“Yes.”
“Do you know where it comes from? The name?”
“Yes. There was a boy named Adrien ….”
It hits me like a body blow. “Jesus!” I whisper. I can’t believe this is happening.
Francesca looks at Callie and then turns back to me. “Please forgive me, but may I look at your right hand?”
“Yes, of course,” I say. I offer her my hand. “You’re looking for the broken finger, aren’t you?”
Francesca doesn’t answer immediately. She only shakes her head in amazement. I see a shiver pass through her upper body. She takes a deep breath and finally says, “We’ve heard so many stories about you. But they all ended with you being killed.” She examines my broken finger again. “It’s exactly as Mémère described. Mon dieu! She will be so shocked. Both of them! I don’t know how to tell them.”
“I think you just have to tell them,” Callie says. “And trust they’ll be strong enough.”
It’s her doctor’s mind at work. I can imagine her saying the same thing in some hospital corridor. I’m still confused. I still can’t really believe it. And all at once a heat comes to my cheeks and I clench my fists. I look at Francesca and ask, “Did your grandmother ever mention a man named Jean-Baptiste? I forget his last name.”
“No. I don’t recall her ever mentioning someone by that name.”
I nod grimly. “It would be good for him if he’s already dead. That’s all I have to say.”
Francesca checks her watch and glances at Callie. “I think we should leave immediately for Paris. I will telephone Maman and arrange to meet with her first. She’ll have a better idea how to break the news to Mémère.”
Thus, within an hour, we are boarding a train at Gare de Caen scheduled to arrive at Paris’ Gare Montparnasse some two and a half hours later. My legs are tired from all the walking I’ve done, and no doubt from the shock of this revelation, so Callie and Francesca help me into the car, one on each side. They take the first empty seats, the women sitting side-by-side and facing forward and me opposite them, facing the rear of the train.
“You don’t mind facing backwards?” asks Francesca.
I shake my head. “When you’ve sat in a C-47 with a parachute strapped to your back and only a vague idea of where you are going, no mode of transportation ever bothers you again.”
The train departs the station and soon picks up speed. The rhythmic click-clack of the tracks quickly has my eyelids closing. I doze fitfully. I wake several times to see Francesca staring intently at me, but I quickly close my eyes again. I hear her and Callie whispering, but I tune them out. There are so many things to deal with. Too many! Briefly, I wish I could be alone with Arlequin, walking the streets of the Navy Yard in Charlestown. A simple life. Uncomplicated. But as soon as I think of Arlequin, I’m drawn back to the photograph at the museum with Élodie and the horse and the cart and the butterfly-eared dog, and everything is complicated again. In one of my periods of wakefulness I think I hear Francesca softly say, “Pépère,” as if rehearsing. I doze off again and wake only when I feel a hand pressing my shoulder and I open my eyes and Francesca smiles at me and says, “We are coming into Gare Montparnasse … Pépère.” She looks at me with raised eyebrows as if to ask if it’s okay to call me “Pépère.”
I glance at Callie who is sniffling and wiping her nose, then smile at my newly discovered granddaughter. I place a hand on her cheek and nod. “We have much to get used to.”
We stand in the aisle waiting for the train to come to a complete stop. Callie impulsively hugs Francesca and says, “I can’t wait to meet your mother. And grandmother!” Then, shaking her head, eyes wide, and lowering her voice, she says, “Holy shit!”
Francesca laughs. “In French we might say, C’est pas possible! I can’t believe this is happening!”
Once we disembark the train, we climb into a taxi and Francesca says to the driver, “Place de la Sorbonne, s’il vous plaît.”75 She turns to Callie and me and says, “There’s a café near the Sorbonne. I’ve asked Maman to meet us there. She teaches art history at the university. I told her Mr. Budge—Pépère—is recovering from an injury and the café is a nice place to sit.”
“Is it possible,” I ask, “to stop at a florist shop? I want to buy a rose for Élodie. No, two roses! One for my … for my daughter as well.” “Daughter” comes out as a two-syllable sob.
“Of course,” replies Francesca. “There’s a shop called Rosebud Fleuristes in the Place de l’Odéon which is only a few minutes from where we are going.” She leans toward the driver and gives him the instructions.
