A Troubled Peace (15 page)

T
wo pairs of feet in shoes cut open so that toes could grow poked out from under the cardboard. Silently, barely breathing, Henry inched toward the open edge of the hut. Inside he could see blond curls over two virtually identical young faces pressed close together, brother and sister, like kittens asleep in a shoe box.

He tiptoed to the next teepee. Empty.

The last one smelled of cigarette smoke. Henry peeped in and caught a young teen mid-drag.
“Zut!”
The youth scrambled out the other end.

This time Henry anticipated the dash. He grabbed the youth by the collar. He couldn't understand the flood of French the youth hurled at him, it was so fast and full of foul-sounding slang. He let him go. Given this boy's attitude and the experience Henry had just had with the
marbles hustler, he knew he wasn't going to get anything worthwhile out of him. The youth ran off making a rude gesture. Henry would have laughed if the youth's poverty and isolation had not been so painfully obvious.

Henry went back to the middle hut and looked in. There was a pile of marbles and a candy bar cradled in a nest of crumpled newspapers. The bedding reminded Henry of how Pierre had lined the hole in his barn wall with a blanket, a pillow, and an old rag doll to reassure the fliers he hid there. His gut told Henry this was Pierre's shelter.

But where was Pierre? Would he come back? It was strange that he hadn't taken the treasures he'd obviously won in marble games with him. Could that mean he'd given up and left the city? Or what if he had done something awful after learning his mother was dead?

Henry was overwhelmed with disappointment and worry. He buckled beside the little cardboard house and covered his face. He'd failed. For all he knew Pierre could be at the bottom of the Seine by now. American bombers had hit the Nazi ammunition factory in which Pierre's father had been forced to work and killed him. Henry's presence had probably led the Milice right to Pierre's mother. Pierre's grandfather was shot during her arrest and his mother died at Ravensbruck. Pierre's losses, his desolation, were Henry's fault.

Henry sank into a gully of regret, guilt, and frustrated tears. He had absolutely no idea what to do. He felt as lost as when he had fallen out of the sky onto Nazi-controlled France.

“Monsieur?”
A gentle voice and a small hand on his shoulder made Henry jump and jerk up his head, wiping his face in embarassment. There stood a fragile and extremely fair boy with tufts of golden hair—one of the slumbering children.

“Ne vous inquiètez pas.”
The child spoke reassuringly and patted him.
“Vos parents reviendront.”

The boy's French was strangely accented. Henry could only understand that he offered comfort because he thought Henry was weeping over his own parents. The child tried another language, which completely flummoxed Henry. Russian maybe?

“I am sorry, I do not understand,” Henry tried, almost expecting the boy to speak three languages.

The child shook his head.
“Je ne comprends pas.”

“Moi non plus,”
Henry allowed. He figured he'd attempt his French and hope the boy would make it through his accent better than he was getting the boy's. He told him he was looking for Pierre. Henry was a friend who wanted to help Pierre.

The boy answered something about Pierre's mother and the Hotel Lutetia.

Henry nodded. But what Henry really wanted to know was if the boy had seen Pierre
after
Madame Latour told Pierre his mother was dead. Very carefully, Henry explained that there was bad news about Pierre's mother.

“Oui, oui. Ils disent ça pour capturer les enfants.”
The boy's sister was suddenly standing beside him as well, explaining that adults lied to kidnap children. They had told her that their mother was dead. But they were wrong. She lived.
“C'est faux. Elle reviendra. Nous avons reçu une carte postale.”
The girl showed Henry a postcard of a lake in Germany, dotted with teeny canoes and sunbathers. He couldn't translate what the mother had scribbled, but clearly the girl believed she lived because of the postcard.

Henry had heard at the Lutetia that some of the labor camps had forced prisoners to send propaganda messages home. The girl's postcard was frayed and folded, read a thousand times over, maybe a year old. With a lump in his throat, he handed it back and forced himself to smile and nod reassuringly.

Trying to keep the conversation going, he asked if Pierre had been told a lie.

“Une femme lui a dit que sa mère était morte. Il n'y croit pas.”

Henry thought he would scream in frustration. He understood that Pierre did not believe his mother was
dead. Where was he now, did she know?

“Il a un travail, non
?” the boy asked his sister.

She elbowed him and frowned and did not answer.

A job? Did the boy say Pierre had a job? But before he could ask more, the sister took the brother's hand. She'd gotten wary. Henry had obviously asked too many questions. They were heading off to church, the girl said, pointedly adding her good-bye,
“Au revoir, monsieur.”

