The Girl in the Blue Beret

5.



IN A SHOE BOX (LADIES’ PUMPS) TAGGED “FRANCE,” IN LORETTA’S curlicue handwriting, Marshall found several letters and photographs, some French coins, a map, and some memorabilia from the war years. In the bottom were the letters he was looking for—two from Pierre Albert, one in English, one in French.

ALBERT, PIERRE



PAINTER



CHAUNY (AISNE) FRANCE



6 FEBRUARY 1947



Dear friend,



I am sending you a little word to ask you what are you doing and to tell you that we are going very well and hope that you are the same since we see you. Here, everything is going very well. I am always in the peinture and my boy works with me. He is now a young gentleman and I am very glad to have him. My wife go very well too.



I hope that you are now with all your family and all the hard days that you passed are now finished.



Here in France, the situation is always very hard. We always have the ration but it’s going a little better than the time the Germs were here, but it’s not tomorrow that we will have like before the war. I think that we will have to waite 2 or 3 year before that everything go all right.



My wife and I would be very glad to have some of your news. I join here some photographs. I am your friend, and I send you all my best wishes from my wife and Nicolas.



Pierre Albert

Marshall remembered answering Pierre’s letter in French, laboriously, freeing the Frenchman to respond in his own language, which Marshall could read more easily now.

CHAUNY 3 APRIL 1947



Dear friends,



I received your letter with joy. I know that your return was not known without difficulty, but at last we are very happy that you have returned, in sum for you the war has ended.



We would be very happy to receive your visit and also your wife and your little son Albert and for us to count you among us again sometime, in order to speak of our old memories. At home you know we often speak of you. I will give you some explanations about my work with the Résistance, after you left. I made connection with the escape networks in Paris.



I profit some at the same time to make you know that Nicolas, my wife, and I wait in order to receive each the distinction “Medal of Freedom” by the American authorities.



In response to your questions I would tell you that the coffee, sugar, ham, soap, butter, rice, tobacco, are very rare, also the clothes and shoes. On the other page, we give you the dimensions for Nicolas, who is very large.



In the expectation of reading you and of seeing you, receive dear friends our good kisses to your little Albert from all our family.



Best wishes to you and your family and le petit Albert.



Pierre Albert

P.S. I beg you to pay attention for there are some thieves in course of the parcel’s route. Don’t forget to write how much money it will cost for all you will send.



Marshall was dismayed. He had answered Pierre’s first letter, but had he bothered to answer this second letter? He had been so eager to get on with his sun-kissed American life—new wife, baby, airline job—that he had neglected his French friends. He had never returned to Chauny. He didn’t even know if he had sent the goods Pierre had requested. Yet how well he remembered Pierre and Gisèle! And their son, Nicolas.

Nicolas: “Gary Cooper!”

Marshall: “Je ne suis pas Gary Cooper!”

Nicolas: “Tireur, tirez!” Shooter, shoot!

The child’s gestures had made Marshall homesick for western movies. With his revolver—something he should have ditched when he began his trek into hiding—Marshall had attempted a fast draw and a twirl, to sensational acclaim and pleas for repeats.

Nicolas: “Howdy, pard-ner.”

Marshall remembered secret bustlings, hurried dinners, and nighttime tappings on the door. Pierre went out to fight a war, while Marshall glumly played cards and tried to read Maupassant in French.

“The neighbor says she saw you peek out beside the curtain this afternoon. That neighbor is good, but I don’t know if all the neighbors are good. You can’t trust. Stay away from the windows.” Pierre’s voice had been severe, Marshall remembered.

Le petit Albert. It dawned on him that news of Marshall’s son signaled a great achievement for the Frenchman. Pierre had risked his life to help Marshall survive the war and start a family. Marshall’s own son knew nothing about the source of his name—the Albert family, Pierre and Gisèle and Nicolas, who had been so important to Marshall for a few weeks long ago. He had given them his aunt’s Cincinnati address, and they had written it in a ledger. He remembered that little book now. Pierre had squirreled it away behind a small cupboard that had loose slats.

Marshall lectured himself, You weren’t that ignorant and unfeeling. You knew enough to name your son Albert, and evidently to write at least one letter to a family who took care of you.

He remembered Loretta saying, You can name the boy, and I’ll name the girl. Marshall wondered now if he had chosen the girl’s name, what would he have chosen? Gisèle?

If he went to Chauny again, he might find the house where he had hidden. Maybe it would be immediately familiar, like the field where the Dirty Lily had crashed. He could imagine Pierre and Gisèle still in their same house, their son living down the block.

Le petit Albert: the words shimmered.

Restless, he found some ice cream in the freezer and scraped the ice crystals off. It tasted old. In wartime France, ice cream was scarce, he remembered. No one had ice. The same word worked for both. La glace.

“In the war he couldn’t get ice cream,” he had heard Loretta explain to someone about his love for ice cream.

They used to have a hand-crank freezer, and when he first tried it, in his attempt to be efficient, he turned the crank as fast as he could and then let it rest a moment, then cranked it again at full gallop.

“That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it,” Loretta said several times. He paid no attention. When the cream began leaking out, he learned that he had made whipped cream, which had swelled quickly.

“I tried to tell you,” Loretta said, laughing. “But you always have to haul off and get the job done. Sometimes I think about offering you a hammer.”

The twenty-three-year-old kid disguised in a Frenchman’s peasant outfit invaded his mind again now, like a pop-up cartoon character. It was the fatuous youth he had seen when catching his reflection in windows.

That night, he dreamed he saw the girl in the blue beret strolling up the Champs-Elysées with a book satchel slung over her shoulder. When he awoke, the dream puzzled him, but then he remembered eating ice cream with her—a small cardboard container of black-market ice cream, smuggled in newspapers and straw.

What had happened to her? Did he have any chance of finding her and her family again? And Robert, who had brought the ice cream on his bicycle. He remembered Robert speaking in hushed tones with Marshall’s host family in Paris. He teased some papers from his coat lining, and the husband and wife studied them for a long time, whispering exclamations. The woman crumpled the papers and tucked them in the stove. Marshall remembered Robert’s bright young face, the meaningful laughter that punctuated what seemed to be a serious discussion. Marshall longed to go out with him, to be of help. Anything. He envied Robert, who went off on hazardous missions, while Marshall was fastened up like a fattening calf.