The Paris Children : A Novel (2020)

by Goldreich, Gloria

  “Time is passing,” she said. “When do we act?”

  “When?” the other team members asked.

  They were impatient but Serge would not be rushed.

  “It depends on the moon,” he said. “And on Babette.”

  Pretty Babette, long a Résistante, was a barmaid in a local bistro favored by the Germans. She had, for some weeks, flirted teasingly with one Ludwig, a German corporal who stood guard at the approach to the bridges. A tedious duty, he told her. No one ever appeared.

  “I stand there for no reason. The Résistance has lost all energy. They live in fear of the Führer’s army. Still I must follow orders, foolish as they are.”

  Babette sympathized. Résistants were stupid, she agreed. She confided that she knew that the autumn nights were chilly. Surely he grew cold. And for nothing. The bridges were not in danger. And her room, which was so close to his post, was so very warm. Especially beneath her quilt. She longed to be with him beneath her quilt.

  “I will keep you warm. I will make you happy,” she promised. “Why should you stand guard night after night for no reason? When will you come home with me?”

  “We must wait for a moonless night,” he said. “On such a night I will not be missed. The officers rarely patrol when it is so dark. Coddled cowards that they are.”

  “Of course. A moonless night,” she agreed happily and reported the news to Serge.

  “Fortunate corporal,” he said.

  “Not really.” Babette giggled mischievously. “J’ai le gonorrhee.”

  Serge’s laughter was without humor, but his gratitude was sincere.

  They waited. Nights passed. They stared up at a full moon that cast a silvery light, then at a half-moon, less radiant but still aglow, then at a graceful crescent just luminous enough to be dangerous. Uneasy and restless, they studied the ink-dark sky until midmonth, when neither moon nor star appeared. Their time had come. Babette loosened her hair, applied fresh lipstick, winked at Serge who stood in a corner of the smoke-fogged bistro, and disappeared from her station.

  Serge hurried home and ascertained gratefully that the surveillance team of Vichy spies beneath his windows had abandoned their posts, as they had begun to do on most cold nights. Like Babette’s Ludwig, they had grown bored and thought their assignment foolish and futile. They drank and then they slept.

  Madeleine waited for Serge.

  “Tonight,” he said tersely. “We strike tonight.”

  She nodded, relieved that small Frederica was sleeping at a friend’s house. She would be safe if the act of sabotage was traced back to Serge. Madeleine dared not think of what would happen to Simone and Serge if they failed or were betrayed. She did not contemplate her own fate. She was neither wife nor mother. She had no hostages that might be surrendered to misfortune. She would not think of Claude.

  The entire team assembled, and in silence they donned the black outfits and darkened their faces with lampblack. One by one they slipped out of the back door and disappeared into the velvet darkness of the night. In concentrated silence, they would move single file, at a distance from each other, until they reached the bridges. There the select duos would work together, swiftly and soundlessly. As each fuse was ignited, as the flame crept slowly toward the explosives, but before the conflagration, they would sprint away in different, well-planned directions to scattered safe houses located at a distance from the bridges. It had been mutually decided that given the locale of the Pont St. Pierre, Madeleine and Serge would be the last to leave.

  Simone, who had been strangely quiet all evening, handed Serge and Madeleine their jackets. With her usual attention to detail, she checked that the torches in their pockets emitted steady beams of light. She stood beside Madeleine in front of the sliver of a mirror and applied the lampblack to her cheeks. Madeleine paused, aware that her sister’s reflected face was drained of all color, that her lips were clenched and her eyes were dangerously bright. Simone was terrified, Madeleine knew, and that terror was justified. Both her sister and her husband, the two people nearest and dearest to her, were leaving on a mission fraught with danger.

  Madeleine struggled to find words that might soothe her and swiftly abandoned the effort. It was best to say nothing. It was best to offer comfort with a swift embrace.

