Escape From Paris (27 page)

When she was gone, Linda and Jonathan looked at each other.

He was frowning.

Linda began to gather up her coat.

“Linda.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to apply for an ausweis.”

They had been over this before. She turned away. “Eleanor needs me.”

“Eleanor should apply for one also. She is still an American citizen.”

“They might not let Robert leave. So she won't even think about it. It's too late.”

“It's not too late for you.”

She didn't answer.

He came up behind her, gently turned her to face him. “Eleanor knows time is running out. It's running out for everyone. Last week Father Laurent sent word to six people who had been helping in the escape line to leave and save themselves. How long will it be until—”

“Until what, Jonathan?” Eleanor interrupted from the door.

Jonathan turned and looked at her gravely. “Until the Gestapo catch all of you, Eleanor.”

She stood by the door, her face white with fatigue. “I don't know, Jonathan. But we have to keep on as long as we can. Every man we send back is another to fight for England and France's only hope is that England will continue to resist.”

“I can't quarrel with your trying to save other Englishmen. That would be a little bit much, wouldn't it? I can't say, well, save me, but don't help any other chaps. But please, Eleanor, send Linda home.”

“Yes. It's time.”

“Are you going to talk about me like I'm a child? Not to be asked but merely to be told? What if I don't want to go home?” To go home. Home. She could see the house suddenly, the way it had always been, a long creamy adobe house with pepper trees and eucalyptus and tall slender palms. The grass was always trimmed just perfectly and, even in November, it was a cool green carpet that smelled like spring. But it isn't that way anymore, she thought confusedly. Mother and Daddy are dead and Frank has probably sold the house by now and there isn't any home for me, anywhere.

“I don't want . . . I want . . .” She began to cry and that infuriated her. Why did she cry at everything anymore? Jonathan must think she was the biggest sop in the world. Oh Jonathan, you will leave in two weeks. Only two more weeks.

Eleanor touched her shoulder. “It's all right, Lindy, don't cry. I know you don't want to leave. But none of us can do what we want these days. Jonathan is right, it's time for you to go. Relations between Germany and America are getting more strained every day. You are so transparently American. That attracts attention. Yes, you must go. I want you to apply for an ausweis tomorrow.”

Linda stood in line for three hours at the rue Galilee office to apply for an ausweis. She was applying for permission to cross the Demarkation Line and travel through Vichy France to Spain then Portugal. And sail for home.

Would Jonathan reach England? Could she go to England? She would try, when she reached Lisbon. But would Jonathan want her to come? It was cold in the barren waiting room but the offices where the German officials worked were almost stuffy with warmth.

The woman in front of Linda asked, “How many times have you been here?”

“This is my first.”

“Oh well, it takes months. Where do you want to go?”

“Home. To the United States. My sister is married to a Frenchman and I was visiting her when the Blitzkrieg started.”

“Ah well, they'll likely let you go. More likely than they'll let a Frenchman go to Bordeaux,” she said bitterly. “This is the fourth time I've been here in two months. I first came the second week in September. I'm from Limoges and my family got word to me that my sister was dying. The Boche said to come back in a week. I did, but they still put me off. Then she died. I tried to get permission to go to the funeral. They said funerals didn't matter. Now I've had word my mother's in the hospital with a heart attack.”

The line crawled slowly forward. It was very quiet in the waiting area, a sullen angry quiet.

I'm glad I'm not German, Linda thought. I would hate to be surrounded, enveloped by this unspoken but seething hatred. It didn't seem to bother the clerks who took the applications. A sergeant major in one corner heard special pleas. Linda overheard the exchange between the woman who had spoken to her and the sergeant.

“Please. Let me go this time. My brother doesn't think my mother will live.”

“Is he a doctor?”

“No, but she is so ill and he says she has lost her will to live. He doesn't think she will last the week.”

The sergeant riffled through a small pile of slips on his desk. Then he shook his head. “Request denied. All the special permits for this week have already been given.” He looked past her, at Linda. “Next.”

“Please,” the woman cried, “one more couldn't make any difference. Why won't you let me go?”

“Your brother is there. She has a family member in attendance.”

“I am her only daughter left. She is calling for me.”

“Next,” he said again, ignoring her.

Linda handed the sergeant her completed application form, her identity card and her American passport.

“American. Pasadena. I've never been to California but I visited St. Louis during the World's Fair. I have a cousin who lives there. Do you know St. Louis?”

Linda shook her head. “I've never been to St. Louis.” What kind of person was he? He was smiling at Linda, eager to talk to her in English. Why had he treated the Frenchwoman so peremptorily?

He stamped her application and handed it and her papers back to her. “Take these to the third desk from the left, Fraulein, and your application will be filed.”

“How long do you suppose it will take?”

He smiled. “Not long. Perhaps next week it will be ready.”

She felt a wave of distress as she moved across the room. She heard the little ripple of words, oh, an American, stamped the first time, that's why. She didn't look at any of the tired faces of the people still waiting. At the third desk, she once again handed over the application and her identity papers.