Henry clung to every ounce of self-control he had to not grab them and try to squeeze information out of them. Instead, he asked politely if he could come back to visit.

The boy smiled. The girl dragged him away.

Henry needed help—someone who could really understand these children and question them in a way that wouldn't frighten them. He couldn't ask Madame Zlatin—not on the heels of her learning that her husband was dead. Maybe Claudette would…
Oh Lord! Claudette!
Henry realized that he was supposed to have met her an hour ago.

 

As Henry reached the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés and sprinted toward the Café des Deux Magots, he expected Claudette to be gone, tired of waiting; or, at the very best, furious with him. Instead she was on the fringes of its sidewalk tables, part of a crowd listening attentively to a hand
some man with large dark eyes and combed-back wavy hair. She glowed with excitement and simply slipped her arm through Henry's to draw him near. She must be completely starstruck to not have noticed the time, thought Henry, with a little spasm of jealousy.

“Henri, c'est formidable,”
she whispered. “Before you are the leading minds of our country. Look there—that is Albert Camus, the editor of
Combat
. With him is Jean-Paul Sartre's love, Simone de Beauvoir, a very important thinker for me. She writes of women's natural abilities and right for independence.”

Normally Henry would have been interested in Camus because of Madame, but he was focused on finding Pierre. He tried to pull her away. “Claudette, I need your help.”

“No, no, Henri.
Une minute.
I want to hear more of what Camus says. A woman just complained of seeing so many ‘cadavers' from the camps walking the streets, of reading his editorials about atrocities. She is tired of the ‘rutabaga era,' of being sad. She wants to laugh again.
Mon Dieu,
how heartless.” She paused, listening. “Monsieur Camus is saying that we must honor the returning absents and their struggles and create a social democracy…” She listened again, then translated, “governed by morality, and free of the bourgeois who let the Nazis in and whose souls are too delicate to hear such truths.” She laughed outright at Camus's sarcasm when the chicly dressed woman stood
up, insulted, and flounced out of the café.

“Claudette.” Henry turned her around to face him. “That's what I need your help with. Pierre's mother is dead. Dead at Ravensbruck for the Resistance. I think I know where Pierre has been sleeping—down by the river near Notre Dame. There are children I can't understand who know him. Please, I need you to talk to them.”

“
Oui, Henri.
But of course.” Claudette took his hand.

The crowd at the restaurant was breaking up as well. One of the men Henry had met the night before approached them. He nodded at Henry before turning to Claudette. “Our returned POWs are massing at La Mutualité. Twenty-five thousand of them. They are protesting the government's neglect of them. We are all going. Come, Claudette. We need to support them.”

“Twenty-five thousand.
C'est incroyable,
” she muttered.

Henry tightened his grip on her hand. “I need you to help me now, Claudette.”

Her friend stepped in front of Henry to block his path. He looked at Claudette with anger. “You prefer this boy to me?”

Claudette laughed lightly. She told the man he flattered himself.

Henry bristled. “Look, buddy, this doesn't concern you.”

“
Mais oui
, it does.” He shoved Henry.

Henry staggered a bit, but held his ground. “Back off.”

The Frenchman shoved him again.

This time Henry pushed back.

“Stop it, both of you,” Claudette cried. “Antoine,” she said to the Frenchman, “behave yourself. This man risked his life to help liberate us.”

“So. I see how it is, Claudette. You are one of those American-hunters. Will you sell yourself to him for a ticket to America and the fat-cat life?”

“Hey! That's enough, pal,” Henry warned, balling up his fist for a good punch if it came to that.

But Claudette beat him to it. The explosion of her slap was so loud, a passerby
ooh-la-laaed
.

Antoine clutched his reddening face and spat at her feet before stomping off. Claudette seemed completely unconcerned. Henry wondered if they had had similar arguments before.

“Come, Henri.” She took his arm and walked them away. “What fools men are. I swear I will never marry.”

“Aw, Claudette, you'll marry. The boys won't leave you alone till you do. You're too beautiful.”

She stopped and looked up earnestly into his face. “No, Henri, unless they change the laws and attitudes in France, I will never marry. If I marry, my husband becomes the
chef de famille
and I am legally nothing but a child. De Gaulle is calling for four million “handsome babies' in the
next ten years to replenish our population. Women will be told to stay home and stay pregnant.” She began walking again. “No, that is not for me. I am fighting for the right to work.”

“It wouldn't be that bad for you in America,” Henry said quietly, not really knowing what he was suggesting.

But Claudette didn't seem to hear him.

A
sea of people followed them on the boulevard Saint Germain. “We will pass near La Mutualité, Henri. I will pause just a moment to see what happens at this demonstration. We will write about it for our UFF paper.”

