The Paris Children : A Novel (2020)

by Goldreich, Gloria

  “Before the summer ends,” she repeated.

  She would count the days and bless each passing hour because soon, very soon, Claude would make his way back to her.

  The sky darkened. Rain threatened. The Dreyfus summer picnic was over. Regretfully, they exchanged embraces. Kisses dampened their cheeks, but their eyes were dry.

  “Au revoir,” they murmured. “Adieu. Shalom.”

  Lucie whispered a prayer, and although they did not understand the Hebrew, they bent their heads and said “amen” in unison. Messages would be sent. They would meet again. Of course they would.

  Pierre Paul, Jeanne, and Anna climbed into his battered Citroën, the back seat crammed with his precious surgical equipment and his ever-shrinking supply of drugs. The Nazi occupiers had commandeered all medical supplies. Pharmaceutical warehouses had been emptied, their contents shipped to Berlin. Medicines were now more valuable than gold, bandages and disinfectants more precious than diamonds. Pierre Paul rummaged in the back seat and beckoned to Madeleine. He handed her a package wrapped in newspaper and secured with rough twine.

  “Morphine,” he said tersely. “For Simone. She may need it when she goes into labor. I did not want to frighten her, but when I examined her, I saw that the baby is badly positioned. If there is no shift, the birth may be a breech and delivery will be very painful. I will be too far away to help her.”

  Sorrow and regret limned his every word. He was a physician, a father, unable to relieve his daughter’s pain.

  “I understand,” Madeleine assured him. “You must not worry. Our good friend and neighbor Hélène is an experienced midwife. She will administer the morphine if it is needed. And you must always remember that our Simone is very strong.”

  “Yes. She is strong. Both my daughters are strong,” he said and held her close.

  Madeleine clutched the parcel and struggled to believe her own words. Yes, Simone was strong but even her strength had its limits. Madeleine recalled assisting her father with a breech delivery many years ago in an emergency situation. Although that young woman had survived, Madeleine knew that breech births often threatened the lives of both mother and infant. She shuddered to think of her sister’s vulnerability as she thrust the precious parcel of morphine deep into her rucksack. She sat beside Simone, gripping her sister’s hand as they drove back to Toulouse.

  At the approach to the Canal du Midi, the sun began its slow descent, casting the melancholy pastel shades of a late-summer sunset across the still waters. A vagrant wind brushed Madeleine’s face, and she felt the first welcoming chill of autumn. Summer’s end. Claude’s arrival. She smiled and stared into the slowly gathering darkness.

  Thirty-One

  Despite her frenetic and exhausting activities, her daily races from clandestine meetings with Résistance leaders to stealthy visits with the hidden children in her care, all of which drained her energy and left her weak with fatigue, Madeleine was haunted by insomnia. She lay awake hour after hour, tossing and turning on the narrow cots concealed behind the false walls of one safe house or another. A profusion of anxieties intruded on her nocturnal thoughts. Simone. Claude. Anna. Her parents. Her brothers. Each precious name triggered an explosion of fear and denied her any possibility of sleep.

  As the Gestapo tightened its stranglehold on Paris and imprisoned cadres of Résistance fighters, she grew more and more concerned for her brothers. Dark imaginings teased and mocked her during the long hours of her very long nights.

  She struggled to calm herself with reassuring news, the optimistic assessments of the battles being waged. It was true that the Allies were on the offensive. Berlin was being bombarded, and more than once, she had seen the lights of low-flying RAF planes winging their way across the Channel to home bases in England. Victory was on the horizon, she told herself, and with victory there would be peace.

  “Blessed peace,” she whispered into the darkness. She closed her eyes, but sleep did not come.

  Unable to rest, there were nights when she left her bed, dressed in dark clothing, and cycled down the dark and deserted streets into starlit rural regions, following roughhewn paths illuminated only by shafts of silver moonlight. Now and again, she saw the lights of planes streaking across the sky in nocturnal sorties.

