Escape From Paris (23 page)

He broke into a run then slowed again as he realized he was crossing the rue de Rivoli. He looked down the arcaded street. More Gestapo offices in there. That's what Franz had told him. Franz's family knew where the Gestapo offices were, from other Jews in Paris. Robert didn't understand the ins and outs of it, but Franz had told him that when France surrendered, she had agreed to give up to the Nazis any refugees who had fled Germany to France before the war. That included Franz's family. His father, Karl Glickman, had been manager of a furniture factory in Frankfurt, but, after the persecution of the Jews worsened in 1938, Herr Glickman had gathered up Franz, his two sisters, Hilda and Gertrude, their mother, Margret, and fled to Paris. He had not, of course, been able to get as good a job as he held before. He had, in fact, been forced to work as a turning lathe operator. But they had found a tiny apartment and made themselves a home.

Now they lived in fear that the Gestapo would find them.

Robert frowned and kicked a stone. He had to kick the stone straight down the sidewalk. If he kicked too hard and the stone skittered into the gutter, the Gestapo would catch him. He had several very near escapes, but, each time, he caught the stone on the side of his shoe, throwing it back toward the center of the sidewalk. The game lasted for three blocks before he tired of it. He found a short thick stick and ran the length of one block, banging it against the pointed tips of the black iron fence, making an exciting rat-a-tat-tat. In the next block, most of the shops were boarded up, but midway up the street, a German staff car, with two pennants fluttering from its staff, waited outside a fur store.

In the window, a white ermine coat hung from a manikin. Black velvet served as a background.

Robert approached cautiously. Usually, there would be a driver waiting in a command car, such as this one, but maybe not this time. Robert walked very softly up behind the car. He looked all around. Across the street was a café. The driver must have received permission to go for coffee. Robert looked at the fur store. Only Germans or Frenchmen who were helping the Germans could afford to buy fur now. In the shop window, a card stated, Man spricht Deutsch.

Robert's face hardened and looked, suddenly, much older than thirteen. Once again, swiftly, he glanced around but the street was empty.

He bent down, grabbed up a sharp stone, ran to the driver's side of the car and scored, deeply, harshly, an immense V. Dropping the stone, he began to run. He didn't slow until he was three blocks and an alley away from the fur shop and just a block from the railroad station. He began to whistle again. Maybe Mother would let him spend the night at the Latin Quarter apartment. Sometimes she did. He liked to talk to the English soldiers. He always asked, “Did you ever meet a French captain named Masson? Andre Masson? His unit was in the fighting near Bruges.”

Eleanor gently massaged her temples, lifted her index finger to rub at the bridge of her nose. In her memory she could hear her mother's light voice. “Ellie, you mustn't frown as you work, (or read or sew or think) it will make the deepest indentation there, between your eyes, and you know you don't want to look like a cross old woman when you are still young.” Eleanor smiled. For an instant her face looked so different, cheerful and amused, almost impish, and, since she had lost so much weight since summer, quite young. But the line was there, a deep crease, and growing deeper every day. Oh Mother, she thought, if that was all I had to worry about now, looking young, fighting lines. Then, with a rush of remembered affection, she was fiercely happy that her mother was safely dead and couldn't know, couldn't dream of the fears and worries that peopled Eleanor's days and nights. Eleanor's brows drew together again as she frowned at the check book.

What was she going to do? For an instant, she fought a flood of panic. She had never before in her life been afraid because of money. Because of not enough money, actually. There had been, when she was a girl, the security of being Eleanor Rossiter. Of the Pasadena Rossiters. Her great-grandfather had come west from Pittsburgh to California, one of the faceless thousands joining in the Great Gold Rush. He had found gold, as had so many. Justin Rossiter was not only lucky, he was canny. He sent for his three brothers and they established banks in the raw mining towns and the family wealth began to grow.

After her marriage to Andre, she had never thought of money either. Andre didn't earn a great deal as a professor, but the money from America always came, the income channeled to her from family investments and trust funds. There had always been money. The payments came quarterly, dependable substantial checks every four months. Then came the shocking deaths of her parents and the subsequent probate of the estate. Frank, as an executor, had arranged for her income to continue. She would be, when the probate was completed, a very wealthy woman. But that money was in America and she sat in her unheated Paris apartment, bundled up in a fur coat, hunched at her roll-top desk, frowning at the checkbook.

There had been so many expenses since the last check from America. It cost 500 francs a head for each soldier to cross the Demarkation Line, and 7,000 francs to cross the Pyrenees, about $140 a man. That didn't include the money it took to feed the men coming to the Latin Quarter apartment twice a week. They had now, she made hatch marks on her pad, been responsible for passing along fifty-four British soldiers. For an instant, the tight line between her eyes eased. Fifty-four men safe from the Germans. Or, possibly not safe, who could know how far along they were on the way to freedom, but they were started, they had a chance and some of them, perhaps all of them, would struggle through the high reaches of the Pyrenees into Spain, and, if luck touched them, they would make it to Gibraltar and sail for England.

