Simple Faith (16 page)

He did not understand that level of concern and devotion to others. He had always thought of himself as a decent and caring man, but would he go to such lengths to save the life of a stranger? Certainly he was little more than a stranger to Anja and Lisbeth and Josef, and even more so to the railway worker and the other unseen faces willing to risk their lives to get him home again. He recalled the day at the farm when the Gestapo agent had looked at Anja, had touched her with his riding crop—ever so gently and at the same time so menacingly. How could she include men like that in her forgiveness?

The marching came to a precise halt, and the coffin was set in place on some secure surface. Someone gave orders, and the soldiers retreated, their footsteps dying away. Now what? He heard the woman, still sniffling but more composed as she repeatedly blessed someone in French. He was surprised to hear the German thank her for her family’s sacrifice and then murmur something to the railway worker, who stated his thanks in German.

A door closed.

The woman—fully composed now—gave directions.

And then Peter heard the whistling of the folk tune. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and reached for the hidden latch. Seconds later he pushed up the lid. It swung away, and he found himself looking up into the smiling faces of the railway worker, a woman dressed in black, and three other men.

“
Bonjour
,” the woman said as the men helped Anja and then him out of the coffin. “Welcome to Paris,” she added in perfect English.

Ye are my witnesses
.

—I
SAIAH
43:10

   CHAPTER 8   

O
ne of the men handed Anja and Peter glasses of champagne and lifted his own glass in the gesture of a toast. Anja took a sip of the sparkling wine, which tasted like dishwater, and forced a smile. She wondered if Peter found it unusual that no one offered introductions but hoped he would remember what she had told him—the less he knew, the better. That way he had no names to offer should he be captured. To her relief, he simply raised his glass to the others and took a long swallow.

“What’s next, Mom?” he asked the woman in black as he set the glass on a side table.

Everyone except the woman laughed. Anja knew who this was—who it had to be. She had heard of a woman working for the line who moved between Paris and Madrid playing various roles. She was an actress by trade and a fairly well-known one at that. Her name was Gisele St. Germaine, and she was as renowned for her beauty as she was for her courage. While Anja felt like a tramp, having spent the last several hours closed up in a coffin, Gisele looked as if she had just stepped off the pages of the fashion magazines.

Peter certainly had taken notice. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the French woman, who appeared to be studying him with an equal amount of interest and curiosity. Anja felt the flare of pure, unadulterated jealousy.
This is hardly the time for such triviality
, she thought and stepped to the center of the room. She spoke calmly and softly in German, knowing Peter understood German but not French and assuming the others spoke both. Everyone gathered closer to hear what she had to say. Gisele might be beautiful, but Anja was going to get one thing straight—she was in charge.

“They will return—of that you can be sure. The officer has made an emotional connection to what he thinks is the situation. He will want to see that there is in fact a proper funeral and a burial. This has become a matter of personal pride for him. I for one do not intend to return to that box, so we need to find a body—preferably male and preferably dressed in the uniform of the German Army.”

“Done,” one of the three men replied.

“My friend and I need safe houses for at least tonight.”

“The weather prediction is for a blizzard,” the railway worker said. “The railroads have been ordered to move only essential materials and troops—no passengers—so it could be several days and nights before you can move on to Bordeaux.”

“Will you not both stay here?” Gisele asked.

“No. It’s better if we split up.”

Gisele arched one penciled eyebrow and smiled. “You have just spent hours lying with this man in that coffin,” she pointed out, “and now you would balk at being in the same house with him?” She glanced at the men and murmured the French word for prude. The men all chuckled. Peter looked from them to her. He was clearly confused by this conversation.

“I thought the plan was for us to travel as man and wife,” he reminded her.

“That plan has changed,” she said firmly and turned her attention back to Gisele. “We will need separate safe houses.” If Peter and Gisele were so taken with each other, then who was she to stand in the way? She would give them their privacy.

Gisele lifted one thin shoulder in a gesture of complete indifference and took a cigarette from a silver box on a side table. The railway worker picked up the silver lighter that matched the box and waited for her to anchor the cigarette in an ivory holder.

“What if we are delayed for several days?” Peter asked.

“The weather can work for us as well as against us. There are less likely to be searches during a blizzard. On the other hand, every day we stay here—”

“It is Paris,” Gisele said. “You could be detained in far worse places.” She blew out a long stream of smoke and walked closer to Peter. She studied him. “You are quite tall,” she commented. “A beret, I think, and perhaps a fisherman’s sweater with dark corduroy trousers and some kind of a jacket. Do not shave,” she instructed, then turned her fashion eye to Anja.

