The Girl in the Blue Beret

14.



“NICOLAS! NICOLAS ALBERT?”

“Oui.” The man with the baguette turned toward Marshall. “Américain?”

“Oui. I was here in the war.”

“Un aviateur américain! American flyer!” Nicolas banged on the door.

Marshall’s sudden reunion with Pierre and Gisèle Albert and their son, Nicolas, made him think of a boisterous litter of puppies waking up from a nap. Yes, Marshall was going well. How was Pierre going? How was Gisèle going? They were going well. Nicolas too. Marshall’s French was going excellently.

The twelve-year-old boy was recognizable in Nicolas the man. Marshall remembered him eagerly bringing in daily reports of the aircraft he had spotted, the whereabouts of Germans in the streets, activities he had seen around the train station or the post office or the school. The Germans had requisitioned his school, occupying one half of it and crowding the boys into the other. Marshall recalled that Nicolas had been earnest and intelligent, full of questions about America.

“Do you still have your American maps?” Marshall asked him now.

“You remember? Bien sûr. I have a weakness for geography, but I have not yet traveled to your country.”

Nicolas was a school superintendent, and he often had lunch with his parents. He and his wife lived in a suburb of Chauny, and their two daughters were attending a university in Nancy. Gisèle insisted that Marshall join them for the meal. There was plenty, she insisted. She was tiny, with a narrow forehead, bushy eyebrows, and strong hands. Pierre had thinning hair, a thick neck, nostril hair, and an occasional boom in his voice. He was perhaps a decade older than Marshall, but his grooved face seemed hardly older now than it had in 1944. He assured Marshall that the clothing he had asked for long ago had arrived. Marshall thought Loretta must have sent it, but he didn’t say this. Gisèle told him they had kept in touch with many of the aviators they had sheltered during the war.

“I’m not much of a correspondent,” Marshall said, explaining that his failure to answer Pierre’s letter was a faux pas that jumped over the years.

“C’est la vie. Nevertheless, it gives us great pleasure to host you in our country again. Gisèle, get the Calvados.”

Pierre poured the aperitifs. He raised his glass. “A toast to your son, le petit Albert, and to your return to your friends in France.”

“You remember.” The phrase le petit Albert was still fresh in Marshall’s mind from rereading Pierre’s old letter.

“That gave us such joy when you wrote of your marriage and your son. Do you give the French pronunciation—no, of course you do not.”

“They don’t speak much French in New Jersey,” Marshall said. “And I’m afraid Albert is not much interested in the meaning of his name—or in the war.”

“Ah, the young. Give him time.”

“It is the greatest honor to us that you give him our name,” said Gisèle, who began gathering dishes from a cupboard. “Don’t derange yourself. You know that I don’t accept help in my kitchen.”

Marshall hadn’t thought of offering help, then was sorry that he hadn’t, then relaxed, knowing any exertion would have been inappropriate.

Gisèle laid out dishes on an old wooden table that was sticky with sugar crumbs and spills. “We have a simple lunch,” she said. “But Nicolas demands his favorites.”

“Maman is the best cook in France.”

“Angeline is a superior cook!”

“My wife,” Nicolas said to Marshall.

In a while, Pierre uncorked a bottle of red wine, and Gisèle served slices of a vegetable terrine adorned with bits of radish. As they ate, Marshall told them about his life after the war.

“I’ve had a cushy life,” Marshall said. “Cushy—facile, luxueuse? The worst thing that ever happened to me was crash-landing the B-17.” Immediately, he thought perhaps he should have said the loss of his wife.

“Marshall, you were very frightened when you came here!” said Gisèle. “You were so disturbed about your airplane and your friends.”

“You flew the grand airplanes,” said Nicolas. “In the war and after too!”

“I wish I could have flown more missions,” Marshall said. “I really regret that.”

“Everyone has his part, Marshall,” Pierre said, finishing a tidbit of toast.

Gisèle cleared the plates and served a heavy stew, with the baguette.

“It’s a feast,” Marshall said.

“This is no longer wartime, dear Marshall!” said Gisèle, spooning stew from the bulbous tureen into a dish for him. “There is much food now.”

“People forget the deprivation,” said Pierre. “Marshall, you know that after war there is a grand forgetting.”

“That is normal,” said Gisèle.

“But now the people of our country have forgotten too long.” Pierre poured wine and recorked the bottle.

“All of France has amnesia,” Gisèle said, gazing out the window.

“It has to be finished,” Pierre said. “Oh, you know France has had a terrible history. Terrible.”

