Escape From Paris

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Krause studied the photograph intently, the fires in the central business section, what looked like a direct hit on Paddington Station, and, most of all, the roiling twisting plume of smoke that hid the docks. The blazes would be an inferno beneath that smoke. Smoke and flame. The funeral pyre of a decadent society.

  He lifted the cup to his mouth, took a final sip of coffee and let his gaze wander slowly up and down the broad elegant boulevard. Parisians were so proud of the boulevard. Actually, it couldn’t compare with the Unter Der Linden. The Champs-Elysees looked frowsy this morning, so many shops boarded up and only an occasional car, a German car, to break up the swarms of dilapidated bicycles with their shabby riders. The Arc de Triomphe wasn’t a match for the Brandenburg Gate. He was swept suddenly by a wish to be home again, especially now that it was September. Though, once again like last year, the gigantic Nazi Party Rally had been canceled. He had attended the rallies every year since they began in Nuremberg in 1933, caught up in the excitement, the glory, the thunderous roar of thousands of exultant supporters. He pictured Nuremberg’s narrow streets with their Gothic facades, the tens of thousands of Swastika flags hanging from windows and roofs and balconies, the streets thronged with black and brown uniforms. One year he remembered especially clearly. It was his first time to sit upon the platform in Luitpold Hall. There had been flags there, too, hundreds of them, fluttering above the packed audience. The band played as everyone assembled, then, after the last chair was taken, the last inch of space along the walls filled, the band stopped, a hush fell.

  Hitler appeared in the back of the hall.

  The band struck up the Badenweiler March.

  Hitler started down the center aisle. Goering and Goebbels and Hess and Himmler strode behind him.

  Thirty thousand men and women rose. Thirty thousand arms lifted in salute. Thirty thousand voices roared.

  Hitler reached the stage. Kleig lights spotted him. The band swung into Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. Everyone on the stage, a select hundred of them, party officers, army and navy officers stood, Krause among them, part of them, and everyone shouted, everyone on the stage and in the hall, HEIL HITLER, HEIL HITLER! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

  Krause walked down the Paris boulevard, climbed into the waiting car, the paper tucked under his arm, his breath quickening as he remembered. Thousands strong. They were conquering the world.

  He was still smiling as he settled behind his desk. For once he didn’t pause to savor the room and its furnishings. Nothing French could be counted as valuable this morning. He dropped the newspaper into the wastebasket and reached out for a stack of papers Sgt. Schmidt had arranged for him.

  He skimmed the reports. Ah, activity was looking up in the search for the British airmen. What more could be done? He leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowed. In a moment, he buzzed for Schmidt.

  “Sergeant.” Krause tilted back in his chair, stared sightlessly at the ornate ceiling, his fingertips pressed lightly together. “Find five Gestapo agents who speak perfect English. Obtain British uniforms, either RAF or Army, RAF preferably. Prepare reasonable escape stories to account for their turning up at various points.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Paris, Orleans, Tours, Bordeaux.” He opened his eyes, looked thoughtfully at the map opposite his desk. “And St. Jean-de-Luz.” St. Jean-de-Luz, just short of the Spanish border. “If only one of them, Sergeant, is helped by the French, we will have a thread to yank. Once we yank, we can unravel an escape line all the way back to Paris.”

  She awed him as he hadn’t been awed since childhood, Jonathan realized. Not since the massive cook, Mrs. Smithson in his wealthy aunt’s kitchen, had lifted pale blue eyes one mid-summer morning to remonstrate, “Master Jonathan I do not permit rowdy behavior,” had he encountered such strength of personality. Mme. Moreau was not huge, as Mrs. Smithson had been, but she radiated the same aura of power. The very first evening, when he had struggled down the cobbled passageway to knock at the first door on the left, she had welcomed him gravely, helped him inside. Once he was fed, bathed, his wound freshly dressed, she had looked at him dispassionately. “It will be necessary, Lieutenant, that we have a clear understanding of your responsibilities.”

  He must have looked surprised.

