Lives Paris Took

by Rachael Wright

  “It is thousands of years of war and the rise and fall of empires that gave birth to all these countries. Maybe someday your United States will go this way.”

  “Ah, but here the people were never one, not even in the days of the Gauls. The United States has always been one. A collective unity.”

  “Yes, the unity of the outsiders. You are all immigrants. Your own great-grandparents were German.”

  “I would much rather be French.”

  “And why’s that? France has its own issues.”

  “Yes, but France specializes in the three most important things in the world; food, wine, and women,” he said, giving Catherine a playful poke in the ribs.

  “You should find yourself a French woman, then,” she shot back.

  “You are French as I am French.”

  “So not French, then.”

  David beamed at her. Being away from the city had done him a world of good. Catherine had been right about that. She was always right. He always needed a push, an excuse, or someone to blame to make the step forward. He thought, with a twinge, about his father. Would he have come, if Raikes had not forced his hand? Perhaps it was a gift, giving his son the excuse to leave and to not look back.

  They lunched in silence; the waves adding a backdrop for their thoughts. The ice in the basket had melted long ago, but the food seemed to still be in fine order. There was even a fine local wine, corkscrew, and two small glasses. Catherine perched these on the side of the basket, they rocked, tossing their contents up the sides.

  David sighed and pressed his lips together. A memory, his father holding David’s chubby (now missing) hand as they walked across the waving grass. They had walked out to see the older boys fixing a fence and in a moment of fatherly pride, Raikes had picked up David. His father smelled of sweat and cinnamon and the fruity aroma of cigars. His face was smooth and David wrapped both arms around his father’s neck and curled into the hollow of his shoulder.

  “Are we going to talk about yesterday?”

  David jerked up, shuddering back into the present. How could a three-year-old’s memory be so painful? Why couldn’t he move past the horrible pain of his father’s dismissal two years later? Catherine cleared her throat. The afternoon sun beat down with a vengeance, he blinked in its glare.

  “Of course we can talk.”

  “Your brother was just in Paris, on a layover before his posting in Africa.”

  “What? How did you know?”

  “It isn’t that hard to maintain a relationship with Madame Jeanne. She told me. I would have liked to hear it from you.”

  “What would you have liked to hear?”

  “I would have liked to hear ‘Catherine, my brother and his wife are in Paris, please join us for dinner so I can introduce you.””

  “Why?”

  “Why, David? Perhaps so your family could get to know me and what I mean to you,” she said. Heat rose in rivers to her cheeks, and a fire kindled behind her eyes.

  “I know what you mean to me. You know what you mean to me. Why do they need to know?”

  “I don’t know what I mean to you. What sort of man hides his lover away? Are you embarrassed?” she said, her face had fallen into lines of misery.

  The sound of the waves, the idyllic scene, the peace of the afternoon, all were gone, dispatched on the breeze. Night seemed to have come early, drowning out everything but the fissure between them.

  “I don’t understand why this is an issue. I know what we have; I don’t need to prove it.”

  “You hide yourself. You hide me, and I am not that kind of woman. Please say you didn’t know what you were doing.”

  “I am serious about you. I do love you. What more do I have to do to prove it to you? I don’t seek their approval. Why is this an issue? I’ve been clear about the divide between me and my family from the start.”

  “It’s more than that. You don’t want to open yourself up to them. You don’t want to give them a chance to redeem themselves.”

  “They are too good for me. You are too good for me.”

  “That’s not it.”

  David watched as she strode away from him in a fury. He couldn’t fathom why she cared so much about people she’d never meet. They had never talked about marriage or children, so why was introduction to the “in-laws” so vital?

  Catherine moved as far away as she could, stopping where the rocky beach met the jutting cliff. David stood up and walked gingerly toward her. He took it as a good sign that she didn’t walk away when he approached, so he thought it safe to put his arm around her. Her head dropped, dark hair spilled over his arm in a cascade, and she began to cry. Tears fell thick and fast, wetting his shirt and arm.

  “Catherine?” he said, twisting her around to face him. “What’s wrong?”

  “One of these days, we won’t be able to come back. It’ll be the end. And I don’t want it to end. I want it to go on and on, until we are ninety and can’t even eat a croissant because our teeth are gone.” Her voice was brittle and she couldn’t bring her eyes to meet his.

  “Oh Darling, that will never happen.”

  But as he drew Catherine to his chest and rubbed her back and made calming shushing noises in her ears, a twinge of unease rippled across his mind.

  “Come,” he said leading her toward the path, back to the car, back to solid ground.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rachael - January 2016

  “YOU WOULD THINK THAT it wouldn’t be this difficult to track down a man,” I said over the dinner table. The snow sat three feet deep outside the patio door and was still falling. Jared looked over his plate of spaghetti at me, completely bemused.

  “It’ll be alright.”

  “I can’t find him,” I said.

  I threw down my fork and stared out the window. The snow was hypnotizing; it lulled the observer into a false sense of security … making one believe that it was beauty without pain–without cold. Beneath the table a paged turned. We glanced down, our daughter looked sheepishly up and then returned her gaze to her lap. I smiled. Her life was so much different than mine. I wouldn’t have dreamt of reading at the dinner table, but she was secure in her place. Maybe that’s why I didn’t care that she was reading instead of eating.

