A Bridge Across the Ocean

by Susan Meissner

  “I am not trying to tell you what to do,” Brette began, but the Drifter pushed her back into the main hallway and toward the staircase and the main hall. Brette wondered for only a moment if the Drifter was done with her, but once on the promenade, she was led to the stern and outside at the back of the ship. She stopped to get her bearings as she emerged into sunlight again. Clutches of people wearing earbuds and listening to the audio tour were scattered here and there, but the Drifter urged Brette down one flight of exterior stairs after another until she was standing in front of a doorway that led back inside the ship. A sign on the outside with an arrow pointing down read TO THE ISOLATION WARD. The Drifter nudged her. Brette shaded her eyes and stepped inside the darkened opening. A set of stairs met her and a second sign cautioned her to watch her step. She took the steps carefully and wound her way to the right, the only direction available. The area that had been the ship’s sick bay now lay before her, and a few self-guided tourists were taking pictures and reading placards. Brette was nudged forward with an elevated sense of urgency. Something had happened to this Drifter on the ship. It hadn’t happened in the stateroom, though there had been something in the little cupboard that had mattered at the time. She was led into a little anteroom where historical records hung on the walls. A couple was looking at one of the framed documents. The Drifter swirled about Brette, and the hair on her neck stood on end. The man looked up. He had felt the electrical charge, too, but didn’t know why. He seemed to think Brette had somehow been responsible for it, and he put his arm protectively around the woman as they moved away. Brette smiled politely and they smiled, too, but warily. As soon as the couple was gone, the Drifter propelled Brette toward the document they had been looking at.

  It was a chronological list of those who had died aboard the ship, from first to last.

  The Drifter pressed Brette forward with renewed force.

  “It might help if you just let me see you and then you can just tell me your name,” Brette said as she nearly stumbled forward, closer to the document on the wall.

  But the Drifter remained invisible.

  “Is your name on this list? Is that why we’re here? You’re not Laura, are you? Just tell me. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”

  Look.

  “Look at what?” Brette said. “What do you want me to see? Your name? Is your name here?”

  Brette peered at the list.

  Look, the Drifter seemed to say, and Brette felt it gently push her line of sight toward one date, February 12, 1946. One of the war brides crossings.

  Look, the Drifter seemed to whisper, a third time.

  Brette read the first name aloud even as the Drifter seemed to murmur it in her ear.

  Annaliese.

  Sixteen

  PARIS, FRANCE

  1944

  Papa had told Simone to memorize the address on Rue de Calais but to never, ever go there until he told her to. He had shown her on the street map where it was and he’d even walked with her as far as two streets away. But he’d told her that some French people would do anything to keep themselves and the people they loved safe, and that meant even telling a German soldier that a neighbor whom they had known all their lives was engaging in suspicious activity and visiting places they didn’t usually visit.

  “You could unknowingly lead the Gestapo right to it by going by there,” he’d told her. “They would arrest those they found. Maybe torture them for information.”

  Simone had honored that request. For three years she had walked past the side street that led to Rue de Calais but had never gone down it.

  She had always imagined number 23 to be just another indiscriminate brick three-story building with iron grillework on the windows and maybe a brass knocker wanting polish. There might be a pot on the front step sporting pale geraniums, and the front door—blue or green—would need a bit of fresh paint. It would be a house that looked like all the others so that no one would ever suspect it was a place of safety.

  But as Simone ran from the scene of her father and brother’s execution, that halcyon image escaped her and all she could think about was that she didn’t have the gun. She didn’t have anything. Papa and Étienne were dead. She couldn’t go back to the shoe-repair shop and get her sketchbooks or her mother’s photo album or her grandmother’s cameo or her favorite pajamas. Or the gun. She had nothing but the clothes she was wearing and her fear. The sun was starting to set and the light all around her was failing.

  She scampered down one block of Rue de Cler, cutting down a side alley to deflect notice, and continued on to Rue de Grenelle. A voice inside her urged her to slow down and stop crying; she was attracting too much attention. A running girl with tears streaming down her face would be remembered by anyone she passed. Simone forced herself to relax and slowed her pace to that of a young woman merely late for an appointment or about to miss a bus, and she willed the tears to ebb. She could not think about Papa and Étienne. Not now.

  From her previous walks on streets near Rue de Calais, she knew it would take fifteen minutes to reach the house, maybe longer, since Papa had told her if anything should happen and she needed to flee to it, he wanted her to take side streets. Instinct bid her check over her shoulder to see if she was being watched or followed.

  It seemed that everyone was looking in her direction when she turned around; every eye was fixed on her. If she was not careful, she would expose not only Monsieur Jolicoeur but anyone else at 23 Rue de Calais. She decided to take another alley and wait until the sun had finished its descent so that she could approach the safe house under the cover of darkness. She turned into a narrow side street empty of people where she knew a Jewish clinic had been. The clinic, vacant for the last two years, was a ruin of broken windows, crumbling stucco, and a kicked-in door. She could slip inside and wait for nightfall. Simone made her way to the abandoned building, her worn shoes crunching on broken glass. She had no sooner crossed the threshold inside when she heard the sound of someone else stepping on the shards behind her. Simone turned and there in the doorway was a man in a Gestapo uniform, smiling at her. A gold tooth winked in the scant light of the setting sun. Her stomach lurched.

