The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  Madeleine reached into her bag and handed Rachel a sealed envelope. “There’s the money I took. $3,100, plus compound interest.”

  “Plus what?”

  “Compound interest. I calculated it as though you’d invested the money in 1968 US treasury bonds. Here’s your return. It’s quite a tidy sum.”

  “You’re really something! There must be over $200,000 in here! Guilt can sometimes be a good thing. But I don’t want the money.”

  “Take it. Please.”

  “No, really. I must have told Daddy a thousand times not to keep his money in his desk drawer. Anyone might have opened it! It was a busy week; he hadn’t been to the bank. He didn’t notice the money was missing until he got back, his knee all in a mess. But he wasn’t exactly going to go running to the police, not considering the line of work he was in. You cleaned us out! If you’d just taken your envelope, I’d have understood, but you ran off with everything in the drawer . . .”

  “Why run after us then?”

  “To give you back your cross! He noticed right away that you’d left it behind.”

  Rachel stood up, disappeared off into the bedroom and came out after a minute with a small metal box that had once held jasmine tea. She handed it to Madeleine, who opened it. In it was a pile of little, glittering gold crosses. Madeleine shook the container to shift the contents. When she saw the cross initialled ML, she froze. Slowly, she removed it from the container, held it up, then slipped it into her purse.

  “Aren’t you going to return the one you’re wearing, the one initialled LB?”

  “How? How did you know I took that one?”

  Rachel crossed her legs, yawned, and looked outside.

  “Do you believe in God?” she asked, sounding more serious.

  “Of course! I’ve just traveled all night to get my cross back!”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing. Would you like to hear an incredible story, Madeleine?”

  “Go ahead. I owe you that, at least.”

  Just as Rachel was about to speak, Solange came out of the little office and sat down beside Madeleine on the loveseat. She looked shaken. Hearing her come out of the office, Madeleine had quickly slid the envelope full of money back into her bag. Rachel could see in Madeleine’s eyes that the matter was now closed. She smiled inwardly and felt a little sorrier for the woman who was at once so rich and so poor. She gave Madeleine a knowing wink, and Madeleine began to breathe easier right away. Rachel had seen in her eyes what she’d always known: Solange didn’t know about the money. When Rachel had read the 1995 Business Week article about the phenomenal success of the restaurant chain, she’d recognized Madeleine right away. The article and accompanying interview had overjoyed her in a way that was hard to describe. Madeleine had candidly admitted to the reporter that she’d built her empire by investing an inheritance of $3,100, the exact amount she’d taken from Dr. Beck. Rachel had spared a thought for her father. He’d never been good with money, had never been able to say how much he earned, let alone how much he spent. His only extravagance had been to take a lover from time to time and treat her to a night at the opera.

  For the rest of Rachel’s story, Solange and Madeleine didn’t say a word.

  “Daddy was German. Born in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1908 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. In 1930, he was twenty-two and already practicing medicine with one of his uncles in Charlottenburg. Daddy always, right up until his death, considered himself to be German. Nobody could have convinced him otherwise. Shortly after Hitler came to power, he lost the right to practice medicine, like all the other Jews in Germany. But like a lot of half-Jews, he said the Nazis weren’t out to get him, just all the proper Jews. Daddy came from a well-off family. He learned French at the Berlin lycée, spoke it fluently. That’s why he forced me—and I do mean forced—to learn French. When I was twenty-one, he sent me to live with a family in Lyon. I came back plump and have stayed that way ever since, a tribute to my days in Lyon. What bliss life in France was . . . In any case, he didn’t follow the huge tide of people like him who could smell trouble brewing. Since he was getting by in Berlin, that’s where he stayed, even when he had the chance to flee to Palestine in 1938. He’d put a little money aside, and he didn’t want to leave his mother, who was ill. When the deportations started, he realized he’d have to hide if he was to survive. It didn’t take people long to find out about the camps. Everyone knew. You needed forged papers to survive, but even that was risky. Daddy told me one rather funny thing. In 1942 in Berlin, the line for tickets at concert halls was one of the safest places for those who were persecuted. The Nazis insisted the Germans carry on as before. That they go on living even though bombs were falling on their heads. And so they were encouraged to go to the opera, to go to concerts. The police didn’t check papers in the lineups; they didn’t want to put people on edge. Music lovers were left alone. And so Daddy would line up for the opera for hours at a time, pretending he was going to buy a ticket. Sometimes he would, but not often: he had very little money left by the end. The last show he went to see was Tosca. In 1942. A few months before the opera house was bombed. Then, in fall 1944, he was arrested. He wound up in Sachsenhausen, a camp near Berlin. Luckily for him, the Russians had already liberated Auschwitz late that January, so he was never sent there. When the Red Army marched into Berlin, he was released. He found himself in a camp for deportees at Tempelhof and, since he was a young doctor who still had his health, he was asked to help out. The stories he told me about the camps! Typhoid, diphtheria, even dysentery. The horrors. And then there was everything that happened to the German women.