A pudgy private with a perpetual worried frown took them. He looked to see if the application bore the official stamp, flipped open a ledger with narrow lines and laboriously began to write her name and age and residence, her destination. He looked up. ”When do you want to leave, Fraulein?”

To leave. It sounded simple, easy. Was it really going to be this easy to leave France? “As soon as possible.”

He thumbed through a card index, rubbed his nose in thought. “You understand, Fraulein, there are many ahead of you. December 13 is the first open date.” He looked up and laughed and the laughter sounded strange in the sullen quiet. “It's Friday the 13th, Fraulein. Are you superstitious?”

Superstitious? Linda shivered as she stepped out into the biting cold. She pulled the inadequate blue spring coat closer against her and began to walk swiftly toward the Metro. It would be a lucky Friday the 13
th
if she could start home. But it was hard to believe she was going to obtain her ausweis so easily. The private had added another stamp and told her to return next week to pick it up. Today was Friday, November 8. She could pick up her permit next week and then it would only be a little more than a month and she would leave.

Jonathan would be gone by then.

One more dreary month, fighting the cold and the constant gnawing hunger. There was never enough to eat. One more month to be afraid and then she could go home.

All the way across town on the Metro, she hugged a leather strap and rode with her eyes closed and permitted herself to think of home because, for the first time in so long, it didn't seem an impossible dream. She would spend Christmas with Frank and Betty. Betty always fixed Posadas, the long row of paper sacks with candles glimmering inside, along the sidewalk leading up to the house. The Christmas tree, an Oregon fir, would sit in their living room. She would go to Mother's, or wherever things were stored, and get out the box of Christmas decorations. The same ones they had used ever since she was a little girl. Frank and Betty would love them, too. The wooden gingerbread man with black jade eyes. The delicate glass redbird that she always put on a branch next to a popcorn ball. The tiny church her grandfather had carved and painted. To sit beneath the tree, loveliest of all, the wooden crèche that her parents had brought back from a trip around the world.

Linda had always loved the crèche best of all and it was she who laid the Christ child in his manger bed on Christmas Eve. The figures were carved from a darkly golden wood and every tiny detail was perfect, Mary's smile, Joseph's awe, the portly dignity of the Three Wise Men.

She could see her Mother, reaching up in the basement closet to lift down the box. Every year, she had said the same thing. “Just think, Linda, this has come half way around the world to be part of our Christmas, all the way from a little Bavarian village to Pasadena.”

Linda's eyes opened. She had never thought before that the figures came from Germany. They were so beautiful, so lovingly done. By a German. By a German. By a German. The words rolled over and over in her mind to the rhythm of the train. By a German. She shivered.

The walk from the Metro station seemed longer than ever. It was getting dark. The Arc de Triomphe loomed behind her, dark, massive. Pedestrians hurried, heads down against the cold wind. At the beginning of their block, Linda paused and looked up. All four shades across the front of their apartment were down. Eleanor had devised a signal to prevent all of them from being arrested should the Gestapo come and find only one of them home.

At any unexpected knock, a lighter-colored shade, which Eleanor had installed in the second window, could be pulled down instead. They had experimented and the lighter shade was distinct, even at night, but not noticeable enough to attract the attention of anyone not looking for it.

The four shades were uniform in color.

Linda walked a little faster. The apartment would be cold, but not quite this cold. She could wrap up in a blanket and there would be hot soup for dinner. And in a month, just a little more than a month, she could start for home. She might be home by Christmas.

It was icy cold in the dining room but Eleanor smiled happily at her son and sister. Robert wore his heavy plaid jacket. Linda was bundled in a wool blanket and Eleanor wore her thickest tweed suit.

“Tonight is going to be a very happy night. We are going to have one rule at the dinner table. No one will talk of the war. Not one word. We are going to have dinner and later, over coffee—”

“Coffee?” Linda exclaimed.

Eleanor nodded. “Coffee and some other marvelous surprises. The black market is richer tonight but we are going to have a fine meal.” Her tone was almost defiant.

Linda wondered how Eleanor had come up with the money but she wasn't going to ask about it or worry. From the minute she had come home tonight, she had smelled the most marvelous aromas. It had been so long since they had eaten anything but watery soup without even potatoes. They hadn't had any sugar for almost a month. Linda felt a twinge of guilt. She had used up almost the last of their sugar to make Jonathan's birthday crisp.

Robert was excited. “What other surprises, Mother?”

“We received a letter from Uncle Frank today. He sent some money. Thank God he did. Though I'm going to be able to get some money next Monday to help us with our soldiers, but we needed money, too. I went out and bought wonderful food. We are going to have a lovely dinner, thanks to Uncle Frank. I have saved his letter for all of us to read together tonight.”

A year ago, none of them would have thought this a fine dinner. It would have been a nice supper, but nothing remarkable. Tonight they ate almost in silence, slowly, slowly, savoring every bite, puffy sweet omelets with bits of cheese, potatoes fried very crisp and brown, and, unimaginable luxury, thick slices of ham.

After dinner, they sat closely around the potbellied stove in the living room. Robert stuffed it full of the paper balls they used for fuel. “We're almost out, Mother. I soaked all of last week's papers and mushed them into balls, but this is the last of them.”