Last Train to Paris (24 page)

“But—” Bill protested.

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Bill. Let it alone. Just help me get out of here!”

“Wow, pal. Calm down,” he said. “There's nothing I can do—she's right behind you.” And with a newspaperman's curiosity, Bill didn't budge.

“Rose,” my mother said, slightly out of breath, and gripping my arm to turn me around. “Don't be such a horse's ass. Colette and Janet have asked if you would join us for dinner.”

“Wow,” Bill said. “Introduce me to your charming friend. She's the pencil artist I mentioned before.”

Pure hatred flooded my mind. Then shame. Then futility.

“This is Bill Jamison from the
Guardian
. Bill, this is my mother, Miriam Manon.”

‘Well, I'll be,' he exclaimed. ‘I've been watching you drawing during the trial. You're good. Really good!'

“Thank you,” she replied graciously.

 

I realized that there was no chance for me politely to turn down the dinner invitation. And, because I already had a professional relationship with both Colette and Janet, I could admit to myself that I was fascinated—now I would have the opportunity to observe my mother. But when we walked to the car, neither Colette nor Janet appeared to recognize me. “I would like you to meet my daughter Rose,” she said to them. “She's the cub reporter for the
Paris Courier
.” My heart sank with the patronizing attitude.

“No, my dear Miriam,” Colette said, saving the moment. “We've met her before. But we know her as R.B. Manon, the major correspondent for the largest English-language paper in France. Her work's well known and appreciated by all of us. Now, let's first go to my house before our dinner.”

I sat on the front seat of the black Peugeot; Colette, Janet Flanner, and my mother settled into the back. The car reeked of Colette's perfume. I felt as if we were in a funeral parlor, sitting beside a casket. I supposed the strong perfume covered the musty odor of perspiration after a long time spent in a stuffy courtroom. I tried to crack a window.

“No, dear, I will catch a cold,” Colette admonished. And I noticed a glimmer of a smile on the chauffeur's face.

 

We were deposited at 9 rue de Beaujolais in the Palais-Royal on the Right Bank. I had often walked by this building. Sometimes I saw Colette leaning on her windowsill, chatting with her strolling neighbors. Her rooms faced south and overlooked the sharply sculpted, much-too-manicured gardens. Set in the center of the gardens was an energetic fountain that reminded me of the white egret plumes on some of my Aunt Clara's hats.

“Come upstairs,” Colette pronounced. “We need to wash up after such a long day.” Colette unlocked the door and we all entered. “You go first, R.B.,” she said.

“Please, call me Rose,” I replied, and she smiled.

I did as I was told and then combed my hair—and with humor remembered to clean my hairs out of the sink, just as my mother had taught me. But, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I could see only the child I had once been. Distressed by this association, I flung cold water at my face, wiped it with my handkerchief, and lit a cigarette.

In the small hallway outside the toilet stood my mother, waiting for her turn. “Isn't this amazing?” she whispered. “Imagine, two nobodies from nowhere waiting to use the great Colette's toilet.”

“Ma, I have to tell you that I'm feeling really upset. Being here with you isn't good for me. I feel like a child.”

“You keep saying that, Rose. I don't know how to make you feel better. You certainly don't seem like a child to me. Your hair's even turning gray, like your father's.”

I thrust my hands deeper into my pockets. Smoke billowed around my face, and I tried to control the most ridiculous urge to shove my own mother.

“Perhaps you should check your dear Dr. Freud,” she said, “and see if he can help you.” And she entered the toilet and closed the door.

“Here, dear
,
here I am,” Colette directed from the other room.

Entering the room where Colette wrote melted away my anger. Although it was stuffy, she was sitting with a shimmering brown fur robe thrown over her legs, leaning back against the plump damask pillows. She had henna-colored hair and long, gray, luminous eyes that were surrounded by kohl and framed by thin arches of brows. Her full face was accented with a little chin and a mouth that was long and red. I knew that it was in this room,
la petite chambre rouge,
that she wrote. It was obvious why it had that name—the walls were covered with a deep, Pompeian red silk. Even the divan was upholstered in a shade of red, a deep carmine. On her desk were her collection of paperweights, a portable slanted writing table, a globe, a magnifying glass, a blue lamp, a jar with her fountain pens, and a Persian blue vase of yellow daffodils. Behind the desk were shelves set into an arched wall, holding books, the telephone, and framed butterflies, spread-eagled and lifeless. There was no clock to be seen.

