The Postmistress of Paris(11)

Luki, inside the carriage, was showing off her new yo-yo to her little friend, speaking in flawless French. At four now, she had lived all the life she knew in Sanary-sur-Mer, with no memory of Vienna or Berlin except through photographs and the stories Edouard told her out on their dreaming log. Now Berthe was taking her ahead to Paris, allowing him to finish packing up their cottage and prepare it for sale.

“You will come with us,” the man repeated. “To the station.”

Edouard, unable to hide his alarm now, stammered, “I don’t understand.”

He called to Berthe, “The kangaroo’s name is Professor Ellie-Mouse. She teaches mathematics, like all good stuffed kangaroos.” Trying to keep a lightness to his voice, to maintain his composure. One more day. That was all he needed. Paris would be a safer place for Luki and him. A big city. Anonymous. No paranoid neighbors. No one who, seeing his light on late at night, might suggest that his single steady bulb somehow signaled code to a Nazi ship. A single light behind old film he examined for some image he could develop and sell so he could feed them, only to print Salvation again and again, as if finding the right exposure time, solarizing, burning and dodging that single photograph into a perfect print might save him. Prints that brought in no grocery money, that he didn’t even try to sell.

He called to Berthe, “Luki loves numbers.” Like Elza had. “If she’s upset without me”—Lord, she would be frantic if he didn’t show up tomorrow as he’d promised—“run her through the multiplication tables; that soothes her.” If he kept talking, Berthe might realize what was happening, so she could explain to Luki if he was delayed. “She likes to square numbers, too, and cube.”

“Edouard?” Berthe said.

“A number multiplied by itself, and then by itself again.” He nodded ever so slightly first to the one policeman, then the other.

Berthe looked startled as she registered the police.

Edouard said to the policemen, “My Luki—”

“It will only be for a few questions.”

The train still there, in the station. He could take Luki off it. He could keep her with him. He could bribe his way through one more day, couldn’t he?

He focused on the policemen, trying to stay calm. This was France. This wasn’t Germany.

“You would want the child to accompany you?” one of the policemen asked.

Berthe had Luki in her arms now. She was holding her up to the open window, saying, “Wave to your papa. Wave to him, sweetheart.”

Edouard called to the train, “Luki, I love you! I love you!”

Luki raised one small hand.

LUKI GRIPPED HER yo-yo tightly, wishing Pemmy wasn’t hiding in the suitcase, wrapped in a towel. Tante Berthe’s hands were at her waist, holding her up to the window. She waved to Papa. She tried not to cry. She was lucky, because she would see Papa tomorrow. Her friend Brigitte didn’t get to see her papa at all because her papa was a soldier. And Pemmy didn’t even have a papa, except Papa was like a papa to her even though he wasn’t a kangaroo.

She waved to Papa again as he waved back.

“Tante Berthe,” she said, “are those men Papa’s friends?”

Tante Berthe didn’t answer.

The men looked angry. Luki wanted to tell them to be nice to Papa, who never got mad at anybody, not even when Pemmy climbed into the bath with her for a swim and dripped water on his photographs. He said they were only photographs and Pemmy could drip on them any time she wanted, but they needed to get her as dry as they could because she wasn’t as fun to hug when she was sopping wet, and also, maybe one swim in a lifetime was enough for a kangaroo.

Papa called out again that he loved her. Then the train was moving. It was taking her away from him. Papa was getting smaller and smaller. He got so small. Then he disappeared.

AS THE POLICEMEN waited outside the cottage, Edouard put a few things into a suitcase that had been Elza’s. Nightclothes. Clean things for tomorrow. So much of his life was already packed in crates around him. Why hadn’t he just thrown the things from his makeshift bathroom darkroom into a last crate and gotten on that train with Luki? He could have left a key with a neighbor and managed the sale of the cottage from Paris. But the French had long been so good to refugees. They’d accommodated a million as Spain fell to Franco, and even Daladier’s decree authorizing the internment of “undesirables” on the excuse of national security had been nothing but words and posturing, with no actual internment camps involved. Yes, an August 30 circular called in the event of war for the gathering up of men from “the old territories belonging to the enemy,” and now France was at war with Germany, but he was Jewish, a refugee from Hitler’s brutality, for god’s sake. How could anyone imagine him a spy for the Reich?

He pulled from a crate his Leica, set it in the suitcase, and rooted around for film as if this moment might free him to photograph again. He gathered what money he had, wishing he’d sent more with Luki. He grabbed a pen and the box of writing paper he’d gotten to write a thank-you note to Nanée Gold for that gathering in Paris so long ago. He set aside the half-written letter, the words he’d never been able to complete, and he extracted a clean sheet.

This would all be sorted out before his train left tomorrow. He’d be in Paris before Luki could miss him. But he quickly jotted a few words: