by Anna Schmidt
“Bonjour,” the woman said as the men helped Anja and then him out of the coffin. “Welcome to Paris,” she added in perfect English.
PART 2
FRANCE
JANUARY 1944
Ye are my witnesses.
—ISAIAH 43:10
CHAPTER 8
One of the men handed Anja and Peter glasses of champagne and lifted his own glass in the gesture of a toast. Anja took a sip of the sparkling wine, which tasted like dishwater, and forced a smile. She wondered if Peter found it unusual that no one offered introductions but hoped he would remember what she had told him—the less he knew, the better. That way he had no names to offer should he be captured. To her relief, he simply raised his glass to the others and took a long swallow.
“What’s next, Mom?” he asked the woman in black as he set the glass on a side table.
Everyone except the woman laughed. Anja knew who this was—who it had to be. She had heard of a woman working for the line who moved between Paris and Madrid playing various roles. She was an actress by trade and a fairly well-known one at that. Her name was Gisele St. Germaine, and she was as renowned for her beauty as she was for her courage. While Anja felt like a tramp, having spent the last several hours closed up in a coffin, Gisele looked as if she had just stepped off the pages of the fashion magazines.
Peter certainly had taken notice. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the French woman, who appeared to be studying him with an equal amount of interest and curiosity. Anja felt the flare of pure, unadulterated jealousy. This is hardly the time for such triviality, she thought and stepped to the center of the room. She spoke calmly and softly in German, knowing Peter understood German but not French and assuming the others spoke both. Everyone gathered closer to hear what she had to say. Gisele might be beautiful, but Anja was going to get one thing straight—she was in charge.
“They will return—of that you can be sure. The officer has made an emotional connection to what he thinks is the situation. He will want to see that there is in fact a proper funeral and a burial. This has become a matter of personal pride for him. I for one do not intend to return to that box, so we need to find a body—preferably male and preferably dressed in the uniform of the German Army.”
“Done,” one of the three men replied.
“My friend and I need safe houses for at least tonight.”
“The weather prediction is for a blizzard,” the railway worker said. “The railroads have been ordered to move only essential materials and troops—no passengers—so it could be several days and nights before you can move on to Bordeaux.”
“Will you not both stay here?” Gisele asked.
“No. It’s better if we split up.”
Gisele arched one penciled eyebrow and smiled. “You have just spent hours lying with this man in that coffin,” she pointed out, “and now you would balk at being in the same house with him?” She glanced at the men and murmured the French word for prude. The men all chuckled. Peter looked from them to her. He was clearly confused by this conversation.
“I thought the plan was for us to travel as man and wife,” he reminded her.
“That plan has changed,” she said firmly and turned her attention back to Gisele. “We will need separate safe houses.” If Peter and Gisele were so taken with each other, then who was she to stand in the way? She would give them their privacy.
Gisele lifted one thin shoulder in a gesture of complete indifference and took a cigarette from a silver box on a side table. The railway worker picked up the silver lighter that matched the box and waited for her to anchor the cigarette in an ivory holder.
“What if we are delayed for several days?” Peter asked.
“The weather can work for us as well as against us. There are less likely to be searches during a blizzard. On the other hand, every day we stay here—”
“It is Paris,” Gisele said. “You could be detained in far worse places.” She blew out a long stream of smoke and walked closer to Peter. She studied him. “You are quite tall,” she commented. “A beret, I think, and perhaps a fisherman’s sweater with dark corduroy trousers and some kind of a jacket. Do not shave,” she instructed, then turned her fashion eye to Anja.
“And you …” She walked around Anja, drawing on her cigarette so that Anja’s head was wreathed in smoke. “Makeup, a French twist for the hair, and my Schiaparelli suit for the funeral.” She fingered Anja’s hair. “On the other hand, if we cut this into a boyish style …”
Anja coughed and waved the smoke away. “The clothes I am wearing will be fine, and I happen to like my hair.”
Gisele gave a hoot of laughter and turned back to Peter as if he—not Anja—had objected to her choice of clothing for him. “I have another thought. The beret yes, but the fisherman’s sweater, no. I think you must look more artistic—mysterious even. An ascot with a fine silk shirt in blue to bring out your eyes.”
“I thought the idea was not to be noticed,” Peter said.
“Dressing well is the only way not to be noticed in Paris, my handsome friend. Even in the middle of a war, people take pride in looking their best. It is sometimes our only defense against total despair.”
“No ascot,” Peter mumbled.
“Of course, you are so right, cheri. A suit with a vest, I should think—rumpled and with a neckerchief tied around your throat. Suspenders for when the jacket is off and the vest unbuttoned. White shirt frayed at cuffs and collar and the beret—with that luxurious head of hair you must have the beret.” She actually ran her fingers through Peter’s thick hair, and the man stood there, grinning like a love-struck teenager.
Anja was beside herself. “Could we get on with this?”
“I thought we were,” Gisele replied, and she actually winked at Peter as if the two of them were sharing some private joke at Anja’s expense.
