Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  I kept the K and TD pills but I handed the L pill back to Émile. I didn’t want to think about what it could do. I didn’t even want to look at it or have it near me. “No prisoners,” I said. “I don’t plan on getting caught.”

  On Monday morning, the pilots left for Nesles, and in the afternoon I re-dyed my hair and studied the map of Romainville. On Monday night, Émile, Ray, Barzo, Gossie, and I went to a little place in the Quarter that served liquor and played a kind of Afro-Cuban jazz music, bright and loud. I wore a flower tucked behind my ear, and when he saw me, Barzo whistled. He said, “Nice hair, pilot.”

  Normally I would have bristled at him, at this, but my mind was as far off as the moon, so that the music and the dancing and the laughter and the colors of the band and of the room—blues and reds and greens and oranges and yellows—swirled all around me, but it was as if I were in a bubble, in a separate room from everyone else.

  Gossie and the men talked and drank, and at some point I said to Émile, “I want to go over the plan again.” It made me feel better to go over it. It made me feel more in charge, more in control, like if I went over it enough nothing could go wrong.

  But Émile said, “Not here. Not now.” Underneath the table, he rested his hand on my knee. He looked at Gossie. We hadn’t said a word to her about what we were planning to do because that way, if something happened and they somehow traced me back to her and Cleo, they could honestly say they didn’t know anything. “Tomorrow,” he said, and he raised his glass to me and drank. I knew it was all about appearances—going out to this restaurant, acting as if we weren’t planning a raid on one of France’s toughest prisons.

  The rest of the night, Émile draped his arm across the back of my chair or held my hand as I smiled and talked. But I was standing a far way off from everything, watching myself smile and talk like I was an actress in a movie.

  Gossie said, “You should get up there and sing, Mary Lou.” She’d had a letter from Clinton Farnham, her fiancé, that morning. He was getting leave soon and coming to see her, and she was as high as the moon.

  I said, “I don’t feel like singing.”

  “We’ll find him, honey, don’t you worry. If Clinton Farnham can find me in this war, we can find your brother.”

  I smiled and tried to pretend that this was all that was on my mind, and before Gossie could say anything else, Émile leaned in to her and said something in her ear that made her throw her head back and laugh. He raised his glass to me and I looked away, pretending to watch the dancers, pretending I could think of anything but Friday. Barzo said, “I think I’ll have another. Garçon !”

  He waved to the waiter, and I watched as the man passed through the tables, through the crowd, and then I watched as he was shoved aside by a man rushing through the door of the nightclub from the street. The waiter fell on the floor, shaking his head back and forth at the surprise of it, and the man shouted something in French, too fast and muddled for me to hear. Ray got to his feet and helped the waiter up, and the man shouted again, over and over, the same thing, and suddenly everyone was out of their seats and running toward the door, and we were in the middle of them, Émile taking hold of my hand, and the others just behind me. We ran out into the night, which was warm and balmy, and we stood on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, where all the people from the restaurants and cafés and clubs and bars were singing and waving as a great line of Germans went roaring past in their cars and trucks.

  “La libération!”

  The Liberation!

  “La libération est arrivée!”

  The Liberation has arrived!

  “What is it?” I had to holler over the noise. “What do they mean by that?”

  Gossie said, “Paris is liberated.” She took my other hand. My heart jumped. If the Allies were here and the Liberation was here, maybe Eleanor would be set free and I wouldn’t have to go to Romainville at all.

  Someone began singing:

  Allons enfants de la Patrie,

  Le jour de gloire est arrivé….

  This was “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem of France. Everyone joined in, raising their voices and their glasses to the warm night sky.

  Émile’s eyes traveled up and down the street, watching the people who were dancing and kissing and waving and singing, and the Germans driving by. “It’s too soon,” he said.

  All at once, there was the sound of a shot. I looked up, waiting. A woman standing at the edge of the street, just feet away, dropped to the ground. There was another shot and this time a man fell, the drink still in his hand. Émile said, “Descendons!” Get down!

