The Paris Apartment, page 34
“It was a gift from my grandmère,” Lia told him, puzzled.
“And your grandmother was the Estelle Allard mentioned here?” He gestured to the brochure.
“Yes.”
“Indeed.” The man still looked distracted.
“Is there something else I can help you with?”
“I think that maybe we can help you.” He held up the brochure. “My mother saw the advert for this exhibition on the news. Saw the story behind it and the photos of the paintings that were to be shown. She recognized three of them.”
Lia glanced at Gabriel, her heart skipping.
Gabriel extended his hand. “Gabriel Seymour,” he said. “I was hired by Miss Leclaire to curate and restore this collection.”
Adler shook his hand. “A pleasure.”
“May I ask which three paintings your mother believes she recognized?”
“The Degas paintings. At the risk of sounding insane, I think they may have, at one time, belonged to my mother.”
“Extraordinary,” Gabriel said politely. “Do you have any evidence to back such a claim?”
“I think so. But I also think,” he said, glancing again at Lia’s throat where her pendant rested, “that my mother should be the one to show you. She’s here tonight,” he added. “And I would be much obliged if you would speak with her.”
“Of course,” Lia replied. She realized that she was gripping Gabriel’s arm hard enough to make her fingers ache and forced herself to relax her grip.
They followed Adler to the far end of the exhibit where the ballerinas still practiced and pliéd across a painted stage. There were bunches of people here, craning their heads to get a better view of the canvases. In the center of the crowds, noticeable if only for her solitary silhouette, an elderly woman stood, gazing at the dancers. She was dressed somberly in a long dress of deep wine, her white hair drawn up and twisted to the back of her head in a style similar to the dancers whom she gazed upon. One hand rested on a gleaming black cane, the other held a small packet of what looked like paper against her chest.
“Mama,” Adler said quietly, “this is Aurelia Leclaire and Gabriel Seymour. Miss Leclaire, Mr. Seymour, my mother, Dr. Alina Adler.”
The woman turned toward Lia, intelligent dark eyes meeting hers directly before dropping to the pendant at her throat, the same way her son’s had.
She drew in a sharp breath and wobbled slightly before her son steadied her with his arm. She dropped her hand, the one holding the paper, and Lia wobbled as well. For nestled at the collar of the woman’s dress was an exact replica of the pendant Lia wore.
Lia was aware that Gabriel had slid an arm around her waist, and she was inordinately grateful for that.
“Your necklace,” Lia managed. “Where did you get it?”
“It was a gift when I was a child,” Alina replied. “It was one of the few things I took with me when I fled France during the war.”
“How old were you when you fled?” Gabriel asked.
“I was six, maybe seven. My memories of that journey are in little fragments. Pieces that I confess I tried to avoid dwelling on for most of my life.”
“Did you leave with your family?” Lia was trying to understand what was happening here.
“No. My family was…gone. It was just me who was left. I fled France with a group of other children. I remember darkness and cold and hunger and fear. A child never forgets fear like that.” She ran her fingers over the head of her cane.
“She was one of many children who found refuge in Switzerland,” Luca said. “She was adopted by my grandparents. My aunt was also adopted.”
“I was Jewish,” Alina said. “And I was one of the lucky ones.”
“Tell me about the paintings,” Gabriel prompted gently.
Alina held out the paper she still had in her hand. Only now, Lia could see that it was an envelope. “What is this?”
“It’s a photograph. Take a look.”
Lia opened the envelope and extracted a worn black-and-white photo. It was a picture of a little girl with dark hair and dark eyes, sitting in the lap of a pretty woman with the same dark features. They were both laughing, the woman’s arms wrapped tightly around the little girl.
And in the background, above their heads, the Degas ballerinas danced across the wall.
“That’s me. And that was my aunt Rachel,” Alina said. “The paintings, as you can see, are in that picture. But that’s not where I remembered them. I remember them hanging someplace else.”
Lia couldn’t breathe. “Where?” she whispered.
“A little room. One where I had to be silent all the time. Looking back now, I know that I was hidden. That room saved my life.” She looked up at Lia. “Your grandmère, Estelle Allard, saved my life.”
“You’re Aviva,” Gabriel breathed.
“Yes,” the woman agreed.
“What else do you remember?” Lia asked.
“I remember that the apartment where I was hidden had crystal chandeliers that made little rainbows across the floor and walls when the sun came in the windows. I remember that your grandmother would read to me, and often she would sing. She sang all the time.”
Lia looked down at the photograph again and the laughing child. “La Chanteuse,” she whispered to herself.
“You never went back after the war? To Paris?” Gabriel asked.
The doctor shook her head. “My parents told me that I didn’t speak a word for fourteen months after I was placed with them,” the woman continued. “That when I arrived at their house, I didn’t laugh, I didn’t cry. I couldn’t even tell them my name. So they picked one for me. Alina.”
“But that wasn’t your name.”
