by David Leroy
Marie stopped. “No, I am going with you.”
“But I thought you were going to visit your friend first?” her mother said, perplexed.
“No, I want to go with you. I will visit her later,” Marie said in her mind. She jumped through into the past and went right back to the one decision she regretted the most. With everything inside, she wished to pass into the dream of her family, to go back to June 13, 1940, to be back in Orleans.
“All right, then, let’s go to the market,” her mother said. Marie’s heart filled with peace. She knew that she would then share in the holy communion of the horses, and never have to taste any of these bitter days of life during the war.
Outside at the café, Jacques grabbed Marc’s forearm and squeezed it. “Will she be back?”
“I don’t know. She did not look well. If you need anything, please call on me,” the waiter said before he left their table.
“She cannot even look at me,” Marc said. He started to feel the same sadness. He knew there was nothing he could do to go back. He just wanted to go back to the summer of ’39, but there was no passage to it.
Marc scanned his mind for the last honest words that she’d said to him. Was it in front of the agent, as she left? “You should have left Paris, Marc, and never come back.” She’d spoken with such venom. He questioned if she honestly did ever love him before it all came undone.
He then caught his breath as the words struck him. He couldn’t avoid them or deny their truth. She was right that day, outside the movie theater. He realized that they had become the people in the newsreel: simply broken. He closed his eyes and tried to steady himself.
“It will not be long, you know. I don’t need to do a thing?” Marc mumbled.
“What do you mean?” Yves asked.
“She is out in the open, working in a café. It will only be a matter of time before she meets someone else,” Marc said, thinking of the eventual outcome of this terrible newsreel of his life.
“There are other women, and, besides, maybe you will get together with her again,” Yves said, unaware of the impossibility of such a disastrous reunion.
“Yves, I will tell you later. It is more complicated than that,” Marc said.
“Marc, tell us the vision again,” Jacques asked.
“You mean Marc’s dream?” Yves said.
“It is just a dream, Jacques. Not a vision,” Marc said, looking down at his plate.
“Marc, it is more than that, much more. Please, I love hearing you tell me about it,” Jacques pleaded.
Marc sat silent for a moment and gathered his thoughts. The dream felt more real than even life, he thought while he pondered Jacques’ pestering.
“When I was in the hospital, I think I got very close to dying. And these twins, who looked just like me, stood on either side of my bed, looking at my chest, ready to take me away. I couldn’t sleep but just stared at them as I breathed. I hadn’t felt like that since the sinking. I thought maybe I was dead, and then I thought about what would’ve happened had I died. Then, they were gone and I was back on the Normandie, going home …”
Marc woke in a leather chair of the smoking lounge. He was naked and covered in oil. His life jacket had come untied.
He started to focus his eyes, and all around him were horses. A horse’s snout then prodded him in the chair. His mother and father were riding the horse. His mother said, “Time to get up, Marc, you have a ship to catch.”
He stood up and found the entire room filled with horses, in between the leather chairs, surrounded by the gold lacquer murals along the walls.
Marc felt compelled to walk toward the doors of the lounge. In the corner sat a woman, with what looked like her family. They were laughing and enjoying lunch. The woman looked back at him and smiled. He hesitated and recognized her face, then walked through the doors into the main lounge.
Rain fell down from the wide-open sky when he passed through the doors. All of the oil from the broken Lancastria fell away from his skin under the showers. In the lounge, he saw elephants in a circle, lifted high upon their hind legs. People gathered around and watched the show, between the towering glass fountains of light.
The murals came alive, the gods sharing the circus with all the people. Marc caught the eye of Jean, and then he saw Georges. He walked through the room with no shame or concern that he was naked. He removed the life jacket, but carried it in his hand.
The gods stood in each corner of the lounge, beholding the magnificent circus act. The sky above held a golden sun. Angels flew down close to the fountains of light, dipping in jars, and carrying the treasure high into the sky. The bears danced with the children, and the lions gave rides on their backs. Even wearing the rags of the camps, the people were glorious and bright. The little Belgian boy with his sister sat laughing at the show beside their two dogs.
Marc walked down the stairs and toward the dining room. The doors were wide open. As he approached, a single white angora rabbit came hopping up the stairs past the passengers. The rabbit stopped in front of Marc and then went around him. Marc laughed out loud and felt the overwhelming joy from the room.
“I know your name. This way, please,” the agent from Paris said to Marc. “You are welcome here,” he said with a smile. Marc followed him through the vast dining room. All of the tables were filled with men, women, and children in all kinds of dress—uniforms from all sorts of nations. The solid blue floor shimmered like water, and Marc thought he was walking on the ocean. On each side rose the fountains of lights. The beams of the dining room gave way to a cloudless sky.
