Last Train to Paris

Europa Editions
214 West 29th St., Suite 1003
New York NY 10001
[email protected]
www.europaeditions.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2013 by Michele Zackheim
First publication 2013 by Europa Editions
Translation by $TRADUTTORE$
Original Title:
$ORIGINAL_TITLE$
Translation copyright © 2013 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
ISBN 9781609451899

Michele Zackheim

LAST TRAIN TO PARIS

For Jane Lincoln Taylor

Get your facts first and then you can distort 'em
as much as you like.
—MARK TWAIN

A German citizen named Eugen Weidmann abducted a distant cousin of mine in Paris in 1937. For more than two years in Europe, Britain, and the United States, it was a flashy headline news story. The case fascinated me, so I set out to write a nonfiction novel. I did all the requisite research. I traveled to Paris and Berlin. I had done this kind of writing before. But I became far more interested in my fictional characters and less in the ‘real' people. Except for a few. The lawyers Renée Jardin and Moro-Giafferi are real. Colette is real. Janet Flanner is real. Aurora Sand is real–and indeed, they were all part of the real story. The rest are from my imagination.

 

Some days, I'm too angry for words. Those are the days when I can't get to my writing table. When I don't bother to dress. When I stay in my ratty blue chenille bathrobe and shuffle around the house in my slippers. Those days I eat yogurt out of the container, and drink too much coffee—sometimes too much whiskey. I read the newspaper and carry on conversations with myself about the dismal state of the universe. Over the years people have tried to assure me that as I grow older I will become less angry, more accepting of the stupidity I see on our planet. This has not proved true. Sometimes, to ease the tension, I'll read a mystery, hoping to be fooled; often I waste time daydreaming. But I have a job to do, a column to compose, so eventually I'll hunker down and begin writing. Then it gets interesting. There is a shift in my mind and my body. Love takes over. My pen begins to tickle my passion for words and I squirm with pleasure. I still love to use a fountain pen—love the way the smoothed nib pushes the stream of blue ink across the paper, making letters, making words—trying to make sense of the world. I write for a short time and then remove my pen from the paper, put on the cap, and place my fingers on the keys of the typewriter. As if by magic, I write my weekly column for the
New York
Courier
. But, really, it's not magic. It's a facility with rhythm, language, and ideas that comes with age and hard work. And I do have to admit that I still get a thrill when I turn a newsprint page and find my byline: “R. B. Manon.”

 

I love my old house in the rolling hills of upper New York State. Made of wood that's gray with age, it has a peaked roof, ornate gables, and faded red window frames that sag toward the south. It reminds me of the Victorian houses that dotted the mountains of Nevada. And although I'm loath to remember my childhood, the architecture remains in my mind as calming and pretty.

The back of my house has a screened-in porch and faces the southeast. Ten years ago I planted wisteria, a climbing vine, on the south side. Now it snakes around one porch pillar, curls itself around the crossbeam, winds down the other side, and then climbs up again, twisting and turning back and forth. I can no longer tell if it's the woody wisteria holding up the porch roof or if it's the pillars. What I do know is that in the spring, the flowers drip from the vines, creating a gossamer fringe of lavender.

 

A reminiscence. Spring in Paris. Overnight, shops moved their wares out onto the sidewalk. Fresh-cut flowers, especially modest bunches of violets; potted pink and red geraniums; lovebirds cooing, baritone pigeons, squawking hens, soprano canaries, even small green turtles whose shells were painted with
J'aime Paris
. The streets became alive with the new season, just like my splendid twelve acres of rolling hills and blooming wildflowers.

 

It's the spring of 1992. Except for a lip of charcoal-colored cloud peeking over the horizon, the weather's clear. Here I am, an old woman of eighty-seven, on my knees pulling weeds in the cool morning. I hear the phone ringing in the house. Blast it!—it always rings when I'm out here. I know there's no chance of standing up, climbing the steps to the porch, going inside to the kitchen, and getting to it before the answering machine does its job. So I don't bother.

As the afternoon approaches, I'm getting hot and tired and cranky. Finally, achingly, I stand, walk to the porch, climb the three steps, and lower myself into a faded green rocking chair in the shade. Looking out over the hills, I think about the horizon, that mysterious threshold between earth and sky—and I remember the Eiffel Tower. My God! It's a little more than fifty years since I worked in Paris. I remember how I used to long to see over the horizon to the other side. Whenever I was feeling stifled, or more angry than usual, I would go to the top of my urban mountain—the Eiffel Tower. Resting my arms on the railing, I would gaze west across the imaginary sea to the mountains in Nevada where I was born.

One early morning in 1940, it all changed. The French surrendered Paris to the Germans. The city was eerily silent, bereft of many of its citizens. My instinct was to get to my mountain. As I walked toward the Seine on the boulevard St. Germain, I saw Parisians sneaking around corners, hugging walls, slinking past windows painted with ugly methylene blue.

