A Troubled Peace

by L. M. Elliott

  “Down the hall, Mac, around the corner.” A corporal pointed the way. “You’re new, right?” He didn’t really wait for an answer or introduction. “Better hoof it. The water’s heated from seven to ten A.M. Most everyone’s going to be heading that way soon after getting their stories filed.”

  The water was lukewarm, but Henry was very grateful to be clean, his hair blond again instead of a strange color of greasy. Shaved and dry, he figured he’d treat himself to something decent to eat and headed downstairs.

  In the dining room, most of the men there had their heads on the tables, trying to recover from the night’s celebrations. Only the Brit who’d helped Henry seemed wide awake. He’d finished eating and was pouring loose tobacco into paper to roll his own cigarette. He wore a blue flannel shirt and his leather jacket hung on the back of his chair—unusual workingman clothes in the collection of officer uniforms, tweed jackets, and silk ties around him.

  Henry decided to thank him for the help with the desk clerk and his clumsy French. “Thanks for bailing me out, mister. I never seem to get my French quite right. Nearly got killed last year because of it.” He put out his hand, “My name’s Henry Forester.”

  The man licked the edge of his cigarette paper, rolled it tight, and stuck it into his mouth before taking Henry’s hand. “Orwell, George. Have a seat.”

  “Oh no, sir, I don’t want to interrupt.”

  Orwell extended his arms. “What’s to interrupt? I’m the only sober man here and that’s only barely.”

  Henry gratefully sat down and was amazed when the waiter offered him poached eggs and white toast with jam. He looked up at Orwell in surprise before digging into his food with a vengeance.

  “Enjoy. Only in the Scribe will you find such fare. The Americans ship it in. Sometimes there is a line of Parisians out back hoping for scraps, like something from the eighteenth century. Been a while since you’ve eaten?”

  Self-consciously wiping his mouth with a big white napkin, Henry nodded.

  “No offense, my boy, but you really don’t fit the OSS. You are going to stand out like a sore thumb. There are a number of British and American intelligence officers in this hotel. You’re nothing like them. Maybe you’re clerical support?” he asked hopefully.

  “I’m not OSS, sir. I’m not anything at all.”

  “What are you doing here then?”

  Henry hesitated.

  “It’s all right,” Orwell said. “We can make it off the record. I’m in need of a good story right now. And I can tell you have one.”

  Henry assessed his face. There were dark circles under the man’s deep-set eyes. His skin was stretched taut and pale over high cheekbones. He was probably around forty and looked sickly, sad. Something about his melancholy told Henry that he would understand.

  So he told him. Told him about being shot down, being saved, and his search for Pierre. The man nodded and listened, pulling long inhalations of his cigarette. He was so attentive, Henry even admitted to his nightmares, and his hopes that Patsy would think he was ready to restart his life when he came home.

  He finished by telling Orwell that he had wheedled himself out of arrest. The only part Henry omitted was exactly how he did that. He left out the Nazi nested in with the Americans. Instinctively Henry knew that keeping that information to himself was the only reason he was still in France. Divulge it and he broke the unspoken pact with Thurman. And somehow, Henry sensed, Thurman would hear of it if he did. He was getting the distinct feeling of being shadowed by the man.

  When he was done, he felt emptied.

  Orwell coughed, a hacking rattle, and then tipped onto the back two legs of his chair, putting his hands behind his head. “When was the last time you flew over Germany?”

  “March last year.”

  “Then you haven’t seen the absolute devastation dropped out of the sky by your bombers. I’ve just come back from Nuremberg and Stuttgart, covering Allied movements for the Observer. German cities are ruins. Every bridge, every train, every viaduct in the three hundred miles between the Marne and Rhine rivers was blown up. Europe will suffer a long poverty before we can build things back to the standard of living of the Depression, let alone anything better.”

  He rocked forward and leaned toward Henry. “If you find this boy, and his mother is dead as you fear, you should take him home to America. He’ll end up in an orphanage here. He’ll be marginalized, a third-class citizen.”

  Take Pierre home? Henry hadn’t thought of that before. “Why do you think he’d be…did you say ‘marginalized,’ sir?”

