The Paper Girl of Paris

by Jordyn Taylor

  “Yes. But I want to kiss you very badly, and I cannot do that here.”

  I pack up my things as fast as I can. Paul takes me by the hand and leads me on a short walk to the Luxembourg Gardens. We follow the path to the back of the Luxembourg Palace, past the pond with the fountain in the middle, and finally to a shady patch of grass between two rows of trees with their branches and leaves cut into perfect rectangles.

  We fall into the grass and kiss each other immediately, deeply. I used to imagine what it was like to French kiss someone, and I always assumed it was kind of complicated, with all those moving parts. I never thought it would come so naturally, or that I’d actually end up doing it with a French person. I don’t even care that there are people around as I let his tongue push past my teeth. It feels amazing. And I have so many pent-up feelings from everything that’s been going on, I just want to lose myself in the steady rhythm of our lips.

  Somehow, we go from seated to lying side by side, facing each other. His hand travels slowly down my side and comes to rest on the bare skin peeking out from underneath my T-shirt. It sends happy chills through my whole body.

  Then our glasses clank against each other, and we both dissolve into a fit of giggles.

  “I figured that might happen,” Paul says.

  “I can take mine off, if you want.”

  “No, it’s okay.” He shifts back an inch and fixes his eyes on me. “You look so beautiful right in this moment.”

  I feel like I might burst into a fireworks display.

  We both sit up and brush the plant life from our clothes, blushing feverishly. I reach for my backpack and retrieve Adalyn’s diary.

  “I guess we should get back to work,” he says.

  “It was a good study break,” I point out.

  Before we left the bookstore, we had been going over an entry from December 1943. Adalyn was writing about another brutally cold winter, about not having enough coal to heat the apartment, about wishing the war would end. One section jumps out at me toward the end:

  It is so cold in here, my fingers are numb—and I am under the covers. These frigid nights would be so much more bearable if I were sharing my bed with Chloe, as we used to do. But Chloe hasn’t come to my room in a year now. She’s hardly ever home. When she is, she doesn’t speak to me. She doesn’t look at me if we pass each other in the hall. It shatters my heart every time.

  Based on that, we reasoned that Gram and Adalyn stopped speaking at the end of 1942, but we still can’t figure out why.

  “If Adalyn was in the resistance, then why would Gram be so mad at her?” I ask. “They both would have been on the same side.”

  “I just thought of something,” Paul says. “What if your grandmother didn’t know?”

  “Didn’t know that Adalyn was doing resistance work?”

  “Yes,” he says, still mulling it over. “Maybe it was secret.”

  “That’s a pretty big secret to keep from your family.”

  “It is.”

  “I mean, they were best friends.”

  I turn to the last entry in the book, dated May 30th, 1944. The rest of the pages in the diary are blank, and I’ve been trying not to let my brain jump to conclusions about why my great-aunt might have stopped writing. The entries are much less frequent in 1944; maybe she just got too busy. Still, it’s hard not to worry, now that I know what the final entry says.

  When Paul read it to me the other day, he furrowed his brow, and his glasses slid down his nose. “This is a strange message,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s mysterious,” he murmured. “It’s like she’s talking in symbols.” And then he translated the cryptic message for me:

  May 30th, 1944

  Nearly four years it has been. Four years since the flame was lit. And still, my flame burns.

  Here is the thing that is true about fire: It creates power, but it also creates destruction. My fire has fueled many victories, but it has destroyed what I had with the person I love most in the world.

  My fire has caused me such pain but I can’t put it out. I don’t want to.

  Tomorrow may be the most difficult day yet. I am frightened. I am trembling as I write this. But my fear is far less important than doing what must be done.

  Whatever happens, I sleep tonight knowing the risk will be worth it.

  My heart pounds as I look at the words again, now that I know their meaning. I’m equal parts desperate and terrified to know what Adalyn had planned for May 31, 1944. It can’t be good that she wrote about doing something dangerous the next day, and then stopped writing in the diary . . . but Paul keeps reminding me we don’t know anything for certain yet.