The small florist shop is next to a large gallery called Avant-Scene which Francesca says specializes in fine decorative furnishings. But I only have thoughts for the two most perfect red roses I can find. Roses no sheep would dare to eat. With Francesca’s help, it only takes a few moments to find the right flowers, and two Waterford crystal bud vases, and, ten minutes later, we pull onto the Place de la Sorbonne and step out of the taxi at the corner of a pedestrian-only street. At the end of the short street sits the domed neoclassical bulk of the Panthéon-Sorbonne like a stern Roman paterfamilias at the head of the table.
“There she is. Maman is already here.” Francesca leads us to a table under a large awning that bears the name of the café, “Tabac de la Sorbonne.” When we reach the table, she stops and looks from me to her mother and back again. “Maman, this is Henry Budge.” She follows that with a young girl’s giddy laugh as if she can’t believe what she just said.
Francesca’s mother brings a hand to her chest and her body goes rigid and she stares at me for a long moment before saying, “Mon dieu!” She makes the sign of the cross as she says, “Au nom du Père et du Fils et du Saint-Esprit.76 Can it be true?”
“Apparently,” I reply with a soft smile. I hand her one of the roses, unable to say anything more. I am overwhelmed by a wave of unspeakable joy.
She stares at the rose in her hand for a long while, shakes her head, and gives a short, nervous laugh. “Prove it. How did you know my mother?”
“It was during the war. She was posing as a German nurse and I was injured when I parachuted behind Utah Beach in the early hours of D-Day.”
Adrienne reaches for my right hand. “May I?” she asks. She examines the little finger. “Did you never have it re-broken and set?”
“I keep it as a reminder not to jump out of airplanes.”
She draws in a sharp breath. “Oh, my dear god! It is you! That’s what she said you said.”
“It’s me. I … uh … I …” I dig into my pocket and fish out a handkerchief to wipe my eyes and nose.
Adrienne gives that nervous laugh again and reaches out and pinches the sleeve of my jacket. “I don’t believe it.”
“But apparently it’s true … dear Adrienne.” I try to keep my voice steady. “I couldn’t believe it at first. It all seems so impossible.”
“Maman, you have his nose,” Francesca says, again with a giddy laugh.
I look into Adrienne’s eyes and study her face. My daughter! Our daughter! “Do you think this will be too much of a shock for her?”
Adrienne laughs, and I reach out to steady myself with a hand on the table. “As you know quite well, she fought the Germans behind enemy lines, she guided two groups of children over the Pyrénées. What you perhaps don’t know, is she survived one Nazi death camp … and …”—her voice breaks—“gave birth to me in another. There was no help. She even had to bite through the umbilical cord herself. I was born five days before the death camp, Bergen-Belsen, was liberated. She’s the strongest woman I know, and I am proud to call her my mother.” Adrienne places a hand on mine and holds my gaze. “She will handle the shock.”
“Bergen-Belsen? She was at Bergen-Belsen?” I can barely breathe. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the chest by a mule. Callie pulls out a chair and I sink in to it. “The Brits liberated Bergen-Belsen. My outfit, the eighty-second, liberated a camp called Wö
bbelin. Christ! If only it had been the other way around!”
“There’s a great deal about that time you don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“No. It’s for her to tell you … Papa.”
There’s that unimaginable—but confusing—wave of joy again! But then, a hard thought. “Tell me this, then,” I say. “Did she ever marry?”
“No.” Adrienne wipes her eyes and shakes her head slowly. “She often told me my father was the only man she ever wanted to marry.”
We catch a taxi. I’m scarcely aware of our progress, or how long it takes. All I can think about is what will I say? What will she say? Should we be doing this? After seventy years? We each have lived all these years with a certain reality. Is it possible to change that now? Could we shatter that reality and reassemble the pieces into a different reality? Yet, what choice do we have once we know the truth?
The taxi stops opposite a café called “La Tourelle” and we all climb out.
Adrienne says, “This is the Saint-Mandé commune. That’s her building across the street. See the windows on the third floor with the open curtains? That’s her flat. Wait in the café. Have some wine or coffee and a pastry. I’ll go tell her the news, and when she’s recovered from the shock, I’ll come and get you and bring you to her.”