“It became my name. And I became their daughter. I became a sister. I became a dancer, a doctor, a wife, and a mother. My heart was full, and I tried to leave the past where it lay because I thought it was best to look only forward.” She smiled sadly. “After the birth of my son, I tried to find your grandmother because, for the first time, I understood how hard it might have been for her to let me go. But I didn’t know her last name or even the address where we had once lived. But I know she loved me. And I know she gave me this.” She put a hand to the pendant.
“She looked for you too,” Lia said, swallowing against the lump in her throat. The constant trips to Switzerland finally made sense. “She looked for a long time.”
“You should know that your grandmother saved a lot of people.” Alina smiled. “I shared that little room more than once.”
“We think she helped smuggle Allied airmen out of France,” Lia replied.
“And women,” Alina added.
“Women?”
“Well, one. I remember that she looked like a princess. I remember that she knew how to speak Hebrew. And French. And English. She knew how to open the trunk that your grandmother always kept locked. And she was a terrible artist.”
Lia laughed and wiped at the tears that had started down her cheeks. The mysterious threads of history contained in a Paris apartment were being woven back together, and Lia wanted to know more.
“My grandmother never talked about her time during the war,” she told Alina. “What she did. Who she loved.” Lia smiled and glanced up at Gabriel. “Would you tell me more? Anything you might remember?”
“Of course.” The woman smiled.
The overhead lights in the gallery had been dimmed, only the spotlights that caught each painting still bright.
Lia leaned back on the bench that had been placed in the center of the room and gazed at the woman painted in a swirl of angry scarlets and oranges, her arms still flung over her head, her hands still outstretched. Only now her stare didn’t seem as angry and accusing, merely defiant. A survivor instead of a victim.
“Alina doesn’t want to take the Degas dancers home.” Gabriel sat down beside her. His voice echoed strangely in the empty room, the exhibit crowds long gone, almost all the staff departing not long after. “She said it would be a shame to have them hidden in a room again. She’d like them to remain part of the exhibit. She’s inquired about museum loans after that.”
“What about the rest of the collection?”
“She can’t for certain say what belonged to her family. Though I have a last name now, which might help determine which pieces are rightfully hers.”
Lia sighed. “What am I to do with the paintings in the meantime?”
“What you’ve already done.” He put an arm over her shoulder. “Share them with the world. And share the story of your grandmère along with it. Because both are extraordinary.”
“Yes.” Lia leaned into his warmth.
“When do you return to Seville?” he asked.
“I don’t.”
“But what about—”
“I didn’t take that job. I thought I’d stay here.” She rested her head on his shoulder.
“Because of the exhibit?”
“No.”
He was very still against her. “I see.”
“I hoped you would,” she whispered.
They sat like that for a long minute, neither moving, simply…together.
“I brought you something,” Gabriel said eventually, reaching behind him.
Lia straightened and turned as Gabriel placed a violin case in her lap. She stared at it for a moment before opening it. The Collin-Mézin gleamed under the single light above their head.
“I had it restrung and restored properly,” he told her.
“Why?”
“Because restoring things is kind of what I do.”
“No, I mean why are you giving this to me?”
“Because I’m rather tired of hiding things in the attics of Millbrook.”
“Ah. Yes, that seems to be a theme this evening.”
“Was that a thank-you, then?”
“Thank you. It’s beautiful. Shall I play it?”
“Yes, but not right now.” Gabriel closed the case and latched it securely. He set the instrument on the bench and stood. “Right now, I have something else in mind.”
“What are you doing?”
Gabriel looked around him at the deserted gallery, the lone light from above shining down on his head and turning his hair raven black, putting his features in stark contrast. He held out his hand. “I find myself in a moment when no one else in the world exists except a woman who has made me understand what it means to make every day count. Every moment count.” He held out his hand. “Will you dance with me?”
Lia placed her hand in his.
“Yes.”
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Author’s Note
The Paris Apartment is a work of fiction. While a product of my imagination, the premises and characters I’ve chosen to create are inspired by real people and real events. The characters of Sophie Seymour and Estelle Allard were shaped by the experiences and courage of Virginia Hall, Pearl Witherington Cornioley, Christine Granville, Josephine Baker, Nancy Wake, and Andrée de Jongh. Their memoirs, interviews, and stories only give us an idea of how truly extraordinary each of these women was.
Sophie’s work at Bletchley Park was based on the real men and women who worked tirelessly against time and almost impossible odds to decode Nazi encryption devices. Most of us have heard of the Enigma cipher and the remarkable work by Alan Turing and his team to break that cipher. Told less often seems to be the story of Tommy Flowers and Bill Tutte, who, together with their teams, developed Colossus—the machine that was able to break the Lorenz cipher, known as Tunny at Bletchley.
The Lorenz cipher was favoured by Hitler and used by High Command—and for good reason. It was far more powerful than the Enigma and capable of exceedingly complex encryptions. Additionally, unlike the Enigma, it did not depend on Morse code. Attached to a teleprinter, it automatically encrypted outgoing messages and decrypted incoming messages, allowing longer messages to be transmitted with greater ease. Each of the links between Nazi command posts was given a name by Bletchley—the Paris–Berlin link was referred to as Jellyfish.
