by Sarah Jio
CHAPTER 12
CÉLINE
“I’ll only be gone an hour at the most,” I say to Papa the next morning as I button my coat. The snow is falling heavily, and by the looks of the heavy clouds above, there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight.
“I’m not sure you should go out in this weather,” Papa says.
“Well, we won’t have anything to eat for supper if I don’t, and besides, if this weather continues, the market will close. I’ll be quick. Don’t you worry about me.”
“Take side streets,” he says, finally relenting and kissing my cheek.
I nod. “Tell Cosi I’ll be back in a snap.”
* * *
—
OUTSIDE, PARIS IS awash in white. I breathe in the crisp, cold air and pull my hood over my head. My boots crunch through the fresh powder with each step, reminding me of the days I was a schoolgirl, walking home with Suzette, with Luc a short distance behind. Luc. How I wish he were here now.
Normally bustling at this time of the day, the market is quiet. Besides me, a lone elderly man hovers over a barrel of pockmarked potatoes, inspecting one after the next, ultimately setting all back. A mother picks through a table of onions, most of them bruised and visibly rotten, before giving up and turning to the carrots. Her young son kicks the snow beneath his feet, and I smile at him. He reminds me of the little boy I used to play peekaboo with at the market. The little Jewish boy whose home has been taken and family dispersed, his teddy bear left in the street. I sigh, selecting a few decent zucchinis. I’m grateful to see that there are eggs and milk available, which I grab, along with some salad greens and cherry tomatoes for Papa. This will certainly be the last of them for the season now that we’ve had the first snow. Basil, yes. A block of cheese. A squash, which I’ll roast for Cosi. I pay Monsieur Duval, whose hands are red and chapped from the cold, then purchase two baguettes at the nearby bakery, along with three pastries for breakfast.
I sling my bag over my shoulder and continue on to Bistro Jeanty to speak to Luc’s mother about the possibility of waiting tables to supplement our income. I haven’t told Papa, of course. I don’t want to worry him. He’ll argue that Madame Jeanty will do us no favors, but I think he’s wrong. Despite her feelings about me, she loves her son, just as I do. I will appeal to her as a mother and as a woman. The position will be temporary, of course. Luc will be home soon, France will be liberated, and this will all be a distant memory.
My mind turns to Suzette and her German officer. She called me in tears yesterday, but Cosi was sitting beside me in the kitchen, and I didn’t want to frighten her. When I phoned her back an hour later, there was no answer.
I hope her tears are merely the result of a silly lovers’ quarrel and nothing more serious. I pray that I am wrong about Suzette’s beau, and that, as she explained, he’s one of the “good ones.”
I’m pleased to see the lights of Bistro Jeanty in the distance. Under the awning, I pull my hood down, dust the snow off my shoulders, and smooth my hair before stepping inside. A blast of warm air hits my face as I inspect my reflection in the mirrored wall. I need to look my best when I speak to Luc’s mother, who is always meticulously groomed, even in a snowstorm.
The restaurant is empty, aside from a busboy polishing a rack of glasses at the bar. I don’t recognize him, but then again, why would I? Madame Jeanty burns through help faster than Cosi does a chocolate bar.
I nod at the boy and walk to the rear of the restaurant. I can hear Madame Jeanty’s voice in the kitchen, and I’m happy to catch her here. While she typically doesn’t arrive until the dinner service begins, I know from Luc that she comes in early once a week for the wine delivery. I decide to wait just outside the double doors until she emerges. I’ll then give her a double kiss and tell her she looks lovely in whatever new dress she has on. We’ll talk about our hopes for Luc’s return, make some small talk, then I’ll explain that the flower business has been difficult in wartime. I won’t tell her why, exactly, though I’m sure she already knows. Madame Jeanty knows everything. But that doesn’t matter. I am Luc’s sweetheart. She won’t turn me away. I’ll ask if she can carve out a position for me to wait tables, or even help at the hostess station. The Germans who come in won’t bother me, because they respect Madame Jeanty. It will be safe.
I pause my stream of thoughts when I hear a male voice in the kitchen. I detect the thick German accent immediately, followed by laughter from Madame Jeanty. While I’ve seen her engaged in friendly conversation with plenty of soldiers, I’ve never known her to welcome them into the restaurant’s most intimate spaces. Who is she speaking to? I inch closer to make out the conversation as best I can.
“I don’t know what dreadful things my son is tied up in down there, but can you get him home, once and for all, like you promised?”
“Soon, soon.”
“But it’s already been longer than you said.”
“You wanted him out of the city long enough for us to take care of things with the girl.”
“Yes,” Madame Jeanty says, “but I didn’t realize it would take this long. I want my son home.”
“I assure you, we are working on it. We’ll need to pay a visit to the home, arrest the father. We’ll send him to a work camp with the next roundup.”
“When will that be?”
“A few days at most.”
“Good,” Madame Jeanty says. “And the little girl?”
I gasp.
“Up to you,” the man says.
“Luc shouldn’t have to care for another man’s child. He deserves his own. If she stays, he’ll try to take her in. I can’t have that.”
“Understood.”