  She turned, her arms outstretched, only to see that Simone’s mouth was twisted in pain, that her legs could barely support her. She stumbled clumsily across the room and sank into a chair, making no sound, although her breath came in stertorous gasps. She gripped the armrests, her knuckles white, flecks of spittle dotting her lips.

  Madeleine knelt beside her.

  “Simone, what is it? Are you in labor?” she asked.

  A bilious reflux soured her own throat as a flow of clear, odorless fluid poured out of her sister’s body and puddled the floor. Her question required no answer. They were doctor’s daughters, certified social workers who had completed a course in basic midwifery. They understood that the membranes containing the amniotic fluid had ruptured and the birth process was launched.

  Simone groaned, biting her lips so hard that drops of blood dripped onto her chin.

  Serge rushed to her side, wide eyed with concern, with fear.

  “When did the contractions begin?” Madeleine asked.

  “Perhaps an hour ago. So mild that I ignored them. False labor, I thought. But now…” Simone’s voice tapered off and she writhed in pain.

  Gently, Madeleine and Serge eased her onto the floor. Madeleine dashed into the kitchen, placed a large pot of water on the gas ring, plucked up towels, and rushed back to Simone. Serge knelt beside her, massaging her abdomen with his black-gloved hand. He glanced at his watch. Madeleine stared at hers. Their thoughts merged, their twin concerns heavy upon mind and heart. Simone. The Pont St. Pierre. Their double urgencies, their double obligations. What would they do? What should they do? What could they do?

  “I must get Hélène,” Madeleine said and hurried out, not waiting for Serge’s reply.

  She ran down the street to Hélène’s room and pounded frantically at the door. Hélène opened it.

  “Simone?” she asked and seized her bag. The two women raced down the street and burst into the room.

  Simone had shifted position. She lay on her side, her head resting on Serge’s lap, biting down on a strip of cloth.

  “She is in terrible pain,” he said, and Madeleine saw that her brother-in-law, renowned for his strength and courage, trembled with fear, his face drained of all color.

  Hélène’s trained hands moved across Simone’s abdomen, then placed her stethoscope on its distended rise and adjusted the earpieces. She listened, moved the scope, frowned, and moved it again. At last she nodded and managed a thin, reassuring smile.

  “The baby’s heartbeat is strong,” she said as she loosened Simone’s clothing, pulled her undergarments off, lifted her legs, and examined her internally.

  “She’s almost fully dilated,” she murmured.

  Madeleine bent close and Hélène whispered.

  “I can feel the baby’s shoulder but not the head. It’s a dangerous positioning.”

  “A breech,” Madeleine said. “My father feared as much.”

  She remembered suddenly that a breech had caused the death of the infant her mother had carried to term and then lost, the phantom younger sister she had never known. She banished the thought as Simone was seized by another stronger contraction. She screamed, writhed in agony, and clutched Serge’s hand.

  Madeleine rushed into the kitchen, retrieved the package of morphine from its hiding place beneath a sack of onions, and handed it to Hélène.

  “Thank God,” the young midwife said and administered the narcotic. For a brief and blessed moment, Simone lay quietly.

  Serge turned to Madeleine.

  “What must we do?” he asked, his voice tre
mbling, the decisive Résistance leader now confronting indecision. “We cannot abort the attack on the Pont St. Pierre, not after all our planning, not with so many relying on us.”

  Even as he spoke, Simone was assaulted by a new onset of pain, unmitigated even by the narcotic.

  “Serge! Serge! Don’t leave me,” she wailed. “Serge, I need you.”

  She was a woman in labor, the agonizing pain of childbirth canceling out all other concerns.

  He knelt beside her, stroked her hair, whispered words of comfort, of assurance.

  “I am here. I will not leave you,” he promised and stared beseechingly at Madeleine.

  “Of course you cannot leave her,” she said firmly. “Nor can we abort the operation. I will proceed without you. It will be all right. I know exactly what to do. Everything is in place. We have practiced it so many times.”

  “But we have always worked together. How will you manage alone? You will have to deal with the fuses, the accelerants.”

