A Troubled Peace (12 page)

“Peace? Peace is not that easy, that finite, my boy. War ends; then it takes a long time to negotiate a real truce. Many times that peace is troubled and contains the embers for the next war, smoldering, just in need of a spark. Take France. There is already friction between de Gaulle and the communist-dominated Resistance, mainly because de Gaulle has been lenient with collaborators. He's making all
sorts of compromises to push France forward. Meanwhile, the Soviets and the Americans circle, both hoping to influence France to adopt their way of doing things, both snooping and trying to undermine each other. Stalin seems bent on taking over as much of Europe as possible now that Hitler is out of the way. Stalin is as vicious as Hitler in how he crushes people he feels are inferior or who stand up to him. The U.S. will use any means to stop him. There's sure to be a rather nasty standoff, perhaps right here in France, beginning with covert politics.”

Henry thought of the angry disappointment of the Marseille restaurant owner, the Vercors doctor's suspicions of de Gaulle, and Thurman's attempt to coerce Henry to name communist
maquis
he'd met so that the OSS could spy on them.

Orwell put his hand on Henry's shoulder once more. “Right and wrong will no longer be clear, not like the target of your bomb runs were. You'll have trouble getting your bearings. If I were you, Henry, I'd go home as soon as possible. Good luck.”

Henry watched Orwell leave. If only the man knew how much Henry had already compromised himself to be in Paris. Go home as soon as possible? For sure—but not until he found Pierre.

O
utside, Henry headed for Gare de l'Est, the train station of the East. He followed the map of Paris that a GI handed him. With a girl on each arm, still celebrating victory, the soldier joked that he had his own personal guides. “They're going to show me the Eiffel Tower and then my seventy-two hours of freedom are over. It's back on a train to my outfit near Stuttgart.” He pointed up the boulevard as the threesome strolled away. “The Gare de l'Est is that way.”

Henry was glad to have the map to reassure him that he was going the right way since the wide avenue kept changing names. The buildings all looked the same, too—long, connecting facades of smooth mortar running flat to the street, five to seven stories high. Their beauty and individuality came in small touches of decoration, in high archways carved with lions' heads or fleurs-de-lis. Windows
were almost as tall and wide as double doors, and many were whiskered with beautiful wrought iron balconies, the black metal twisted into curling vines and flowers. The buildings were gray from decades of soot belched out of charcoal fires, giving a pen-and-ink-sketch look to the streets. Even so, on this bright sunny morning, they were the prettiest he'd ever seen.

Many of the first floors housed bookstores, clothing shops, or grocers. Looking in, Henry could tell the owners had put most of their wares in the display window. Shelves inside were empty, the rooms dark. As he walked, the city awoke. More people began to enter the street. No cars appeared, but bicycles crowded the road. Small cabs, pulled by men on bicycles, lumbered by. Gangs of girls with billowing skirts and long legs zipped past them. Henry was nearly run down by a boy pushing a wheelbarrow as fast as he could so that the huge block of ice inside wouldn't melt before he got it home.

Along came an elderly man in a boater hat and a slightly frayed but smart suit and ascot. He leaned on a gold-capped walking cane. In the other hand he balanced a fishing pole and a small basket. He was obviously heading for the Seine. A GI threw a cigarette butt into the gutter near him. Stiffly, the old man leaned over for it. He stuck it into a long cigarette holder, the kind Henry had seen in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies depicting the Jazz
Age. Henry realized the holder would allow the man to drain the cigarette to its last drop of nicotine. He wished he had those Camel cigarettes now. He'd gladly give the old gentleman a pack to restore his dignity.

Uncomfortable, Henry hurried on, hoping that now the war against Hitler was over, things could get back to normal quickly. Although given Orwell's description of the devastation across Europe, it could take years just to clear away the rubble.

 

At the train station, hundreds of grim people waited in front of the platforms. An anxious murmuring, amplified by the white marble floors, lifted as a hum toward the lofty
glass ceilings. How much longer till the train pulls in? Do you think he'll be on this one? They say three thousand will come through today. Have you heard how thin they are, covered with sores and lice? Awful.
Quelle horreur!

A woman cried out and dropped a newspaper. After her friends guided her to a bench, Henry picked it up. He gagged. There was a photograph from a concentration camp named Bergen-Belsen—a long pit with rows of corpses in it, naked, mangled, the bodies so emaciated they were barely identifiable as human. Next to it was an article saying prisoners were being shot right before the Allies liberated camps. Bodies were still warm when the soldiers entered. They had been that
close to freedom when killed.

