Paris Encore

by Bodie Thoene

  Ignoring the bookseller’s amused gaze, they winked at Josie and spoke to her in clumsy French. “Parlez-vous l’anglais?” The words were flat, without any pretense of correct pronunciation, as if they were being read from a guidebook. English-French. French-English. Barely recognizable.

  She shook her head politely, shrugged, and smiled apologetically.

  They nudged one another and made suggestive remarks about her in their native language, thinking that she really did not parlez.

  She knew the old bookseller well and asked in distinct English, “Bonjour, Monsieur Lemoine. If you please, I am looking for a certain volume of the works of Milton.”

  “Oui, Madame Marlow!” He held up the index finger of his one hand in exclamation. He had just the thing.

  “Blimey!” exclaimed the fairest boy. “She’s a Yank!” He noticed the press badge on her topcoat. “A journalist!”

  Josie raised an eyebrow regally. “What would your mother say if she knew you spoke this way to a lady?”

  The boys blushed. British males were usually stolid when it came to women, unless they thought they could get away with something. And these were very young. Probably this was their first time out of their Yorkshire village. Tipping their service caps, they wandered quickly in the opposite direction.

  “Well done, Madame,” exclaimed the bookseller. “One hopes these English will learn something about women while they are in France, but they do not even know how to speak. I hope they know how to fight the Boche.”

  “Let’s hope the whole thing will be finished before it matters, Monsieur.”

  “Oui, Madame.” He accepted fifty centimes for the volume. Then, with his solitary hand, he deftly wrapped it in newsprint and tied it with twine. Josie held her finger on the center of the knot. “Are you working today, Madame?”

  “An interview with the American sisters on Rue de la Huchette.”

  “Madame Rose and Madame Betsy?”

  “You know them?”

  “But of course! Everyone knows them.”

  “How long have they lived here?”

  He shrugged. “Since before I came home from Verdun. For a time they cared for the son of my dear sister, who perished from the influenza in ’18. The boy is at the front now. I hope he comes back in one piece.” He pointed to the pinned-up sleeve in a gesture that indicated he knew much about war. “Take the ladies a gift from me, Madame.” He counted the fifty centimes back into her hand, then added an additional twenty. “The church is rich enough. Bonjour, Madame! Merci! Good day!” He turned to a new trio of customers.

  The dark-eyed beauty with the long, black hair batted her lashes at Professor Alan Turner of Oxford University. Her passport indicated she was Portuguese by birth, and everyone knew Portugal was a neutral nation, so her presence at Oxford as a student of literature was no surprise.

  What was amazing was her sudden interest in mathematics. She attended one of Turner’s lectures on games theory and stayed around after class to inquire further. “Ees it true that the great Einstein lectured here and that his blackboard notes are still preserved?”

  Turner was so delighted by her breathy accent and her way of leaning toward him when she asked her question that he promptly forgot what she had said. Noting the way she filled out the silk blouse she wore did not help his concentration either. Turner blushed into the roots of his thin brown hair. “I’m sorry. What was that again?”

  “Einstein,” she repeated simply.

  “Oh, yes,” Turner confirmed. “He was here . . . let me see . . . clear back in ’31. His notes are still on the board in the basement lecture hall.”

  “Can we see them?” Miss Francesca Pereira asked.

  Turner loved the way she said we. “It’s a bit of an old, dusty room. But perhaps I can arrange it sometime.”

  “Why not now?” she asked, pushing out her lips in a pout to go with her disappointed frown.

  “Now? It’s after hours and there would be no one about,” Turner said, inwardly groaning after his objection.

  Miss Pereira fluttered her eyelashes again and inclined even closer to the mathematics professor. “But this way you could geeve me a private explanation of what eet means,” she purred.

  Turner found himself walking rapidly along the curve of the Sheldonian Theatre. He was vaguely uncomfortable to be under the disapproving gaze of the thirteen giant stone heads known as the Emperors.

  Miss Pereira talked incessantly and actually pressed against Turner’s arm. “And you know Professor Einstein personally?”

