The Paris Daughter

“Very well, Madame LeClair.” He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. “You can find me at the gallery if you need anything. I’m certain Monsieur Bouet would have insisted I do all I could to make you comfortable.”

“Thank you.” It was entirely beyond this man’s understanding that she would never be comfortable again. He hesitated awkwardly, then slid her key onto a table and headed for the door, which he pulled shut with a thud of finality on his way out. Afterward, she sat on the couch in the stillness for hours, until the sun began to set, and then, numbly, she stood, her legs shaking beneath her, and made her way toward Mathilde’s nursery.

She turned the knob and entered. The room was dark, and she crossed to the window to lift the shade up. Amber light poured in, coating the space in honey, and a sob caught in Elise’s chest. Mathilde’s infant bed was still here, along with the tiny pillow over which her curls had once fallen. Elise touched it, and she could almost see Mathilde’s rosy cheeks, her lips parted in a rosebud bow, her eyes closed in slumber, as her little body rose up and down with the steady breath of sleep.

But Mathilde wasn’t here. No part of her remained in this room.

Next, Elise moved back to her studio, where she’d spent so many hours with her daughter, showing her the world outside their doors. She looked up at the ceiling and was startled to see the paint intact, the trees of the Bois de Boulogne beneath a star-dotted twilight sky. Her eyes welled with tears; of course there would have been no way for the Germans to steal this. It felt like a gift from God, this reminder of Mathilde’s sky, which Elise had imagined connecting them while she’d been gone.

She lay down on her back on the floor, her whole body aching, grief burning through her. In the silent emptiness, she stared up at the ceiling and willed sleep to take her, even for a little while, into oblivion.

Instead, she was still awake beneath the sea of stars when morning came, and as the sky above her began to glow in the light trickling in from the open door, she squeezed her eyes closed and tried to see Mathilde’s face. But all she could see was the headstone in the cemetery, beneath which her daughter would sleep forever.



* * *



Elise forced herself to bathe, to change into some of her old clothing, which still hung in the closet, and to go out that day for food. Realizing she had neither money nor identification, she returned to the gallery, where Monsieur Vasseur looked like he was expecting her.

“I know Monsieur Bouet bought my husband’s work outright, and you don’t owe me anything,” she said quickly. “But I see how much you’re selling his paintings for now. Far more than Monsieur Bouet paid him for them, now that Olivier is dead. I’m hoping you’ll consider loaning me a bit of money to get by on until I am back on my feet. I wouldn’t ask, but right now I have nowhere else to go.”

She was expecting an argument, but the gallery owner simply handed her a neat stack of bills, along with a satchel. Suspicious, she looked inside and found bread, cheese, a sausage, and three apples, a small bounty. “That is to take with you,” he said. “I have biscuits and coffee in the back room for you now, if you’d like. I was hoping you would return.”

He led her to the back room, which was saturated with the scent of coffee beans, real ones. Her stomach growled, and he motioned for her to sit down at the small table, where a plate of biscuits awaited her. She hesitated but then took one, gasping with delight at the buttery taste.

“Where did you get these?” she asked.

“A baker who owed me a favor.”

“And the coffee?”

“Another favor.” He smiled as he poured her a steaming cup.

She took a long sip, savoring the taste, which brought her back to a time when the world was at peace and the future had stretched before her like a grand illusion. “It seems you are owed many favors.”

“I suspect life owes you some favors, too, Madame LeClair. How else may I help you?”

“First, I must have Monsieur Bouet’s address in New York,” she said when he sat beside her with his own cup of steaming coffee. “I have some questions for him about the disappearance of the art.”

“Of course. I will write it down for you.”

“And my identity card. When I fled, it was with false papers, and now, well, I need to be myself again.”

“I will take care of that. Is there anything else you need, Madame LeClair?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “I need to find Juliette Foulon.”

He looked at her blankly.

“She is the woman who cared for my daughter. There was a bomb…” She drew a shaking breath. “Only she and her daughter, Lucie, survived. I don’t know where she has gone, but I need to hear how Mathilde—” She stopped abruptly, unable to complete the sentence. “I need to know. And I need to see if she needs my help.” It was foolish, she knew. What could she do? But she had promised Juliette on the day she left Mathilde with her that she would help her if ever she needed it. She still owed her that, and though she was still reeling from her own loss, Elise’s heart broke thinking of what Juliette had endured, too, and how devastated little Lucie must be. Juliette was Elise’s family. She had to find her.

“Of course, madame. I will make inquiries.”

“And there are two children. Georges and Suzanne Levy. They were separated from their mother. I need to locate them if they return to Paris.”

“Jewish?” he asked, and for a second, she bristled. “I only ask because it will help me to find them. The Jewish children who have begun to return are being assisted by an aid organization. I will make some inquiries there, too.”

“Can you connect me with them?” she asked. “The aid organization? Perhaps I can do some good there.”

He seemed to consider this for a few seconds before nodding. “Certainly. But are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to simply take some time to reacclimate?”

“No.” She thought of all the children who had passed through Madame Roche’s home, all the children who might be returning to find their families gone forever. “I think this is something I need to do.”

“Very well, then. I’ll place some calls, Madame LeClair.”

“Why are you helping me?” she asked after a pause. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Because it is the least I can do as a human being, madame. And I know how important your husband’s work was to the establishment of this gallery’s reputation. If I can do anything to help you, I will.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the final sip of her coffee and standing. For now, it was enough to have Monsieur Vasseur feeling that he was in her debt. “Please let me know the moment you have any news of Juliette Foulon.”

“Yes, madame.” Monsieur Vasseur stood, but Elise was already striding out, the gallery owner’s satchel of apology slung over her shoulder, her belly full but her heart as empty as it had been since she’d seen the ruins of La Librairie des Rêves.





CHAPTER TWENTY


Elise’s days took on a familiar rhythm as 1944 bled into 1945, winter into spring. Elise volunteered twice a week with the Jewish children’s aid organization Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, the OSE, occasionally making the journey to Andrésy, a commune northwest of Paris, to visit the children housed at the orphanage there. She scanned the rosters of returnees for Georges and Suzanne in vain and cried herself to sleep at night, depleted by the constancy of telling children that though they’d survived against impossible odds, there was no sign of their parents. Often, there were cousins or aunts and uncles or sometimes even grandparents who could be found to take them home. But for many of them, it had already sunk in that it was likely their parents would not return.

The tales from the east that had begun to flow back to France were horrific: camps where children and the elderly were murdered on arrival, showers that pumped poison gas, mass graves in picturesque summer resorts. The horror of it all sat within Elise like a weight; otherwise, she might have floated away like an untethered balloon, nothing grounding her to earth.

Monsieur Vasseur had insisted on loaning her a bit more money to get by on, and he had given her the address of Constant Bouet in New York, but her letters to him had all gone unanswered. She wondered if her words were even reaching him; mail service was still wildly disrupted. Still, his silence felt like a severing of the final threads connecting her to her former life. No one she had known well before the war was here anymore, and sometimes it felt as though the past had been a dream.

On her days off from her work with the OSE, she began visiting the H?tel Lutetia in the sixth arrondissement, which in April had become a processing center for the men, women, and children returning from concentration camps. And each morning, no matter what the rest of her hollow day held, she greeted the sunrise by kneeling beside Mathilde’s grave.

On a sunny afternoon in May 1945, she had just walked through the door of the orphanage in Andrésy when she heard a small voice call her name.