Escape From Paris (39 page)

Linda was setting the table for breakfast and he came shyly and asked if he could help. She smiled at him. “We are a little informal because we never had a chance to really stock this apartment. But you can put the knives and forks around for me.”

She had saved up some extras for this breakfast. Father Laurent had given back to her the first 25,000 that Eleanor had received. She still had a good store of money so, last week, she had waited several hours in line and managed to get a crock of honey and a pot of peach jam. Treasure of treasures, though it had cost the earth, she had bought a pound of real coffee on the black market.

He watched her measure spoonfuls and draw cold water. He sniffed. “Oh, I say, that can't be real coffee?”

“Yes, it is.”

“That's very nice and it is nice of you to share with us.”

She looked up into his blue eyes and she wondered if he could see the pain in her own eyes. Nice of her to share it—the soldiers were the only thing that kept her sane. It still frightened her to pick them up and bring them here, it always did. No matter how many times she did it, she always felt an ache in her chest and her heart thudded wildly. She hated the fear, but she needed to see them, to have them on their brief stopovers. What good is it to have coffee or gold or life, if there's no one to share with you?

“I'm glad you're here.” That was all she said. She turned abruptly and put the coffee pot on the stove. When the coffee began to perk, the others filed in. They were very quiet, very reserved until breakfast was underway. Then their faces brightened and they began to talk.

“ . . . should have seen the straw in his hair, Miss, when we dug him out of that haystack . . . ”

“ . . . and the look on his face . . . ”

She smiled , listening to them, and drank the coffee, the real coffee, and a faint pink flushed her cheeks and she looked young and lovely.

“I say, miss,” the youngest one said suddenly, “it's awfully good of you to give time away from your family to help us, especially today.”

“Today?” She repeated blankly.

“Why yes, Miss. It's Christmas Eve, don't you know?”

The silence woke Eleanor. She opened her eyes slowly. The expanse of space puzzled her. Then joy swept her once again. Her own bedroom, her own wide soft comfortable bed with its thick warm layer of quilts and comforts. And to be clean.

Eleanor stretched, arched her back and felt her toes press against the footboard. Oh God, to be clean and free. The air smelt a little stuffy though she had thrown open the two broad windows last night. The smell of that cell . . . a rush of nausea surged within her. She raised her head and breathed deeply, a mixture of dust and wool and the faint overlay of her perfume.

She had bathed last night. After heating pan after pan of water, and then she had splashed cologne and gloried in the sweet fresh smell.

Why was it so quiet? A sense of unease stirred her. She reached for Andre's wool robe. Her robe was of silk but that was for the long ago days when their apartment had been heated.

The apartment was ghostly, of course. She expected that, overcame it. And Paris, ever since the Occupation, had been only a shadow of herself, a gray and ancient reflection of a voluptuous woman. Still, there were noises, German staff cars, the slam of doors, pedestrians walking to work, walking to find a place in the long line at food shops.

Why was there no sound from outside?

She stood to the side of the window, looked down into the bleak street with the frozen puddles. Such an empty street. Almost like a holiday but . . . Oh. Today was Christmas Eve.

Eleanor turned away from the window. Christmas Eve and the apartment dusty and cold and quiet. Always before she had fixed hot chocolate, thick and sweet and steaming, and tiny brioches with raspberry jam. Breakfast was long and leisurely and they never counted it a miracle, Andre with his hair ruffled and his eyes tender, Robert excited and voluble. Now there was no one . . .

She measured water to boil for ersatz coffee and cut a generous slice of bread for toast. Last night the café owner had known her for what she was. He must have become used to the occasional appearance of filthy, weak, disoriented just-released prisoners. He had heaped her plate with food and sold her a fully cooked chicken and loaf of bread to take home. “All the shops will be closed tomorrow.” She had tried to pay him double but he had waved it away.

As she ate, she could feel strength returning. It was lack of food which had made her weak and dizzy. It hadn't seemed to affect the others so horribly, but they all had hunched on their beds in a stupor, their minds in limbo or clinging to remembered happiness. Thank God, she had the extra food. She would be able now to reach Father Laurent. She had felt so weak and ill the night before that she hadn't been sure. But there wasn't any hurry.

After she had eaten and washed the few little dishes, she wandered restlessly around the living room. She must stop thinking about Christmas Eve. It did no good to grieve for days that wouldn't come again. She should be grateful. She was grateful. Robert and Linda must be in England by now. They might even be on a ship en route to America. Frank would take care of them and Franz, too. That was worth everything. But she couldn't rest. If she sat in Andre's chair, she looked toward the corner of the room where the tree always stood. When she moved to her own chair, she remembered the Christmas morning that Andre had come up behind her and bent down to kiss her gently and slip a lovely matched pearl necklace around her throat.

On Christmas Eve, before they left to go to midnight Mass, Andre always lifted down the huge Bible that had belonged to his maternal grandmother and read, in his clear and resonant voice, the story of that Christmas Eve so many years ago.

Eleanor walked to the glass fronted bookcase. She carried the Bible to Andre's chair and sat down. When it was opened, she began to read and she could once again hear Andre's voice and the year slipped away and a sense of peace filled her.

She was so immersed that she almost didn't hear the tiny knock, but it was so quiet, the city lay so silent beyond, that the sound quivered and hung in the still air.