“Once we have the safe houses and disguises in place, then we’ll need train tickets to Bordeaux for each of us.”
“Got that covered,” the railway man said. “Everything is in order, mademoiselle. This is not the first time we have done this.”
“I know, and I apologize.” She managed a weak smile. “You see, this is the first time I have been on this side of things since we started the line. Usually I am standing where you are. Tonight I am one of the people who must trust you with my life.”
One of the other men stepped forward. “And you—and the airman here—could not be in safer hands. Now suppose we get you to your safe houses where you can have some food and a wash-up and get some rest.”
It was exactly what Anja would have said if she’d been the one dealing with a new evader. “Yes,” she agreed. “We are both so very tired.”
But when she and the man assigned as her contact reached the Paris apartment where she was to stay, they found the Gestapo there ahead of them. From the shadows of a shop doorway across the street, they watched as a woman was taken into custody, placed in a car, and taken away.
“What now?” Anja murmured more to herself than to her companion.
“We return to Gisele’s,” he said, already starting down a nearby alley. “We are already short of safe houses, so for tonight at least I think you must stay with the American. It is the only way.”
When they got to Gisele’s apartment, Anja was led to the actress’s bedroom and on into a closet the size of the bedroom she and her son shared at the farmhouse. The closet was filled with clothes and shoes and handbags and hatboxes. It did not appear as if one more item of clothing could possibly fit. Her guide went directly to a rack holding dozens of evening dresses and pushed them apart. Then he tapped out a code on the wall, waited for a reply, and slid a small section of the wall to one side.
Behind the wall was a tiny room—only a quarter the size of the closet. Two mats lay on the floor and a single lightbulb hung from the ceiling. Peter was sitting cross-legged on one of the mats. He motioned to the other one. “Home sweet home. Giselle said we should make ourselve
s comfortable and she will see us in the morning.”
He lay down on the mat closest to the wall. Anja’s guide indicated that she should take her place on the other mat. When she did, he closed the partition, and she heard him move the hangers laden with Gisele’s clothes back into place. She felt like she was back in the coffin.
The snow, whipped by howling winds, continued through the night and all of the following day. The city was virtually paralyzed. Awnings over shops sagged and finally collapsed under the weight of the snow. Streetcar service had to be stopped when a couple of streetcars jumped their tracks because of a buildup of ice. And as the snow continued to fall, a silence settled over the city that had people anxiously peering out their windows as if they expected any minute to have the silence broken by some huge disaster.
The disaster, of course, was the storm itself. With piles of snow clogging the streets and sidewalks of the city, it felt as if someone had declared a moratorium on the war. Peter soon learned that although nothing and no one appeared to be moving, in fact by dawn of the second day people began to venture out—children to play in the snow, adults to try and clear a path in front of their homes or businesses, and young people to take advantage of this rare opportunity to walk hand in hand down the middle of what any other time was a street clogged with traffic.
At Gisele’s flat, people came and went through the day as plans came together for the funeral. There was almost an aura of festivity to the preparations. That evening Gisele hosted a dinner party attended by her friends from the theater. The supper was what Peter’s mother would have labeled a potluck, with everyone arriving with some dish or at the very least a bottle of beer or wine. After they had laid out all the food and everyone had filled one of Gisele’s fine china plates, they sat on chairs or the floor near the fire, telling stories, laughing over adventures they had all experienced in the theater, and bemoaning the fact that with the war, opportunities to ply their craft were limited.
When someone sat down at the grand piano that dominated one corner of the sitting room, Gisele and several others abandoned their plates but carried their wine glasses with them as they gathered around the pianist. Throughout the evening, Anja and Peter sat at the top of the stairs—like children spying on their mother and her glamorous friends. Gisele had explained that it was too dangerous for them to attend the party, but she made sure they had ample food and wine. Peter noticed that by the second song Anja was tapping her toe on the carpeted stair and mouthing the words to the song. He thought it was the first time he had ever seen her simply enjoying herself.
Finally, when the last guest ventured out into the snow, Gisele glanced up the stairs, calling out to them. “Come down now and warm yourselves. You must be freezing,” she said. “And they left us some cake.” Peter and Anja hurried down the stairs and sat on the floor near the fire—the one truly warm place in the whole apartment—and stuffed their faces with cake frosted with a thick, creamy icing. Clearly no one on earth knew how to take full advantage of nature’s reprieve better than the French.
During that night, the snow let up and the winds calmed. By morning they could hear the scrape of shovels on sidewalks filtering in through the tall windows of Gisele’s apartment. Peter and the other men who had been present the night he and Anja arrived went out to clear a path to the side entrance so that a horse-drawn wagon could pull up to collect the coffin and carry it to the church two blocks away. With the path cleared, they dressed in the disguises Gisele had devised for them, added coats, gloves, and boots, and walked to the neighborhood church behind the horse and cart that carried the flag-draped coffin. Presumably at some point—perhaps while Gisele and her guests were partying—someone had placed a body appropriately dressed in uniform inside the coffin and draped the Vichy flag over it.
