Escape From Paris

by Carolyn G. Hart

  A woodpecker. Not the faraway chop of an axe.

  If there were anyone near the bridge and the dry weed-grown ditch, he must be standing as quietly as Jonathan lay. Satisfied, Jonathan sat up and began to push himself backwards up the slope until he could reach up and touch the edge of the bridge. He used both hands to pull up. He hung there for a long moment, his good leg bent and taking his weight, his hurt leg outstretched, and peered over the side of the bridge, looking quickly up and down the road, twisting his neck to look behind him. A forest of oak trees crowded thickly down to the stream bed. The dusty grayish road bent out of sight into the trees. He couldn’t see far because of the woods, but he would hear anyone coming long before they would be able to see the bridge or him. It was still cool among the huge trees, the sunlight slanting through the thick green clusters of leaves, the only sound the erratic tattoo of the woodpecker. Cool and bright and cheerful, and the sky, glimpsed through the tree tops, a clear and vivid blue.

  What was happening at Hawkinge? Was his squadron already up? Someone would have packed his kit by now. Group Captain Arnold would have called his mother. Jonathan frowned. His mother had always been a strong woman. She had to have been, to have kept the family afloat after his father’s death at Verdun in the Great War. But even a strong woman could bear only so much. His brother, Robin, was posted missing after Dunkirk. Now she must learn that he too was missing.

  But maybe she would have faith enough to pull them all through. After all, he wasn’t dead. Not nearly. He had felt when he first heard Robin listed as missing that he had been killed, but now, he felt a sudden surge of hope. Maybe Robin was somewhere here in North France, too, hiding from the Boche.

  By God, maybe both of them were lucky.

  Jonathan was smiling as he straightened up and stood beside the bridge. He kept his weight on his left leg. Cautiously, he stepped lightly with his injured leg. It hurt, it hurt like the very devil, but he could, just barely, manage to walk on it. With a stick or a cane or a crutch, he could manage.

  For a long glorious moment, he stayed there beside the bridge, leaning on it, feeling the warmth of the morning sunlight on his face. His eyes moved restlessly around the small clearing and the patch of road he could see and along the wall of trees. No one there, no one coming. He took out his cigarettes, shook one free. Just one. That was all he would chance.

  He smoked slowly, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, savoring the acrid brownish taste. He put the cigarette out very carefully, making sure no spark danced into the dry weeds beside him. Then reluctantly, he swung himself back beneath the bridge, back into dusty dim safety. He stretched out comfortably, ate half the remaining cheese and two chunks of bread, and slowly drank some apple brandy. He lay back and stared sightlessly at his planked ceiling. It was mid-morning now. Thursday, August 15. Last year in mid-August, he had been on a walking holiday of Cornwall, tramping along the rugged rock-hewn coast. At Padstow one mid-week day, it might have been a Thursday, he had bought a pork pie and two bottles of beer and found a faint path winding down to a narrow pocket of sand circled by jagged tooth-edged boulders. The sand was wet as the tide had just raced out. He had spread his mackintosh for a blanket and eaten a leisurely lunch, then rested, hands behind his head, looking up at a milky blue sky and scudding clouds, thinking of the first lecture he would give when classes began. Just a year ago. He had thought Hitler menacing and evil, but he had never imagined the mustachioed German would change his life. His life and thousands of lives. But he could still think what he wished. With a slight smile, Jonathan said softly, “Gentlemen, we will consider both Chaucer the man and Chaucer the poet this term. We will begin by recalling the world as it was when . . .”

  There had never been a doorman here, of course, but Eleanor remembered the apartment house having a down-at-heels blowsy charm. Now, the entry door moved on only one hinge and she had to lift the door to open it. The foyer was scuffed and dusty. Letter boxes mostly hung open and empty. The Durands, mother and son, had the second-floor back apartment. The smell of cooking cabbage flooded down the stairwell.

