The Paper Girl of Paris

by Jordyn Taylor

  Telling the family I’m going in search of more coal, for they won’t be suspicious when I come back empty-handed, I bundle up in my warmest layers and head out into the cold for the safe house nearby. I’m relieved that the address is in the Ninth, but my face and hands are still red and numb by the time I reach the building on the rue d’Astorg.

  I tap out the code on the apartment door, and Geronte opens it. He greets me in his usual fashion—a sniff of the nose and an upward jerk of the head, like a hound.

  “Follow me,” he says.

  Geronte leads me down an ordinary-looking corridor to a windowless bedroom, and inside, on the twin-sized bed, sits a tall man with broad shoulders and a pronounced jaw. He jumps to his feet when we enter the room.

  “Bon-joor,” he says.

  Oh! His accent is funny. He must be an American.

  “His plane was shot down about a month ago,” Gerard explains. “Friend of mine found him hiding on his property. Asked if I could help get him out of France so he can fly again. I said I had no idea, but we’d try.”

  I shake the airman’s hand.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I say.

  He flashes an apologetic sort of grin.

  “Doesn’t speak a lick of French,” Geronte adds.

  I turn to Geronte. I’m flattered he chose me to help.

  “What can I do?”

  “This man needs a guide to ride the train with him to Chartres,” he says. “Somebody else will take him from there to Vendôme, and then he’s on his way to Spain.”

  Geronte runs through the details of the assignment to me, and then to the airman in broken English. This is how it will go: I will walk ahead of the airman and show him the way. We will not speak—not that we could if we wanted to. We will act as though we do not know each other, as though we are just two random strangers on the same train. If anyone asks the airman any questions, he will show them a note explaining he is deaf and dumb. He can’t let his accent give him away.

  “When will we do this?” I ask Geronte.

  “Tomorrow,” he says.

  I walk home in a daze. I spend the rest of the afternoon running through the plan in my head, and each time, I get more nervous.

  But I must try to push the fear from my mind, because first, there is the party at the Hotel Belmont. Clutching our overcoats tightly about our bodies, Maman and I step out into the frigid air, which is colder than it was on my earlier outing, because the sun has gone down.

  Ulrich is waiting for me by the fire. He even has two glasses of cognac ready to go on the small table in between our chairs. He leaps to his feet as I approach. “It is always a pleasure to see you walk through the doors,” he says.

  We exchange pleasantries, and then I slip into my usual conversation style, asking seemingly innocent questions about which trains he’ll be dealing with tomorrow. At this point in my work, I’ve mapped out a rough understanding of the general frequency with which German arms are coming into Paris through the Gare de l’Est. I try to think only of relaying this latest information to Geronte, and not of Chloe’s worried face wondering if I’m having relations with any Germans.

  Late in the evening, as the party winds down, Madame LaRoche’s voice echoes from the adjacent room.

  “One more drink before you leave, Odette! Come, now!”

  I look through the doorway in time to see a tipsy Madame LaRoche leading an even tipsier Maman through the thinning crowd. The two of them must have had a grand old time tonight. Just before they disappear from view, Maman stumbles on a rug and grabs hold of a waiter to steady herself.

  “I should probably leave soon,” I tell Ulrich, who nods.

  “Before you go . . . ,” he says, his voice trailing off. He reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket and produces a brown paper package, along with a note.

  “Oh, Ulrich—what is this?”

  “Something for you. It is small.”

  Oh no. I don’t want any sort of gift from a German, but what choice do I have? This is the role I must play.

  I open the note first. It says:

  My most dear Adalyn,

  I give thanks for the many evenings I have spent by your side. Your beautiful eyes and your wonderful stories make better the pain of being so far from home. If I cannot be in Berlin, I am glad to be here in Paris with you. I give you this gift in the hope it will keep you warm during the winter.

  Yours truly, Hauptmann Ulrich Becker III

  I smile at him graciously. The note might have warmed my heart if it hadn’t been written by someone in Ulrich’s uniform. I stow it in my pocket.

