Last Train to Paris

by Michele Zackheim

  Besides a few other newspaper people, whose typewriters were clicking away day and night, there were three prostitutes, one with hennaed hair, one a peroxided blonde, and one with coal-black dyed hair; a wealthy, generous, and serious female drunk from London who loved young boys; a Polish communist who sold Persian carpets on the boulevards; two German Jewish lesbian couples who came from the same village near Berlin; a Romani bookbinder who spoke only Yiddish; a Russian cellist who practiced six hours a day, and his wife who worked in a Russian bookstore at the Exposition Internationale; two male Serbian exiles from Belgrade who often hid in the dark hallways and always greeted me with a whispered “Dobra dan” (good day); an Italian Jewish maker of fashionable shoes who sent money in shoeboxes to his family in Rome; a Pole and his wife who were so frightened that they rarely left their room; a male dancer with Les Ballets de Paris who lived in the hotel with his wife and two children; the Finnish gardener at the Jardin du Luxembourg, who tended the English-style gardens; Mademoiselle Ruska, Voyante Médium, Hindique (originally from Ohio, and stranded in Paris for lack of money), who often tried to convince me that she could show me the destiny of my “fractured soul”; and a French taxidermist and cold-weather hand-muff maker, whose specialty was household cats. “Look, Miss Manon,” he once said. “If you rub yourself with this cat-fur mitten, it will keep you warmer than those ridiculous, useless coal stoves that we have in our rooms.” Facing the park on the second floor was Mr. Hin, an exiled Chinese poet of note and an earnest member of the PCF, the French Communist Party. We became friends. There was also an elderly woman who had lived there since the beginning of the Great War. She wore only black and owned a wool shop around the corner. Arrayed on her shelves were pasteboard boxes filled with skeins of yarn in every color—lively vermilion, carmine, vibrant orange, emerald, ultramarine, Indian yellow. Her establishment reminded me of my Aunt Clara’s button-and-trimmings shop in Brooklyn.

  There were no toilets in the rooms, but each floor had one at the end of the hall. I didn’t like this at all. I’ve never liked sharing such an intimate room with anyone and his brother.

  ABSOLUMENT AUCUNE CUISSON DANS LES CHAMBRES, the black-on-white enamel signs warned on each landing. No cooking allowed in the rooms—but most residents had spirit cookers and locked larders, both to keep the mice away and to hide the stoves. The aromas of food wafted through the hallways; nothing was a secret. If someone was in the money, the halls smelled of frying meat. Otherwise, there was an abundance of cabbage. Every morning, if a tenant had paid a small extra amount, Monsieur Pleven would bring him or her a steaming cup of coffee with a small pot of hot milk and a freshly baked croissant from the bar at the corner of the boulevard St. Michel. I liked that amenity. I would buy the evening newspapers and save them for the morning’s coffee in my room. Every once in a while, when Andy and I missed the American breakfasts of our youth, we would go to a restaurant run by a former Pullman porter near the Eiffel Tower. The Chicago-Texas Inn specialized in fried eggs, corned-beef hash, and thick griddlecakes dripping with butter. It also had a private stash of American-made bourbon, saved for special customers. On occasion, there was genuine maple syrup. As soon as the syrup arrived, the word would go out to the American newspaper community.

  Fifty steps away from the Hôtel Espoir’s front door was Henri’s Café, the local bar, with the nearest public telephone. All the newspaper people who lived in the area would check each day to see if any messages had been left with Monsieur Henri, who was the owner, the waiter, and the bartender too. If so, the message would be written on the back of an old receipt in Monsieur Henri’s spidery nineteenth-century handwriting. He would place it at the end of the wine-stained bar with a shot glass on top.

  Outside the café was a dingy green kiosk selling French and international newspapers, and it also had the tobacco concession for the neighborhood. On the upper part of the kiosk, directly below the dull bronze, pineapple-shaped dome, each day’s headlines were printed on cheap paper and applied with thick wheat paste. The French bought between three and five newspapers a day, more newspapers per person than any other country in the world; this was one of the characteristics of France that I loved. Each time I approached the kiosk, the newsagent, Monsieur Villières, was there with the same greeting. ‘Ah, Mademoiselle Manon. C’est la fiction! C’est toute fiction!” (It’s fiction, all fiction), he would say as he handed me copies of Paris-Soir, the London Times, and the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung.

