Telegram For Mrs. Mooney

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Telegram For Mrs. Mooney Page 19

by Cate M. Ruane


  The plan included (in alphabetical order):

  Breaking the German curfew

  Bubbly

  Candlelight

  Chic dress with plunging neckline

  Kissing

  More kissing

  Oysters (an aphrodisiac)

  Romantic chitchat

  Stargazing

  Stroll along the Seine River

  Sunrise watching

  Sophie was the first to notice that Daphne was sitting quiet as a figurine. “Look at you, you poor thing. And us rattling on.” She rubbed circles into Daphne’s back.

  Daphne told them everything she’d learned from wicked Madame Barrault. The long and short of it was that the French police arrested Aunt Dalia back in July, along with a whole lot of other Jewish people. The French police were in cahoots with the Gestapo and only doing their bidding. Daphne said it didn’t make sense because her aunt wasn’t even religious and ate bacon and decorated the apartment with Buddha statues.

  The whole time Daphne talked, the three Doumers shot each other nervous looks. I hoped they weren’t secret Nazi collaborators. How well did Daphne know these people? The door was only ten feet away. There was probably a fire escape. In the worst case we’d jump five flights. I tried to catch Daphne’s eye, but she was crying again.

  “Déplorable,” said Sophie, and I relaxed.

  Turned out that everyone in Paris knew about the roundups, when thousands of Jews were arrested and taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a stadium for bicycle racing. It reminded me of stories about the Roman Coliseum and Christians being thrown to the lions. But in this story, the Germans sent the people away on trains.

  “To labor camps we’ve been told,” said Madame Doumer. “Same as my husband.”

  “But Monsieur isn’t Jewish,” said Daphne with a puzzled look.

  “No, but he’s a machinist. He didn’t want to go, but it was that or prison.”

  Sophie rose from the couch and found an envelope on a dinette table. It was stamped with a swastika. I tried to read the letter but the handwriting was terrible. Sophie said it was from her papa. The Germans made Frenchmen with mechanical skills work in German factories, so that their own men could fight for Hitler. Forced labor. The papa couldn’t say exactly where he was, or what it was he was working on. Probably Panzer tanks or Messerschmitts. And he didn’t mention anything about work conditions, which was the same as saying they were bad.

  “Maybe you’ll get a letter from your aunt,” I said, hoping to cheer Daphne up.

  “What kind of labor can an elderly woman do?” said Daphne, fitting words in between sobs. “She has arthritis in her fingers and knees. And she’s a food critic. What could they possibly want with her?” Madame Doumer handed Daphne a hankie and she blew her nose.

  “Whole families were taken, little children too,” said Juliette.

  The conversation switched to Advanced French and my mind turned to worrying. Slaves, I thought, remembering big Jim, Huckleberry Finn’s truest friend—abused by wicked Miss Watson the slave master, and forced to escaped on a raft up the Mississippi River with Huck. I pictured Aunt Dalia, with chains on her legs and whip marks on her back, made to pick cotton in the scorching sun. No wonder Daphne was so heartsore. What if Jack ended up a slave too? My palms got sweaty thinking about it. Hitler was worse that a million Miss Watsons. And what about the Jewish children, I wondered: Will the Nazis rip them from their folks, same as the Southerners tore apart slave families? Right then, I missed my ma fiercely. I even missed Da a bit.

  “We have to rescue Aunt Dalia,” I said.

  “Impossible à faire,” said Sophie. “No one knows where they’ve sent people. Most likely to Germany.” She pulled a paintbrush from her bun and looked at it troubled-like. Daphne volunteered to help wash the brushes, but Sophie made her stay put.

  I wished I hadn’t burnt Mein Kampf. What if Hitler wrote about his plans, about where he’d be taking people? You couldn’t just walk up to a Nazi and ask for directions. We were in a bind, that’s for sure. I told Daphne that we needed to find Jack more than ever. He was an expert treasure hunter and would know how to find the aunt.

  Daphne squeezed my hand. “You’re sweet to call my aunt a treasure.”

  “Ooooooh,” said Juliette, raising her hand. “Didn’t you tell us Jacques was an RAF pilot? Surely he’d know the coordinates of labor camps.”