The SS were everywhere. Their gray field blouses, cinched with thick black leather belts and closed with shiny silver buckles, were inscribed
Gott mit uns—
God Is with Us. I was frightened. I knew firsthand how rough and unforgiving those conquerors could be. But I persisted, turned left along the river, and after a short while, turned left again. I walked over the Pont d'Iéna, seeing before me the Eiffel Tower and beyond to the Parc du Champ de Mars. The park was dotted with ancient lime trees casting their shadows, creating umbrellas of coolness. I looked up. The catastrophe was clear. Flying from the top of the Eiffel Tower was a huge red flag with a black swastika in a white circle.

I needed to get to the summit, but all the elevators were out of order. Sabotage. I wasn't sure if the guard was German or French; he wasn't wearing a uniform. I spoke in French. He didn't understand. I switched to German and he did. He told me that someone had removed crucial parts from the mechanisms. So I climbed. It took a long time. The metal steps were treacherous; they could be slippery, the handrails thin. By the time I reached the second deck, I was exhausted—and relieved to see a chain blocking the rest of the stairs. Still, I was high enough to look out and over the wide expanse of Paris. I was struck by both the city's astonishing beauty and the crushing undercurrent of fear. Rather than taking a deep breath and imagining what brightness was over the horizon, I felt paralyzed by the disaster at hand.

 

Now, many years later, on this pleasant summer day, I look over my peaceful green hills and feel safe. My only enemy is time.

It isn't until the afternoon that I remember to check the answering machine. It's a message from the delivery company, informing me that they will arrive tomorrow morning.

A few weeks ago, I was informed by the
Paris Courier
's office that the newspaper was moving to new headquarters and the staff was cleaning out the basement. Would I like the crate that they had been storing for me since the beginning of World War II? I said yes, of course, curious about retrieving whatever ancient fragments of my old life still existed. But I was also surprised. I had heard that the newspaper's basement had flooded during the war. Oh well, I remember having thought—there go my notes.

For years I had been avoiding the task of organizing my archive, using the lost notes as my excuse for doing nothing. Now I couldn't avoid it. And what a job it threatened to be! I dreaded it. Like most journalists, I never throw anything away. After all, one never can tell. I might be sued—a researcher might need information that I have—I might need to refer back in time for a story I'm writing. Everything after 1940 is here in my house, roughly tossed into boxes, sometimes labeled with the year, sometimes not.

 

The next morning is cloudy and the sky a mottled steel gray. I've become melancholy, like the weather. Then there is a loud clap of thunder, and just as it begins to rain, the delivery van arrives. What bad luck. But the man wrangles something onto a hand truck and delivers my young life to my elderly house.

I'm astonished. Standing before me is my old red-leather traveling trunk, not a box. “What the hell,” I say aloud, and have to sit down.

I eye the trunk as if it's an ogre in repose. Get on with it, Rosie, I say to myself, don't be such a coward. But the latches are glued shut with the passage of time. It rankles me. I get a chisel and hammer from the pantry and begin to tap my way lightly around the edges. Before long my hands ache, yet I'm persistent. And I'm fascinated. Soon there is a small pile of rusty dust, but the latches still won't open. I place the chisel in a logical spot and whack it with the hammer. Then I do the same to the second latch. They are both open.

I wait.

I pour myself a glass of whiskey.

I open the trunk.

Out wafts the fragrance of cloistered time.

There, sitting on top, alongside George Sand and Balzac, is my Freud—still stuffed with notes. Oh, no, this isn't mine—it's Andy Roth's. I don't want to open it, afraid it will release old demons into my beloved house. Ah, here's my copy. Just as old and tattered, but filled with my own typed notes and underlines and many, many exclamation marks. Everything then was so important, so dramatic, so tragic. I put Freud aside for the moment, not wanting to be detoured. The next layer is a collection of newspaper articles that I had written in Europe. Careful. They are yellowed, flaking—disintegrating. I save them for later.

Next is a pile of handwritten notes on onionskin paper. They are now so delicate, so fragile—the ink has faded but they're readable. These notes were my witness to the world going mad. I remember a friend telling me that when he came across his old journals, he opened one to an arbitrary page and remembered years of searching and confusion and anger. In one fell swoop, he gathered them up and threw them into a passing garbage truck. “It's good the truck was there at the right moment,” he said. “Otherwise, I might have read them and jumped off a bridge!” But I see it from a different perspective. It will be interesting for me to read my old self. I'm curious. I wonder how honest I was? As a reporter I've always been interested in the truth. Was I really determined to tell the truth when I was young?

It's raining hard—the tin roof is protecting me, while at the same time making a huge racket. No matter. I'm wrapped in words and memories. Here are the remnants of my early life. I wonder who I was. Making myself comfortable on the sofa, I begin to read.

 

* * *

 

In 1933, I had just traveled across the sea to the second floor of the
Paris
Courier
's editorial office. It was midnight. I remember entering bedlam. It reminded me of a George Bellows painting of an action-packed boxing ring and arena—ochres, grays, an occasional spot of color. Cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke was hanging in the air, adding its aroma to a miasma of damp paper and stale ink. It made my eyes water. The reporters were working at several large, scratched, coffee- and beer-ringed oak tables that made a square in the middle of the room. Over the tables dangled bare light bulbs that were swaying in slow motion to the noise and the bustle. There was too much smoke and too little bright light. The rewrite men were sitting at battered desks haphazardly placed around the room, banging away at rackety typewriters.