Mémère had lost two sons in the Great War and was less insouciant than their young customers about the war raging outside of France’s borders. There were mothers there too, mothers who were losing sons, she said, and they were all crying. When she and Claudette went to fetch beer at the tavern, Mémère questioned Monsieur Lefebvre about the battles. He had fought in the Great War, and since winter he had begun to wear the frayed military jacket that marked him as an expert on military strategy.
He hung a large map on the tavern’s wall. “We need not worry about the Germans,” he told Mémère. “No enemy will ever again invade France from the east.” He tapped on the squarish shape that he said was France, and his gnarled finger traced a red line. “Here is the northeastern forest. Absolutely impenetrable. South of it, the rest of France’s long eastern frontier is protected by the Maginot Line.”
“What’s that?” Claudette asked, alarmed. The distance shown on the map between that border and La Guerche was shorter than her forearm.
“An immense line of concrete fortifications, bunkers, and cannons stretching for thousands of miles to our southern shore. No enemy will ever again enter France from the east.” Mémère’s mouth pulled down in sadness. Claudette knew that memories of war were forever vivid in her head.
Indeed, horrible news arrived in May. The German tanks had plowed through the supposedly impenetrable northeast forest, and suddenly the war exploded inside France. Two million French soldiers were taken prisoner. Overnight, all the young men with whom the village girls had planned to dance enlisted. Probably the Jew too, because he stopped coming. Although he wasn’t young, he wasn’t too old to fight.
Mémère cried again for her two boys and for the French mothers who were wretched with worry and fear. The last of the Jew’s elixir failed to lessen her anguish. Claudette stared at the grainy newspaper photo of captured French soldiers, and her lungs burned as if she had inhaled the smoke of gunfire.
La Guerche hummed with rumors of advancing German troops. Life was conducted in hushed tones among women and the few old men who remained in the village. In the tavern, Monsieur Lefebvre led the old men in devising military strategies to defeat the enemy. On his map, green pins marked the advancing Germans. A large blue pin marked La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois. He showed Claudette the Loire River, which, after heading north, made a sharp turn westward to reach the Atlantic Ocean. Their Aubois River was one of its many tributaries.
Like Claudette, Monsieur Lefebvre must have been dismayed by the proximity of the blue pin to the green ones because he organized the old men to patrol the streets at night. They donned their battered helmets and tattered military wool jackets and carried their tarnished rifles.
Claudette lay upstairs in the dark, her dog, Belle, curled against her, and listened for the guard. Only after she heard his tired footfalls on the cobblestones did she fall asleep, trying to believe that Monsieur Lefebvre’s squad could keep the German tanks away.
The Germans went on to conquer Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The newspaper Claudette read in the tavern reported that the French government had abandoned Paris and relocated to Bordeaux. The pins on Monsieur Lefebvre’s map shifted westward and southward. The Germans had conquered all of Normandy’s shore with its strategic ports.
“The Brits are our only hope against the Nazis. The Brits and the Canadians.” Monsieur Lefebvre dropped his head, probably planning a new military strategy.
Since spring, the word Nazis has been uttered with fear, the speaker’s voice lowered a notch. It wasn’t just the word Germans in newspaper headlines. Nazis were worse. They were so powerful that the only countries able to stand up to them were England and Canada. But Claudette knew that Canada was as far away as China, where the finest silk came from, and India, whose silk was sturdier and more colorful.
And counting on the Brits? Everyone ridiculed the ways of France’s long-standing enemy. Claudette was vaguely aware of a centuries-old
history of bloodshed between the two nations. Why would the Brits bother to save the French?
Chapter Four
Sharon
Paris, France
September 1968
How does one scout an airport? After the El Al Israel Airlines plane touches down at Paris Orly Airport, Sharon remains in her seat for a few minutes, baffled by her first assignment. Commander Daniel Yarden instructed her to lock her suitcase in the luggage storeroom, then spend an hour or two scouting the airport. It all sounds so foreign and chilling that Sharon’s initial apprehension balloons in her chest. What has she done, accepting this job?
In the seat pocket, a flyer features a map of the airport and its gates. Sharon grabs it.
“Walk through the terminals, check each level, and get to know where the gates are and where each exit takes you,” the commander told her. “Don’t make any notes publicly. Memorize landmarks like stores and kiosks, broken floor tiles, and exposed ceiling pipes. Pay attention—some chains have more than one store in each airport. And in some European airports, gate numbers repeat in different terminals, so there can be a gate four in both terminal A and terminal C.”
She cannot imagine what end this scouting serves. Surely the navy doesn’t plan to take hostages or blow up an airport. Israelis design their operations abroad to avoid public drama; they don’t grandstand like the Palestinians.
She exits the plane, the last vestige of the familiar. The whirlwind of emotions that roiled in her during this past month of preparations churns faster. She’s on her own. The commander thought he had her profile charted, but he missed one crucial point: She’s never been without a close ally—Alon, Savta, friends, or colleagues. By clinging to the Golans for six months of shared grief, she had staved off this crushing loneliness that now rises in her.