  “When the Russians invaded Germany, you see, they were out for one thing and one thing only: revenge. Daddy told me the German women were raped, often gang-raped by groups of soldiers. Whenever a German woman was caught, no matter her age, no matter her looks, she was often raped by four or five men, one after the other. The kinder ones refrained from finishing her off with a bayonet. In many cases, the women committed suicide or fell ill and died. But in other cases, some got pregnant, naturally enough. There was no way they were going to bring those children into the world, children of blood and violence, sired by men they considered monsters. They were desperate to abort them, but doctors were few and far between. Daddy said he helped perform at least twenty abortions on German women. None of them had the money to pay. Sometimes the patient would give him a piece of jewelry she’d managed to hide from the Russians, who looted everything in sight. He forgot all of those women, or most of them, he told me; their faces, their stories. At the end of his life, he was no longer even sure if he’d helped twenty or thirty. But there was one he never forgot.

  “She was twenty-five. He never knew her name. One day at the Tempelhof camp, someone asked him if he could help a poor girl who’d been raped hours after the fall of Berlin. She’d taken refuge in a convent in Dahlem, where the Russians had found her and left her very much the worse for wear, her and the rest of the nuns. She was three months pregnant. Now you’ll understand why Daddy ran after you. You see, when he performed the abortion on the woman, he noticed that she had a strange birthmark on her inner thigh, shaped like a bass clef. Imagine his astonishment when he examined you on his table on 10th Avenue and saw that you had the very same birthmark between your legs! That’s why he gave such a start! He told me all about it later. I hope you’re not upset that I’ve brought it up. The soldiers who raped that particular woman had then taken a bayonet to her genitals. Daddy had to sew her up in three different places. It was ghastly.

  “He knew very little about the German woman. Only that she’d survived a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea and that she was from Charlottenburg. She cried the whole time; it was enough to break Daddy’s heart. In the end, she insisted on paying him with the little cross, the one with LB initialled on it. Her name was probably Louise or Leonore, who knows. A Catholic first name at any rate. Daddy refused, but she insisted. Over the years, do you know how many girls gave my fath
er a little gold cross they’d gotten from an aunt or perhaps from their mother? Daddy kept them all in case they ever came back. Three did, including one from up your way. Péloquin? Poliquin? I’m not sure anymore. It was shame that brought them to us in the first place, and regret that brought them back. Anyways. He kept the crosses his whole life, a man who didn’t have a religious bone in his body! He had no time for Orthodox Jews or priests.

  “Do you know what he told me? In Germany in the 1930s, the Nazis set up a special ministry to fight abortion and homosexuality. Different sides to the same coin, in their eyes. Daddy always said that every time an American bishop would say something stupid about abortion or gays here in the States, it reminded him of that Nazi ministry. He was exaggerating a little, but even so . . . He had every right to say that kind of stuff. I tend to agree with him, at least in part. When an outside force takes control of your body, it’s fascism. Or its toned-down version: Catholicism.”

  “I think you’re perhaps exaggerating just a little,” Solange interrupted, irritated.