  “Yes,” Turner agreed and then, waxing brave, added, “and other important thinkers as well.”

  “Really?” Francesca said. “Who else? You don’t know Lewinski, do you?”

  “Richard Lewinski?” Turner repeated. “Certainly.”

  “Ooh,” she said. “I just adore hees ideas on a universal calculating machine . . . fascinating, and so ultramodern.”

  “Richard and I have discussed his theory many times. In fact, we worked on it together while he was here at Oxford.”

  “You don’t mean eet?” Francesca’s voice rose in amazement. “But this ees fabulous . . . it will be the foundation of a whole new world. But tell me, where ees Lewinski now? Why has he not published his work?”

  Turner wrinkled his forehead, worried that he might somehow fail an exam for which he had not properly prepared. “I don’t know. I lost track of him after he went to Warsaw.” Turner could tell that Miss Pereira was unhappy with the answer. “But I know where he isn’t,” he added. “He did not go to America, because a colleague of mine from Princeton wrote and asked me the same question. It seems someone from Poland was trying to locate him about some money he had coming.”

  “But you must be concerned for heem,” Francesca urged. “Can’t you think where a great mind like hees would go to continue hees work?”

  Turner thought a moment. “Lewinski always said that he loved Paris better than anywhere on earth. I should think he is in seclusion there.”

  Francesca’s eyes widened. “Does he have something to be frightened of?”

  “No.” Turner laughed, tired of so much talk about Lewinski. “He’s just like that—solitary and reclusive. Anyway, I would bet on Paris if I were trying to find him. Shall we press on to the classroom now?”

  Francesca consulted the watch on her slim wrist. “Oh, my goodness,” she said with alarm. “I’m late already, but we can do it another time, yes?” She planted a quick kiss on Turner’s cheek and hurried away.

  “Yes,” he called after her. “Another time, then!” Turner looked at his own watch. How could he have been so inattentive? He also was late to his work at Bletchly Park, where he oversaw the MI6 attempt to unravel the German code device known as Enigma.

  28

  Miracles Every Day

  Josie Marlow pulled the bell rope, announcing her arrival at No. 5 Rue de la Huchette.

  A thin young girl with straight, bobbed brown hair and thick glasses opened the gate and peered out curiously like a strange little bird. She wore a coarse, hand-knit red sweater and a high-collared yellow dress. Her shoes were scuffed. One blue sock was up and the other down, revealing a spindly leg.

  Behind her in the confined space of the courtyard a group of boys played baseball. The noise of cheering was amplified against the high white walls of the building. Chalk squares drawn onto the cobbles served as bases. Beside each base was an umpire—a boy in a tall, old-fashioned wheelchair being pushed by a much smaller boy. An orb wrapped and bound by burlap and twine served as the ball. A tennis racket was the bat.

  The girl at the entrance screwed up her face at Josie and shouted, “I am Marie Jardin. Do you like my new glasses? I can see everything very well now, thank you. I did not know I could not see before. But now I can. You see? Who are you? You have a nice face.”

  “I have come to see Madames Rose and Betsy.”

  “They are playing baseball.” She stepped aside and swept an arm up to poin
t to two old ladies in the thick of the fray. “You would like to watch? Madame Betsy launches the ball. Madame Rose is a la batte. My brother, Jerome, is the catcher of the baseball, which is a common potato all wrapped up. Henri, the boy who rides in the chair with wheels is the vampire, but he does not drink blood. Vampire. It is something you have in American baseball, no? You see him there? He holds Uncle Jambonneau’s dog, who is a rat. Papillon is on his shoulder.”

  Josie spotted a rat riding on the shoulder of the grinning, wheelchair-bound child beside first base. “Very interesting, Marie.” Jose determined that she would steer clear of the kid with the rat.

  “The game, she is a tie. Last inning. Two outs. No one on base and two strikes on Madame Rose.”