“Claudette, please, I really have to talk with those children before I lose them.”

“I will be only a moment, Henri. It is important.” Claudette was all business now.

“Okay, Claudette, five minutes. What's their beef anyway?” he asked with irritation.

“Beef?”

“Sorry. I mean, what are they mad about? And who are they?” There were thousands of bedraggled prisoners and camp survivors returning every day—Resistance fighters,
political “undesirables,” Jews, forced laborers. It was hard to keep them straight.

“These are our soldiers, captured when France fell, prisoners since 1940. Some people blame them for the Occupation and our humiliation, saying they did not fight hard enough. So they have come back to a France that is scornful of their courage, a France completely changed. So many have lost everything—their houses destroyed by Allied bombing, their families scattered as refugees, sometimes their wives taking on new loves, thinking they were dead. The government has promised them a new suit of clothes and shoes, but there are few to be had. The ministry did give them a thousand francs each as they reentered the country—but as you know that will buy next to nothing these days.”

Henry calculated that to be about twenty dollars. He knew how American GIs would react to getting twenty bucks in bonus for five years of jail. All hell would break loose.

And that's what they came to—thousands upon thousands of men shaking signs that demanded clothes and shoes. They shouted angry complaints that de Gaulle's new army had beautiful new uniforms while they were in rags. Through a megaphone, someone urged the crowd to march on the home of Henri Frenay, head of the ministry for prisoners: He had betrayed them all. He crawled with Vichyists!

Claudette gasped. “Monsieur Frenay was Resistance. He helped start
Combat
. He fought for these men, for France.
How can they turn on him in this way? He is a good man.” She called out, “
Non! Frenay est bon
.”

Men surrounding them glared at her. Henry could feel the mob bubbling toward violence. “Shhhh, Claudette. You can't stop this.”

The crowd began chanting:
Frenay out, Frenay to the stake!
It sounded like a guillotine crowd from the French Revolution.

Claudette screamed to be heard over them, “Idiots! He fought for you!
Il a lutté pour vous!”

“Shut up, Claudette. You can't fight twenty-five thousand juiced-up soldiers.”

“Il a lutté pour vous!”
she continued shouting, ignoring Henry.

Henry grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the ground to carry her out of the mob. Enraged faces warned Henry that he had just a few seconds to get her out of harm's way.

“Coward,” she yelled at Henry, flailing at him. “Let go.”

He held on. “You can't win this today, Claudette. Choose your battles. Write about it. Write what you think in your paper and pass it out to everyone in Paris. Screaming at this crowd is suicide. Look at it.” He grabbed her face and turned it. “Look!”

The men were on the move. Many of them were picking up stones as they walked.

“Mon Dieu,”
she whispered.

Bright red caught Henry's eye. A couple of the soldiers holding signs demanding clothes were huddled with a man in a crimson shirt and a boy. He looked more closely. He was right. It was the man on the boat and the marbles hustler. The group shook hands and then looked around furtively before parting. Something was up. Henry's mind played the day back in his mind—the hustler checking out tailor shops and writing down addresses, the small boy by the river letting slip that Pierre had a “job” and his sister cutting him off. Henry suddenly remembered having heard at the Lutetia that there were a rash of break-ins happening at Paris clothes shops.

Good grief.
The hustler wasn't planning on purchasing clothes. He was probably getting ready to break into a store and hawk the stuff to these soldiers. Could Pierre be involved? Was that the “job” the gentle, golden-haired boy had referred to? Could that be why his sister had been so quick to hush him?

“Come on, Claudette,” Henry grabbed her hand. “We gotta follow that man and boy. I think they'll lead us to Pierre.”

 

He and Claudette shadowed at a distance, dodging men running to join the protest. It was hard to keep the pair in sight without getting too close. When the duo looked back in their direction, Henry and Claudette had to pre
tend to peer in shop windows. They held hands, whispered in each other's ears, like a couple out for a stroll. Claudette instantly snapped back into the right playacting, having spent years as a lookout and a shadow for the
maquis.
Henry tried to control his impatience, his impulse to run ahead. He followed her lead just as he had when his life had depended on her.

The hustler was backtracking along the very route he and Henry had taken from the Hotel Scribe to the little encampment of cardboard shelters. He'd definitely been checking out some options. Near the Louvre, just off the Rue de Rivoli, the pair stopped in front of what once had been an elegant storefront, now run-down as all Paris was. There was a tweed suit and several hats in the window. Henry pulled Claudette into an alcove entrance.

