Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  “Ten of each.” He threw one arm back on top of the cushions and held up the palm of his hand. “I am much older than I look.”

  “And now you’ve come for me.”

  He reached for a strand of my hair. “If only I had done it sooner.”

  “How did you find me? How do you know Cleo?”

  “Remember that the Resistance links us all.”

  “I’ve been waiting two weeks for you to come back. I think the least you can do is tell me where you really were.” He rested his head on his hand and looked at me, and I could see the lines around his eyes, the shadows underneath them. I said, “You left me, and now they’re gone, Monsieur Brunet and his whole family. Just like they were never there. I don’t know where they are or what’s happened. They may be dead, and the only thing I can think is that I could have been taken too.”

  His face changed then, and even though he didn’t move a hair, everything about him turned serious. “My mother lives in Paris.”

  I heard her songs in my head, the one about the moon and the one about the pig. Just like that, the anger was gone. “She must have been glad to see you, to know you’re okay.”

  He said, “She is Jewish, Clementine.” And I felt my heart sink like a stone because I knew that being Jewish in this war was about the worst thing you could be.

  “Is she all right?”

  “She is.” He stared off toward the pictures on the wall, even though I knew he wasn’t seeing them. He told me then how he had grown up in Paris, the oldest of five—three girls and two boys—the son of a baker (his daddy) and a scientist (his mama). Everyone but his mother was captured in July 1942, when the French police rounded up some thirteen thousand Jews and told them they could take only a blanket, a pair of shoes, a sweater, and two shirts, but that they had to leave everything else in their homes. Émile, his brother, and their daddy—who was part Russian, part French, but not Jewish—were sent to the Vélodrome d’Hiver cycling stadium, which had only one water tap and no bathrooms. They lived at the Vel d’Hiv for four days, and Quakers and Red Cross workers brought them food and water. Émile’s sisters were sent someplace else, but he didn’t know where.

  On the fifth day, Émile, his brother, and his daddy were transferred to a prison camp at Drancy in sealed wagons, and his brother died on the way there. When they learned the prisoners were being sent to the German death camp Auschwitz, Émile and his father planned their escape. They broke out in early August, managing to return to Paris, where they lived in a friend’s attic for ten days until the friend turned them in and they were captured by the Gestapo. Émile’s father was shot on the spot, and Émile was sent to Paris Austerlitz, a train station in the center of the city where Jewish prisoners were forced to clean and repair and pack up furniture and toys and clothing and other things to send to families in Germany.

  He said, “We unloaded the trucks that brought these things to the station. We sorted the paintings, and the German officers took what they wanted. I knew but I wasn’t sure where these things were coming from.”

  “From the Jews?”

  “It was everything they’d been forced to leave behind, even photographs. One day I came across a picture of my father when he was very young, and then a picture of my mother, of me as a baby, of my sisters, and then a framed photo from my parents’ wedding day. I found the silver that had been handed down to my mother from her mother, and the harmonica I’d played when I was young. I found books and clothes and other things. I stole a grocery sack and I filled it with the photos, the harmonica, a brooch my mother loved, my father’s pipe, the baby cup that was mine and then my brother’s. I managed to escape from there too, but the Gestapo came after me and captured me, and they took the sack of memories and made me watch as they set fire to it and burned every last thing. I never did believe much in God or heaven, but for me, what little belief I had in either died right there, right then. I was taken back to Paris Austerlitz, and the next day I escaped again. This time I got away, but with nothing.”

  “And you became an agent.”

  “Because I am French, we are given different names, not just on our papers, but for everyone to use, for the other agents to call me. This way, my family is safe, and the Germans cannot use them to get to me.”

  I’d only ever known him as Émile Gravois. Now he was telling me he was someone else. He had another name, just as I had another name. Émile Gravois. Clementine Roux. I wondered if anyone in this war was who or what they seemed. I said, “What’s your real name then?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I have not been that person for a long time.”

  “Where is your mama now?”

  “She is in Salpêtrière. It is a mental asylum here in the city. In many ways, she has not survived this war either. No one knows she is Jewish, and she is safe; otherwise I would take her out of that place now and put her on this Freedom Line. So, you see, in a way the Germans took her too. They took everything.”

  I wanted to find the Germans who had done this to him and his family and fly over them in my B-17 and blow them straight to hell. I said, “But they didn’t. I used to think I had to carry a hatbox around with me with all my memories: clover jewelry Mama and I made when I was little, back before she died; her hair combs; her wedding ring; the first wooden figure, a singing one, that the Wood Carver gave me; my secret decoder ring; my record album; the emerald my daddy brought me from the Black Mountains. But that hatbox is back in England, and I still have those memories with me. I can talk about them or think about them, and suddenly there they are, just like I can touch them, and the good thing about being able to do that is that they don’t get old and chipped and yellowed like the real things do.”

  I reached my hand out and rested it on his, the one that lay on the back of the sofa. “You gave me a new name and new memories and told me to forget myself and everyone I know and love, to leave that all behind, but I can’t because they’re a part of me. And you don’t need to do that either.”