  “Well, it really does sound like she was doing resistance work,” I point out again. “And still, my flame burns. Charles de Gaulle talked about ‘the flame of French resistance.’ Adalyn quoted it earlier on in the diary.”

  “And it would explain why the entry is written in that confusing way,” Paul replies. “She wouldn’t have wanted to speak openly about her plans, in case someone found the book.”

  “There’s still one big question, though.”

  “What is that?”

  “Why was she hanging out with Nazis?”

  “Oh . . . right.”

  I let out a groan and flop down onto my back, my arms splayed out to either side. Paul lies down next to me. I curl into his body, resting my cheek on the soft spot just below his collarbone. It feels good here. Safe.

  “I know the chances are slimmer than slim,” I say, “but I really hope we find someone who recognizes her at the Project Geronte meeting.”

  “You never know,” he replies. “Maybe Adalyn herself will be there.”

  I bury my face in the fabric of his shirt. “Now you’re making me all nervous again!”

  “Sorry,” he says. “I can try to distract you, if you want.”

  “How?” I grumble.

  There’s a slight disruption as he takes off his glasses and tucks them into the side pocket of his backpack. Then he lies back down and pulls me in close. Just like that, my brain completely shifts gears. With butterflies beating their wings inside my chest, I lift up my face so Paul can kiss me again.

  The Project Geronte meeting is at a hotel in the Ninth Arrondissement, not far from the rue de Marquis. I tell myself it’s a good sign, even though it actually means nothing. I meet Paul outside on the sidewalk, the photos of Adalyn tucked under my arm in the envelope Ms. Richard gave me. I’m so nervous, I’m shaking. I feel like I did when I opened the door of apartment five for the first time, completely unaware of what I’d find inside.

  Paul looks really good in his blazer and dark jeans. I’ve never seen him in anything other than a T-shirt.

  “You dressed up,” I point out.

  “Well, what if Adalyn is here? I wanted to look good in case I end up meeting your family.”

  I smack him with the envelope. “She is so not going to be here.” But even as I say it, my heart thuds. What if, by some absurd stroke of luck, she is?

  Paul offers me his elbow, and I take it. Having him by my side makes me calmer.

  “Hey, Paul?” We’re riding up the escalator to the party room in the mezzanine.

  “Yes?”

  “I just want to say . . . thanks for coming with me. And for helping me out with everything. I never would have gotten this far without you.”

  Now we’re standing outside the double doors with the Project Geronte signs taped to them. Before we go in, Paul takes my face in his hands and kisses me on the forehead. It’s the most unexpectedly romantic thing that’s ever happened to me. My knees wobble.

  “It is my pleasure,” he says. “I am just happy to be with you, Alice.”

  Three men—one very old, helped by two who must be in their seventies or eighties—shuffle past us and go into the room. This is incredible—some of the people on the other side of these doors were actually part of the French resistance! It’s
history in real life.

  “Should we go in?” Paul asks.

  “Yes.”

  We open the doors onto a carpeted conference hall with chairs lining the walls and people milling around in the middle, many of them as old as the men we saw come in. I hear faint forties-sounding music playing, which they probably have to keep low so the guests can hear each other okay. There’s a long table with artifacts laid out—copies of old newspapers, posters, some rusty old weapons—and another table with a spread of wine, cheese, and bread.

  A strong hand grabs my upper arm. “Alice? Paul?”

  I spin around. If this is our host, she looks a lot younger than eighty. Sixty-five, maybe. She’s styled her short white hair so that it spikes up in the front, and she’s dressed in a tailored red pantsuit.

  “Yes, that’s us,” I tell her. “Are you Corinne?”

  “Oui. It is a pleasure to meet you.” Her English is choppy. She greets us both with a firm handshake. “Antoinette told me all about your story. I am glad you came here tonight.”

