A shiver ran through me. Sofya?
“What did she look like?”
“He just said she was dirty, a beggar, perhaps. She left no name and he thought she was up to no good. I pressed him for more. Her age? Hair color? But his eyes are failing.”
“It could have been my friend Sofya.” I sat on the sofa, eyes burning, the time difference catching up with me, deflated at the thought of missing her. How close I may have come to seeing her again.
“From Brillantmont?” Madame Solange asked. “I remember her.”
“Of course she would look disheveled, having come all the way from Russia.”
“I am so very sorry.”
I gathered myself. “I have business to attend to—locating a friend. In the meantime, if she comes by here—”
“I doubt that. My father was terribly rude to her. I am so sorry.”
“If she does appear please offer her every comfort. If it’s not Sofya it may be someone with news of her.”
I went to my room to dress for the hunt to find both Merrill and Sofya. They were both here in Paris, I could feel it. The only question was where.
* * *
—
I SET OUT ON my search for Merrill, dressed in as much scarlet as good taste would allow, barely able to contain myself, exhilarated to be back on the streets of Paris. Was my hunch right? Would Merrill be there at the Grand Palais? In my exhaustive research, it seemed the obvious place to go, where the wounded had been tended since shortly after the war began. I braced for the worst.
The Grand Palais, that lovely Beaux-Arts exhibition hall left over from the Universal Exposition of 1900, stood on the Champs-Élysées close to Mother’s apartment. I hurried toward the massive building, with its soaring, glass barrel-vaulted roof, a tattered tricolor atop it flapping in the punishing wind.
I entered the main hall and stood, stunned by the vastness of the place where Mother and I had once seen a horse show, now an immensely busy hospital. Doctors, nurses, and visitors rushed about as recovering soldiers milled through the crowd.
A brown stockade fence, the top saw-toothed as if cut with giant pinking shears, ran around an entire village of canvas-tented buildings, of which I could only see the tops. A sign high above read: Atelier du Blessé Franco-Américain. “Wounded workshop.” What a lovely way to describe this tragic yet wondrous place.
I followed a few patients toward the galleries, past rooms of recuperating soldiers lying in iron hospital beds lined up under the soaring ceilings and rooms where doctors helped patients work their bodies on a system of pulleys along a wall. I passed long tables of women, heads bent over their sewing, stitching bedsheets and pillowcases. Everywhere I looked for Merrill’s dark hair and searched the faces of the wounded.
A woman in a high-necked white dress and a leather bag across her chest hurried by, clipboard in hand.
“Excuse me, Nurse. I know you are terribly busy but I am looking for an American flier—”
“I am a therapist, not a nurse,” she said, still walking. “The Americans are no longer here. Shipped out by ambulance weeks ago.”
I hurried alongside her. “But the sign says Franco-Américain.”
“There were many Americans here during active combat but now the war is over they have been transferred. Only a few British men left and they are leaving today.”
“Could he be behind that fence?”
“That is the operating area. In process of being shut down. This is now a rehabilitation center.”
“Can you check your records?”
“We only record French patients now. American wounded passed through here to other centers and eventually home, or to, well, the American Cemetery. If I may say so you are looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“I have come so far to find—”
“I am sorry, madame. We are very busy. This place needs to be vacated so that companies can hold their exhibitions once again. Try the Red Cross. Or the American Hospital up in Neuilly.”
Though only a little past noon, my spirits sank, the needle in a haystack growing smaller still.
* * *
—
THOUGH TAXIS WERE SCARCE, I eventually flagged a decrepit one down and we rode up the Champs-Élysées, past the Arc de Triomphe, through the gate to the suburb of Neuilly, officially out of Paris, to the American Hospital, housed in an old school.
I exited the cab and was bowled over by the scale of the building. It rose five stories up from the gravel courtyard where rows of Ford motor ambulances stood, red-crossed on their doors, drivers tinkering under their hoods. How to find Merrill in this immense place?
I entered and a round-faced nurse dressed in a white dress and headpiece came to greet me.
“May I help you?”
How strange to hear French spoken with a Midwestern accent.
“I am here to see if you have a patient by the name of Richard Merrill.”
The nurse scanned her list and I stepped aside as an attendant led a line of patients by. Each man wore bandages wound around his eyes and held on to the shoulder of the patient before him.
She looked up. “I am sorry, no.”
“Can you check again? I’ve come a long way. Based in Aford, Cher France?”
“We have over six hundred men here, madame.”
“A flier. Richard Merrill—”
“Oh, you said Merrill Richards.”
“No, I did not, but—”
“Yes. Merrill. Here it is. He’s a popular one. Of course, many of the men here have visitors. Sometimes the girls from town come out here and say hello to the men. Make them little—”
“Are you sure it is the right Merrill? Richard Merrill from New York?”
