It seemed like Luc had found a way to live with his. It was such an unusual and unexpected story. And yet he made it sound right.
Perhaps I am finding a way to live with my grief too, this time,thought Nora.On my other trips here, I’ve brought Jeremy along with me. This time I feel I’m creating more distance and making my life here my own. It’s different and it feels right.
* * *
Rain was forecast for the entire weekend, and Nora welcomed it as an opportunity to get ahead with Marie-Louise’s story. The grey skies and dull light helped bring her into the grim darkness of life during the Occupation.
As she made sense of her notes and recordings, the powerful story of the innocent young Marie-Louise began to take shape. Nora had already drafted a substantial number of pages.
Reviewing what she had so far, she thought how the memoir was also in many ways not just the life of the little girl and her neighborhood, but it also represented a quiet elegy for the tragic suffocation of the city.
She went back to the beginning of her notes of Marie-Louise’s story and reviewed. She knew this would occur many more times.
At ten, Marie-Louise and her friends initially thought the soldiers were exciting, in their neatly pressed uniforms and shiny boots that clacked when they marched past their windows. They gave the children candy.
Her mother would pull her back from the window and hiss, “Don’t stare. Don’t watch.” But she didn’t understand why. Then, as the streets became so quiet, so strangely still except for the heavy thud of the soldiers’ boots and the chaos of arrests, a fear set in.
Her neighborhood had never been without voices, without laughter. There had always been someone singing, someone arguing, mothers calling children, neighbors chatting to each other across balconies, children running in the street, radio sounds drifting out windows. Now that was gone, replaced by a silence that didn’t belong.
As time went by, the soldier’s novelty wore off. Swastikas were everywhere. Food was scarce and her mother would send her to line up at stores for whatever scraps could be had. Her father had vanished. She saw her Jewish friends forced to wear the yellow star and their families pulled from their apartments and loaded into army trucks. She had to learn to say nothing.
Her mother’s eyes showed a new kind of tired, and she often disappeared for much of the day … and sometimes the night. Marie-Louise began to understand the importance of her message-carrying.
The posters on the walls of buildings changed, and so did the looks people gave each other in the streets. Mostly they looked down at the ground. She stopped seeing her Jewish friends at school. When she asked about one of her friends, her teacher just said, “She moved.”
By fourteen, she knew better. But still not where they had been taken.
She knew who watched too closely and who no longer spoke. She saw how some women laughed too loudly at German officers and how others spat at their feet when they thought no one was looking.
She learned to carry silence like armor. But she also noticed the quiet heroes—the baker who passed secret messages hidden in his bread to the tailor, the old man on the corner who fixed radios and whispered news from London, the older boys who pretended to be going to school and instead slapped posters on the walls around the neighborhood. Some acted as lookouts and whistled warnings to their friends.
Her fear didn’t disappear—it grew roots. But something else took hold too: the spark of defiance. Her mother explained she would not tell Marie-Louise anything, so if she was questioned, she’d know nothing.
“Someday the stories will be told, ma puce. But for today we must resist quietly.”
There were moments Nora felt she was living it, breathing it, right there looking out over the same rooftops that others had looked over years ago. It became all too real. And she cried.
ChapterTwenty-Two
Three weeks stayingwith Atticus
After a weekend of pouring rain, which Nora spent at her computer, they departed for Provence, and she was excited.
At the Gare de Lyon, Nora reminisced about their dinner at the iconic Le Train Bleu on one of her previous visits. “I’ll never ever forget that magnificent restaurant and the outstanding meal we had there that summer. Let’s go again next year!”
“When we save enough money,” Chloe joked. “But the cost was definitely worth the evening we had. It’s such a special place. A treasure in Paris for sure.”
Nora got Atticus comfortably settled on the train. Because they had reserved a four-seat carré famille, or family square, Atticus was allowed his own seat. Nora had brought a small blanket to cover the plush upholstery and a special harness to keep him safe. After checking out the other people passing by for a few minutes, he curled up for a snooze.
Olivier moved to a vacant set of seats to make a business call.
“Okay, Maman,” Chloe said in a hushed voice. “I really hope you’ll give Pierre another chance while we’re in Provence. I honestly think you two could be good friends ... and maybe even more.” Her eyes lit up expectantly.
Nora attempted not to sound annoyed. “Why on earth would you say such a thing? You saw for yourself he wasn’t impressed with me in any way. I mean, really, he could not have been ruder most of the time we were in each other’s company.”
“But you really didn’t spend so much time together. Maybe you’re being too defensive. I thought I saw him warming up to you. How could he not?”
Her daughter’s suggestion of the possibility of romance got Nora’s back up. She was the parent, not a girlfriend wanting to be set up. “Chloe, sweetheart. I know you want me to fall in love again, but I’ve told you many times it isn’t something I need in my life. I had a happy marriage cut short, and I have learned to live with that. Some people never have as much as I did. You need to accept this.”