  Daphne perked up for the first time since we got the news about her aunt. It was probably true that British Intelligence told pilots the location of camps, so’s they wouldn’t fire at innocent people by mistake. Daphne agreed that Jack was the one to find a solution. “He’s so resourceful,” she said, breaking into a smile.

  “Oui? Comment?” said Juliette, moving to the edge of her seat.

  Daphne thought for a second and said, “Hmm…Well, he found my favorite perfume, which was challenging given that French perfume is no longer being imported and there’s such high demand for English brands…and he found little pats of butter, too.”

  Everyone sighed at the same time, all of us thinking the same thing: It was one thing to find butter and another thing to find an aunt. That didn’t stop us from agreeing to a plan: we’d find Jack first. After all, he was the only one of us trained for exactly these predicaments.

  They started jabbering away in French, so I went to scope out the place again. Teensy-weensy was too big a word for it: packed with bric-a-brac, wardrobes overflowing, crates stuffed under tables, and bookshelves and paintings stacked up the ceilings. Most of them showed naked people. I found Sophie in a closet-sized kitchen, swooshing paintbrushes in a jar of turpentine.

  “Life drawing is essential for the artist’s training,” she said, “the same way medical students must study the human body.”

  “Uh, huh,” I said, but I wasn’t buying it.

  Sophie had talent. If you stood back far enough and squinted, her paintings almost looked like photographs. I followed her to a bedroom where she showed me what she was working on: a painting of three whitewashed wine bottles. Sophie spread her wet brushes on a towel, just as Daphne stepped into the room.

  “Lovely,” said Daphne squinting her eyes, something art experts do whenever they look at a painting. “And so like you to be emulating Morandi at a time like this.” She threw her arms around Sophie.

  “Who’s Morandi?” I asked.

  “A Jewish-Italian artist,” said Sophie. “Banned. Along with Chagall and Modigliani, among others.”

  “Good God.” Daphne rubbed her eyes, red and puffy. She leafed through drawings, impressed with Sophie’s progress. They went on and on—about this artist and that artist—about some fella named Picasso, who was living in Paris. The Nazis didn’t approve of his work and he wasn’t permitted to exhibit. (I wondered if that meant he wasn’t allowed to pose naked.) Sophie said the rumor was that Picasso had turned to writing.

  “Hitler was a realist painter,” said Daphne, as though that explained everything.

  I was glad when Juliette invited me to play a game of cards out on the balcony. It was windy out there and a few cards, from the deck of 52, flew away down the cobblestone street. Even without the Jack of Hearts, a deuce, or the Queen of Spades, I taught Juliette how to play Go Fish. One thing about the game: it depends on each player being honest about the cards they have in their hand. I won the game, proving that Juliette was an honest girl. So I trusted her enough to give me the low down on German occupied Paris.

  “They’re wicked people, Tommy. They ship our food to Germany along with our fathers. They take the best seats on buses and in the Metro. They sit in the box seats at the cinema and at the ballet. It’s because of them the Bolshoi no longer comes to Paris. When Gone With the Wind finally plays at Le Grand Rex it will be impossible to get a ticket because the theater will be filled with Germans. And that cinema has 2,800 seats!”

  She leaned forward and whispered, “You heard what they did to my cousin, oui? Jacques-Yves? We’re not to speak of
it when my sister is visiting. It upsets her so, to hear him spoken of.” (She meant Madame Faure, of course.) We had a moment of silence together where the mood got gloomy. After that I switched subjects.

  “Gone With the Wind. Bettya the German’s hope to learn about American battle maneuvers. Hopefully they’ll take their cues from the Confederates.”

  “Ooooooh! You saw Gone With the Wind?”

  I told her that everybody seen Gone With the Wind in New York, but that we was rooting for the Union. Juliette squinted her eyes, like she was thinking hard. For a minute I was worried that she’d correct my grammar, which would’ve been humiliating coming from a Frenchie. Then she asked me if Scarlet O’Hara was as beautiful in life as she was in the book. I wasn’t going to lie. I’d only skimmed the last ten pages after cutting them from my sister Mary’s copy.

