The Paris Children : A Novel (2020)

by Goldreich, Gloria

  Madeleine glanced at Claude, who turned away. She took Anna’s hands in her own and spoke softly, injecting reassurance into words that she knew would disappoint.

  “We cannot go to Spain just yet, Anna. Not today. Not tomorrow. We must plan and prepare. But we will leave very soon. That is my promise to you. For now, you and your friends are safe with the kind sisters.”

  “No! No!” Tears of disappointment streaked Anna’s cheek. Her hands, clenched into fists, pummeled Madeleine with a sorrowful beat.

  “I want to go now. Now. When will I see my brothers again? When will you come back?”

  Madeleine cradled the girl in her arms. Anna’s sorrow became her own, although the child’s words were lost to her. Unable to hear, she was also unable to speak. Grief choked her voice into silence.

  “Why?” Anna asked. “Why is this happening to us? Why do the Germans hate us?”

  It was Claude who answered. He spoke calmly, clearly, and in the quiet of that room, Madeleine heard his every word. She had forgotten how resonant his voice could be.

  “No one can understand such hatred,” he said. “No one can explain it. Not I. Not Madeleine. Not the wisest of our rabbis nor the most thoughtful of our leaders. Not our courageous Mother Superior. But we know that love, in the end, triumphs over hatred, that better days will come. Be patient, Anna. Know that you are loved. And protected. It is no small thing to be loved and protected by Madeleine Levy. She catches her dreams and turns them into reality. Trust her. Trust me. We will leave for Spain and you will see your brothers again. Smile now and the three of us will go to the café in Lézignan-Corbières. We will eat fresh-baked croissants and imagine that we are on the Champs-Élysées.”

  And Anna did smile, a sad and wistful smile. Disappointment, after all, was not new to her. Reconciled to that which she was powerless to change, she took solace from Claude’s gentle words.

  “Yes. Let us go to that café and eat croissants. Perhaps they will have apricot jam. Madeleine and I love apricot jam.”

  She smiled and Madeleine understood that Anna was offering her the comfort of pleasant memories, of days long past when hunger had been unknown and the jam that they favored had been sweet upon their tongues.

  “They will definitely have apricot jam,” Madeleine promised. “This summer was a splendid season for apricots.”

  She remembered the summer days when she had cycled down rural roads to visit her hidden children and paused to pluck the golden orbs dangling from low-hanging branches. The hungry, frightened children had looked with wonder at the fruit she placed in their small hands. The golden skin of the juice-filled orbs was a memento of the sunlight they rarely saw, sequestered as they were in basements and haylofts, in tunnels blanketed in branches. The hidden children had eaten hesitantly, tentatively, each bite a small miracle.

  She and Claude murmured their thanks to the Mother Superior and, with Anna, they walked hand in hand down the sun-dappled road into the village.

  The elderly nun, still fingering her crucifix, stood in the doorway of the convent and stared after them. She had thought to remind them to be careful, very careful. Even in the small village, collaborators lurked, but she knew they had no need for her words. They were children of Abraham in Nazi-occupied France. They were conditioned to courage, conditioned to caution. She watched as they disappeared beyond a bend in the road, her lips moving in soundless prayer.

  Thirty-Six

  Back in Carcassone, a Résistance courier brought a communique from Serge. He wrote that German military successes in Greece had emboldened Hitler’s generals. The Gestapo in Athens had ordered all Athenian Jews to register but had encountered the organized resistance of the local population. Princess Andrew, the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, hid Jews in her own home.

  “Why does Serge write of this? How does all that affect the Jews of France?” Madeleine wondered. “How does it affect us, Claude?”

  “Serge explains that it will soon have an impact on us,” Claude replied grimly. “The Nazis are so frustrated by the Greek Resistance that Goebbels has ordered the occupying forces in France to move farther southward and crush the French Résistance. If the Jews of Greece cannot be decimated, then the Jews of France will be punished. It is maniacal logic, but our enemies are maniacs. We are at risk because our intelligence reveals that Carcassone is an obvious target. That is why Serge risked sending a courier to warn us to leave this area.”