  He yanked me to the sidewalk, and I hit the pavement with a smack, pain shooting through my knee and up my leg to my hip. I lifted my head enough to see that the Germans were standing up in their cars and trucks, aiming their machine guns into the crowd. Ray lay to the right of me, his cheek pressed against the ground, and Gossie was just past him. Ray said, “Keep your head down, Clementine.”

  I closed my eyes and began to pray: Dear Jesus, please don’t let me die here on this sidewalk in France. Dear Jesus, don’t let anyone die here. I prayed for a B-29 to come out of the sky and drop a bomb on each and every German.

  Men and women and children were falling to the ground all around me. Flat on our stomachs, we started edging over to the doorway of the nightclub an inch at a time. Bullets buzzed over my head. I heard the sharp clink, clink, clink as they hit walls and doors and then the pavement. I heard the screams of people falling where they were shot.

  All the while, the cars kept rolling past, until suddenly the last car drove by and all was quiet. I lay there a minute. Two minutes. I looked up and saw others all around me looking up too. A Red Cross truck came racing toward us, stopping in the middle of the street, and medics and nurses climbed off, carrying stretchers. Émile said, “Are you all right?” He was next to me, reaching for me.

  I couldn’t do anything but nod. He stood and I wanted to shout to him to get down so that he wouldn’t be hit. People were standing, brushing themselves off, wiping their eyes, picking broken glass out of their hands, their arms. And all around, other people lay still and cold on the sidewalk or in the street, the blood pooling around them.

  Émile said, “It is okay, Clementine.” He leaned down and studied me and rested a hand against my cheek. It was cool against my face, which was burning like an oven. He said, “Come.” He pulled me to my feet, and Gossie was already standing, shaking her fist in the direction of the cars, cursing the Germans.

  The sidewalk was red with blood. The Red Cross workers carried off the dead and wounded. Several feet away, a woman was holding a man in her arms, the blood turning the blue of her skirt a dark purple, the color of blackberries. She was singing:

  S’ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,

  La terre en produit de nouveaux,

  Contre vous tout prêts à se batter….

  I helped lift the bodies onto the stretchers. We left the dead and went for the wounded, stepping over bodies to get to them. The faces of the dead blurred until they were the same. I looked down and saw the red of my footprints on the concrete. I stepped over a man. I thought he was dead, but then his eyes fluttered open and he opened his mouth to say something. His ear was blown away and a part of his skull. The rest of his face was craggy, as if he’d been left out in the sun too long. I bent down and untied the map scarf from around my neck and wrapped it around his head, trying not to look, trying to stop the bleeding. There was so much blood—too much blood.

  I held his head in my lap, waiting for the medic to come get him. He looked up at me, at the sky, and it was hard to know if he could see me. I said, “Ray. Stay with me. I’m here.”

  He said, “Is it the Liberation?”

  To my left, the woman was still singing.

  If they fall, our young heroes,

  The earth will produce new ones,

  Ready to fight against you.

  His eyes were closing. I could see the l
ight going out of them as I held his head, his blood covering my lap, my arms, my legs, my hands, so much that I wondered if they would ever wash clean.

  “Yes,” I said. “You are free.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  That night, I hardly slept. I was thinking about Ray, picturing his head in my lap, his eyes closing, his blood everywhere. I’d scrubbed my hands and arms and clothes for an hour, but I could still feel the sticky wetness of it, could still smell it on my skin. Émile and I lay on the couch at Cleo’s, my head on his chest, his arms around me, and I told myself: Sleep, Velva Jean. Sleep, Clementine. But every time I closed my eyes I saw the scene on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.

  Émile stroked my hair, the way Mama used to do, and told me stories of Paris before the war. Finally he said, “Is it helping?”

  “No.”

  He tilted my chin so I could see him and then he leaned in and kissed me. “Is this helping?” It was a whisper.

  “Not yet.”

  He pulled me closer and kissed me again, harder this time. His hands were in my hair, not gently now, and I kissed him back just as hard, just as fierce, then harder, then fiercer, as if we were trying to push everything else away but us.