  She had smiled a little drily. “Yes, Lieutenant, your responsibilities. It is of utmost importance that you agree to do exactly as I tell you or neither of us will survive. I must request that you do not smoke. My friends know that I am not a smoker. Under no circumstances are you to leave this house. Moreover, during the daytime hours, you must be very careful not to make any loud noise although you may move quietly about the house. I am fortunate in that my home is a single dwelling but passerby must not hear odd noises when they know I am not at home.” She looked at him levelly. “This will entail some discipline on your part.”

  She was right. As the days slipped by, Jonathan was amazed at how desperately he wanted to go outside. Just for a minute. A single minute free of the stuffy, confining, tiny heat-laden rooms. Just one minute. And to smoke a cigarette—his lungs ached, his whole body hungered for the acrid soothing full-throated draw of smoke down deep into his lungs. One day, he took the packet of Players out of his pocket and emptied it, lining the cigarettes in a row. Twelve cigarettes. He picked each one up, ran a finger lightly its length, slipped it back into the crumpled tattered packet. Then, abruptly, violently, he crushed the packet into a ball, crushed and smashed it beyond recall, then shredded the tobacco and paper mixture into tiny flakes and dumped all of it into the garbage pail in the kitchen.

  He lost weight, though Mme. Moreau tried, skillfully, to give him the larger portions of their meager meals. His face, that had always been rounded and cheerful, became increasingly lean, his cheekbones prominent, the line of his jaw stark and distinct.

  During the weekdays, when she was at the village school, he followed a rigid regimen. From nine to ten, he walked. Five steps forward, five steps back. Five steps forward, five steps back. The first two weeks, he would grimace and hold moans deep in his throat and lean heavily on his crutch. Soon his side and arm would begin to ache. But, day after interminable day, he walked back and forth across the tiny living room in the dead hot air, sweat streaming down his face and back and legs for the windows were shut and the curtains tightly drawn. From nine to ten he walked. From ten to eleven he read. It was hard at first. He had not read in French for many years but there was the excitement of struggle and success and the peace when time was suspended and his mind delighted in the clarity and grace of that clearest and most graceful of languages. Mme. Moreau’s bookcases filed one wall in the tiny dining room. The light was poor, the bindings old, titles often almost illegible. It was the second week that he found, tucked toward the back, a modern day English version of Beowulf. That first afternoon he never looked up from the book until he heard Mme. Moreau’s key in the lock at six o’clock. After that, he was more sparing. If he worked hard at his walk and his French and his afternoon exercises, he permitted himself to read Beowulf. Lunch was soup and a piece of bread. From one to two, once again he walked. From two to three, he studied the 1919 Atlas, learning the track of the narrowest country road, the belts of forest, the rivers. Les Andelys was near the Seine. How big was the river here, Jonathan wondered? What kind of boats still moved? Was there a chance to escape in a boat? From three to four, he exercised, mostly pushups in the beginning for he could just manage those with his injured leg. From four to five he rested and read. At five, he began to straighten the house, picking up his books, putting the chairs back in place in the living room, setting the kitchen table.

  Days slipped by. The heat lessened and the leaves began to flame orange and red. From the attic window, he could look out and see an ancient oak. Every day a few more leaves drifted down into untidy autumnal heaps.

  Each night, when Mme. Moreau returned, he looked up hopefully, then turned away.

  He was beginning to be able to walk with only a moderate limp. The wound wa
s closed but the skin felt strange around it and he had noticed last night during his first bath in a week, for there was so little soap and water had to be heated in the kitchen and fuel was too precious to waste, pinkish streaks radiating downward from the lumpy discolored scar. The wound no longer hurt, unless he bumped against something, but he didn’t feel well. And he was always hot.

  Today he felt awful. He kept to his schedule but he did his exercise grimly, mouth tight, and his thoughts were as dark and murky as water in a stagnant pond. He was just beginning to pick up his day’s litter, a stack of books by the couch, the cup with dregs of ersatz coffee, yesterday’s Paris newspaper, the Atlas, when he heard, clear and distinct, familiar after these three long weeks, the brisk clatter of Mme. Moreau’s sturdy shoes against the cobbled stones.

  Jonathan came to life, grabbing up the paper and the book and the cup, lunging hurriedly toward the dining room and the narrow steps that twisted up to the single bedroom and higher yet to the tiny attic. It was only half-past five. What had happened? What was bringing her home early?