  “Mademoiselle Devereux!” He grinned in mock delight. “You easy I catch!”

  His French was piecemeal, like so many of the Gestapo who knew no French at the beginning of the occupation and had learned what they could from those they had come to oppress.

  Simone backed up a step. Her gaze darted to the right and left as she looked for a way out, since the front doorway was completely blocked by the Gestapo officer.

  “You want more to run?” he said, also taking another step inside. “You want hide in building and I come find you? You want play games, mademoiselle? Go, run! Find place you hide. See if I find you!” He came closer.

  “Please . . .” she said. “Please let me go.”

  “You think you hide from Gestapo? Here? In Jewish pig barn?” His tone was more sinister now and yet he still smiled.

  She backed up a few more steps, and through the haze of semidarkness she saw a hallway and a trio of doors.

  “You think your father clever spying while shine our shoes?”

  “No . . . I . . . Please.” One of the doors was ajar just a few feet away. If she could just get to it and slam it shut. Maybe it had a lock. Maybe there would be a window to the outside. Maybe—

  “Please, what, mademoiselle?”

  She sprang into action and sprinted across the broken floorboards. Her hand was on the doorknob, wrenching it open, when the man grabbed her arm. She swung at him and missed, yanking free of him as she whirled into the room. He lunged in after her. There was no window in the room. There was no lock on the door. There were only the remnants of a wheeled stool and a shattered sink.

  She saw all of this as he knocked her to the ground. Her cheek and right temple hit broken tiles an
d gravel with a cracking thud, and for several seconds she could see only twinkling stars, and then the sparkle of his tooth as he tore at her clothes. She screamed and he hit her, yelling in German words she did not know.

  The blow stunned her for a moment, giving him time to unbuckle his pants and lower his zipper.

  “Very pretty, very clever mademoiselle. So very clever. I show you clever.”

  She screamed again but he did not care. And then there was fire between her legs as he pushed himself inside her—a searing, tearing, wrenching away of anything good left to her. She cried out in agony and he grunted. She felt his pistol still in its holder bumping against her leg, and through her anguish she heard her father tell her how to hold the gun, how to pull back the lever, how to hold it steady and straight. She reached for the weapon, fumbled it out of its holster, and pointed the barrel against the German’s rocking torso. She opened her eyes and screamed Papa’s name as she pulled the trigger.

  For several seconds the only sound she could hear was a ringing, like an alarm, reverberating in her head. The clanging subsided and she heard next the sound of the man who had violated her gasping for breath as blood and foam rimmed his mouth. He was staring at her in disbelief, still on top of her, his eyes wide and the gold tooth glistening crimson.

  She pushed him off her, turned to the side, and vomited.

  Simone knew she needed to get to her feet and run as far away from the man as she could. But she could only lie on the broken tile as the Gestapo officer struggled to breathe. A moment later he was still.

  They would be coming for her now. She had only to wait and they would come. They would find her and they would find the dead Gestapo officer. They would pull her out of the building, drag her to the street, and do to her what they had done to Papa and Étienne. She only had to just lie there and they would come and then it would be over. Soon she would be in heaven with Maman. And Papa and Étienne. They would all be together again. She only had to lie there.

  A bit of time passed and there was no sound of rushing boots.

  “I am here,” Simone called out in a raspy whisper. “I am here.”

  But several more minutes went by and no one came, and she knew Papa would have her get up. She could feel him tugging at her torn sleeve, urging her to get to her feet.

  “No,” she said aloud, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.

  Yes. Yes, Simone!

  Slowly she rose from the dirt and fragmented tiles. The Gestapo officer was on his side, his vacant eyes fixed in her direction. Blood pooled all around the buttons of his uniform. The gun lay between them, pointed toward the wall where Simone now noticed a picture of the human body, stripped of its skin and tissue, and its amazing organs all tucked in neatly.

  Go, Simone!

  She pulled her torn dress tight around her middle and staggered away, the pain where her legs met making her feel like she’d been sliced in two.

  She walked to the battered front door. No one was rushing toward the little alleyway. She was only a block or two from Rue de Calais and night had nearly fallen. Simone rubbed her face with her hands to wipe away the stains of her tears.

  Just stay to the shadows, do not run, the voice in her head whispered to her.

  There were a few people on the street, but they seemed disinterested in her and the way she walked, a bit hunched and with her arms crossed firmly across her chest and her dress torn and dirty. The occupation had been one long and terrible stretch of deprivation. One more street urchin was nothing new.

  She at last rounded the corner onto Rue de Calais, a tiny passage off a characterless street lined with tired-looking buildings. Simone found number 23, a locksmith and key-making shop, two buildings in.

  She had pictured the safe house as a home, not a run-down retailer that appeared to be on the verge of closure. She looked again at the number on the building to make sure it was number 23 and then went in. Keys of all sizes and shapes hung on the facing wall. A waiting bench sat along another wall. An older woman sat behind the counter, grinding a key on a spinning disc.

