Escape From Paris (17 page)

Days slipped by. The heat lessened and the leaves began to flame orange and red. From the attic window, he could look out and see an ancient oak. Every day a few more leaves drifted down into untidy autumnal heaps.

Each night, when Mme. Moreau returned, he looked up hopefully, then turned away.

He was beginning to be able to walk with only a moderate limp. The wound was closed but the skin felt strange around it and he had noticed last night during his first bath in a week, for there was so little soap and water had to be heated in the kitchen and fuel was too precious to waste, pinkish streaks radiating downward from the lumpy discolored scar. The wound no longer hurt, unless he bumped against something, but he didn't feel well. And he was always hot.

Today he felt awful. He kept to his schedule but he did his exercise grimly, mouth tight, and his thoughts were as dark and murky as water in a stagnant pond. He was just beginning to pick up his day's litter, a stack of books by the couch, the cup with dregs of ersatz coffee, yesterday's Paris newspaper, the Atlas, when he heard, clear and distinct, familiar after these three long weeks, the brisk clatter of Mme. Moreau's sturdy shoes against the cobbled stones.

Jonathan came to life, grabbing up the paper and the book and the cup, lunging hurriedly toward the dining room and the narrow steps that twisted up to the single bedroom and higher yet to the tiny attic. It was only half-past five. What had happened? What was bringing her home early?

The key scraped in the lock. No time to get to the attic. Was anyone with her? Was something wrong? He dumped his armload on the dining room table and grabbed up a straight chair and waited, pressed against the wall.

The door slammed behind her. He heard her uneven breaths. She must have hurried awfully fast. He lifted up the chair.

“Jonathan? Jonathan, where are you?”

Slowly he put down the chair.

She swept into the dining room. A smile softened her severe face. She held up her school satchel. “I have them here,” she said excitedly. “Your papers. Everything's set, Jonathan. You leave tonight.”

Eleanor kissed Michael's cheek. Robert shook his hand. Linda smiled and realized she was holding back tears.

Michael looked at each of them. “I can't thank you enough.” His voice broke a little at the end.

“No thanks,” Eleanor said quickly. “We thank you, Michael. Go to England and keep on fighting them and someday you'll come back to Paris and we'll have a grand reunion. You and Linda and Robert and . . . and Andre, he'll be home by then, and myself. We'll take you to a fine little café, La Bonne Franquette, up in Montmartre. That's a promise.”

He nodded, pressed his lips together.

Linda said it. “It's time now.”

Michael took the little mesh bag that Eleanor had fixed, a loaf of bread, cheese, a bottle of wine. A little slowly, he also picked up a thick woolen jacket, red-and-black checked. “I hate to take this, Mme. Masson. Your husband will need it when he comes home.”

Eleanor didn't look at the jacket but Linda saw the imperceptible change in her sister's face and realized with a cold horror that Eleanor didn't expect Andre to come home again. Ever.

Eleanor looked at Linda. “The priest said they cross the Pyrenees into Spain, didn't he?”

Numbly, still shaken by her sudden insight, Linda nodded.

“Well then, Michael, you will need it more than Andre. By the time you reach the border, the weather will be turning very cold up in the mountains. Soon the snow will begin. You must take the jacket. Andre would want you to have it.”

Father Laurent had instructed Linda to bring Michael to the Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens between 10 a.m. and a quarter past.

Linda was reaching for the door knob when Eleanor asked, “Do you think it would do any harm if Robert and I followed along? We'll pretend we don't know you, of course.”

Linda hesitated for an instant. But it couldn't make any difference that she could see.

They walked down the Boul' Mich', Eleanor and Robert trailing about twenty yards behind. They passed bookstores and cafes. Every day a few more shops opened, though the boarded-up windows on every block still reminded of those who had fled in June and had not returned.

Linda and Michael didn't talk. She was tautly conscious of him beside her. She wished they had given him a cap to cover his thin blond hair. A long strand fell over his forehead. He looked so English. Linda began to walk faster. If she could just get him to the park and to the fountain. Once he was delivered to Father Laurent, they would be safe again. Eleanor and Robert would be free of the danger she had brought to them when she smuggled Michael out of the hospital. Ever since the posters had gone up, the black-and-white posters announcing death for those who did not surrender Englishmen, Linda passed each German soldier with a sickening sensation of dread. Firing squad. To be lined up in front of a firing squad, to stand, blindfolded, and wait. To hear, in that last instant, the guttural command to fire.

Linda saw the gray-green of a German staff car approaching and she stumbled.

Michael looked down. “What's wrong?”

“Hush.
Ne parle pas anglais
.”

“Sorry,” he muttered and she could have screamed at him. The instant the car passed, she was filled with regret. For God's sake, even the Germans couldn't tell a man on a sidewalk twenty feet away was speaking English. But she was afraid, afraid all the way through. They were so near now to safety, she and Eleanor and Robert. Just a few more minutes and all the strain would be over. They could walk away, leave the apartment empty. They wouldn't have to be afraid again.

She might even go home. Oh God, what she would give to go home. It would be all right to go home now. There wasn't anything more she could do to help Eleanor. And, if she sensed the truth, Eleanor no longer hoped for Andre's return. Perhaps Eleanor and Robert would come, too. They could all go home. Pasadena would be lovely now, anemones blazing against the wall in the backyard, the sweet smell of hibiscus, soft cool air and nowhere the sharp green of Army uniforms or the soul warping black of the SS.

The air was cool on the path leading to the fountain, huge trees blocking the thin September sun. Red and yellow and brown leaves crackled underfoot. It was beginning to feel like fall, a cool edge beneath the morning warmth. The path was wide enough here for four to walk abreast. Room, then, to pass the couple walking toward them. Once again her legs were leaden, felt clumsy and unmanageable. Michael reached out, gently, to take her arm.