  The key scraped in the lock. No time to get to the attic. Was anyone with her? Was something wrong? He dumped his armload on the dining room table and grabbed up a straight chair and waited, pressed against the wall.

  The door slammed behind her. He heard her uneven breaths. She must have hurried awfully fast. He lifted up the chair.

  “Jonathan? Jonathan, where are you?”

  Slowly he put down the chair.

  She swept into the dining room. A smile softened her severe face. She held up her school satchel. “I have them here,” she said excitedly. “Your papers. Everything’s set, Jonathan. You leave tonight.”

  Eleanor kissed Michael’s cheek. Robert shook his hand. Linda smiled and realized she was holding back tears.

  Michael looked at each of them. “I can’t thank you enough.” His voice broke a little at the end.

  “No thanks,” Eleanor said quickly. “We thank you, Michael. Go to England and keep on fighting them and someday you’ll come back to Paris and we’ll have a grand reunion. You and Linda and Robert and . . . and Andre, he’ll be home by then, and myself. We’ll take you to a fine little café, La Bonne Franquette, up in Montmartre. That’s a promise.”

  He nodded, pressed his lips together.

  Linda said it. “It’s time now.”

  Michael took the little mesh bag that Eleanor had fixed, a loaf of bread, cheese, a bottle of wine. A little slowly, he also picked up a thick woolen jacket, red-and-black checked. “I hate to take this, Mme. Masson. Your husband will need it when he comes home.”

  Eleanor didn’t look at the jacket but Linda saw the imperceptible change in her sister’s face and realized with a cold horror that Eleanor didn’t expect Andre to come home again. Ever.

  Eleanor looked at Linda. “The priest said they cross the Pyrenees into Spain, didn’t he?”

  Numbly, still shaken by her sudden insight, Linda nodded.

  “Well then, Michael, you will need it more than Andre. By the time you reach the border, the weather will be turning very cold up in the mountains. Soon the snow will begin. You must take the jacket. Andre would want you to have it.”

  Father Laurent had instructed Linda to bring Michael to the Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens between 10 a.m. and a quarter past.

  Linda was reaching for the door knob when Eleanor asked, “Do you think it would do any harm if Robert and I followed along? We’ll pretend we don’t know you, of course.”

  Linda hesitated for an instant. But it couldn’t make any difference that she could see.

  They walked down the Boul’ Mich’, Eleanor and Robert trailing about twenty yards behind. They passed bookstores and cafes. Every day a few more shops opened, though the boarded-up windows on every block still reminded of those who had fled in June and had not returned.

  Linda and Michael didn’t talk. She was tautly conscious of him beside her. She wished they had given him a cap to cover his thin blond hair. A long strand fell over his forehead. He looked so English. Linda began to walk faster. If she could just get him to the park and to the fountain. Once he was delivered to Father Laurent, they would be safe again. Eleanor and Robert would be free of the danger she had brought to them when she smuggled Michael out of the hospital. Ever since the posters had gone up, the black-and-white posters announcing death for those who did not surrender Englishmen, Linda passed each German soldier with a sickening sensation of dread. Firing squad. To be lined up in front of a firing squad, to stand, blindfolded, and wait. To hear, in that last instant, the guttural command to fire.

  Linda saw the gray-green of a German staff car approaching and she stumbled.

  Michael looked down. “What’s wrong?”

  “Hush. Ne parle pas anglais.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered and she could have screamed at him. The instant the car passed, she was filled with regret. For God’s sake, even the Germans couldn’t tell a man on a sidewalk twenty feet away was speaking English. But she was afraid, afraid all the way through. They were so near now to safety, she and Eleanor and Robert. Just a few more minutes and all the strain would be over. They could walk away, leave the apartment empty. They wouldn’t have to be afraid again.

  She might even go home. Oh God, what she would give to go home. It would be all right to go home now. There wasn’t anything more she could do to help Eleanor. And, if she sensed the truth, Eleanor no longer hoped for Andre’s return. Perhaps Eleanor and Robert would come, too. They could all go home. Pasadena would be lovely now, anemones blazing against the wall in the backyard, the sweet smell of hibiscus, soft cool air and nowhere the sharp green of Army uniforms or the soul warping black of the SS.