  We fell asleep just before dawn, and I woke two hours later, alone. I checked the time and dressed in a hurry in a black skirt and white blouse that I’d borrowed from Bernadette, a thin black blazer, a pair of dark green sandals, and a green scarf, which I wrapped around my hair like a turban. I picked up my bag and set out, following the crooked alleys and tangled streets, like a maze, that made up the Quarter. I was meeting Émile and Barzo at a café in Saint-Germain-des-Prés because Barzo was staying near there and the Quarter was too crowded with Germans. Émile had gone ahead without me because he didn’t want to risk traveling through the streets together.

  I left in such a hurry that I forgot the rest of my things, including a heavier jacket in case the day turned cool and an umbrella in case it turned rainy. I was halfway to the café and thought, I can turn back or I can keep going. I knew I should always travel with everything I had, just in case. But it was warm outside and the sun was shining. If I went back I would be late.

  I kept going. The Eiffel Tower rose up ahead, the swastika at the top flapping in the wind. In the bright sun, the people on the streets looked shabbier and more worn out, as if they had been in this war for all their lives and they knew they would always be in it, until they died.

  The sun turned the day hot, then hotter. I was glad I’d left my jacket. I took off the blazer and rolled my shirtsleeves over my elbows. I passed a little park where people were sitting on the grass sunning themselves. Skirts were pulled up over knees and shirt collars were unbuttoned, faces tipped back, eyes closed, soaking it in.

  The café sat on the corner of two busy streets. The inside was red seats and dark wood walls and mirrors, but I sat outside under the white awning. I’d brought a French magazine, and I pretended to read this while the sun slanted in at an angle over my legs. I moved them a little so that they would be fully in the light. I didn’t see many Germans here, only locals filling up the tables and chairs and hurrying down the street. Even though it was a hot day, I ordered coffee—just bitter chicory with saccharin to sweeten it.

  For twenty minutes, I sipped the coffee and waited. When Émile and Barzo didn’t come, I waited ten more minutes, my pulse starting to race. I was already on edge from the night before. The waiter asked if I wanted anything else and I said no, not today. I told him I had someplace to be, even though I didn’t.

  Something had happened. After thirty minutes, I got up and started the walk back to Cleo’s. Maybe they were there. Maybe our signals had gotten crossed and they were waiting for me right now. I walked faster, following the river, along to my left, until I found myself back in the twisting, narrow maze of the Quarter. I turned down Cleo’s street, my bag thumping against my hip, my heart thumping in my chest. But what if Émile and Barzo weren’t there? What if they’d been captured?

  Breedlove’s was closed. Before I reached the door I looked up, out of habit, to check the windows. Only one curtain was drawn—the one on the front window. If the curtain above the store is closed—just that one—it means keep away.

  I glanced up and down the street, making sure no one was watching me, that I wasn’t being followed, and then I turned the corner and another until I was in front of a café with a raggedy red awning. Outside, a waiter was unstacking the chairs and tables, and the people who were waiting for them sat down. The cafés only served alcohol four days a week now, and one of the other waiters stood in the doorway drinking wine. Because there wasn’t any more room, I sat inside, at a table by the window, and ordered a glass of wine myself, even though I didn’t like wine, and watched the people walking by.

  I waited five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Something was wrong. First Émile, now Cleo. The wine tasted like vinegar, like blood. Blood everywhere. I pushed it away. I decided I would give it thirty minutes and then I would walk back by Cleo’s to see if the curtain had moved. It had to move. She and Gossie had to be there. And Émile had to be there too.

  Twenty minutes.

  The wail of a siren made me jump, spilling my wine on the table and on my skirt. Just like Ray’s blood. One of the waiters said something about the Allies—“Ils larguent des bombes,” which meant, “They are dropping bombs”—and everyone rushed out of the café and into the street. I looked up at the sky and it was thick with planes, like giant birds, circling and soaring toward us. I wanted to stand and watch them, to wave to them, to shout at them: “I’m one of you!” Then the first round of bombs crashed to the earth, and I was jolted against one of the waiters, who was standing beside me and looking up too.

  He shouted, “Allons-y!” We must go!