  “I will contact the rest of the team. They will have finished their work at Pont Neuf, at Pont Michel. They will help me. We will cope. We will succeed. You must not worry. Simone is your concern tonight. Only Simone.”

  Madeleine spoke with a calm she did not feel and glanced at Hélène, whose hands were moving deftly across the rise of Simone’s abdomen.

  “I am trying to manipulate the baby, to change its position. I think it will work but it will take time, a long time. There is nothing more you can do here, Madeleine. Go to where you are most needed. Where I myself need you.”

  Madeleine understood the import of her plea. Hélène’s fiancé, Edouard, was interned at Brens. The demolition of the bridges would prevent his deportation and perhaps save his life.

  “Yes. That is what I must do,” she agreed.

  She kissed her sister’s forehead and felt the saline moisture of Simone’s sweat upon her own lips. It met the tear that drifted down her cheek. Salt upon salt, sorrow upon sorrow.

  “Be strong, Simone,” she whispered.

  There was no answer. Speech was impossible. Simone’s small store of energy was in reserve to battle the pain that consumed her.

  “And you, Madeleine, you too must be strong,” Serge said, his voice resonant enough for her to hear echoed the words she herself had offered his wife.

  She left then, closing the door behind her. She did not hesitate as she raced through the moonless darkness to the Pont St. Pierre.

  Thirty-Four

  Breathlessly, Madeleine ran across field and meadow until she reached the route that she and Serge had chosen for their approach to the bridge. It ran through rough terrain but offered the cover of random copses and wild hedges. They had hiked it together again and again, memorizing the natural landmarks, the trees and ravines, the thorn bushes and conifer windbreaks, so that the path would be familiar to them even under the cover of darkness. Moving swiftly and confidently now, she followed it, crossing the fields strewn with bracken and weaving her way through copses of birch and elm. The fallen leaves were slippery beneath her feet, and she slowed her pace.

  “Caution, caution,” she reminded herself.

  She avoided a narrow stream, but even as she moved forward, she caught her foot in a tangle of root and fell to her knees. She cursed softly and stood, relieved that she was bruised but uninjured.

  She would take no more chances. She lit her torch and followed its narrow ribbon of light through the familiar landscape, passing a rutted shepherd’s crossing redolent with the stink of manure, the underbrush flattened by herds of goats and sheep. She increased her pace and suddenly, without warning, the rough pathway vanished and she sank into the boggy soil of a treacherous marsh.

  Dizzied and bewildered, she gasped and dropped her torch. She bent and combed through the muddy surface, tossing aside weeds and branches until at last her fingers closed around it. She swiveled its weak beam, uncertain of which way to turn. With palpable relief, she spied a landmark she and Serge had taken note of, a copse of young birch trees, their white bark shimmering in the darkness. Just past it, she knew, was a gradient that led directly to the bridge. She walked swiftly toward it, newly aware of her vulnerability.

  “Left foot up,” she murmured to herself. “Right foot down.”

  “Important not to fall.”

  “Almost there.”

  “Only a few more meters.”

  “Left foot up.”

  “Right foot down.”

  The rhythmic repetition of the chant that she could barely hear steadied her. She stared upward, hoping to see the lights of the bridge, and at that moment of distraction, she did not see the lichen-encrusted log in her path. She tripped over it and hurtled forward, tumbling facedown onto the ground. The scent of damp earth filled her nostrils, grit invaded her mouth. Her eyes burned but she did not weep. Instead, she lay motionless, briefly overwhelmed by a paralyzing fatigue, a suffocating sadness.

  She moaned. Oh, she was tired. So terribly tired. Tired of hopes shattered, of disappointments compounded. Tired of being alone. So alone. She felt herself smothered in a cloud of self-pity, weak with longing. How tired she was of being a heroine, of denying her own desires, riveted to a cause that all too often seemed doomed to defeat. Writhing on the wet earth, she chastised herself for the unbidden thoughts that shamed her.

  “Claude.” She wrenched his name from the depths of her misery.

