JEAN-LUC
On Saturdays, he could get away from the camp. As soon as the day was over, he took the train from Bourget into Paris. He liked to get off the Métro at Blanche, looking at Le Moulin Rouge before wandering up Rue Lepic, where he lived with his mother.
But this evening he wasn’t ready to face the absence of his father in the apartment. Not yet. So he stopped for a pastis at the café on the corner.
“Salut, Jean-Luc.” Thierry poured him a glass of the strong aniseed drink, leaving a small jug of water by the side. Jean-Luc added some, watching his pastis turn a cloudy yellow. Thierry put his elbows on the bar, wrapping his hands around the back of his neck, twisting his neck as if it was sore. “Quoi de neuf?”
“What’s new?” Jean-Luc drew his eyebrows together. “Nothing that I know of.”
Thierry leaned closer. “Any news from your father?”
“Two months ago.” Jean-Luc paused. “We had a letter asking us to send him warm socks and food. He says he’s fine, just thinner and older.”
“Terrible business—taking the men like that. I was lucky I was too old for them, and you… well, you were lucky they needed railroad workers. But how are we supposed to keep things going back here? There’s no one left to farm the land.”
“I know. I know.” He’d already had this conversation a hundred times.
“Service du Travail Obligatoire, my arse. It’s forced labor for the Boches.”
“Of course. But at least we know he’s in Germany.” Jean-Luc picked his glass up.
He’d done his best to fill his father’s shoes, but the little flat he shared with his mother felt more than half empty, as though his father had been replaced by a gaping hole that allowed a bitter wind to blow through the rooms. Every Sunday, he went to Mass at Sacré-Coeur with his mother, and they lit a candle for Papa. Jean-Luc liked to imagine the little flame giving his father courage, wherever he was. He thought of his father often, but it left him feeling morose and melancholic. Papa was such a strong, independent man, the thought of him having to submit to the Boches and their brutality filled Jean-Luc’s heart with pity. He didn’t deserve that.
Thierry lowered his voice. “Don’t worry. He’ll come back. Have you heard about the Americans?”
“What?”
He leaned closer still, his voice dropping to a whisper even though the café was empty. “They’re going to land in France. Yes! They’re getting their troops ready, and then they’re going to actually land here and chase the Nazis out.”
Jean-Luc stared at him, wondering how he’d heard such a thing. “Well, let’s hope it’s true.” He gulped his drink back.
“Another?” Thierry had already taken the lid off the bottle. “And then all those poor families they sent away will be able to come back—your father too.”
“Let’s hope so.” Jean-Luc swirled the pastis around in the bottom of the glass.
“Maybe the Cohens will be back soon. Their kid, Alexandre, was a cheeky little monster. I’d like to see him again.”
Just then two Boches entered the café, and Jean-Luc walked out, leaving his half-finished drink behind. As he left, a wave of loneliness washed over him. Suddenly he missed his ex-girlfriend with a pang. They’d been courting for almost a year and he’d been serious about her; he’d even been planning to ask her to marry him. He liked the way she wanted to enjoy life to the full despite the war; she loved dancing and always seemed to know about the next bal clandestin. He liked these secret dances too; they felt like one small victory over the Boches. She’d told him not to worry when his father had left, that it was only Germany and that they needed the labor there, so they’d look after him properly. He’d drunk in her words, letting himself believe them, but as time marched on, he began to doubt them. Began to doubt he’d ever see Papa again. And then he’d grown despondent and withdrawn. How could he enjoy himself knowing his father was probably cold and hungry in a foreign country? He couldn’t do it.
When he began to decline her pleas to go dancing, she went anyway with other friends. He should have known it would only be a matter of time before she met someone else, but he’d taken comfort in the fact that there were hardly any eligible men around. He hoped she hadn’t got herself a stinking collabo, or worse, a Boche. She wouldn’t say who he was, but surely she wouldn’t be that stupid. Horizontal collaboration, people called it disdainfully, as if they were morally superior. We’re all guilty to a lesser or greater degree, Jean-Luc thought. If he were to name his own kind of collaboration, he would have called it survival collaboration. One had a duty to survive, for all the others who couldn’t.
The pastis had awakened his appetite and he began to look forward to his dinner. Maman always saved her rations from the week to cook him a proper meal with vegetables and, if they were lucky, some pigeon. On Sunday, after Mass, they would have a lunch of sorts at one of their neighbors’, or at their own home. Everyone would contribute what they could: vegetables from their gardens, pickles they had made the previous year, and sometimes someone would arrive in a cloud of excitement with meat in a paper bag; maybe something a friend had caught, or they had caught themselves. The unveiling of the meat was sacred, and a silence thick with anticipation would fall upon them. Food shared always seemed to go further.
But now these lunches had become something of an ordeal for him. He found he had nothing to say, and the neighbors’ gossip alienated him with its pettiness. They appeared to be more concerned about who had managed to get butter on the black market or who had caught a rabbit than who was being murdered. Their chatter was of no value, and when they did broach the subject of the round-ups, it never led anywhere. He felt like he was disappearing inside himself, as though he couldn’t remember who he was, or who he was supposed to be.
