Last Train to Paris

by Michele Zackheim

  “You’re just jealous,” Pete said a couple of nights later over many glasses of wine. “It’s like what I once heard my wife say about her mother: I wallow under a dark cloud while my mother waltzes in a starlit night. Anyway, R.B., you’re not the flirting type. But it’s apparent to those of us who have met her that she certainly is!”

  If she could recover from the death of a husband of thirty-six years, I asked myself, why couldn’t I get over Leon, a lover of a mere four? But I knew Pete was right. I simply didn’t know what to do about it.

  I often ask myself why I never married. I must be quite strange, I suppose. Although there were men in my life after Leon, I was far more interested in the adventures of my work than in the complications of a marriage. Leon had faded from my consciousness, true. But the passion I felt in that relationship, I never felt again. So, I thought—why bother?

  The next morning, the courthouse was again crowded with observers. Pete and I were lucky to get seats. People were perched on windowsills and railings, leaning against walls, jamming the space. Colette was sitting with the actor Maurice Chevalier and Georges Carpentier, the former heavyweight champion of Europe, in the celebrity section.

  Today it was the prosecutor’s chance to convince the jury that there could be only one sentence for the German murderer: death by guillotine. The prosecutor had changed into a black velvet robe with red-ribboned decorations dripping from his chest. His contrast to Vosberg was startling. Vosberg looked ragged. His shirt collar was now too large; his usually obsessively combed hair was out of place.

  “This,” the prosecutor said and paused dramatically, “this man is an incarnation of a devil! He must be destroyed. There is no chance for rehabilitation. No, gentlemen of the jury, even with his weeping and sniveling, Ernst Vosberg is past hope. We demand the penalty of death. Nothing less. We have said all that needs to be said. The decision is simple. The handsome devil must die!”

  The courtroom became pandemonium. People screamed, “Murderer! Monster!” Others screamed, “No! Let him live!”

  Judge Levi banged his gavel. “A recess of one hour is called.” There was more screaming. The observers in the courtroom were teetering on the edge of a riot. The guards began to menace those nearest their stations with their raised batons. Then whistles were blown and people began to rush for the door.

  Pete and I leaned against the wall, a few feet from our seats. An hour later, after a stern admonishment from the judge, court was reconvened. Everyone was unusually quiet, as if they were embarrassed by their earlier behavior.

  The attorney Renée Jardin began her poetic and passionate plea on behalf of Vosberg–a plea for life in prison. She begged the jury to ‘try to search for the human being behind the criminal.’ Vosberg had his hands over his face.

  “Vosberg’s an unknown man,” she continued, “a mystic with a split personality. He does not understand, nor can he control, the compelling nonsense of his throbbing mind.” Here she paused, looked around the courtroom, and then stood firmly in front of the jury. “He is delivered and has begun his moral rehabilitation.”

  Turning dramatically to the jury, she said, “Enough blood! Enough killing! There are other penalties that will remove Vosberg from society. It is you, gentlemen of the jury, who will discover yourselves, in your hearts and consciences, the penalty that you know is just.”

  When Jardin finished, a wild wave of applause burst out in the courtroom. The judge banged his gavel for order, but the lawyers, and even the prosecutors, crowded around to congratulate her on her ardent attempt to rouse feelings of pity for a man who had committed such a gruesome murder.

  The next day, extra soldiers and police were on duty both inside and outside the courtroom.

  “Jeez, R.B.,” Pete said, “this is like the opera at the beginning of the season. It looks as if every mother, father, wife, and uncle of the judges and lawyers are jammed into the court.”

  He was right. Women were dressed in veils, hats, and furs; men were dapper in expensively tailored suits. All the reporters lost our seats. We were standing, lining the walls, alongside the photographers.

  Vosberg’s other lawyer, Moro-Giafferi, was huffing and puffing around the room. Pete and I looked at each other and tried not to laugh. He was obviously revving himself up—getting ready to offer the most stunning oratory of his career.