She has a job to do, she reminds herself. Determined, Sharon spends over an hour checking the corridors and gates, then she slips into a lavatory and writes notes on the airport map. She tucks it into her handbag with her voucher for a night in a Paris hotel and an envelope of francs. What if she missed some crucial information the commander wanted her to find?
Midafternoon, she checks into a small, charming hotel on the Left Bank with a wood-paneled lobby that smells of dusty fabrics and freshly brewed coffee. In her room, she throws herself on the bed; her outstretched arms almost touch the walls. She stares at the diamond relief around the small chandelier. She’s in Paris! The commander gave her no further tasks, but her hotel voucher is for a single night. She has only the rest of today to explore the city.
Except that Alon is not here with her.
She brushes her hair, parts it in the middle, and ties a headband around her forehead. She changes out of her long, wide-sleeved caftan into a printed minidress and checks her image in the mirror. Her eyebrows are thick, and her irises are dark against the bright white surrounding them. Nothing reveals her apprehensions. Paris, here I come! she mouths with faux cheerfulness to fortify herself. She forces her lips into a smile. Yup. The dimple that Alon loved is still there.
Before exiting the hotel, she deposits her heavy skeleton key with the clerk at the reception desk. He hands her an envelope. “From the gentleman in room six oh four.”
The commander is here? Sharon tears open the envelope and finds a note written in large, loopy letters.
Welcome to Paris. If you’d like to join me for a concert at Notre-Dame, please be at the entrance at 19:45. Otherwise, plan to talk at 23:00. Danny.
She misses music; she has been away from her flute for so long. Yesterday, before buckling her suitcase, she contemplated whether to pack it, but it was inconceivable that she would find it in herself to play music. Yet at this moment, so far from home, she knows she’ll attend the concert.
On a map of central Paris, the clerk marks the location of the hotel and points to the icon showing the cathedral of Notre-Dame, several blocks away.
She has four hours before she meets the commander. Sharon walks around the district, taking photos with her camera. There is so much to see in the narrow cobblestoned alleys, where some old walls are kept from collapsing by cables and screws; in the magnificently ornate larger buildings in the wider streets; in the colorful boutiques and street markets. She stops at Place Saint-Michel, awed by its breathtaking marble fountain. But what’s most striking to her are the hundreds of people her age who lounge about on the ground, seemingly carefree. Their attitude is such a contrast to that of Israelis, who are forever steeped in existential worries. Just this past May, the news on TV was filled with images of the French students’ uprising and the violent clashes between them and the police. This plaza was the epicenter of the riotous protests that swelled when the labor unions all over the country joined the students with an all-out strike.
Sharon had felt so remote from the issues at the core of the events. Rebelling against the establishment? She and her generation in Israel had just won the greatest military victory in Western history—they were the establishment. Protesting against consumerism? Not a concern when 70 percent of every Israeli’s income was taxed for the nation’s defense. Enraged by capitalism? Israel was proud of the socialist policies that helped absorb millions of landless Jewish newcomers. Now Sharon watches the much calmer crowd; some sing along with a guitarist, others float in the serenity of hashish she can smell, still others engage in heated debates.
In Intelligence, she learned to be a “listener,” to eavesdrop on conversations in Arabic. Now her training kicks in and she inches closer to a vociferous group and catches a discussion in French about Wilhelm Reich’s book The Function of the Orgasm. With the advent of the pill, one young woman says, it’s time to acknowledge that understanding the intricacies of sex doesn’t come naturally. “An orgasm is politics,” the woman says. “It frees us from the male institutional domination.” Sharon smiles to herself and moves away. She and Alon had never heard of an orgasm and didn’t know where to look for it once it was mentioned. It had taken a book to show them the way. She’s never thought of it as anything but a private matter.
Just then, a young woman with straight blond hair who’s wearing a gauzy white dress floats over, tucks a daisy in Sharon’s headband, and raises two fingers in a peace sign. Sharon thanks her, then locks eyes with a girl nearby, another member of the small universe of girls with daisies in their hair.
* * *
The dome of the Notre-Dame cathedral rises above Sharon with its magnificent chiseled stone vaults and stained-glass windows. As people around her settle into their seats, she gazes at the architecture. She catches Danny glancing at her, smiling at her tilted head, and she smiles back to thank him for introducing her to the genius of the architect of eight hundred years ago who knew how to ignite awe in the hearts of believers.
Just then, the string section of the fifty-piece orchestra breaks into a swirling storm. The piano sends up waves of sound, ascending and descending scales, that are answered by the horns’ valiant chords. Sharon closes her eyes as the swell of pure notes fills both the cathedral and her body.
Night has long fallen when she and the commander walk along the Seine, its ebony water sparkling with millions of pinprick lights. The arpeggio of the “Revolutionary” Étude by Chopin is still in Sharon’s head, and looking at the water, she hears the graceful gurgling streams. She regrets having left her flute at home. Home and its sorrow are eons away. Savta was right when she urged her to travel.
