Finally, on Thursday evening, the electricity came on again, and my father turned on the radio and twisted the dial until he found a voice. We heard an announcement from something calling itself the Radio of the French Nation saying that the first French troops led by General Leclerc had entered the capital. Missak came home late on Saturday, and instead of greeting him with joy, my mother collapsed into sobs. By Saturday evening, the liberation had been accomplished. That night all the churches of the city set their bells ringing. My father, Missak, and I headed to join a crowd at the Parc de Belleville, where we watched celebratory fireworks showering over the Hôtel de Ville.
The following day we heard on the radio that General de Gaulle was on the Champs Élysées, and then the American soldiers, who would soon be on their way to their next battle, streamed into Paris.
Jacqueline came by to invite Missak and me to a gathering in honor of the Armenians in the American army who were passing through town. The next afternoon, taking the Métro for the first time in weeks, I met Jacqueline and Missak at her office and then the three of us walked the few blocks to an Armenian restaurant in the diamond district that was already crowded with revelers. Just inside the door, I was almost bowled over by the heady smells of lamb, butter, and spices.
Jacqueline said, “Look at that food! Who cares about the Americans? Come on. I want something to eat.”
The side table was spread with a royal banquet. As we held out our plates to be served, I whispered into Jacqueline’s ear, “How in the world did they get all this food?”
The Armenian American soldiers were jolly and round-cheeked while most of us were thin and pale from a four-year regimen of root vegetables. But it felt as though they were our cousins, and, as often happened with Armenians, some of them were in fact distant cousins. The patron of the restaurant broke out bottles of raki he had been holding in reserve for this occasion. Soon a troupe of Armenian musicians started to play, and everyone, fueled by food and raki, began singing.
I was pulled into a line of dancers snaking around the room. When I glanced back to find my brother and Jacqueline, I saw that they were in the corner talking, their heads so close together they almost touched. The look on Missak’s face was earnest and bashful. The usually sardonic Jacqueline was gazing at him adoringly.
When the line broke up at the end of the song, I went in search of something to drink. As I was standing in a dark alcove of the room sipping a glass of water, a tall young man in an American uniform approached me and said in Armenian, “I hope you won’t think this is rude and I’ll understand if you say no, but we’re leaving tomorrow to join the fighting in the east. I’d like to be able to say that I kissed a girl in Paris. What do you think?”
The earnest look on his face charmed me.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“New York City,” he said. “The Bronx.”
“What’s your name?”
“Hrant. But they call me Harry. What’s your name?”
“Maral. Where are your people from?”
“The mountains of Zeitoun,” he said.
“That’s why you’re so tall.” I tipped my head back to stare up at him.
“You’re very pretty, Maral,” he said. “You remind me of a girl I know back home.”
“Your girlfriend?” I asked.
“Just a girl from church. You know what, Maral? I think we need a drink!” he said. He raced off and returned with two glasses of raki.
“Genatz!” I held up my glass.
“Vive la France.” He saluted and then threw back the drink in one gulp.
I followed his example and drained mine as well. The raki burned going down, starting a small internal fire. I felt lapping flames travel under my skin from my head to my toes. Suddenly life was clean and bright and easy.
“So what do you say?” he asked.
“What do I say about what?” I asked, feigning ignorance.
He said with enthusiasm, “The kiss! What else?”
Here was a brave American soldier who had helped liberate Paris. He was about to march off into battle and anything might happen to him. Even with my mother’s horrified face flickering in my mind, how could I have told him no? I pushed my mother aside, and there behind her was Zaven, a tiny forlorn figure in an oversize sweater. But I wasn’t feeling any pity at that moment.
I looked up at the tall Zeitountsi and answered, “Why not?”
We moved deeper into the alcove so we were out of sight. He quickly leaned down and put his mouth to mine. It was an exuberant and celebratory kiss—nothing romantic or passionate—and when we broke apart, both of us started laughing.
“So now you can say you kissed a girl in Paris,” I told him.
“Would you mind trying that again?”
“Oh, not at all,” I replied, smiling.
He put his arms around me and kissed me. But this time, I was pulled down into a whirlpool of dark water. I shut my eyes and forgot where we were. My head was spinning so fast that I was dizzy and breathless when we separated.
“Wow!” he said in English.
Just then my brother appeared beside us. “Maral, what do you think you’re doing?”
I said, “Harry, this is my brother, Missak. Missak, this is Harry. He’s from New York. The Bronx, in fact, right, Harry?”
Missak took hold of my elbow. “That’s enough, Maral. If you’ll excuse us, Harry, we’re going home now.”
As Missak led me away, I called back over my shoulder, “Good luck, Harry! May victory be ours.”
Missak said, “Is it the short hair that makes you act like a fool?”
“Oh, don’t be such an old goat,” I said. “It’s the raki.”
