Though expensive, the taxi ride was short. Because everyone in Paris wanted to escape south, the streets were choked so much that half a kilometer from the station the taxi came to a halt. Every sidewalk was packed with people carrying heavy suitcases, many of which were eventually abandoned to thieves. At first they dragged their loot into the side streets and alleys, but soon they began to split open luggage where it had been dropped, struggling over precious items and littering the street with clothing strewn like entrails after a battle.
“People will be fighting to get on the trains, and how many trains will there be?” Philippe asked Cathérine. For him, her dark red hair had never ceased to be a mystery, endlessly deep, endlessly exciting. Now she was in the eighth month of her first pregnancy. He knew that even if they could make their way to the station and onto a train, the journey south might take their unborn child from them, and perhaps the life of the mother as well. And the rumor was that to stop movement south the Germans were strafing rail lines. As the cellist in a chamber quartet that had toured Europe, Philippe had flown in German civil airliners that had been surrogates for the development of military aviation otherwise forbidden to Germany – planes with metal airframes, ribbed sides, and powerful engines. He didn’t merely think of how the Luftwaffe would strafe rolling stock. Rather, he imagined the view from the cockpit as an aircraft easily overtook a train below. He knew that the approach and attack would take only seconds. He saw the steam issuing from the fleeing engine, waving in the wind before disconnecting. He saw the relative motion of aircraft, train, smoke, and steam on and across a landscape of rich green fields, wheat-colored grasses, and blue sky.
“She’s pregnant,” he declared to the taxi driver, who had noticed and taken pity, which is why they had been able to snare his cab. “We can’t fight that,” meaning the crowds and disruption visible through the windshield.
“So what do you want?”
“Go left at the next street. Then take us to the Gare de l’Est.”
“I was there,” the taxi driver told him. “People are pouring in from the Marne and Champagne.”
“The trains going out will be empty.”
“But to where? The Germans?”
“There’ll be a vacuum behind their lines, filled only by supply troops. They’ll focus on what lies ahead.”
“Bird shouldn’t fly into traps.”
“All of France is a trap. For the moment, we’ll take refuge in a neglected corner. If you were a German, would you pay more attention to Paris or Reims?”
The point was made, and the taxi driver grunted in assent. At the sooty Gare de l’Est, the least glorious of Parisian stations, Philippe and Cathérine fought their way against streams of people coming from the east. They had had to leave their suitcases strapped to the roof of the taxi, and now photographs, letters, and records, like their home and their past, were gone forever. Cathérine cried as she walked, but they pushed on, because their lives depended upon it.
All Philippe could think of was to save his wife and child. He had his cello and a briefcase with documents and money. Cathérine had her purse, to which she clung as if it were a child about to be ripped from her arms. In the crowds flowing past were many Jews, some Orthodox, their dress ensuring that they would be in the most danger, and some identifiable mainly to other Jews. Though they were assimilated, their eyes told everything. When Philippe and Cathérine passed them they knew each other for what they were, and it was not just Cathérine’s red hair, for Bretons and others frequently had red hair, but a certain tentative way in the world, always alert as if expecting what always came.
“The Germans will have flushed the Jews from Reims the way beaters clear a field of pheasants. They won’t be looking so hard for them as they will here. Provincial, non-elite troops may not know what to do, or be so inclined.”
“One hopes,” said Cathérine. “But where will we stay?”
“I said Reims because I don’t want to disappoint you, but maybe we can get to Switzerland. Perhaps they would let us in as refugees. I played a concert at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I remember the name of the functionary who took care of us: Von Arx. He was kind, and he may remember me. He wasn’t high-ranking, but that was in thirty-four. Perhaps he’s risen.”
In front of the station, they heard a sound from within like that of a chorus. It was the sound of people in distress, of the past breaking, illusions shattering, and mortality bursting forth from the comfort of ordinary life. It sounded like fire whistling on gusts of air through a burning forest.
Philippe turned to take a last look at Paris. He lifted his gaze to the sky and was astounded to see ragged smoke curling through flawless blue as rich as fresh paint. The smoke was as black and gray as the lines in an etching. Moving both violently and expansively, rising on the wind and racing as if to escape toward the sun, it was composed of the remnants of that which would disappear rather than submit.
IN THE STATION at Reims, open spaces were packed with anxious crowds that had flowed in from the city streets and surrounding countryside. Gustave Doré could not have drawn people stripped more of comfort and assurance. As would his son, Philippe loved sound, and he stopped to listen as the murmur of the crowd floated above them in a cloud. The station was alive with the electric energy of a thousand desperate people: children in arms (somehow they too knew the danger, and their little faces showed it); men charged with the protection of their families; old veterans and their wives, saddened to see war once again; officials who, though trying to do their duty, were beaten back by the panic.
Having discovered that no trains were moving southeast toward Switzerland, Philippe and Cathérine remained calm. Except for them, no one went from the station to the city, and as they walked against the tides the Parisian cellist and his wife felt that, driven by a kind of madness, they had almost left the world of the living. Not knowing where they were going or how they would end up, they persisted in moving toward the danger, suspecting that they were soon going to die.
On the boulevards, some stragglers were hurrying toward the railway, but the side streets were empty. “There are no hotels here,” Cathérine said as they looked down a long residential street half submerged in summer shadow. Brassy light spilled from the cornices and chimneys still illuminated by the sun, with the effect of blackening the darkness where sunlight did not strike.
“The last thing we should do is go to a hotel, because the first thing the Germans will do will be to requisition them for their officers.”
“Then where will we stay? We don’t know anyone here.”
“We’ll ask.” From the north and northeast came the muted sound of distant artillery. “We have perhaps a day, certainly hours. We’ll find something.” He wasn’t half as sure as he wanted to sound for Cathérine’s sake.”
They walked farther into the shadows. Halfway down the last of several streets later, they came to a storefront: Patisserie Boulangerie Mignon. Though it was closed, Philippe saw variations of light coming from a room in the back, as if there were a fire or someone were moving about and blocking or reflecting the light of a lamp. He knocked on the glass-paned door.