  “I’m glad you let us come! So . . . your grandfather led a resistance network?”

  “That is correct.”

  “I don’t know if you would recognize photos of anyone he worked with, but . . .”

  I slide out the black-and-white copies Ms. Richard gave us. Corinne inspects them close to her face, then hands them back, shaking her head. “My grandfather worked with many people during the war, some as young as these people here. I do not recognize them, but you are welcome to ask anybody in this room. I see a number of new faces here tonight. You never know.

  “Here—meet my friend Micheline.” Corinne touches the arm of a frail woman passing by on the way to the drinks table. The woman looks confused but smiles warmly at us. Corinne asks her a question in French, and she points at the photos in my hand. Micheline’s eyebrows go up. She beckons for me to pass her the pictures. My heart racing with anticipation, I hand them over. She squints at them for a minute, the wrinkles in her forehead growing even deeper, and then says simply, “Non.”

  “Merci beaucoup,” says Paul, as Micheline toddles away. Corinne goes off to greet another new arrival.

  My heart sinks. “I wanted her to recognize them.”

  “She was the very first person we tried,” Paul says, patting me on the back. “Come on—let’s go try that couple over there. I can do the talking, in case they don’t speak English.”

  We go up to the man and woman standing alone by the window.

  “Excusez-moi,” says Paul, “pouvons-nous vous poser une question?”

  We go through the same routine as before, handing over the photos and watching with bated breath as they analyze them. And just like before, they shake their heads and say, “Non, désolé.”

  Non, désolé—no, sorry—become the words of the evening. Nobody recognizes Adalyn or any of the boys. Some people take it as a jumping-off point to explain their own exploits during the war, and we get totally distracted by their incredible stories until one of us remembers we should probably keep circling the room.

  After shaking her head at the picture of Adalyn, one old woman shows us a black-and-white photograph of herself in 1942. The first thing I notice is her hair, because it looks hilarious. It has this big bump in the front that must be a foot high. It’s taller than her actual head. As we share a laugh about it, I glance back at the photo and realize there’s a star on her dress. It has the word “zazou” in the middle of it.

  “I think my grandmother wore the same star,” I tell her, remembering the purple dress left behind on Gram’s bed. “Her name was Chloe Bonhomme—you didn’t know her, did you?”

  She shakes her head again. “It was so many years ago,” she replies in her raspy voice. “The memory works in funny ways. There are tiny things I shall never forget, like the taste of the ersatz coffee my mother used to make . . . or the smell of the iodine dye she would paint on her legs to make it look as though she was wearing silk stockings, which we could no longer afford. Other things, they are gone!” She jokingly raps her knuckles against her head.

  “Why did you wear the word ‘zazou’?”

  The woman smirks. “That’s what we called ourselves,” she says. “We were little rebels! We did the opposite of whatever Pétain and his Vichy government told us to do. He wanted the girls to stay in the home and become mothers, so of course we dressed like this and went to all the jazz clubs. It was quite a time!”

  Even after all these years, I can still see a spark behind her eyes.

  As the woman hobbles off on her walker to say hello to Micheline, my heart swells with pride. Gram was a rebel! I wouldn’t have expected anything less. She was like that until the end of her life, shunning Mom and Dad’s repeated suggestions that she hire a full-time caregiver.

  “So if Gram was one of these zazous,” I say to Paul, “she probably wasn’t too happy that her mom was going to the Hotel Belmont every other weekend. . . . And then, if she found out that Adalyn was doing whatever she was doing with those Nazis—”

  “She would have been really mad,” Paul says, finishing my thought. “Mad enough to stop speaking to her.”

  “And don’t forget how close they used to be, from the beginning of the diary.”

  “It would be like if Vivi started hanging out with Nazis,” he says. “I don’t know how I’d speak to her again, either.”

  We migrate to the corner of the room so we can survey the scene. By this point, the photos of Adalyn are limp and creased from being held by so many different hands.

  “Who next?” Paul asks.

