Escape From Paris (29 page)

Eleanor was slumped in the rocking chair, her hands clamped onto the arms, staring sightlessly into the darkened room, when she heard the knock.

It was such a small sound that she thought for a moment she had imagined it.

A dull tentative ghost of a knock. Almost like an animal scratching to be let in. Eleanor jumped up, ran across the room, undid the bolt and yanked open the door.

He was huddled on the floor in front of the door. She heard the uneven hiccups of his breathing, saw him shaking. Kneeling, she slipped her arm around his thin shoulders. He was shaking with cold and more than cold, wearing only his worn flannel pajamas.

“Franz.”

His hands shook, his body shook. He tried to speak but his breaths fluttered in his throat.

Eleanor bent, scooped him up. He was so much smaller than Robert. Near in age but still a little boy in frame. Tonight he felt heavy, leaden. Eleanor pushed the door shut with her foot and carried him to the rocker. She picked up the afghan and wrapped it around him. She sat in the rocker and held Franz in her arms.

“My . . . uh . . . my . . .”

“Don't try to talk, Franz. I saw. From my window. Don't try to talk.”

Finally, he did stop shaking, but every so often a shudder racked his body and Eleanor's arms tightened about him. “You're safe now, Franz. Please don't worry. We'll see that you are safe. We know a way to escape from France. Rest now, Franz, rest.”

He slept finally. Eleanor held him, rocking back and forth slowly. Beneath the blanket she could feel the rise and fall of his chest, warm and alive, safe for now. She stared into the darkness. Finally her eyes closed but even in her sleep, she saw it all again, black and silver images against her mind, soldiers in silhouette swinging, back and forth, back and forth, then throwing their captive high into the air. That thin and pitiful twisting body. That anguished cry of a mother for her child. “Hilda!”

Eleanor jerked awake, hearing that cry once again.

It was Franz crying out in his sleep. “Hilda!”

She shook him awake, gently, gently. “Franz, you're dreaming. I'm here. Robert's mother.”

It was dawn now, a cold gray dreary dawn. He looked up at her, his thin childish face blanched and stricken. In a mixture of German and French, he told her what had happened. “We were asleep. I didn't know what was happening. There was banging, like sledge hammers on stone. Hilda was yanking at me, shaking me. I didn't understand but she made me help her move the chest against my bedroom door and then we heard a crash, the door to the apartment breaking.” His eyes were wide and dark. “Hilda screamed at me to hurry. She shoved up the window and put me on her shoulders. She held onto the side of the window and made me jump up and catch the fire escape. I could hear the crashes against my door and she screamed at me to hurry, to run, and she pulled down the window. I heard her screaming and fighting. I hid there on the fire escape. They didn't know she had opened the window and she struggled so hard they didn't even think to look for someone else. When they had pulled her out of my room, I went on up the fire escape to the roof and ran across it. I could jump down onto the roof of your building. It wasn't far.”

Eleanor's arms tightened around his shoulders. She didn't speak. What could she say? When a child is hurt, you hold them, say, “It's all right. It's all right.” But it wasn't all right. It would never be all right. And how could a little boy, oh God, just twelve, a year younger than Robert, how could he understand the evil that would wrest away his family in the middle of the night, crying and screaming, carrying them off to concentration camps and for only one reason. Because they were Jews.

It made the world hideous.

“Mme. Masson.”

“Yes, Franz.”

His mouth quivered. “Did you see what they did to Hilda?”

“Oh, Franz.” She met his imploring eyes and tears welled in her own. “Oh Franz, my dear, my dear, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Franz.”

He buried his head against her and rackingly, harshly, began to cry.

Linda tucked another blouse into the suitcase and a packet of sachet. A little smile tugged at her lips. Did she think the faintly sweet scent would matter to Jonathan? She knew it wouldn't. But, it was funny, the things you do when you are in love. She was still smiling as she closed the suitcase. She heard the front door of the apartment slam.

“Eleanor?”

Her sister came to the bedroom door and Linda felt a pang of concern. Eleanor was so thin, so weary. For an instant, Linda hesitated. Would it be better for Eleanor if she stayed here? Not really. None of them spent much time here now. She had been alternating between this apartment and the one in the student quarter, staying at the latter when there was a group of soldiers to prepare for escape. Eleanor spent so much time at the hospitals that she was scarcely ever home.

Eleanor began to slip off her gloves, her gaze abstracted. “I'm glad I caught you. On your way back from the apartment tonight, could you stop by a pawn shop near the metro?”

“I'm not coming back tonight,” Linda said hurriedly.

Eleanor frowned. “We don't have a group tonight.”

“No.”

“But then it would just be . . .” Eleanor trailed off. It would be just Jonathan and Linda. Alone.

Linda lifted her chin. “I've decided to stay there now, Eleanor. For the rest of the time.” She didn't have to explain. The rest of the time until Jonathan left.

Eleanor smoothed her hands on her fur coat. A year ago, it would have been unthinkable for her unmarried sister to spend the night alone in an apartment with a young man. That was a year ago. A great many unthinkable things had occurred since then. This was a long way from the day when appearances mattered. A long way from Pasadena.

Slowly Eleanor nodded, “That's a good idea. All this running back and forth, it's such a waste of time, isn't it?”

