The Paris Children : A Novel (2020)

by Goldreich, Gloria

  Each day Madeleine grew more confident. She learned quickly, handling the matérielle with a deftness that surprised her. When the course was completed, she and Serge thanked the pale Englishman. He smiled bitterly.

  “You have both done well. Consider yourselves accomplished saboteurs,” he said. “Au revoir. Bonne chance.”

  He grasped Serge’s hand and kissed Madeleine on both her cheeks.

  “A strange graduation ceremony,” she murmured to Serge as they began the journey back to Toulouse.

  “All will be well,” he assured her.

  But all was far from well. Simone greeted them with her eyes red rimmed, her hands trembling as she handed Serge a flimsy copy of Le Ferro, a collaborationist tabloid.

  He recoiled from the damning headline. In bold type and capitalized letters, it screamed out Madeleine’s name. He read it and solemnly, reluctantly, handed it to Madeleine. She read it and swayed dangerously, overcome with faintness. She clutched her sister’s outstretched hand. She had been betrayed, her identity revealed. The newspaper article placed her in the gravest of danger with the revelation that she was not Madeleine Dupuy, a practicing Christian and a senior social worker in the employ of the Vichy-controlled Secours National, but that she was, in fact, Madeleine Levy, a Jew, a Résistante, an Éclaireur leader. As Madeleine Dupuy, she had been protected from suspicion and arrest. That protection was now forfeit. It was now public knowledge that she was a Jew and a Résistante, an Éclaireur leader.

  She read on. The crude reportage was laced with anti-Semitic taunts and Fascist-inspired hatred.

  The Jewess who dares not speak her name… She who calls herself Mademoiselle Madeleine but she is Levy—the Jewess Levi—a granddaughter of that infamous traitor Alfred Dreyfus, the screed read.

  “Our grandfather is resurrected,” Simone said bitterly, and she handed Serge yet another broadsheet known for its crude Fascist orientation. He read it aloud.

  “She calls herself Dupuy but she is Levy—the grand pontiff of the Secours National. Had you missed that point, good Christians? Sweep her out! Sweep her out!”

  He snorted his derision.

  “Full of misspellings,” he said. “Grand pontiff indeed. What does that even mean?”

  Madeleine shrugged. Its meaning was a matter of indifference to her. Her faintness passed, replaced by relief and, oddly, leaving her free of fear. From the very onset of her elaborate masquerade, she had known that she was surviving on sheer luck, that inevitably her true identity would be revealed. Anyone might have betrayed her. The Vichy bureaucrat who had sought sexual favors, the subordinate who had resented her seniority, the clerk whose incompetence she had cited.

  She had played her part as best she could but uncertainty had haunted her every hour, every day. Now, at last, she could reclaim her own persona and emerge as Madeleine Levy, a proud Frenchwoman, a proud Jew. Her new vulnerability was her new strength.

  “All right. The masquerade is over,” she said quietly. “How do we proceed?”

  “Much as before,” Serge replied. “Simone and I are relatively safe. Vichy intelligence has always known that we are Jewish, but they have not yet decided to identify us as members of the Résistance although they watch us carefully. Simone’s pregnancy has, in fact, been an excellent cover. They assume, I suppose, that no couple active in the Résistance, living in fear, would bring a child into the world.”

  “A pity that I did not become pregnant,” Madeleine said and, despite themselves, they laughed. “So what do I do? How do I protect myself?”

  “We always knew this might happen,” Serge replied, “and we are prepared. You will go underground. We have safe houses throughout Toulouse and in the countryside. In Villefranche and Castres. Simone will prepare a set of documents—a new carte d’identité, new ration cards, a driver’s license.”

  He spoke calmly, but his hand trembled as he held a match to the flimsy copy of Le Ferro, reducing it to ashes, willing it out of existence.

  “The new documents are already prepared,” Simone said.

  “And our parents? And Anna?” Madeleine asked. “If my identity is known, so is theirs.”