  “Bonne chance,” she called to the Royal Air Force pilots as they flew westward. They would need whatever luck could be mustered. She knew that three hundred RAF airmen had been killed and almost as many taken prisoner.

  One star-streaked night, again beset by sleeplessness, she cycled deep into the countryside, her eyes lifted skyward as she pedaled. Hypnotized by the beauty of the sky, she searched out the constellations whose names her grandfather had taught her so many years ago.

  “Ursa Minor. Ursa Major,” she said aloud. “Ah, Cassiopeia.”

  She craned her neck.

  “But where is my Andromeda?”

  It was always Andromeda that she had greeted with enthusiasm, in love with the myth of Perseus’s faithful wife, in love with the musical cadence of the name.

  “Andromeda,” she repeated as she cycled on.

  She swiveled eastward, craning her neck, but it was not Andromeda that she saw. Searching the heavens, her gaze was, instead, riveted on the slow, almost balletic descent of a parachute. The argentine moonlight emphasized the stark whiteness of the chute’s silken swell as it swayed gently in a vagrant breeze. She discerned a figure dangling from its cords, dark suited and motionless. It was a pilot, she realized, trained to submit to the choreography of the wind.

  Madeleine watched intently as the plummeting parachute cleared a copse of young elm trees and barely avoided a narrow rivulet to fall to earth only meters from where she stood. The pilot lay supine and inert on the tall grass, and she thought for a brief and terrible moment that he might be dead. She watched intently and, at last, saw him move, slowly, almost imperceptibly. With a sudden spurt of strength, his arms reached up, and he struggled to release himself from the restraining straps.

  She hesitated. She was not close enough to see his uniform, to read whatever insignias might be on his epaulettes. It was possible that he was German or Italian. Axis planes had been spotted flying over Toulouse, but that had not happened recently. It was far more likely that he was English or American. She moved quickly and rushed toward him. His nationality did not matter. He was a man, a human being, alone and perhaps wounded, in a deserted meadow in the dead of night, in need of help. She reached into her pocket for the small torch she always carried, and clutching it tightly, she knelt beside him and trained her light on him. She saw, with relief, that he wore the brown flying helmet of the Royal Air Force. She leaned closer so that she might see his face and hear him when he spoke.

  He was a tall man, ruddy skinned, his blue eyes bright. He moved one leg slightly, then the other, one arm and the other, and smiled as though surprised to note that his limbs were undamaged.

  “Who are you?” she asked, grateful for the basic English she had been taught at the Lycée Molière.

  “I suppose it’s all right to tell you,” he said. “I’m Staff Sergeant Claude Sharple of Penzance, the most beautiful town in England’s most beautiful county, Cornwall. And who are you, and where am I?”

  Leaning on one elbow, he grinned at her and she smiled in return. That his name was Claude seemed to her a magical sign of a kind. A foolish thought, she knew, but she claimed it as comfort.

  “I am Madeleine Levy, a member of the French Résistance. You are in France, on the outskirts of the city of Toulouse, a so-called unoccupied zone under the control of Germany and its Vichy puppet government. It is dangerous for you to be here. We must move quickly before you are discovered,” she replied, stumbling over her words, speaking breathlessly.

  She darted away, retrieved her bolt cutter from the pannier of her bicycle. Working together, they cut him free of his parachute.

 
“Where is your plane?” she asked.

  “It was a fighter escort. It was shot down miles from here.”

  “They will be looking for you. The Germans.”

  “If they think I survived,” he replied.

  “They will be looking for you because they will not know whether you are alive or dead. They take no chances. And they must not find you.”

  He did not ask why. They both knew what happened to captured Allied airmen. The Germans treated prisoners of war with barbaric cruelty, ignoring any pretense of adhering to the laws of the Geneva Conventions. Torture was routine. There were summary executions. The bodies of the dead were often stripped of all identification, uniforms discarded. The corpses were incinerated, their weapons seized.

  Madeleine studied the area, turning left, then right, finally pointing to a windbreak of young trees planted closely together.

  “There. It is the safest place.”