Several men carrying clubs joined the two. “Henri,” Claudette whispered, “that is trouble. I am certain those men with the sticks are looking for a collaborator. The return of the absents has been so shocking there has been a resurgence of retributions against Nazi informants and anyone suspected of being responsible for a
maquis
fighter's arrest.”

Across the street, the group argued.

“Can you hear what they are saying?” he asked Claudette.

“I think they have arrived at the same time by accident.
The men are after someone in an upstairs apartment. The pair we followed is after the clothes. Your man—the man in the red shirt—is telling them to wait, to not break down the door and make noise. He says he has a very small and agile boy who can crawl through the window and let them into the shop and the apartment.” She strained to hear more. “The men like the idea that they can surprise the
collabo
so he cannot get away. They want the small boy to come with them to several houses tonight.” She glanced at Henry. “The boy with them cannot do that, he is too big. They must be waiting for someone else.”

Henry nodded. “I bet it's…”

Henry caught sight of a small figure walking up the street toward the men. Despite the passage of a year, he knew that walk. He'd never forget that small child appearing on the roadway to take his hand and lead him to safety.

“It's Pierre!” He'd found him, at last!

Filled with joy and relief, Henry started to dart across the street.

Claudette grabbed him. “Wait, Henri. Those men will not let you have Pierre. Let him do what they want first and then we can lure him away as they go upstairs.” Henry tried to jerk away. Claudette persisted. “There are too many of them, Henri. Think! Listen to me. If you rush in, they will scatter, taking Pierre with them. Or worse
for you. You cannot fight three men with clubs. You must believe what I tell you. It will be the same as when we went after the Nazis. We let the group go in to raid a house and then picked off those standing guard outside, one by one. Trust me.”

Henry knew she was right. But what if they hurt Pierre? What if the collaborator had a gun and in self-defense shot Pierre by mistake? He was in agony.

Claudette tugged on his sleeve. “Trust me,” she whispered.

Henry ground his teeth.
Two minutes, that's it; then I'm going in.

 

The man in the red shirt hoisted Pierre up easily. Pierre balanced himself on the man's shoulders like a carnival act. Henry frowned. The move was practiced. How long had that jerk been taking advantage of Pierre?

Claudette noticed it, too. “Your Pierre may not want to be saved, Henri. There have been a number of burglaries in the city, taking clothes, coats, hats, and shoes. He looks like he knows exactly what to do.”

Henry felt sick as Pierre pried open the window latch, lowered the sash quietly, and pulled himself into it. There was a moment of squirming and then Pierre's legs and feet disappeared. Soon he opened the tall wooden door. The group swarmed in.

“Now!” Henry and Claudette sprinted to the building and slipped into the door left ajar. The man in the red shirt, the marble hustler, and Pierre were just sneaking toward the clothes in the storefront window.

Henry lunged, shoving the man aside. “Pierre, it's me—Henri!” he cried. He held out his arms, expecting Pierre to embrace him, as he had at their good-bye.

Pierre stared at him.

Birdbrain!
Henry berated himself. He was moving too fast. But there wasn't time to spare. “Pierre, don't you recognize me? It's Henri. The American. You taught me French, I taught you English. You saved my life.”

Pierre blinked and stared more.

Claudette tried, telling him not to be afraid.
“Ça, c'est le pilote qui est resté chez toi dans le Vercors.”
She pointed at Henry, telling Pierre he was the pilot Pierre had helped, back home in the Vercors. The one who took him to the priest for safety. Remember?
Souviens?”

Pierre looked at her blankly.

Henry heard shuffling atop the steps, the sound of a man struggling, his cries muffled. They had to hurry. Henry tried again: “I hid you in the barn from the Milice when they came. Your
maman
asked me to…” That was the mistake.

At
maman
, Pierre began to back away, shaking his head.

“Henri, look out!”

From behind, the man in the red shirt jumped on Henry. Henry managed to dip and roll him off. “Take Pierre and run, Claudette!” he shouted. He grabbed the man by his crimson shirt, slammed him against the wall, and hit him as hard as he could across the jaw. He felt Claudette brush past him, could hear her coaxing Pierre to follow her; they would look for his mother together, “
Viens avec moi, chéri. Nous trouverons ta maman
.” The front door swung open and they were gone.

Run, Claudette!

The vigilantes came down the stairs, shoving the blubbering collaborator with their clubs. “
Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé?
” they shouted at the man in the red shirt.

“Au secours!”
He gasped for help.

Before Henry could turn to defend himself, a club hit his head. In a flash of hot splintering light and pain, Henry felt the enormous blow, and then nothing.