“I could never understand what he saw in her,” Luc’s mother continues. “It would be one thing if she was beautiful, but she’s really rather plain. And there’s something distinctly Jewish about her face. Luc deserves so much better. He doesn’t see it now, but he will, in time.”
“Come here and let me have my way with you,” the man says.
“Oh, Gerhard, you’re a scoundrel. Not in the kitchen!”
“Why not? We’ve never tried that before,” he says.
Suddenly, there’s silence, then giggling, followed by a pot or pan hitting the tile floor with a jarring thud. I race to the door, running out to the snowy street without stopping to button my coat.
I run home as quickly as I can, passing all the places I might have stopped in happier times: Madame Caron’s boutique, the cake shop Cosi loves, Luc’s favorite patisserie, which is where I hear a man shouting and see a woman stumbling out to the street and falling into the snow as if she’s been pushed. The door slams shut behind her.
I run ahead and kneel beside her, brushing the snow from her face and neck. “Are you all right?” I ask, as she turns to look at me. I recognize her instantly. Suzette.
“Céline!” she exclaims, rising to her feet.
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s Mother’s birthday and I wanted to get her a cake. But”—she pauses and gestures toward the bakery—“I guess our family isn’t welcome here.”
“Why on earth…”
I notice that her lip is trembling. “He said he doesn’t serve families with…cripples.” She shakes her head. “I don’t understand. We used to take Élian here often, and it was never a problem.” She brushes the snow off of her coat. “What’s wrong with the world?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, tucking my arm in hers. “I’ve missed you.”
“Me too.”
“Shall we walk together?”
She nods as we set out on the snowy streets. For a moment we could be the two schoolgirls we once were, talking about hair ribbons and giggling about boys. But the world has changed, and so have we.
“I’m scared,” Suzette whispers.
“I am, too,”
I say.
“What will become of us, Céline? What will become of Paris?”
I don’t ask her about her beau, or inquire about her brother, or tell her anything of my own problems. Instead, my mind turns to a woman named Antoinette, the wife of a jeweler who kept a shop on the rue Cler, where my late husband had purchased my necklace. I ran into her at the market earlier and learned that the business was recently shuttered and looted by the Nazis. Our conversation was brief but meaningful, and I share Antoinette’s story with Suzette. Raised in orphanages, her parents died when she was a child. Her life was altogether miserable until the summer she turned eighteen and met Mendel, the son of a jeweler. For Antoinette, marrying into a big, loving Jewish family was a dream come true until the Nazis arrived in Paris. The day they arrested her husband, his brothers, and his father, they raided the jewelry store and sent the entire family to a work camp. Even his mother, and his sister with her newborn baby.
Suzette holds her hand to her heart. “I can’t even imagine.”
I nod, explaining the way Antoinette had pulled back the sleeve of her dress to reveal a scabbed-over wound, a crude star of David, on the lower part of her right forearm, carved into her flesh, just like the one hastily painted on our shop window.
I recall the way she’d closed her eyes tightly, telling me how much she’d wished they would have just taken her too. “My punishment,” she had said, “was far worse. Being separated from the family I love is like being orphaned all over again.”
Suzette shakes her head.
“I told her not to lose hope, that she would see her beloved Mendel again, in this life or the next.”
I stop and lock eyes with Suzette as we round the next corner. “And that rings true for both of us, Suzette. You know why Antoinette will persevere, just as you and I will?”
“Why?” she asks, searching my eyes.
“Because she’s a lotus, and so are we.”
“A lotus?”
I smile to myself, recalling the story Papa told me as a girl. “The flower. Have you seen one?”
She shakes her head again.
“They’re gorgeous,” I say. “But my point isn’t about their beauty. Lotus flowers lead harrowing journeys. Their seeds sprout in murky swamp water, thick with dirt and debris and snarls of roots. For a lotus to bloom, she must forge her way through this terrible darkness, avoid being eaten by fish and insects, and keep pressing onward, innately knowing, or at least hoping, that there is sunlight somewhere above the water’s surface, if she can only summon the strength to get there. And when she does, she emerges unscathed by her journey and blooms triumphantly.” I place both of my hands on her shoulders. “Suzette, you are a lotus.”
She forces a smile.
“You may be deep in the murky water right now. But you will bloom.”
“I wish I had the confidence that you do. The truth is, Céline, I’m scared. All the time.”
“We all are, dear friend,” I whisper.
My apartment building is just ahead, and at the next block we say our goodbyes. I turn right, she turns left, each of us on our own journey, but with the same goal: to emerge through the murky waters and bloom in the sunlight.
* * *
—
WITH THE REMAINING potatoes, I make a simple soup for dinner and carefully ladle it into the blue-and-white china soup bowls that my mother used to love so, then call Cosi and Papa to the table. There are no leeks, nor crème fraîche, but it’s a fine meal just the same.
“How was your day?” I ask Cosi.
So far, Papa and I have decided to let her continue at school, despite our family’s troubles and fears. Cosi’s school is just across the square, and she knows to avoid stopping along the way or drawing attention to herself in any way. Besides, she loves school, and it would break her heart to leave her friends.
Normally cheerful, Cosi stares silently into her soup bowl.
