The Keeper of Happy Endings(49)

I’ve received quite the education since that day in the cellar, about the various specialties within the Resistance: clandestine radio operations, sabotage of supply transports, printing and distribution of underground newspapers, even the movement of weapons and explosives. Each cell operates independently of one another. Our work is less daring than the blowing up of bridges and railroads, but it’s no less dangerous. To smuggle downed Allied airmen out of France requires intricate planning and many hands.

The process begins with falsified death certificates and carefully forged identity papers for each escapee and employs a vast network of couriers—many of them women like me—and a series of safe houses along a carefully guarded route over the Pyrenees, into northern Spain, and then on to the port of Lisbon.

That is Anson’s work, transporting the men when moving day finally arrives. I dread those nights when he kisses me goodbye and promises to return safely, because we both know he can’t guarantee anything of the sort. We all seem to be living on borrowed time these days, daring fate to catch us out, wondering not if our time will come but how and where. It doesn’t help that the hospital gates stand directly opposite the German headquarters and that guards are posted day and night.

But I have work of my own now—as a courier. Finally, after nearly two weeks of training, I’m being given real assignments. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly brave, but what I’m doing feels right. Not just for Paris but for Anson. Helping the cause, even a little, means helping him.

He was adamant that I not report to him, and so I’ve been assigned to Elise, whose fiancé, I’ve learned, has been sent to work in a German munitions factory as part of the forced-service edict. She’s brusque and all business, but not unkind, and she has trained me well.

I work as a liaison, conveying information to other members of our cell: a rendezvous schedule hidden in a tin of coffee, a drop-off point scribbled on a scrap of paper used to wrap a wedge of cheese. Sometimes the exchange is verbal, a seemingly innocent inquiry about an aunt’s recent bout of flu or a question about the Métro timetable. I’m to recite the line exactly as given, memorize the reply, and report back to Elise. I never know what any of it means, but that’s by design. In the event that I’m picked up and questioned, I can’t reveal anything because I don’t know anything.

But today, I’ve been trusted with something new. I’m to collect a pouch of papers from a man Elise referred to only as The Painter. She told me to fill a basket with wine, bread, and cheese and then pedal Maman’s bike to a garret in the Rue des Saints-Pères.

I’m nervous as I pull up in front of the dingy apartment building. My instructions are to appear as if I’m meeting a lover for an afternoon assignation. I take out a compact and a tube of lipstick, as I’ve been taught, and make a show of primping, all the while using the mirror to make sure I haven’t been followed.

It’s the first thing they teach you: how to make sure you aren’t tailed and what to do if you are. What to look for on the street. How to melt into a crowd. How to get rid of anything that might tie you back to the cell. But nothing looks out of the ordinary.

I chain up my bike, loop the basket over my arm, and climb the skinny flight of steps to the third floor. Three sharp knocks on the door. No more. No less. There’s the clicking of locks, and the door cracks open, revealing one eye and a heavy brow.

“J’espère que tu as faim,” I say, precisely as instructed. I hope you’re hungry.

The door inches back. Three-quarters of a face now. The eye narrows as it runs over me. Eventually, the door opens enough to let me in.

It’s a tiny apartment, two rooms crowded with tables and lamps, made even more claustrophobic by heavy blackout curtains, which are closed though it’s the middle of the day. There is a distinct reek to the place. Chemical fumes mixed with unwashed male bodies, scorched acorn coffee, and cigarette smoke.

I remember my instructions while I wait. I’m to say nothing unless specifically addressed, to make no comment or question anything I see. The less I know, the better. But it’s hard to curb my curiosity about what appears to be a kind of assembly line. There are small tables set up along the far wall, stocked with an assortment of inks, writing implements, seals, stamps, and glues.

I count four men in all—the one who answered my knock and three others bent over various tables. No one speaks, and yet it’s clear who’s in charge. He’s seated at the farthest table, surrounded by the tools of his trade—The Painter. There’s something almost desperate in the way he hunches over his work, stained fingers twitching with small, frenetic strokes, inventing human beings with paper and ink.

He lifts his head, craning his neck to work out a kink. Our eyes lock briefly. He’s surprisingly young, not much older than I am, with a long face, round wire spectacles, and a chin full of dark stubble. The moment is over quickly. He returns to his work, and the man who let me in returns, handing me an oilskin pouch. I don’t look inside or say a word. I simply tuck the pouch into the back of my skirt and cover it with my cardigan. No money changes hands. The Painter takes nothing for his work. Like the rest of us, he cares only about the cause.

When enough time has passed, I empty my basket, leaving the wine and food behind, and muss my hair and lipstick a little, in case anyone happens to notice me leaving. And then I’m outside in the sunshine again, pedaling away with a packet of forged documents tucked into my waistband.