The Keeper of the Walls (59 page)

Lily gazed at her, a strange thrill seizing her. “Nicky said that?”

“Yes! And he's right! If it hadn't been for Vichy, there would never have had to be a Mers-el-Kébir!”

She'd gone too far, and Mark had to rescue her. Personally, Lily applauded her, and knew that Mark did, too. But she allowed him to appease their fellow passengers, afraid of unpleasant consequences. These were not days when the young, or the old, were free to speak their minds.

At eight forty-five, the train pulled into the Gare d'Austerlitz in Paris. They had some problems with the luggage, because the baggage room was refusing to take any bags. But at length, after many trips, they collected all that was theirs on the sidewalk outside. But the métro stopped functioning at ten fifteen, and it was now ten thirty. A man offered to help them carry everything to the small hotel across the street.

In the morning, Lily and Kira left Mark with the baggage, and took the métro to the Pension Lord-Byron. Léone, the young maid, flung open the door, her face all welcoming smiles. And Madame Antiquet threw her arms around them, saying, conspiratorially: “I have a surprise for you two!”

In the dining room, Nicky was sitting at the table, stirring a cup of café
au lait.
Before he knew it, his sister had toppled him off his chair, and was hugging him so tightly that they both fell to the floor, laughing. Lily felt a moment of weakness, the room blurring before her eyes. He was safe. God—whichever one, the Catholic or the Jewish one—had let him come home safe.

“What happened over there? Did you run into any problems? When did you arrive?” she asked him, words tumbling out haphazardly in her excitement.

“Yesterday morning. I had no trouble getting out, and the exam was tough, but all right. I gave them both addresses, here and in Arès, just in case—so they can let me know if I passed. My problem was getting there: in Nantes. I reached the ticket counter at the station, and the woman refused to send me through without a German permit. So, with great emotion, I took my identity card and shoved it through the window. I'd judiciously spit on it a few times, smudging the writing, to look like tears. I told her that my brother was dying in Caen, and had requested one last visit from me. There were tears in my eyes and my voice was shaking. And, guess what?” He grinned at them, his large brown eyes shining with pride:
“She let me through without a permit!”

Lily was holding herself in, trying not to let her emotions gush out. She felt on the ragged edge, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “You alone, Nicky, would have made your way into a forbidden zone in order to take an
exam
. . . and you alone would have invented a story like that one! I'm not sure whether you deserve a standing ovation, or a thorough whipping.”

“Paris sure is a shambles, though,” he commented. “I've tried to help Madame Antiquet a little. Five German officers have requisitioned rooms here. She's had to move us into her own apartment, for the moment, to make extra space.” And then he asked: “Where's Mark?”

“He's in a small hotel by the Gare d'Austerlitz, with our baggage. There was too much for us to carry by hand.”

“Then I'll get Gustave, the handyman, and we'll go over there to help him. Madame Antiquet—perhaps you'd let us use your two carts? The three of us should have no trouble going through the subway with the bags in those carts.”

“I'll go with you,” Kira offered.

When they had departed, their young energies radiating joy through the boardinghouse, Madame Antiquet turned to Lily, and, her hands on her hips, asked: “Who's ‘Mark'?”

“A family friend who came with us on the train.”

The plump woman made a face, shrugged, and made a gesture of “I give up.” “I'd hoped for something more, Lily,” she said. “War or no war, it's good to have you back—with a bloom in your cheeks.”

Following her into the kitchen, Lily felt her heart constrict. The long trip was over, and Mark would be returning to his own apartment. She was on the verge of confiding in Madame Antiquet, and then held back. She'd always hated women who gossiped, spilling their guts out. All her life, she'd been forced to keep other people's secrets: her mother's, Misha's, Claude's. And now she had a secret of her own. She owed it as much discretion as the others.

God had a way of deciding everyone's fate. Lily would have to let Mark go, like the kind friend he was supposed to be. For, in occupied Paris, survival had to take first priority.

