“Paris, sir.”
“I’ll see if I can arrange a ride for you with our supply trucks heading there. A favor between friends, eh?” Thurman walked out the door, leaving it open.
Friends? No way. He and Thurman just negotiated a mutual blackmail. Henry wouldn’t divulge that Thurman was protecting a Gestapo torturer, and in exchange Thurman wouldn’t send Henry back home or alert American authorities that he was in France. That was no friendship.
Henry wiped his hand on his pants leg to clear it of sweat-slime. But he wasn’t going to ever be able to wipe himself completely clean of the deal he’d just cut, would he? How many fliers had that Nazi drowned or beaten to death? Would it be worth the exchange of helping Pierre—saving one young life by letting the murderer of many go?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Ever been to Paris?”
Henry sat in the passenger bench of a large U.S. Army supply truck next to a young private. A sergeant was driving and a long convoy stretched out behind them.
“No, I haven’t,” Henry answered. Despite his sorrow and worries, he was excited to see “the city of lights.” He wondered if the Louvre would be open. He had never been in a museum before. Patsy loved to draw and was forever checking out library books about painters. She’d told Henry that a portrait of a woman by Leonardo da Vinci called the Mona Lisa was at the Louvre. Mona Lisa’s eyes would follow him around the room, she’d said. Henry would sure like to see that painting so he could tell Patsy if the woman’s eyes really were that magical, to show he’d been thinking of her in France. Was she thinking of him? he wondered.
“Don’t expect too much,” grumbled the driver.
“Excuse me?” Henry asked, startled. Could this guy know what he was thinking about?
“Don’t expect too much from Paris,” the driver repeated irritably. “It’s overrated.”
“Ah, come on, Sarge, it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” said the private, who smiled at Henry. He was from Oklahoma and his openness reminded Henry of wide fields and clean breezes. “Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Seine…”
“Yeah, the Seine,” barked the sergeant. “It stinks. It’s full of garbage. They relieve themselves in pissoirs on the street that I bet just dump straight into the river. The people stink, too. Don’t they ever shower?”
“They explained that to us, Sarge. Most of them don’t have any hot water. And soap is rationed to two cakes a month per family.” He elbowed the sergeant. “Bet you need that much soap every time you shower to smell good.”
“Ha ha ha. You’re a laugh riot, Joe,” grumbled the sergeant. “Listen, kid,” he said to Henry, “just watch you don’t get soaked. All of Paris is a clip joint as far as I’m concerned. They charge ninety francs for one shot of watered-down cognac. I went to the Folies Bergère and the usher girl demanded a tip for showing me to my seat. What a racket!”
“But they don’t pay them anything,” the private interrupted again. “It’s like our tipping taxi drivers or redcaps. It’s how they make a living.” The private turned to Henry. “It’s worth a tip just to meet them, sir. They are some of the prettiest gals I’ve ever seen. And real nice if you talk to them. Of course, they don’t hold a candle to my Millie, but it’s fun to look.” He grinned.
“Well, they won’t look back,” grumbled the sergeant. “The French don’t like us, Joe. I’m telling you. They never thank us for anything. Since October our engineer corps has removed thirty demolished bridges and built two new ones across the Seine. But all the French do is complain that we have too good of a time when we’re on leave. Complain, complain, complain.”
The private looked at Henry and rolled his eyes as if to say, Look who’s talking. “Here’s where you start, sir. Go to Rainbow Corner, run by the Red Cross. They’ll help you find rooms rented out by the French. But don’t worry. If you get in a pinch, there are plenty of us around to help you out. Besides us with the quartermaster unit, thousands of GIs come in on leave every week.”
“He don’t need the Rainbow Corner,” said the sergeant, turning to eye Henry for the first time. “Somehow he rates the Hotel Scribe. That’s where we’re supposed to direct him.”
Surprised, the private shifted his weight and his attitude the way enlisted gunners on the aircrew would change when an officer came in the room. Clearly he was no longer as comfortable with Henry.