22
IN THE WEEKS FOLLOWING the liberation of Paris, known and suspected collaborators were arrested. Women who had consorted with German soldiers in what was called horizontal collaboration had their heads shaved in public. Food was still rationed and hard to procure. The Occupation may have been over, but the war was not.
In October, I started classes at the Sorbonne and a part-time job in the English library. I loved the university—from the notebooks, to the lectures, to the marble and wooden staircases worn smooth by the thousands of students who had trod them before me.
Most of the other girls had an array of pretty dresses that they wore with matching sweaters and brightly colored scarves. I missed Victor Hugo’s democratizing smock, which had disguised the shabbiness of my clothes. After carefully eyeing the sweaters of the other girls, I knit myself an approximate replica. When I mentioned to my mother that I had only three presentable dresses, she sewed me two white blouses out of a flea-market tablecloth, a blue wool skirt out of a remnant her boss had given her, and a brown dress from a length of cheap cotton. The new clothes were almost hopelessly out of fashion, but I said thank you and convinced myself that intelligence was a more important attribute than style.
Missak moved back into the apartment, and despite his long hours of work at the printer, we saw more of him now that he and Jacqueline were keeping company. My parents couldn’t have been more pleased—they thought of Jacqueline as a second daughter. As for me, my pangs of jealousy were less frequent and less sharp.
“You don’t mind?” Jacqueline asked me one night when she and I were washing dishes after dinner.
“Now that I’m used to the idea, I think it’s a good arrangement. You’ve always been a part of the family. Lately I get to see you more often. Do you think you’re going to marry him?”
Jacqueline smiled ruefully. “He hasn’t asked me yet.”
“Don’t worry, he will. My mother is pestering him about it. She’s even talking about grandchildren. If he doesn’t ask you soon, my mother will do it on his behalf.”
Jacqueline laughed. “Oh, I should be able to wrangle it out of him before she has to do that.”
We started another winter season with fuel rationed and harder still to come by. I stuffed the cracks around the windo
ws with rags and pulled out the woolens so my mother and I could wash the smell of naphthalene out of them. The rituals reminded me of Auntie Shakeh.
Havabour started to lose her feathers, and this time I knew that the bird was molting and would lay eggs again if we gave her the chance. But I didn’t argue against my father’s suggestion of a nice chicken stew. When the war was over—and that day was on the near horizon—there would be other eggs and other chickens. I was also hoping for chocolate, meat, and cheese in large quantities. I longed for abundant hot water, scented soap, silk stockings, and reams of fine paper. But it seemed frivolous to covet luxuries while there were still tens of thousands of prisoners of war in Germany and hundreds of thousands of soldiers battling across the continent.
When we gathered at the table on Sunday afternoon, the steaming chicken soup in our chipped white bowls, I couldn’t help but think of the people we had lost to the war. Auntie Shakeh was in Père-Lachaise. And what of our neighbors the Lipskis, and Denise and Henri Rozenbaum? Who knew where they were? Zaven and Barkev were still in a German camp somewhere, and no one had heard a word from them. Sometimes missing Zavig would hit me like an illness for which there was no medicine.
After the meal, as I carried the dinner plates into the kitchen, my mother said, “You’re thinking about Zaven, aren’t you?”
I asked, “How can you tell?”
“You get this pitiful look on your face.”
“I’ve seen that same expression on yours.”
“So many lost, so many not yet returned. When he comes back, my girl, he may be changed. What you see in a war marks you forever.”
I said, “Sometimes I worry that he’s not coming back. I doubt they feed them much and I’m sure the work is hard. He was so thin the last time I saw him. And now with all the fighting and the bombing over Germany . . .”
“We’ll go to church next week and light a candle for Auntie Shakeh, God rest her soul, and we’ll light two more for Zaven’s and Barkev’s safe return.”
The next Sunday when my mother and I arrived at the church, the badarak had already started. At the back of the sanctuary we lit three candles and then crossed ourselves and slid into an empty pew. The priest and deacon led a procession around the altar and down into the nave. Smoky incense clouded the air as the gold thurible was swung from side to side. The deacons chanted the divine liturgy.
As the service continued, I glanced around the nave at the other churchgoers, most of them old widows with black lace covering their heads, and some families with school-age children. In the opposite row, there was a young man who looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen him before. He must have felt my gaze because he turned and stared straight at me, his eyes sharp with recognition. When he smiled and nodded, I remembered a German uniform. What was his name? Andon. Andon Shirvanian. Jacqueline and I had met him the night of the folkloric dance concert.
At the end of the service he approached us.
“Oryort Pegorian?” he asked. “Pardon my boldness. Do you remember me?”
“Of course,” I answered. “Mairig, this is Andon Shirvanian.”
“I am happy to make your acquaintance, Digin Pegorian.” He bowed his head. “I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter at a cultural evening about a year ago. I am surprised that she remembered my name.”
“You are from the Soviet Armenia?” my mother asked.