  Madeleine’s heart sank.

  “We must have more information,” she said. “What does the BBC say?”

  “We will soon find out,” he replied.

  * * *

  In the basement of the monastery, Claude watched the abbot remove his radio from its hiding place deep in the coal bin. The monk smiled sadly as he brushed the granules of black dust from the receiver.

  “It is now the only radio in the village,” he explained. “We keep it hidden because our beloved schoolmaster, Maître André, was arrested and sent to Brens when his radio was discovered. We fear that he was executed. Imagine the lunacy of this war. A good man is killed for the crime of listening to a radio.”

  Claude nodded.

  “There have been similar occurrences in Toulouse,” he said, and he wondered if the radio hidden in Simone’s kitchen was still functioning. He would know soon enough.

  He read the communique yet again. Serge wrote that the search for the saboteurs of the bridges had ended in a spurt of false arrests. That search now seemed to be abandoned, which meant that given the Gestapo drive toward Carcassone, it would be safer for both Claude and Madeleine to return to Toulouse.

  Safer, Claude thought bitterly. Would they ever be safe? He shredded Serge’s message as he watched the abbot coax the radio to life.

  The reception was weak. They waited patiently through bouts of static and indistinct humming and smiled in relief when they heard the new BBC code for Radio Londres—Verlain’s “Chanson d’Automne.” The faint, ghostly melody wafted through the room.

  “A suitable choice of music,” the abbot said. “Autumn is indeed upon us. The season of sadness and death.”

  “October,” Claude agreed. “Never my favorite month.”

  He and Madeleine had felt the new crispness in the air, the chilly brush of mountain winds drifting down from the Pyrenees. Fallen leaves of scarlet and gold crunched beneath their feet as they walked through the village to meet with the Spanish couriers who would serve as their guides. Money was exchanged. Maps were studied. The weather was discussed.

  The abbot gave Claude a woolen cape. The seamstress rummaged through a trunk and found a winter coat that smelled of camphor which Madeleine gratefully accepted.

  “It will soon be very cold,” the couriers warned Madeleine and Claude. “The shepherds predict an early snowfall in the Pyrenees.”

  How soon would the snow begin to fall? Claude wondered as he leaned forward and listened to the newscaster’s welcoming words. “Ici Londres. Les Français parlent aux Français.” Then the Morse code of dot-dot-dot-dash. V for victory. The H for honor had been eliminated. Perhaps, Claude thought, because so many French collaborators had forfeited their honor. The omission did not matter. What mattered was that they were not alone, that the Free French in Britain remained a vibrant force and Radio Londres continued to broadcast.

  The newscaster’s tone was somber, but then it was always somber because he never had anything positive to report. Claude could not remember a time when the news had been good. Certainly it was not good on this bleak October afternoon. He listened closely to the droning voice.

  Nazi attacks on Greek Jews had accelerated. The Chief Rabbi of Athens, Elias Barzilai, had fled to Thessaly. Groups of Greek partisans, Greek Jewish scouts, and Palestinian Jews were smuggling Jewish children across the Aegean Sea to Turkish ports and then on to the coast of Haifa. It was a heroic but dubious effort, the an
nouncer said sadly, a treacherous journey to a dangerous and uncertain destination because the British would not rescind the White Paper that limited Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine.

  “But Palestine is your promised land,” the abbot said. He was perplexed. Zionism was an alien concept to a monk isolated in Carcassone.

  “It seems that promises, even God’s promises, are made to be broken,” Claude replied bitterly.

  “Not God’s promises,” the abbot countered as he lit a Gauloise and passed the packet to Claude, who accepted a cigarette gratefully and inhaled deeply.