  “Claude!” she repeated loud enough that she could her own voice. Perhaps, she thought, a vagrant wind might carry her summons to him. Magical thinking, stupid imaginings, she protested mentally. Annoyed at her own foolishness, she forced herself to stand. Once again, she had escaped harm. No fractures, no sprains. She moved on, her every step vested with caution.

  She peered across the dark expanse and saw the flutter of dim lights. Suffused with relief, she realized that they emanated from the lamps that lined the causeway of the Pont St. Pierre. She was so close, very close.

  She turned her gaze southward to the other bridges, but they were completely dark. There would be no help from the teams at the Pont St. Michel and the Pont Neuf. The distance was too great, the darkness impenetrable, contact impossible. She would have to manage alone. And as she had promised Serge, she would cope. She would more than cope. She would succeed. The storm of weakness and indecision had passed.

  Newly energized, she followed the lights of the bridge, moving slowly, and then with a spurt of adrenaline, she dashed to the burrow blanketed with fallen branches, beneath which she and Serge had concealed the cache of matérielle needed for the demolition. Thrusting the ground cover aside, she saw at once that nothing had been disturbed. She could proceed.

  Swiftly, she pulled out one length of coiled rope to serve as an improvised fuse. Removing the small knife from the pocket of her jacket, she cut the coil and spread the rope across the muddied earth. Clutching one end, she crawled through the wild grass and pulled it toward the arch, stopping only when she was within its confines and directly beneath the bridge. The air in the partial enclosure was fetid and stagnant, smelling oddly of tallow. Candle stubs littered the earthen floor across which empty wine bottles were scattered, the remnants of lovers’ clandestine meetings, she supposed, left in place by the wise masons when they affixed the explosives.

  They had cemented the sticks of dynamite to the crenelated surface, then covered them with a thick coat of paint, leaving the detonating caps untouched. Gently, she placed the rope directly beneath the explosives and sped back across the field, straightening the rope as she ran, remembering the English instructor’s somber warning that any unevenness might impede the progress of the flame. Satisfied that one fuse was in place, she pulled out the second loop of coiled rope, but as she knelt to cut it free, she saw the outline of fresh footprints in the muddied earth.

  She froze. She had been discovered. Bitterly, silently, she cursed he
r deafness. The slightest sound would have alerted her, but of course she could barely hear her own voice, never mind the tread of a footstep, the rustle of a branch.

  She stood very still and saw a figure move through the darkness and lurch toward her, arms raised threateningly. Terrified, she gripped her knife. Her lips parted but the scream died in her throat, stifled by the black-gloved hand that covered her mouth while another hand wrenched the knife from her grasp.

  She could not see her captor, but she smelled the sourness of his breath and the malodor of his unwashed body. Overcome with nausea, she struggled to free herself. She felt that repellent sour breath warm against her ear, but then she heard his voice, a familiar, tender voice, enunciating each word so clearly that she could hear without difficulty.

  “Madeleine. Hush, my Madeleine. You must not scream. C’est moi. Claude. I am here, ma chérie. I am here to help you.”

  His hand left her mouth and she turned to him, weak with relief, tears streaking her cheeks.

  “Claude. Oh, Claude. You heard me call your name,” she gasped.

  Her magical thinking had morphed into miraculous reality.

  “Heard you? No. I heard nothing. Only the wind.”

  “Where have you been? I waited and waited. And how did you know where to find me?” she asked, a confusion of questions melding anxieties of the weeks past to the events of this night of danger and daring.

  He told her then, speaking rapidly and clearly. He knew that there was no time to be wasted, that the hour was crucial, but he snatched a precious few minutes to reassure her, to explain his long silence and his puzzling absence. There was time enough for that.

  “My trek though the Pennine Alps was difficult. Yes, the Italians were defeated, but I knew that pockets of fascisti remained. I walked at night, scavenged for food, slept when and where I could until I reached the headquarters of the Italian Jewish scouts in Turin. They gave me maps, money, and forged papers that got me across the border to Grenoble.