  “I fear France will not break apart its class structure any time soon, no matter what its socialist intellectuals and Resistance fighters say. De Gaulle’s nationalism feels very old school, very bourgeois, the French would call it. I suspect, sadly, that the emphasis will be on getting France back to the way it was—the cabarets, the fashion makers, the superb wine—not making life better for orphans or ordinary people. But I hope I am wrong.”

  He thought a moment and added, “Be careful around the Scribe, Henry. The OSS seems interested in you. You must know something or they think you’ll lead them to people they want to watch. When the government wants something, it has a way of dogging you. Before you know it, someone may convince you to do something without your even realizing you’re doing it.”

  Orwell reached around to pull his coat from the back of his chair. As he did, Henry caught a glimpse of a pistol stuffed inside the breast pocket.

  “Whoa,” Henry murmured, and pushed back from the table.

  For a moment Orwell looked puzzled. “Ah, yes. I carry this for protection. Ever since I wrote about the betrayal of the workers’ revolution in Spain by the Communist party and the Soviet secret police, I have been afraid of a Stalin-ordered hit. The Soviets are feeling very bold right now. All sorts of retributions are happening in dark streets. And I’m about to publish something that Stalin is sure to hate.”

  He stood up and shook Henry’s hand good-bye. “I’m leaving for Austria. Remember what I’ve told you about the OSS. I know. I did a stint with the BBC in its India section, wanting to help the war effort. But I was sickened by writing propaganda. It’s twisting reality, presenting things to promote the government’s agenda, manipulating words to indoctrinate—to make us sheep.”

  Orwell contemplated Henry for a moment. “Just like farm animals,” he muttered more to himself than to Henry. Henry tried not to squirm under the gaze.

  “You strike me as being an idealist, like me,” Orwell continued. “Face it—your time of influence here is over, lad. That’s true of all good soldiers. The aftermath of war is a messy, brutal elbowing among political ideologies, as different groups that survived the war battle each other for power. They will smile at one another’s faces while plotting coups and spying on each other.”

  “Sir? What are you talking about?” Henry asked. “Peace has been declared.”

  “Peace? Peace is not that easy, that finite, my boy. War ends; then it takes a long time to negotiate a real truce. Many times that peace is troubled and contains the embers for the next war, smoldering, just in need of a spark. Take France. There is already friction between de Gaulle and the communist-dominated Resistance, mainly because de Gaulle has been lenient with collaborators. He’s making all sorts of compromises to push France forward. Meanwhile, the Soviets and the Americans circle, both hoping to influence France to adopt their way of doing things, both snooping and trying to undermine each other. Stalin seems bent on taking over as much of Europe as possible now that Hitler is out of the way. Stalin is as vicious as Hitler in how he crushes people he feels are inferior or who stand up to him. The U.S. will use any means to stop him. There’s sure to be a rather nasty standoff, perhaps right here in France, beginning with covert politics.”

  Henry thought of the angry disappointment of the Marseille restaurant owner, the Vercors doctor’s suspicions of de Gaulle, and Thurman’s attempt to coerce Henry to name communist maquis
he’d met so that the OSS could spy on them.

  Orwell put his hand on Henry’s shoulder once more. “Right and wrong will no longer be clear, not like the target of your bomb runs were. You’ll have trouble getting your bearings. If I were you, Henry, I’d go home as soon as possible. Good luck.”

  Henry watched Orwell leave. If only the man knew how much Henry had already compromised himself to be in Paris. Go home as soon as possible? For sure—but not until he found Pierre.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Outside, Henry headed for Gare de l’Est, the train station of the East. He followed the map of Paris that a GI handed him. With a girl on each arm, still celebrating victory, the soldier joked that he had his own personal guides. “They’re going to show me the Eiffel Tower and then my seventy-two hours of freedom are over. It’s back on a train to my outfit near Stuttgart.” He pointed up the boulevard as the threesome strolled away. “The Gare de l’Est is that way.”

