Escape From Paris (18 page)

“It is worth a risk to feel alive again.” Eleanor's thin face looked suddenly bleak. “But now it's done. Over. While we had Michael, while we were searching for a way to help him, it wasn't so hard, being without Andre, being here with the Germans all around us. Now it will be like that awful summer again, Paris dreary and empty, day after day of nothing.”

Linda listened with the dreadful sense of knowing what was going to happen without being able to do anything to prevent it. It was like foreseeing an avalanche, the first tentative shift, knowing that tons and tons of snow and rock and rubble hung by a thread, knowing that it would be too late in an instant more.

The priest said quietly, “There are people here in Paris and across the country, who are cooperating to help Englishmen and Jews escape.”

“I know,” Eleanor said unhappily. “It was frustrating when we had Michael. I kept trying to find people who would help, but I couldn't. If I just knew how to help.” She looked intently at Father Laurent.

Like an avalanche, obliterating in an instant all safety, all security.

Eleanor began to smile. “I thought, from what Linda told me, that you were just helping us with Michael. But that isn't right, is it? You are a part of something bigger.”

The truck rumbled along the rutted narrow country lanes until dark then stopped for the night because of the curfew. The driver had bent down by the rear tire, thumping it, and warned Jonathan not to stir. “There's a garrison three doors down. But this is where I always stop. That makes it safe, you know. They searched the truck a few times, but not any longer.”

Jonathan lay on his back in the narrow cramped space, boxes of apples stacked around and over him, forming an oblong space, big enough to hide him. From the tail gate, the truck bed looked fully packed, every inch taken. He slept some but kept awakening with the cold and the unaccustomed hardness of the frame and the rich, fruity, suffocating smell of the apples. The truck left Gisors just after dawn. It stopped twice at control points. Each time, Jonathan lay rigid, straining to hear, wishing he could speak German. Everything the German soldiers said, in guttural harsh tones, sounded threatening, but once the driver laughed and the sentry joined him. Each time the truck started up again and the hard jolting uncomfortable passage resumed.

Hours later, the truck swerved off the road, bumped over cobblestones, then, after a quick and hurried exchange, pulled into a garage. The door was slammed after it. The back end of the truck was lowered and two men began to shift the heavy crates out until one end of Jonathan's oblong space was open.

“Hurry up, mate.”

Stiff and sore, Jonathan twisted onto his hands and knees, wrenching his injured leg. He grunted with pain but kept on going. Helping hands pulled him up and lowered him over the tailgate to the hard-packed ground. They motioned Jonathan out of the way. The apple crates were quickly rearranged until the narrow space was gone. The tailgate was swung up and closed, the garage door pulled wide, the truck backed out and the door shut again.

It had not taken more than ten minutes.

Jonathan leaned against the stone inner wall, waiting passively for his new protectors to attend to him. He felt the familiar sensations of uneasiness, helplessness, uncertainty, and a kind of embarrassment. He was handed along from person to person, a human burden, unable to fend for himself. He hated it, yet he had to accept it.

He had never even known the name of the truck driver. Now he looked around in the gloom of the unlighted garage. The only illumination came from a faint glow through slits high in the side stone wall. Two men walked toward him. One was old, unshaven, squinty-eyed. He moved on past Jonathan, hurrying, one shoulder lower than another, toward the back of the garage. The other man, short, stocky, unsmiling, stopped and faced Jonathan. “The train to Paris will be at the station in about forty-five minutes. If it's on time. Here is your ticket. In forty minutes, walk out that door,” he pointed to a wooden door just past Jonathan, “turn to your right. To your right. Have you got that?”

Jonathan tucked the ticket in his pocket and nodded. Goddam, did the man think he was a fool?

“Turn to your right. Walk two blocks. You'll see the station. Go in. There will be some German soldiers waiting. Don't act nervous. Walk to the second barrier. When the train arrives, go into the third compartment. Do you understand that? The third compartment. Look for a baldheaded man, about forty, in a blue-striped shirt. He wears glasses. He'll be carrying a Bible under his right arm. Don't speak to him. For God's sake, don't. Don't try to sit by him. Follow him off the train in Paris. Discreetly.”

Jonathan was still nodding. He would have enjoyed punching this patronizing son of a bitch right in the mouth. How stupid did he think Jonathan was, that he had to repeat every instruction, put it on a child's level? Jonathan felt the tightness in his chest, the rising flush of anger, felt it and realized he was close to erupting, he, who had always been equable and balanced, almost phlegmatic in his acceptance of circumstances. What was wrong with him?

He shook his head, realized he had missed part of the instructions. “Sorry,” he muttered, “What was that?”

“In Paris, after you arrive at the Gare du Nord, follow M. Paul outside. He will lead you to the guide who will take you to a safe house. You will stay there until the next leg of your journey is arranged.”

Jonathan frowned. “What if I should lose sight of M. Paul?”

“Don't.” Then he looked down at the hard-packed floor and frowned. He hesitated, then said unwillingly, “If anything goes wrong, if M. Paul is picked up or if you should lose him, you may go to the Church of the Good Shepherd.” He looked at Jonathan doubtfully. “It is a long way from the station. Five kilometers or six.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and a stub of pencil and, slowly, carefully, drew a map. Jonathan looked at it and at the street names, names he had never heard before, rue de LaFayette, Boulevard Madeleine, the rue Royale, the Boulevard Raspail, the rue de Naveau. Jonathan took the map. Five kilometers or six. He couldn't possibly walk that far. “At the station, couldn't I catch a taxi?”

A look of disgust settled on his companion's blunt heavy face.

Jonathan, hot already, felt his face flame.