I look up to the windows which are one level below the mansard roof with its elaborate, second empire dormers, and then I gaze further upward to see how the roof is framed by heavy, impasto clouds, like clotted cream, that have gaps through which crepuscular rays shine down on us.
Callie, Francesca, and I sit in bright persimmon-colored, sunlit chairs at one of the sidewalk tables with a view of Élodie’s building. We order pastries and a bottle of red wine. The order takes ten minutes to arrive and we have scarcely begun when Adrienne emerges from the building, crosses the street, and joins us.
“How did it go, Maman?” Francesca asks, pulling a chair back for her mother.
“I’m not sure she believed me,” Adrienne answers.
I start to stand. “Should we go up?” I ask, anxious and afraid at the same time. Actually, I have no idea how to describe how I feel—incomparable joy for what I’ve found, immeasurable sadness for lost years, incomprehension that any of this is possible. And love. A swelling up and a blossoming out of love that threatens to choke me.
“Not yet,” Adrienne says. “Just in case you truly are her Henry, she wanted a few minutes to freshen up. Give her ten or fifteen minutes. What’s that compared to seventy years?”
“Be patient, Papa,” Callie says, reaching out and patting my arm. “We’re here. You just met your daughter! And you’re about to see your Élodie.” Her voice lifts at the end to a giddy register.
Adrienne and Callie are right, of course, but to me the ten minutes almost seem equal to the seventy years that have already passed. I sip my wine slowly. My hand is shaking. The little finger of my right hand, curled against the stem of the glass, aches.
At last, Adrienne touches my hand and asks, “Are you ready for this, Papa?”
I look into my daughter’s eyes, hold her gaze, and then pick up the second crystal vase. “I’m ready.”
To my relief, the building has an elevator. Of course! Élodie will be about my age so a walk-up wouldn’t do. It’s a shocking thought. In my imagination, in all my memories, she is a young woman. I don’t know what to expect. Will I recognize her?
The elevator is absurdly small. It is scarcely able to accommodate the four of us and I feel awkward brushing against the bodies of family members—especially family members who are also strangers. The elevator lurches to a stop and we spill out. Across from us is an open door.
“Maman has left the door open.” Adrienne gestures me forward like a gracious hostess.
My heart beats rapidly as I step across the threshold. An old woman leans against the marble mantel of a small fireplace, watching me from across the room. We stare at each other warily. I have no idea what to say. Is this, indeed, Élodie? I venture a few steps.
“You have brought me a rose,” she says.
“It’s the special rose that loved the little prince, and he her. The one he would give his life to ensure she is not eaten by a sheep.”
The woman sucks in her breath as she steps forward and takes the rose from me.
Because I’m feeling awkward and shy with Callie and the others present, I quickly glance around the room. There are several framed portraits on the mantel. I study them. Each is a portrait of a young, beautiful violinist with a conductor. In one picture, she stands with a white-haired conductor before a structure I recognize—it’s the music shed at Tanglewood in western Massachusetts. The conductor is Serge Koussevitzky, elegant in a bowtie and a white double-breasted suit. The clothes and the building confirm the picture must have been taken during a summer in the late ’30s, for that was when the music shed was built. That would have made Élodie barely out of her teens, at the beginning of what, I know, was a prodigy career.
“I must look in those pictures very much like the woman you knew seventy years ago,” she says.
I turn to gaze into her eyes. It is the same melodic voice I remember, just a little more thready. “Yes,” I whisper.
A bracelet jangles from her wrist as Élodie holds out her hand and says, “Please. Come to me.”
My cane taps the floor lightly as I cross the space between us. When I’m close enough, Élodie reaches for my right hand. She examines the broken pinkie finger for a moment then lifts it to her lips and kisses it. She looks into my eyes. “Hello my love, Mon cœur. What does one say? I can scarcely …. I don’t know … I just ….” She sucks in a deep breath. “How has your day been so far?”
A dam bursts. I explode into laughter.
Behind me, Callie, Francesca, and Adrienne all bust out laughing. It’s as if, together, we have pushed an elephant out the window and now there is space to breathe.