  He was watching me behind dark eyes. He looked as if he were going to say something, and then, with the hand that was on the sofa cushion, he pulled me to him by the back of my head. He rested his forehead against mine so that I could feel his pulse and feel his breath. He smelled like wine and cigarettes and something woodsy and green. His eyes were closed and I wanted to tell him to open them, to look at me instead of looking back at all the things that had happened.

  As if he’d read my mind, he lifted his head away and opened his eyes and looked at me. He traced the line of my face with a finger and drew me in close and kissed me. It wasn’t a standing-in-a-field, trying-to-trick-the-Germans kiss, or a quick, riding-on-a-train-in-Paris kiss. It was soft and deep and strong, and something about it made me keep my feet on the ground this time so that I didn’t go floating off above us. I was right there in it, feeling his hand on my neck, his mouth on mine, his breath and my own.

  There was a thank-you in that kiss, and something else. Just when I thought and hoped it might never end, we pulled apart and sat, the only sound the ticking of the clock above the hearth. He held my hand in his. I’d never focused on what great, broad hands he had. I had big hands for a girl, but his were twice as big as mine.

  The clock ticked, ticked, ticked, and suddenly I thought about all the time that had gone by, that was going by now, that would go by in the future, if there was a future. We might all be gone tomorrow.

  With my other hand, I reached for Émile, touching the light V of hair that appeared just above the top button of his shirt. I circled the button with my finger while he watched my face. I circled that button round and round and then I pinched it so that it came open. I touched his chest again, his skin warm, circling the hair of it like I’d circled the button. My hand reached for the next button, and then he pulled me to him. I thought, What are you doing, Clementine Roux?

  I heard Gossie’s words: I’m alive and I’m here, and I intend to make the most of it.

  And then I kissed hi
m.

  When I woke up in the morning, I felt the weight of him next to me. The clock still ticked. It was just after six. Émile slept beside me, one leg thrown over me, an arm under my head, the other across my chest, pulling me into him.

  I didn’t want to move because I didn’t want to wake him. I wanted to lie on the sofa and feel him around me and keep him around me so that I wouldn’t have to stand back and think about the night before too closely.

  He said, “You are awake.”

  “Yes. I thought you were still sleeping.”

  He sat up, rubbing his jaw, his eyes sleepy and unfocused. He kissed my shoulder. “We should get up before they come in.” He stood and I tried not to watch as he searched for his shirt, tried not to look at his naked chest. I could still feel the curve of it, still feel the firmness of the muscles, the warmth of his skin.

  I wondered what I looked like to him, rumpled and half dressed. As he pulled on his jacket, I buttoned my blouse and smoothed my hair and clothes. I folded the blanket and settled myself on the edge of the sofa, adjusting the hem of my skirt over my knees. He laughed at this. Then he sat back down beside me and frowned. “You are too beautiful in the morning.” He brushed a piece of hair off my face, tucking it behind my ear, but I could see in his eyes that he was moving past me already.

  I touched my hair where he’d touched it. The shortness of it still felt strange. I said, “Where are Barzo and Ray?”

  “They are staying with families, ones that work for the Resistance.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “Because we need your help.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. He rubbed his forehead with his thumb and inhaled and then exhaled the smoke. He said, “This Freedom Line your friends are involved in.” He looked toward the door in the direction of the bedrooms. “It is for downed pilots.”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “You are a downed pilot. I think you should free yourself. Get out of here and go back to England and be safe.”

  He was saying it to test me. It was just something he felt he should say. He didn’t want me to go back to England any more than I wanted to go back to England. I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “No I’m not. My brother is here. I can’t go home till I find him.” I stared at Émile and he stared at me and the clock went tick-tick-tick.

  “He is in France?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.” And as I said it, I believed it. He was in France. He had to be. “But I can’t just sit here, and I’m not leaving France without him. What do you need me to do?”

  “I need you to rescue someone.”

  He pulled something from the inside of his jacket and handed it to me. It was a photograph of a woman with curly dark hair, eyebrows that arched over merry, light-colored eyes, and a widow’s peak that made her face look like a heart. She could have been eighteen or forty or anywhere in between. I studied the picture but I still couldn’t tell whether she was frowning or smiling. Her expression seemed to change in front of me.

  I said, “She’s pretty.” She looked like a nice girl, like someone I might have been friends with if I’d met her in Nashville or Texas or at Camp Davis in North Carolina. “Who is she?”

  “I am not sure.”

  “Swan.”

  “Yes.”

  “A spy?”

  “Probably.”

  “They don’t tell you?”

  “They only tell us what we need to know, nothing more.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “She has the code name of Swan, but she is also called Eleanor. Not her real name, I’m sure.” He returned the picture to his pocket. For one minute, I wondered if she was someone he knew, maybe a girlfriend. I stared at his pocket, thinking of the photo next to his heart.

  I said, “Why didn’t they kill her when they took her?”

  “We don’t know. From what we can tell, she was captured by Hugo Bleicher, one of the most ruthless pursuers of enemy agents. One of the worst of the spy hunters, or the best, depending on how you look at it. He has disabled entire networks, and he has been able to turn agents so that they betray England or France or America and go to work for him and for Germany.”