  “So you found a letter. A letter to an unknown person.”

  “I need to know who the person is.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” I couldn’t tell him, even with his pleading eyes leveled at me with a kind ferocity. “I think … well there are rumors that David had a lover in France.”

  “Ok.”

  “Just forget it.” I stood, put my dishes in the sink, and shut the door to our bedroom.

  Solitude had always beckoned to me. I always did my best thinking alone, undisturbed. It rejuvenated me. But then, my mind a maze of worries about the divorce, no sense of calm came. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my desk with the laptop lying unobtrusively on it. There was nothing for it: I went and made tea.

  Five minutes and a few curious stares later I sat down at the desk. It had been months since my one victory with the Sorbonne. But beyond the dates when David was employed, there was precious else. No dependents. No changes in address-just the apartment above a bistro on the Rue Saint-Jacques where his checks were sent for ten years. I hung my head over the black keys and wallowed in my failure.

  It felt as if I wasn’t supposed to set down this path, as if my father had been right and he was exerting his influence and power still, as if I was doomed to fail. But what harm could there be in my search? It had been almost thirty years … some governments don’t even keep secrets buried that long. I wanted to know. He felt so much like me … loving his family so desperately, yet they held him back … he couldn’t grow where he was planted. Did he really have to go all the way to Paris to find his place?

  I lifted my head, curled my feet under me, and stared out the window at the wind whipped grass peeking above the snow beyond. It sw
irled in the evening storm, twisting this way and that, and every now and then a stalk would break off and would be tossed into the air, rolling and careening on unseen whips and it would tumble out of sight.

  A loud ping echoed from the desk and I looked down to see an email notification. Spam-obviously, is it ever anything else? But in the sender line: Ministre de l’Économie, des Finances et de l’Industrie glowed back at me. The screen flickered before my eyes and the thrill of adventure sprung back to life.

  Two dates and one name: Gilbert de Granville. He was listed as David’s business partner. It was all they could give me, and would I beg their pardon for not being able to provide more. Records were difficult to find, and this was before computers did all the work. It was surely a laborious process to track down the information.

  But the name was one I didn’t know, and so I searched for him. I poured over ancestry websites and France’s censuses and frowned between a French dictionary and the computer as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

  My fingers flew over the keys when another email popped up. The word had gotten out (I’m sure it was my father) and other family members were strangely keen to add their experiences. One of David’s nephews expressed his sadness that David hadn’t made it home for his father’s funeral. I read with quiet glee and ran out into the living room.

  “What did you find?” my husband asked, as he confidently pushed a glass of wine across the counter to me.

  Well played, husband. Well played.

  “Two dates. One new name.”

  “The name you were hoping for?”

  “I don’t know,” I said and tipped the glass back. “I also found out that he didn’t come to his father’s funeral. Someone said that he was busy or couldn’t get time off work.”

  “Why was he so secretive do you think?” he asked. I swirled the glass and cringed as a drop escaped and ran down the side. I quickly wiped it up with my finger.

  “We don’t tell our parents everything we do,” I countered.

  “But they’ve seen our house and met our friends.”

  “Everyone says he was private. But I think it’s more than that. I don’t think he wanted to be judged anymore and if he kept them away he could live happily enough. Or I guess that’s how I feel. I don’t know.”

  “It’s how you feel?” he repeated, confused.

  “It’s so legalistic … maybe that’s what David was running from: a family that couldn’t get to know him or couldn’t understand why he wanted to live a different life. I don’t think he was a rebel like they all think … they just didn’t take the time to get to know him.”

  I retreated back to the bedroom as Jared put our daughter to bed. The peals of her laughter echoed across the house. I smiled as I curled back into the solitude of the bedroom. David’s image swirled in front of me. The man with the high forehead, the ears that stuck out from his head, the thick eyebrows and the inquisitive perpetually frowning eyes–he frowned. But a ghost of a smile slid across his face and he sat down opposite me and stared. I toasted the apparition and as the wine glass passed in front of my eyes, he left.

  I sighed. Even with this Gilbert de Granville, it felt as though I had been beating my head against a rock for the last few months, trying to conjure a man from the mists of time. But he had been there. He’d worked in Paris. I had the address where he’d lived. Why then was it so hard to pull a letter’s addressee from the same mist? Perhaps they hadn’t known he’d died. Perhaps they were still searching. And I, the only link. I had to laugh at that, thinking about the fact that my father had almost forbidden me to search. Was I ready for what I found, if indeed I found anything? Few secrets, when exposed, ever foretold happiness.

  “Who are you?” I whispered to the empty room.

  14 June 1970

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON David followed Catherine onto the train in Cannes. Far from the beaches where the sea winds cooled vacationers and residents alike, the city was quiet. It was far too hot to do anything; even the short walk from the car to the station had left David sweating. They sat down in the cool interior of a coach and settled into an amiable silence.