  Eleanor hesitated. It was so dark and dirty. But if anyone would help her, it would be the Durands. She started up the steps, smiling. Paul was one of her husband’s best friends, a fortyish sardonic professor of languages. His mother, Leone, cooked incessantly, talked without pause, welcomed his friends, bemoaned the lack of a daughter-in-law, and continued hopefully to match-make, undismayed by Paul’s wry disinterest. Her round, plump face always smiling, tendrils of curls escaping from her bun, her good humor and kindness attracted students of all sorts. Once Paul had put his foot down firmly, “Mother, I know you have a soft heart. I appreciate it, I value it. But, nonetheless, I am not willing to share the front hall closet with that bedraggled girl from Tours. Send her home to her loving family. I wish once again to hang my overcoat in the front closet, place my boots in the corner, tuck my umbrella to one side.”

  Leone had opened her huge blue eyes wide, tilted her head, and said slowly, “Oh Paul, I’m sorry about the closet. I would clear it out for you if I could. But Paul, Annemarie doesn’t have a loving family.”

  That had been that. Annemarie had lived with them for two years, then married a prim young pharmacist and moved two blocks away to a tiny room in a boardinghouse attic, but she still spent most of her day at the Durands. As Eleanor hurried up the stairs, she was listening. She was almost to the second floor when her steps slowed and she began to frown.

  It was quiet. Too quiet.

  It was never quiet at the Durands. Young voices, usually raised in excited loud discussion, reverberated until the early morning hours, Leone offering steaming mugs of hot chocolate or glasses of red wine. She knew each student by name, knew his hopes (“Michael, have you been accepted at the Institute, my dear, how wonderful! Dominique, you think twice my dear, don’t be hasty. If it is really love, there is no hurry. Tell me your name again? Ralph? How do you say it? Ralph. And you’ve come all the way from Mexico? No? Oh, New Mexico. Where is New Mexico, Ralph?”) Cigarette smoke and the tart smell of wine, the warmth of people, laughter and movement, Paul smiling satirically but always gently.

  Silence.

  Eleanor almost turned away without knocking. Obviously, no one was home. Of course, the fall term hadn’t begun. Perhaps Paul and his mother had left Paris in June, before the Germans came, and hadn’t returned. If they had left soon enough, before the German onslaught swept past Paris and turned back the refugees, they might have reached friends in the South and be there now.

  Everything had happened suddenly after the Germans stormed into Holland. Andre had only a week’s notice when his unit was called up. He had tried frantically to arrange his affairs. That last morning, cramming an extra set of boots into his luggage, he had told Eleanor, “If you need help, real help, go to Paul Durand.”

  Eleanor stared at the closed door to the Durand apartment. Usually the door had been ajar when they came in the evening, voices and music drifting down the hall. How dreadful that she had not even checked on Paul and his mother since Andre left.

  But it hadn’t seemed a time for visiting friends, not with half the shops in Paris boarded up and the hated green of the Germans everywhere you walked. It was better to stay home, shades drawn, shutting out all the hurtful sights.

  She knocked almost perfunctorily. Once, twice. She turned away. She was midway down the hall when she heard someone coming briskly up the steps. They met at the top of the stairs.

  “Annemarie? Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

  The thin young girl paused, nodded. “You are. . .”

  “Mme. Masson. Eleanor Masson. My husband Andre and I used to visit Paul and his mother quite often.”

  Annemarie smiled. “Oh yes, of course.”

  “No one’s home. I knocked but there wasn’t any answer.”

  Annemarie looked surprised. “Oh, I think you are mistaken, Mme. Masson. Mme. Durand is there. I am living with her now and she never leaves
the apartment. I’ve been out shopping. You know how it is, you have to get to the shops so early. I was at the butcher’s at eight this morning. I waited two hours and still there wasn’t a scrap of meat left but I told him she was old and needed just a morsel and he found me a soup bone.”

  Eleanor looked at the basket Annemarie was carrying. Why in the world would she be living with the Durands again? And, even if she were, why would Annemarie be doing the cooking? If ever there was a cook who took joy in her kitchen, who could create the most marvelous meals from the most meager ingredients, it was Leone Durand.

  “You say you are living here now?” Eleanor spoke slowly, staring at Annemarie’s dark face, hoping, but, in her heart, knowing the answer.

  “Yes, since Professor Durand died.”

  “I didn’t know. Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

  Paul dead. Intelligent, aloof, gentle Paul.

  Annemarie was talking on, in that young matter-of-fact voice, “. . . the breakthrough at Sedan . . . a field hospital . . . he had volunteered as an ambulance driver . . . not in a reserve unit . . . asthma. The letter came the next week.”