As the procession made its way down a side street, Peter saw a man in an overcoat and slouch-brimmed hat watching from a café window with more than a passing interest. He was glad the occasion called for the women to wear heavy black veils that obscured their features. At least Anja was somewhat protected in that she looked like all the other faceless women. For his part, he slumped a bit and limped more than he needed to in hopes he would appear older—and shorter—than he was. He noticed that the other male mourners clustered around him, forcing him to the center of the group and thus further disguising him.
Inside the church, Peter was surprised to see a fairly large gathering.
“The boy’s real family,” Gisele whispered, apparently reading his confusion.
“He was truly a soldier then? Loyal to Hitler?”
“He was a soldier for freedom—one of us—as is the priest and almost everyone here,” Anja murmured. “But take care. There are always infiltrators.”
“Did you notice the man watching us from the café?”
Anja and Gisele both nodded. “I’ve seen him before. He was the one who came to the café that night—I saw him look out the window,” Anja whispered. “If he has come to Paris, there can be only one reason.”
Gisele linked her arm through Anja’s. “Do not predict trouble. We do not presume to guess what people will do. We must simply prepare for the worst and pray for the best.”
Peter followed the two women down the long center aisle and slid into a pew next to Anja. She sat stone still, and he understood that she was following the traditions of her Quaker faith in worship while he struggled to follow along with the service as best he could given it was all in Latin. As the service came to an end, he realized that Anja was crying. Periodically she would slip her gloved hand beneath the veil that came nearly to her waist and wipe her eyes. Once she released a shudder of emotion and a heartbreaking sigh. She must have known the boy, Peter decided. Perhaps they had even worked together. He took hold of her free hand, and when she did not resist, he held on until the service was over.
A small reception followed the service in a room just off the sanctuary. Gisele had to be there in her role as the grieving mother. As Anja had predicted, the officer from the train had attended the service. But it was far too dangerous for Anja and Peter to attend such a social gathering, so as soon as the service ended, they were pulled aside and led to another side entrance to the church.
“Go,” their guide urged them. “Gisele will meet you at home.” The woman handed Anja a fur hat to replace the veil she took from her. “Go,” she repeated in French.
Outside, the streets were almost completely deserted. Because the wind had whipped the snow into drifts, no traffic moved, and they saw only a half dozen pedestrians—all of them hurrying to some destination where it was presumably a good deal warmer. But Peter found the sharp, cold air exhilarating, and the snow-packed streets reminded him of home.
“Where I live in America, it hardly ever snows, so when it does, the towns are not really prepared to deal with it,” he said as he and Anja walked along, picking their way through drifts and over ice patches. “Schools and businesses can close down if there are only a couple of inches of snow on the ground. The whole town is as deserted as this street is. I can’t imagine what would happen if we ever had this much snow at one time.”
“Is it very nice where you live? Very different from here?”
“Not so different really.”
“There is no war there,” she reminded him.
“There’s a different kind of war—shortages, though not as severe as you have suffered. But there is the unknown that is the same as here. Loved ones in danger and no way to know if they are safe or will be coming home.”
“Your family must be very frightened for you.”
“I don’t like thinking about what they must be going through. The imagination can sometimes be far worse than the reality.” He stopped and turned to face her. He touched the collar of her coat—Gisele’s coat. “I wish I could tell them that I’m in Paris and that I’ve met this woman who has changed my life forever.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I want to thank you, Anja.”
To his
shock, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the lips. “Stay like this,” she murmured as she continued to feather kisses along his jawline.
He held her close, savoring the warmth of her lips on his skin. And then he heard the sound of a car moving slowly past them. He could feel the tension in Anja’s thin body as she stiffened but did not break her hold on him.
The car rolled to a stop. “Pardon!”
A light snow had started again and had already covered Peter’s shoulders and the beret. He sheltered Anja as he turned to look over his shoulder at the woman who had called out to them.
It was Gisele. She was sitting in the back of a sleek black car, a uniformed driver at the wheel, the windshield wipers struggling to keep up with the accumulation of snow. “Do you need a ride?” She smiled and blew out a long stream of cigarette smoke.
“No,” Peter replied, keeping his arm firmly around Anja’s waist. “We’ll enjoy the walk while we can.”
Gisele frowned, rolled up the window, and signaled the driver to move on. Peter was well aware that Gisele was the kind of woman used to men falling for her on sight, but she was not his type. He found her charming and obviously very beautiful, but she was not like Anja.
No woman he’d ever met was like Anja.
For one magical moment when she was kissing Peter, Anja dared to imagine the possibility that someday her world could be normal again, complete with all the dreams she’d had for Daniel and herself—dreams she had once shared with Benjamin and that had included their daughter, Rachel. Dreams she had begun to think might find a home with someone new—someone like Peter. But that wasn’t reality. And neither was Paris—at least not this Paris.
“Quick thinking—kissing me that way,” he said, fighting a grin.