The Girl in the Blue Beret (29 page)

“I was a child when the war began,” she said abruptly. “Papa sent us away from Paris a few days before it fell to the Germans. That infamous day—June 10, 1940. He stayed behind, hoping to keep his job in the finance ministry, and we went to our summer house in Normandy. A few weeks later, Papa decided we should return to Paris. The travel was abominable—my mother with two children and innumerable possessions. Monique must have her dolls, and I must have my books. We arrived at Paris, and the sight of the Nazi flags on the rue de Rivoli—it made the stomach sick. We
hated
the Germans! It was insupportable that we should be ruled by these detestable people in their ugly uniforms, the color of mold and ash. Monique was lively and I tried to play games with her, but I was serious about my studies, and I was alert to my parents’ views. They had friends for dinner many times, and all were inconsolable over the plight of France. The Germans had tried this twice before. Could they not see that we were never going to give in to their brutal aggression? It was all
horrible.
”

“It still seems very real to you.”

“
Bien sûr
. But we made the best of it. Papa lost his job but managed to get another position in the
mairie
, the city government. Maman had difficulty getting enough food. She was outraged that the Germans should make the French go hungry, when it was certain that the Germans would not appreciate
foie gras
or a fine sauce
à la bordelaise
.”

Annette was concentrating on her driving. Traffic was increasing now.

“I’m sorry I never tried to find you,” he said.

“No, no, no. I did not contact you either. The boy who wrote—I did not answer.”

“I still think I must have seemed ungrateful all those years.”

“And so did I,” she said, turning to smile at him.

It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was behind them. She turned to the last road into her village, eased down the quiet street, and pulled up to her doorway. He got out and opened the large double door to the courtyard. After she parked, he closed the door and greeted Bernard. The workmen were gone. Marshall’s rented car stood there, waiting to take him back to the train. He didn’t want to leave. Then he had an inspiration. He waited for her to get out of her car. As she shut the door, he said, “Let me take you to dinner tonight.”

“I would like that.”

“I’ll drive,” he said, patting the rented car as if it were Pegasus.

SHE CHOSE A SIMPLE
place on the river. They sat at a table with an umbrella and watched ducks and geese waddling up the riverbank for bread crumbs. She laughed, holding her wineglass daintily. She talked about her husband’s work as a veterinarian. Annette had assisted him very little, for it broke her heart when an animal suffered. She raised the children, kept pets, fed chickens, gathered eggs, helped raise lambs.

“I rejoiced when the animals got well, but I did not have the sensibility, the stomach for enduring the losses! I was a coward, I think! One day I will never forget, a woman came in with a small white dog in her arms. She was in tears. Her large shepherd dog had killed the little one, it was apparent, but she was disbelieving. Very kindly, Maurice took her and the little dog into the examining room, and in a few minutes they emerged. She was weeping uncontrollably, and the little dog was in a cardboard box. It should not have been done—trusting the large dog with the little one. She just did not believe it had happened, or that it had been her fault.”

“That’s sad.”

“I cried,” Annette said. “That day my husband said, ‘No more. You cannot be the assistant.’ He was being good to me, not forbidding me. So I found other occupations! The children, always. And work in the schools. Art teaching. Now I am a floating teacher. I go from class to class, school to school—like the troubadours of old, I suppose.”

She smiled, as if seeing herself as an itinerant bard, in a traveling costume.

The waiter poured more wine for Marshall. He was getting used to wine. He liked seeing her across the table, her face lighting up.

“I remember you drawing in your notebook,” he said. “You were at your parents’ table, drawing, and working over your school lessons in the evenings when I was at your house. You were the most cheerful person I had ever seen.”

“One had to be, you know, Marshall.” Her eyes went down.

“And I remember how happy everyone was when Robert came on his bicycle.”

“Robert—yes.” Annette was contemplating her hands, which rested firmly on the table, one on either side of her plate. “An interesting young man.” She paused, turning her head aside. “He was very brave during the war,” she said. “A good person.”

“So I’ve heard.”

On the lake, a goose was taking off in the water, flapping and skidding and finally getting lift. Some lights were coming on in the distant houses. The birds were disappearing, roosting for the night. The last duck quacked.

