The Paper Girl of Paris

by Jordyn Taylor

  “This party is incredible, isn’t it?” Madame LaRoche says breathlessly. “Odette, come with me. Suzette is over there by the window, and she’s just lovely in person.” She seizes Maman by the hand, and the two of them go off toward the group of middle-aged women clustered around the obliging—though perhaps slightly overwhelmed—columnist.

  Now, once again, it’s just me and the twins. I really do wish Chloe were here. I still feel hopelessly sad from my meeting with Luc, and it would help to have a friend at my side, even if I couldn’t tell her exactly what was wrong.

  “What shall we do?” I ask them.

  “Maybe we should go to the room in back,” Marie suggests, eyeing Monique. “The one we were in earlier.”

  Monique shrugs. “If you want.”

  Marie takes me by the hand and guides me and her sister toward a set of doors. But when I see where she’s taking me, I recoil. The sitting room is smaller, quieter, and more comfortable than the main entrance, with a roaring blaze in the fireplace. But reclining on the divans, and leaning against the mantel, are a half dozen German officers in black jackets adorned with medals and leather gun belts. They stand out like roaches on a white-tiled floor.

  “I know, I was surprised, too,” Marie whispers. “But they’re really very friendly.”

  They deported one of my friends.

  “It’s quite nice when you can forget about the war for a while and just be people.”

  Frozen at the threshold of the room, I watch as Marie strikes up a conversation with a blond-haired, blue-eyed German on the sofa. His red Nazi armband is glaring, but she doesn’t seem to mind as she tries a sip of his cognac, then wrinkles her nose in what’s meant to be cute expression of disgust.

  Monique is still standing next to me, like a beachgoer deciding if she wants to get into the water. Of the two LaRoche girls, she is the one I get along with slightly better. Surely, she sees how wrong this is.

  “Are you going to go join them?”

  “I . . . I suppose so,” she says. “I know it isn’t right, because they’re the enemy, but at the same time, the Occupation is the Occupation, is it not? We can’t change that. We might as well interact and see if we can get something out of them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Food. Wine. Maman says the black-market prices are getting steeper and steeper.”

  Monique seems ready to join her sister. I am not. “You go ahead,” I tell her, spying a corridor that looks as though it might lead to a lavatory. “I want to powder my nose first.”

  “Okay, see you soon,” she says. “I swear it isn’t as bad as it looks.”

  I dart for the corridor, intent on spending as much time as I possibly can in the toilet tonight. But I’m about to turn the corner when I careen headfirst into another body—one that emits a clinking of metal upon collision. The crash sends a wave of champagne splashing down my front, and my glass flute plummets to the floor and shatters into a million pieces.

  The room goes silent as everyone turns to look at us.

  I am mortified.

  “Gut gemacht, Uli,” teases the blond-haired Nazi on the couch. Well done, Uli. The other Germans in the room point and laugh at us. Great—now they have all seen us together. If I sneak away now, people will notice.

  Uli, as he must be called, is crouched on the floor and using his leather gloves to sweep the glass into a pile and deposit it in a nearby trash can. Instinctively, I bend down to help him, but he holds out his hand to stop me.

  “Vorsicht—es ist sehr scharf,” he warns. Careful—it’s very sharp.

  He can’t be much older than I am. He has smooth, pale skin with rounded features and a full head of sandy-brown hair. I notice, with the tiniest bit of relief, that he isn’t wearing the swastika on his arm.

  When the glass is all gone, he gets to his feet, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Then he takes one look at my dress, now wet with champagne, and launches into a string of apologies in mangled French, his cheeks growing more and more crimson by the second.

  “It really is fine,” I assure him for the tenth time.

  At last, he is calm.

  “I do not have very much experience at big parties,” he says with a chuckle. “You see? I still have not introduced myself to you. I am Ulrich Becker. What is your name, miss?”

  I cast around for Marie and Monique, but they are deep in conversation on the couch. Well, if I must stay at this party until Maman is ready to go home, better I pass the time with Ulrich, who isn’t an armband-wearing party member, than with the blond-haired Nazi.