Janet was sitting on the desk chair. She was wearing her trademark black tailored suit, this one a Chanel. Her monocle, used as an aid for her dark-brown eyes, dangled from a black ribbon around her neck. Her nose was too big for her face. Even though she was only forty-six years old, her bobbed hair was so white that it looked translucent. That evening Janet was suffering from kidney stones. She wasn't happy or comfortable.

“Sit down wherever you like,” Colette said to me, “but careful of the cats. Now, tell us what you've been covering in this ridiculous world.” I liked her directness and began to describe my experiences in Berlin. The women appeared to be interested.

“There's going to be war—a war that may even exceed the Great War,” I said in a firm voice, trying not to sound as if I were pontificating, and they nodded in agreement. I could feel my mature expertise returning to my brain. What a relief, I thought. I'm speaking like a grown-up.

“Do you really think there's going to be a war?” my mother asked, walking into the room.

‘Oh, my dear Miriam,' Janet said. ‘After you've been here for a while, and then look back, you'll begin to understand the naïveté of Americans. Of course there'll be a war–indeed, all of Europe's balanced on a seesaw.'

“Before we get into a long discussion, or an argument, let's eat,” Colette said. “I'm starved. And you,” she said, pointing at Janet, “you must not drink wine with your kidney stones. It's what causes the pain.”

“Nonsense,” said Janet. “And after a day of watching that murderer, I need a drink. Let's go.”

On the street, I walked behind the three women. They were all short. While my mother and Colette were rotund, both with bigger-than-normal feet, Janet was thin, with tiny feet that moved her body like a bird.

We walked to a bistro in the passage Choiseul. “This is the night,” Colette said, “that they serve a special cassoulet. But I have to be careful. I'm getting fat, because I like my food too much. The new oracle,” she complained, “is the bathroom scale.” She smiled. “So I don't own one.”

We were hungry—and we were so animated by the trial that we talked with our mouths full of food, holding white napkins up, trying to be polite.

My mother took center stage. “Vosberg has an odd face,” she said. “Drawing him is difficult.”

“I think,” Janet said, “that he's exceptionally handsome in the medieval way—his features are those of a Holbein etching, with an alert, inquiring, open, hungry eye, an aquiline nose, and a handsome and sensual mouth. I can see why a woman like Stella Mair would be attracted.”

“That's a perfect description,” my mother said, “and—”

“Wait,” Janet said, holding up her hand with its ever-present cigarette. “I have more to say about our Miss Stella.”

I felt my stomach flop and watched my mother's stoic face. I realized that the other two women had no idea about our family connection to Stella.

“You see,” Janet said, “I know a girl here in Paris who knew her—had known her since she was a child in Philadelphia. My friend works at the American Express office. She said that Stella Mair was a grabby little American. Still, I do have to admit that it was an awful thing to go out to tea with a new foreign beau and have him strangle her.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “Stella made friends easily. That doesn't mean she was
loose
. It simply means that she was an honest-to-goodness American girl. Anyway, she came from Brooklyn, not Philadelphia.”

“Oh, you're right, R.B.,” Janet said sarcastically. “Sure. My friend must have given me information about the wrong woman.”

No one at the table challenged her, and I was afraid of embarrassing myself.

I changed the subject. “Vosberg is emblematic of our time. He represents our anxieties. Our anxieties for our daughters—our anxieties for France. He's indeed a treacherous man.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

We had finished—run out of things to say—full of cassoulet and tipsy on red wine. And Janet had turned gray with pain.

“You see, dear, it's the wine,” said Colette.

“I must go,” Janet said, “I don't feel well. See you all tomorrow.”