The German soldier and the girl with him didn't look at Linda and Michael as they passed and Linda was ashamed of the way her arm trembled. She pulled free from Michael. “It's all right,” she whispered. “I'm all right.” Soon she would be all right. The constant pressure was going to end, no more tension and danger and, worst of all, the insidious unending fear that turned her mouth to chalk and tightened her chest until it hurt to breathe.

“Look for the artist,” Father Laurent had said.

The easel sat to the right of the fountain. The artist stood in front of it, as tall and angular as she remembered. Somehow, she was surprised when she saw him. She had not thought he would be there in person. Slowly, casually, she and Michael strolled toward the easel, stopped to look at the drawing.

It was a penciled sketch, not quite finished, but with only the contrast of soft lead against the creamy manila paper, he had caught the essence of the fountain, the slender and young and graceful bodies of Acis and Galatea, each absorbed, consumed by the other, Galatea lying back against Acis, cradled in his arm, looking up into his eyes, and, above them, driven by jealousy, implacably dangerous, the huge Cyclops, Polyphemus, crouched, forever captured in bronze in the act of rolling the huge boulder down upon the lovers.

Linda looked from the drawing to the fountain, at the pale clean-limbed lovely bodies of Acis and Galatea. So beautiful and so vulnerable. “
C'est bon
.”

“
Merci
.” Father Laurent deepened a shadow, murmured, “There is a woman with a boy. Behind us. They seem to be watching.”

Linda bit her lip. “I'm sorry. That's Eleanor and my nephew, Robert. They wanted to see Michael off.”

“That's all right. I just wanted to be sure.” The priest half turned, smiling at Linda and Michael, as a painter politely would respond when his work was admired. “Michael?”

Michael nodded.

“Take the path to your left. Follow it to the lake. There is a boy in a yellow sweater, sailing a red toy sailboat that is almost a half meter long. Go up to him and say, ‘That is a handsome boat, Claude,' He will take you from there.” The priest repeated the French sentence twice.

“That is a handsome boat, Claude.” Michael managed the French well enough. After a swift glance at Linda, he turned and walked quickly away.

Linda was ready to leave when, to hide the almost overwhelming surge of relief that swept her as Michael was lost to sight, she said abruptly, “I didn't expect you to be here, Father. I thought, when we talked the other day, that one of your helpers would meet me.”

He frowned at the drawing. “I had not intended to come.” He paused and looked around the clearing, at Eleanor and Robert, dawdling now on the other side of the fountain, at a student stretched out on a bench, his sweater over his face, at the old woman walking slowly down the path, her head bent, stopping to pluck up any broken twig or piece of bark. “You came to me for help and now I must ask you for help.”

Linda looked at him, startled.

“Please, look at the painting and do not appear worried.”

Linda leaned forward, as if to see the drawing better. “What is it, Father?”

“I did not tell you, for there was no need, but the reason I could take Michael was because I am a part of a chain that helps English soldiers reach Spain. It began in July when a priest I knew at seminary dropped by to see me. He lives in a village in Northern France. There are thousands of English soldiers hiding in the woods up there and he is bringing them, in groups of four, to Paris. He turns them over to me and I see them on their way to Bordeaux. A former student of mine picks them up there and takes them across the Demarkation Line. He has a friend who sees them on to Hendaye. From there . . . But you see how it works. It all began a little blindly. My friend came to me, I went in search of a friend in Bordeaux, he found a friend in Hendaye. I have also been the one who obtains the necessary papers. That takes time so sometimes it means the men that come to Paris must wait a while before leaving. That brings me to my difficulty today.”

“Yes.” Her throat was dry.

“The home where I had arranged for the men to stay tonight . . .”

“Yes?”

“A Gestapo agent has moved in upstairs.”

But you know so many people, Linda wanted to cry, all the people in your Church, hundreds of them, and others, people you've known for years. In all of Paris, can't you ask someone else?

“Four soldiers,” she whispered.

“Yes. They may need to stay for several days, perhaps until next weekend. When I heard that we needed to find another place, I thought of you immediately. An apartment in the student quarter. Oh, it couldn't be better.”

“The apartment is empty,” she said slowly.

ALL PERSONS HARBOURING ENGLISH SOLDIERS . . . NOT LATER THAN . . . WILL BE SHOT . . . 

She could see the edge of the poster from where she stood. The old familiar tension tightened the muscles in her shoulders. He was so sure of her answer. That hurt almost as much as the fear flickering deep within her, like a banked fire that would explode at any time.

“But the apartment is leased by my sister, you see, and I will have to ask her.”

“Of course. I understand. It isn't your decision to make.” Father Laurent looked toward Eleanor and Robert, sitting now on an iron park bench. They were smiling, excited and happy, Linda knew, that Michael was safely on his way. Eleanor looked so young. She was much thinner because of their limited diet. Her face was slender, almost ethereal, the face Linda recalled from her childhood. Eleanor bent close to her son, speaking rapidly, one hand gesturing toward the pond. He nodded and their laughter rang across the dusty clearing.

It was Robert who first felt Linda's glance. He, then his mother, turned suddenly still faces toward her.

Linda gazed at the priest. When he nodded, she waved for Eleanor and Robert to come.

Father Laurent took both Eleanor's hands in his. “My daughter, I am delighted to have this chance to meet you.”

“Is it all right?” Eleanor asked uncertainly. “Michael?”

“Everything is quite all right about Michael.” Father Laurent looked at Robert then back at Eleanor. “You are very brave, Madame.”

Eleanor shook her head quickly. “Such a small thing, Father.”

“To risk your life and that of your son's?”