  The air was cool on the path leading to the fountain, huge trees blocking the thin September sun. Red and yellow and brown leaves crackled underfoot. It was beginning to feel like fall, a cool edge beneath the morning warmth. The path was wide enough here for four to walk abreast. Room, then, to pass the couple walking toward them. Once again her legs were leaden, felt clumsy and unmanageable. Michael reached out, gently, to take her arm.

  The German soldier and the girl with him didn’t look at Linda and Michael as they passed and Linda was ashamed of the way her arm trembled. She pulled free from Michael. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m all right.” Soon she would be all right. The constant pressure was going to end, no more tension and danger and, worst of all, the insidious unending fear that turned her mouth to chalk and tightened her chest until it hurt to breathe.

  “Look for the artist,” Father Laurent had said.

  The easel sat to the right of the fountain. The artist stood in front of it, as tall and angular as she remembered. Somehow, she was surprised when she saw him. She had not thought he would be there in person. Slowly, casually, she and Michael strolled toward the easel, stopped to look at the drawing.

  It was a penciled sketch, not quite finished, but with only the contrast of soft lead against the creamy manila paper, he had caught the essence of the fountain, the slender and young and graceful bodies of Acis and Galatea, each absorbed, consumed by the other, Galatea lying back against Acis, cradled in his arm, looking up into his eyes, and, above them, driven by jealousy, implacably dangerous, the huge Cyclops, Polyphemus, crouched, forever captured in bronze in the act of rolling the huge boulder down upon the lovers.

  Linda looked from the drawing to the fountain, at the pale clean-limbed lovely bodies of Acis and Galatea. So beautiful and so vulnerable. “C’est bon.”

  “Merci.” Father Laurent deepened a shadow, murmured, “There is a woman with a boy. Behind us. They seem to be watching.”

  Linda bit her lip. “I’m sorry. That’s Eleanor and my nephew, Robert. They wanted to see Michael off.”

  “That’s all right. I just wanted to be sure.” The priest half turned, smiling at Linda and Michael, as a painter politely would respond when his work was admired. “Michael?”

  Michael
nodded.

  “Take the path to your left. Follow it to the lake. There is a boy in a yellow sweater, sailing a red toy sailboat that is almost a half meter long. Go up to him and say, ‘That is a handsome boat, Claude,’ He will take you from there.” The priest repeated the French sentence twice.

  “That is a handsome boat, Claude.” Michael managed the French well enough. After a swift glance at Linda, he turned and walked quickly away.

  Linda was ready to leave when, to hide the almost overwhelming surge of relief that swept her as Michael was lost to sight, she said abruptly, “I didn’t expect you to be here, Father. I thought, when we talked the other day, that one of your helpers would meet me.”

  He frowned at the drawing. “I had not intended to come.” He paused and looked around the clearing, at Eleanor and Robert, dawdling now on the other side of the fountain, at a student stretched out on a bench, his sweater over his face, at the old woman walking slowly down the path, her head bent, stopping to pluck up any broken twig or piece of bark. “You came to me for help and now I must ask you for help.”

  Linda looked at him, startled.

  “Please, look at the painting and do not appear worried.”

  Linda leaned forward, as if to see the drawing better. “What is it, Father?”

  “I did not tell you, for there was no need, but the reason I could take Michael was because I am a part of a chain that helps English soldiers reach Spain. It began in July when a priest I knew at seminary dropped by to see me. He lives in a village in Northern France. There are thousands of English soldiers hiding in the woods up there and he is bringing them, in groups of four, to Paris. He turns them over to me and I see them on their way to Bordeaux. A former student of mine picks them up there and takes them across the Demarkation Line. He has a friend who sees them on to Hendaye. From there . . . But you see how it works. It all began a little blindly. My friend came to me, I went in search of a friend in Bordeaux, he found a friend in Hendaye. I have also been the one who obtains the necessary papers. That takes time so sometimes it means the men that come to Paris must wait a while before leaving. That brings me to my difficulty today.”