“I’ll go get my things.” Was this really happening? Did I have any silk stockings at Mother’s apartment?
“Don’t bring any makeup,” Paul said. “You are perfect as is.”
“Not even a lipstick?”
“Hurry. I’ll finish making dinner.”
“Please don’t, Paul,” I said. “Dr. Bedreaux says…”
Paul stood and walked to the counter. He scooped a few dusky new potatoes, the color of violets, from the bowl. Would it be too much for him to make a meal?.
“Don’t say another word, or I will change my mind,” he said.
I grabbed my purse. “Nietzsche said a diet predominantly of potatoes leads to the use of liquor.”
“Good. Bring a bottle of your mother’s wine. We’re celebrating.”
In the almost two-hour drive back to Paris, I made a mental list of what to pack. Capri pants. Silk stockings. My new lingerie. I would eventually need a proper French driver’s license.
At the apartment, I drew the shades, threw a suitcase together, and headed out. As I locked the door, the phone rang in the kitchen, and for once in my life, I ignored it. If it was Mother, I needed more time to tell her the whole story.
On the trip back I stopped at our favorite market and found one sorry-looking baguette, small, but a good omen. I stopped again to stoke the engine with wood and headed for Rouen, the car radio turned up, windows open, as Léo Marjane sang “Alone Tonight.”
I am alone tonight, with my dreams….
The papers all chastised the cabaret singer for having entertained the Nazis a little too enthusiastically during the occupation, but no song captured the war like that one. I sang along.
I am alone tonight, without your love….
It was wonderful not to be the one alone for once. Sad songs are not so sad when you have someone who loves you. I turned onto Paul’s street singing with abandon. Who cared what the neighbors thought?
I rounded the bend and saw a white ambulance parked at the curb outside Paul’s house, engine running.
Time stopped. Was it parked at the wrong house? I drove closer and saw a nurse standing outside the front door, a navy-blue cape over her white uniform.
My God. Paul.
The car barely stopped moving before I jumped from it.
I ran up the walk.
“Is Paul hurt?” I said, my breath coming in great gulps.
“Come quickly,” the nurse said as I followed her into the house.
1945
“Am I dreaming?” Zuzanna said as the ferry docked at Gdansk, the salt air filled with the wild cries of gulls and terns. I lifted my hand to shield my eyes, for the sparkling water, alive with diamonds, blinded me.
We had spent two months in Malmö, Sweden, the place for which God saved all the most beautiful things in nature. The greenest grass. Sky the color of cornflowers. Children who seemed born of that landscape, their hair spun from white clouds, eyes of cobalt sea.
We were sorry to leave, for we were treated like royalty there, feasting on princess cake and pitepalt dumplings with butter and lingonberry jam. Once we regained our strength (both Zuzanna and I were up to forty kilos), many of us wanted to get home to wherever that might be. Poland. France. Czechoslovakia. A few women with little left to go home to stayed in Sweden to start new lives. Some waited to see what would happen with the proposed new elections in Poland before they ventured back. We’d heard the repressive Soviet law enforcement agency NKVD was in charge in Poland, but Zuzanna and I never hesitated. We ached to see Papa.
While I was grateful beyond words for my rescue, the stronger I became, the angrier I got. Where was the joy at being rescued? I watched women around me recover, eager to resume their old lives, but for me, the rage just grew, black in my belly.
Once we’d made it to the northern coast of Poland by ferry, a driver met us at the landing. He was a young man from Warsaw, one of more than one hundred former Polish Air Force pilots who’d joined Britain’s Royal Air Force and risked their lives fighting the Luftwaffe. He was only a few years my senior, but at twenty-two, I had the limp and posture of an old crone.
He reached for Zuzanna’s cloth sack and helped us into the car. I felt the leather of the backseat, cool and smooth. How long had it been since I’d been in an automobile? It may