Brotteaux Neighborhood
September 18, 1942
Lili had gathered her belongings and, with new identification papers, moved to a neighborhood on the other side of the city. Hoping to escape the attention of the authorities, she had dyed her hair and changed jobs. The only one who knew where she lived now was her mother. That was why the knock at her door one afternoon startled her so badly. But her heart raced in a completely different way when she looked through the peephole and saw Georges Garel standing there.
The day after their magical dinner she had gone to his house, but he was in hiding by then. Lili feared that it had been too good to be true and that what seemed like a real chance at love had fallen through. Georges had fled to save his life and had been hiding out at the home of a friend. As soon as he could get false identification papers, the first thing he did was go out and find his love. He had not forgotten for one second their promise to marry, though the circumstances were highly unfavorable to their plans.
Lili threw open the door and wrapped her arms around Georges’s neck, peppering him with kisses. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much!” she managed to say.
Georges looked all around and answered, “We’d better take this inside.”
They kissed all the way down the hall and were only half dressed by the time they tumbled onto Lili’s bed. The desperation of the last few weeks fueled their lovemaking. After an endless hour of bliss, they leaned back against the pillows and shared a cigarette. In the magic of the moment, it seemed like nothing on earth could separate them again.
“How did you find my new apartment?” Lili asked.
“Your mom. I figured you would have told her about me.”
Lili smiled. “Has anyone ever told you how pretentious and arrogant you are?”
“For what—presuming you had told your mom that you went and got yourself engaged? I just figured that would have come up, you know. If I’m so pretentious, why do you like me?”
“For your looks,” she joked, kissing him again.
Lili got up and returned a few minutes later with coffee.
“Do you know where the others are?” Georges asked.
“No, and it’s better that way. They’re hunting for all of us.”
“I get the feeling that something changed, like the Nazis’ good luck has run out. Now it’s our turn.”
Lili was amused. “Do you always get so optimistic after sex?”
“Ha, no, it’s just that the streets are flooded with tracts against the Nazis, and there are big V’s for victory painted on lots of walls. It’s like people have lost their fear and respect for the occupiers.”
Lili rested her head against Georges’s chest. “Do you think we’ll ever go back to normal life again? I used to never want a normal life. It’s like I needed a war to make me realize that what really matters is exactly what we already have but don’t care about. Like walking together and holding hands, having a picnic in the country, drinking fine wine with cheese, watching the leaves fall from the trees, and maybe having an adorable baby with your eyes.”
“Someday we’ll get all of that back, and you’ll become Mrs. Garel. We’ll have . . . twenty children!”
“Hmm, for the sake of getting places by car, three or four should suffice.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon dreaming and making love. Despite it all, life did march on, and they had to learn how to move forward. They could not put everything on hold until the Nazis were defeated. Who knew when death would knock on their door? What mattered right then was to guzzle the cup of their existence to the dregs, leaving nothing for later. In those times, the future did not exist. Only the present was real.