The House of Dreams (9 page)

“Be careful,” he said as Raymond approached.

“I'm a big girl, Varian.” She smiled up at Raymond as he handed her a glass of red wine. “Thank you, darling.”

“I have a train to catch. I'll bid you good night,” Varian said, taking his case and hat. He pushed his way past Raymond and out of the bar.

“I wish you two would get along,” Mary Jayne said, settling at a small table with a red lamp. Raymond took out a silver case and lit two cigarettes, passing one to her.

“Play nicely, you mean?”

Mary Jayne kicked him gently under the table. “It would just make things a lot easier. I…” The words died on her lips as three policemen walked into the bar. They spoke to the bartender and showed him some papers. “Raymond,” she said quietly. “We should get out of here. Something's going on. There's going to be a raid.”

Raymond exhaled a plume of blue smoke, his eyes closing as he tilted his head back. “We will be fine,
bébé
.”

One of the policemen strode over to their table. “Raymond Couraud?”

“Who wants to know?” he said, taking another drag of his cigarette.

“Are you Raymond Couraud?”

“I might be.”

“Papers.” The policeman snapped his fingers. Raymond leisurely pulled out his wallet and handed over his identity card. “This is him.” He beckoned over his colleagues, and they blocked his escape as Raymond made a break for it.

Mary Jayne cried out as the table went flying, the glass of wine smashing on the floor, the red lamp rolling in an arc, light swinging across their shoes as they scuffled. “Raymond!”

“We have a warrant for your arrest. You are absent without leave from the Foreign Legion,” the policeman said, snapping the handcuffs closed.

“No! There's a mistake!” Mary Jayne clung to Raymond, who was panting, his arms held firmly by the other two policemen. “He has his demobilization papers, I've seen them.”

Raymond leaned down to kiss her and whispered in her ear, “Forged.”

The color drained from her face. “What can I do?”

“Money,” Raymond said, “and get a good lawyer.”

 

TEN

R
UE
G
RIGNAN
, M
ARSEILLE

1940

G
ABRIEL

Mary Jayne wasn't at the office the next morning. When they told me to come back on Wednesday to see Fry, who was out of town, I made sure I was first in the queue. I hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep in my cold, pestilential room anyway. Bedbugs, or fleas, or both, had kept me awake all night, and I was scratching at a bite on my wrist as a kid with sleep-mussed eyes unlocked the door.

“No one's here yet,” he said. There was something about his face, an innocence, that touched me. He must have been only a couple of years younger than me, but there was a goodness to him that I'd lost somewhere along the way.

“Hey, Gussie,” Charlie said as he squeezed past into the office. “Good night?”

“All quiet, Charlie.”

I glanced along the pavement and saw a tall, dark-haired man striding down the road, his overcoat flapping around him. A little black puppy was trotting along at his side, pulling on the leash. “Good morning,” he said cheerily, holding on to his hat as they blew into the office. A few people were gathering behind me now, and it wasn't even light yet. It seemed to take hours for the office to open up. I couldn't bear to think what it would mean if they couldn't help me. How else was I going to get away? My mind filled with visions of police cars, cells, the Gestapo. I could be hauled up for manslaughter, murder, even.… I screwed my eyes shut as I thought of the fire.
Vita,
I thought, my guts twisting with guilt and sorrow.

“Lambert,” Charlie called out, reading from his clipboard. There was no answer. “Gabriel Lambert?”

Something inside me registered he was calling my name. “That's me,” I said.

“Say, I remember you. The jazz fan. Well, come on in, fellah,” he said, and clapped me on the back. The queue shuffled forward behind me as I stepped into the office. “Head right on through,” he said, pointing to the room at the end. I smoothed down my hair and knocked.

“Come in,” a voice said. I pushed the door open and found the dark-haired man sitting behind the desk.

“I am Lambert,” I said. “I am … I…” My faltering grasp of English deserted me.