  “Adalyn Bonhomme.”

  “You have very beautiful eyes, Miss Bonhomme.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “We must get you something else to drink.”

  “Okay.”

  I let Ulrich lead me to a pair of empty chairs near the fire and pour me a glass of cognac. It feels good to let the flames dry my damp clothes—but what am I to talk about with this damned boche all evening?

  “Tell me about yourself,” he says.

  “All right. What would you like to know?”

  He takes a long, slow slip of his drink and stares into the blaze. I can see tendrils of fire reflected in his eyes. “Anything.”

  I sense that Ulrich does not want to learn; he wants to be distracted. Well, so do I. I pick a safe, neutral topic—school—and in a meandering sort of way talk about my first few months of university.

  “It is nice that you enjoy it,” Ulrich says. “I must admit, I never liked school.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I was not good at sports—the worst in the whole school. My classmates called me weak. I . . . I never had very many friends.”

  “Oh. That certainly makes things more difficult.” Like school after Charlotte and Simone left. “It isn’t fun to feel lonely every day.”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  “What do you do now?”

  “I work at the rail yard.”

  “Are you happier?”

  Silence. Ulrich chews his bottom lip. “Can I tell something to you, Miss Bonhomme?”

  “Yes. You may say whatever you like.”

  He tips his glass against his lips once more, his eyes never leaving the hearth. “I must speak softly,” he says, nodding toward his compatriots. “You see, I am grateful for my position . . . and I believe it is the right thing, the natural thing, for Germany to rule over France . . . but if I am to be honest, Miss Bonhomme, I miss very much my home in Berlin.”

  I try not to let my reaction to his comments about Germany and France show in my face.

  “Is your family there?”

  “Ja. My mother, my father, and my baby sister. My sister, Klara, she is my very best friend. We are normally talking to each other all the time. It is not easy to be away from her . . . and it has been two years now.”

  His words stir up an unexpected flurry of emotions in my chest. They remind me of Chloe, and the look in her eyes as she yanked her hand out of mine in the foyer, and all the secrets I’ve been forced to keep from her in the last two years. The war has driven a wedge between us, which frustrates me terribly, because we are still the same people at our cores.

  “My younger sister is my best friend, too,” I tell Ulrich, and when he finally looks at me, I can see that his eyes shine with tears.

  “Thank you for understanding. . . .”

  “Of course. That must be very painful.”

  “Ja,” he says again, nodding. “Very painful.”

  There is nothing left for me to say about school, so Ulrich talks about his work instead. I learn that he is in charge of train schedules at the Gare de l’Est, the railway station not far from my home. He makes sure that important supplies from Germany—weapons, ammunition, building materials, and the like—make it into Paris safely to be used by the Occupation forces. Despite missing home, he says he enjoys his job, and it isn’t long before he’s getting into the finer details of organizing train schedules. When h
e mentions the specific timing of a firearm shipment coming in later this week, my ears perk up. Perhaps under the influence of an evening’s worth of cognac, Ulrich is revealing very specific details about the German war effort—details that could be useful to us.

  My head starts to pound with adrenaline.

  I need to memorize everything he’s said.

  “Adalyn?”

  Ulrich stops talking, and we both look over to find Maman standing in the doorway. She looks back and forth between us, assessing the situation. She must be doing some mental calculation over how it’s okay to feel about a German officer being kind to her daughter. In the end, she smiles, albeit somewhat cautiously.

  “Are you ready to go, darling? Madeleine has arranged for a German staff car to take us home.” She pauses. “It’s easier than walking all the way back.”

  Earlier in the evening, I might have leapt at her arrival, but now I wish I could stay and get more information out of Ulrich. He helps me out of my chair and guides me to Maman, past Marie and Monique, who are now more than a little drunk and taking turns trying on the blond Nazi’s uniform hat.

  “You have a lovely daughter,” Ulrich says to Maman. “We have very much enjoyed talking this evening.”