This Sunday, it was the Franklins’ for lunch. Monsieur Franklin’s brother had been out hunting in the countryside and had come back with two rabbits. The rabbit stew went down well, and with meat in their bellies for a change, the conversation livened up.
His mother started it off. “When this damn war ends, do you think there’ll be any wine left?”
Monsieur Franklin was quick to reply. “Marie-Claire, you know we have some hidden.”
“I know no such thing.”
“Ha! Very good. Me neither, then. But when this damn war ends, you and I will go down and get it, eh?”
“I’ll drink to that.” His mother raised her glass of water.
“So, Jean-Luc, how is the new job going?” Monsieur Franklin turned his attention away from the mother to the son.
Jean-Luc felt his pulse rate race ahead, as it did every time his work was mentioned. “Bit too close to the Boches for my liking.”
“Mais oui, you’re right in the heart of it, aren’t you?”
“What really goes on there?” Madame Franklin interrupted.
Jean-Luc looked at her a minute, taking in her thin lips and bird-like eyes. She never missed a thing, and he knew anything he said would be repeated the next day when she joined the queues for food.
“I don’t know.” He looked out the window, avoiding his mother’s scrutinizing stare.
“Come on, lad. You must know something. What are they doing with all those prisoners? Where are they taking them?” Monsieur Franklin narrowed his eyes as he stared at Jean-Luc.
“I haven’t seen anything. I never see the trains, or the prisoners—”
“I’ve heard they’re cattle trains, not proper passenger trains,” Madame Franklin interrupted. “And that the prisoners have to lie on straw, like animals.” She always seemed to know more than anyone else.
“I’ve heard similar,” Madame Cavalier added. “And that there are no bathrooms either. They have to pee in a bucket.”
“That’s disgusting! How do you know that?” His mother spoke for the first time on a new subject. “It must be an exaggeration.”
Madame Cavalier shrugged her shoulder. “You’ve seen what they are capable of. I wouldn’t put it past them. They’ve arrested thousands, haven’t they?”
“Therefore they must be shipping them out by the thousand.” Monsieur Franklin frowned, turning to look at Jean-Luc. “Maybe you could find out what they’re doing with them.”
Jean-Luc stared back. “What?”
“Well, you’re right there in the thick of it. Can’t you discover what’s going on?”
“I told you, I never see the trains leaving. I start work after.”
“Couldn’t you get there earlier?”
“No!” He paused, calming himself, trying to keep his tone neutral. “We are taken to the station by army truck at seven thirty every morning.”
“But you’re near the station, aren’t you? Couldn’t you walk there? Have a look?”
Jean-Luc frowned. “I don’t know.” He paused. “It would be dangerous. They watch us all the time.” He looked up and saw the disappointment in their faces. It made him feel like a coward. “Maybe… maybe if I got up very early and sneaked out, I could see one of the trains leave.”
His mother gasped, putting her hand over her mouth.
“Good lad!” Monsieur Franklin grinned. “You could get a photo. I have a camera.”
A photo? What good would a photo do? He would be risking his life for a damn photo. There must be some other way.
When they returned home, his mother boiled up some disgusting roasted chicory and acorn drink. He took the cup from her, pretending to drink it. “Maman, I’ve been thinking.”
“Oh dear,” she laughed. “Not again.”
“No, seriously. I need to do more than just take a photo.”
“What do you mean, son?”
“I need to do something.” He screwed his eyes up. “Something that makes a difference.”
She whispered, “What about the Résistance?”
“But I don’t know anyone.”
“No, neither do I.” She put her hand over her forehead. “We must be mixing in the wrong circles.”
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not something you can really ask someone, is it? Are you in the Résistance? Because I’d like to join too. I think you have to wait to be approached.”
“Has no one ever approached you?”
“No, Maman. How about you?”
She shook her head. “But you know, if they had, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Then again, what use is an old woman to them?”
She was right. It wasn’t up to old women to fight; it was up to young men like himself. He did want to fight; he wanted to stop the trains that were deporting the prisoners to God knows where. But there was that promise, the one he’d made to his father before he left.
Papa had taken him aside while his mother was out queuing for bread. “Son, promise me one thing.”
“Of course.”
“Promise me you’ll look after your mother while I’m gone.”
Jean-Luc’s gaze didn’t waver as he looked at his father. “I promise.”
“Now I can leave knowing that the two of you will be safe here. It will help me find my way home.” Papa had gripped him around the back of his neck, pulling his face toward his own. Jean-Luc had wrapped his arms around his father and they’d held each other tight for a moment. Then Papa had pulled away, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
Papa. He wandered into his bedroom, glancing at the walls and the bookshelves his father had cut, sandpapered, and put up himself. The books were arranged first by subject—adventure stories in one section, fantasy in another—then from the tallest to the shortest, all the spines the right way up. He could order his books in a way he couldn’t order his life.