Linda smiled tremulously, picked up the suitcase and started for the door. When she reached her sister, she stopped and gave her a hard hug and left without another word.

Eleanor walked slowly to the kitchen. She was so hungry. She looked dully at the cabinets. Nothing there. She heard the front door slam behind Linda. It would be lonelier without Linda, but she wouldn't call her back for the world. Eleanor closed her eyes. Love him, she thought gently, love him.

“It's today, isn't it?”

He nodded nervously. “There isn't anything we can do about it, Margot,” Jules said. “You know that.”

Her heavy mottled face turned toward him and, as always, he couldn't meet her eyes. Something in her eyes that made him quiver inside. He had never crossed her. Never. It didn't pay to anger Margot. There had been the kitchen maid, oh it was years ago, a little Breton kitchen maid. Stupid, of course. But sassy for all of that. She had laughed at Margot, called her Old Fat Legs. He had never forgotten the look on Margot's face, almost the same kind of look she had right now. Implacable. The little kitchen maid had lived in the smallest room just at the top of the twisty attic stairs. When they found her dead at the foot of those stairs early one morning, her neck broken, Margot had said calmly. “She was clumsy.” Her mouth had curved into a tiny satisfied smile. Now Margot stared at him.

“When are you taking her?”

“Just after lunch.”

“The Arc?”

He nodded.

“Don't leave here until one-thirty.”

“But Madame said one sharp.”

“The motor won't start. Come down the Avenue Hoche. I will be watching.”

He started to ask Margot what she intended to do, but when she looked at him once again, he nodded his head quickly and turned to leave.

She stared after him contemptuously. How had she ever married such a bungling inept weak little man? Her mouth turned down and she moved heavily about the kitchen, getting out the implements she would need to fix lunch. Madame still had a good lunch. There was money enough to pay whatever it cost on the black market, 300 francs for a chicken, 120 francs for a dozen eggs. But how long would the money last if she persisted in this madness? Madame had promised the foreign bitch 50,000 francs. Madness. To throw money away to help English soldiers who meant nothing to Madame. And she had promised them an extra 25,000 francs a year for every year they were in her employ. She and Jules were taking good care of Madame, Madame had promised. The money belonged to them.

Margot's face grew heavier, more sullen with each passing moment. If she were married to a man, he would do something. It was going to be up to her. She would manage. No one was going to rob her of what belonged to her.

After lunch, Margot normally moved heavily, slowly up the back stairs to their bedroom for an afternoon nap. Today, she didn't even wait to do the dishes. As soon as Madame was served, Margot walked to the cloak closet and pulled out her heavy dark brown coat and a thick woolen scarf. The Metro was crowded but she planted herself solidly near the exit. It was only after she had left the train, climbed laboriously up the steps to the thin gray winter sunlight that the first sense of unease stirred within her. Why were there so many people streaming toward the Arc? She stopped and looked to her left, toward the Champs-Elysees. Hundreds of young people walked quietly, groups of two and three merging into clumps of twenty, thronging into a solid dense moving phalanx walking determinedly toward the Arc.

Mounted German troops reined their horses in a circle around the Arc. More troops were arriving by truck.

How would she be able to spot the car and Madame and that woman Madame was meeting? “What's happening?” Margot asked a woman that had stopped too at the top of the steps to look at that silent awesome crowd.

“Don't you see?” The woman asked quietly. “The young people are carrying flowers. To the Tomb. It is Armistice Day.”

November 11, 1940. The Great War had ended on November 11, 1918. Margot turned her heavy face toward the Arc de Triomphe which stood over France's Tomb to her Unknown Soldier.

They were coming by the hundreds now and the flowers were piling into a soft white and pink and red mound. Students wearing black ties, mourning France's Occupation, middle-aged women in shabby coats, some old men with ill-fitting ancient military caps, quietly they came, inexorably.

A German major shouted orders to the soldiers climbing down from the trucks. Students near him looked up with hostile faces.

“There's going to be trouble,” Margot said sharply. The fools. They were silly fools. Their stupid little flowers didn't matter. Did they think flowers could hurt the Germans? That major had an ugly look in his eyes. Somebody was going to get hurt. How stupid it was to irritate the Germans. She began to move to her left, toward the Avenue Hoche and already the crowd was so thick that she had to struggle against the press of people moving toward the Arc. She used her bulk to push her way nearer the street. These fools were going to keep her from finding Madame.

Then, over the dull sound of shuffling feet and the soft rustle of cloth, she heard a car, a recognizable familiar throaty purr.

Thank God nobody but the rich and the Germans could drive cars. In the old days, cars would have been whizzing around the Arc, clogging the streets in mid-afternoon. Now, a single car could be heard.

Others heard the motor too and turned, looked back, their faces tight and angry. Only Germans and the friends of Germans had cars.

Margot was only ten yards away when the car eased to the curb and Jules hurried around to help Madame get out, then handed the crutches to her. “Madame, there is some kind of demonstration. I don't think you should get out now.”

“Return to that end of the block.” Mme. Leclerc pointed away from the Arc. “In half an hour. I will be there.” She turned and began to stump toward the Metro exit, her thin aged face held high. People made way for her. No wonder she had a car. She was old, crippled. She stopped once and turned toward the Arc. She bowed her head and closed her eyes and made the sign of the cross, then resumed her slow steady progress toward the Metro.