“Ils arrivent!”
someone cried. The “absents” were pulling into the station.

The crowd pushed forward. Those in front began to sing in greeting, and the lyrics rippled back to where Henry stood, those around him picking up the verse:
“C'est la route qui va, qui va, qui va.”
Then, just as suddenly, silence rolled back, the singing abruptly stopping. The crowd parted and two soldiers come through carrying a man—if you could call the poor soul that. He looked more like a stick-figure hangman drawing than a real body. His bone-thin arms were around their necks and he sat in a cradle the soldiers easily made with their own strong, thick forearms. Wearing striped pajamas, he grimaced with pain. Or was that his smile?

More were carried out. Then those who could walk began to stagger through.

Get back, the soldiers shouted. The absents had not yet gone through quarantine and could carry typhus.

But when people recognized a ghostly figure, they burst through the crowd, with both cries of joy and horror, gathering their loved one up in kiss-filled embraces. Others rushed forward and then stood woodenly, shocked, bewildered, repulsed. The deportees held out what little bundle they might clutch and dutifully waited to be told what to do.

Most of the returned trudged on, following the back of the person in front to the doors that opened onto the wide boulevard de Strasbourg. There U.S. Army trucks driven by Free French soldiers waited to transport them to the repatriation center at Hotel Lutetia. Only a few blinked in the warm sunbeams sifting through the leaded glass ceiling of the train station and looked up to the vast half-moon window that opened the wall to a brilliant blue sky and sun-haloed clouds. Golden light lit up the sunrise design and its latticework rays that stretched out wide, ending in a lacy outline of smaller starbursts.

One woman stopped when she saw it. Those behind her simply walked around, like water rushing past a stone in a creek. She stayed rooted, her eyes lifted.
“Mon Dieu
, she murmured, tears streaming down her face.
“C'est le ciel de Paris.”
The Paris sky, just as she remembered it.
Exactement
. The Nazis could not change that.

Only later, when hearing how so many had left Paris from that very station, crammed into cattle cars heading to Germany, to be herded off the trains into warehouses and gassed, could Henry completely understand the symbolism of her return and her awe. At that moment, he simply caught his breath, recognizing another human being slipping the surly bonds of earth, climbing sunward, and finding redemption in the sky. He was witnessing a rebirth. He would never forget the sight of it.

Nor would he forget that after that woman walked on—smiling, transformed, beautiful again—and the wave of deportees had swept by, in its wake were left two little girls. Just as Madame had described, they held up signs carefully penned with their full names, their last names large. They wore embroidered sweaters, carefully pressed pleated skirts, and huge butterfly bows pulling back their shining hair, their faces as hopeful as those Sunday-best clothes.

When the last deportee walked out the door, and no parent had come, and no news of them either, the children wilted. Silently, the oldest took her sister's hand. Heads down, they left the train station, their signs bumping along the pavement.

H
enry followed them, remembering that Madame Gaulloise said children looked for their parents at the train station or the Hotel Lutetia. He figured they would go there next.

The little girls went down the Boulevard de Strasbourg, past a huge market and hordes of people haggling over crates of fruits and vegetables, to the Seine. They crossed over it and an island with what must have been Notre Dame, given the long, carved stone braces that jutted out from the cathedral—Miss Dixon had called them flying buttresses. The girls kept walking. Henry kept shadowing them.

For an hour they walked—no childhood skipping or dallying, no pausing by the one shop that had sweets in its window or to watch the hobo street performer with
a small scraggly dog sitting on his head. They didn't slow until they turned from the Boulevard Saint Germain onto the rue du Four. Many blocks down, another crowd gathered. Unlike the one at Gare de l'Est, this one was loud.

Frustrated shouts echoed up the street. People were crammed against a barricade and shaking their fists at police who pushed them back with sticks. Even more people jostled in front of billboards nailed to poles and littered with papers on both sides. The people in back barked at those ahead for standing too long, for blocking the view. Those closest to the boards snarled at them for pushing from behind.

What does that one say? I can't read it
. There were cries of anguish, people collapsing onto curbs to cry. Or sparks of hope—
Look, look there! Do you see? A month ago!

What in the world were they looking at? Gingerly, Henry stepped into the rumbling crowd.

Photos. Hand-scrawled notes:

If you know of Etienne Cain, please contact Rebecca Cain, 9, rue Gabrielle.

Tell the family of Marcel Challe that their son was alive as of April 15.