  Josie stepped around her just as the scrawny Betsy wound up and tossed the wrapped potato over home plate. Rose swung hard and connected. The twine around the burlap broke, and the ball flew into pieces. Part of the potato struck Rose as she ran for first. The catcher, a thin-faced, male version of the little bird-girl, clawed at bits of the tuber in an attempt to find enough potato to throw her out. Madame Betsy called for time and shook her bony finger at her laughing sister. This required a judgment from the umpires. It wasn’t fair, Betsy declared. Half of the potato had touched Rose, and Rose was out! She had busted the ball, and she was out!

  The wheelchairs rolled together for the umps to discuss the situation. The boys mumbled and nodded as the rat looked on seriously. Finally they judged against the base hit. Madame Rose was definitely out. Remaining on first, Rose blustered her protest. She was promptly warned that if she argued further her team would be penalized one run. Josie concluded that in this French version of baseball, the rules must be very fluid and unpredictable—something like French politics.

  Pursing her lips in obvious disagreement, Rose dusted herself off as if she were Babe Ruth and stalked from first back to home.

  Thus ended the inning and the game with a tie: thirty-one to thirty-one. Both teams, the umpires, and the spectators lined up to congratulate one another beneath the banners of laundry drying above the courtyard. Jerome plucked the rat from the shoulder of the ump and placed it on top of his head. He danced around in joyous circles, then fed the rat a bit of potato left over from the ball. Josie was taken firmly by the hand and guided to the center of the mob by Marie, who blinked happily through the lenses of her glasses.

  Madame Rose, who did indeed have a grip something like Babe Ruth’s, pumped Josie’s hand. “Hello, hello!” Her cheeks had bright spots of color. “You are Josephine Marlow. We have no room for a terrain de football—a soccer field—so we play baseball. My team usually wins.”

  Betsy pouted. “Rose cheats . . . makes up her own rules.”

  “When in Rome, as they say, Betsy dear!” Rose retorted cheerfully. “You have Papillon as mascot, don’t you, Jerome? That draws all the best players. If I did not cheat a bit, how could I ever win?”

  All good-natured, the hands of the children reached up to pat their coaches in congratulations. It was a good game. The best kind of ending: Nobody won.

  “We do not want you to enjoy yourselves too much! Schoolwork!” Rose clapped her hands, and Betsy spread her arms like a hen herding her chicks into the coop. There was an audible groan. The crowd, with curious looks at Josie, dispersed to trudge up the outside stairs that led to the upper stories. The four umpires in their wheelchairs were piloted toward the wide door of a ground-floor room by Austrian boys in lederhosen who growled like race-car engines and charged over the rough cobbles in competition. The catcher and his rat beat everyone up the stairs to the landing, where he thumped his chest and yodeled like Tarzan.

  “How many children?” Josie asked, looking after them as they disappeared from balconies into a half-dozen doorways.

  “Seventy-two,” Betsy replied. “From the tiny ones to age twelve. More than twice as many as usual.”

  “And the rat?” Josie asked.

  Betsy put a finger to her lips, letting her in on the secret. “They all think he’s a dog with a long, hairless tail. He belongs to Uncle Jambonneau, and Jerome is taking care of him,” she confided, as if this was an answer.

  “However do you manage?”

  “We are never without help,” Rose explained. “Students from the Sorbonne come to tutor the children in exchange for meals. Grandmothers come to help us cook and help with the babies. The older children help with the younger. And with God’s help, overall, it is not difficult, Madame Marlow. He brings us little miracles every day.”

  “I’ll bring tea.” Betsy excused herself as six volunteer cooks banged on the gate.

  Josie remembered the seventy centimes. She fished in her pocket and presented the coins to Rose. “From Monsieur Lemoine, the bookseller. He says you cared for his nephew years ago.”

  “This is why it is not difficult. Every day God reminds our friends that we are still here. Like Monsieur Lemoine . . . his nephew, Jacques, all grown up now and old enough for it to happen all over again. France has enough empty sleeves from the last one.”

  Rose shrugged, mopped the perspiration from her brow, and led Josie to a cramped and cluttered office. Framed needlepoint Bible verses hung on the wall. Do unto Others . . . She moved a stack of hymnbooks from a battered wooden chair and gestured for Josie to sit. “And now, my dear, how can we help you?”