  “And Mme. Durand?”

  Annemarie looked sad. “It is odd, you know, what happens to people when their world dissolves. She must have cared too much. I would have said, before the war, that she was the strongest woman I knew.” Annemarie unlocked the door and held it open for Eleanor. The curtains were drawn. It was so dark that it took Eleanor a moment to find Mme. Durand.

  The older woman huddled in the wingback chair next to the fireplace. She didn’t look up until Eleanor came and stood beside her.

  “Leone.”

  The once plump high-colored face was sunken and thin. Strands of lank hair hung uncombed. Dark brown eyes looked at Eleanor incuriously.

  “Leone, don’t you know me? It’s Eleanor. Eleanor Masson.”

  “How do you do.” The thin childlike tone prickled Eleanor’s back. She looked at Annemarie pleadingly.

  “Come now, Mama Leone.” Annemarie’s hearty voice sounded shockingly loud in the stillness of the dusty dim room. “You remember Mme. Masson. Her husband is Andre Masson. You knew him. He was a professor, too, like Paul.”

  Eleanor bent down, reaching for the thin hands that lay supinely along the chair arms. They felt cool and dry, scarcely more human than a bird’s claws. “I’m sorry.” Eleanor’s voice broke. “If I had known, I would have come sooner. Oh Leone, I’m so sorry. We loved Paul, too.”

  “Paul. . .” The eyes flickered with life. She struggled to get up. “Paul will be home soon. I’ll start dinner. Whatever am I doing, sitting here like an old woman? And it’s so dark. I must have taken a nap. Here, let’s get these drapes open and get things straight, well, I’ve never seen so much dust, and magazines scattered about. It’s a disgrace and the students start to come, oh, about four, let me see, what time is it?”

  She had slipped between them, darted to the windows, pulled the drapes wide, then turned toward the back of the apartment and the kitchen. Her voice muted now, floated out to them. Pans clattered, cupboard doors banged open and shut.

  Then, abruptly, silence.

  Leone stood in the middle of the tiny kitchen, clasping a brownish green pottery mug to her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Eleanor recognized the mug. How many cold nights had they sat by the fire, Paul cradling that mug in his hands, sipping strong chocolate with its topping of cinnamon and cream.

  Annemarie deftly took the mug, substituting her basket. “Look now, Mama Leone, you won’t guess what I’ve brought today. Look now and give me a guess.” She gestured for Eleanor to leave the kitchen.

  Eleanor waited in the silent living room. The sharp morning sunlight emphasized the smudged windows, the film of dust in the once immaculate room, the general aura of disuse and neglect.

  Annemarie joined her in a moment. “I have her busy now, making the soup. If you don’t mind, it would be better for you to go. When she remembers, it distresses her. When she doesn’t remember. . .”

  When she didn’t remember, there was no point in staying.

  Eleanor nodded and turned to go.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Annemarie asked diffidently.

  Eleanor wondered if her tension was that obvious. She hesitated, looking again, almost as if for the first time, at Annemarie’s young thin face. Dark eyes, sallow skin, a splotch of acne across her forehead. She had, when Mme. Durand first took her in, a hunted badgered look. Warmth and caring had filled out the thin cheeks, relieved the anxious look. Then love had brought a faint glow, a touch of radiance. Now, once again, her face was sallow and pale, her eyes somber.

  What was her husband’s name?

  Annemarie watched her eyes.

  Eleanor didn’t have to ask.

  “Jean-Paul’s company was at Lille. The last time I heard.”

  “Andre was at Bruges. The last I heard,” Eleanor said heavily. “So both of them were near Dunkirk.”

  That was the secret hope, the dream of so many thousands of Frenchwomen. They had heard nothing and they knew, the newspapers and radio broadcasts had told them, that many died on the roads and in the fields as the French and English fell back. But they knew too that thousands of Frenchmen had escaped to England.

  Andre and Jean-Paul?

  The two women saw in each other’s eyes grief and hope and the seeds of despair.

  “We don’t have much here,” Annemarie said awkwardly, “but if you need food?”

  Eleanor shook her head quickly. “It’s nothing like that.” She barely whispered the words. “Annemarie, do you know anyone who could help someone get to the Unoccupied Zone?”