  “Yeah, you’re right. What do I know? I’m lucky enough not to have known either. You should give me LB’s cross back now—you never know! Perhaps she’ll manage to track me down like you did.”

  “Miss Beck, what would you say if I asked you to leave the German woman’s cross with me?”

  “What would I say? What do you want me to say! The crosses are no use to anyone! They’re only worth something in the eyes of the person wearing them. Are you going to tell me you’ve become attached to the cross you’re wearing? It’s the one you’re wearing right now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, this is the one. May I keep it? I’ll give you back all the others. Here you go.”

  Rachel’s jaw dropped. Then she smiled.

  “I’ll never get my head around you Catholics. Listen, if you really want it, then sure, it’s yours. But promise me one thing: if LB ever pops up—which is highly unlikely, I grant you—I’ll find you and ask you to give it back, okay?”

  “Okay. I give you my word.”

  “Ah! I almost forgot! When you ran off, you also left a white silk scarf behind. Daddy kept it all these years.” She went off to find it.

  “It’s incredible. A woman we met in the bus gave it to me. I can’t believe it.”

  Solange fingered the little gold cross they’d been reunited with. Her phone rang, but no one paid it the slightest bit of attention. Then it rang again, and again. When it rang for a fifth time, Solange swore and fished it out of her bag. A familiar voice immediately began babbling a mile a minute. The words shot across the room like arrows across the northern sky. It was Anamaria, desperate, on the verge of a breakdown, demanding to speak to Madeleine. It was Madeleine’s turn to disappear into Rachel’s office to talk. Rachel used the opportunity to worm a little information out of Solange. “So, are you lesbians?”

  Solange didn’t reply.

  “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. It’s just that since I’m a lesbian too, I thought—”

  “You don’t have to bring it up.”

  “Okay. Tell me Solange, did Madeleine also take a few vials of morphine with her that day in 1968?”

  “Yes. She stole three of them.”

  “I hope it didn’t get her into hot water.”

  “More than you could ever imagine. But everything’s under control now. As long as she doesn’t get too stressed. Sometimes she goes off the rails, but I’m there to catch her. She’s been for treatment a few times.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear it. Truly. You really love her, don’t you?”

  Solange didn’t reply.

  Madeleine reappeared. The conversation had been brief, but it had given her a real boost. Her manners all but forgotten, she abruptly brought an end to their meeting with Rachel, much to Solange’s relief.

  “It’s Anamaria. We’ve got to go, Solange.”

  “We have to go? Did they find her? Oh, thank God!”

  “Yes, all hell’s broken loose in Rome. I think D’Ambrosio tried to pull a fast one on me. Wait till I get my hands on the little jerk!”

  “You want us to go to Rome? Right now?”

  Madeleine’s sudden change in mood seemed to amuse Rachel.

  “Who’s this Anamaria?” she asked.

  “Michel’s ladyfriend. Michel’s the child I had when I went back to Quebec,” Madeleine replied curtly. “Do you think we’ll be able to catch a flight to Italy today?”

  “After what’s happened tonight, I think that anything’s possible. If I wasn’t so busy at the hospital, I’d even suggest I go with you. Daddy always took me to France, never anywhere else. Italy remains one of my biggest regrets.”

  Without further ado, Rachel drove Solange and Madeleine back to their Jaguar at the Port Authority. A little less than four hours and several thousand US dollars later—it was a cry for help from Anamaria, after all—an Alitalia flight catapulted the two women across the Atlantic. Solange and Madeleine had gotten two seats on standby, thanks to two Italians who’d decided they were too drunk to fly home and would rather spend a little more time in New York City. On the ride from the Radisson to JFK, Solange went quiet again. She didn’t ask a single question. It wasn’t until they were aboard the plane, once the Alitalia stewardesses had taken her coat, that she broke her silence. Simply to tell Madeleine that she didn’t want to hear a single word the whole trip and that she had no intention of reading Michel and Gabriel’s letters to each other or the Magdalena Berg notebooks that Madeleine had waved under her nose.

  “I’m not interested, Madeleine. All I want to do is sleep.”