Then he came to his table. Dr. Jackson stood and hugged him. “I was not able to swim, but Philip made it.” He looked healthy and strong.
Officer Sean stood up and greeted Marc next. He’d been playing a game of cards with the Scotsman, and the other John, the other British man Marc had met on the Lancastria.
Allen came over to the table with a tray of drinks. “Marc, I have those drinks from the bar,” and Marc took one along with all the others. “Let us toast together,” Allen said.
Marc took his glass and raised it with the others to the large, looming statue in the center of this dining room. It seemed even larger now to Marc than when he had first seen it going to France. The golden lady, however, was not a statue but alive, holding out an olive branch above the diners.
“To peace everlasting, my friends!” Allen called out. “To peace everlasting,” they echoed back.
Chapter 48
September, 1967
Saint-Nazaire, France
“And they toasted to the golden goddess of Peace, raising their glasses together and said, ‘to peace everlasting,’” Jacques said as he finished telling the vision. He could not put his finger exactly on the emotion that rushed through him. Perhaps it was the hope of the vision that he loved, and that the dream Marc had, captured his own heart back in ’45, he thought.
Then, the full weight of the twenty-two years bore down upon him like boxcars on a train pressuring the engine as it screeched to a stop. He stood in silence before the gathered mourners, deep inside of himself. Jacques tried to remember the last time he heard Jean’s voice.
“Those were very sweet lies he told, very sweet,” he whispered to himself just above the dead silence, as he remembered how Marc refused to say they had died. The silence lasted only a moment, but for Jacques, it opened a deep well of time. He remembered all those rowdy brave voices gathering in his apartment in 1940, his young band called the Sons of Liberty. He smirked at the cocky arrogance of their innocent offerings of bravery. He lingered over all those young voices long past, lost in the war. They were all still alive, though only in his consciousness. Georges and Jean were not gone. He just hadn’t listened to their voices for twenty-two years.
No one at the graveside seemed to be in any hurry for Jacques to finish. They waited patiently for him to find himself again. Dora held a card from David back in the States. Nigel sat next to her, holding their t
wo canes. Marc’s sister, Elda, sat in the front row, next to Jacques and his family.
Jacques then caught himself. He stood tall before the people and said, “I have always loved that vision, that dream of Marc’s from those days, of a ship going home, with both friend and foe reconciled under the presence of something we were all fighting, praying and hoping for, that beautiful goddess called Peace.”
The echo of his own voice sounded strange to him, as if there was something more just beyond the people gathered, as if there was a second congregation standing all around. They were standing around them, and above, in every direction: men in uniforms left to drown in the sea, women and children dumped into the sea by the flipped lifeboats, the nameless refugees who disappeared from the earth as they boarded that ship. Jacques doubted his ears but they did not lie.
His speech complete, Jacques moved back to his seat.
“As you know, Marc was not particularly religious, and that is why he asked me to speak instead of a priest. Please join us inside for a reception with Marc’s sister, Elda.” Jacques took the hand of his wife to guide him back into the reception room.
Marc’s soul felt the sudden release as the rate of time increased.
“Why did I have to go back? If I had just let her go, I would’ve always had the Marie of ’39, but I went back and lost her, and all those people paid,” he cried out in anguish over the guilt and shame he’d held inside all those years after the war.
Then the light of days flashed in the sky. Marc stood with the assembly of those known unto God from the Lancastria. The priest held the staff with the clock atop it. The dial sped up and the years passed. Marc looked up at the priest, recognizing him as Yves from Buchenwald. He had lost contact with him after the war, but never forgot how he’d helped him carry Georges’ lifeless body to roll call.
Marc stood looking back at the grave. It bore the title of his request. He’d been emphatic that he had given his true name to someone unknown in ’41 and would not take it back. The grave marker stated simply, “Known Unto God.” Marc’s service as a medical doctor flashed before him far faster than the years of the war.
“Joan was right. I was trying to save those whom I’d lost,” Marc said. Then the rate of time increased again, until Marc could no longer read the clock. His life played out over and over again, much to his horror, in what appeared to be an endless loop.
“Why are you condemning me to this?” he yelled at Yves.
“I condemn no one,” Yves said.
“Is this it? I am condemned to watch my life over and over again? I am in hell. Are you my judge?” Marc said with rage.
“You know that is not true,” Yves said.
With each spin of the clock’s dial, Marc’s life replayed before his eyes. “What siren of Paris, what siren of, what siren, what siren, what, what, what …” Marc heard Officer Sean each time, as he stood dumbstruck by the flashback of the years.