“The poor woman,” my mother said after she left. “She—”

And Colette interrupted. “She's stubborn, stubborn as an ass!”

 

That night Czecho-Slovakia ceased to exist. I heard from the reporters in my office that the Czechs were so surprised by the sudden occupation that the only resistance they put up was to throw snowballs at Hitler's troops. But I found it hard to find humor in the Czech story. As I walked home from the office, I noticed a waning of human energy and activity. People appeared to slink among the shadows. Noisy conversations and laughter were missing. There was an eerie silence in the air. It was obvious that people were preoccupied with despair for Europe, for their own lives. France was dying. And I was preoccupied with wondering what I was doing in France at all. Stella was dead. This I knew. Leon was still alive—so far as I knew.

 

I was brimming with both boredom and longing. I had no social life. Each evening Pete and I arrived at the newspaper office with only enough time to file our story. After that, Pete would go home to his family, and I would eat at a bistro, sometimes with a colleague, but most often alone. I wasn't bathing enough; I didn't have the time. My clothes needed to be washed. When I had been with my mother at Colette's apartment, I could tell by her grimace that she thought I smelled. Wine, cigarettes, and coffee, along with hard salami, cheese, and bread, were the staples of my culinary life.

 

My political and humanitarian views were being relentlessly challenged. I had come from a family of contrasts. Mother was the one who owned and used the shotgun; my father wouldn't touch it. I've always stood somewhere in between—the worst place to be. It left me adrift in a roiling sea of opinions. My father had believed that capital punishment was wrong, but I knew that my mother was rooting for Vosberg's demise. Again, I was caught in between. Then I thought about Leon and his parents, and my entire tough-girl belief system came tumbling down. I chose my father's side.

The next day in court made me furious. I watched Vosberg sit quietly and elegantly, his knees crossed, his face erased of feelings. I felt a repugnance so visceral that I had to hold onto both sides of my seat to prevent myself from leaping forward and punching him in the face. Fortunately, the judge called an early recess for lunch. I was relieved to get away from such ugliness—relieved to go outside into the fresh air.

 

I looked around for my mother and found her with her new pals—along with Madame Sand. “Come,” Colette said to the group, “let's go have lunch. Everyone,” she said, “please meet Aurora Sand.”

“Oh, Miss Manon, it's so good to see you again,” Madame Sand said enthusiastically. I could see that everyone, especially my mother, was impressed.

We walked rather slowly, because of Colette's bad feet, to a café across the street from the court. With great ceremony we were led to a large table at the window.

It took a while to order. Everyone had questions, especially Colette. How was the veal cooked? When was it purchased from the butcher? Was the butcher in Paris? What was his name? My mother and I smiled at each other over the silliness of the inquisition, but the others took it quite seriously.

Out of the blue, as if our being together was the continuation from another meal, Janet said, “I think Vosberg's homosexual.”

“Ah,” everyone said in unison.

“When he said in his earlier testimony,” she continued, “‘I was close to her on the sofa,' the American press assumed there was sex. But he used the word ‘
allongé
,'
which means to stretch out, as on a sofa—in French, the word has no erotic significance at all. And the police definitely stated that the autopsy showed that there was no intercourse. I understand, thanks to R.B.'s correction, that she wasn't a stay-out-all-night kind of girl. And it's obvious that her respectable Jewish aunt would have never expected Stella to be impolite.”

I caught myself feeling piqued at Janet for having to identify Clara as “Jewish.” “Excuse me, but what does being Jewish have to do with it?” I asked. “Would you say ‘Christian' if her aunt had been Christian? I don't think so.”

For a pregnant moment the women were uncomfortable. Janet turned pink with either rage or embarrassment. I could sense that they were all thinking about how to escape the discomfort I had created.

“I agree with what Janet said earlier about Vosberg,” said Colette. “He's unusual for a murderer. He's a romantic. He loves flowers and was even cultivating roses at his villa. And he's certainly handsome!”

I knew I was outgunned and folded my hands on my lap, deciding to be quiet.