  For almost four hours he thundered. He pleaded. He preached. He rocked on his heels and stretched his short, massive body out over his wooden pulpit and thrust his heavily jowled face at the jury. He stamped and raged and banged his fist and massaged his gray mustache. He bellowed at the prosecutor, making him turn red. With perfect theatrical timing his words embraced the bent-over Vosberg and made the accused weep even more.

  ‘Vosberg is mentally ill. He’s an instinctive pervert. Instinctive perverts are all the more dangerous if they are intelligent, as they use their intelligence to pursue their evil ends. This type of ‘instinctive perversity’ is fatal. This being the case,’ he whispered, and everyone leaned forward, ‘his only crime was to be born.’

  His voice was now turning into a steam engine. “And I hear people say—Why not kill him? He killed! Let him die! That is the morality of the talon, the law of the lynch mob, the barbarian’s justice. Why then our symbols—our traditions—and why my robe—and why yours, O judge? To murder yet another human being? Vosberg’s not crazy, but he’s abnormal. He wants to correct himself, but he cannot. His illness is incurable.”

  Moro-Giafferi turned his back to the audience. Then with a grand gesture, he threw his scarf around his neck and turned back again. “Must justice always be a slaughterhouse?” he cried.

  The judge called for an hour’s lunch recess. The spectators opened their sandwich wrappers and bottles of wine and beer and, without moving from their treasured seats, carried on shouted conversations across the room. Some people, in the invited spectators’ section, were drinking champagne from fluted glasses.

  Pete and I sat on the floor and smoked, trying to curb our hunger.

  Finally, the judge brought the court to order. The room fell silent. Moro-Giafferi continued his defense. His voice rose at the end of each of his sentences. I was captivated. I realized that Stella would have loved being there. It was a spectacular performance. He mesmerized the courtroom. And then, when his audience was perched on the edge of its seats, he whispered, “I rest my case.”

  The room was silent.

  After instructions from Judge Levi, the jury was sent out of the courtroom to begin its deliberations. Time crept by, but no one gave up his or her seat. Again we smoked. Everyone had to watch as trays of food and glasses of beer were brought, hour after hour, to the men of the jury.

  “In England,” Pete said, “the jury’s not given food until it reaches a verdict.”

  “That’s cruel,” I replied.

  “It makes them act more quickly!”

  At 9:20 P.M. the bells rang and the twelve visibly tired men of the jury filed in. The foreman was nervously mopping his bald head with such a large white handkerchief that it could have been mistaken for a flag of surrender. Behind them came the lawyers, then the prosecutors, then Judge Levi. After a moment, the clanking prisoner was escorted to the dock and his shackles were removed.

  Vosberg was instructed by the judge to face the foreman of the jury. The foreman read from a paper. Vosberg was found guilty of the premeditated murder of Stella Mair and would be sentenced to death. At first he showed no emotion. Then he smiled. It was a melancholy smile, colored by resignation.

  “No,” bellowed Moro-Giafferi.

  With a harsh stare, the judge said, “Sit down. It’s settled.”

  But Moro-Giafferi, roaring with rage, tried to interrupt. “No! No! My heart is torn,” he objected. “Your decision is cruel. Vosberg is mentally ill! He should be given life!”

  The judge, white with anger, ig
nored him.

  He struck his gavel.

  “You, Ernst Vosberg, will die by the guillotine.”

  Observers in the courtroom shouted brutally at Vosberg, “Death! Yes! Death!”

  An infuriated Moro-Giafferi whirled and screamed, ‘Cannibals!’

  “Okay, now, let me begin my new assignment,” I said to Ramsey. “It’s over.”

  “Nope. You both have to cover the execution. Even the guys in New York insist.”

  “But I don’t want to watch a murder. Get one of your bloodthirsty reporters.”

  “You’re it, R.B.”