  Next, the package. I pull back the paper and my fingertips graze something smooth and soft.

  “It is leather,” Ulrich says. “From Germany.”

  He’s given me a very handsome pair of gloves, the kind you’d be hard-pressed to find in Paris these days. It is very cold outside, and we haven’t any heat half the time, and I suppose if I must accept a gift from Ulrich, at least it is something useful.

  “These are lovely,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

  “You are very welcome,” he replies.

  That final glass of champagne did not do Maman any good. She slips and slides on the icy roads all the way home, and I do my best to keep her upright. The five flights of stairs are something of an ordeal, but at last I guide her over the threshold of the apartment.

  At the sound of the door, Chloe wanders into the foyer wearing a blanket like a cape. She didn’t go out with her friends tonight, and she must be hungry for human interaction.

  “You’re home,” she says.

  “We had a marvelous night,” Maman gushes in a much-too-loud voice. She’s slurring her words.

  “Yes,” Chloe says, “I can see that.”

  And then my sister’s eyes narrow. It’s not Maman she’s looking at, but me. Too late, I realize my mistake. I should have taken them off before I got home, but I was preoccupied with taking care of Maman.

  In a voice as quiet and deadly as poison, Chloe asks: “Whose gloves are those?”

  Quick, Adalyn.

  I could say I borrowed them from the twins.

  Or that I found them in my closet, a forgotten gift from before the war.

  Just when I’m about to feed her a lie, Maman, oblivious to my plight, blurts out an answer at full volume:

  “They were a gift from her German!”

  Not even a German—her German. Her, as in belonging to me.

  Chloe and I both freeze. Her blanket slides to the floor. It feels like everything is shrinking: the floor, the walls, the air in the room. My own heart—I think my chest is closing in on my own heart. Is that possible? Chloe is seething. Her jaw juts forward; her lips curl. I want to defend myself, but I can’t. I have to stand here while the person I love most in the world decides that I’m her worst possible nightmare.

  Papa comes shuffling down the hall, his housecoat swallowing his thin body. He’s usually in bed by now, but he must have been drawn out by Maman’s loud voice.

  “Is everything okay?” he asks tentatively.

  Chloe stares me down, almost daring me to speak first.

  Maman beats both of us to it. Flinging her arms around Papa’s neck, she cries, “Everything is wonderful!”

  She needs to stop shrieking like that. Immediately. Everything is not wonderful. The fabric of my life is unraveling too fast for me to hold it together.

  “Adalyn,” Chloe says, and her voice is quiet, pleading, as though she’s desperate to get through to me. “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me Maman isn’t serious, Adalyn.”

  I wish she’d exploded. I wish she had screamed at me or thrown something at me. It still would hurt, but not as much as seeing my sister’s bottom lip tremble at the very sight of me. Not as much as seeing the hope in her eyes still glimmering right before I speak the worst two words imaginable:

  “It’s true.”

  She clings to my gaze for one final moment. One fleeting chan
ce to take back what I said. As I stand there, gloved hands hanging helplessly, I remember what Papa made me promise him as soon as I was old enough to understand: Protect your little sister, Adalyn. Keep her from pain. I wish I could have done the same for my little brother.

  Right now, I can’t keep Chloe from pain.

  No, it’s worse than that.

  Right now, I am the source of my sister’s pain. I am the worst pain she’s ever felt in her life. I can see it in her face.

  “But you can’t do this,” she begs. “You can’t fraternize with the Germans . . . not while the rest of the world dies at their hands. . . .”

  “The Germans could be here forever, Chloe!” cries Maman. “You have to calm down.”

  “I will not calm down,” Chloe snaps at her. Then she turns to our father, tears welling in her eyes. “Papa—please—Papa,” she says, “tell me I’m not making this up. Tell them that what they’re doing is wrong.”

  Papa stuffs his hands into the pockets of his housecoat. Maman still hangs on to him, her head resting on his shoulder.

  “I don’t want to get in the middle of this,” he mumbles.

