Marcel’s nostrils flared. “No. It’s not.”
“Glad someone remembers that.” The man leaned back and drew in a bracing breath. “I want you to see the performance. But don’t watch the musicians, if you please. Watch the people. Then, you will come to my home. You will eat, you will rest. And we will talk about why I wanted you back in France.”
Perhaps he’d grown too used to following orders. Perhaps he was curious enough that he didn’t even consider objecting. Perhaps he was too tired to ask anything else. Marcel nodded, rested his head against the side of the train, and let the familiar rhythm soothe him. Lull him. Seep into his soul.
Home. He was home.
He must have dozed off, because he jerked back to awareness when Grigoryan gave his knee a shake and said, “Our stop. Up we go.”
A moment later they emerged from the underground, back into the spring sunshine, and were striding down the Boulevard des Capucines. Marcel’s eyes waited for their first glimpse of the Palais Garnier, and his chest went tight when he found it towering over the street with its white stone, its soaring columns, the green-copper rotunda catching the eye as it had always done.
He’d worked so hard to earn a position with the Opera. All the years of study, all the positions in lesser orchestras, improving his art and earning a name for himself. Finally, finally he’d sat at the piano on that incomparable stage. It had seemed that God had heard all his prayers, delivered him all his dreams. He’d seen his own name in musical reviews, followed by praise upon heaping praise.
And then, the pinnacle. He’d conducted the orchestra, exactly once. One performance that had left him with a euphoria he thought he’d never descend from.
The next morning, every newspaper had been full, not of musical reviews, but of doom. Germany had taken Poland. Germany was advancing toward France. War had come.
The Phony War, they called it now. Because while France had been digging in to protect their supposedly undefeatable line of defense, Germany did nothing to engage. All that tension, all that planning, all those men who had joined up like he had, determined to take his piece of the glory defending his homeland... all for nothing. Months of inaction, of second-guessing.
And then defeat, in the blink of an eye.
A blink now, and he saw the activity around the steps to the Palais. The glint of sunlight on highly polished wood. On the breeze, he caught the familiar sound of strings being tuned.
They paused across the street from the grand, wide stairs, and Marcel leaned against the building behind him. People hurried past with little more than a few glances over their shoulders at the gathering musicians. A few wore expressions of resentment, disgust even. Others, curiosity.
But everything shifted the moment the music began. He would admit it—his gaze drifted to the orchestra first. They were standing, instrumentalists behind and a choir in the front, with the conductor at the ground level, baton sweeping. A sight he had seen countless times, yet never enough.
Then the people stole his attention again. Their steps shifted from purposeful to slow. Then they stopped. Faces went from neutral or irritated to captured, soft. First a few people halted, then clumps formed, and within a few minutes, the entire boulevard was packed with Parisians.
For a moment, he was back at the camp. Outside in the early-spring air just weeks ago, that old upright wheeled out. Fellow musicians sat in rickety chairs, borrowed instruments in their hands. He could feel the chipped ivories under his fingers. He remembered his mental note to avoid the sticking A-below-middle-C key. He was looking out, not at Parisians, but at the sea of his fellow prisoners, all sitting or standing, eagerness on their faces.
Beyond them, to the guards who had gathered too. They’d gotten permission for the concert, of course, and he’d known most of the guards would attend. They’d have to, to supervise. But what he hadn’t been prepared for was the expectation and excitement ontheirfaces.
Men. They were just men, not all that different, in essentials, from the ones they guarded. Different uniforms, and Marcel certainly had no love for the regime too many of them embraced wholeheartedly. But they were also men who were away from their wives and sweethearts and mothers for perhaps the first time, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere like the prisoners. A bit of entertainment was as valuable to them as it was to the Frenchmen they held captive.
Realizing it, realizing the guards weregratefulfor the concert he’d organized, for the music he’d composed... for the first time since his regiment was taken prisoner, he hadn’t felt helpless. On the contrary, he’d felt, as he nodded out the beat and launched his ragtag orchestra into the prelude, powerful.
He couldn’t fight those men, not with weapons. They’d stripped him of his gun, of his bayonet, of even his pocketknife. And hecould be honest, he hadn’t been a natural with any of them anyway. But music... music he could wield easily. And music could have a more profound effect on people than a bullet. He’d always believed it. In that moment, he reveled in it.
Now, standing before the opera house, his stomach churned. Because the Nazis clearly knew it too. They knew music was one of the most powerful weapons in their propaganda arsenal—there was no language barrier, and after centuries and decades of appreciating the great German composers, Frenchmen couldn’t help but be drawn in to a performance of it. Couldn’t help but admire the top-notch orchestra who’d come out on the street during lunchtime to brighten their day.
“Clever,” he muttered as he watched rapture fall over all the faces around him. “We don’t know how to fight the pull of music. They’re utilizing that.”
Beside him, Grigoryan nodded. “I knew you would see. We must combat them on this same level. Fight fire with fire. And you, I thought, would be the perfect leader for this fight.”
Usually Marcel found it nearly impossible to look away from a performance, but now he turned to face his companion. And he let himself frown. “Forgive me, but... you scarcely know me. We’ve only met, what, twice before now? What makes you think I’m the one to do whatever it is you have in mind?”
A soft, boyish smirk on his lips, Grigoryan reached into his jacket and pulled out a few folded sheets of paper. Not until he unfolded them did Marcel realize what they were—a copy of a musical journal he’d written an article for right before he joined the army. An idealistic article, all about how music was part of the French identity and how it could be used to strengthen hearts and minds and speak to the soul, even—especially—in times of war.
Marcel raised his brows. “All right. And?”
Grigoryan tapped the papers to Marcel’s shoulder. “In your words in this article, and in the times we met, I got the feeling youwere not the sort of man to roll over and accept defeat. You were not handed your successes on a silver platter, after all. Much like me, you fought and scrambled and worked tirelessly to get where you are in your career. Is this not true?”
Throat too tight for words, Marcel nodded. He hadn’t been from a well-to-do family, not like so many of his compatriots at the conservatory. His father was a low-ranking professional. That one trip to Berlin was the only travel they’d ever really done, which was why the tickets to see the Philharmonic had been priceless.
“As I thought. I am an excellent judge of character.” Grigoryan leaned closer. “So tell me, my friend. What do you think of the marshal’s insistence that we collaborate with Germany? That we become the model for a German-run vassal state?”
Marcel winced before he could think to control his reaction. News from France had been sporadic over the months of his internment, the letters they received censored, but they’d certainly been told about how their own hero had struck an agreement with Hitler and what it entailed.
