āLuc. Heā¦ā I inhaled. āI canāt find him.ā
āYou two, you have a habit of losing one another.ā He laughed and wiped his hands on his smock.
āClaude, hush,ā she said. Iād never heard Madame speak with anything less than adoration to her husband. She set down her knife. āClare, he came to the studio?ā
āYes. Didnāt he write to you?ā
āHe doesnāt.ā
āHe came and I made him a mask.ā I pressed my fingers together. āI thought he was happy.ā
āMa chĆØre.ā Monsieur stood from his stool and brought it to me. āHeās gone far since that summer you knew him. So have you.ā I let him take my arm and lead me to the stool. āAll that youāve given him, but what he needs most of all is time.ā
āBut if heās in dangerā¦ā
āDo you not think Luc is used to danger?ā
Madameās breath caught and she put a hand to the wet clay in front of her. I saw then that she sculpted a young boy.
āSo what do I do?ā I asked.
āWhat weāve been doing all these years,ā she said. She ran a finger down the clay boyās cheek. āWait.ā
I sat in the Gare du Nord with my head in my hands. Iād stood over Bauer with the knife in my hands. If that milk cart hadnāt come by when it did, I would have killed him. I would have. But he scrambled up and away, and I was left with the battered suitcase and blood on my hands.
I brought it into the train station. I cleaned up as best I could in the lavatory and dropped the knife through the tracks. And then, not knowing what else to do, I sat on a bench in the departure court, sitting on my shaking hands.
Bauer was bleeding and bruised. He was without his camera and suitcase. Did that mean he wouldnāt finish his mission? I knew him too well. Heād lay low until he could get another camera. He was probably at Liliās, licking his wounds. Wondering what had given him away on the streets of Paris.
I sat all day, watching trains come and go, watching people pass, not quite knowing what to do. I walked from the departure court into the station, pacing the edge of the tracks. Would he come here? Would he try to leave Paris? I leaned against the wall, tired and watchful, and bought strong black coffee. With all of the refugees crowded in the station, one more itinerant didnāt matter.
Gare du Nord was crowded and buzzing. Suitcases and trunks were piled higgledy-piggledy on the platforms, overflowing from the baggage rooms. People clustered, holding tight to cloth bags and parcels and the odd treasure saved when they fled. Clutching wedding tickings, Bibles, or gilt-framed paintings, they complained to each other in county patois. Most were refugees who had come into Paris years ago; only now were they looking to leave.
Their nightmares were over. I thought that mine were gone, too. That other night, that night Clare kept watch, Iād slept soundly, for the first time in a long while. Maybe it was her lingering perfume, maybe the pad of her bare feet, maybe the way she couldnāt help but touch the side of my face when she thought I was asleep. But Iād dozed, for once at peace.
Now, crouched in the station, slipping in and out of that half sleep, the nightmares returned. Nothing specific; not the kind of dreams Chaffreās Austrian doctor could find anything in. Sharp, shapeless shadows, screams that burrowed into my brain, aching pain in each limb. I woke sweating and buried my face so no one could see it. Through my haversack the mask dug into my hip.
It was exhausting, this remembering. My shoulder throbbed, and again and again I heard that thump as Chaffre fell next to me. I closed my eyes, to summon up memories of the other night, of Clare in the candlelight, of Clare touching my face, but all I could think of was Bauer, taunting, telling me nothing had changed. He had said ābattle,ā and, like an infection, the word had brought up every blood-slick battle thereād been, until I was afraid to close my eyes.
I could end it all. I could take the suitcase to one of the policier on the platform. Itās what I should have done the moment I entered the station. Passed on the suitcase and said there was a spy in Paris. Heād probably slunk back to Liliās or else was lurking around the station the way I was, watching for a train to Berlin. They could find him.
But he was right. The war was over. The only one left was my own. My battle was with the past and what it left me with. I wasnāt alone. I saw it in the shattered, spent faces of the refugees in the station. All we wanted to do was sleep, not because our bones were weary, but because our hearts were.