He replied, “Born in Leninakan. But my family is originally from Moush.”
“My husband’s family is from there,” my mother said as we made our way to the exit.
Out in the churchyard, people she hadn’t seen since Auntie Shakeh’s funeral quickly surrounded my mother. I stood nearby with Andon. Snowflakes were slowly filtering down.
“You cut your hair,” he said. “It is very becoming.”
“Thank you.”
“I am flattered that you remembered my name,” he said.
“You remembered my name as well.”
“But that is different. I was a stranger, wearing a German uniform, and you were kind.”
“I wasn’t that friendly,” I said, remembering how I had deflected his offer to meet again. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to light a candle for my mother,” he said.
“Is she ill?”
“She died some months after I left for the war. This is the third anniversary.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“In a time of war, no one is without losses. But you and I managed to survive this one, did we not?”
“It seems that way,” I answered. “But I really meant what are you doing here in Paris?”
“That is too long a story to tell while standing in this cold churchyard. Will you be friendlier to me now than you were before? Will you agree to see me another time?”
“It seems possible now that you aren’t dressed in a German uniform.”
“Will you invite me to pay a call at your home?” he asked with a wry smile. “Or perhaps we could meet for a coffee? It is less formal.”
When he smiled at me like that, I felt a feather of excitement brush behind my ribs. Then I was immediately ashamed. I stared sternly down at my hands. I had just lit a candle for Zaven’s safe return, and here I was entertaining an invitation from another man. I looked up at Andon’s face; now it was sincere and a little wistful, as though he could sense how close I was to saying no.
We made a plan to meet later in the week at a café not far from the Sorbonne, after I finished my afternoon shift at the library.
On the way home on the Métro, my mother observed, “That Andon’s a nice-looking boy. His Armenian is beautiful, and he has good manners.”
“And clean fingernails, if you had a chance to inspect them,” I said. “But he’s not Zaven.”
My mother grew serious. “No, he’s not.”
I approached the café near the Panthéon and saw Andon seated at a table by the window. When he spied me he broke into a full smile and waved. He rose as I came over and pulled out the chair for me.
“I’m so glad to see you, Oryort Pegorian,” he said. “I wasn’t sure that you would come.”
“You don’t know me well,” I answered.
“This is true. We do not know each other well. But I would like to know you better.”
His smile made me feel as though my foot had slipped on a tread in the stairwell. I had to catch the handrail to keep myself from falling.
I blurted out, “Listen, Andon, you should know that my boyfriend was deported. And when he comes back, we’ll be getting married.”
“Are you engaged?” he asked.
“Nothing formal, but a promise,” I said.
“He was deported for what reason?” he asked.
“He was caught distributing Resistance tracts.”
“Have you heard from him?”
I shook my head. “No one has.”
“And how long has he been gone?”
“Since May.” I didn’t mention that it had been a full year since I had last seen Zaven.
He nodded slowly. “I see.”
“You and I can be friends,” I said.
“I would very much like to be your friend, Oryort Pegorian.”
“Please call me Maral.”
“Maral.”
“You promised to tell me what you are doing now,” I said, anxious to change the subject.
“I am working for my father’s cousin. He has a rug shop not far from here. The carpet trade is one my family knows, among others. I learned as a boy how to repair them and now I am learning to appraise them as well.”
“How long have you been in Paris?”
“Since late September.”
“And what were you doing before that?”
“It is a rather long story . . .”
I glanced at the clock over the bar. “I have at least an hour.”
“That’s more than enough time to recount the tale. Soon after I met you, they sent us t
o the Atlantic coast to work on the construction of the barriers. But, of course, the Allies invaded in a different location, and the walls we made served no purpose. Then they ordered us onto trains heading to Germany. We were told we would be working in an armaments factory. That job would have made us a prime target for Allied bombers. But we never got there.
“As our train crossed the Belgian border, the Americans dropped a bomb that hit the front of the train and tore up the tracks. My friends and I jumped out of the back of the train and took to the woods. We wandered around for some days until we found a Resistance unit and asked if we could join them. They put us under arrest while they contacted their leaders for instructions. Word came back that the Allies had made a deal with Stalin. So they were sorry, but we couldn’t join the Resistance. All Soviet prisoners of war were to be held for eventual repatriation to the Soviet Union.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“It was a choice of waiting as a prisoner of war knowing that I would eventually be sent back to the Soviet Union or escaping and finding a way to stay in France. My presence here tells you what I decided. I left on my own. I imagine that my friends will be on trains heading east as soon as the war is over.”
“You didn’t want to go home? What about your family?”
“I am disappointed that I may not see my family for a long time, but let me put it this way: We soldiers were expected to die on the battlefield defending the motherland, and doing anything less than that, such as being taken prisoner, will not be looked on with much lenience. Then there is the issue of the German uniform.”
“Why did you join the German army?”
“General Dro came to the POW camp . . . Do you know who he is?”
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