  “They have already left Toulouse. They are farther south, in the country, staying with a farmer whom I know we can trust. I arranged that while you and Serge were in Lyon. I had to work quickly. When you were unmasked, so were they. It would be known that Maman’s father was Alfred Dreyfus and that Dr. Dupuy, he who treats the Gestapo and Vichy bureaucrats, is actually Dr. Levy. In this city of collaborators and double agents, their lives would be in danger,” Simone said.

  Madeleine marveled that Simone had so swiftly and competently organized their parents’ and Anna’s escape.

  “Our work together will go on. All that we learned in Lyon will be put to use,” Serge assured her cryptically.

  They could not speak, even to Simone, of what they had learned of what they would undertake, but Simone intuited that her sister and her husband had become skilled mechanics of death. She turned first to Serge and then to Madeleine.

  “I understand that you must do what must be done,” she said. “Whatever that might be.”

  Within hours, Serge escorted Madeleine to a safe house on the outskirts of the city. She carried with her only a hastily packed rucksack of clothing and the packet of Simone’s expertly forged documents that validated her new identity.

  She was welcomed by Edith and Roselle, veteran Résistantes who had been in her Paris éclaireurs troop. They embraced her, urged her to eat the food they had managed to prepare, and showed her the small cot hidden behind the false front of an improvised wall where she would sleep when she stayed with them.

  “Not every night,” Edith said. “There are other safe houses that will shelter you. We must be careful.”

  “I know,” Madeleine said wearily.

  The next morning she sat very still as Roselle cut her long, dark hair and then, using a noxious compound, dyed it blond.

  “The Milice will be looking for a dark-haired woman,” Roselle said. “This will deceive them.”

  “Hopefully,” Madeleine agreed.

  She stared at her new self in a mirror.

  “Who are you?” she asked her reflection, struggling to recognize the young woman whose sleek helmet of corn-colored hair hugged her head. Would Claude recognize her? Did she recognize herself?

  She shook her head, thanked Roselle, and dressed quickly. Discarding her own simple cotton dress, she shrugged into the emerald-green, close-fitting satin blouse and the very short black skirt that Edith handed her. Roselle hung a silver cross around her neck. It dangled on a flimsy chain that fell to the cleavage between her barely concealed breasts.

  She shuffled through the documents Simone had prepared and memorized her new identity.

  “Say bonjour to Denise Delacroix, nursemaid and aspiring actress,” she told her friends. “Let us hope that her chances of survival are better than those of Madeleine Levy.”

  “You will be fine,” Edith assured her even as she and Roselle exchanged worried glances. “Just be very careful, Mademoiselle Delacroix.”

  “I will try,” Madeleine said. “Certainly I will try.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Her new life began. She was constantly on the move, constantly on guard. She avoided all contact with her former colleagues at Secours National and visited Simone very late in the evening, slinking through streets she had once walked fearlessly. She slept in a different bed every night and scurried through darkened lanes and unfamiliar roads for her meetings with Serge and one or another of the newly trained Résistance saboteurs who were her comrades in arms. Like them, she was daring. Like them, she was cautious.

  Twice in one week their explosives, set to timed detonators, exploded beneath German ammunition trucks. Madeleine raced away in one direction, Serge in another, disappearing just as Gestap
o investigators reached the scene.

  She sauntered down the Place Saint-Sernin and was stopped by Milice officers. She smiled at them, passing her tongue across lips reddened with a thick coating of scarlet lipstick, her eyelashes fluttering flirtatiously. Her heart beat rapidly, but her hands were steady as she handed them her carte d’identité and affirmed that she was indeed Denise Delacroix, an unemployed actress, now working as a nursemaid for the children of a ranking Gestapo officer.

  “You may call him, but he will not appreciate being bothered,” she said. “He is not very pleasant when he is irritated.”

  It was a story they accepted without question and one which she told with surprising ease.

  On another day, after dashing from the scene of the explosion, she approached a Garde Française Jeune patrol to report that she had seen a group of Résistantes running from the scene toward the railway station.

  “Merci, mademoiselle,” the youths shouted and gave chase as she walked calmly on.