Or on some of the photos, messages like this one beside a formal portrait of a beautiful young woman at a piano:
I am very sorry. Your daughter died October 1944. Before that she would sing ‘Che tua madre' from
Madama
Butterfly
to us. She brought beauty to Ravensbruck.

Henry backed away, knowing this was no place for an idle spectator. It was a horrible way to learn the fate of a loved one. Or to learn nothing at all.

He searched for the girls. Relieved, he spotted them crossing the street to a park, where an elderly lady sat. They helped her stand and supported her arms as they walked away. Well, at least someone was watching over them, Henry mused, although it looked like the children were taking care of the lady more than the other way around.

Henry jogged across and took the bench. He tried to regather himself. No one stateside would believe all this, he thought.

A long line of exhausted, frail deportees waiting to be processed inched its way along the wall toward the entrance of the Hotel Lutetia. Official-looking women in tightly buttoned navy blue uniforms marched up and down, scribbling on clipboards, asking questions. Bystanders shouted their own:
Do you have any news of
——? Dozens of names were called at the same time, peppering the deportees like scattershot from shotguns. They looked dazed. Only a few managed replies. The French soldiers guarding them did nothing to stop the incessant, frantic interrogation.
Do you know of
——?
Have you seen
——? Only when one woman doubled
over as if kicked in the stomach and started screaming at a deportee that she was a liar—her sister could not be dead—
liar, liar, liar
—did the soldiers pull someone away from the line.

Another truck convoy arrived, depositing more deportees. Unsteady, those men shuffled into the already long line.

Henry despaired. Where in the world among all these people, in this huge city, did he think he'd find one small, lost, unhappy boy?

 

Henry watched all afternoon, approaching any children he saw, listening, searching their faces for any familiar features. He realized how much a nine-year-old boy could grow in a year, how much starvation could alter a person's face. Would he recognize Pierre?

At twilight, following playground sounds of laughter and jeering, Henry entered the park behind him. It was a pretty little square of pine and gum trees, pebble walkways, and flower beds, an oasis from the noise and angst of the street outside. At its entrance was a marble statue of three figures: a small boy climbing stairs to two women in long coats and muffs, one elderly, one young. The women's carved faces carried concern for the stone boy, who held his hat in his hand. The older lady was leaning down to rest her hand on the child's shoulder. The younger one
looked to be pulling money from her purse. At the base of the stairs was a fourth stone figure, a new mother holding an infant, carefully shielding the baby with her chiseled cloak. The work was marked:
MADAME BOUCICANT
1816–1887 and
MADAME DE HIRSCH
1833–1899. Henry felt his throat tighten at its symbol of need, replicated so clearly in real-life souls across the street.

The laughter came from behind the statue's stairs. Henry had already figured out that getting too close to the children hanging around the hotel caused them to skitter away. Henry tiptoed up the stairs and sat next to the stone women, shielded from the children's view.

“Ton tour.”

Henry peeped over and saw a game of what looked like jacks. Patsy had played it constantly when they were kids. But instead of a tiny rubber ball and little metal stars, these boys and girls were hurling up a knobby bone painted red, and scrambling to pick up a scattering of smaller bones before it hit the ground again. Two boys were facing off. They both made it through picking up pairs and triples. But one of them failed to grab four before the red bone came back down.

“Merde!”
The loser handed over a stick of gum.

Henry's mouth dropped open at the sight of little kids gambling.

The winner tried a new hustle. He presented a lumpy
leather sack and poured out a huge cache of marbles. He grinned, cocky. When no one would take him on, he ridiculed the group as cowards.
“Quels trouillards!”

The boy sweetened his lure with
two
sticks of gum as his bet and offered to loan a special shooter he'd won the day before to whomever had the guts to play him.
“Regardez.”
He held up a large marble, saying that it'd once belonged to an American and that the boy who lost it claimed it was good luck. He laughed with a grown man's sarcasm.
“Bonne chance pour moi!”

It sure would help the player using it, thought Henry. It was a huge end-of-day “cloud,” with red and gold swirls, a one-of-a-kind marble that glassblowers made from the day's leftover glass scraps. Just like the marble he'd won off Clayton and carried on bombing missions for good luck, the one he'd given Pierre.

Wait a minute.
Henry's breath snagged.
Good luck. Red and gold swirls.
Henry couldn't keep himself from leaning over the edge to get a closer look.

As soon as his head appeared above them, the children shrieked and scattered. The boy scrambled to shove his marbles back into his bag before darting away. But Henry was too quick for him. He pole-vaulted over the back of the statue and grabbed the hustler by his wrist. The boy still clutched the marble.

