Lilac Girls

  The doctor looked me over, his eyes red rimmed. Had it been days since he’d slept?

  “Can you walk with me, please?” the doctor said.

  I sensed a tenuous criticism, as if he disapproved of me somehow.

  “I am Dr. Philippe Bedreaux,” he said once we stood in the hallway. “I have been treating Paul for a few weeks now. He made an excellent recovery from typhus, due in part to chloramphenicol, a new drug. Then he took an inexplicable turn for the worse. Pneumonia.”

  “Pneumonia?” My breath caught in my throat. Like father. Pneumonie. So much prettier in French, but just as deadly. Something Mother still referred to as “lung fever.”

  “He recovered but is by no means out of the woods. Are you staying in the city?”

  “At my mother’s apartment close by. Does Paul know about his wife’s death?”

  “Yes. It was a great shock, and he refuses to speak of it. Right now he needs to sleep. At some point, he’ll need aggressive physical therapy due to muscular atrophy.”

  “Will he recover completely?” I asked.

  “Too early to tell, Mademoiselle. We are dealing with a ruined body here. He has lost almost half his overall body weight.”

  “Mentally, he seems fine,” I said. “Playing poker—”

  “He is an actor. Of course he puts up a good front, but we must be very careful. His heart and lungs have been through a great trauma.”

  “So are you guessing two weeks? Three?”

  “He may not wake up tomorrow as it is. You must let him recover.”

  “I am sorry, Doctor—”

  “A young man was set to go home last week—vital signs good—and he died of cardiac failure the morning he was to leave. Who knows when we can consider these patients cured?”

  “I’m just eager to—”

  “He must not exert himself in any way—no cooking, extended walks, and certainly no, well—”

  “What, Doctor?”

  “Certainly no extracurricular activities…”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Complete bed rest.”

  With Paul alone in the bed, he wanted to say.

  After the doctor left, I sat at Paul’s bedside, watching his chest rise and fall under the blanket.

  “Don’t leave,” Paul said.

  I smoothed the back of my hand across his cheek.

  “Never,” I said.

  —

  I SAW PAUL EVERY DAY and decamped to Mother’s apartment each night. I was relieved the old place had survived the war relatively unscathed thanks to our caretaker’s wife, Mme Solange. The apartment was surprisingly untouched, not a crack in the floor-to-ceiling casement windows or the hornbeam parquet floors, though fine white powder covered every surface, the silver-topped jars on my mahogany vanity table now two inches deep in silty dust. The carriage clock in Father’s study had stopped at 9:25, and there’d been a leak in Mother’s bedroom. A section of damask wallpaper curled down off the wall there like a stained sow’s ear.

  Paul slept for much of those first two weeks, but soon asked to go home to the house he and Rena had shared in Rouen. Dr. Bedreaux reluctantly agreed, with additional vague references to a ban on lovemaking that made Paul smile. Dr. Bedreaux insisted a doctor had to visit Paul every day, for Rena’s house was several miles outside of Paris, with limited access to hospital care. I agreed, happy to pay whatever it took to make Paul happy, and with the help of three strong nurses, we managed to get him into the front seat of the Peugeot.

  On the road to Rouen, fresh evidence of combat was everywhere, and many buildings were nothing more than façades. The imposing Rouen Cathedral, made famous by Monet’s paintings, was one of the few buildings left intact. Paul directed me to a bunker-like house on a side street in Rouen, not at all what I’d expected.

  I helped Paul up the front walk and considered the house, which resembled a military pillbox, cold and standoffish. It was designed in the Bauhaus style, another abhorrent thing Germany had foisted on France.

  Would the neighbors come out to greet him? Would they think me an interloper? After all, Rena had grown up in the house and she and Paul had lived there together. Did they have friends, couples on the street who missed her?