  They didn’t say much about their encounter with Rachel. Solange simply summed it up with a snide remark:

  “Her accent is so annoying.”

  “Come off it, Solange. She spent some time in France. It’s only natural she sounds a bit shrill. And she was more than decent to us. You have to give her that. She kept my cross all those years. Imagine that!”

  “That doesn’t change a thing about how she talks.”

  Solange could have stood up to argue the point, but she preferred to sink down into her seat and keep her silence rather than cross swords with Madeleine. She thought about telling her the nun and Old Ma Madeleine had been found dead in the forest in Rivière-du-Loup, but then she thought better of it: Madeleine hadn’t been in touch with them since they’d left in 1968. Solange had taken her silence to mean that Madeleine didn’t much care what happened to those she’d left behind. She hadn’t even been there for the opening of the restaurant in Rivière-du-Loup in 1982; it was Solange who’d taken care of it. Irene Caron had not been invited. Neither had the nuns, a move that Solange had found a little gauche on Madeleine’s part, all the same. And so she thought the story about the women’s passing could wait. Madeleine was now flying to her little Michel’s rescue; no one else—of that Solange was certain—mattered at all.

  Solange also didn’t ask Madeleine why she hadn’t mentioned Gabriel. In other words, it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder why poor Solange didn’t say a word, not when it would seem the perfectly reasonable thing to do. The explanation is quite straightforward: while ordinary love is cruel, Puccinian love is merciless. And that’s precisely what she’d been suffering from since that day in 1954 when she’d seen Madeleine for the very first time, on the other side of the willow hedge, holding the little cat in Rivière-du-Loup. That day she’d become a Puccinian Suzuki, forever enslaved to Madeleine Lamontagne’s teal gaze. It’s the same love that allows people to survive misfortune, to recover from the greatest hardships. It is an ordeal in itself, a kind of concentration camp within.

  Her seatbelt buckled, she waited in anticipation for that blissful minute when the plane would accelerate down the runway. Nothing thrilled her more than that colossal forward momentum. Closing her eyes, she pictured herself at twenty, on her first motorcycle, driving north around the lake toward the immense, welcoming St. Lawrence River. In her mind’s eye, Solange was alo
ne, absolutely and marvelously alone on her bike. No helmet on.

  As the Boeing growled, she thought back to the green fields of July, the bridge over the river in Rivière-du-Loup, the women off berry picking in the meadows of their northern land. Then she was driving flat out across the Highway 20 overpass, arriving seconds later at that spot on the road above a steep slope that looks down over the blue river in a way that makes you think for a split second that your vehicle has just left the ground, flown over the tops of the fir trees, and taken off like an Inca condor for the mountains of Charlevoix, to the North, the real North, where there’s nothing but wind and lichen. As the Boeing left the tarmac, a tear attempted to emerge from the corner of Solange’s eyelid, then, realizing it would be all alone in the world, promptly turned back, never to try to escape again. Solange sighed, then fell asleep as she imagined a humpback whale breaching out of the waters of the St. Lawrence. Chances are, it would all end badly, she thought to herself. The good luck they’d enjoyed thus far couldn’t possibly hold much longer.

  Someone, that much was clear, would have to pay.

  Confessions of a Diva

  IT WAS THE morning of January 2, 2000, and the Red Army was on the march through Gabriel Lamontagne’s head. For a good minute, the soldiers stomped their heavy boots as they sang disturbing songs. Then, broad red streamers began to flutter in the sky above a city that was a blend of Montreal, Toronto, Berlin, and Königsberg. In golden letters: “Tosca Must Die.” Now roused from his restless sleep, he swallowed a handful of aspirin without bothering to dissolve them first, and tried to fall back to sleep. Gabriel had no idea that the nightmare would prove prophetic and decided to get up and face the new day.

  Outside, the sound of fireworks had died down. Nothing is noisier than New Year’s Day in Germany. Amused by Gabriel’s reaction when the explosions had begun in the sky over Alexanderplatz, Magda had explained to her protégé that the din was designed to ward off evil spirits for the new year.