“Is something wrong, love?”
She nods, looking up at me a moment later, tears in her eyes. “Alina says she can’t be my friend anymore.”
“Oh, honey,” I say, reaching for her hand, thinking of our neighbors on the second floor.
“Because of the yellow star,” she continues, tucking her knees to her chest. “I hate the yellow star.”
Papa and I exchange worried looks.
“I hate it, too, my sweet girl,” I say, trying to console her.
Her eyes search mine for answers, or at least some semblance of hope that everything is going to be okay. “Mama,” she begins again, tearfully, “what if no one wants to be my friend? Then what?”
I sit up straighter in my chair. “Then they are silly little girls, and you’re better off without them. Besides, you have me, Papa, and Monsieur Dubois. We will always be your friends.”
She nods, cracks a tiny smile, and returns her attention to her soup bowl. A few minutes later, I excuse her to the living room, where she tucks herself under a blanket with her book.
“How did your outing go?” Papa whispers.
“I’m afraid I don’t have good news to share.”
Papa’s eyes widen as I recount the scene at Jeanty. I know he’s as discouraged as I am. Each day brings more bad news. Each hour, a greater sense of fear. I stiffen every time I hear footsteps in the hall, or the creak of the staircase outside our door. Are they coming for us?
We need to make an escape plan, and soon. But at the mere mention, Papa sighs and retreats to the sofa, as if the best defense mechanism is to pretend that everything will be all right. He sits beside Cosi: two silhouettes in the dim light beside the crackling fire. If only I could freeze this moment forever.
By the time I’m done tidying up the kitchen and preparing for tomorrow’s breakfast, Papa and Cosi have both dozed off on the sofa, he with his reading glasses half on his face and an open book in his lap, she with her beloved journal, which has fallen from her grasp onto the floor. I smile at the sight and tap Papa on the shoulder. He sits up, disoriented, sets his reading glasses on the table. “Good night,” he whispers, heading to his bedroom as I lift Cosi into my arms and carry her to bed, tucking Monsieur Dubois against her chest. She pulls the bear to her face and rolls over in peaceful slumber.
As I tidy the living room, the phone rings. Strange, I think. Who’d be calling at this hour? I’m quick to answer so as not to let it wake my sleeping family.
“Céline?” It’s Suzette, and I can tell she’s been crying.
“Suzette? Are you okay?”
“No,” she says. “Céline, you were right, about everything.” Her voice is beyond frantic, it’s hysterical. “Franc betrayed me. Céline, he betrayed me.” She sobs so hard, I can barely make out her words. “When I came home tonight…” She is hysterical. “They…Élian. Céline, Élian!”
“Wait,” I say. “Slow down. What happened?” My heart beats faster.
“They took him away,” she cries. “They came to the apartment. Céline, they arrested him.”
My legs feel weak and I collapse into a chair at the table. I don’t know what to say. I can only weep. He’d been born with a compromised body, but no one had a bigger or more perfect heart. I can picture his face now, smiling up at me from his chair, trying to say my name, which always came out sounding like “Shell-ene.” Their mother, Claudine, loves him with such intensity. I shudder to think of how she is coping in this moment. And now he’s gone, and Suzette is the reason. There is nothing left to say, so we sit at our respective kitchen tables in Paris, and we cry, and we cry.
CHAPTER 13
CAROLINE
Before Victor arrives, I try on three different dresses, then settle on jeans and a white blouse that drapes off the shoulders a bit. I nervously set out the cheese, bread, and wine, hoping he’ll be pleased with my selection.
“Nice place,” he says, looking ar
ound.
I smile. “I have no idea why I would have chosen something so large. Seems a little silly.”
“Silly, or awesome,” Victor says. “Check out the detailing in the ceiling.” He marvels at the intricate woodworking above. “I’ve seen plenty of fancy Parisian apartments in my life, but this is…in a class of its own. And with real estate so tight and competitive, you must have been very lucky to sign the lease.”
“I suppose so,” I say, nervously tucking my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “Monsieur de Goff, the concierge, acts like it’s cursed or something.” I relay what I’ve learned, and Victor shrugs.
“Who knows,” he says. “Maybe he’s just trying to spook you so you’ll leave and he can rent it himself.”
I shake my head. “I highly doubt that. I don’t think he wants anything to do with this apartment. Anyway, would you like a glass of wine? I picked it up at the market today. Apologies if it’s a terrible choice. I admit, I know next to nothing about wine.”
He eyes the bottle. “Wow, a 2005 Château Margaux? I’d say that you’ve made a very fine selection, Ms. I Don’t Know Anything About Wine.”
My cheeks flush. “Well, I did ask the wine merchant to steer me in the right direction.”
“May I?” he asks, reaching for the corkscrew.
I nod, watching as his strong hands expertly uncork the bottle.
“Do you have a decanter, by chance?”
“Oh,” I say. “I…really don’t know.”
“Shall we go have a look in the kitchen?”
“Sure.” I lead him down the hall, past the dining room.
“Look at this kitchen!” he says, stunned. “We could move the whole restaurant here.”
I smile. “Feel free to pillage my cabinets. I have no idea what’s in there.”