āMonsieur, are you hurt?ā It was a young girl, a refugee, with red-brown curls falling from beneath a knit cap. āYou look tired.ā Though she looked too old for it, she had a faded rag doll tucked into the front strap of her knapsack.
āTired.ā I rubbed the corner of my eye, remembering I wore no mask. But she didnāt flinch. āBut why, of everyone in the station, are you speaking to me?ā
She shrugged. āI thought you were lonely.ā
āWhereās your family?ā No one came to shoo her away from the monster. No one came to shake a finger at me for talking to this girl who looked so like Clare. āMademoiselle, I could be a bad man.ā
A sadness crept into her eyes and she touched the doll at her shoulder. āI donāt think there are really bad men anymore.ā Behind her, a train whistled. āOnly scared ones.ā
Once Iād been scared and my best friend had died. I stood. I couldnāt look the other way while Stefan Bauer hurt someone else again.
A policier strode the platform in his dark uniform. I approached with the battered suitcase. āMonsieur.ā
His hand went to his belt as he turned. I ducked my head.
āWhat is it?ā He tapped his heels impatiently.
I wondered if I was making too much of it. In my hands, the suitcase looked innocuous. And maybe it was. The Paris I saw every day, shedding its mourning, wasnāt the defeated city of Bauerās photos. Maybe he had nothing in the suitcase.
The refugee girl stood by the bench with her knapsack. Though sheād lost her home, she still refused to see the bad in the world. She didnāt know that it stalked the streets of this very city.
I lifted my chin. āMonsieur, Iāve seen a spy.ā I opened the suitcase. āAnd I think I know where he is.ā
The soldier stood on the threshold of the caves beneath Brindeau. The caves were dark, but he kept to the splash of sunlight outside, holding a stick like a rapier.
He came alone, lurking in the entrance, not quite stepping in. Once fearless in the face of a trench wall, he was afraid of a cave. Inside, it still smelled of an army, of horses and wood smoke and drying wool. Debris littered the cavernsārotting hay, scraps of torn cloth, tins, bottles, forgotten letters. Memories strewn underfoot. The soldier who hesitated outside, he was afraid of that more than anything.
I moved from the shadows. āLuc.ā
I was nervous, too. Taut from my journey from Paris, terrified that I wouldnāt find him, that, once again, heād disappear from my life, I left Mille Mots for the place Iād once felt safe. I went to the familiar darkness of the caves.
And then here he was. Amazingly, beautifully here. I remembered an afternoon in the hallway of Mille Mots where he told me the story of his mother leaving and of his seven-year-old self wishing for her so hard that she felt it across the Channel and came to him. Iād come from Paris, sending wishes into the sky with every mile. And he came. I held on to the end of my coat sleeves and stepped towards him.
At the sight of me, the stick clattered to the ground. And suddenly he was there, so close I could have taken him in my arms. And I shouldāve. Instead I said, āYou were gone.ā
He wore my red scarf, loose around his neck. āIām not now.ā
āBut you were. I didnāt know where youād gone, only that you left in the morning and you didnāt come home.ā I pressed a hand, wet from limestone, to my forehead. āI wondered if you ever would.ā
āI didnāt mean for you to worry.ā He swallowed. āI just had to be sure the war really was over.ā
āAnd is it?ā I moved closer. I could feel the warmth from his coat.
He put a hand to the wall of the cave. āI think so.ā He ran fingers down the wall. In the dim light from outside, I could see a roll of honor carved into the stone. āThis is where it all happened, you know.ā
āWhere whatā¦it is?ā And I took a step back to look around. Iād known that the war came close to here. Iād seen the ground churned up outside, smelled the lingering memory of horses and men, saw tatters of cloth and discarded shoes. In one corner, Iād overturned an empty pot with my toe. Soldiers had stayed here, but to think that Luc had been one, so near to home, yet a world away. āThis is where Michelā¦and Stefanā¦ā
He inhaled and nodded. āI never thought Iād come back to this cave.ā
āDo you wish you hadnāt?ā