When she opened the door, the concierge, tiny Mme. Sibert, slipped in like a shadow and immediately closed the door behind her. She looked fearfully around. “Are you alone?” she whispered.

Eleanor nodded.

“Oh, Madame, I am so glad you are free. I've brought you some food,” and she thrust a plate with a napkin over it into Eleanor's hands. “I was afraid you wouldn't have any food here at the apartment and you can't buy any today.” A footstep sounded in the hall way and she waited, rigid, her fear communicating itself to Eleanor, until it was quiet again. She bent close to Eleanor, whispered even more softly, “Did you know, Madame, they are watching you?”

“Watching me?”

“They've taken an apartment across the street. A man with binoculars stands in the window. He has been there all day. There is another man in the alleyway near the backdoor. He is cold, that one,” she added with satisfaction.

“No,” Eleanor said slowly, “I didn't know they were watching me.”

Mme. Sibert nodded. “They do that you know. I have heard. They let you go and then they watch you and they arrest anyone you speak to. Madame, if you have friends, for God's sake, avoid them.”

When the concierge had cautiously slipped away, Eleanor looked discreetly out of the front window. Yes, there, the third floor right apartment across the street. She could see the tiny silver spots that marked the field glasses and behind them a shapeless form.

She wasn't free or safe, after all. She should have known. If she hadn't been so weak, so fuzzy the night before, she would have known. Thank God, Mme. Sibert had warned her.

A watcher at the front. A watcher at the back. If she left, she would be followed. And she couldn't lose them, not in these empty streets. Her follower would take care to cling to her heels in the Metro.

She leaned against the wall and felt the fluttering of panic. Trapped. And when they were through with her, when the decoy didn't rise, they would yank her back into that filthy sickening prison.

She would rather be dead. She would, she knew suddenly, soon be dead if she went back to Cherche-Midi.

As she stood, looking down into the icy street, the street that was now a part of the trap, two nuns, their heads down against the wind, their hands folded inside their habits, came around the corner. No matter what happened in the world, this was a joyous day to them. The eve of the birth of the Christ child, and tonight, their calm faces lifted to heaven they would sing and praise God for his gift to the world. The streets would be full of worshipers. Would the Germans enforce the curfew tonight?

“Your sister would pick Christmas Eve to come.”

Rene didn't answer. It wouldn't do any good to answer. Yvette wasn't angry about Denise's arrival. Yvette had grown more and more morose this winter. First, it was the lack of business, the end of the little luxuries she coveted. Then it was the gnawing fear that they would lose their little shop and all they had worked for. Now she knew the shop's failure was inevitable. He could hold on for another month, perhaps six weeks. There had been a little spurt in sales the past few weeks, a weak flicker of buying for Christmas. He had sold the last of his pipes. But the days were numbered. There wasn't any hope and Yvette's voice grew sharper, her face more pinched.

“Did you talk to Bussiere before he left town?”

Bussiere, one of their suppliers, had gone into the black market in a big way. He was getting rich. He and his family didn't have any trouble getting passes from the Germans and they were in Nice now, for Christmas.

“It didn't do any good,” Rene mumbled.

“Why not?” Her voice rose. “We've been good customers. You'd think he could help us out, now that we need it.”

“No credit.”

They were a half block from the station now. Rene started to walk faster.

“Did you ask him to take you on? His business is booming. He must need help.”

Rene shook his head, “He's got plenty of brothers and cousins and friends to work for him. He said it would be another story if I had a truck.”

At one time they could have sold their business and had enough to buy a truck. But the store wasn't worth anything anymore. There wasn't any way in the world they could get enough money to buy a truck. Yvette clutched her husband's arm. “Rene, look up ahead. Isn't that the Masson woman's sister?”

Rene peered through the gloom. “It looks like her.”

Yvette began to trot, pulling on her husband's arm. “Why would she be coming to the Gare de'Austerlitz? They're still hunting for her. The Gestapo, I mean. A plainclothesman checked with me just a couple of days ago. He said if she showed up to be sure and call them. He even gave me a number. Hurry, Rene, let's get up there. I'm sure that's her.”

He looked puzzled. “I thought I saw a light in the Masson apartment today.”

“A Gestapo agent has been staying there. She must have been a pretty big fish. She was running an escape line for English soldiers, the agent told me.”

They were about ten yards behind Linda when they entered the station. It was jammed and Yvette stood on tiptoe to keep Linda in sight.

Rene touched Yvette's elbow. “Denise's train will be on track four.”

“Don't worry about her. Help me keep that girl in sight.”

“What for?”

She turned her sharp bitter face toward him, just for an instant. “Ten thousand francs,” she whispered. “That's what they pay for turning in those who have been helping the English escape.”

“Ten thousand francs?”

Yvette nodded. She surged on ahead from Rene. There she was. That was odd. She had come to the station and now she was heading for the exit. That didn't make sense.

Yvette looked back at a checkpoint, German soldiers stolidly checking identity papers. She could run to them, tell them that the blond one, that one, was wanted by the Gestapo. But the notice had said the Gestapo would pay for the name and address of the suspect. If she turned her in to the checkpoint, she might not get credit for the arrest. She looked back. My God, she was already at the door. Yvette began to run, in little sharp half steps. She would follow her, find out where she was hiding. Then, if she called and gave the address to the Gestapo, there couldn't be any doubt about who should get credit for the capture.