  Paul and I walked into the front hallway and inched our way across the living room. It was a dark house, but the rooms were done in the bright prints of Provence. I considered asking Paul if we could live at Mother’s apartment with its lovely morning light and pastel boiseried walls, filled with the pieces Mother and I had found at the Marché aux Puces and other antiquaires. My Louis Seize commode. The fin de siècle metal garden table in the kitchen. Mother had gone a bit toile crazy, but it was nicely done. All it needed was a good dusting.

  I helped Paul up the stairs and past a snug little room with yellow, fabric-upholstered walls and on to the master bedroom, where Paul and Rena once slept. The bed was small for a man as tall as Paul and wore a white matelassé bedcover and blue-and-white ticking pillows.

  I pulled a chair next to Paul’s bed and watched him sleep well into the night. Eventually I moved to the padded window seat and slept for a bit. Before dawn, Paul spoke.

  “Rena?”

  “No, Paul, it’s Caroline.”

  “Caroline? I am so cold.”

  I brought my blanket to the bed and smoothed it over him.

  “I thought I was in the hospital,” he said.

  “No, you’re home, dear.”

  He was back asleep before I finished the sentence.

  It was strange to cook in Rena’s kitchen, the copper pots still burnished bright, her drawers filled with pressed cotton napkins folded in neat stacks. There was little food to cook, for all over France, meat and vegetables were hard to come by. At first, I improvised. With a ration card, a lucky sort could hunt down some potatoes and bread, perhaps some anemic carrots, but most of the country existed on thin soups and toast. Then I raided Mother’s pantry at her apartment and struck gold: molasses, oatmeal, and tea bags. Eventually I found one could buy anything for a price on the black market.

  Each day I served Paul an old family remedy my great-grandmother Woolsey gave her soldier patients at Gettysburg: one egg and soda water beaten into a glass of wine. Several other Woolsey remedies were on the menu as well, including beef tea, milk punch, and rice with molasses. I told Paul they were old New England favorites from my distaff side. Thanks to them, he grew stronger every day.

  “Would it help to talk about the camp?” I asked one night.

  “I can’t talk about it, Caroline. You have good intentions—”

  “You have to at least try, Paul. Maybe start with the night you left here. Baby steps.”

  He was quiet for a long moment.

  “They came for me with no warning thinking I might be good for their cause. Rena was sick in bed with the flu. Took me to headquarters and told me very nicely they wanted me to film some things: propaganda, of course, but I wouldn’t do it. They kept me in Paris for a while and then sent me to Drancy. I guess they came back later to get Rena and her father. That was the beginning of the roundups, taking the Jews.”

  “How did they know Rena was here?”

  “They knew everything. Maybe from the visa application. I don’t know. Drancy was horrible, Caroline. They took the children from their mothers.”

  Paul bent his head, chin to chest, and pressed his palm to his mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Paul. Maybe this is too much for you.”

  “No, you are right. I have to talk about it. You would not have believed the camp—Natzweiler.”

  “In Alsace? Roger thought you might be there.”

  “Yes, in the Vosges Mountains. Many died from the cold and the high altitude alone. I was such a coward. I prayed I would die. We built part of the camp. New barracks and…” He tried to take a sip of tea but put the cup back in the saucer. “Maybe we can finish later.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Doesn’t it help to talk about it?”

/>   “Perhaps.”

  I tucked Paul into bed that night, happy to be making progress.

  —

  THE AFTERNOON OF MAY 8, I was ankle deep in the stream behind Paul’s house picking watercress from the banks, marveling at the chestnut blossoms and emerging wisteria. Purple foxglove, a flower I’d had to pamper back in Connecticut, sprang up everywhere like weeds. I could hear Paul whistling in the house, and it made me smile. Men only whistle when they are happy. At least that was true for Father.

  All at once the whistling stopped, and Paul called out.

  “Caroline…”

  I ran through the grass toward the sound of his voice. Had he fallen? Heart pounding, I raced into the kitchen, tracking wet footprints.

  “De Gaulle is on,” Paul said.

  I found Paul, right as rain, standing near the radio. I caught my breath, relieved, just in time to hear General De Gaulle announce the end of the war in Europe.