  Bells and whistles were going off in Josie’s head. She remained serene and hoped that Rose would not see the sparks flying out of her ears. Could it be that this was not just one story, but an entire series? Tomorrow she would submit a newsy little human-interest article to the bloody knife of Frank Blake for AP. And then? Then she would write something new and wonderful each week and sell it freelance to Harper’s or Ladies’ Home Journal!

  Josie calmly took out her notebook. “Would you mind starting at the very beginning?” The tea arrived and Betsy joined them. “How did you come to be here?”

  The sisters exchanged looks, as if they had been waiting the longest time for someone to ask.

  “You see, my dear. Josephine, is it?” Betsy began. “It started with a miracle that took place in 1870. We would never have been here at all, otherwise. . . .”

  Rose got a faraway look in her eyes, as if she were hearing another voice speak to her. “Our father, Captain William Smith, was a sailor. . . .”

  Somewhere in the telling of the miracle, the thought hit Josie that Madame Rose was just the woman who could help in the making of another miracle. She took out the envelope with the photograph of the baby from Warsaw and slid it across the desk of the old woman.

  “I need help. I don’t even know where to begin. This child is in the Reich. . . .”

  The eyes of Rose brightened as she studied the photograph. “And you want to bring him out?”

  “Yes. I have approached the American Embassy about the proper documents. They are intractable. The waiting period for immigration to the States is years. No Germans are being allowed out of the Reich. Especially not Jews.”

  “Of course. Unless he is your son. A handsome little fellow.”

  “Can that be done?”

  “Certainly.” Rose grinned and opened a cluttered file cabinet to remove the forms.

  “Is it difficult?”

  “Heavens no! I’ll hand carry the letters myself. We’ll have to pretend he started out here in Paris.” She winked. “A little larceny for the sake of a child. God doesn’t mind a bit. We’re an orphanage, you see. A matter of two months, and you will be a mother. I know an excellent bookbinder who can conceal the documents for you to cross the German border. A simple matter. Done quite a lot these days.”

  It was a fact that Trevor Galway doubted would be believed at home. There was a young navy chaplain named Gabriel Horne who shared the space of the men in hell.

  Being a tiny, dark-eyed Protestant from County Tyrone, Chaplain Gabriel had more the look and sound of a leprechaun than an archangel. It was observed, however, that the little man did not po
ssess the power of either being.

  The area in the hellhole of Altmark was even more confined than the cargo hold had been. It was not possible for those imprisoned here to do anything other than stand up. Trevor thought it was amazing what humans could cope with and keep going. He and the others in the cramped cubical leaned against each other to sleep.

  The hellhole was below the waterline. When the ship rolled in the waves of the North Sea, icy, foul, oily water from the bilges sloshed around the legs of the prisoners.

  The darkness that clamped down when the hatch was shut was absolute. While it was true that Trevor could literally not see his hand in front of his face, that fact was far from being the worst of it. Left without any ray of light to register on the senses, the mind soon conjured up images to replace the lack. At first the figures were simple, like sunbursts and fireworks. But as time passed, Trevor imagined that he could see flowers and trees and recognize people in these pleasant outdoor scenes. It made him wonder if he was losing his mind, but everyone in the confinement experienced the same thing.

  Chaplain Gabriel, being shorter than the others, suffered from saltwater ulcers on his legs. And yet he coped with his suffering without curse or complaint.

  To deal with the physical pain and the gnawing possibility of going crazy, Chaplain Gabriel encouraged the others to tell stories. Every man in the bowels of the ship remembered more than he thought he did—sights from travel in distant lands or memories of home. It was decreed that they would not talk about real food or sex. Chaplain Gabriel declared that discussing mother’s home cooking or the girls they left behind was the surest way to drive each other crazy. They should think of this enforced fasting—two crusts a day—as a sort of spiritual purification. This pronouncement was at first harshly booed by the boys in hell. But when Dooley began to conjure up fresh strawberries and cream and a pot of hot tea for breakfast with Greta Garbo sitting across the table, Chaplain Gabriel battled the phantoms using bits of song alternated with Bible verses.