NOTICE
SHOT FOR SPYING. THE JEW JAKOB MANSARD, THE COMMUNIST VIKTOR YABLONSKY, AND THE JEW LOUIS DEVRY.
And the second:
NOTICE
HENCEFORTH, ALL FRENCH PEOPLE ARRESTED FOR ANY CRIME OR INFRACTION WILL BE CONSIDERED HOSTAGES. WHEN A HOSTILE ACT AGAINST GERMANY OCCURS IN FRANCE, HOSTAGES WILL BE SHOT.
“They’re shooting ordinary French people for nothing?” she said.
“Don’t look so pale, Mademoiselle. These warnings are not for beautiful women such as yourself.”
Isabelle glared at the man. He was worse than the Germans, a Frenchman doing this to his own people. This was why she hated the Vichy government. What good was self-rule for half of France if it turned them into Nazi puppets?
“Are you unwell, Mademoiselle?”
So solicitous. So caring. What would he do if she called him a traitor and spat in his face? “I am fine, merci.”
She watched him cross the street confidently, his back straight, his hat positioned just so on his cropped brown hair. The German soldiers in the café welcomed him warmly, clapped him on the back and pulled him into their midst.
Isabelle turned away in disgust.
That was when she saw it: a bright silver bicycle leaning against the side wall of the café. At the sight of it, she thought how much it would change her life, ease her pain, to ride to town and back each day.
Normally a bicycle would be guarded by the soldiers in the café, but on this snow-dusted morning, no one was outside at a table.
Don’t do it.
Her heart started beating quickly, her palms turned damp and hot within her mittens. She glanced around. The women queued up at the butcher’s made it a point to see nothing and make eye contact with no one. The windows of the café across the street were fogged; inside, the men were olive-hued silhouettes.
So certain of themselves.
Of us, she thought bitterly.
At that, whatever sliver of restraint she possessed disappeared. She held the basket close to her side and limped out onto the ice-slicked cobblestoned street. From that second, that one step forward, the world seemed to blur around her and time slowed down. She heard her breath, saw the plumes of it in front of her face. The buildings blurred or faded into white hulks, the snow dazzled, until all she could see was the glint of the silver handlebars and the two black tires.
She knew there was only one way to do this. Fast. Without a glance sideways or a pause in her step.
Somewhere a dog barked. A door banged shut.
Isabelle kept walking; five steps separated her from the bicycle.
Four.
Three.
Two.
She stepped up onto the sidewalk and took hold of the bicycle and jumped onto it. She rode down the cobblestoned street, the chassis clanging at bumps in the road. She skidded around the corner, almost fell, and righted herself, pedaling hard toward rue La Grande.
There, she turned into the alley and jumped off the bicycle to knock on the door. Four hard clacks.
The door opened slowly. Henri saw her and frowned.
She pushed her way inside.
The small meeting room was barely lit. A single oil lamp sat on a scarred wooden table. Henri was the only one here. He was making sausage from a tray of meat and fat. Skeins of it hung from hooks on the wall. The room smelled of meat and blood and cigarette smoke. She yanked the bicycle in with her and slammed the door shut.
“Well, hello,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel. “Have we called a meeting I don’t know about?”
“No.”
He glanced at her side. “That’s not your bicycle.”
“I stole it,” she said. “From right under their noses.”
“It is—or was—Alain Deschamp’s bicycle. He left everything and fled to Lyon with his family when the occupation began.” Henri moved toward her. “Lately, I have been seeing an SS soldier riding it around town.”
“SS?” Isabelle’s elation faded. There were ugly rumors swirling about the SS and their cruelty. Perhaps she should have thought this through …
He moved closer, so close she could feel the warmth of his body.
She had never been alone with him before, nor so near him. She saw for the first time that his eyes were neither brown nor green but rather a hazel gray that made her think of fog in a deep forest. She saw a small scar at his brow that had either been a terrible gash at one time or poorly stitched and it made her wonder all at once what kind of life he’d led that had brought him here, and to communism. He was older than she by at least a decade, although to be honest, he seemed even older sometimes, as if perhaps he’d suffered a great loss.
“You’ll need to paint it,” he said.
“I don’t have any paint.”
“I do.”
“Would you—”
“A kiss,” he said.
“A kiss?” She repeated it to stall for time. This was the sort of thing that she’d taken for granted before the war. Men desired her; they always had. She wanted that back, wanted to flirt with Henri and be flirted with, and yet the very idea of it felt sad and a little lost, as if perhaps kisses didn’t mean much anymore and flirtation even less.
“One kiss and I’ll paint your bicycle tonight and you can pick it up tomorrow.”
She stepped toward him and tilted her face up to his.
They came together easily, even with all the coats and layers of newsprint and wool between them. He took her in his arms and kissed her. For a beautiful second, she was Isabelle Rossignol again, the passionate girl whom men desired.
When it ended and he drew back, she felt … deflated. Sad.
She should say something, make a joke, or perhaps pretend that she felt more than she did. That’s what she would have done before, when kisses had meant more, or maybe less.
“There’s someone else,” Henri said, studying her intently.
“No there isn’t.”
Henri touched her cheek gently. “You’re lying.”
Isabelle thought of all that Henri had given her. He was the one who’d brought her into the Free French network and given her a chance; he was the one who believed in her. And yet when he kissed her, she thought of Ga?tan. “He didn’t want me,” she said. It was the first time she’d told anyone the truth. The admission surprised her.
“If things were different, I’d make you forget him.”
“And I’d let you try.”
She saw the way he smiled at that, saw the sorrow in it. “Blue,” he said after a pause.
“Blue?”
“It’s the paint color I have.”
Isabelle smiled. “How fitting.”
Later that day, as she stood in one line after another for too little food, and then as she gathered wood from the forest and carried it home, she thought about that kiss.
What she thought, over and over again, was if only.