  Forever honor our armed forces and their leaders. Honor our people that terrible trials could not reduce or decline. Honor the United Nations, which have mingled their blood with our blood, their sorrows our sorrows, their hopes our hope, and now triumph with us. Ah, vive la France!

  Paul and I hurried to the front garden and heard the cathedral bells.

  “It’s hard to believe it,” I said.

  Though the first act of the German capitulation had been signed in Reims the day before, it wasn’t until we heard General De Gaulle and our neighbors in their cars, honking horns and flying a tricolore out the window, that it all sank in.

  The war in Europe was over.

  I threw on one of Mother’s scarves and drove us to her apartment in Paris. We flung the windows open wide expecting to hear a great celebration, but Paris was strangely quiet that afternoon considering the momentous news of the war’s end. All that changed, however, as the afternoon wore on, and young people streamed out into the parks and squares.

  “Let’s go to the Place de la Concorde,” Paul said.

  “Why don’t we just listen to the radio here?” I said. “The crowds may be too much for you.”

  “I’m not a cripple, Caroline. Let me enjoy this.”

  It was a lovely warm day, and we walked to the Hôtel de Crillon at the Place de la Concorde. The lovely old building rose up from the square, the tricolore flying between the columns. It was all so surreal, to celebrate a free France, in the same square where King Louis XVI was guillotined.

  As the shadows in the square grew long, the crowds thickened, and American military police wearing white helmets appeared here and there in the crowd, making sure people made it in and out of the American Embassy. We pushed through the crowds, the din of horns and singing all around us, waving white handkerchiefs above our heads, jostled and knocked as American army jeeps rode by. Young French men and women on the running boards popped champagne and threw flowers to the crowd.

  As the sunlight waned, the lights came on at the Place de la Concorde for the first time since the war started. A cry from the crowd went up as the Fontaines de la Concorde were turned on once again and the fountains’ sculpted fish, held by bronze sea nymphs, sent great plumes of water into the night sky. People danced in the fountain fully clothed and soaked to the skin, mad with happiness that Paris was back.

  Paul dropped his handkerchief, and a teenaged girl stooped to retrieve it for him.

  “Here you go,” the girl said. “For a minute, I thought you were Paul Rodierre.”

  “He is,” I said.

  The girl danced off. “Very funny,” she called over her shoulder.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” I said, but Paul knew the truth. He was barely a shell of his old self.

  The wind seemed to go out of Paul’s sails after that, and we left after sunset to head home. As we drove toward Rouen, fireworks exploded over the Seine.

  Once home, we changed into comfortable clothes, me in Paul’s soft trousers and an oversized shirt and Paul in his favorite ivory flannel pajamas. He seemed withdrawn and more tired than usual. He sat slumped at the kitchen table as I prepared dinner.

  “Are you sad Rena’s not here?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t help to bring it up. As it is, you can’t stop trying to be her.”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “Cooking her recipes, dressing like her. Please don’t do that.”

  “Because I wore a scarf today?” I asked.

  “Just relax and let it be like it was in New York.”

  “I’ve never been happier,” I said.

  It was true. We had our differences, but since I stopped typing up medication and exercise schedules for Paul, our relationship strengthened every day. Plus, thanks to the Woolsey remedies, Paul was finally filling out.

  “Then why don’t you move in? For good, I mean.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Paul. It would help to hear how you feel.”

  “I’m crazy about you.”

  “How so?”

  Paul thought for a second. “You are a very hard worker. I respect this.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And I like the way you speak French with your American accent. Very sexy.”

  “Certainly that isn’t—”

  “And I never tire of being with you.”

  He stood and came to me at the sink.

  “I like your imperfections. Your lopsided smile.”

  I touched my lips. Lopsided?

  “And you don’t have a giant handbag you’re always pawing through.”

  He took my hand. “I like that you wear my clothes.” He unbuttoned one button at my chest. “And your white skin. So smooth all over—I thought of that a lot while I was away.”