  I hate to sound like a curmudgeon, but today’s newspapers aren’t written as well as the ones from that time. Before the war there were more choices, more published differences of opinion, more column inches to tell long stories. And I miss my print-stained hands and that heavy, wonderful smell of ink.

  When I first arrived in Paris, I thought it would be thrilling to have a chance to go to China as a correspondent for the Paris Courier. In Simon’s Creek, Nevada, where I was born, there were many Chinese people who had come to work on the railroad and then settled there. Having learned Mandarin as a child from my nanny, I had many people to practice with. But in Paris I had met only one Chinese person, my new friend Mr. Hin. If the weather was nice, Mr. Hin could be found in the morning sitting on a bench in the small square just outside the hotel, reading a newspaper or a book, or writing, his wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Tall and thin, he was a straight-postured man with his long hair worn in a braid. His face was ancient, reminding me of an ivory Chinese figurine. He wore the robin’s egg blue, heavy-cotton clothes of a French laborer, but interrupted that look with a faded red-and-orange embroidered cap.

  Andy had introduced me. “Mr. Hin, please meet my friend R. B. Manon. She’s new here and lives on the second floor, two doors down from me.”

  “Happy to meet you,” I said. “What are you reading?”

  “Glad to meet you too. Cigarette?” I was happy to take his offered Gauloise Bleu. Although I had to force myself to inhale the heavy Turkish tobacco, I felt more French than American, which pleased me no end.

  “I’m reading Les Fleurs du mal et oeuvres choisies by Baudelaire.”

  “I’m impressed!” I said.

  Then I felt embarrassed for implying that it was unusual for a Chinese man to be reading in French, and Baudelaire to boot.

  Mr. Hin smiled at my discomfort. “No, don’t worry, Miss Manon,” he said. “French is my second language, too.”

  “Please,” I replied. “Call me Rosie.”

  Meeting Mr. Hin had made me homesick. How odd, I mused, that to me the American West felt Chinese.

  I don’t like admitting it, but I’m still smoking. And to tell the truth, I love it. I don’t know if it’s the pure delight of taking the first puff, or the shock on my friends’ and colleagues’ faces when I light up. I’m not stupid—I know it’s not good for me. However, I appear to be one of those people for whom smoking has no lasting ill effects. My doctors simply shake their heads. I think they’re envious.

  But I do know that the smell of old cigarette smoke is quite unpleasant to many people. While I was still in Europe, I stopped smoking for more than a year because tobacco was so hard to come by. It was then that I understood the awful odor of stale cigarette smoke. It was everywhere. There was always, no matter what season, a sweet-and-sour smell of sweat and cigarette smoke that permeated Parisian cafés, public buildings, and the Métro and city buses.

  Mr. Hin had wryly informed me, “It’s an old Parisian adage that you will wreck your eyes if you read too much—and wear down your skin if you take too many baths.” Every three days—more often if I could afford it—I would go to the public bath on the rue de Vaugirard. The proprietors provided me with a thin piece of soap, a gray, threadbare towel, and a tin tub of warm water. It was never enough; I never felt fresh when I left. I had been brought up breathing the crystalline air on a mountaintop. When I first moved east to work at the New York Courier, it took me a long time to become a
ccustomed to the new smells.

  In Nevada, an old, scarred, red-leather trunk sat closed in the corner under a window in my childhood home. It smelled of mountain dust and memories. In the trunk were tarnished nineteenth-century silver teapots, sugar bowls, and creamers from Russia and England, marked with cryptic stamps and the etched names of artisans. As a child I used to play a game with myself, closing my eyes and running my fingers over the etched names to try to feel out the letters.