“I didn’t arrange for any room yet,” said Henry.
“No, sir,” the sergeant answered. “But it’s been put in for you. By the same brass that gave you that stash.”
He referred to the Red Cross relief box Henry was holding in his lap. It had appeared in the truck, labeled for him. It was crammed full of supplies: K-ration biscuits, Klim powdered milk, Kraft cheese, Sun-Maid raisins, Jack Frost sugar, Hershey bars, instant coffee, and yes, Spam. Henry’d been grateful for the food, figuring that was a fair handout to compensate for the things the police had taken from him. But he was beginning to feel a little funny at the mention of the hotel. “What’s the big deal about the Hotel Scribe?”
“It’s pretty swank, sir. It’s where all the newspaper guys are housed. Used to be the hotel for the Nazi propaganda unit, so it stayed pretty well outfitted during the war. The Army guys brief you daily and keep a good eye on you, sir.”
So that’s why the private suddenly seemed uneasy around him. They thought Henry was press. All the fliers had been leery of reporters when they met them on the base. They seemed nice enough, but if a flier was quoted in a real honest moment, he could get into a barrage of flak with his superiors.
“I’m not a newsman.”
They both looked at him with that “Sure, right” expression Henry knew so well from his time with the guys in his base Nissen hut. “Then why the red carpet?” the sergeant asked.
Henry didn’t know. But he was beginning to worry about Thurman’s long-term expectations of him. If Clayton had taught Henry one thing, it was to stand on his own two feet. Maybe Clayton’s reasons for that had been to avoid obligations he didn’t like the smell of.
About the time they started driving alongside the Seine River and seeing rows of tall, meticulously kept town houses, they heard church bells. Cannon fire. The rushing sweep of planes.
“What’s going on?” the private asked.
Henry held on to the rim of the window and pushed himself out to look at the belly of low-flying planes. They were American B-17s. “They’re fortresses!” he called back into the truck cab. Was the city under attack? That wouldn’t make any sense given their formation, and how low they were flying. If the Germans had launched some sort of counterattack, the Allies would be answering with fighters, not bombers.
Suddenly there was a racket of horn blowing—cars, trucks, unseen but heard for miles. And a kind of roar rose from deep inside the city, as if thousands of people were crying out. Unnerved, Henry poked his head back into the truck. “What do you think it is?”
For the first time, the sergeant cracked a grin that sweetened his sour face. He slammed on the brakes and the convoy following stopped short, in a domino of screeches. Cheering erupted from the back of the line and rolled up along the trucks to them, as the sergeant held up his fingers in a V, like Churchill.
Could it be?
“We’ve won!” the sergeant cried. “We’ve won, Joe. I heard a rumor about it this morning. Hitler killed himself and the Nazis have finally surrendered.”
“We’ve won? It’s over?” the private repeated in awed tones. Then the two of them screamed it out together over and over in shouts of delight and relief: “We’ve won! We’ve won!” They jumped out of the cab to join a dozen drivers skipping, embracing, knocking one another over, like a mass of puppies playing.
Everywhere around them doors flung open and French children, women, men spilled out, crying, “Victoire! Victoire!”
Somehow, carried by a mass of dancing, rejoicing people, Henry ended up on the Champs-Élysées, the main boulevard of Paris. From the Arc
de Triomphe to the huge palace of the Louvre, the street was jammed full of jeeps and taxis and bodies. Every U.S. Army vehicle was covered with girls waving handkerchiefs, waving flags, blowing kisses, singing snatches of American songs they’d learned from the radio: “Yez, zir, zat’s my bébé.” Thousands marched up and down, crying and laughing, chanting, “Vive la France! Vive la France!” White and pink petals from the blossoming chestnut trees fell like confetti on them. American planes roared overhead.