“Could you come again?” she asked. “Would you like to go hiking after I return from Saint Lô? A real hike into the wilderness?”

“Yes. Sure. I’d love to.”

“Do you have some good boots?”

“I’ll get some. I’ve worn out my shoes walking all over Paris.”

“Be sure to break them in.”

“Where do you hike?”

“There are many places, but I will take you to a good trail, where we will see magnificent scenery.”

“I should be in good shape,” he said. “All the walking I’ve done.”

“Good. Do you have to be in Paris?” she asked.

“Oh, no. I can be anywhere.”

“You should get your boots in Paris. I will tell you where to go.”

THE WAITER REMOVED
their plates. It was growing dark, and the thrumming insects had struck up a symphony.

She drank more of her wine and began laughing. “I look back on those times, and it was exhilarating. It was amusing to torment the Germans! They occupied half of my school, as they did many schools—like Odile’s. Once, I chose the precise moment to let my books fall from my arms onto a German’s feet. The
vache
buckled at the bottom, so you could let it fall open and the books would fly out. Robert told me later I could have been arrested for that! But the pleasure of seeing that German forced to pick up my books, as though he were my servant, was worth the risk.”

“You and Odile took a lot of chances.”

They laughed and he finished his wine. He had rarely had so much wine in one day.

“It was an exulting time, something I’ve thought about very much since. Everyone felt intensely alive—expressing joy much more readily than has been possible since. For us, it was
jubilatoire.
” She paused, smiling broadly.

“You were young,” he said. “When you’re young you can feel that.”

“But it was the same for Maman! Everybody felt this. I do not mean we were happy, you comprehend? We were in misery. But each day handed out possibilities of little victories. Each time you passed a German and could assert your Frenchness, it was a little triumph. Or if you had a dear friend with you and could show your pleasure with each other, to the soldier’s face, it was a little triumph.”

The waiter was bringing some sort of dessert of soft chocolate.

“I remember sharing some black-market ice cream with you,” Marshall said.

“We did not resort to the black market!” she protested. “We went to people we knew.”

She took a spoon of chocolate and savored it.

“Only the children were allowed rations for chocolate,” she said. “I was too old, but Monique wanted to share her chocolate. We wouldn’t allow it.”

He tasted the chocolate and tried to picture Annette’s little sister.

“The moon is coming up,” Annette said. “It is near the full. I never want to miss the full moon. It is one of my principal joys!”

38.

P
ARIS WAS WARM AND MUGGY. THE SKY FELT CLOSE, THE AIR HEAVY
with coming rain. A storm cloud was like a piñata waiting for thunder to whack it, Marshall thought, but he knew that thunderstorms were infrequent in Paris, so he walked to his apartment from the Gare Montparnasse with his small duffel. He told himself he was getting in shape for his hike with Annette, but the weight unbalanced his shoulders, and he began to wish he had taken a taxi. He arrived at his apartment sweaty and feeling lopsided.

Marshall was moving around his own apartment as if exploring it. The bedroom was stuffy, so he pulled open the windows and leaned toward the street. Children on the playground were hurrying away as large drops of rain began to fall. The dark, heavy shadows of pigeons rushed past the windows. He could feel the breeze pick up.

He closed the windows halfway, and the rain splashed against them while he read his mail. Al Grainger had written again, suggesting a crew reunion at the crash site in Belgium. “It was my wife’s idea, and I have to say she was right on target. After what you wrote about going back there and meeting those people, it just seems right to go and thank them in a proper way. And we could have a great time seeing each other, catching up, reminiscing. Couldn’t we round up all the surviving crew? Their families could come too.”

O.K., but no preaching
, Marshall felt like replying. He tended to answer letters in his head instead of on paper. Marshall the Procrastinator. Thirty-six years.

After the rain let up, he telephoned Nicolas and reported on his trip.

“Marshall, maybe I have found the house where you stayed before we sheltered you in Chauny.”

“The women in black?”

“Yes. I don’t know if any are alive, but there is a daughter.”

“Good work, Nicolas.”