  Henry was glad to have the map to reassure him that he was going the right way since the wide avenue kept changing names. The buildings all looked the same, too—long, connecting facades of smooth mortar running flat to the street, five to seven stories high. Their beauty and individuality came in small touches of decoration, in high archways carved with lions’ heads or fleurs-de-lis. Windows were almost as tall and wide as double doors, and many were whiskered with beautiful wrought iron balconies, the black metal twisted into curling vines and flowers. The buildings were gray from decades of soot belched out of charcoal fires, giving a pen-and-ink-sketch look to the streets. Even so, on this bright sunny morning, they were the prettiest he’d ever seen.

  Many of the first floors housed bookstores, clothing shops, or grocers. Looking in, Henry could tell the owners had put most of their wares in the display window. Shelves inside were empty, the rooms dark. As he walked, the city awoke. More people began to enter the street. No cars appeared, but bicycles crowded the road. Small cabs, pulled by men on bicycles, lumbered by. Gangs of girls with billowing skirts and long legs zipped past them. Henry was nearly run down by a boy pushing a wheelbarrow as fast as he could so that the huge block of ice inside wouldn’t melt before he got it home.

  Along came an elderly man in a boater hat and a slightly frayed but smart suit and ascot. He leaned on a gold-capped walking cane. In the other hand he balanced a fishing pole and a small basket. He was obviously heading for the Seine. A GI threw a cigarette butt into the gutter near him. Stiffly, the old man leaned over for it. He stuck it into a long cigarette holder, the kind Henry had seen in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies depicting the Jazz Age. Henry realized the holder would allow the man to drain the cigarette to its last drop of nicotine. He wished he had those Camel cigarettes now. He’d gladly give the old gentleman a pack to restore his dignity.

  Uncomfortable, Henry hurried on, hoping that now the war against Hitler was over, things could get back to normal quickly. Although given Orwell’s description of the devastation across Europe, it could take years just to clear away the rubble.

  At the train station, hundreds of grim people waited in front of the platforms. An anxious murmuring, amplified by the white marble floors, lifted as a hum toward the lofty glass ceilings. How much longer till the train pulls in? Do you think he’ll be on this one? They say three thousand will come through today. Have you heard how thin they are, covered with sores and lice? Awful. Quelle horreur!

  A woman cried out and dropped a newspaper. After her friends guided her to a bench, Henry picked it up. He gagged. There was a photograph from a concentration camp named Bergen-Belsen—a long pit with rows of corpses in it, naked, mangled, the bodies so emaciated they were barely identifiable as human. Next to it was an article saying prisoners were being shot right before the Allies liberated camps. Bodies were still warm when the soldiers entered. They had been that close to freedom when killed.

  “Ils arrivent!” someone cried. The “absents” were pulling into the station.

  The crowd pushed forward. Those in front began to sing in greeting, and the lyrics rippled back to where Henry stood, those around him picking up the verse: “C’est la route qui va, qui va, qui va.” Then, just as suddenly, silence rolled back, the singing abruptly stopping. The crowd parted and two soldiers come through carrying a man—if you could call the poor soul that. He looked more like a stick-figure hangman drawing than a real body. His bone-thin arms were around their necks and he sat in a cradle the soldiers easily made with their own strong, thick forearms. Wearing striped pajamas, he grimaced with pain. Or was that his smile?

  More were carried out. Then those who could walk began to stagger through.

  Get back, the soldiers shouted. The absents had not yet gone through quarantine and could carry typhus.

  But when people recognized a ghostly figure, they burst through the crowd, with both cries of joy and horror, gathering their loved one up in kiss-filled embraces. Others rushed forward and then stood woodenly, shocked, bewildered, repulsed. The deportees held out what little bundle they might clutch and dutifully waited to be told what to do.

  Most of the returned trudged on, following the back of the person in front to the doors that opened onto the wide boulevard de Strasbourg. There U.S. Army trucks driven by Free French soldiers waited to transport them to the repatriation center at Hotel Lutetia. Only a few blinked in the warm sunbeams sifting through the leaded glass ceiling of the train station and looked up to the vast half-moon window that opened the wall to a brilliant blue sky and sun-haloed clouds. Golden light lit up the sunrise design and its latticework rays that stretched out wide, ending in a lacy outline of smaller starbursts.