  Juliette asked me if I was in school and I explained that I’d taken time off for important war work. I didn’t go into the details. Juliette studied at home ever since children began missing from her school. One day she’d go into class and there’d be an empty seat next to her. When her friend Ruth disappeared, Juliette’s mother—trained as a teacher—withdrew her from the school and was now teaching her from home.

  “My maman made inquiries about Ruth’s family at the Lycee.”

  “I take it this Ruth is Jewish?”

  “Exactement. Her family came from Berlin originally, and fled to Paris when Hitler came to power, thinking it would be safer. Who could have imaged this?” She threw a hand over the balcony, taking in the whole city. “That day, when Maman returned from the Lycee, she was very upset and wouldn’t speak to Sophie or I about what she’d discovered. She forbade me from stepping anywhere near that school from then on. All she’d say was that the headmistress was a Fascist.”

  “Did they torture your ma?”

  “I don’t think so; I hope not. But I’ve seen the Germans beat people with club sticks, only for looking at them the wrong way. I’ve watched as families are dragged from their homes and afterwards all their furniture carted off by the Germans. Get on their wrong side and that’s the end of you. Look—I have gooseflesh talking about it!”

  She let me rub the bumps on her arm. That had me scared, so I changed the subject again. I asked her what it was like to study at home, if she got to sleep late. Juliette said it got a little lonely, that’s all. She thought maybe her ma would let me join in her lessons. “Do you want me to ask? She can teach in English, if you prefer. Maman’s English is très bein.”

  “Well, in that case—” I realized that it might not be a bad idea after all. At this rate, I was in danger of being left back a grade, and ending up in Sister Bridget’s class all over again. But if I came back fluent in English and French, they’d probably skip me to high school.

  She asked me what took us to Paris, and I told her the short version of the story, emphasizing the danger to my own life. “I have the Gestapo on my tail right now,” I said.

  “Then should you be sitting out here on the balcony, in plain sight?”

  Juliette had a point, and so we went through the French door and into the living room where the three grown-ups were sitting. The conversation was off Picasso and onto my brother, Jack. Daphne had pulled his photograph from its hiding place in the lining of her valise and was passing it around. Everybody agreed that he looked très beau, and très courageux, and that he was lucky to have such a devoted fiancée. No mention of the devoted brother.

  “Jack,” said Daphne, squeezing her knees. “I have a gut feeling he’s hiding in Paris.”

  “Gut feeling? What does this mean?” asked Juliette.

  “Avoir une intuition,” said Daphne.

  Sophie suggested we put ourselves in Jack’s shoes and think about what kind of places he might gravitate to. We tossed the idea around. I mentioned that my brother was Catholic and asked if they had a church like the one in Dunkirk, one with gargoyles.”

  Juliette shouted like she was on a radio game show: “Petit Sainte Chapelle—it has très belle stain glass windows!” Madame Doumer, snapping her fingers: “Saint-Denis Basilica where 32 French queens are buried.” Sophie chimed in with: “Sacre Coeur Basilica, don’t forget.”

  “He’s not that religious,” said Daphne.

  We went on like this for a few hours, even as we ate our supper and got ready for bed. Daphne was going to bunk with Juliette, Sophie, and the mother. The Faures, if they ever returned, were taking the mother’s room. Juliette was worried about the Gestapo coming to take me in the middle of the night and said I’d better sleep in the hall closet or in her toy chest. The sofa looked awfully comfortable.

  “Better take the sofa,” I said, “so’s I can guard you ladies.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  FROM THEN ON WE SEARCHED PARIS for my brother. If Jack was hiding out in the city, he was doing a good job of it. Daphne and me walked for hours everyday, visiting every place we figured Jack might go. Sophie sometimes joined us, when she wasn’t painting naked men. Meanwhile the Faures had returned to the tobacco store in Dunkirk, with Monsieur Faure’s last words to me being: “Juliette—très charmant, no?”

  Madame Doumer worked part-time in a shop, gluing feathers onto hats. And all because the Germans hadn’t sent a pfennig of Papa’s paycheck, even though they’d promised. Off-hours she taught Juliette and me about French history. So while we learned about Louis XVI—his palaces and furniture, his spoiled-brat wife, and their gruesome executions—Daphne searched without me.