T
he children were back
at the lycée, Nicky in his final year and Kira in the tenth form. But for everyone else, life in Paris had turned into a kind of nightmare. The Germans paraded around town, obstreperous and arrogant, as if they'd always owned the graceful boulevards and picturesque avenues—their martial boots clicking, their harsh, clipped accents jarring with the quiet beauty of the old city. The French found themselves quivering, shrinking against the façades of buildings to make way for the strutting conquerors—as if they were a lower echelon of persons in the face of the Nazi occupants.

Everywhere, there was evidence of Teutonic supremacy. The city walls were plastered with posters of cabaret acts with flashy, seminude attractions, their captions in German. Varvara Trubetskaya's heart-shaped face, its saucer eyes of forget-me-not blue winking provocatively as her red curls bounced, smiled invitingly at German lieutenants young enough to be her sons. It was rumored that she'd gone to a clinic in Switzerland to get her face lifted, though most women weren't sure what that meant, and some said it was Sweden, not Switzerland. She looked twenty years younger than her fifty-five, though she graciously admitted ten. But the occupants loved her; she spoke their language fluently, and crooned to them from the stages of the Olympia, the Gaîté-Lyrique, and even the Opera Comique theaters.

Lily was too busy surviving to dwell for long on her husband's ex-wife. Yet she was becoming frightened by the Jewish question. Street names that were Jewish had been changed. The signposts around the city were no longer in French. By October, even the Vichy regime had expelled the French Jews who had held public employ, and was preparing to try, in a special court, those ministers of the Third Republic whom it had interned in Riom. Pétain wanted to placate the Germans, and to let France fit into Hitler's European plan, which visualized Germany as its center of industry, and all the other countries providing it with their raw materials. The old marshal had surrounded himself with Maurras's Action Française clique, and preached a simplification of life to his “subjects,” a return to old values and strict moral codes. French life had become, in effect, a thinly cloaked version of what existed in the Reich.

Already, the Reich rule that had forced all Jews to register at their city halls, had come into practice. The Steiners and Sudarskaya, known to be Jewish by all their acquaintances, had been obliged to comply; the Walters had not, hoping to avoid detection . . . glad at last that Claire had never been open about their religion. Yet Lily saw the large red
J
on her friends'
identification cards, and her stomach twisted with worry. How much longer, then, she asked herself with sudden terror, before the French Jews, like those of Germany, Austria, and Poland, were plucked from their homes to be sent without warning to places with strange names?

Jacques Walter, for one, agreed with her. He told Claire that he would do his best to straighten out the red tape that would allow her to travel back to Switzerland with him, as soon as possible. The small neutral country was filled to the brim with Jewish refugees, and Claire wasn't Swiss, but a naturalized French citizen. “We don't have to go,” she reassured him. “All my married life with Paul, I was known to be a good Catholic.”

“Your maiden name was Leven. It's on all your papers. And ‘Walter' rings Jewish.”

“Most people think you're a Swiss-German and that I was Flemish.”

“But a Nazi would know better.”

And so, with as little fuss as possible, they left their elegant suite at the Ritz for a less conspicuous apartment in the suburb of Auteuil, not far from where Claire had lived with Paul at the Villa Persane. They selected a large apartment on Boulevard Exelmans, which the previous tenants, who had left in a hurry for Spain, had furnished with taste in Louis XIV and Louis XVI, delicate
bergères
and inlaid consoles, with velvet upholstery in chartreuse, mustard, and coral hues. Jacques had obtained all this at a bargain. They were not far from the Bois de Boulogne, but not at the center of Paris. And when they took their lease, they signed it “Monsieur and Madame Walton.” “It's totally un-Jewish, and sounds Anglo-Saxon,” he explained to Lily. “Right now, having British connections isn't exactly the best thing, but we didn't want to go too far off. We can plead an English ancestor, and leave it at that.”