“The collabos know who they are,” said Gisèle bitterly.

Pierre said, “Too many of those—but they have to live with their shame.”

“You made a tarte Tatin, didn’t you, Maman?” asked Nicolas.

“Bien sûr.” She nodded. “I have beautiful apples,” she said to Marshall. “Remember the apples we ate in 1944?”

“Yes, I believe I do.”

“We had few apples, and we had to make use of every small part.” Gisèle wrinkled her brows.

“You were generous with me,” Marshall said, the warmth of the wine easing him.

Pierre shrugged and tore another piece of baguette. He said, “When the fleets of the B-17s went over, with the streaming rows of cloud like breaths on a cold morning, we rejoiced. We loved the sound. When we heard the bombs drop on the munitions factories and the aerodrome at Laon, we knew there was danger for us, but there was more danger if nothing was done.”

Nicolas said, “It was very exciting to see the planes, and to hear the roar of them filling the sky. We were always watching for parachutists.”

“Nicolas saw a parachutist die,” Gisèle said.

“An American? Did one of our bombers crash around here?” Marshall stiffened.

“It was a man from a B-24, the Liberator, which fell somewhere to the east,” Nicolas explained. “We were outside at school, at the time of the recess, and we heard the noise of the plane high above, but we could not see it. Then we saw the man in the harness, floating down so peacefully, below a canopy. We began running. He was not far away. Then as he floated down we saw a German soldier on the bridge shoot him. We could see the man’s body jerking. He dropped behind a dairy near my school. Naturally we ran toward him. We had our little pocket knives—my friends and I had them for cutting parachutes! And now there really was an aviateur coming from the sky. He was not far from the school, maybe half a kilometer. Other people were running, and they told us to go back, stay away. Of course I was a boy and I wanted to be involved. There may have been six of us boys, all running. And the aviateur was shrouded in his parachute. People began tearing it away, quickly, cutting the lines, and I could see him lying there, bloody and lifeless. I remembered all the aviateurs we had harbored in our house, men who had parachuted or who had survived crash landings—like you, Marshall—and I was very disturbed, because I realized that this young man would have a family, maybe a girlfriend, probably dear parents who were worried about him and who would grieve. I knew that the Germans would bury him in a way that if the man’s parents knew, they would be mortified. Oh, the thoughts I took with me as we hurried back from recess to our classroom, where we must sit perfectly still all afternoon and recite pluperfect verbs!”

No one spoke as Gisèle cleared the dishes.

“I was lucky,” Marshall said then. “Without you, what would I have done? Out on my own, I would have been dragged to a stalag very soon.”

Pierre raised his glass. “To friends from two countries, to the friendship of two countries.”

“The same for me,” Marshall said, not finding the right words. His voice choked.

“La tarte Tatin—voilà!” said Gisèle, setting the dessert on the table.

“Merci, Maman,” Nicolas said.

The apple tart was so delicious that everyone fell silent. After it was finished, Gisèle removed the plates and served coffee.

“This is real coffee!” she said. “It is good, is it not?”

Marshall laughed. “I remember the wartime coffee! What was it—mud and sticks? What was the secret?”

“An exclusive ingredient from Germany,” she said, touching his arm gently.

Marshall nodded. “It was a hard time.”

“Yes, very difficult,” Gisèle said, trading glances with Pierre.


AFTER THE COFFEE, they showed Marshall the back room where he had hidden. Now it was a laundry and storage room, packed full, so that it appeared even smaller than Marshall remembered. He recalled Gisèle crooning to a baby crying in the kitchen. A commotion outside. Someone running down the street. Later, a gunshot in the distance. A fire in the neighborhood, a house burned. Gisèle told him to crawl through an opening in the back of the armoire into a narrow lair behind the wall and not to come out until she signaled. He heard sirens, blasts.

Now he listened as Pierre and Gisèle explained that the Germans had found résistants three houses from them. They arrested the adults, shut the children in the basement, and set fire to the house. Neighbors rescued the children, and Gisèle cared for the baby until a grandmother in the country could be located.

“I heard the baby crying,” Marshall said. “I never knew what was going on. But I wasn’t supposed to be told anything.”

“It was better that we keep you closed behind the armoire!” Gisèle said.

Marshall remembered hearing about the bombing of the aerodrome at Laon. At night he listened to the German soldiers marching in the streets, singing.

“Remember the Germans singing at night?” he asked.

Gisèle shuddered. “That detestable music,” she said.