  Chloe looks at each of us in turn, and I know she’s giving us one last chance to explain ourselves. First Papa, who avoids eye contact. Then Maman, who’s off in her own dream world. Finally me.

  “This is really who you want to be, Adalyn?”

  I could fix this in an instant. I could spill all my secrets from the last two years right here, right now. It would feel so good.

  I hear Luc’s voice in my head.

  You can’t tell a soul what you’re doing—do you understand that? Not a soul. Not your family.

  I knew it would be hard, but not like this.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to Chloe. “I really am.”

  Chloe takes a deep breath. She picks her blanket up off the floor. When she speaks again, her voice is eerily calm.

  “I am done with you all,” she says. “I am done being a part of this sick, collaborationist family. If I could live somewhere else, I would, but I don’t want to have to explain you to any of my friends. Someday, though . . . someday, I hope I never see any of you again.”

  Chloe marches off to her bedroom, and shell-shocked, I go to mine. The first thing I do is tear off the gloves. As I undress myself with shaky hands, I come upon Ulrich’s note tucked inside my pocket.

  I want to burn it right this instant.

  However, walking to the kitchen would mean passing Chloe’s bedroom, and I can’t risk another confrontation. I don’t feel like seeing my parents either, and I think they’re in the drawing room. I should just go to sleep. I can forget what happened tonight, at least for a little while.

  Instead of feeding it to the flames, I shove Ulrich’s note into the bottom drawer of my desk, the one I never use, and slam it shut as hard as I possibly can.

  I board the train to Chartres. Do not think about Chloe. I pause in the aisle and pretend to look for something in my valise so I can make sure the airman gets on. Do not imagine what Chloe is thinking right now. I find a carriage with two empty seats side by side. Focus on what you have to do, Adalyn.

  I can tell the airman is nervous. His forehead is sweating, even though it’s December, and he keeps having to mop it with a handkerchief. He has a long and treacherous road ahead of him; this trip to Chartres and then on to Vendôme is just the beginning. Once he makes his way down the whole of France, he will have to cross the Pyrenees into Spain, and from there, it’s on to Britain by air or sea. I would cross the Pyrenees in the dead of winter if it meant Chloe would somehow forgive me.

  I’m beginning to worry this airman’s nerves will give him away. On top of the sweating, he keeps fidgeting in his seat and checking his pockets to make sure his papers are still there. When the conductor comes by to collect our tickets, his gaze lingers on the airman in his mismatched clothes for a second or two longer than normal. Is the suspicion in his eyes real, or am I imagining it out of fear?

  I spend most of the trip staring out the window, thinking about last night and watching town after town fly past. This is how I notice when our train rolls to an unexpected halt about an hour into our journey. This isn’t a planned stop. We’re in between stations.

  “What’s going on?” asks an elderly man in our carriage.

  My heart pounding, I slip into the aisle to try and catch a glimpse of what’s happening. Following my lead, the airman comes out, too. There are footsteps behind us, followed by a small cough.

  It’s the same conductor from earlier.

  “The Germans are coming on board for an inspection,” he says in a very low voice, so both of us can hear. “They never check the lavatories.”

  Then he steps around me and proceeds down the aisle.

  He doesn’t stop to talk to anyone else.

  Is it a trap, or is he trying to help us? If one thing’s certain, it’s that I don’t want to see what happens when my nervous airman comes face-to-face with an armed German soldier. I lead him wordlessly toward the lavatory, and when I’m certain nobody is looking, I grab him by the sleeve and pull him in with me, wrenching the door closed and locking it tight.

  It’s a tiny space—cramped for one passenger, and certainly not enough room for two. His clothes are moist to the touch, and I can smell his sweat. He’s as frightened as I am.

  “The Germans are here,” I whisper, and he seems to understand.

  It’s hard to say how much time has passed. Ten minutes . . . twenty . . . thirty . . . all I want is for the train to start moving again. I hear something—oh no. There are heavy thuds coming from the other side of the door, which can only be one thing: German boots. And they’re coming closer. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Now they’re right outside the door.