“And you …” She walked around Anja, drawing on her cigarette so that Anja’s head was wreathed in smoke. “Makeup, a French twist for the hair, and my Schiaparelli suit for the funeral.” She fingered Anja’s hair. “On the other hand, if we cut this into a boyish style …”

Anja coughed and waved the smoke away. “The clothes I am wearing will be fine, and I happen to like my hair.”

Gisele gave a hoot of laughter and turned back to Peter as if he—not Anja—had objected to her choice of clothing for him. “I have another thought. The beret yes, but the fisherman’s sweater, no. I think you must look more artistic—mysterious even. An ascot with a fine silk shirt in blue to bring out your eyes.”

“I thought the idea was not to be noticed,” Peter said.

“Dressing well is the only way not to be noticed in Paris, my handsome friend. Even in the middle of a war, people take pride in looking their best. It is sometimes our only defense against total despair.”

“No ascot,” Peter mumbled.

“Of course, you are so right,
cheri
. A suit with a vest, I should think—rumpled and with a neckerchief tied around your throat. Suspenders for when the jacket is off and the vest unbuttoned. White shirt frayed at cuffs and collar and the beret—with that luxurious head of hair you must have the beret.” She actually ran her fingers through Peter’s thick hair, and the man stood there, grinning like a love-struck teenager.

Anja was beside herself. “Could we get on with this?”

“I thought we were,” Gisele replied, and she actually winked at Peter as if the two of them were sharing some private joke at Anja’s expense.

“Once we have the safe houses and disguises in place, then we’ll need train tickets to Bordeaux for each of us.”

“Got that covered,” the railway man said. “Everything is in order, mademoiselle. This is not the first time we have done this.”

“I know, and I apologize.” She managed a weak smile. “You see, this is the first time I have been on this side of things since we started the line. Usually I am standing where you are. Tonight I am one of the people who must trust you with my life.”

One of the other men stepped forward. “And you—and the airman here—could not be in safer hands. Now suppose we get you to your safe houses where you can have some food and a wash-up and get some rest.”

It was exactly what Anja would have said if she’d been the one dealing with a new evader. “Yes,” she agreed. “We are both so very tired.”

But when she and the man assigned as her contact reached the Paris apartment where she was to stay, they found the Gestapo there ahead of them. From the shadows of a shop doorway across the street, they watched as a woman was taken into custody, placed in a car, and taken away.

“What now?” Anja murmured more to herself than to her companion.

“We return to Gisele’s,” he said, already starting down a nearby alley. “We are already short of safe houses, so for tonight at least I think you must stay with the American. It is the only way.”

When they got to Gisele’s apartment, Anja was led to the actress’s bedroom and on into a closet the size of the bedroom she and her son shared at the farmhouse. The closet was filled with clothes and shoes and handbags and hatboxes. It did not appear as if one more item of clothing could possibly fit. Her guide went directly to a rack holding dozens of evening dresses and pushed them apart. Then he tapped out a code on the wall, waited for a reply, and slid a small section of the wall to one side.

Behind the wall was a tiny room—only a quarter the size of the closet. Two mats lay on the floor and a single lightbulb hung from the ceiling. Peter was sitting cross-legged on one of the mats. He motioned to the other one. “Home sweet home. Giselle said we should make ourselves comfortable and she will see us in the morning.”

He lay down on the mat closest to the wall. Anja’s guide indicated that she should take her place on the other mat. When she did, he closed the partition, and she heard him move the hangers laden with Gisele’s clothes back into place. She felt like she was back in the coffin.

The snow, whipped by howling winds, continued through the night and all of the following day. The city was virtually paralyzed. Awnings over shops sagged and finally collapsed under the weight of the snow. Streetcar service had to be stopped when a couple of streetcars jumped their tracks because of a buildup of ice. And as the snow continued to fall, a silence settled over the city that had people anxiously peering out their windows as if they expected any minute to have the silence broken by some huge disaster.

The disaster, of course, was the storm itself. With piles of snow clogging the streets and sidewalks of the city, it felt as if someone had declared a moratorium on the war. Peter soon learned that although nothing and no one appeared to be moving, in fact by dawn of the second day people began to venture out—children to play in the snow, adults to try and clear a path in front of their homes or businesses, and young people to take advantage of this rare opportunity to walk hand in hand down the middle of what any other time was a street clogged with traffic.

At Gisele’s flat, people came and went through the day as plans came together for the funeral. There was almost an aura of festivity to the preparations. That evening Gisele hosted a dinner party attended by her friends from the theater. The supper was what Peter’s mother would have labeled a potluck, with everyone arriving with some dish or at the very least a bottle of beer or wine. After they had laid out all the food and everyone had filled one of Gisele’s fine china plates, they sat on chairs or the floor near the fire, telling stories, laughing over adventures they had all experienced in the theater, and bemoaning the fact that with the war, opportunities to ply their craft were limited.