  The vacation had been enjoyable enough; Catherine had been bright and happy. But a haze had fallen over them both after the news about his father. David could feel it, see it even, as he and Catherine lounged by the sea or took meals in the hotel restaurant. Something had changed. Something infinitesimal had shifted between them. They hadn’t spoken, thankfully in his opinion, of their future or of children. It was as though an unspoken agreement had been erected between them to hold to the status quo.

  Even though he did not aspire to marriage or children, the thought of losing Catherine was abhorrent. His life had changed beyond recognition, and it had been due entirely to her. She had come in like spring to a forgotten wasteland, but if she left, life and beauty would go with her. David hung his head, leaned against the softly swaying side of the train, and fell asleep.

  The city was dark when the train pulled into the station. The wheels screeched and passengers lurched forward in their seats. Catherine sat unspeaking, staring out the window as she had done for hours. David picked up the bags, and they joined the queue of passengers waiting to disembark. He could only just keep Catherine in his sights as she zigzagged through the crowds. Only at the exit did he manage to catch up. A black car idled by the curb, as they walked out into the warm evening air. Catherine moved steadily towards it, waving goodbye halfheartedly. A porter followed her; loaded her luggage, and a black suited chauffeur helped her into the back seat. The car pulled off, every window rolled up.

  David meandered down the sidewalk. A street musician played a rousing tune as he lugged his suitcase to a waiting line of taxis. He was driven by a mute cab driver that only grunted at his requested drop off. The drive was thankfully quiet; he didn’t feel like making small talk and was ready to be alone … to simply sit in a room, with no one and nothing but his own thoughts. He smiled as the grumpy driver pulled up outside of the Jeanne’s bistro. He passed francs through to the front seat. The cabbie pulled his cap down a bit further and grunted again.

  He heaved his own case out of the trunk. The lights from the bistro were on, but chairs were stacked on tables. Jeanne was slumped over a glass of wine at the small bar, her usually perfect chignon was loose, and strands of greying hair lay draped over her shoulder.

  David loitered on the pavement, struck by her solitary figure, watching as she angrily pulled pins out of her hair and flicked the chignon loose. Before he could think of a reason for her exhaustion and clear pain, she turned around, sensing movement. She stared blankly into the poorly lit street before her face broke into a smile and she waved him closer.

  “Welcome back,” Jeanne said, unlocking the door and planting a kiss on his cheek.

  “Thank you.”

  “Let me get you a glass.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “I can’t drink alone,” she said, her voice muffled from behind the bar.

  He sat down on the cushioned stool as she slid a glass across the bar’s highly polished surface.

  “How was your trip?” she said, her hands slid back around her glass, clutching it as though it were a steaming cup of coffee.

  “It was pleasant.”

  “Your telephone has been ringing constantly. I can hear it when the bistro is quiet.”

  “Did I get any mail while I was away?”

  “Its all in your box, dear.”

  “What’s wrong?” David said.

  “Whatever do you mean?” she said, flicking a piece of lint from the counter.

  “You say you can’t drink alone, but you obviously have been. What’s wrong?”

  “It doesn’t matter?”

  “What doesn’t matter?” David queried.

  He leaned closer. It was against everything he normally stood for. Don’t get involved. Don’t ask personal questions. People expect you to reciprocate when they tell you their secrets
and David never had the inclination to do so. But today, now, she worried him. This was so far out of her character. When had he ever asked this woman, over whose bistro he had lived for a decade, about her life?

  Jeanne gave a little hiccup and poured herself more wine.

  “You matter, Jeanne,” David pressed. He gripped her shoulder as she gave a shudder.

  “June 14, 1940.”

  “Sorry?”

  “The day the Nazis came.”

  David gaped. He was struck dumb. It was the very last thing he expected her to say. Today was June 14.

  “They didn’t kill many of us, you know. The Nazi takeover was relatively quiet comparatively. Except if you were a Jew, or in the resistance. Somehow they heard of him. He’d fought in the first war. Intelligence. We’d only been married for two years. He was much older than me. My parents were dubious about the match. But he was everything to me. We started this bistro. We lived first in your little flat.

  “And then June 14. One of their hit squads came to the apartment. Quiet like with no moon and no lamps to light their way. I was sick, throwing up in the bathroom from the horrible food we’d eaten, when they came. I heard their boots. I heard the rifle butt hit his head. I heard his moan. I couldn’t move. I was frozen, cowardly frozen. I could only stare out the small keyhole and watch them drag him away. Then out the window their shapes moved down the alley and the quick blast of light and the shuddering pop of the rifle.

  “I couldn’t scream. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. The love of my life … I watched as they dragged his flopping body across the cobblestones and into their truck. They tossed him in like garbage. I can still hear them singing songs as they drove away, the sounds echoing off Rue Saint-Jacques.

  “I have been alone for thirty years. I have been stuck in this bistro, mending espresso machines, and scrubbing tile and drinking myself to oblivion to forget it all. That is why I gave you the flat. It warmed my heart to think of you living where we did … the rooms have life in them once more. Because when you are my age, David, your memories are all you have. I should have ran out and done what I could to save him, or I should have died alongside him. But I didn’t. I froze when he needed me most.”