  After each encounter, each near escape, she congratulated herself on her good fortune. She was safe and she would stay safe because one day she would live a life blessed with love and serenity.

  “Claude, I am waiting,” she murmured each night as she struggled toward evasive sleep on a makeshift bed in one unfamiliar refuge or another.

  Always, the very utterance of his name comforted her.

  “Your friend Claude Lehmann is safe,” Jean Moulin had said.

  “Claude, stay safe,” she commanded in a whisper, although she could no longer hear even the enhanced sound of her own voice. Her deafness, she knew, was proceeding into profundity.

  The last days of June were even warmer than usual. Daringly, despite the danger, Madeleine and Simone visited Lucie Dreyfus, carrying with them a basket of plump scarlet cherries that concealed the Résistance journals inaccessible in Valence. The Vichy police had deemed that possession of such newspapers was a criminal act and would be severely punished.

  “The absurdity of it,” Madeleine said angrily. “The Nazis think that reading a newspaper is a crime.”

  Simone grimaced.

  “Hardly the worst of their sins,” she said.

  Lucie was delighted with their visit, with the cherries and the newspapers. She led them to the walled garden and they sat on low chaises, grateful for the respite of a pleasant, sun-bright afternoon. Every scavenged hour of peace was precious, given the dangerous present and the precarious future. Madeleine stared down at the poppies, lupines, and daisies that stubbornly thrust their way earthward through the blue and gray flagstones that lined the garden path. The bright blossoms were tenacious as they fought their way into life. She plucked a blue-petaled lupine and smiled. The insistent flowers triggered thoughts of the children in her troop.

  The Jewish youngsters were death haunted but life loving. Like the persistent flowers, they lifted their pale faces to the radiant skies and chased each other in joyful play. Their laughter radiated hope. She pressed the blossom to her cheek, taking comfort from its warmth.

  Lucie turned to her granddaughters.

  “Do not be frightened,” she said serenely. “We are in the hands of God.”

  She touched Simone’s abdomen, and at the lightness of her touch, the unborn infant moved ever so slightly.

  “Ah, my great-grandchild is welcoming me,” she said and Simone and Madeleine laughed. This was a moment they would remember.

  Lucie turned the pages of Liberacion, the leading Résistance newspaper.

  “Not very much news,” she commented. “No bombings. Is the Résistance growing weary?”

  “A strategic pause, Grand-mère,” Madeleine said as she popped a cherry into her mouth.

  She could not tell Lucie that she and Serge had decided on a brief suspension of the sabotage program as they readied themselves for the attack on the bridges. Jean Moulin’s advice informed their actions. A pause in all sabotage activities would lull their enemies into a false sense of security and offer them a modicum of protection, he had suggested. Madeleine banished all thoughts of future actions and leaned forward so that the sunlight might brush her face. One day, she thought, she and Claude would sit quietly in a circlet of brightness. One day.

  But when would that day come? When, when? Perhaps never.

  She shivered, shamed by the pessimism of her own thoughts, angry at herself, angry at the dangers of her days and the loneliness of her nights. Still, she summoned a smile as she and Simone prepared to leave, each of them kissing Lucie on her withered cheek and promising to visit again soon. They parted at the gateway to the convent, and Madeleine went on alone to meet with Serge at a safe house on the road to Castres. She dreamed that night that she and Claude followed a ribbon of sunlight as they strolled down an unfamiliar path.

  * * *

  The Gestapo, reacting to the random acts of sabotage, announced what they called “a vast movement of repression,” and the Résistance leaders swiftly changed their tactics.

  “Moulin is right. Our inaction will catch them off guard,” Serge assured Madeleine. “The Gestapo and their Milice collaborators will assume that they have at last frightened us into submission. We will resume operations when they feel confident that they are safe, that their so-called repression has frightened us into suspending acts of sabotage. We must wait for word from Jean Moulin. The order to attack the Ponts Jumeaux must come from him.”

  “I agree,” she said. “But the collaborators seem to be gaining strength. Did you read the editorial in today’s issue of La Dépêche?”

