Two Crosses (16 page)

David made his way through the first few rooms in the Jeu de Paume museum on the Right Bank of Paris. It was crowded for a Tuesday afternoon. Entering another room, he walked toward the back wall, where there were fewer people, and then stopped suddenly, ten feet away.
Les Coquelicots.
Monet’s field of poppies. He whispered, “Gabriella.”

At once he saw her before him, laughing, lighting up the classroom or the courtyard or the beach. A shocking picture of hope. A lone poppy in a field of sunflowers.

He remembered how a villager in Castelnau had reproached him once when he commented on their delicate beauty.
They take over the field, you know, and the farmers hate them. Just a weed, really. A wildflower. You start with one, and it spreads like wildfire, those blasted poppies.

Delicate beauty, that was Gabriella. Shocking with life, with an enthusiasm and charm that spread out and spilled over, infectious in its winsome spirit.

“Gabriella,” he whispered again, and with one last glance at the poppies, he turned and left the museum.

David walked briskly through the Tuileries gardens that led from the Jeu de Paume to the Louvre. The bright October sky of an hour ago now grumbled menacingly above. And something grumbled even louder within his soul. It was October 17. A dark day in history. The day Louis XIV had signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, thus abolishing religious liberty in France. And with that quick release of ink, the blood of thousands of Protestants flowed through the caverns and mountains of the Midi. They ran and hid; they prayed and cried out to the heavens. Still the blood flowed and mingled with the mud and was forgotten. David wondered, was the cause worth the price of blood?

Yet the Huguenots had stood firm in their faith. He couldn’t deny it, though he would not show Gabriella how deeply it moved him. A people who believed that their faith was worth dying for.

He listened to the wind and could almost hear its mournful warning.
Blood will flow again.
Tonight, he knew, another suppressed minority would raise their angry fists and cry, “Liberty!” But who would answer? Who in fact knew the answer for Algeria? Who could see past the passion of political parties into the soul of the people?

David shook his head as he walked through the gardens. He would observe the march, and perhaps get the information he needed to appease his conscience. But he knew there was no answer to satisfy both Algeria and France, the FLN and the OAS, the harkis and the pied-noirs. And so the blood would continue to spill onto pages not yet written, which would someday fill the history books.

Ophélie slipped out of the apartment and rushed down the stairs and out the back way. Malika waited for her in the late afternoon, her eyes glistening with excitement.

“We’re going to march tonight! For independence! A march with our friends!” Malika’s voice lifted and swelled with feeling, a young girl reciting her poetry into the afternoon air.

“But will you still teach me about the marbles?” Ophélie asked.

“Marbles! Ha! I’m talking about freedom. Come march with me for freedom!”

“You’ll let me go with you?” Ophélie longed for excitement and the taste of the wind on her face.

Malika bent down to her height and looked her in the eyes. “Do you believe in a free Algeria?”

The young child’s face clouded. What did Mama think? They had left Algeria, of that she was sure. But she couldn’t remember if Algeria was good or bad. Oh well. It didn’t matter. Tonight she would escape with this big girl.

“I believe what you believe! I want to be with you.”

“Then I’ll come back for you after dark, Ophélie. Papa says that tonight we will be part of history!”

The sky was black when Ophélie finally heard M. Gady snoring in his room. She gathered up an old sweater the old man had found for her when the weather had turned colder. Then she stopped. What if he woke? What if he looked for her and found the blue bag? Quickly she pulled it out of the pillowcase and put it around her neck, tucking it under her shirt and sweater. The cross lay safely in the bottom.

Ophélie tiptoed down the steps and let herself outside with the key M. Gady kept on a hook near the door. She pulled the door closed, locked it from the outside, and dropped the key into the blue bag.

Malika was waiting. “You’re late. We must hurry.”

“Is this an adventure?” Ophélie asked.

“It certainly is. You’ll see. Now come on!”

Masses of Algerians crowded through the streets along the Seine. Ophélie struggled to keep up with the moving tide. Men, women, and children hurried silently along, their eyes burning bright. All was quiet. No angry, bitter words. But she could see the look of determination on their faces. “To the prefecture,” they whispered in Arabic.

Ophélie searched for Malika, suddenly feeling afraid. The other girl was running ahead, laughing. She didn’t hear Ophélie’s cries.

By the time the crowd reached the prefecture, Ophélie felt she could walk no farther. She wished she had stayed with M. Gady.
This is bad, Mama. I want to go home.
She was crying as she ran, pushed along by the stream of Algerians. “Mama!”

Suddenly a shot rang out. Then another and another, until it sounded to Ophélie like the celebrations when the sky lit up with beautiful fire. But this wasn’t a celebration. People were screaming and running.