  When I dropped that Jack liked history, Madame Doumer had the bright idea of combining the search with our lessons. We visited the Bastille, where I got the willies by putting my head under a real guillotine. It was the sort of place Jack liked but he wasn’t there. On another field trip we visited the Musée de l’Armée: one of the largest war museums in the world. They had some very impressive swords but no Jack. Maybe he was sick of war.

  I had blisters on my heels and toes, and the rubber on my sneakers started loosening from the canvas. If we didn’t find Jack soon, I would be walking around Paris barefoot. We spent too much time in art galleries and dress shops: two places Jack wouldn’t be seen dead in. Otherwise, we covered the right ground.

  Meanwhile, we kept an eye out for people wearing yellow stars. We’d spot an old lady across a wide boulevard and Daphne would perk up, thinking maybe it was her aunt. Then it was: run across the street, with Daphne waving her hands. Until she got close enough for the letdown. She’d drag her feet the rest of the day, with me trying to cheer her up.

  Twice we walked by synagogues bombed by the Nazis, so that the Jewish people had nowheres to go to church. Daphne said it made her blood boil and once when no one was looking she bought a flower and laid it at a synagogue door, under a Nazi sign warning people to stay away. I thought she was super brave. That time, I stood around the corner watching.

  The next time, I got up my courage and ducked under a fallen beam that once held up the entryway. Using the rubber tip of my sneakers like a bulldozer, I made it to the altar—if that’s what you called it—and stood with my mouth gaping. The place was blown to smithereens. A hand trembled on my shoulder: Daphne about to faint.

  “Oh, God—how tragic,” she said. She spun on her heels, taking in the whole view.

  Rain was coming through a hole in the roof and making the marble floor slick. Daphne slipped and fell to her knees. When she stood, I saw she had a little book clutched in her hand. “It’s a prayer book,” she said, wiping soot from the pages, “a siddur.” The book was half the size of a paperback and burnt on the edges. Somebody had ripped off the cover.

  So, that’s what Hebrew looks like, I thought, taking in the strange shaped letters on the title page. Daphne snapped opened her pocketbook, found a white hankie trimmed around the edges with lace, and wrapped the book in a neat little package.

  “It shall be very helpful come Shabbat,” she said, sighing. “It’s got songs and prayers and all sorts of lovely th
ings.”

  “Should I find more of them?” I said eagerly, struck with the treasure hunter bug.

  Daphne’s face, I noticed, turned ghost white. She stumbled to a bench, plopped down, and asked me to give her a moment. She covered her eyes and began weeping into her gloves. I figured she needed privacy—the way Ma needed it the day the telegram arrived. So I wandered down an isle, looking under rubble for more of them books.

  That’s when my trained eye caught something glimmering. It was nailed to a charred doorframe: silver, the size and shape of a thumb. I spit on my finger and wiped soot off. It looked like a ladies brooch, with teeny leaves and branches carved into the .925 silver. A blue sapphire mounted the top. I examined the stone for flaws and noticed a little gold letter—like a W, it was. Using my pocketknife, I pried the nails from the wood, going slow—like archeologists are supposed to do—being careful not to damage the treasure.

  By the time I got back to Daphne, she’d pulled herself together.

  “Get a load of this,” I said, opening my fingers in slow motion.

  She let out a gasp, took the treasure in her hand, and tried to hold it up to the light. But the sky had darkened to slate gray since the time we’d been inside the ruined temple, making so that we were sitting in shadow.

  Then came a jaw-dropping moment.

  Clouds parted above us. A beam of orange light shot through the hole in the roof and flashed off the jewel. I swear to God—it reminded me of Cecil B. DeMille’s movie The Ten Commandments—the part where Moses holds up the tablets right before the Dead Sea parts in two and Pharaoh and his army are hit with a wave of salt water.

  Next thing I knew, we were sitting in pitch darkness.

  “It’s a mezuzah,” said Daphne, fingering the carvings. “Religious Jews attach them to doorframes. I remember now that my grandmother—we called her Bubbeh—had them on every doorframe in her London flat.”

 

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