“There are no taxis in Paris, M'sieur. Perhaps it would be best if you made an effort to keep M. Paul in sight.”

Jonathan's hands balled into fists. He looked away from that swarthy contemptuous face, looked at the dirt floor. He had to keep calm. It didn't matter that the Frenchman thought him a fool. Why was he letting the man's disdain upset him?

“Do you have a watch?”

Jonathan held out his wrist. “Yes.” He set his watch as the man directed. Ten-seventeen. He was to leave the garage at five minutes before eleven.

The stocky man picked up a basket that had been tucked into a corner. He held it out to Jonathan. “My wife fixed this for you. She thought you would be hungry. I'll leave you now. Be sure to keep track of your time.” He started to turn away then paused. “Good luck,” then he was gone.

The gruff sincerity of the salutation stayed with Jonathan long after the man was gone. Jonathan awkwardly lowered himself to the ground, sitting with the stone wall at his back. Everyone in France these days had a story or a memory or a pain. If this was the stocky man's garage and it must likely be, he was risking imprisonment to help a stranger. Who knew what feelings he harbored? Distress that his country had given in while Jonathan's fought on? A brother or a cousin lost in the delaying circle thrown up by the French around Dunkirk? Was a daughter or a sister or a cousin smiling at the German soldiers? They were men, weren't they, and not grim and poor and emasculated. Did the stocky man envy Jonathan's chance to rejoin the battle? Or was he angry, angry with a deep and abiding and unforgiving anger at what had happened to his country and ashamed that a stranger should see it?

“
Bonne chance
.”

Good luck from a stranger, a basket of food fixed by a woman he would never see. The roll was crusty and still warm with a trace of marmalade inside. The small bottle of wine was wrapped in leaves and it was cool and fresh. He ate too fast then fought a rush of nausea. Groggily, he shook his head. He felt like the very devil. He must wake himself up. He had to be alert. He started to get up, forgetting for a moment to favor his right leg. The wound pulled and split. Pain seared his thigh and he felt spreading warmth. He pulled up to his feet , clinging to the wall. He leaned against the stones for a long moment until the pain began to ease. Then he saw, with a feeling of sickness, the dark stain on his pants, and noticed the smell, sweet and noxious.

Like a dead animal. He stared down at the slowly spreading patch of dampness and began to shudder. Blood had always smelled unnatural to him, but this was worse than the smell of blood. Much worse.

Panic swept him. He had to walk to the station and board the train. He took a step, then another, then a series. Oh God, he could walk, though his leg hurt, but the dampness, whatever it was, some thick and viscous fluid from his wound, was sliding down his leg now and soon, soon, his pants would be wet enough for everyone to notice . . . and smell.

Jonathan stumped down the center of the long garage peering through the gloom. A pair of coveralls hung near a work bench. Jonathan snatched them down then looked desperately at his pants leg. Almost sodden.

Hurrying, even his fingers awkward now, he pulled off his trousers, stepping out carefully. He could see where the wound had split and the oozing stream. He grabbed up a pair of shears, cut off the unsullied trouser leg and used the cloth to make a wadding of a bandage, to stop the flow, hide it, absorb it.

When that was done, he rested.

Hot. God, he was so hot. He wiped the back of his right hand against his face then jerked his hand away. That smell. The odor would nauseate a horse. He bent nearer the bench. Nothing, nothing. A can of turpentine, a barrel of vinegar, a vat of paint, nothing to help. He searched the near end of the garage. He stopped to pick up the basket that the stocky man's wife had fixed and his hand felt the faint coolness of the bottle. He hadn't quite finished the wine, had he? Jonathan tilted up the bottle and heard the faint slosh. Not much wine, but a little, an ounce or two. He cupped his hands, poured out a meager teaspoon, rubbed his hands over and over. The sour smell of the red wine wafted up and soon he could no longer smell the sweet sickish odor of the discharge from his wound.

He poured the rest of the wine in tiny driblets onto the coveralls, just above the wound. Some wine soaked through the wadded bandage and touched the newly raw edges like liquid fire, but he clenched his teeth and kept on pouring. The odor of wine clung to him, hung sourly.

The Gestapo wouldn't arrest a man because he smelled like he had drunk too much. The smell of a rotten wound was another matter entirely. He was exhausted when he finished. Slowly doggedly, he folded the napkin, put the basket on the workbench. He had fifteen minutes before it was time to go.

He closed his eyes and repeated in his mind his new name, Michel Beauvais, and his history: A Parisian returning from Clermont where he had gone in search of his girlfriend. They had quarreled. You know the kind of thing? You say things you don't mean. Somebody had told him she had gone to Clermont to stay with her sister. But the Tillon family here had never heard of Genevieve. Or said they hadn't. Now, disgruntled, sullen, hostile, he was returning to Paris. He lived in the 13
th
Arondissement, in a room above a cleaning shop.

Ask me your questions, Jonathan thought wearily, I can answer a few. But only a few. If the questions delved very deep or if a native-born Frenchman heard him speak, he would be caught. But there was no point in worrying about that. Not now.

It was time.

The garage opened onto a dusty courtyard. The hulks of two burned-out cars sat on one side. The old unshaven man who had helped shift the crates of supplies was dismantling the motor of a pickup truck with a broken axle. He kept working as Jonathan walked by, not looking up.

Jonathan turned to his right. It was a rocky village street with a mild uphill gradient. Two blocks. It seemed a long way, a long bloody way. For a moment, he hesitated. He was tired, so tired. Two blocks. Just two blocks then he could rest. His head down, moving with a stiff uncertain gait, Jonathan started up the street toward the station.