“Yes, shot down near Saint-Souplet but survived, poor thing. Think he was the one picked up by the Boche and came to us in a prisoner exchange. I hope you are not expecting to speak with him. He’s had a bad time of it. Of course, he’s not the only one who’s suffered. We have whole rooms of gueule cassées, severe facial injuries.” She held one hand to the side of her mouth and whispered. “We warn visitors to bring their own basin in case they, well, you know…”
Why did I have the misfortune to run into such a chatterbox, what Mother would have called a moulins à paroles?
“I’m sorry to interrupt but can you take me to Mr. Merrill?”
“Wish I could, but visiting hour is almost over. The men need their sleep. Most of them could sleep for days if we didn’t have to wake them for their medications and to eat, of course. Come back tomorrow.”
I started toward the wards. “I won’t be long. I’ve come all the way from New York, after all.”
The nurse blocked my way. “I do love New York. The people there are a little pushy for my taste, though. I’m from Wisconsin, myself—”
All at once a contingent of ten or so khaki-clad workers, a nurse in starched white hospital dress at the helm, entered and swept by.
The nurse abruptly stopped and held out one hand to me, causing her group to stand and wait.
“Eliza?” Though I scarcely recognized her at first, it was Mother’s friend Mrs. Belmont, the former Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, who had divorced and remarried.
“Mrs. Belmont. How do you do?”
“How is your dear mother?” She spoke quietly, in a firm and dignified way, such a long way from New York and her famous costume balls.
“Well. She—”
“Who are you here to visit?”
“A flier friend—”
She looked to the nurse. “What room?”
The nurse checked her clipboard. “Philadelphia.”
“Come with us,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said. “We are going that way.”
I followed Mrs. Belmont at a fast clip, her entourage in her wake. “The wards are mai
ntained by donations from the various cities and states, hence you see their names over the doors. Boston. Chicago. Rhode Island.”
I struggled to keep up, trying to see each high-ceilinged ward we passed with their rows of crisply made white beds, spotless floors and walls.
“Terribly sorry about your flier, Eliza. You’ll be happy to know he can’t get better nursing. Our nurses are all Americans from excellent families. Angels. Two to a ward with one male attendant.”
I could barely contain myself.
As we passed wards, patients well combed and washed smiled at us from afar.
“I am just president of the auxiliaries but we are staffed with Americans from every walk of life. Bank managers rolling bandages. The man glorifies the job, so they say.”
“What kinds of injuries do you treat?”
“Every sort of injury and ailment one can imagine. Gas poisoning, with the terrible blindness. Gangrene, trench foot, and our share of shrapnel and bullet wounds.”
Mrs. Belmont dropped me at the Philadelphia ward. “Here it is, dear,” she called over her shoulder and continued on her way. “Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything.”
The ward seemed immense, with iron beds lined up along the walls, some equipped with tentlike wooden structures, suspending injured arms and legs in the air by pulleys. Several of the lovely, long narrow tables particular to France sat down the middle of the ward, topped with a few wine bottles, a tureen, and the remnants of lunch. Clearly any patient able to bring himself to the table could enjoy the customary long French lunch, no doubt the best medicine any hospital could provide.
One had the general impression of restful beige, for the walls and patients’ pajamas were all the same color, of lovely worn French linen and hazy light filtered in through the tall windows. Visitors clustered around some beds and the nurses, both animated and serene, watched over the men. Most were newly shaved, a clipboard of records attached to the foot of each bed, with the patient’s name written in fat block letters.
A nurse walked through the ward, hitting the little box of chimes in her hand with a small rubber-tipped mallet, tolling the end of visiting hours.
I scanned the room for Merrill. A mustached man dressed in white, his rumpled linen vest buttoned down the front, stood near the table.
“Could you help me, Doctor?”
“Doctor? I am the chef.”
I smiled. Only in France. “I’m looking for a man named Richard Merrill.”
He pursed his lips. “Hmmm. Infantry?”
“No. A flier.”
“That’s right. Merrill.” He waved toward the end of the vast hall. “The very end of the ward, there. Straight back. His friends hung an American flag over his bed.”
I stepped down the ward with an increasingly quick step, thrilled to finally see Merrill again, flapping my hands at my sides to dry my wet palms.
I came to the end of the great hall and saw in the distance a bed against the far wall, the stars and stripes draped above it.
Merrill.
I hurried toward it. How wonderful it would be to see him.
But as I stepped closer my air felt cut off. Why had my feet stopped working? I stopped in the middle of the ward, visitors milling around me, taking a second to digest what I saw.
Not in my wildest dreams had I expected such a dreadful sight.
CHAPTER
42
Sofya
1919
After work each night, I waited near the townhouse where I’d seen Taras, hoping to see my son, but ending up with no sign of Max, only frostbitten toes. Perhaps they were already home at that time of day? Surely he and Varinka left each morning if he went to school, but my mornings I had to devote to my collections, the prime time to find people at home.
But even if I got Max, would he be safe? I needed a secure place to live and enough money to buy him food. Would I get more help from the White Russian community on Rue Daru? Maybe someone there could help.