  Together they pulled the downed parachute into the small grove.

  “Now we must bury it beneath the leaves. Then you must stay here until I return. Lie very quietly on the ground and try not to move. I won’t be away long,” she said, scooping up foliage and piling it over the white folds of the parachute.

  “But where are you going?” he asked, and for the first time she heard the slightest quiver of fear in his voice.

  It did not surprise her. He was very young, perhaps not even out of his teens, very alone, wearing his country’s uniform in an area controlled by a ruthless enemy. He feared execution. He feared death. She understood. After all, she too feared execution; she too feared death.

  “I am going to get help,” she said with a calm she did not feel. “My Résistance comrades will return with me, and we will help you to escape to safety. Please trust me.”

  His smile returned.

  “Not that I have any choice, but I do trust you. How could I not trust a pretty lass who speaks English with such a charming accent?”

  Obediently then, he disappeared deeper into the windbreak, and she mounted her bicycle and sped to the nearest safe house.

  Within two hours she returned with a small group of Résistants. They worked feverishly, aware that before the sun rose, all traces of Staff Sergeant Claude Sharple would have to disappear. They dug a hole and buried the parachute and his flying suit, covered it with leaves and rolled a boulder over it. The downed pilot quickly dressed in the thick sweater and worn work pants they gave him. Serge ran toward them with a set of forged documents which Simone, roused from sleep, had hastily prepared, affixing a very blurred photograph to the carte d’identité and a medical certificate attesting that Girard Polyneaux, a shepherd, had unfortunately been born mute.

  “Couldn’t you have fitted me out with a name I might be able to pronounce?” he asked jokingly.

  “Since you are a mute, that will present no difficulty,” Serge countered, and they all laughed.

  Laughter, Madeleine thought, was their sole relief, their claim to a briefly restored normalcy, a reminder of a time when humor was their constant companion and the sound of merriment was not alien.

  A dark-haired young man stepped forward, Sancho, a passeur, a Spanish guide who had fought against Franco and now assisted the Résistance.

  “Sancho, our loyal friend, will take you across the Pyrenees to safety,” Serge told Claude as he shook his hand.

  “Thank you,” the young aviator responded.

  He turned to Madeleine.

  “And I will never forget you,” he said, and awkwardly but tenderly, he kissed her on both her cheeks and then followed after Sancho to begin his long walk to freedom.

  She stared after him.

  “Adieu, Claude,” she murmured, aware that the very utterance of the name he shared with her beloved friend imbued her with hope and with pleasure.

  “Claude, Claude,” she repeated as she cycled thought the milky light of a nascent dawn.

  Thirty-Two

  September winds rustled the leaves of trees newly ablaze with the fiery hues of autumn. Madeleine stared up at the arboreal crowns of russet and gold, scarlet and burnt orange, the favorite colors of her favorite season. Tall purple asters rimmed the banks of the Garonne, and jet-black caper berries shimmered on earth-hugging bushes. Now and again she plucked a flower and filled her panniers with clusters of late-blooming fraises du bois, the wild strawberries that basked in patches of pale sunlight. She crammed the sweet fruit into her mouth and tossed the residue as well as the wilting blossoms into the fallen foliage.

  She had no vase for her small flowers, no bowl to fill with the plump red berries. She was a nomadic fugitive who lay wakeful on a different cot each night, yearning for sleep but fearful of her dreams. She allowed herself thoughts of Claude, repeating in a whisper the gentle promise of his letter that he would see her before the end of summer. But summer was coming to an end, and he had not arrived in Toulouse. Once again, she was weighted with anxiety. Once again, she feared to sleep because too often she dreamt of death and danger.

  “Is he safe?” she asked Serge. There was no need to say his name.

  “We have had no news of him. All we know is that the children he guided through the Alps are now in Italy, in the care of the tzofim, Jewish scouts from Palestine. Claude’s orders were to return to France, and that is surely what he will try to do. But such a journey will not be without obstacles, which probably account for his delay. Try not to worry, Madeleine.”