  * * *

  It was a cold and clear night with barely a half-moon. Pete and I were grumpy–we didn’t want to be there. Neither of us was interested in death. We arrived at midnight. Public executions were still the style. Thanks to the announcements in the newspapers, at least a thousand people–drinking and carousing–had gathered on the streets to watch the execution outside of Le Santé Prison’s walls. Every time someone went in or out of the green prison doorway, there were catcalls, cheering, and whistling. The two brightly illuminated cafés nearby were jammed with people drinking wine and eating thick sausage sandwiches. Many people were sitting or leaning against the walls of the prison and nearby houses having picnics. The stink from the urinal was disgusting, but it didn’t appear to bother the picnicking observers.

  Some reporters, including Pete and me, were allowed inside the prison. Although we weren’t permitted to speak to Vosberg, we were allowed to be outside his cell.

  Soon, we heard the clop-clop of horses’ hooves and the rattle of the guillotine-laden wagon driving over the cobblestones, and we went to the nearest window.

  “This is it, R.B.,” Pete said, and offered me a swig from his flask. I took it.

  The wagon backed up to the gates of the prison. The driver jumped down and balanced a lit oil lamp on a rock under an isolated young chestnut tree that grew out of the prison’s foundation. With some helpers, he began to unload the sections of the portable guillotine. As the pieces were fitted together, the lantern threw large, flickering shadows on the silent working men. The guillotine grew by increments until it loomed over the crowd.

  It was 3:30 A.M. and the sky was beginning to lighten. Except for the very drunk, most people had quieted down and were waiting, some crowded onto nearby roofs, their heads the same size as the ceramic chimney pots. In Vosberg’s cell, the lawyer Renée Jardin held his hand, and together they prayed.

  It was 4:00 A.M. and almost broad daylight. The bell in the belfry of the Hôtel de Ville tolled the hour. Milk wagons began to roll over the cobbled streets. Monsieur Desfourneaux, the new Monsieur de Paris, the public executioner, entered the building. A small man, he was dressed in a flamboyant black wool cape with a black felt hat pulled low on his forehead. We reporters were led downstairs and out to a roped-off area outside the prison gates.

  It was 4:30 A.M.

  The gates swung open.

  In a headlong flurry, Vosberg was rushed—flung facedown—strapped to the bascule.

  But his neck was badly positioned. It wasn’t aligned with the arc of the lunette. Monsieur Desfourneaux had bungled it. One of the more experienced execution-valets hurried over and yanked Vosberg by the ears to straighten him out. A spine-chilling scream arose from the witnessing crowd.

  The troops raised their rifles and swords in a salute to the Republic. In the suspended second before the knife dropped, a convent bell rang, sounding like bits of ice hitting glass.

  Whoosh!

  The heavy, finely sharpened blade crashed down upon his neck and rebounded from its own force and weight. A geyser of dark blood spurted from his neck as the jugular was chopped. Vosberg’s famously handsome head fell into a large basket.

  The entire procedure took ten seconds.

  Before the valets could clean the mess with their buckets of water, more than fifty women, all wearing their infamous white hats—all screeching—rushed forward to mop up Vosberg’s blood with their white hankies.

  Standing next to us was the lawyer Moro-Giafferi. As he caressed his ivory-topped cane, he turned to us and said, “This man lived like a monster, but he died like a saint.”

  A saint! My god, what was he thinking? Vosberg was a monster, a predator of women. He had left a trail of lovelorn women behind him.

  “Someone will write a book,” Pete said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It should be titled The Handsome Devil.”

  “Perfect!” he said.

  “Yes, and the writer will dig up every gruesome detail. But it won’t be me.”

  “Nor I,” said Pete.

  I was sick to my stomach and sick in my heart. “You can write this news story without me, right?” I asked Pete.

  “Sure, R.B. Go home.”

  I did. And I wept. I wept for Stella, for her lost promising life. I wept for Clara, her life forever distorted. And I was sickened by the merciless biblical consent of murder: an eye for an eye. I fought with myself. How could I ever forgive myself for coldheartedly watching a human being killed? What was I becoming? How could I continue to do this job? I would have to learn how to harden myself, while being deeply sympathetic to people, to tragedy. Could I do this? I knew that it would be a challenge to write more sensitively. But I knew that I would have to try. In the end, looking out my window at Madame’s cloth-covered canary cages, I wept for myself. And at last I fell asleep.