  “Thank you,” Maman says. “It’s nice to see us all getting along.”

  “I hope to see you again, Miss Bonhomme,” Ulrich says to me.

  “I hope so, too,” I reply.

  Maman and I retrieve our coats and make our way to the door, stopping along the way for a few final goodbyes. I don’t know what makes me do it, but right before we leave, I glance over my shoulder for one last look at the party. There’s Ulrich, standing at the entrance to the sitting room and gazing in my direction. When our eyes meet, he smiles.

  He waves to me.

  I wave back.

  On the car ride home, the cool September breeze blows our hair this way and that. Maman recounts the highlights of the evening with the air of someone trying hard to assure themselves of something.

  “I think we deserved a night out, didn’t we? It was nice to just relax. With the way things are now, we have to let ourselves eat and drink like that when we can.” She nods, as though agreeing with herself. “The band was excellent—and there was so much champagne—and Suzette was brilliant; I would love to meet her again.”

  I nod along, too, my mind on Ulrich’s train schedules. I’m also thinking about my meeting with Geronte, which is happening tomorrow morning.

  “Madeleine said we must come to her next event,” Maman says, reaching across the seat and squeezing my hand.

  I can tell she’s conflicted. She knows it isn’t right to go to parties with Nazis, but tonight, she had fun. Maman wants to adapt to our new normal—not to the same lengths as Madame Marbot, of course, but enough to make our lives under the Germans a little more tolerable. I think she wants me to help justify our return to the Hotel Belmont—and luckily for her, I have a vested interest in meeting Ulrich again.

  “Of course we’ll be at the next one,” I tell her, squeezing her hand in return.

  The automobile turns onto our darkened street, its covered headlights casting an eerie blue light onto the pavement. I don’t know what makes me do it—maybe it’s purely by chance, or maybe I really am attuned to my sister’s every impulse—but as the car rolls to a stop outside number thirty-six, I gaze up toward our apartment on the fifth floor.

  There, staring down at the street with her head hanging out the window, is Chloe.

  It’s too dark to read the expression on her face, but perhaps it’s better that way. For I can only imagine what’s going through my sister’s head as we climb out onto the sidewalk in our evening wear—Maman giggling about some joke she heard at the party—and the shiny German car drives off into the night.

  Chapter 9

  Alice

  Another evening at home. Another rigid dinner around the kitchen table with Mom sitting in sullen silence, and me and Dad taking turns trying to start some kind of conversation.

  “So, Alice, it sounds like you and Paul have a fun day in Versailles planned tomorrow. He seems like a good guy, doesn’t he, Diane?”

  “Mhmm.”

  “It was really nice of him to invite me,” I chime in. “He did it out of the blue, as we were leaving Gram’s apartment.”

  Shoot. I wasn’t thinking—it just slipped out. The second I mention the apartment, Mom’s body visibly tenses. She stops chewing, her jaw clenches, and she squeezes her fork so tight her knuckles turn white. Oh no, no, no. I feel terrible. Mom’s still so sensitive to anything involving Gram, and I just dropped that bomb without any warning.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ve been trying not to talk about it.”

  “It’s fine,” she says, swallowing her food with what looks like difficulty. “It’s fine.”

  But it clearly isn’t fine. Nobody speaks for the rest of the meal; the only sound is the forks and knives scraping against china. When we’re finished, we clear our plates, and Mom returns to her corner of the couch; Dad, to his laptop. Mom probably needs a little space right now, so I go to my room to keep translating Adalyn’s diary.

  Tonight, I have the diary open on one side of my lap and my great-grandmother’s day planner open on the other. I’ve been cross-referencing dates to see if I can find any links. Suddenly, I find something that makes my heart leap.

  There’s a diary entry dated September 26, 1942. The day before, Adalyn’s mom visited the Hotel Belmont for the first time. What if Adalyn went with her? And what if she wrote about Ulrich Becker III? I start typing into Google Translate as fast as I can.