  He wrapped his arms around my waist. “But my favorite thing about you is…”

  “Well?”

  “…the way you kiss. Sometimes I think I may not recover when I kiss you. It’s like going to another place.”

  Paul pulled my shirt collar aside and kissed my neck.

  I smiled. “Funny, there’s one word you never use.”

  Paul stepped back. “Why do Americans have to have every detail spelled out? You say ‘I love you’ to the garbageman.”

  “I believe the phrase was invented here.”

  “If that’s all it takes, I love you. I can’t imagine a life without you. Now move your things in, your clothes, your books. Make the house ours.”

  “You mean not go back to New York?” It was too wonderful to imagine, being with Paul for good.

  “Yes. Make this your home. We can always visit New York. And your mother can move here. You already have the apartment.”

  “I’ll miss the consulate, but Roger has Pia.”

  “He certainly does.”

  “Of course I’ll stay,” I said.

  “Good then,” Paul said with a smile. It was like medicine to see that smile again.

  Was it too late to have a baby together? I was over forty years old. We could always adopt. There was a file in my suitcase full of darling French babies who needed homes. We’d have a real family. Mother would be thrilled to have a wedding at last. Roger had wrangled her a visa, and she was on her way to Paris for a visit after all. I could tell her in person.

  “Why not start tonight?” he said.

  “I’ll go get my things.” Was this really happening? Did I have any silk stockings at Mother’s apartment?

  “Don’t bring any makeup,” Paul said. “You are perfect as is.”

  “Not even a lipstick?”

  “Hurry. I’ll finish making dinner.”

  “Please don’t, Paul,” I said. “Dr. Bedreaux says…”

  Paul stood and walked to the counter. He scooped a few dusky new potatoes, the color of violets, from the bowl. Would it be too much for him to make a meal?.

  “Don’t say another word, or I will change my mind,” he said.

  I grabbed my purse. “Nietzsche said a diet predominantly of potatoes leads to the use of liquo
r.”

  “Good. Bring a bottle of your mother’s wine. We’re celebrating.”

  In the almost two-hour drive back to Paris, I made a mental list of what to pack. Capri pants. Silk stockings. My new lingerie. I would eventually need a proper French driver’s license.

  At the apartment, I drew the shades, threw a suitcase together, and headed out. As I locked the door, the phone rang in the kitchen, and for once in my life, I ignored it. If it was Mother, I needed more time to tell her the whole story.

  On the trip back I stopped at our favorite market and found one sorry-looking baguette, small, but a good omen. I stopped again to stoke the engine with wood and headed for Rouen, the car radio turned up, windows open, as Léo Marjane sang “Alone Tonight.”

  I am alone tonight, with my dreams….

  The papers all chastised the cabaret singer for having entertained the Nazis a little too enthusiastically during the occupation, but no song captured the war like that one. I sang along.

  I am alone tonight, without your love….

  It was wonderful not to be the one alone for once. Sad songs are not so sad when you have someone who loves you. I turned onto Paul’s street singing with abandon. Who cared what the neighbors thought?

  I rounded the bend and saw a white ambulance parked at the curb outside Paul’s house, engine running.

  Time stopped. Was it parked at the wrong house? I drove closer and saw a nurse standing outside the front door, a navy-blue cape over her white uniform.

  My God. Paul.

  The car barely stopped moving before I jumped from it.

  I ran up the walk.

  “Is Paul hurt?” I said, my breath coming in great gulps.

  “Come quickly,” the nurse said as I followed her into the house.

  1945

  “Am I dreaming?” Zuzanna said as the ferry docked at Gdansk, the salt air filled with the wild cries of gulls and terns. I lifted my hand to shield my eyes, for the sparkling water, alive with diamonds, blinded me.

  We had spent two months in Malmö, Sweden, the place for which God saved all the most beautiful things in nature. The greenest grass. Sky the color of cornflowers. Children who seemed born of that landscape, their hair spun from white clouds, eyes of cobalt sea.