  “I read it. Imagine a Frenchman, once a respected journalist, writing that the actions of the Vichy police should be carried forward with vigor. That bastard. That filthy Pétainist. ‘The actions of the police,’ indeed.” Serge’s voice quivered with anger.

  “He meant of course ‘the actions of the Gestapo.’ Vichy, the Milice, the Garde Française Jeune, they are all one and the same. Fascists all. France may be the only nation in Europe to be complicit in its own occupation,” she said.

  “You go too far, Madeleine,” he replied reprovingly. “Not all of France is complicit. There are de Gaulle, the Free French, the Résistance. Think of the mayor of Annemasse who arranged for a group of Jewish children to slip through a barbed-wire fence to safety in Switzerland. Like him, we will fight on against the occupation, against the Nazis. But why has there been no word from Moulin?”

  He peered through the grimy window of the safe house, as though willing Jean Moulin to stride up the rutted pathway.

  “Serge, go home. Simone is waiting for you. Jean Moulin will contact us when the time is right,” Madeleine asserted reassuringly, despite her own fears and uncertainty.

  But day after day passed, and Jean Moulin did not contact them. Nor was there any word from Résistance leaders in Paris and Lyon. All coded transmissions had ceased. No couriers arrived. The Résistants of Toulouse felt the chill of abandonment.

  During the last week of June, on a night when Madeleine daringly took refuge in Simone’s apartment, a haggard Résistance courier stole in through a window at midnight.

  Pale and distraught, seated rigidly on a straight-backed chair and clutching a mug of chicory coffee that Simone pressed upon him, he told them that Jean Moulin and eight key leaders of the Unified Résistance had been secretly arrested in Lyon ten days earlier.

  “We were betrayed,” he gasped. “There are double agents everywhere. Moulin was delivered to Klaus Barbie.”

  “Klaus Barbie?” They repeated the dread name in unison, their voices faint.

  Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief in Lyon, was notorious, his cruelty unmatched, his torture methods barbaric. It was said that any prisoner subjected to his inhuman interrogations inevitably revealed whatever information he demanded.

  “We are lost,” Serge said despairingly. “Jean Moulin knew everything about our operations
in Toulouse. He surely revealed all our details to Barbie.”

  “He revealed nothing,” the courier insisted angrily. “Not Jean Moulin. He was a Résistant to the very end, choosing death over betrayal. We know for a fact that he was cruelly tortured and that he died in Barbie’s dungeon without answering a single question. You are safe, mes amis. But our comrade Jean Moulin is dead.”

  A tear trickled down his cheek. He closed his eyes, and still seated so rigidly on that straight-backed chair, he fell asleep, the coffee cup falling from his hand and shattering on the hardwood floor.

  Simone covered him with a blanket. Not daring to light a lamp, they sat around the table in the darkness and discussed their options.

  “Actually, there is only one option,” Serge said at last. “We remain the Jewish Union for Resistance and Support. We continue our program of sabotage. We have the names of all Moulin’s contacts, the suppliers of matérielle, men and women who will assist us when we target the bridges.”

  “But, Serge, what of the children? We are pledged to rescue one last group,” Madeleine asked. “Shouldn’t they be our priority?”

  The children were, of course, her priority. Her promises to Anna and her small troop of brave and hopeful youngsters were sacrosanct.

  Serge nodded.

  “Of course the children must be rescued, but that will be possible only if the damn Fascists are in disarray. We must throw the bastards into confusion, explode their fortresses, destroy their confidence. If the Milice and the Gestapo are in full operation, if the convoys of death continue to cross the Ponts Jumeaux, our own position is vulnerable. They will have the manpower to police our escape routes. But with the destruction of the bridges, they will be disorganized, frightened, their focus diverted. And then we can proceed with our plan to guide the children across the Pyrenees to safety. That was Moulin’s blueprint, and it must be ours,” he said firmly.

  “Yes. Of course,” she agreed reluctantly.

  It was, she supposed, what Claude himself would advise. She wondered if the courier from Lyon, now snoring so gently, knew anything about Claude, but she knew that she could not ask him.