  A hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me toward the Metro station on the corner. Émile said, “Come, Clementine.”

  Before I could ask where he’d been and where he’d come from, we pushed our way down the stairs, bumping against all the others who were pushing and bumping. A black arrow was painted on the wall, and we all followed this to the air raid shelter, which sat right smack on the train tracks.

  The tunnel was dark except for a pale blue light that glowed like fox fire in the woods. People coughed and shouted and pushed, and the children were crying. From up above, I could hear a rumble like thunder. I prayed right then for the Allies to take out every last German but leave Paris and the people of the city unhurt. Someone grabbed my waist in the dark, and then my leg, inching a hand up my skirt. A man’s face leaned in to mine. His breath smelled like liquor, and I pushed away from him, deeper into the crowd. I tried to make myself as small and quiet as I could, as if making myself small and quiet would help me disappear. Émile reached forward and punched the man in the jaw, sending him reeling backward. Hands caught him and shoved him away.

  The bombs boomed and thundered, and all around us the walls and ground shook. I focused on the dim blue light up ahead. I stared at it long enough to believe it really was fox fire glowing in the woods back home, and if I just went toward it I could pick some and take it back with me to Mama’s. I stared at that light until I could see the woods of Fair Mountain and everything that grew there—fox fire, balsam trees, grass, moss, wildflowers—and the streams and the hollers. Three Gum River. Mama’s house. Granny’s house just behind it. Daddy Hoyt’s fiddle workshop. The house where Linc and Ruby Poole lived, and the one where Aunt Zona lived with the twins and Aunt Bird. I could hear the rain on the tin roof at Mama’s and smell the lavender and lye soap that she and Granny made in summer.

  Suddenly, everything above us got quiet. We stood together, hundreds of us, not saying anything, barely breathing. I looked up at Émile and he looked back at me, calm, cool. I whispered, “I waited.”

  He said, “We were detained.” Something about the way he said it gave me a chill. “We came just as you were leaving, but you were too far ahead.”

  �
��Something’s wrong at Cleo’s. The curtain—”

  “I know.”

  The sirens sounded again, which meant it was all clear and we could come out. Everyone started moving then, and I knew we only had a short time to get off the tracks before the electricity came on.

  We moved like a herd of cows, like a flock of geese pushing upward till I could see the blue of the sky and feel the sun on my face. I wanted to get right down and kiss the ground, but there were too many people—you could barely move. My hand was in Émile’s, but everyone was pushing behind us and around us, and my hand broke free. For a minute, I lost sight of him. I ran my eyes over everyone as I moved forward, carried by the crowd, until I saw him, four people away. Then I heard the high, shrill screech of a whistle. Germans in uniform wound their way through the crowd on the sidewalk and in the streets.

  Men, women, and children were still rushing up from underground, and the Germans rounded them up as they came out onto the street. The Germans made a wide circle around us, a kind of rope, and they waved their machine guns. I looked everywhere for Émile, but he was too far away. He was reaching for me across the people who were blocking his way, keeping us apart. He was shoving them aside, trying to get to me. Suddenly I felt something hard and cold against my back, and a voice said, in French, “Move!”

  A truck waited on the street, black with a canvas roof. The something hard and cold against my back was a gun and the person holding it was a German officer. No one had ever pointed a gun into my back before, and my mouth went dry and my throat went tight and I could feel the beads of sweat collecting under my hair on the base of my neck. I looked for Émile, but couldn’t find him.

  There were fifteen of us in my group, and they lined us up next to the truck. The guards went up and down the row, emptying everyone’s bags and looking at their papers. I pulled my bag across my chest and laid my hands across it. Out of all the things I was supposed to take with me Friday, the only thing I had with me was the chewing gum. In my hair, I was wearing some of the bobby pins Monsieur Brunet had made, but I didn’t have the jacket with the gold francs in the shoulder pads. I didn’t have the lapel knife or the button compass or the T and K pills. In my bag, I had my Révolution Rouge lipstick, Ty’s compass, the wooden flying girl, the seashell for luck, the rip cord from my parachute, and the map of Romainville.