Henry snatched it and turned it over and over, looking
for a tiny flaw, a little chip in one of the golden whirls. There it was. This
was
his marble. He was certain of it. But why wasn't it with Pierre? “Where did you get this?” Henry nearly shouted the question.

The boy looked up at him with terrified eyes.

“Où est-ce que tu trouves ça?”
Henry repeated in French. “Please. I am looking for the boy this belonged to.”

The boy shook his head, still frightened, clearly thinking Henry meant to hurt him. Henry was ashamed to be terrorizing a child. He felt like Clayton. But Henry knew that the instant he let go the hustler would bolt.

“Pierre.
Il s'appelle Pierre.
Do you know him?” Henry was vaguely aware of the other children peeping out from behind bushes and trees. “I won't hurt you. I promise.
Je te promets.
”

“He does not believe you.”

Henry turned around to see a short, middle-aged woman in a white smock and scarf. As he looked, the boy hauled off and punched him, right on his sore rib. Henry gasped. His grip loosened. The boy wrenched free.

Henry lurched for him, just missing, and belly-flopped on the pebbles.

The boy stumbled and righted himself and was about to escape.

“Arrête, mon petit,”
the woman spoke gently and stepped in his path. The boy froze. She held her hand up to stop
Henry from moving and spooking the child. “What is it you want from the boy?” she asked him. “Tell me and I will explain to him.”

“I am looking for a boy named Pierre who saved my life. I am an American pilot. Pierre hid me and connected me with the
maquis
. His mother was taken to Ravensbruck. He comes from the Vercors. The rest of his family is dead. I am afraid she might be as well. I gave him this marble.” He held it up. “That boy must know where Pierre is since he had the marble.”

“The Vercors,” the woman murmured. “God help him.” She turned to the boy and explained in French. Did he know where Pierre was?

Henry's heart sank when the boy answered no. But he did add that Pierre had been hanging around, waiting for “an absent” to return.

Bingo. Madame Gaulloise had been right!

“Merci, chéri.”
The woman pulled half a roll from her apron pocket and gave it to the boy, who grabbed it. He ran off, cramming huge bites into his mouth, trailed by the other children, like gulls chasing a bird that had caught a fish along the James River back home. The sight sickened Henry. Pierre was probably that hungry, too.

Henry pushed himself to his feet and carefully buttoned the marble in his pocket. “Thank you,
madame
.”

She looked him over, finally smiling slightly. “You will
not find your Pierre by threatening other children.”

Henry flinched at the word
threatening.
“I didn't mean to scare him,” he explained, feeling like he'd been caught in a schoolyard fight.

“These children are damaged,” the woman continued quietly as if explaining something quite obvious to the class dunce. “They are afraid. Many live on the streets as they watch and pray for parents to return. They are terrified of being caught and taken to an orphanage or something worse. They will not trust anything you say. Too many of their loved ones have disappeared, right after someone like you asked questions.”

Henry nodded. He could see it. But what should he do, then—wait outside the hotel and just hope he could collar Pierre and hang on to him until he could talk the boy into trusting him again? If the past months had affected Pierre in the same way they had this gang, Henry knew that plan had a snowball's chance in Hades.

“Can you help me,
madame
?” It was obvious from her hospital smock and scarf that she was with the Lutetia's deportation center. “Please? I'm a good worker. I could do whatever you need at the hotel until we find him or his mother.”

The woman thought a moment, then motioned for Henry to follow her to the long row of boards. They had been pushed up under the hotel's awnings to protect them
during the night. Only a few people remained reading the notices. She pulled a small pad of paper from her pocket. “What is the boy's full name?”

“Pierre Dubois.”

“The mother's?”

“I don't know,
madame
.” Again, Henry kicked himself for not asking the priest when he had the chance.

“Hmmmm. That will make it harder.” She thought a bit before writing.

The setting sun cast a red glow on the hundreds of faces pinned there. Among them, at a child's eye level, she tacked her square note:
Pierre Dubois, please come inside and ask for Sabine Zlatin.

“We shall see if this works. It may frighten him off at first. So you must be patient. What is your name?”

“Henry Forester,
madame
.”

“Come back tomorrow, Monsieur Forester. We can use you.”

“Yes, ma'am!” Hope raced through him. “What time?”

“Before the first train of deportees arrives. At six thirty. Now that victory is declared, the Allies are free to help move the absents. The Americans have been flying in thousands from Germany each day. They tell us to expect eight thousand tomorrow.”