  Then one day I dug deeper. I discovered a pile of yellowed linens wrapped in tissue paper, which had begun to flake like a thin layer of dry spun sugar. Under another layer of tissue were crocheted doilies and Victorian lace collars; the insides of their rosettes had turned from ecru to umber. Under all of this I found a pink satin-covered candy box filled with letters. Most of the letters were from my mother’s sister, Clara Silverman, who lived in that mysterious place, Brooklyn. Her handwriting was scratchy and hard to read, already fading with time. Finding the letters boring and almost indecipherable, I put them aside. It was then that I found a telegram from Clara congratulating my parents. Mazel tov on the birth of your daughter, it said, and I had no idea what it meant.

  “Mrs. Cheng?” I said, moving my nanny’s arm back and forth to wake her.

  “What, Rosie, do you need?” she said.

  “What does this mean?” I handed the telegram to her.

  “I don’t know, sorry.”

  “But this doesn’t even look like English. Perhaps it’s English for a Chinese word?”

  “No,” she said as she looked at it again, “sorry, Rosie, not Chinese word.”

  I replaced the telegram and closed the trunk.

  I loved my Aunt Clara. Every other year she would travel from New York City on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe for a visit. I can still see her stepping down from the railway car with smoke billowing around her while she held onto a hat decorated with colorful bird feathers or splendid silk flowers and carried a lumpy, stuffed handbag. Clara wore dangling earrings and the kind of clothing that I never saw in my town. Her brown-leather trunk, bound with a thick strap and closed with a heavy brass buckle, would be put on the cart and then towed into the wagon, and in later years, the trunk of the car. I learned early on that it was filled with amazing gifts: toys and books for me; art supplies and sophisticated big-city clothing for my mother that she never wore. Also in the trunk were books; whiskey for my father; and all kinds of salami, fat loaves of dark bread, and large chunks of hard cheese wrapped in cheesecloth, waxed paper, and then newspaper.

  My parents would unpack every last thing, and then carefully smooth out the pages from the New York Post. They put the pages in order and savored every word, reading them time and time again. Some of my later love for newspaper work must have come from watching my parents peacefully reading. Those were rare instances when there was no tension in the house; my parents, for the moment, were in harmony.

  Unlike my schoolmates, Aunt Clara never teased me about my shortsightedness, about being an oddball with my tightly curled black hair, about being funny looking. Even when I was very young, I could read in her eyes that she loved me. And Aunt Clara, my father, and Mrs. Cheng were the only people I allowed to call me “Rosie”—otherwise I was Rose, without the “i.”

  The year I found the mazel tov telegram, Clara made another visit. During a Sunday dinner that included a family friend, Father Patrick Maloney, I asked my burning question.

  “What does mazel tov mean?”

  For a pregnant moment, there was silence at the table. “Why, it means ‘good fortune,’” Clara said easily as she looked around the table at the shuttered faces.

  My mother was staring at her older sister with a “don’t you dare say another word” look on her face. My father was looking down at his plate. Father Maloney took a larger than usual gulp of wine.

  “My God, Miriam,” Clara exclaimed, “doesn’t Rosie know she’s Jewish?”

  All hell broke out.

  My mother was screaming at Clara, my father was trying to calm my mother, and Father Maloney was intoning to his friends, the angels.

  “Listen, Clara,” my father said, “this wasn’t my idea.”

  “Well,” my mother answered, “all of a sudden my milquetoast of a husband is being a man!”

  My father’s face crumbled.

  “You can’t talk like that to him,” I said.

  “Oh, shut up, you horrible brat,” shrieked my mother, and struck me across the face.

  “Stop,” shouted Clara, “leave her alone!”

  Finally, Father Maloney had had enough. “Holy Mother of Jesus. Stop!” he said, and he slammed his wine goblet down on the table, splashing red wine on the white tablecloth, on Clara’s crisp white blouse, on my mother’s black dress, on my father’s collarless white shirt. He missed me altogether. Silence.

  Then my father began clearing the table and cleaning up. Clara came out of the kitchen with a dishcloth and went to work. Father Maloney looked about the room and said, “Obviously, this is a family matter.” He got up and left, his black cassock billowing behind him. I stood in the doorway, holding my burning-red cheek and glaring at my mother; she was seated at the table, staring at a mysterious horizon.