Watching the formations, Henry got drenched when sculpture fountains that had been dry and silent during the war were turned on suddenly in coughing spews of water. Parisians clapped and splashed the water at one another, the cascading fountains adding to the city’s raucous partying. French troops on horseback and in Napoleonic dress uniforms tried to parade, but the crowds swallowed them and hoisted girls up onto the horses. Wrapping their arms around the soldiers, they squealed as the horsehair plumes from the men’s shining helmets fell into their faces.
Because of his conversation with Thurman, Henry wondered at the sight of Soviet soldiers in fancy high collars, red stars, and shoulder-board epaulets walking arm-in-arm with American GIs—no political distrust between them, just rejoicing in peace. But Henry couldn’t contemplate that long as a child grabbed his hand and dragged him into a conga line. The elderly, the elegant, the ragged stretched for yards, connected hands to hips, sashaying in time like a giant centipede of joy.
At twilight red, white, and blue floodlights lit up the city’s most famous monuments—the Arc de Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde, and the Opera. There was a momentary hush as the lights switched on. Then the masses began to sing a Resistance song that filled Henry with a bittersweet pride of mourning and celebration:
When they poured across the border,
I was cautioned to surrender.
This I could not do.
I took my gun and vanished.
I have changed my name so often;
I’ve lost my wife and children.
But I have many friends
And some of them are with me.
An old woman gave us shelter,
Kept us hidden in the garret.
Then the soldiers came.
She died without a whisper.
There were three of us this morning,
I’m the only one this evening.
But I must go on
The frontiers are my prison.
Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing,
Through the graves the wind is blowing.
Freedom soon will come
Then we’ll come from the shadows.
So many had died for this moment—May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe, VE Day the crowds called it. Henry promised himself to mark the date in the years ahead by remembering Madame, Dan, Billy, and his teenage guide. They would be his partners in any dance of celebration. Their memory followed him through that night of rejoicing.
At midnight, the Parisian fire brigade blew trumpets to end the official partying. Shouldering his bag, Henry set off to find the Hotel Scribe, following directions scribbled down by the convoy’s sergeant.
Tomorrow his hunt for Pierre would begin again. Tomorrow, perhaps he’d find him. Then the war for Henry would finally be over.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Around two A.M., Henry stumbled through the revolving door of the Hotel Scribe. He’d been lost for a good hour. The hotel was near the landmark Opera House, which was straight up the Avenue de l’Opéra from the Louvre. But the neighborhood was dark and confusing. For years the city had been operating in blackout mode against potential Allied or Nazi raids and electricity had yet to be really restored. The end of the war had brought a sudden, strange juxtaposition of lighting. The streets were illuminated by moonlight, candles from inside buildings, and ricochets of white beams from the newly lit floodlights on the Opera House about a half mile up the boulevard.
Once he found his way to the avenue, Henry felt like a moth drawn to a porch light. He’d never, ever, in his entire life seen anything as fancy as the enormous Opera House. The building had to be a couple of acres big. The walls were covered with statues of dancers, musicians, cupids, and Grecian women, all surrounded with stone wreaths or framed in arches. As he walked along its edge to take a left onto the rue Scribe, he gaped at two huge, winged golden statues perched on the roof’s corners that seemed big enough to carry the building off. He nearly ran into a street lamp, he was staring so.
He felt even more the country bumpkin inside the hotel. Although it smelled of tobacco and flat champagne, leftovers of the day’s excitement, the lobby was intimidatingly elegant. Painted frescoes covered the walls; columns held up the vaulted ceiling, and from it swung cut-glass chandeliers the size of hay bales. He was almost relieved that no one was behind the wood-paneled desk. He sat down in a soft armchair in the corner, figuring he’d wait for a clerk to show up. He leaned his head up against the chair wing to keep watch. Within ten minutes he was asleep.
“Excusez-moi.”
Sunlight and a musical voice woke Henry.
A young woman was talking with a desk clerk. “Pourrais-je laisser un message pour Monsieur Hemingway?”
The clerk told her there was no Hemingway staying at the hotel.
She frowned. “Ernest Hemingway? Mais il m’a dit qu’il logeait ici.”