  “So she must be an agent.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t seem to care either way, but I cared. I wanted to know everything. I thought about the female agents I’d seen at Harrington.

  “So why didn’t he kill her?”

  “Maybe they hope to get information out of her, to turn her against the British. Or maybe they want to torture her, to make her suffer first. It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting her out. That was the purpose of our mission in Rouen, but she had already been moved. We had no radio, so we couldn’t know.” The raid on the prison, the one the professor had talked about. “We have tried here, but there are only three of us. Coleman was the demolitionist. His equipment is gone. We can get more, but we need someone from the inside to make sure they do not move her or execute her before we can break her out.”

  I said, “What do you need me to do?”

  “I need you to get arrested.”

  “Arrested?”

  “She is being held at Romainville on the outskirts of Paris. It is where prisoners are sent before being sent on to other places like the concentration camps.”

  I said, “I thought she was in Fresnes.”

  “She was moved. I would go myself, but there are no male prisoners at Romainville anymore, just women, and I need you to break her out from the inside. They are most likely keeping her in an isolated cell. England is sending another team to assist us in the next few days, as soon as they can get a plane out. Once you are in, we will help free you.”

  My throat had gone dry as a pile of twigs. I could feel my pulse fluttering like a bird.

  Émile said, “We must hurry. The Allies are coming, and before they get here the Germans will start executing prisoners. We do not have long.” I knew that the Allies were moving closer to Paris, and that the Germans were prepared to defend it to the end, digging in and building bunkers and pillboxes on the streets.

  He said, “But you need to know that Romainville is not just a prison. It is a hostage camp, a place of torture. If something goes wrong for the Germans, say they are attacked by the Resistance or bombed by the Allies, they might retaliate by harming the prisoners. They call it Death’s Waiting Room.”

  His words settled around me. I said, “How important is this woman?” I wanted to know if her life was worth mine.

  “Very important, or else they would not go to so much trouble.”

  I said, “Did you—was last night because you wanted me to help you?”

  “Last night was because of you and me. No one else.”

  He was quiet and I was quiet. For some reason I wasn’t thinking about myself. I was thinking about Johnny Clay. I was picturing him on that last day in Nashville before he’d left to get on the train, the last day I’d seen him, maybe the last time I would ever see him. He’d been so gold and proud and brave and fearless, and he wasn’t looking back for a minute at the old safe life and all that he was leaving behind. At least I’ll know I was doing something good, he’d told me, something better than sitting around and waiting. I’m going to die one way or another one day, and I figure I might as well do some good before I do.

  I said, “I’ll do it.” I had known from the start, from the moment he’d mentioned it, that I would do it, so all that was left was to say it out loud.

  Émile took my hand in his. I looked down at our hands, thinking how nice it would be if we were just a regular couple in regular times, sitting here on a sofa side by side.

  I said, “When do I go?”

  “Friday.”

  August 7, 1944

  Dear family,

  I know it’s been a while since I wrote, but this is the first chance I’ve had to mail you som
ething. I can’t say much, but I want you to know I’m fine. I can’t tell you where I am or what I’m doing, but I am in this war and being as safe as I can. I hope it will be over soon, and then I’ll come home and show you for myself.

  Have you heard from Johnny Clay or Linc or Beachard? What about the Deal boys—Coyle? Jessup? Write me at the address I gave you before, back in June, even though I’m not there right now. And I’ll write again when I’m able. Just remember that I’m missing you all and hoping everyone is as good as can be. I think of you all the time, and it’s a help to know you’re out there in this world when I feel so far away.

  I love you.

  Velva Jean

  TWENTY-FOUR

  At two o’clock on Friday afternoon, I was to ride by the Palais du Luxembourg. I would take a spill off my bicycle, right in front of the guards, which would lead the Germans to question me. No matter what they did to me, I wasn’t to give anything up—not my real name or where I came from. Émile said they had someone on the inside, a man he called Niklaus Reiner, working secretly among the ranks of the Gestapo, and he would make sure they didn’t torture me and that I would be sent to Romainville and nowhere else.

  I would wear a jacket with seventy thousand gold Francs sewn into the shoulder pads, which I was to use to bribe the prison guards. I would wear a lapel knife in my collar and carry the pack of chewing gum with sticks of gum that were actually explosives. Émile said some of this might be taken from me, but if all went according to plan, his contact at Romainville would see that I was released in just under twenty-four hours with the woman called Eleanor. They would make it look as if we’d escaped. If it didn’t go according to plan, Émile and his team would be there to get us out.

  Émile gave me a map of the prison—a military fort that was over a hundred years old—which I was to memorize and destroy, and on this map was an X, which marked the part of the prison where Eleanor was being held as well as the easiest escape route out of there. He also gave me L, K, and TD pills. The K pills were liquid knockout drops, the TD tablet was a truth drug, and the L pill was lethal. If something went wrong and I was tortured or fell into the wrong hands, all I had to do was swallow one and that would be it—I would be dead in a minute.