“We can talk in French,” Fry said with perfect fluency. A young woman stood at his side, handing him paper after paper to sign. “I won't be a moment, do take a seat.” He glanced at me and smiled. In the silence, my breath seemed loud. My heart was jolting so hard, I could feel it pulsing in my throat. The puppy yawned and turned a couple of circles before flopping down into a wicker basket by the fireplace. “There,” he said finally. “Thank you, Lena. Would you mind closing the door?” He stood and offered me his hand. “I'm Varian Fry. Pleased to meet you, Monsieur Lambert.”

“Likewise,” I said, horribly aware that my palm was sweating. I quickly wiped it on my thigh before shaking his hand. I was so nervous to finally meet the fabled Varian Fry that as I tried to smile my lips trembled, and I saw a flicker of concern on his face. I tried to calm myself. The ARC was my gateway to freedom, and Fry held the key. It wouldn't look good to be too scared.

“Well,” he said, scanning quickly through the file on his desk. I could see my name on the tag:
Lambert, Gabriel
. “You made quite an impression on Miss Gold.” He held up the ink portrait. “This may have had something to do with it. Most charming.”

“Thank you.”

“But, I checked with Bingham.” Fry made a steeple with his fingers, pressed them to his lips. I held my nerve, stayed silent. “As you know, we only help people we can trust.”

“You can trust me.”

Fry stared me down. “Bingham couldn't place you—”

“We met only briefly.” Panic chilled my stomach, and sweat trickled down my spine. “I assure you—”

Fry raised his hand to stop me. “Fortunately, a couple of my colleagues had come across your work in Paris, too.”

“I had a certain amount of celebrity,” I said, glancing down in a way I hoped looked modest.

“Ordinarily, your case would not be a priority.”

“But I must leave, at once!” I cried. “I have spoken out against Nazism.”

“So has any sane person,” Fry said calmly. “The thing is, you are not, I believe, classed as a ‘degenerate' artist by the Nazis. In fact, your glamorous art deco work is—forgive me…”

“Decorative?” I said, challenging him.

“Admired. And the authorship of your political cartoons is not known generally. You're not on the Emergency Rescue Committee's lists.”

“I don't understand. I thought this was the American Relief Center.”

“It is.” Varian pressed his fingertips together. “The committee is our parent organization in New York. It was established to help refugees displaced by the war in Europe. My remit in setting up the ARC in Marseille was to help specific clients in grave danger.” Fry glanced up at a noise from the outer office. “Our work has expanded somewhat, as you can see from the queues, but the American Relief Center's priority is to sort through the thousands of applicants and help those in immediate danger.…”

Decorative, degenerate? Who cares?
I thought as he talked on, desperately concocting any number of degenerate artworks in my mind. “Please, you must help me.” My throat was tight. “I lost … I lost everything, you see?”

“Yes, yes,” Fry said, pulling a clean handkerchief from his pocket and offering it to me. “There, there, old boy. Don't upset yourself.” Was I crying? I felt hot, and dizzy with hunger and emotion. “I understand you have funds for your ticket, and the ARC will help you obtain the paperwork and visas—”

“Oh, thank God!” I leapt forward, and clasped his hand. “Thank you!”

“Please, calm yourself, Mr. Lambert,” he said. “Listen, all we can do is wrap anti-Nazis like you in the American flag. It's your only chance.” He leaned toward me. “Someone said to me the other day that we are in the export business, pure and simple. We are exporting men and women.” He made it sound so easy. “Now, I understand from Miss Gold that you have the finances to take care of your ticket,” he went on, “which is a big help. All we have to do is guide you through the lengthy process of obtaining the correct papers. I'm going to assign your case to one of my colleagues. You'll like him, he's a good, steady chap and he'll get you sorted out.” Fry leaned forward and tapped the side of his nose. “Don't you worry. We have ways of getting you out of France.”

I could have embraced him. What it meant, after all the weeks on the road, after everything that had happened to me, to have this American angel talking so confidently to me, I can't explain. There was something, of course, a small voice of conscience in me that said:
You have no right to this kindness
. But to be honest, my heart was broken and gone. Then, I was thinking only of myself, and it's only now, after decades of guilt for the way that I deceived that good man, that I will make amends.