  Annemarie looked around the silent living room before she leaned close to Eleanor to whisper. “I have heard, I do not know if it is true, but I have heard that people can go to Saint-Quentin, you know it is a little village just next to the Demarcation Line, and that if you know the right people, you can be taken across.”

  “The right people?”

  Annemarie shrugged. “I don’t know who you would ask. It was the brother of my friend Germaine who told me.”

  “Could you get in touch with him? Find out for me?”

  Annemarie shook her head. “He is gone now, too.” She frowned. “Perhaps if the person who wishes to cross would go to Saint-Quentin, perhaps ask at the Church.”

  “That won’t do. The person who wishes to cross, he can’t speak French.”

  “Oh, Madame! Oh, you must be careful!”

  “Annemarie, Annemarie,” Mme. Durand called plaintively.

  “One moment, Mama Leone, one moment.” Annemarie opened the door, then closed it to whisper quickly, “Madame, do you remember Roger Lamirand? The cocky medical student? The one with the wispy beard who always wore a beret?”

  Hazily, Eleanor did. A rasping voice, always too loud. A pugnacious, abrasive not especially likeable young man.

  “He lives two blocks from here, the northeast corner apartment house. Just off the Rue Saint Jacques. I think you can ask him.”

  On the street, Eleanor hesitated then swung to her right. It would do no harm to go by Lamirand’s apartment. She didn’t have to tell him anything. Why did Annemarie think he could be trusted? She walked slower and slower. The whole area seemed odd to her. It had been so familiar. Andre’s offices had been just a half block from here. She had often met him and carried a picnic lunch to the Luxembourg gardens. The Medici Fountain was their favorite spot. They never went there, in the heat of summer or the cool leaf-strewn fall or even occasionally on a brisk snowy winter walk, without seeing some student Andre knew. Now the streets were almost empty and the occasional passerby seemed furtive and wary.

  Lamirand’s apartment house was in a narrow twisty street where sunlight would touch the curbs only at noon. Even now, at mid-morning, it was cheerless and drab, the bricked facade chipped, the tall narrow windows uncurtained and dirty. In the entry hall, Eleanor paused uncertainly.
No letter-boxes here. She knocked at the concierge’s door. A middle-aged woman with a flat hard face and harshly hennaed hair stared at her.

  “M. Lamirand? He no longer lives here, Madame.”

  “Can you tell me where he has gone?”

  A shrug. Then a flicker of interest stirred. “Are you looking for an apartment, Madame? I could rent it to you cheap, very cheap.”

  “I don’t—” Eleanor stopped, looked up the stairs. Dirty, yes. Cheap. A young man would not be noticeable here, in the Latin Quarter. There weren’t many young men these days, but there were some. A place where a young man could hide. Eleanor looked back at the concierge. “I might be interested,” she said slowly, very slowly, and emphatically, “in subletting an apartment. I’ll pay you in cash and the apartment would still be listed in M. Lamirand’s name.”

  The concierge nodded and answered, as slowly, “It can be arranged, Madame. Of course, I will need a little extra fee to make it possible. Say, 2,500 francs?”

  Eleanor calculated quickly, nodded. Not quite fifty dollars. Fair enough. She stepped inside the concierge’s apartment and peeled off the bills. She had just enough to make up the sum. The woman gave her the key and pointed up the stairs. “The top floor, back.”

  It was a small one-bedroom apartment, shabby and cheaply furnished, but cheeringly clean, the living room recently painted buttercup yellow, the floors waxed and swept. Eleanor began to smile. What a perfectly wonderful piece of luck. Now they had a place to hide Michael. Roger must have left in a hurry, the closet ajar, the dresser drawers agape. He had not even taken time to empty out his larder. Eleanor knew then it must have been a very swift departure. The crock of honey would be unobtainable at the grocery and cost up to two hundred francs on the black market. There was half a loaf of moldy bread and, riches, a mesh bag of potatoes. She looked more carefully through the apartment, then. Surely he was coming back. But there were no clothes in the closet, the bed was stripped and bare, the dresser drawers empty. In the small square living room, she was puzzled for a moment by the arrangement of the furniture. There was a worn rocking chair and lumpy sofa along one wall. An armchair sat with its back to the room, facing the one large window to the north. When she leaned against the sill, she said aloud, “Oh, how lovely.”