  September 26th, 1942

  I thought Chloe would yell at us when we came in from the party, but it was worse. She was standing in the foyer, looking like she was about to cry. Then she stormed to her room and slammed the door.

  So I guessed right. Adalyn was there.

  I hated knowing that I disappointed her, so the next morning I begged her, please, come for a walk with me down by the river. The river is the only place that doesn’t feel claustrophobic in this city, where the buildings give way to wide-open water and air. You can think there. You can breathe. It was a long walk to get there, but the weather was agreeable, and since Maman and Papa were handling rations that day, I said, what else did we have to do?

  She was reluctant, but she agreed. I bought us two cups of so-called coffee along the way, which tasted terrible, but our mutual revulsion broke the ice. We played our old game again, starting with a cup of rich, dark espresso for me and a steaming mug of hot chocolate for Chloe.

  At the river, we returned to the more serious matter. She of course said, How could you? They are the enemy! And I said, I know they are the enemy, and so does Maman. People have different ways of dealing with the Occupation. Different things they must do to survive.

  And then I made a mistake: I told Chloe the truth, which is that I never would have gone in the first place had I known les boches would be there.

  Now I dread what will happen when she learns I intend to go back.

  I double-check the translation, certain I made a mistake. It’s the ending that I don’t get: Adalyn says she wouldn’t have gone to the Belmont if she’d known about the Germans—but then why in the world does she want to go back? Strangely, it all seems correct, so I keep going.

  October 6th, 1942

  I could not focus in class today at all. It was sociology, which I tend to enjoy more than other lessons, but my mind was simply untethered. The professor called on me and I had to ask him to repeat the question—it was embarrassing.

  I know why, though: because I miss him. I long for another evening together. I didn’t expect to miss him this much, but I do.

  I stare at what I just typed for about fifteen seconds.

  Oh my god.

  Gross, gross, gross.

  I slam my laptop closed and shove the diary into my backpack, out of sight. I finally found it. The point when Adalyn went bad.
I’m not translating another word of that thing.

  My heart races as I put it all together into a plausible story line.

  I know that Adalyn used to hate the Germans. She despised them. Then, in 1942, she went to the Hotel Belmont . . . and even though there were Germans there, she decided she wanted to go back.

  Was it because she met Ulrich Becker III? That must be who she was daydreaming about in the second diary entry. My stomach churns as I imagine them falling in love, and Ulrich writing Adalyn the note we found in her desk drawer.

  There’s a gentle knock at the door. I jump about a foot in the air.

  “Alice?” It’s Dad.

  “Hey—come in.”

  He slips into the room and closes the door behind him with a soft click.

  “What’s up?” I ask, trying not to show how shaken up I am from the diary.

  Dad sits down as close to the edge of the bed as possible. He crosses and uncrosses his legs, but he can’t seem to figure out how to arrange himself comfortably. Finally, staring at my knee, he says, “I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s about Mom.”

  I sigh as the guilt from dinner ricochets around my chest again. “I’m really sorry I brought up the apartment earlier. I feel so bad. . . . It just slipped out. . . .”

  “It’s okay, Alice.” He pats my shin with the world’s stiffest hand, before clearing his throat. “That’s, ah, that’s actually what I wanted to talk about.” He pauses to take a deep breath, and suddenly I get nervous. “Given how Mom has been doing, I wanted to gauge your interest on . . .”

  “. . . On what?”

  He rubs the back of his neck. “On potentially selling Gram’s apartment.”

  Whoa.

  He wants to . . .

  He wants to what?

  “S-sorry,” I stammer, searching for words, “I’m just kind of—kind of stunned.”

  “Ultimately, it’s up to you,” Dad jumps in. He’s talking faster now, and I can tell he’s in selling mode. “I know you were close with Gram, and I know it means a lot to you that she left you the apartment, but I think you should at least consider it. I mean, aside from everything with Mom, it’ll also be worth a lot—not just the apartment itself, but everything inside it. You could make a lot of money.”