  One woman stopped when she saw it. Those behind her simply walked around, like water rushing past a stone in a creek. She stayed rooted, her eyes lifted. “Mon Dieu, she murmured, tears streaming down her face. “C’est le ciel de Paris.” The Paris sky, just as she remembered it. Exactement. The Nazis could not change that.

  Only later, when hearing how so many had left Paris from that very station, crammed into cattle cars heading to Germany, to be herded off the trains into warehouses and gassed, could Henry completely understand the symbolism of her return and her awe. At that moment, he simply caught his breath, recognizing another human being slipping the surly bonds of earth, climbing sunward, and finding redemption in the sky. He was witnessing a rebirth. He would never forget the sight of it.

  Nor would he forget that after that woman walked on—smiling, transformed, beautiful again—and the wave of deportees had swept by, in its wake were left two little girls. Just as Madame had described, they held up signs carefully penned with their full names, their last names large. They wore embroidered sweaters, carefully pressed pleated skirts, and huge butterfly bows pulling back their shining hair, their faces as hopeful as those Sunday-best clothes.

  When the last deportee walked out the door, and no parent had come, and no news of them either, the children wilted. Silently, the oldest took her sister’s hand. Heads down, they left the train station, their signs bumping along the pavement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Henry followed them, remembering that Madame Gaulloise said children looked for their parents at the train station or the Hotel Lutetia. He figured they would go there next.

  The little girls went down the Boulevard de Strasbourg, past a huge market and hordes of people haggling over crates of fruits and vegetables, to the Seine. They crossed over it and an island with what must have been Notre Dame, given the long, carved stone braces that jutted out from the cathedral—Miss Dixon had called them flying buttresses. The girls kept walking. Henry kept shadowing them.

  For an hour they walked—no childhood skipping or dallying, no pausing by the one shop that had sweets in its window or to watch the hobo street performer with a small scraggly dog sitting on his head. They didn’t slow until they turned from the Boulevard Saint Germain onto the rue du Four. Many blocks down, another crowd gathered. Unlike the one at Gare de l’Est,
this one was loud.

  Frustrated shouts echoed up the street. People were crammed against a barricade and shaking their fists at police who pushed them back with sticks. Even more people jostled in front of billboards nailed to poles and littered with papers on both sides. The people in back barked at those ahead for standing too long, for blocking the view. Those closest to the boards snarled at them for pushing from behind.

  What does that one say? I can’t read it. There were cries of anguish, people collapsing onto curbs to cry. Or sparks of hope—Look, look there! Do you see? A month ago!

  What in the world were they looking at? Gingerly, Henry stepped into the rumbling crowd.

  Photos. Hand-scrawled notes:

  If you know of Etienne Cain, please contact Rebecca Cain, 9, rue Gabrielle.

  Tell the family of Marcel Challe that their son was alive as of April 15.

  Or on some of the photos, messages like this one beside a formal portrait of a beautiful young woman at a piano: I am very sorry. Your daughter died October 1944. Before that she would sing ‘Che tua madre’ from Madama Butterfly to us. She brought beauty to Ravensbruck.

  Henry backed away, knowing this was no place for an idle spectator. It was a horrible way to learn the fate of a loved one. Or to learn nothing at all.

  He searched for the girls. Relieved, he spotted them crossing the street to a park, where an elderly lady sat. They helped her stand and supported her arms as they walked away. Well, at least someone was watching over them, Henry mused, although it looked like the children were taking care of the lady more than the other way around.

  Henry jogged across and took the bench. He tried to regather himself. No one stateside would believe all this, he thought.

  A long line of exhausted, frail deportees waiting to be processed inched its way along the wall toward the entrance of the Hotel Lutetia. Official-looking women in tightly buttoned navy blue uniforms marched up and down, scribbling on clipboards, asking questions. Bystanders shouted their own: Do you have any news of——? Dozens of names were called at the same time, peppering the deportees like scattershot from shotguns. They looked dazed. Only a few managed replies. The French soldiers guarding them did nothing to stop the incessant, frantic interrogation. Do you know of——? Have you seen——? Only when one woman doubled over as if kicked in the stomach and started screaming at a deportee that she was a liar—her sister could not be dead—liar, liar, liar—did the soldiers pull someone away from the line.