 

ELEVEN

R
UE
G
RIGNAN
, M
ARSEILLE

1940

V
ARIAN

Varian knew the moment Beamish walked into the American Relief Center that the poet Walter Mehring hadn't been exaggerating. “Baby,” as they all called the writer who looked more like a vagabond than a man of letters, had appeared at Varian's hotel room the night before, shaken and terrified. Varian had last seen him in the dark shack near the lighthouse, peering around the bulk of Bernhard's shoulder like a bird with its head tucked down behind a cliff against a storm. Baby should have been in Gibraltar by now, but he told Varian that the boat had failed to materialize, and at two
A.M.
Beamish had sent them back to their hiding places in small groups so they wouldn't attract too much attention.

Varian couldn't let the refugees trailing out of the waiting room see how exhausted he felt. “I'm sorry,” he said brightly, “we've just run out of time for today. Please come back tomorrow.”

Lena, Varian's secretary, was still hard at work, her head bent over her desk by the white marble fireplace, blown tulips in a blue vase nodding toward the ledger she was writing in as she handed out meal tokens and a subsistence allowance to a couple whose desperation was etched in every line on their gray faces. She talked calmly to them, as you might to a frightened animal. As the man began to babble, to plead, she looked up and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear.

“Il ne faut pas exagérer,”
she said, smiling at them. You must not go too far.

Good old Lena,
Varian thought. She was another one who seemed to have arrived like a miracle.
How many professional social workers who speak six languages fluently are there around when you need them?

“Everyone's ready, boss,” Charlie said quietly. He seemed cheerful enough, but there was something in his gaze that made Varian uncomfortable.
Sharlee
looked more like a matinee idol than a doorman, he'd always thought, but his old ambulance uniform gave him something of an official air, and he did a good job of keeping the refugees in order and good spirits as they waited on the steps up to the second-floor offices. The ARC had set up camp above a leather and pocketbook store abandoned by the shopkeeper when the October 3 Jewish Statute forced him out of his job and his home. The man had suggested they use it until they found somewhere larger, and in the early days they did their work surrounded by cases of stock, the warm scent of leather and polish filling the air. A six-foot flagpole with the Stars and Stripes stood in the center of the office like a beacon of hope. Varian knew he was the eye of the storm, that for many of these people he was their only chance, and all he could do was try to look as confident as possible. Once the last of the refugees had gone, Varian walked briskly to his office. One glance at the faces of the men ranged around the table confirmed his fears.

He handed Lena a couple of files with handwritten notes to be typed up and closed the door after her. Varian allowed his head to fall forward and rest against the door a moment. He slid his thumb and forefinger beneath his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So?”

“The situation's hopeless but not serious,” Beamish said, a line, a joke, from the trenches of World War I they often threw around. He balanced a paper knife on the blotter, spun it on its point beneath his index finger.

“What the hell happened?” Varian burst out.

Beamish sat back in his chair and calmly folded his arms. “It looked like it was going to work, right up to the last minute. We met the captain in Snappy's bar like it had been arranged.” Fry knew it well, a seedy joint in the Vieux-Port, a favored haunt of British officers hiding out in Marseille. “Even the Brits thought it was a sure thing. There's no way they would have risked trying to get so many of their prisoners out on the boat if they'd thought the deal was crooked.” Beamish paused. “The bastard wouldn't budge without the cash up front.”

“The captain took the money? All of it?” Varian felt nauseated.

“He told our man he'd go to get the boat—”

“Forty-five hundred dollars. I thought we agreed—no money until the boat was safely at sea.”

“It wasn't our contact's fault.” Beamish looked impassive, bored, even, but Varian knew him well enough by now to see how shaken he was. “We both tried reasoning with the skipper. He wouldn't budge until we paid up front. He's probably halfway to Morocco by now.” He pursed his lips. “Some of the soldiers tracked down the hoods who set this up for us. They won't be doing any more deals for a while, but there's no sign of the money.”