head of my line strikes up a conversation with the soldier beside him. The Swiss German I learned at boarding school is slightly different than the language spoken by the soldiers, but I usually understand them.
“I received news this morning,” he says. “My wife is divorcing me. Taking our children with her. I have plans for the bitch, let me tell you.”
The cold cruelty in his voice forces me to casually step from his line. Papers shaking in my hand, I pretend to fix an issue with the clasp of my suitcase before joining a different queue. Carried by the momentum of the crowd, I shuffle forward.
At the head of the line I abandoned, the disgruntled soldier barks a sharp call for assistance, waving a passenger’s papers in the air. Two more soldiers dash across the platform. A man is forcibly led away through the parting crowd.
“Papers,” I’m asked.
My miraculously steady hand rises. The inspection goes on for the longest time. The soldier’s assistant looks on, surely eager to learn my papers are fakes.
How many times can I expect them to believe I’m a twenty-two-year-old French widow named Adele Blanchard who has come to Paris to look for secretarial work before my luck runs out? They’re not stupid people, these soldiers. All they have to do is study my face for more than a few seconds.
The sergeant points to my papers. Expressionless, I await his verdict.
“This is what real papers look like,” he says to the assistant.
He returns my identification. And I very nearly float away.
At the city’s center are two islands. The Île de la Cité is home to the stunning Notre Dame cathedral. The smaller island, Île Saint-Louis, is home to Dr. Devereux.
Entering Île Saint-Louis is like stepping back in time to a seventeenth-century village plucked out of the earth and deposited into the Seine. I take my time following a shopkeeper’s directions, fascinated by the shops,
fromageries
, bakeries, and the aristocratic mansions where Voltaire and Marie Curie once lived.
I dawdle outside the impressive double doors of François’s home after I arrive. Will my decision to come here lead to help or to capture?
When I finally go ahead and raise my fist to knock, the door swings open. A slender woman dressed in culottes and a blouse resembling parachute silk stands before me, inches from my hand. I draw back the punch in the nick of time.
“
Bonjour. Je m’appelle Adele
,” I say. “I am looking for Dr. Devereux.”
She cocks an eyebrow, scowling as if I’m a mangy stray cat that crawled out from a trash heap and showed up on her doorstep. The door promptly slams in my face.
I stare at the door, dumbfounded and hurt. Maybe I misinterpreted my conversation with the doctor. If he’s not willing to help me, I don’t know who else to turn to.
The door reopens. This time Dr. Devereux greets me with a welcoming smile. The woman—I assume she’s his wife, the poor man—peers out from behind him in the foyer, blatantly keeping tabs on us.
“Adele, how lovely to see you! Do come in.”
The woman blocks my path. “Really, François! Why must you help each and every needy person who comes to our home?”
He looks her in the eyes to say, “Because I am a doctor.”
“I am leaving to do my shopping. You
know
how I feel about strangers in our home.”
With an exasperated huff she slides outside, her back pressed to the door to avoid contact with me. Reeking of expensive perfume she strolls away, one of the last women in Paris unwilling to give up the haute couture lifestyle the war stole from the city.
“Adele, please come in,” Dr. Devereux says. “I apologize for my wife’s behavior. She isn’t usually like that.”
I enter his home, cheered by how clean it smells. I could twirl about like a little girl in a meadow of pink and yellow flowers. And I’m not even the twirling type.
François closes in to get a good look at my face. “Have you eaten?”
My pride tells me to lie, but my
“I received news this morning,” he says. “My wife is divorcing me. Taking our children with her. I have plans for the bitch, let me tell you.”
The cold cruelty in his voice forces me to casually step from his line. Papers shaking in my hand, I pretend to fix an issue with the clasp of my suitcase before joining a different queue. Carried by the momentum of the crowd, I shuffle forward.
At the head of the line I abandoned, the disgruntled soldier barks a sharp call for assistance, waving a passenger’s papers in the air. Two more soldiers dash across the platform. A man is forcibly led away through the parting crowd.
“Papers,” I’m asked.
My miraculously steady hand rises. The inspection goes on for the longest time. The soldier’s assistant looks on, surely eager to learn my papers are fakes.
How many times can I expect them to believe I’m a twenty-two-year-old French widow named Adele Blanchard who has come to Paris to look for secretarial work before my luck runs out? They’re not stupid people, these soldiers. All they have to do is study my face for more than a few seconds.
The sergeant points to my papers. Expressionless, I await his verdict.
“This is what real papers look like,” he says to the assistant.
He returns my identification. And I very nearly float away.
At the city’s center are two islands. The Île de la Cité is home to the stunning Notre Dame cathedral. The smaller island, Île Saint-Louis, is home to Dr. Devereux.
Entering Île Saint-Louis is like stepping back in time to a seventeenth-century village plucked out of the earth and deposited into the Seine. I take my time following a shopkeeper’s directions, fascinated by the shops,
fromageries
, bakeries, and the aristocratic mansions where Voltaire and Marie Curie once lived.
I dawdle outside the impressive double doors of François’s home after I arrive. Will my decision to come here lead to help or to capture?
When I finally go ahead and raise my fist to knock, the door swings open. A slender woman dressed in culottes and a blouse resembling parachute silk stands before me, inches from my hand. I draw back the punch in the nick of time.
“
Bonjour. Je m’appelle Adele
,” I say. “I am looking for Dr. Devereux.”
She cocks an eyebrow, scowling as if I’m a mangy stray cat that crawled out from a trash heap and showed up on her doorstep. The door promptly slams in my face.
I stare at the door, dumbfounded and hurt. Maybe I misinterpreted my conversation with the doctor. If he’s not willing to help me, I don’t know who else to turn to.
The door reopens. This time Dr. Devereux greets me with a welcoming smile. The woman—I assume she’s his wife, the poor man—peers out from behind him in the foyer, blatantly keeping tabs on us.
“Adele, how lovely to see you! Do come in.”
The woman blocks my path. “Really, François! Why must you help each and every needy person who comes to our home?”
He looks her in the eyes to say, “Because I am a doctor.”
“I am leaving to do my shopping. You
know
how I feel about strangers in our home.”
With an exasperated huff she slides outside, her back pressed to the door to avoid contact with me. Reeking of expensive perfume she strolls away, one of the last women in Paris unwilling to give up the haute couture lifestyle the war stole from the city.
“Adele, please come in,” Dr. Devereux says. “I apologize for my wife’s behavior. She isn’t usually like that.”
I enter his home, cheered by how clean it smells. I could twirl about like a little girl in a meadow of pink and yellow flowers. And I’m not even the twirling type.
François closes in to get a good look at my face. “Have you eaten?”
My pride tells me to lie, but my
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