Ernest Hemingway? Staying here? Henry sat up. He knew that name from his crew navigator, Fred Bennett. Fred had made it through two years at Harvard before joining up. He was a literature major and was forever telling Henry about books he should read. A few nights before their plane was hit, Fred had had a few too many beers and ranted on and on about a Hemingway book called For Whom the Bell Tolls. Henry remembered the title because it sounded so ominous, almost as if Fred had had a premonition. Poor Fred. Henry flinched at the memory of his body in the nose of the plane. He would have been so excited to meet a real live author.
The desk clerk was trying to shoo off the girl. He clearly thought she was someone Hemingway would not want to be bothered by. She clutched a bundle of papers. She had met Hemingway at a bookstore. He had promised to look at her novel when she was done. Well, she said, she was done. And she wanted to find him. He had promised.
A tall, gaunt man entered the hotel as this was going on. He leaned up against the desk, waiting to collect his key and messages.
“Sortez.” The clerk waved his hand at the girl in final dismissal. Monsieur Hemingway would not be interested in the likes of her, he said.
“Oh, I think he would be,” the gaunt man broke in. He had a thin, clipped moustache, and when he smiled it stretched itself and wiggled. His voice was clipped, too, British. In perfect French he told the girl that he knew Hemingway. The writer was lodging at the Ritz. He leaned close to her to say in a stage whisper that it had a better bar. The girl was out the door in a flash.
The clerk thanked the man. The things he had to deal with, he complained—lovesick girls, pushy journalists, rude Americans sleeping in the lobby. He glanced down his nose at Henry. Embarrassed, Henry stood. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He’d admit he was scroungy-looking, but that was because he’d only been able to take one real bath, at Madame’s house, since landing in France. He brushed himself off to approach the desk.
“Je suis une chambre pour louer,” Henry tried asking for a room.
The clerk sniffed and stared at him scornfully. Henry repeated himself. The clerk smirked.
With a sympathetic smile, the Brit put his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “You are not a room for hire. What you wish to say, I assume, is that you have a room and you want your key. That is: J’ai une chambre ici et je voudrais ma clé.”
Henry turned sunburn red and repeated the Brit’s wording.
Only then did the clerk switch to English. “I have no rooms available.”
Henry started to step away, too embarrassed by his mistakes and the clerk’s hostility to argue.
“Tell him your name, lad. It might be under t
hat.”
Henry did so. With irritated drama, the clerk searched through cards. He paused over one and glanced up at Henry and then at the paper again. “Pardon, monsieur. You should have said you were with the OSS. We have rooms for them on the third floor.” He reached for a key.
“I’m not OSS,” Henry said.
The clerk shoved the key at Henry and was done with him. He handed the Brit a few messages. “Dining room open?” the man asked. The clerk nodded and the man headed for the wide marble steps leading downstairs. “Better work on that French, my friend, if you’re going to be intelligence,” he said as he disappeared.
“But I’m not OSS,” Henry muttered as he closed himself into the birdcage elevator and pushed the number three. After a few moments of waiting, he realized there was no electricity. The clerk sniggered as Henry headed for the staircase.
Up on the third floor, Henry stood listening to a dozen typewriters clacking and newsmen shouting questions to one another about de Gaulle; the size of the previous day’s crowd; Eisenhower’s whereabouts; how the Americans, Brits, and Soviets would divvy up Germany among themselves for occupation; and whether France would be given a zone as well. Voices came in English and a hodgepodge of languages Henry was unsure of—Italian, Swedish, Spanish maybe. He passed a door with the sign WIDEWING, USSTAF and another with GANGWAY, 9TH AIR FORCE PUBLIC RELATIONS. The doors were open and inside lieutenants were busily typing.
Henry passed more rooms, marked with signs like PRESS WIRELESS, until he came to the end of the hall. His room was long, a narrow closet really, but it had a nice single bed with crisp white linen and a washstand with towels. Henry wanted a real bath. He made his way back to the Air Force office to ask where the showers were.
A Troubled Peace Page 11