  Yet I remember that within a week of his beheading—perverse as it may sound—I missed Ernst Vosberg. I missed the drama of the trial—the sense of importance I had felt. I missed having special access to him. I even missed the tension of seeing my mother every day. But I had to remind myself that Vosberg was a real, honest-to-goodness murderer and I was only an occasional murderer of feelings.

  The greater populace had shared my horror of the situation. Vosberg’s beheading was the last public execution in France. And it was also the last time that the French would legally kill a German citizen. Within months, the Reich would become the savage master of France.

  The main office of the New York Courier gave me permission to wander Europe, looking for stories. Now I could go back to Berlin. Pete would stay on the German political beat, and I would follow my own fancy. But first I needed to deal with my mother. Given that I would not be in Paris on a regular schedule, I would not be able to look out for her safety. Europe was waiting for another sword to fall, and we all knew that France was next.

  After an obligatory cup of tea at her apartment, I said, “You must leave. Go back to the States. It won’t be long before France is invaded.”

  “I’ll leave when I’m ready,” she said. “Not when some idiotic government’s threatening me.”

  “Ma,” I said, “it may be idiotic but it has the power to destroy you.”

  “Oh, shut up, Rose. What do you know?”

  “You’re one hundred percent Jewish, meaning you’ll be the first to be arrested.”

  “Jewish, Jewish! My parents may have been Jewish, but I don’t accept that ridiculous legacy. And I don’t have a ‘J’ on my passport, so how will anyone know?”

  “You look Jewish,” I said, “whether you like it or not.”

  Her face was flushed with anger. She grabbed the edge of a table. “All you do, Rose,” she jeered, “is make trouble for me. For the first time in my life, I feel I can do what I want. So get the hell out of here and leave me alone!”

  Then, as if I were a coiled rattler, I hissed my words, aimed toward my mother’s gaping mouth.

  “The hell with you!” I said. “Save your own damned self. That should be easy since you’re the most egotistical, narcissistic human being I’ve ever known. It’s too bad it was Papa who died—it should’ve been you.”

  And I, Rose Belle Manon—grown-up woman and renowned journalist—slammed out of the apartme
nt.

  September 2, 1939. Two diplomatic notes, one from Britain and the other from France, were delivered to Hitler. The notes jointly insisted that Germany withdraw from Poland. Hitler refused to respond.

  The final blow happened the next day. Britain and France declared war on Germany.

  Remorse? Guilt? It didn’t matter. I had to check on my mother, but had no idea how she would respond to seeing me. She might not even open her door.

  I rang the buzzer and the concierge let me in. Instead of giving her usual shrug of the shoulders, she beckoned me with a crooked finger.

  “Your mother’s gone,” she said. “Moved out yesterday.”

  I waited for more information. None was offered. I turned and left.

  When I got home, Mr. Hin was waiting on the bench outside the hotel. He appeared older, more drawn and stooped than two days before. He was wearing an embroidered cap that I had bought him as a present to replace his old one—but his clothes were ragged, as if he had found them rumpled at the back of his closet.

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Hin? Are you ill?”

  “I suppose you could say, Rosie, that I’m sick with dread. How are you?” he said, looking at me with nothing but kindness.

  “Oh, Mr. Hin, what a mess I’ve made of things,” I said, and even though I was outside on public bench, I began to cry. Mr. Hin put his arm around me and I leaned into his warmth. Since falling in love with Leon, I had become more conscious of needing human affection—a touch of a hand, an embrace, it didn’t matter.

  No one paid attention to my crying. Everyone was most likely crying in some way or another. Our world was changing too quickly, too harshly. Fear had replaced the Parisians’ tenacious adoration of love.

  “Rosie,” Mr. Hin said, while holding my hand, “Madame Pleven gave me this note for you. It’s from your mother—she brought it this afternoon. It’s too bad you missed her. Is this why you’re crying?”