I left for Rue Daru one late afternoon after delivering my receipts to Madame Melange. I was eager to see the place where so many Russians gathered and happy reunions took place. I had so little money still and hoped to make connections there, for a better job and my own bed in the community.
I took a longer route than necessary to pass my favorite sweetshop, À la Mère de Famille, Paris’s oldest candy store. Not that I had any money to buy candy, but nostalgia drew me there. How many times had Mother and I shopped there and left laden with bags heavy with chocolates and bonbons?
I stopped in front of the dark green–painted corner shop and took in the sweets in the window. Though the war drastically reduced the usually bountiful offerings, my favorite oval-tinned candies, les Anis de Flavigny, sat there in pretty little stacks. Produced since 1591 these satiny smooth little candies, made by patiently covering an anise seed, layer by layer, with sugar syrup, were Mother’s favorite and mine, too.
I stepped inside the shop and the most delicious scent of butter and sugar and peppermint wrapped around me. The place hadn’t changed a bit: at the back, the glass booth where the owner rang up the purchase on his old cash register, the black-and-white tile floor with the name of the shop written there, shelves and tables arranged with small displays of bonbons and marzipan flowers.
There were a few shoppers near the glass cases, the candy women in their white smocks helping them choose their chocolates just as Mother and I once had. Would the owner even remember me? Certainly not in my disheveled state.
I found the little tins of les Anis de Flavigny stacked with care and lifted one to my nose. While faint, the scent of licorice made my mouth—
“Hey, you there,” one of the candy women called. She hurried to me as a policeman apprehends a thief, a cross look on her face. “What are you doing? Those are for customers.”
“I am just looking, madame.”
“Just look from outside.” She plucked the tin from my hand.
“Where is monsieur?”
“None of your affair. Leave now.”
She pushed me out the door, barely touching my dog fur coat, and banged the door shut behind me.
I rushed away from the shop, tears burning my eyes, head down in the wind, missing my mother. What would her advice be, after losing everything? My son. My family. My fortune. She certainly would not stand for self-pity. Probably would tell me to stand up tall, one of her favorite cure-alls, and would quote one of her Japanese proverbs, like: Better to be a crystal and be broken than to be a tile upon the housetop.
I smiled at that and walked on, broken crystal that I was.
* * *
—
IT WAS A LONG, cold walk to Rue Daru and I regretted leaving my fur hat at home. On the way I passed a tent set up on a side street with the sign Marchand de Cheveux tacked on the outside.
Hair merchant.
The one Oxana had used?
The little tent was warm inside, heated by a portable stove, with a low stool and small desk on which the owner kept a black cosmetic case full of the accoutrements of his work. He met me as I entered, a white-haired peddler dressed in a belted, blue smock, chamois-colored trousers, and a wide-brimmed black felt hat. An enormous pair of brass shears hung by a ribbon dangled from his belt.
“Bonsoir, madame. Buying or selling?”
“Just looking.”
“I am René Carville. If selling, you can be paid in cloth or silver.”
I stepped to the tent walls to examine the hanks of tethered hair of all colors and lengths, and elaborate women’s hair additions in every shape and size pinned there. On the little desk, three wooden mannequin heads wore men’s toupees. A basket of balls of hair of all shades sat next to the stool.
I warmed my hands by the stove and the peddler pulled a hank of smooth, black hair from the wall. “If
you need a hairnet Chinese hair is perfect.” He pulled an auburn sample from the wall and held it to his nose. “Can always tell Scottish hair from the whiskey smell.”
He offered me a whiff and I turned away.
“The fake chignon is popular now. The gentlemen prefer long hair, but with shorter hair in fashion everyone wants a false chignon to add.” He leaned in. “We buy comb hair as well—the extra hair you find in your brush. I never buy the hair of the dead.”
“That’s a comfort.”
I started on my way out.
The peddler followed. “Madame, wait. Would you unpin your hair? I could give a price, no obligation.”
I stopped, curious about how much it would fetch. I pulled the five pins from my hair and let it drop to my waist. What a strange sense of pride came over me there with that old man admiring my hair. How far I’d fallen.
He unfolded his wooden measuring stick and gathered my hair in his fist at the nape of my neck. “Thick as a horse’s tail—good texture. Almost ninety centimeters. Not as good as the best—the virgin hair of young Italian girls. That gets top dollar.”
A fine-looking man stepped into the tent, pushing up the flap with his silver-tipped cane. He stood dressed in a vicuña coat and top hat, his starched collar and cuffs crackling as he walked.
The peddler snatched off his own hat and bowed low. “Monsieur.”
The man waved toward the toupees. “I would like the usual,” he said in Belgian-accented French. “Nothing skimpy this time.”
He stepped to me and fixed his gaze on my hair. “How much for this?” He reached for a piece of my hair and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “Just like my mother’s. Same color exactly.”
What could he pay? Surely quite a lot given the fancy walking stick.
The peddler ran his hand down my hair. “Oh, this is very special. Russian hair is some of the best.”
“I’ll pay seven hundred francs. Not a centime more.”
Lost Roses Page 34