Marshall thanked him and agreed to come to Chauny for Sunday lunch after he returned from his hike with Annette.

Later, he telephoned Mary and found himself confiding that he had located an “interesting” woman who had been a girl when he came through during the war.

“Her family took care of me when I passed through Paris back then,” he told his daughter. “Now I’ve looked her up, and we had a good time reminiscing.”

He couldn’t continue. He was thinking of Loretta. “A good time” perhaps wasn’t the right phrase.

“Dad, it’s O.K. if you have some women friends.”

“Thank you. Your old dad is still alive and kicking.”

“That reminds me—I heard that Albert has a girlfriend! I was blown away. Don’t tell him I told you.”

“That’s good news,” Marshall said. “I always thought it would just take time. Maybe this one will work out.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Mary, with only the slightest hesitation in her voice.

“How about you, Mary?”

“I’ve been going out with a guy at the college—an economist. He’s really interesting, and he has some theories about inflation that baffle me.”

“Well, let me know if you find out what causes it. How about this—I’m planning to go hiking, and I’m going to buy hiking boots tomorrow.”

“Well, far out, Dad!”

“I guess so. But it was never my ambition to become an old fuddy-duddy, you know. I can still get around.”

She laughed. “Remember how you and Mom would take us for picnics at a state park when we were kids? Nobody thought of going hiking in those days, but I’ve gotten more interested in fitness. Everybody has. Maybe we can go to a park again sometime. We could go hiking this time.”

“Well, let’s do that,” Marshall said. “I’ll have the boots for it, anyway!”

MARSHALL, COMFORTABLE IN PARIS NOW
, no longer carried his cash in a safety pouch on his leg. He gazed at the window display at the Everything Store: fishhooks, a cheese grater, a doll made of seashells, and a Hemingway novel with a faded cover.

“Bonjour, monsieur l’Américain! Ça va?”

“Je vais bien, merci
. And you, Guy?”

“
Comme-ci, comme-ça
. How does your search go?”

“Ah, Guy, I’ve found her. I was looking in the wrong place. She was in the Charentes!” Briefly, he told of his visit with Annette and the hike they planned together.

“A
rendez-vous
for a
randonnée
,” Guy said, smiling.

“Exactly so!” Marshall fingered some leather bags hanging from the wall. “I’m looking for a backpack, a small one for hiking.”

Guy produced a leather rucksack that resembled something a mountain climber of the nineteenth century would carry. The French farmers in 1944 carried such rucksacks, slung over their shoulders. Robert Lebeau had one. Marshall had one himself, holding his meager supplies on the train out of Paris.

“I’d prefer something more modern, Guy.”

“More American, you want to say.”

Guy revealed a cheap blue zippered pack that seemed suitable. Marshall paid and made small talk about his trip to the Charentes. Then he remembered that he needed a curtain of some kind to keep out the streetlights. For some time he examined the crop of dusty bamboo blinds that Guy offered. They had been kept for perhaps decades behind a rolled-up Turkish carpet.

“They look ancient,” Marshall said.

“Mais oui.”
Guy began rummaging excitedly through some cabinets in the back of the store. He went back and forth searching. Then he found what he was looking for, a roll of dark fabric.

“This was to line the curtains, to shut out the light. I am surprised myself to find this. Maybe it is left from the wartime, because people couldn’t afford to buy it.”

“Exactly what I want.”

“You will keep the light inside at night, Marshall. And in the day the sun will stay away.”

Marshall flicked dust from the black roll. “I hope you’re not charging antique prices.”

Guy shrugged. “For you, just what it’s worth.”

“I’ll try it,” Marshall said. He paid for his purchase, declining to have it wrapped. Laboriously, Guy wrote out a detailed receipt.

“See you next time, Guy. Where do you take your vacation?”

“I go to the Languedoc in August.” Guy shut his cash drawer and straightened some knickknacks on the counter. “My wife likes breathing in the country. That’s what she says—in the country she can breathe. My two sons and daughter and my parents and my wife’s mother and my grandmother come. My brother comes with his family. We’re all there.
Bien sûr
, there is nothing like having all the family together. We do the picnics, the games. It is bliss!”