  It is more than seventy-five years later, and I can still recall the slap of her hand. The humiliation I felt was profound. Experiencing it in front of my beloved Aunt Clara was the worst part. Over time, I got over the embarrassment—but it was translated into fury. I nurtured that fury, embracing “poor me” with a stern, unrelenting, unconscious delight. Although, over time, there were many slaps, many spankings, many cruel words said to me, that was the first public slap. It taught me to hate my mother from the inside out.

  * * *

  It had taken a little more than two years of good hard work in Paris to convince the guys in the New York office to move me from the society page to the foreign desk. I became a political correspondent, somewhat rare for a woman. Silly as it may seem now, I had to be careful about the way I dressed. I put together a uniform. Black trousers. A dark-colored blouse. Sensible shoes. I wore my hair pulled back with a barrette at the nape of my neck. Sometimes to amuse myself and be contrary, I would wear the round brooch that had belonged to my grandmother. Clara gave it to me—and I still have it. It’s an enamel painting of a sweet, idyllic scene in the woods. Leaning against a tree trunk are a couple holding hands. They are dressed in eighteenth-century attire, with ruffles and pointed shoes. The young woman is holding a fan edged with lace; the young man is gazing at her. They look comfortable and a bit naughty, too.

  Whenever I wore the brooch, I felt mischievous, daring the men to look at my cleavage. But it was a waste of time. It was obvious that I was completely without glamour. I got used to it. It didn’t matter, for I was as excited as a schoolgirl to be working in Paris.

  It was the summer of 1937, and I had just returned to Paris from an assignment in Berlin. I was sitting outside under a café’s canopy reading the Paris Courier and having a cup of coffee. As I scanned the “News of Americans in Europe” column, I read at the bottom of the page: “The actress Stella Mair and her aunt, Miss Clara Silverman, arrived in Paris on the SS Normandie. They are staying at the Studio Hôtel on the rue du Vieux-Colombier.’

  Soon after I began working at the newspaper in 1933, I had become familiar with this column. At the desk next to me was a day-staff man whose task was to gather arriving ships’ manifests and compile the daily list of passengers. The list was then handed over to Ramsey before being sent down to the Linotype machine operators. Ramsey put most of the names in alphabetical order, but he put the Jewish-sounding names at the bottom.

  “Why?” I had asked.

  “Directive from high up,” Ramsey said, and stuffed a cigar stump in his mouth, ending the questioning.

  I had known that Clara and Stella were coming, and had asked Ramsey
for permission to return to Paris from Berlin. “Sure,” he agreed, “but no more than two weeks.”

  The idea of my family being on my patch of the planet was disconcerting. Although I adored Clara, I worried that they might be a burden. I would have to spend time with them and take them sightseeing. I knew that I would feel responsible for their having a good time. Clara would be easy, but I wasn’t sure what I felt about Stella. Stella—the family beauty, the family success story. I was jealous. She was inclined to be dramatic and there was no telling what trouble she could get into. Besides, I couldn’t understand why Jews would want to visit the Exposition Internationale, 1937. It was an open invitation to the Germans. Paris was crawling with soldiers of the Reich. The city was being seeded with spies. The soldiers, with their clean, sharp haircuts and trim uniforms, were enthralled with its beauty. They strolled along the boulevards of the Right Bank, side by side with American tourists, all thumbing through their Guides Bleus. It was impossible for me to walk to and from the newspaper office without seeing them. I heard more German and English spoken than French.

  At the same time, thousands of German Jewish émigrés, without official residency permits, were hiding from the authorities while trying to eke out a living on the Left Bank. The Emergency Rescue Committee in Paris helped as much as it could, but its efforts were meager and the human needs overwhelming. Émigrés were forced to move from one cheap hotel to another; they were forced into dealing in the black market, along with stealing, counterfeiting, cleaning offices in the middle of the night, selling safety pins and shoelaces–living hand to mouth. The trick, everyone quickly learned, was not to behave like émigrés or they would certainly be caught. But try as they might not to, the émigrés gave off an odor of fear, easy to distinguish.