“It’s just become a great deal better,” I reply. “There are so many questions.” My hand is still in hers. Something doesn’t feel right. I look down and see her knuckles, gnarled and swollen. I frown.
“Seeing you now is like seeing a character from a much-loved book suddenly come alive,” Élodie says. “I feel I’ve dreamed our story all these many years and now, suddenly, here you are, straight out of the pages of a fantasy.”
I start to say, “We both thought the other—”
She puts her fingers on my lips. “Don’t. Don’t speak of it. It’s too ghastly. Let us allow all this to sink in before we ask how this … this … stupid nightmare can have happened.”
“Adrienne says you were at one of the Nazi extermination camps.”
Élodie flinches. She drops my hand and turns and walks to a sofa and sits. She sits silently for long moments and I begin to fear I made a terrible mistake. Finally, she pats the sofa, motioning for me to join her. And, when I am beside her, she says, “I suppose it will explain some things, so it’s only fair I should tell you my whole story.” She turns to Adrienne and says, “Please, mon ange, make martinis for everybody.”
“Of course, Maman,” Adrienne says. “It will be a pleasure to make a martini for my papa.”
Élodie smiles at that and turns to me. “I never, ever, wanted to talk about it. But you need to know, for it will explain why you never saw me again.”
“I went looking for you after the war,” I say. “I went to Mirepoix because I discovered that’s where Claude, Marcel and Jean-Baptiste were from. I learned Claude and Marcel were dead.”
“Yes, they were killed in Dijon during the allied invasion in the south.”
“But, Jean-Baptiste, survived.”
“Yes.” She frowns. “How unfortunate.”
“He was the one who told me you had been killed by German border guards in the Pyrénées.”
“He made it up. Probably to get rid of you as a competitor.”
“But he said there was a witness,” I say. “Someone named Luc
Vidocq. I could never locate him.”
“Luc Vidocq was a famous passeur. He was killed a year or so before you even appeared in France. Jean-Baptiste knew that.”
I frown. “It was a lie the whole time!”
“Yes,” she says. “And it was Jean-Baptiste who told me he saw you dead in a field hospital near Marseille. I knew he had joined other resistance fighters in the Battle of the Vercors Plateau in July and was with the fighters who aided the allied landings near Saint-Raphaël and the liberation of Marseille. I believed him because I knew all these things happened in July and August of that year and he had a wound that would have been treated at a field hospital. I had no reason not to believe him. Especially since it was some time after the war before I saw him. It took me a long time to recover from the camps.”
“In July, my unit was in England preparing to jump into Holland,” I say. “That’s when I rejoined them. After the war I was stationed in Chartres. I got leave and went to see if I could learn anything about you. I saw Odette Dupont.” I pause, then say, “Wait! You, too, must have seen her sometime later. Why wouldn’t she have told you I was alive?”
“Oh, mon dieu!” Élodie raises a hand to her mouth.
“What?”
“It took several months before I was fit enough to make it back to Aquilac. I was in hospital, recovering from … from the camps. By the time I made it back, Odette had died. Gaston, too. People said he died of heartbreak only a week after her. It must have been soon after you saw her.”
“Jesus!”
“I heard Jean-Baptiste died some fifty years ago. We should go spit on his grave,” Élodie says with steel in her voice.
“Or piss on it.”
She exhales slowly. “But we shan’t, shall we?” she says. “We saw too much hate back then to bring it back into our lives now.”
I nod. “If France and America can forgive Germany, who are we to carry on a hatred for a man who is long dead anyway?”
Adrienne appears with the martinis and hands one each to Élodie and me. Élodie takes a long sip, places her hand over mine, and says, “Even so, I don’t know why I believed him so easily. I shouldn’t have. But after everything that had happened, it seemed to make sense. It seemed nothing good could ever happen again.” She looks up at Adrienne and smiles. “I had our daughter, but it was difficult. I had seen too much. Gone through too much. I was on my back foot. Perhaps I was still traumatized by Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen.” She takes another long sip and stares at the opposite wall for a long time with an expression that suggests she is seeing through the wall to some distant memory. “It was a long time before I was able to think clearly, and, by that time, I suppose, I had become reconciled to you being dead.”
The Light from the Dark Side of the Moon Page 30