"Of course, Monsieur, I'll inform you when the reservations are completed," the clerk said.
And I can escape the ghost of Sarah hovering in my mind, Hartmuth thought, courteously thanking him. How foolish he'd been to think she might have survived! But deep inside, a tiny hope had fluttered. There would be no records of her either, he'd taken care of that himself in 1943. Hartmuth gazed sadly over Place des Vosges below him.
"Excuse me, Herr Griffe," the clerk bowed abjectly. "I almost forgot, this came for you." He handed Hartmuth a large white envelope.
Hartmuth thanked him again absentmindedly and went to the elevator. As he entered and nodded to the other occupants, he idly noticed his name on the envelope. It was scrawled in the familiar cursive script of his time, not how people wrote these days, squat and uniform. The system had changed after the war, like so much else. As the elevator stopped and let a couple off, he looked forward to this evening when his plane took off. Finally he would be safe. He'd make it out of Paris.
Hartmuth noticed a bulge in the envelope. And then he panicked. Had he trustingly picked up a letter bomb? This was Paris, after all. Terrorist attacks happened all the time! His hands started shaking so much he dropped the envelope. But the only thing that happened was that a piece of ivory bone wrapped in faded yellow cloth rolled soundlessly onto the carpeted elevator floor.
He kneeled and gently unfolded the tattered yellow star, the childishly embroidered J with broken black threads that every Jew had been required to wear. Could this be Sarah's? He'd seen it for so many years in his dreams, reminding him of her. He cupped the bone in his hands. Nothing else was in the envelope. Could she be alive after all these years? Had she survived?
The bone had been their signal. She would leave a bone lying on a ledge outside the catacombs. It had meant "Meet me tonight." Who else would send a message like this? Tears brimmed in his eyes.
He would go and meet her where they had always met. When night fell and the lights hid behind the marble salamander on the arch.
Hartmuth took the elevator back down and he went to the reception desk.
He smiled. "Excuse me again, there's been another last-minute change. Cancel that flight for me tonight. Who delivered that last message for me?"
"I'm sorry, Herr Griffe, I just came on duty at two and the message was already here."
"Of course, thank you," Hartmuth said. He felt the pounding of his heart must be audible to the clerk. In several hours it would be dark. They had always met just after sunset, the safest time since Jews were forbidden on the streets after 8:00 P.M.
He walked out of the lobby, through the courtyard bursting with red geraniums, to the sun-dappled Place des Vosges. He entered the gate, closed it behind him, and let his feet and mind wander. Duty. Hartmuth knew all about that since most of his life was based on it-his political life, marriage, and being an upright German.
The plane trees still held some foliage, but yellow leaves fell and danced in the bubbling fountains. Toddlers bundled in warm jackets chased pigeons and tumbled onto the grass with cries of glee. Like his daughter, Katia, had done once. Before she'd blindly stepped in front of a GI troop truck on the outskirts of Hamburg and died in Grete's arms. She was only six years old.
But he couldn't forget the first time he'd seen Sarah. She could have stepped right off the shelf of porcelain figurines that lined his grandmother's Bremerhaven cottage.
As a young boy, he'd spent every summer at the cottage playing with his cousins near the sea. Sometimes for hours at a time, he would stare at his grandmother's collection and make up stories about each figurine. Grandmother never allowed him to touch, that was forbidden, but he had been content to look.
His favorite, though it had been a hard decision, was the shepherdess, with her coal black wavy hair, azure eyes with dark blue pinpoints, and white porcelain skin. She held a staff and beckoned to her fluffy sheep, whose hooves were forever poised in flight.
Of course, it was all gone. His grandmother's cottage, as well as miles of other suburban cottages, had been firebombed during early raids on the Bremerhaven harbor.
But Hartmuth had seen his shepherdess alive and in the flesh that day in 1942. He'd been checking the Marais again near the building with the salamander. In the courtyard with sleepy midday shuttered windows, a figure leaned over, petting an orange marmalade-colored cat.
A girl with wavy black hair had looked up, smiling, as he'd approached. She had incredible sky blue eyes and alabaster skin. Her expression had changed when she saw the black uniform with the lightning bolts of the Waffen SS on his sleeve and his heavy jackboots. He'd ignored her look of terror as she haltingly rose. Hartmuth always remembered her as the only French girl who had ever greeted him with a smile. Love at first sight can happen when you're eighteen, he thought. It had lasted all his life.
She'd recoiled in fear, but he'd put a finger to his lips and knelt down to pet the cat. Its fur was uneven and it had scaly patches of mange, which probably explained why no one had eaten it. He opened his heart to her and smiled. Then she nodded, kneeling down beside the cat and next to him.
Her schoolbooks peeked out of the worn satchel on the cobblestones. Something about her was so defenseless that he decided to ignore the yellow star embroidered on her school smock. They took turns petting the cat, who was purring furiously now and hoping for something to eat. She had the biggest blue eyes he'd ever seen. Hartmuth couldn't stop staring into them. When she looked up at him he pulled a bit of chalk out his pocket. He drew a whiskered cat and they both smiled. His French was so minimal and his urge to communicate so desperate that he did the only thing he could think of.
"Woof, woof," he barked.
Her incredulous look gave way to stifled giggles and then outright laughter as he stood up and started scratching like a monkey and jumping around. Hartmuth didn't care how he embarrassed himself, he just wanted to make her laugh. She was so beautiful. He remembered something his uncle, a bachelor who had many mistresses, had said: once you've got them laughing, they're yours.
It was important to him that she want him, too, that he wasn't just her captor. He gently put his hand on her shoulder, feeling bones and her thinness, and gestured with his other hand. Trembling, she reached into her satchel and handed him her school card with the ausweis permit attached to the back. He recognized the address. His men had raided it during the Vel d'Hiver roundup in July. He gestured forward with his arm and led her through the courtyard, up the staircase with a winding metal rail.
"Ja. C'est bien, kein problem." He smiled and patted her arm to reassure her.
Just as they approached the apartment, a door across the hall opened and an old man hobbled out using a cane. His rheumy eyes took a long look as he stopped and clicked his tongue in disapproval. Sarah had looked up in fear, but Hartmuth purposely ignored the old man, who shuffled down the hall. In front of her door, Hartmuth pantomimed eating, trying to make her understand that he would bring food.
Hartmuth used the little French he knew and motioned with his hands for her to wait. He showed her his watch and what time he would be back. She seemed to understand and nodded vigorously. He took her chin in his hand, it was warm and smooth, and he smiled. He still couldn't stop staring at her. Then he left.
The apartment was empty when he came back. She'd run away from him.
So he waited and watched in the Marais. He would find her. On the third day he saw her, emerging from the boarded-up courtyard of a derelict mansion, an hôtel particulier, off the rue de Pavee. Dusk had fallen when she finally returned. He stood waiting. Waiting to follow her. She wouldn't get away this time. He watched her pick her way through debris, then disappear behind a pile of rubbish.