Oh, it was worth it. It was worth the danger and the strain but none of it was going to be possible if she didn't get more money, money to buy black-market food and gasoline, money to give to Father Laurent to help pay for forged papers, train tickets, money to meet their own expenses, including the rent on two apartments. And, God yes, money to buy an adequate winter coat for Linda. She had come to Paris last winter with her spring coat, suitable for California. There had been plenty of coats in Paris stores then, but, somehow, they had never bothered to shop for one. This winter there were no new coats. No buttons. No needles. No cloth for sewing. The polydore at work, Parisians said. Everyone knew where the coats and dresses and peacetime goods had gone, along with the food. The trains, laden with scrap iron, oil, food, and plundered art works rolled eastward every day.

Money, money, money.

Eleanor pulled open the lowest shallow drawer and picked up her address book. In August, she had called almost every person in it. Most of the telephones had rung unanswered, but, every day more people returned to Paris She flicked slowly through the pages, saying names aloud, “The Arbeufs . . . Paul Bidault . . . Paul might help but I don't know how much money he has. Yves Callet. No. Rene Christen. Maybe. Armand Galois? I don't know. Oh the Leclercs . . . I will call Jacqueline. She will help if she can and they are quite rich.”

The Leclercs were older than most of their friends. They lived in an elegant private house in the Roule district. Felix Leclerc owned a chateau in the Loire Valley which he permitted the public to visit twice yearly. He and Andre had met at a philatelist congress and, since they both were interested in the same kinds of stamps, early issues in Africa, they met again in Paris and gradually, over the years, became friends. Their wives had enjoyed each other and it was one of those easy relationships which can sometimes develop between couples distant in age.

Eleanor reached for the telephone then let her hand drop. It would be better, safer to drop by unannounced. If the Leclercs weren't in Paris, well, then, she would have to think of someone else.

Panic flickered again. She couldn't write another check without being overdrawn and no more money was due from America until November. If she wired Frank . . . All wires would almost surely be read by the Germans. She couldn't afford to attract their attention. If she wrote Frank, well, all letters leaving the country had to be cleared through censors. Of course, a request for money wouldn't excite anyone but Frank might wonder why, might write back and urge Eleanor to be more careful of her expenditures and inquire what she was spending so much money on in a war-repressed economy, might even list sums. A smart German, and God knew there were too many smart ones, might wonder too why an American-born French resident with only a son and a sister to support needed so much money.

Eleanor massaged her temples again. She had to stop worrying. The thing to do was to get up and go hunt for help. It didn't do to be proud, not in circumstances such as these. But she hated to think of asking anyone for money.

She struggled to open the ground-floor door. She pushed out into the wind and stopped for a moment, shaken by the onslaught of cold. It was the coldest November in years. And they had no warmth to come home to. The Germans had all the coal. The only way to have a warm apartment was for a member of the Gestapo to move in. That brought the coal trucks. But they were better off cold. That would be all they needed now—to have someone associated with the Gestapo living in their apartment house. She pulled her fur coat around her more tightly, ducked her head and plunged down the steps into the windy street.

Yvette Bizien peered down from her front window. “I wonder where she goes every day. In and out. In and out.”

“Who?” her husband asked absently, not looking up from his morning newspaper.

“That Masson woman. There's something odd about those people. Always going in and out and it isn't just for shopping. They don't have packages or bags when they come home. Half the time that boy doesn't go to school but off he hurries in the mornings. What are they up to?”

“Who cares?” Rene folded the newspaper, put it neatly down on a doily-topped table. “I'd best be getting on to the shop. Will you come in this morning?”

Yvette turned away from the window, her thin pale face petulant. “It doesn't matter, does it? We don't have enough business for me to come.” She began to clear the breakfast table. “What are we going to do, Rene? We will have to close by Christmas if something doesn't happen.”

He was at the closet, getting his overcoat. “I don't know. Why ask me? I didn't start the war. I can't help it there aren't any customers.”

“I've heard there's money in the black market. If we could get a truck—”

“A truck? You might as well want the moon. It couldn't cost much more.” He slammed out the door.

She washed the dishes, her pale face drawn in thought. They had to do something. When the apartment was straight, she walked again to the window, stared down into the empty street. All the little shops in their neighborhood had closed one by one, except theirs. No one around here had any money. The Germans had all the money. If only she and Rene had one of the expensive restaurants or a shop dealing in antiques. If only they had something they could sell to the Germans.

The front door to the apartment house slammed shut.

She craned her head, looked down. Oh, that was Mme. Masson's sister, the American girl. All huddled up because of the cold. Not dressed for it either. So why was she going out on such a bitter day? What was she carrying so carefully? Something wrapped in paper? It would be interesting to know where she was going in such a hurry.