  Serge spoke slowly, patiently, his tone revealing neither optimism nor pessimism, his eyes resting on a much-creased map spread across the kitchen table.

  “What obstacles?” Madeleine asked.

  “I will show you.”

  He plucked up a pen, allowed it to hover over the map, and rested it on the pale-green outline that was Switzerland.

  “The last word we had from him was the letter he wrote to you. It was postmarked Lausanne.”

  The pen rested on the small dot that was Lausanne.

  “Yes, Lausanne.”

  She did not tell Serge that the letter was always on her person, tucked beneath her camisole. Even as he spoke, she felt the thin paper brush her breasts.

  Clutching the pen, he traced the route that led from Lausanne to Toulouse, his face turned to her, mindful of her need to read his lips so that not a word would be lost.

  “He would have had to cross the Pennine Alps to reach Turin, and we know that Italy was dangerous and uncertain territory even in late summer. The Italians themselves were divided between the anti-Fascists and Mussolini’s thugs, just as we in France are divided between Vichy and the Free French. Claude would have had to proceed slowly, cautiously. He had to make his way westward, perhaps crossing the border near Grenoble.”

  “Claude would be slow. He would be cautious,” Madeleine said, moving her own finger across the map.

  Simone leaned over her sister’s shoulder and smiled.

  “Claude is like this baby I am carrying then, very slow, very cautious. They are both traveling to Toulouse. Who will win the race—my baby or your Claude?” she asked mischievously.

  They all laughed then, grateful to Simone for easing the tension.

  “I will make tea,” Simone said. “Grand-mère’s solution to all problems, a cup of tea.”

  Madeleine watched her sister move across the room and noted the slowness of her gait, hampered as it was by the great weight of her pregnancy. Simone’s condition worried her. Their midwife friend, Hélène, had examined Simone and told Madeleine that the baby remained in breech position. Madeleine thought gratefully of the morphine she had hidden in Simone’s kitchen. Fervently now, she wished the birth to come swiftly. With equal fervor she prayed that Claude had managed to cross the Italian border safely.

  “You must be patient,” Serge said quietly, folding the map. “The Allies have begun the invasion of Italy. A
merican troops are already on the beaches of Reggio. That should ease his journey through Italy. Do not despair, Madeleine. Do not give up hope.”

  She nodded. Despair was not an option, although she acknowledged that hope remained elusive.

  But hope soared anew when Italy surrendered in the second week of September. That surrender meant there would be no Fascist patrols in the Pennine Alps, no Nazi troops strutting through the streets of Turin. Claude’s journey could proceed in relative safety. Serge assured her that he would now be able to avoid the dubious sanctuary of safe houses and move through Italy relatively free of threat and danger. Sleep came to her that night and a dream in which Claude strode toward her, his arms outstretched.

  Newly energized, Madeleine, partnered with Serge, managed varied acts of sabotage. They severed communication lines, planted explosives at a Gestapo quartermaster station and scouted out other targets. She increased her visits to the scattered children in her care, cycling swiftly from one locale to another and reassuring each of them that their trek to freedom was not far off.

  “Quand? When?” The question was increasingly insistent, but she had no answer on offer.

  “Quand? When can I join my brothers?” Anna Hofberg wrote plaintively from her hiding place with Madeleine’s parents.

  “Soon,” Madeleine replied. “Very soon, I hope.”

  She could not explain that she had to receive instructions from the Résistance leadership, that she was waiting for Claude’s arrival, that she too was impatient, that she too asked “Quand?” When?

  Cycling to a distant safe house, she lifted her eyes to the sky that darkened early in autumn’s encroaching sweep. A flock of geese flew southward, and she marveled at how they soared with such beauty and grace across borders that for her were fraught with danger and destruction. She decided, impulsively, that their flight was an omen. Claude, too, would safely cross borders and return to her. A foolish thought, she knew, even as she waved to the birds who flew even higher and disappeared into the soft white pillows of wind-tossed clouds.