38.
PARIS WAS WARM AND MUGGY. THE SKY FELT CLOSE, THE AIR HEAVY with coming rain. A storm cloud was like a piñata waiting for thunder to whack it, Marshall thought, but he knew that thunderstorms were infrequent in Paris, so he walked to his apartment from the Gare Montparnasse with his small duffel. He told himself he was getting in shape for his hike with Annette, but the weight unbalanced his shoulders, and he began to wish he had taken a taxi. He arrived at his apartment sweaty and feeling lopsided.
Marshall was moving around his own apartment as if exploring it. The bedroom was stuffy, so he pulled open the windows and leaned toward the street. Children on the playground were hurrying away as large drops of rain began to fall. The dark, heavy shadows of pigeons rushed past the windows. He could feel the breeze pick up.
He closed the windows halfway, and the rain splashed against them while he read his mail. Al Grainger had written again, suggesting a crew reunion at the crash site in Belgium. “It was my wife’s idea, and I have to say she was right on target. After what you wrote about going back there and meeting those people, it just seems right to go and thank them in a proper way. And we could have a great time seeing each other, catching up, reminiscing. Couldn’t we round up all the surviving crew? Their families could come too.”
O.K., but no preaching, Marshall felt like replying. He tended to answer letters in his head instead of on paper. Marshall the Procrastinator. Thirty-six years.
After the rain let up, he telephoned Nicolas and reported on his trip.
“Marshall, maybe I have found the house where you stayed before we sheltered you in Chauny.”
“The women in black?”
“Yes. I don’t know if any are alive, but there is a daughter.”
“Good work, Nicolas.”
Marshall thanked him and agreed to come to Chauny for Sunday lunch after he returned from his hike with Annette.
Later, he telephoned Mary and found himself confiding that he had located an “interesting” woman who had been a girl when he came through during the war.
“Her family took care of me when I passed through Paris back then,” he told his daughter. “Now I’ve looked her up, and we had a good time reminiscing.”
He couldn’t continue. He was thinking of Loretta. “A good time” perhaps wasn’t the right phrase.
“Dad, it’s O.K. if you have some women friends.”
“Thank you. Your old dad is still alive and kicking.”
“That reminds me—I heard that Albert has a girlfriend! I was blown away. Don’t tell him I told you.”
“That’s good news,” Marshall said. “I always thought it would just take time. Maybe this one will work out.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Mary, with only the slightest hesitation in her voice.
“How about you, Mary?”
“I’ve been going out with a guy at the college—an economist. He’s really interesting, and he has some theories about inflation that baffle me.”
“Well, let me know if you find out what causes it. How about this—I’m planning to go hiking, and I’m going to buy hiking boots tomorrow.”
“Well, far out, Dad!”
“I guess so. But it was never my ambition to become an old fuddy-duddy, you know. I can still get around.”
She laughed. “Remember how you and Mom would take us for picnics at a state park when we were kids? Nobody thought of going hiking in those days, but I’ve gotten more interested in fitness. Everybody has. Maybe we can go to a park again sometime. We could go hiking this time.”
“Well, let’s do that,” Marshall said. “I’ll have the boots for it, anyway!”
MARSHALL, COMFORTABLE IN PARIS NOW, no longer carried his cash in a safety pouch on his leg. He gazed at the window display at the Everything Store: fishhooks, a cheese grater, a doll made of seashells, and a Hemingway novel with a faded cover.
“Bonjour, monsieur l’Américain! Ça va?”
“Je vais bien, merci. And you, Guy?”
“Comme-ci, comme-ça. How does your search go?”
“Ah, Guy, I’ve found her. I was looking in the wrong place. She was in the Charentes!” Briefly, he told of his visit with Annette and the hike they planned together.
“A rendez-vous for a randonnée,” Guy said, smiling.
“Exactly so!” Marshall fingered some leather bags hanging from the wall. “I’m looking for a backpack, a small one for hiking.”
Guy produced a leather rucksack that resembled something a mountain climber of the nineteenth century would carry. The French farmers in 1944 carried such rucksacks, slung over their shoulders. Robert Lebeau had one. Marshall had one himself, holding his meager supplies on the train out of Paris.
“I’d prefer something more modern, Guy.”
“More American, you want to say.”
Guy revealed a cheap blue zippered pack that seemed suitable. Marshall paid and made small talk about his trip to the Charentes. Then he remembered that he needed a curtain of some kind to keep out the streetlights. For some time he examined the crop of dusty bamboo blinds that Guy offered. They had been kept for perhaps decades behind a rolled-up Turkish carpet.
“They look ancient,” Marshall said.
“Mais oui.” Guy began rummaging excitedly through some cabinets in the back of the store. He went back and forth searching. Then he found what he was looking for, a roll of dark fabric.
“This was to line the curtains, to shut out the light. I am surprised myself to find this. Maybe it is left from the wartime, because people couldn’t afford to buy it.”
“Exactly what I want.”
“You will keep the light inside at night, Marshall. And in the day the sun will stay away.”
Marshall flicked dust from the black roll. “I hope you’re not charging antique prices.”
Guy shrugged. “For you, just what it’s worth.”
“I’ll try it,” Marshall said. He paid for his purchase, declining to have it wrapped. Laboriously, Guy wrote out a detailed receipt.
“See you next time, Guy. Where do you take your vacation?”
“I go to the Languedoc in August.” Guy shut his cash drawer and straightened some knickknacks on the counter. “My wife likes breathing in the country. That’s what she says—in the country she can breathe. My two sons and daughter and my parents and my wife’s mother and my grandmother come. My brother comes with his family. We’re all there. Bien sûr, there is nothing like having all the family together. We do the picnics, the games. It is bliss!”
Guy’s broad smile made Marshall wistful. He thought of the family picnics Mary had mentioned. The elaborate logistics of the outings had always annoyed him, smothering whatever “bliss” he might have felt.
Walking down the avenue du Général Leclerc, he thought how unlike a Frenchman he was, with his inadequate attention to things that mattered most here—food and wine and family. History, they didn’t dwell on. Sex—well, maybe he could see eye-to-eye with the French on that.
The blackout curtain material was brittle on the edges, but he trimmed it and taped it to the windows. He wasn’t sure it was authentic, but it would do. That night he slept peacefully, and the morning sun was high before he was fully awake.