how effortlessly she slipped into the role of double agent. She was a Résistance fighter who, with great efficiency, followed the instructions of her Vichy superiors.
As a senior qualified social worker, she was charged with the responsibility of seeing to the welfare of indigent children. She supervised all requisitions, daringly adding requests to routine submissions. She demanded supplies, appending explanations for the additions, none of which was ever questioned.
She insisted that a dozen pairs of boots be issued, explaining that the children in her district walked long distances to school and the boots would prevent damage to their feet which might incur medical expenses. The boots were issued and immediately went into Jeanne Levy’s inventory for the children making their way to freedom across the forbidding Pyrenees.
Madeleine’s brother Jean Louis submitted a list of medical supplies which she added to her requisitions, explaining to her Vichy masters that having such supplies in local clinics meant fewer visits to hospitals and thus saved money. She was congratulated on her attention to economy, and the Vichy bureaucrats happily pocketed the money ostensibly saved. The salves, pills, and bandages were bundled into the rucksacks of the Spanish guides and the convoyeuses, the Éclaireur escorts who accompanied each group of children.
She invented a bevy of Suzannes and Maurices, Brigittes and Andrés and inserted their names on the rosters of orphans in need of assistance. Simone, in turn, forged identity cards, permits, ration stamps, and other documents for them. A score of vulnerable, undocumented Jewish children were suddenly under the protection of the Vichy regime itself.
The Toulouse forgers also created ration cards, using Kaminsky’s unique dyes, and cheerfully dispensed them to their Résistance comrades. The multicolored coupons authorized single liters of wine, renewable every ten days, packets of Gauloises and pouches of tobacco, all of which were consumed at impromptu nocturnal parties. They did not apologize for their happy gatherings. These were, after all, their salad years, the days of their youth. They would not allow the Germans to rob them of their brief, too brief, hours of gaiety. Why should they not drink a glass of wine, smoke a cigarette, and dance in each other’s arms? Soon, very soon, all laughter would be stilled. They could not dance across the frozen terrain of mountain trails.
The Paris Children : A Novel (2020) Page 14