There is no evidence that there was ever a Lorenz machine installed in the Ritz Hotel in Paris—that is pure imagination on my part. However, there is certainly evidence that the Nazis housed cipher machines in other hotels and buildings used as headquarters. An objective of the disastrous 1942 Dieppe assault may have been to capture coding/cipher technology at the Hotel Moderne, according to author David O’Keefe. Knowing that the Paris Ritz Hotel served as the headquarters of the Luftwaffe and was the residence of Hermann Göring (who was tapped as the successor to Hitler), a need for a direct, protected line of communication to the Führer seemed plausible for this work of fiction.
There is also no evidence that Bletchley Park ever received any intelligence from SOE operatives such as photos, codebooks, or even sketches of the Lorenz machine. Declassified documents from the Target Intelligence Committee (TICOM), which was a joint operation between the U.K. and the U.S. targeting the capture of German signals intelligence organizations, provide the first Allied description of a captured, intact Tunny communications train, but not until 1945, long after D-Day. Nazi Field Marshal Albert Kesselring’s captured “Fish Train” included six German trucks housing Tunny machines, radio transmitters, receivers, and encryption devices. Each truck contained two bunks for the driver and assistant, who operated the equipment. Tutte and his team did not have the benefit of this information at Bletchley. All the decryption work done was the product of an astonishing feat of reverse engineering.
The first Colossus machine, developed by Flowers, was operational by December 1943, allowing the Allies to intercept and decode critical information leading up to and after D-Day. For this story, however, I chose to imagine that Bletchley and its brilliant minds might have had a helping hand.
The Paris Ritz Hotel, with its socialites and industrialists, collaborators and spies (and, yes, hidden cupboards and stairways), remained the glamourous headquarters of the Luftwaffe throughout the war. The Charles Le Brun painting The Sacrifice of Polyxena (currently hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) that I have used in this book was, in fact, discovered hidden in plain sight in the luxurious Coco Chanel suite prior to the hotel’s recent renovation. The provenance for this painting before its discovery in the hotel remains unknown. The current theory is that when César Ritz purchased the hôtel particulier at No. 15, Place Vendôme, once the home of princes and dukes, the Le Brun canvas was already hanging within. I chose a different history for this painting.
Other events that serve as a backdrop for this story that will be familiar are the bombing of Wieluń, Poland, in September of 1939, where I imagined Piotr was killed, and the Vél’ d’Hiv’ Roundup in July of 1942, when Rachel and her family members are taken. The objectives of the Luftwaffe bombing of the small and nonmilitary town of Wieluń, arguably the first major act of World War II, are not entirely clear. Some historians have suggested that the Germans received reports of the presence of Polish cavalry, like Piotr’s character, in the vicinity of the town, but others disagree.
Regardless of motive, beginning in the early morning of September 1, the Luftwaffe dropped 46,000 kilograms of bombs on civilian targets, including the clearly marked hospital. There are also numerous accounts of the Luftwaffe strafing fleeing civilians. The timing of the initial bombing is a subject of debate, with Polish sources marking the first run at 4:30–4:40 a.m., while German records show the first run beginning at 5:40 a.m. For the purposes of this novel, I have used the German military records.
There is no debate, however, on the timing of the 1942 Vél’ d’Hiv’ Roundup, which began at 4:00 a.m. on July 16, 1942. Over 13,000 Jews were arrested by French police, more than 4,000 of them children. The majority of those arrested were held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver or other internment camps before being deported by cattle car to Auschwitz, though there are numerous stories of individuals hidden by friends or neighbours or who managed to escape arrest.
One of these courageous people who helped Jewish children escape occupied France altogether was the Frenchman Georges Loinger, whose creative methods of getting children out of France and into Switzerland included dressing up his charges as mourners and leading them through a cemetery located along the Swiss border. Aviva’s journey out of France in this novel is based loosely on Loinger’s efforts.
Lastly, the network of men and women that Estelle and Jerome were a part of was based on the very real Comet Line. This resistance organization operated in occupied Belgium and France and helped Allied airmen and soldiers evade capture and return to Britain. An estimated 3,000 civilians assisted the Comet Line by hiding or escorting Allied airmen, and up to seventy percent of these helpers were women.
Questions for Readers
The theft and destruction of art is only one of many crimes perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II. What impact do you think this loss has on individual families who cannot rightfully claim or recover property? What significance does the loss of art have on society today? Do you understand why many people risked their lives during WWII to save artworks?
Was Lia right or wrong to display Gabriel’s art in the exhibition without him knowing? What do you think convinced Gabriel to finally claim his work as his own?
Estelle had a very solitary childhood and adolescence, independent from her parents. Similarly, Lia lives a life separate from her immediate family. Do you think lifestyles follow families through generations?
Many Parisians who patronized the Ritz, including Coco Chanel, collaborated in some manner with the occupying Nazis. Were they right or wrong to do so? Do you think it was a matter of survival? Or do you think it was the opportunity to further themselves that some took advantage of?
Why do you think Sophie told Estelle about some of her personal life? How isolated do you think both Sophie and Estelle felt when they met each other? What do you think drove their partnership?