  Blowing a smoke ring into the basement dimness, he marveled at the fortitude and tenacity of the Greek and Palestinian scouts. The Aegean would be frigid even on these early autumn days. According to the couriers and passeurs, the mountain passes of the Pyrenees were also dangerously cold. They had been warned by the Spanish guides that if he and Madeleine were to succeed in leading this last group of Jewish children across the border, they would have to leave soon. Very soon. And it was important, the passeurs had stressed, that the children be properly clothed and shod. The German were one enemy. The cold weather was an even more formidable adversary.

  Claude sighed. The newscast ended. He helped the abbot conceal the radio beneath the black lumps of coal.

  The next day, he and Madeleine made one last visit to the convent. Madeleine was relieved that Anna was away, having joined her class on a nature hike. It was the Mother Superior they had come to see.

  “It is important for us to know whether the children have sturdy boots, warm clothing,” Madeleine said, aware that the nun knew exactly why she was asking such a question.

  The answer was both anticipated and disappointing.

  “We have soled and resoled their footwear. Some of it is serviceable, but most is beyond repair. The cobbler despaired of Anna’s boots. She now wears the shoes of one of our sisters, too large for her small feet, but we stuff newspapers at the toes and the heels. She manages, but they would not sustain her on a long trek,” the Mother Superior said flatly.

  “We have very little winter clothing,” she continued. “Perhaps two anoraks. Three pair of heavy leggings. The Jewish children were brought to us in the spring or the summer. None of them arrived with any clothing but the flimsy garments they wore. You must know that the Germans requisitioned the inventory of winter clothing in every French store and factory and shipped all that they found to Berlin. German children will be warm even as our French children will shiver with cold. I do not know how you will find the garments and boots that the children will need.”

  “We will manage,” Madeleine assured her. “We will return for our children, and we will bring everything that they will need. We have resources.”

  The nun asked no more questions. Too much knowledge was dangerous.

  “We will await your return,” she said. “But try not to delay. There has already been an early frost, which means there will be an early snowfall in the mountains.”

  “We have been told of that. We will not delay,” Claude promised. “We know that neither time nor weather is on our side.”

  In fact, he thought wryly, nothing was on their side. Their only weapons were their own perseverance and determination.

  “You must leave this area as soon as possible,” the nun continued. “We have been informed that a Gestapo contingent will arrive today. There is a bus leaving within the hour, not for Toulouse but for Valence.”

  She glanced at the window where a fierce wind rattled the barren branches of a giant oak.

  “Of course. Valence will, in fact, be a safer route for us. Toulouse swarms with Milice,” Madeleine said. “And I will be able to see my grandmother who is in Valence.”

  Her spirits soared, however briefly, when she thought of seeing Lucie Dreyfus, of embracing her beloved grandmother and resting her hand upon the old woman’s shoulder in the habit of her girlhood. Oh how tired she was, how very tired.

  “I will send a message to my sisters at the convent there telling them to expect a visit from the granddaughter of Madame Duteil.”

  The nun flashed Madeleine a conspiratorial smile and turned to the window again, this time focusing her gaze on the roadway. A workman waved a flag, a signal that Gestapo vehicles were approaching. She crossed herself and hurried out. She had to warn the other sisters of the Gestapo’s imminent arrival and rehearse the Jewish children yet again in the answers to the dangerous and invasive questions the unwelcome invaders asked.

  Madeleine and Claude understood. Within minutes, they dashed from the convent to the depot, arriving just in time to board the Valence autobus.

  The clumsy vehicle lumbered across rutted roads, lurching to stops at every hamlet so that schoolchildren might board or disembark. Because of the early frost, the children were swathed in layers of sweaters and heavy jackets, with colorful woolen hats jammed down to cover their ears.

  “Where are we to find such clothing and boots?” Claude asked worriedly, pointing to the chattering children. “Look at them. Our little ones will need scarves. Mittens. Heavy socks. Warm undergarments. It was spring when I led the children across the Alps, but even then the mountain air turned bitter cold in the evening. We will be trekking across the Pyrenees at the onset of winter. If they are not properly clothed, our children could freeze to death. That has happened.”