  I feel the American’s heartbeat against my cheek.

  The doorknob jiggles.

  This is it. It’s over.

  But then I hear the conductor’s voice: “Out of order, I am afraid.”

  The jiggling stops. A German grumbles something about inferior French manufacturing. Thunk, thunk, thunk. The footsteps disappear out of earshot, and my whole body relaxes. The airman lets out a sigh of relief.

  That conductor just saved our lives.

  When at last we get off at the Gare de Chartres, I am grateful to be done with this assignment. I show the airman to the platform where he will start the next leg of his journey, and then without so much as a wave goodbye—which feels odd, given everything we’ve been through—I make my way to a different platform to catch the next train back to Paris.

  At least this part of the plan worked out. The next train is coming in a couple of minutes. Across the tracks, I can see the airman. He takes a seat on an empty bench and scans the platform for his next contact, who’s meant to be a woman in a long brown coat and matching hat.

  That must be her, climbing up the steps. Why is she moving so fast? For some reason, she darts across the platform like a hunted rabbit. She goes right up to the airman and speaks into his ear, like she’s trying to warn him of something.

  This is not right.

  I watch from afar as the sickening scene plays out. The airman leaps to his feet and tries to run, but he doesn’t get far. German soldiers appear at the tops of two staircases, pinning the airman and the woman in the brown coat between them. They brandish their pistols. They bark orders. The airman and the woman sink to their knees, their hands in the air.

  Two soldiers rush forward to grab them—and then the train to Paris screams into the station, severing my view.

  I climb aboard, shaking from head to toe. I stumble into an empty compartment and slam the door closed behind me.

  I burst into tears.

  The trip back to Paris is agony, as I fight to keep from crying any more. Panic riddles my body like gunfire, and I have nowhere to turn. Luc is off in hiding. Arnaud is gone. My own family doesn’t know who I really am, and my sister despises me for reasons that aren’t true. I’m stranded on a b
attlefield without any allies.

  What good are we resisters really doing, scurrying around with our stupid papers and fragments of information? We didn’t stop the Germans from taking the whole of France. We can’t change the tide of the war. Innocent people are risking their lives for no good reason. The airman was young, no more than twenty-five years old, and now he may never see home again—and I can’t escape the notion that I had something to do with it.

  It’s all too real. The weight of it is suffocating me. I cannot keep going on like this.

  By the time I get off the train at the Gare Saint-Lazare, I am empty inside. I drift toward the exit, but along the way, I find my path blocked by a procession of sorts.

  There are two red-faced porters in front, struggling to hold up the stack of trunks balanced precariously between them. Why aren’t they using one of the carts?

  “Schneller! Schneller!”

  There’s a group of German soldiers following the porters, laughing as they shout at the Frenchmen to carry their luggage faster. It’s a parade of cruelty. When the older of the two porters has to stop and catch his breath, a German yells at him for being weak; another suggests that this is why the French were defeated so easily. More laughter ensues.

  A moment ago I thought I was empty inside, but I was wrong. The fire was in me all along. It just needed to be stoked.

  As I watch the Germans go by, the flames swell to a roaring blaze. How could I have thought about giving up? I roll back my shoulders and step out into the frosty evening.

  I hardly feel the cold.

  Chapter 11

  Alice

  I feel terrible.

  The morning after the party, I wake up with a splitting headache. When I sit up in bed, the nausea kicks in, and I sprint to the bathroom just in time to vomit a burgundy stream of last night’s wine into the toilet bowl. It’s half an hour of agony on the tile floor. Finally, I strip out of my pajamas and climb into the shower. I’m never drinking again for as long as I live.

  The warm water feels good. I imagine it lifting away all the memories of Versailles and washing them down the drain. Whenever I remember another detail of the fight, I scrub my body harder with the rough brown bar of soap. My skin is red and raw by the time I turn off the faucet. I wrap myself in a towel and brush my teeth. I already feel better than I did fifteen minutes ago.