  I look around, but I don’t see anybody new. “I feel like we’ve asked almost everyone,” I say despairingly.

  “How about that guy?”

  I follow Paul’s eyes to the opposite corner of the room. It’s the very old man we saw when we came in—the one being helped by two other people. Truth be told, the guy kind of gives me the creeps. I’ve noticed him staring at me since the beginning of the night.

  “He seems a little weird,” I mumble. “Let’s try the ladies by the pistols instead.”

  Paul agrees. But the ladies by the pistols end up being another strikeout. Same with the woman in the wheelchair with little French flags attached to the top, and the tiny old man in the black beret. Now people are starting to trickle toward the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I keep catching Corinne hugging people goodbye. My heart is hammering again. This is it—our last chance to find someone, anyone, who can tell us anything about my great-aunt.

  That man is still over there in the corner, finishing a glass of red wine. Sure enough, he’s also still staring at me.

  But I have to do it.

  I politely interrupt Paul’s conversation with the man in the black beret. “People are starting to leave,” I whisper. “We should try the guy in the corner.”

  Paul nods. We say goodbye to his new friend, who hurries off to snag the last slice of baguette. Then we approach the man, whose two companions sit on either side of him. The man has been staring the whole time, obviously, but now all three of them look up expectantly. Paul clears his throat.

  “Pouvons-nous vous poser une question?”

  There’s a sense of urgency in the way the old man nods, his eyes never once leaving my face, even though it’s Paul who’s talking. They have a brief back-and-forth in French, in which I hear the word appartement come up—meaning apartment—and then Paul tells me I can hand over the pictures.

  The man brings them up close to his face, just a few inches away from his nose. I guess the others will have to wait their turn. He holds them like that for a long time—maybe even a full minute. Paul and I exchange apprehensive looks. What’s the man staring at? Is he searching for memories that are long gone?

  Suddenly, something strange happens. The man’s arms begin to quiver. He grips the papers so hard, I’m scared he’s going to tear through them.

  One of his younger companions puts his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Quel est le problème?”

  Finally, he lowers the photos, and I’m shocked to see that he has tears in his eyes. There’s a collective intake of breath among the group. Then the man looks directly into my eyes and says something to me. Paul looks confused.

  “I’m so sorry, I don’t speak much French,” I explain to him.

  “I said that you look just like her,” the man repeats in English, his voice wavering. “I saw it from the moment you came through those doors.”

  Now my voice is shaking, too. “Did you know my great-aunt?”

  A single tear springs free and rolls down the man’s cheek. He nods his head. With a trembling finger, he holds out the photograph and points to the shaggy-haired boy sitting in the grass next to Adalyn.

  “This boy is me.”

  Chapter 16

  Adalyn

  I have learned how to turn myself off.

  On the outside, you wouldn’t know the difference. I still talk and laugh and smile like a nineteen-year-old girl who doesn’t know any better. But on the inside, I’m empty. The real Adalyn simply vacates the premises. This way, when I look into his cold eyes, I am not consumed by white-hot rage. When he lays his hand on my leg, I do not even flinch.

  This clever technique is how I make it through the autumn and winter of 1943–1944 when von Groth returns to Paris for a longer stretch of time. I visit him once every two weeks or so, in the same restaurant across from Gestapo headquarters. I make sure to arrive toward the end of his meal, then wait for him to join me at the bar. He always does.

  On a turbulent evening in late January, the wind blowing particles of ice against the window, not even a minute goes by before I hear the telltale sound of von Groth’s boots clicking across the tile. The bartender brings us two glasses of cognac without even asking; he knows our routine by now.

  It’s about to begin. I turn myself off.

  “Miss Bonhomme,” says von Groth, “have I ever told you what joy it brings me to see your face at the end of a difficult day?”

  I giggle. “You tell me this every time, Walther!”

  “Well, it is the truth. The worse my day is, the better it is to see you.” He takes a long sip of his drink.