  He fell silent. He would not frighten Madeleine by recounting the reports of small frozen bodies lying on mountain verges, mourned and hastily buried under mounds of snow.

  “The storage room in my parents’ apartment on the rue de la Dalbade is still crammed with all the clothing that my mother collected for needy children. Everything remained there when my parents were forced to flee Toulouse. I am certain that Madame Leonie, our concierge, has managed to protect the contents of the apartment. We will collect whatever we need, arrange for transport back to the orphanage, and return there at once. Our couriers are ready and willing to guide us to Pau, and that is only thirty miles from the Spanish border.”

  “You make it sound so simple,” Claude said.

  “No. I do not deceive myself. It will not be simple, but it is within our reach. Isn’t it amazing what we can do when we have no choice?”

  She laughed and he smiled. Her courage was contagious. Yes, she did indeed catch her dreams and turn them into reality.

  It was late in the evening when they reached Valence. The gate of the convent that sheltered Lucie Dreyfus was swiftly opened by the elderly caretaker who was unsurprised by their arrival.

  “Madame Duteil will be so pleased to see you,” he said.

  Madeleine nodded, fearful that her voice would break if she spoke, moved as she was by his kindness and concern in a world beset by cruelty.

  Lucie Dreyfus waited for them in her small sitting room. Madeleine inhaled the fragrance of the herbs that her grandmother cultivated wherever she made her home. Skeins of colorful wool and half-finished knitted garments filled a corner of the room. Books were scattered on every surface—scholarly volumes, novels, collections of poetry, and Jewish texts. Her grandmother remained an eternal student, a voracious reader. The world of the intellect presented no danger. When she read, when she gathered knowledge, she was safe.

  Lucie’s thick, silver hair was twisted into a simple chignon, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears as she embraced her granddaughter. Her simple black wool dress was worn thin, but it fell in graceful folds. At seventy-four, she was still slender, her face unlined, her posture erect. Ever dignified, ever confident, she was, as always, a woman who refused to surrender to despair.

  “How brave you are to have made this journey,” she said.

  “Madeleine’s courage is recognized throughout the Résistance,” Claude said proudly.

  Madeleine shook her head. She did not want Claude to say anything more. She would not add to her grandmother’s worrie
s.

  But Lucie asked no questions. She prepared tea, using a battered electric kettle, and removed a platter of cheese and baguettes from the windowsill.

  “Nature itself is my icebox,” she said as she set the tiny table in her room with the same care she had once lavished on the formal meals she had hosted in her elegant Paris apartment on the rue des Renaudes.

  The food disappeared quickly. Madeleine realized that they had not eaten since early that morning. Normal meals at set times were now alien to them. They ate when and where they could, as indifferent to hunger as they were to their overwhelming fatigue. Food and sleep were peacetime luxuries. She sighed and saw that Claude reclined in his chair, his eyes half-closed. Lucie smiled and led him to the alcove that contained her own narrow bed.

  “Rest, my son,” she murmured.

  Claude nodded, stretched out, and immediately fell asleep. Madeleine covered him gently with an afghan and pressed her lips against his cheeks. She remembered the many nights of her childhood when her father would return home after a late-night rotation at the hospital and then fall asleep fully clothed on the sofa. She and Simone had watched as their mother draped a blanket over him and lightly kissed his cheek. With that gentle nocturnal gesture, her mother had transmitted a lesson in love.

  She kissed Claude’s forehead, dimmed the light, and returned to her seat beside her grandmother.

  “He is a brave young man, your Claude,” Lucie said.

  “Yes. Yes, he is. We care for each other, but this is such a difficult and dangerous time.”

  “But despite the difficulties, despite the dangers, you have been blessed with some happiness, is that not so?”

  Lucie enclosed Madeleine’s hand in her gentle grasp.

  Madeleine hesitated. It had been many months since the word happiness had been vested with meaning for her. Happiness. She pondered the word. She would answer her grandmother honestly. She spoke very slowly.