  “We’re closed,” she said gruffly, not looking up.

  Simone stepped up to the counter. “I am . . . I am here to see Monsieur Jolicoeur, madame,” she said, not much more than a whisper.

  The woman lifted the key off the grinder for the barest second. Her hand twitched before she returned the key to the disc. “We are not hiring, mademoiselle. Good day.” The woman nodded toward the door without looking up.

  Simone could only remain where she stood, stunned into silence.

  The woman raised her head then, noted Simone’s condition, and raised an eyebrow. But then the shock dissipated as quickly as it had appeared. “Did you not hear? We are not hiring.”

  “I was told to ask for Monsieur Jolicoeur,” Simone replied, her voice and body trembling. “And I am not leaving until I speak with him.”

  The woman stood and studied her with a frown. “What do you want?”

  “I will only speak to Monsieur Jolicoeur.” Tears that she fought to keep at bay began to stream down her face. This was not how Papa had said it would be. He’d assured her that she could find help at 23 Rue de Calais. Her legs threatened to give out underneath her.

  “Who are you?” the woman said, with no trace of courtesy.

  “I will only speak with Monsieur Jolicoeur.”

  “You will speak to no one unless you tell me your name!”

  A sob escaped Simone. She felt like no one. She wanted to die there in the locksmith shop and become nothing.

  “I am Simone Devereux,” she replied as another sob erupted from deep within her.

  The woman came out from behind the counter, brushed past Simone, and looked out the shop’s front-door glass. She locked the door and drew down the shades over the door and front windows. Then she turned to Simone and her gaze was intense.

  “Where are your father and brother?”

  “I must speak with Monsieur Jolicoeur!”

  The woman put her hands on Simone’s shoulders. “I am Monsieur Jolicoeur! It is just a code name! It means nothing. Where are your father and brother?!”

  “They are dead!” Simone cried, and the room felt like it was spinning.

  “My God!” The woman’s angry gaze instantly became one of horrified astonishment. “Are you sure?”

  Simone nodded and her body swayed. “I saw them get shot.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” the woman said. She took a peep out one of the front windows, and then she drew Simone into her arms. “My name is Celeste Didion. This is my husband’s shop. Come tell me what happened.”

  The woman led Simone up a flight of narrow stairs to a flat above the shop. After settling her onto a sofa with a cup of hot cider mixed with brandy and seeing to the needs of her ailing husband, Monsieur Didion, the woman told Simone to tell her everything.

  So she did.

  She told Madame Didion about the firing squad in the street and the man who had told her to run. She told her about how she took side streets, and how she went to the old Jewish clinic to hide until nightfall so that she would not unknowingly lead anyone to the safe house. She told her about the Gestapo officer with the gold tooth and what he had done to her.

  And then she told the woman what she had done to him.

  Seventeen

  GERMANY

  1943

  When Rolf asked her to marry him eight weeks after having met her, Annaliese knew that she did not love him.

  She was entranced by his devotion to her, attracted to him physically, charmed by his extravagant gifts and compliments, and in awe of his strength and control. She never felt unsafe when she was with him, not even when air-raid sirens sounded and they had to seek cover. Others would fly about in a panic, but he would calmly usher her into whatever shelter was closest and assure her that all would be well.

&n
bsp; He was attentive, but not romantic. Polite, but not thoughtful. He was kind to her, and a gentleman in every way, but he did not seem to be captivated by her. And she was likewise not captivated by him.

  She liked him, but she was not in love with him.

  He proposed one evening in late June when he was at the Lange home in Bonn. There had been aerial bombings an hour away the previous night, and when Rolf asked if he might join them for dinner to discuss something important, Annaliese’s father assumed he was going to say it would be wise for the Langes to return to Prüm, where there were no munitions factories or airfields. The bombings in and around Cologne were becoming more intense and more frequent. Annaliese had been sad to think of leaving the ballet studio in Bonn and even Rolf’s affections, but the thought of going home at last, and perhaps being able to sneak in a visit to Katrine, had filled her with hope.

  That hope had been momentary. Rolf had no sooner finished his meal, which he thanked Louisa for, when he announced he was being transferred to Frankfurt and he wanted Annaliese to come with him as his wife.

  He said it so swiftly that Annaliese could only sit at the table in mute astonishment.

  “Our Annaliese?” her father said, his tone a mix of wonder and dread.

  Rolf reached across the table for Annaliese’s hand and covered it with his own. “Your daughter has made quite the impression on me and I’ve grown very fond of her. You have raised her well. She is all that a man like me could want in a wife. She will want for nothing, I can assure you. She will be well cared for.”

  There was no asking of permission, no declaration of ardent love. His words were more a proclamation of intent. Annaliese had been staring wide-eyed at Rolf, but now she turned to her parents and her gaze begged a single entreaty. Please, don’t make me marry him, please, don’t make me!

  Her mother glanced at Annaliese and then quickly looked away. “What a surprise, Herr Kurtz,” she said with slightly feigned exuberance. “You’ve only known each other for a few weeks.”