She understood. Claire didn't want to think about leaving her beloved Paris, and she, Lily, had nowhere else to go, so the question of emigration didn't even occur. Sudarskaya, a foreigner and a Jew, had had a large red
J
plastered to the front of her identification card, and felt afraid to walk the streets in daylight. The Steiners, on the other hand, had not left the Ritz. Maryse had wrung her hands and pleaded, but Wolf hadn't responded. He'd changed almost beyond recognition from the firm, compassionate friend Lily had turned to in every personal emergency. He'd become quiet, withdrawn, spending his days poring over old books, shutting himself away from his wife and daughter. The momentary resurgence of life that they'd all noticed in Saint-Aubin, when they'd thought he was healing, had dwindled down and died. Maryse wept, furiously and piteously, seeking Lily out with nervous frenzy. “I can't go on,” she said. “It's as if I'm all alone, only much worse. He's here . . . yet he's not here at all. Sometimes, Lily—oh, God! I'm so ashamed!—sometimes I find myself wishing for the days when I'd spend all my time wanting to be with him again . . . the days when he and Mama were still in Vienna. Because then, I could live on my memories, whereas now ... I have only the fearsome present.”

But for the moment, the Steiners were still safe. Mina had done her best to adjust, but her life was behind her, in another land, with a man she'd stopped hoping to see again. She functioned, but that was all. With their Austrian papers, all slashed with the big red
J
, they continued to be seen around the city, as if Paris had not been full of those same Nazis who had broken into their home on the Schwindgasse, and sent Isaac Steiner to his death. “You've got to make Eliane and David send you an affidavit from America,” Lily pleaded with her friend. “But for that, you'd have to find a way to the Free Zone, to communicate with them.”

Maryse's small hands fluttered in the air. “I've tried to convince Wolf. But he says he won't go, that the Americans turned him away once, and he won't risk going on a ship another time, and perhaps being sent back to Austria.”

It had become impossible to communicate from the Occupied Zone to most foreign countries. If one was in touch with a special courier, or with a consul, clandestine messages could be delivered. But for a Jew without proper contacts, relatives outside the Reich might as well have been dead. And even between the two zones in France itself, communication was heavily censored. One was only permitted to send special cards with preprinted questions, which one then had the right to fill in as briefly as possible. This constituted the only system of mail now available, though from the Free Zone one had no problems communicating abroad.

The Germans had taken over the French industry and its treasury, and were buying foodstuffs with French money, so that there was now a serious food shortage all over France, but especially in the capital. For those who could work with the black market, some luxuries were still available. But the others had to survive on ration cards, and line up at dawn to obtain whatever products had been left over from the Germans.

There were different types of ration cards. The bread cards were divided into tiny squares bearing the thirty or thirty-one dates of the month. When a person bought some bread, the cashier of the bakery cut out one small square, and at the end of the day, had to line up all the small squares she had cut out, and paste them on special sheets of paper which she had to bring to the city hall.

There were food ration cards divided into the same little squares, but these were numbered consecutively and went to forty. With these cards, which were also dispensed each month, one could obtain meat (3.4 ounces of boneless, or 4.5 ounces with bone per week); dry foodstuffs, wine (one 34-fluid-ounce bottle per month), gasoline (34 fluid ounces per month), coal (66 pounds per month), shoe coupons (one pair per year), tea (almost one ounce per month), and eggs (one or two a month). If one saved four coupons of a certain type, one could purchase a dish; with all the coupons marked for textiles, accumulated over five or six cards, a dress or a coat; with a single textile coupon, one handkerchief.

There were six card-categories:
E (Enfants)
for babies up to three years of age who received milk, flour, and rice, but no wine or meat;
J
(Jeunes) 1
, for older children from three to seven;
J
2, from seven to twelve, J3, from twelve to twenty, was the most interesting one, for it was between these ages that human beings developed the most, needing good nutrition. The
J3's
possessed some advantages: they could receive one cup of milk a day, and two eggs a month.