“The siren was from within my own heart. I betrayed myself long before Marie,” Marc said in reflection.
Yves stepped closer to Marc, and Marc looked up at him. Yves cocked his head a bit with a curious smile, which struck Marc as odd. Then a spark came alive within Marc’s eternal deathwatch of his own life. If I am the one who committed the sin of betrayal, then I am the one who holds my own forgiveness, he thought. Yves nodded his head in agreement, staring into Marc’s eyes.
“Will you?” Yves asked.
“Yes,” Marc said.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I will forgive myself.”
“When?” Yves said as he stepped back and nodded at the spinning clock. Marc looked at the clock as his life played out before him again.
“I forgive myself,” Marc said.
The clock stopped, as did the flashbacks. Marc stood with the dead of the Lancastria, surrounding Yves who held firm to his staff.
“What day is this?” Marc asked.
“June 18, 2040,” Yves said.
“Why are we here?”
“This is the day of healing, the last day you must see before you can let go of this life and be free,” Yves said. Marc’s attention felt drawn to across the Channel, to London.
A older clerk walked slowly down the long corridor of the new building created to house the records in London. He opened a door and walked into an office.
“Yes, what is it?” the younger clerk sitting at the desk said, looking up at him.
“There is a request for these records,” he said, holding a file.
“And that is a problem?”
“They were sealed.”
“So show them the records. You don’t need me for that.”
“But the rules are that they need to be reviewed first, even if the seal has expired,” the older clerk said with a smirk.
“You are such a pain. You are interrupting my work for this?”
“I have never seen you work. Please, look at the seal,” the older clerk said.
“What is this?” He snapped the file from the new clerk’s hand.
“Bloody right, I say. You need to get off your bum and review this file.”
The younger clerk looked at the front of the file, at the one-hundred-year-old seal of Winston Churchill’s office. He opened it and began to read the documents inside.
“Come on, now, what does it say?”
“Oh, I had no idea. This explains everything,” the younger clerk said, scanning the papers. He folded the file and handed it back.
“That’s it?”
“Yes, of course. It’s time. Show them the file.”
“Why was it sealed for a hundred years? I’ve never seen any records from the war still under seal.”
“You can read it now, too. I’m not sure why it has been kept sealed for a hundred years, but I believe I understand why they thought back in 1940 they needed to keep it sealed that long,” the younger clerk said.
The older clerk then returned to the front desk to deliver the file over for the small crowd gather in the waiting room.
Marc’s attention returned to Saint-Nazaire. His soul radiated a beautiful golden light, with all of the others gathered for this day.
“Your watch is now complete. The time has come for us now to go. Will you all please join me for the final prayers?” Yves bellowed out. Marc felt a sweet change inside himself called freedom.
“May the Peace of the Lord within you heal you of all your wounds by day or from night, by love or from war.”
All the people gathered known unto God said with a unified voice, “Thanks be to God.”
For Book Clubs, or Class Discussion groups
1. Humans have a remarkable ability to choose denial over truth when it suits their personal goals. Marc chooses to ignore numerous warning signs that this was not a good time to go to France, and instead brush them off to justify his decision. This aspect of Marc’s personality comes out when he believes Dora’s is referring to the German’s and not the dangers of French women, and he makes the remark that he does not believe there is any reason to be concerned. His opinion is also reinforced by the friends he has selected on the crossing over, who also have a vested interest in the idea that all well be well in the future. How have you experienced that in your life? Have you noticed that certain people have a bias or predisposition to ignore out right or dismiss news, which does not fit their-conceived notion of reality?
2. Once the Athenia is sunk, and real innocent civilian lives have been lost in the very start of the War, how to do you think you would respond. Would you attempt to go south through Spain? Would you still rush to get a ticket on any ship? Would you consider a tramp steamer to South America? Or, do you think instead you would consider your chances better to remain in Europe and depend upon the efforts of the British and French Armies, with the near constant hope ever present in the papers that America would join the war in a matter of time? Do you sit, and wait, or run, and take your chances?
3. Marc’s status and social position enables h
im to move into a position of responsibility few would likely be able to naturally walk into off the street with Ambassador Bullitt, and the American Embassy. How does this appeal to his own ego, and how does the call to be important and loyal work against him in terms of making the best personal choices?
4. Marc leaves America behind, with a failed relationship, and within a few months falls into a new relationship in a foreign country. How can being both young, and dealing with cultural issues, blind someone to the fact they are repeating relationship cycles?
For more questions regarding The Siren of Paris, see www.thesirenofparis.com