The Room on Rue Amélie(9)
Ruby drew herself up a bit taller in her chair. “Aubert, I follow the news too. You can’t think I’m not aware of what’s going on.”
“Of course,” Aubert said, and Ruby could hear his amusement as he added, “Our university girl.” He and Marcel exchanged smiles.
“Excuse me,” Ruby said stiffly, rising from her chair. Aubert and Marcel half-stood too, but she ignored them as she made her way inside to find the toilette.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought as she descended the spiral staircase at the back of the café. Especially with Marcel, and especially in Paris. Hadn’t Gertrude Stein commanded respect here? Zelda Fitzgerald had run the town in the twenties, and now, it was common knowledge that a woman—the Comtesse Hélène de Portes—was pulling the strings of Reynaud’s government. Ruby had met her; she was a shrill, irascible person known as much for her temper tantrums as for her extravagant parties. If someone like that could wield such power, what was Ruby doing wrong? Should she be speaking up more? Standing up for herself when Marcel intimated that she was incapable of grasping the truth? Or would that only drive him further away?
She touched up her lipstick and stared into the mirror. There were dark circles under her eyes, evidence of her lack of sleep. Her curls were loose and frizzy from the heat, something she would have fixed if she cared more. But it was impossible to think about things like that with the invasion on the horizon. What horrors would come with it? What would happen to the people she loved? To her?
She splashed water on her face and pinched her cheeks to restore some color. She smoothed her hair, gave her reflection one last resolute look, and headed back upstairs.
When she returned to the table, Marcel and Aubert were whispering, their heads bent together. As she approached, they pulled back and flashed her identical smiles. Was it her imagination that they looked almost guilty?
“What is it?” she asked.
“Just discussing the Germans,” Marcel said. “Those bastards.”
Unease crawled under Ruby’s skin. “You two mustn’t do anything foolish.”
“Foolish?” Marcel’s eyes locked on hers.
“It’s best to keep our heads down until we figure out what the occupation will mean for us.”
Marcel’s face darkened. “We should just lie down like dogs?” he demanded. Aubert was smirking, as if she was proving him right.
“I just don’t want you to do anything reckless.”
“So you do think I’m powerless to fight for my country.” Marcel looked triumphant and wounded at the same time.
“No!”
His eyes blazed, and they stared at each other until the silence became uncomfortable.
“Well, we are certainly not going to solve the problems of France this afternoon,” Aubert said, cutting through the discomfort. He raised his glass and glanced from Ruby to Marcel. “To France. And what is to come.”
“To France,” Marcel and Ruby muttered in unison, raising their glasses.
But the tension lingered, and as they drank their champagne, no one spoke again. Ruby stared down the deserted Avenue Rapp toward the river. Though the Germans were still miles from Paris, she could already see them coming. She could feel the city changing. And though he was just inches away, she could feel Marcel drifting further from her by the day. All the champagne in the world couldn’t turn back the clock.
CHAPTER SIX
October 1940
By October, it was clear that Paris had forever changed. The Germans had gotten comfortable, their officers settling into swanky accommodations at the Crillon, the Meurice, the George V, the Ritz. The French government had long ago decamped to Vichy, replacing the proud French motto of Liberté, egalité, fraternité with the Germanic Travail, famille, patrie: Work, family, fatherland. Huge German street signs had been erected, directing traffic to the Zentra-Kraft on the Champs-élysées or the local village hospital in the Orts Lazarett Suresnes. German soldiers relaxed in cafés, dined at restaurants, and toured the monuments and museums as if they were on holiday.
The colder weather moved in, accompanied by a growing sense of unease. Ruby queued each morning to receive rationed portions of foods and supplies. She learned, along with the rest of Paris, to make fuel from wood and charcoal, oil from grape seeds, and cigarettes for Marcel from a strange mixture of Jerusalem artichokes, sunflowers, maize, and a small amount of tobacco. At first, it had seemed that food would still be readily available during the Occupation, but now that winter was approaching, it was clear that had been a clever mirage, affected by the Nazis to lull Parisians into a false feeling of normalcy.
There was a sense throughout the city that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel, though. A little-known general named Charles de Gaulle had emerged as a leader over the summer, stirring the pot of Resistance through a series of radio broadcasts from England. “Somewhere must shine and burn the flame of French resistance,” he said, and so it began, simply at first, with Vs for victory appearing throughout Paris, scrawled in lipstick or crayon or coal on German cars, German flyers, and visible spots throughout the city.
Early one autumn afternoon, Ruby was returning to the apartment after waiting in line for more than two hours for bread when she encountered Charlotte’s mother standing in the first-floor hallway of their building crying. Her dress was wrinkled, as if she’d given up on ironing, and there were dark circles under her eyes.