“You know, when they invaded, I left Paris—on a motorcycle, if you can believe,” he said softly. “People were leaving in cars, on bicycles, with horses and carts, walking and pushing their belongings in baby carriages or strapped to their backs.”
He turned a page of the paper. “When cars stalled or ran out of gas, people would scream at each other, cursing, ready to kill to gain a few more feet in the endless queue out.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Crisis may bring out the best in the British, but it produces the worst in us French. I have never seen so much ugliness and selfishness. And that was before the Nazis got here.”
“It must have been terrible,” Maggie said.
“Others had it worse. I survived. And I made it to England.”
“How did that happen?”
Jacques folded the newspaper, slid a bit closer to Maggie, and put an arm along the back of the bench. “I was a pilot for Air France and was offered a job flying planes for the Vichy government, which I couldn’t turn down—or else they’d send me to a work camp. So I flew for Service Civil des Liaisons Aériennes de la Métropole.” He glanced upward, as if remembering his time in the sky. “I’d fly from Paris to Vichy and back. To the colonies in North Africa, to Italy. At one point, I had a layover in Marseilles and through another French pilot made contact with British intelligence. We were transported out of France via the Pat line to Gibraltar. It was more than I’d ever hoped for—I had a chance to go to England. To fight for France.”
The church bell behind them rang the half hour. Maggie watched as the birds, ruffled and wet with their bath, hopped to the edge of the fountain to begin their preening, and tried to be patient. “How did you end up with the Firm?”
“I was recommended to F-Section, because I was a pilot who knew France well, and could convince farmers to let us use their fields for landing our Lysanders and Hudsons. Before I came along, they were landing in bogs. Or running into trees on unchecked fields. And so I came to be an Air Movements officer, in charge of getting all of the SOE agents working in and around Paris in and out. I also coordinate with the farmers who own those fields we use and the various Resistance workers who run the safe houses here in Paris.”
Maggie had looked away from him again, scanning the park to see if anyone was watching them. “What’s that like?”
“We French can’t agree on anything.” He laughed, without humor. “We’re a country with over three hundred types of cheese. How easy do you think secretly organizing a bunch of Frogs is?”
Maggie snorted. Jacques turned to her, and their eyes met. “What did you do before the war?” he asked, suddenly serious.
“I was a student. And then a secretary. And then a tutor.” No need to say to whom. “Why aren’t you flying now?”
“The people in the Firm—they want me on the ground. Organizing.” He gave her a sardonic grin. “My parents died before the war. Perhaps they were lucky.” He shook his head. “But I will continue to fight, to my last breath. My country is still at war with Germany, even if it looks like we’ve surrendered. Pétain and the generals have given up, but the people have not. The war is still being fought, in the shadows. The Boche may have won this skirmish, but they have not won the war—and they will never win this war.”
Maggie was moved by the fervor in his voice. Across the park, she could see a boy, dressed in raggedy clothes, searching through garbage bins.
She felt a sudden flash of hot shame. How could she wear such frivolous clothes in an occupied country? She knew she and Jacques looked like comfortable and well-fed collaborators. There were two versions of Paris, she realized. Versions that existed simultaneously, like Notre Dame and its rippling reflection in the Seine, like yin and yang—collaborator and resister. She bit her lip and tucked one ankle tightly behind the other.
A flock of ducks swooped down and landed on the grass, quacking and strutting, the drakes with their vivid purple sashes and iridescent heads waddling after the more dowdy hens. The boy at the garbage bins turned and smiled, taking a small slingshot from his pocket. He whistled to the ducks as he crept up to them, as softly as he could in his wood-soled shoes. “Hello my lovely L’Orange,” he called, taking aim. “Come here, dear Salmis, darling Confit!” He had the face of a child and the eyes of an old man.
“And you,” Jacques asked. “How are you faring in Paris?”
“This Paris”—Maggie gestured with one hand to the park, to the boy hunting ducks—“this is not the real Paris, the Paris I love. The one I knew before the war. That part is hidden now. And the rest—well, it makes me sick.”
“I know. Me, too.”
“So why did you need to talk to me—” But before she could finish, a group of Germans in uniform began to file in with instrument cases—a lunchtime brass band. As an officer carrying a trombone case passed by, Jacques slid across the bench to Maggie and kissed her—hiding their faces.
She found she didn’t mind. As they drew apart, his hand caressed her cheek, and for a moment she savored the human contact. When she opened her eyes, she saw he was smiling. They stayed that way, gazing into each other’s eyes, until the band started tuning. A cacophony of notes broke the stillness.
“I hate these bands,” Jacques said abruptly, pulling away. “Nothing like our beautiful French music.” Nazi officers were streaming in, wearing their various uniforms—green, gray, the grim black of the SS. They looked almost like actors in a play. But their “costumes,” unlike those of the theater or the colors of a sports team, were reminders of a deadly moral order.
Maggie wasn’t fooled by their posturing and ludicrous collections of badges and medals. One might secretly laugh at Hitler and his disciples, with their goose stepping and their shouting, but, as German philosophers long before the Nazis might have argued, abstract evil did not choose the form in which it emerged in the particular.
An off-duty German, a Teuton with close-cropped blond hair and a peachy complexion, ridiculous-looking in a paint-stained smock and black beret, began setting up a canvas on an easel. “Did you actually need me for something? If not, I have to go,” Maggie said, rising.
Jacques didn’t answer her question, only offering, “I’ll walk you to where you’re headed.”
When she looked askance at him, he added loudly, “Really, mademoiselle, I can get you a better price for your wedding Champagne than anything those other thieves have promised you!”
The band started to play, and the birds scattered. “I can come with you,” Jacques said. “Wherever you’re going.”
“No—this is my mission. I need to do it alone.”
A shadowy cloud passed overhead and a sun shower began, the raindrops marking dark spots on Maggie’s ensemble. She knew a bit more about this man now, but still so little. Perhaps this is what happens in wartime, she thought. There are few rules, after all. She blinked away a raindrop that had fallen in her eye, like a cold tear.
The gritty streets of Paris with their compressed dust gave off a sort of shimmer when the sun hit them at a certain angle. Finally, she and Jacques reached the shadowed edge of the Place Vend?me. A man in a cap played the accordion, a cat perched on a ragged blanket at his feet; a passing Nazi soldier said “Bonjour” as he dropped a coin in the man’s basket. The musician looked up with a wide, acquiescing smile, which vanished as soon as the German strode on.
“I’ll go the rest of the way alone,” she told Jacques.
“As you wish.” He stepped closer.
She had the feeling he might try to kiss her again. She wanted him to—and yet it was wrong. Definitely wrong.
“Lovely to see you, mademoiselle,” was all he said, stepping back. “Please keep me in mind for that Champagne.” He turned on his heel and strode away, buttoning up his jacket against the rain.
Maggie ran to the revolving door of the Ritz, only now realizing the risks she’d just taken. The meeting about nothing in the park, the kiss, revealing real information about herself—it was all foolish for a spy, for an English spy in occupied Paris. And yet part of her wanted to find out if she could manage to see him again.