At the rate of one egg per Frenchman a month, the Food Ministry distributed forty million eggs, which were most difficult to obtain; for the Germans, figuring that a hen laid once every other day, purchased ahead of time all the eggs that would be laid per week, leaving nothing for the farmers to consume, or to send to town.

Then came the
A
cards for adults, from twenty to sixty, and finally the
Vs (Vieux),
the senior citizens from whom certain products were subtracted and others added, such as a larger quantity of sugar, jam, and so forth.

At the markets, vegetables were sold without cards, but the vendors rationed their customers themselves in order to be able to serve more of them. And they knew tricks. Leeks were weighed wet and with mud still clinging to them, which meant that when one returned home, and washed them, one was left with half the weight for which one had paid. Carrots were weighed with their tops, and then the greengrocer would slice them off to feed to rabbits. Most often, the carrots too would be sold embedded in clumps of moist earth. The cupidity of the vendors respected few boundaries.

The Germans forbade anyone from being on the street before five in the morning. Anyone not in Nazi military garb found outside before this was instantly arrested. The stores opened at nine, but they possessed only a limited amount of merchandise. One had to be among the first sixty in line to be sure of obtaining something. The lines began early, in the midst of the blackout. Each was afraid that others would come ahead of him or her.

Lily didn't dare to go out before five, but two minutes before, she was downstairs near the entrance to the
pension,
the bolt drawn back and ready to go, the young chambermaid Léone at her side. At the first sound of five on a nearby church bell, they would bound out into the cold and the pitch-darkness. They had their shopping bags, their wallets, and the ration cards of everybody for whom they were buying. Mark had found Lily a pair of wooden clogs, for the cold ground froze the soles of her feet, and this way they were more insulated.

In the dark, they couldn't walk fast. They had to feel for the sidewalk rims, and hope that the moon's rays would help them along the way. Positioned so centrally, the markets were far. They would reach the bakery line, join it, and instantly, others would follow. Each minute was precious. Five extra people ahead of one could mean no food. Frozen, these people waited silently for the daylight to come. By seven the sky would be clear and half the waiting would be over.

Being out in the daylight, one could see ahead and behind. If they were forty-eighth or -ninth, it was very good; but if sixty-ninth or even seventy-second, they could hardly risk leaving. There might have been a portion left that they would miss if they deserted the line. But, once in the open light, people began to speak, recognizing friends and neighbors. Leone, who had worked for Madame Antiquet since she'd been sixteen, often saw maids from other hotels whom she knew, and would say to Lily: “Hold my place, please, Madame la Princesse. I want to go talk to Estelle.” And she would dart away for five minutes, returning bright and rosy-cheeked.

Sometimes those who had gone to chat with their friends would try to cheat, returning a few places ahead of where they belonged. And then there was always a lot of shouting. Lily enjoyed these small scandals; to her, they provided a diversion that helped to while the time away.

People were allowed to replace tired members of their families, and sometimes Madame Antiquet came at seven to relieve Lily or Léone. Other stores too opened at nine, but some, like the dairy where one could obtain half an ounce of butter and cheese per person, were not open every day; and the fish market delivered without taking coupons, but only according to the number of cards, for fish, too, was rationed.

Only in front of the bakery did the line begin at five. The other stores formed queues around seven. But if one waited to buy one's bread before lining up for milk, one could be certain of reaching the dairy too late, after two hundred other people, and of finding nothing left. Lily and Léone discovered an unwritten law of the jungle that allowed them to stay awhile in one line and then queue in another, asking the person in front to save their places for them before returning to the first queue after a quarter of an hour or so. If they started to line up for milk before eight, and then had to get back into the bread line, by the time they had been given bread, their turn would have come and gone at the dairy. The trick, therefore, was to know just when to start the second queue.

Finally, three or four minutes before nine o'clock, a salesboy would go out from the back door of the bakery, open the iron curtain that closed the front entrance and the other that shut out the display window, and, stationing himself by the front door, would let in ten people whom he carefully counted, closing the door behind them and remaining on guard.