“Malika! Help me, Malika!” Ophélie stood terrified as the crowd turned and fled down the same streets they had just come up.

Ophélie jumped as Malika grabbed her arm. “Ophélie, you must run. It’s not safe.” Her friend’s eyes were filled with terror. “Run, Ophélie. Come with me.”

The night had erupted into a nightmare. Ophélie shivered and cried, remembering the times she had run with Mama when they lived in that other country that now wanted to be free.

Mama had said they would be safe in France. But now she was gone, and Ophélie had to run. But where should she go? Which people were bad?

Another burst of popping sounded. Sharp, quick, like the beating of the drum before an important person appears. Suddenly Malika screamed and went limp, falling to the ground. Ophélie tripped over her body and fell beside her.

Malika’s eyes fluttered. “Run, Ophélie, don’t stay with me,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”

Ophélie touched Malika’s head. It was wet. She looked at her fingers in the light of the lampposts on the Seine. A thick, dark liquid stained her small hand. She stood up and began to run, looking over her shoulder and screaming, “Malika! Malika!”

More shots spat through the sky. Something sharp stung her leg and she fell again, screaming with pain.

“Help me! Mama! Malika! Someone help me. M. Gady!” She crawled on the wet pavement, dragging her left leg behind, until she sat in a cluster of bushes close to the large bridge they had just crossed.

She sat for a long time, sniffling back her fear as men in blue uniforms and tall hats picked up the bodies of the fallen and tossed them into the river. The men in blue, they were good, she knew. They were police. But they were shooting and beating and throwing people in the river. Only Ophélie’s terror kept her from crying out. She waited and watched until the dark-skinned men with gleaming eyes and the men in blue uniforms with guns and sticks had left the bridge, yelling angry words at each other in the dark.

Near the Pont Saint-Michel, David heard the screams of Algerians as the Paris police beat, kicked, and shot at the protestors. He hung in the shadows, sickened. M. Torrès would not show up in this scene of slaughter. His plans were not the only ones to run awry.

More blood spilled. In his mind he was back in Paris in 1941. He saw the Nazi guards standing before him, the shots, the blood. “Why did you think we would be safe, Mother?” He spoke aloud, and the sound of his own voice startled him.

Once again one race’s hatred for another spilled blood on the pavement of the bridge. And once again, no one came to their defense. Only the Seine, running swift and smooth, knew the count of those who were killed. The
gendarmes
threw the lifeless bodies of beaten Algerians into the river one by one and watched as they sank below her slow-moving current. And the sweet river once again closed her sad eyes and was silent.

“Mama! Mama!”

The screams of a young girl pierced the stillness of the bloody Paris night. David could not ignore them. “Where are you?” he whispered, running toward one side of the Seine as the Paris police charged off in another direction.

“Here. Please,
monsieur
, help me.”

He stooped to see the crumpled form of a young girl by the light pole. Instinctively he picked her up, turning away from the bridge and the river. He ran until he reached the safety of a small square down the road from the Pont Neuf. He slipped down a side street that was now swallowed in darkness. Far away, more cries rang out and gunshots echoed. But here there were no police.

Carefully he placed the small girl on the sidewalk and bent close to inspect her wounds. Her breathing was shallow and forced, and her eyes glazed over as she stared up at him.

“M. Gady? It is you?”

“I’m a friend. Where is M. Gady?”

“Take me to M. Gady. He will help me,” she rasped, frantic for breath.

“Don’t worry. I won’t leave you, little one.” He removed his jacket and then his shirt, ripping it and tying it around the wound in her leg.

The child was murmuring incoherently. “He’s near the big school. Such a pretty red-and-white awning, the little store … yes, Mama. I know … rue des Beaux-Arts … yes, I can get there from our house …” Her eyes fluttered, and she fainted.

David picked her up and held her close. “Don’t die, little girl. Don’t die! Not like Greta. This time I’ll help.”

Only the moon witnessed the tall American racing along the sidewalks of the Left Bank of Paris in search of rue des Beaux-Arts and a shop with a red-and-white awning.

David knew many cities of the world, but none better than Paris. He was not far from the École des Beaux-Arts. He hoped that this child did indeed live nearby. Moments later in the darkness, a storefront with a red-and-white awning came into view. By the streetlight he read the word
Epicerie
. As he approached the door, he stepped on broken glass. The windowpanes were gone. He did not need to ring the bell, for the wooden door stood ajar. He entered and waited in the shadows for several minutes, but he heard no noise and nothing moved. Slowly he made his way toward the back of the shop and through the doorway that led up a flight of stairs. He walked into a small room where a mattress lay on the floor. A small desk and couch were the only pieces of furniture. The desk had been overturned and every drawer emptied. The mattress and a pillow had been slit, and stuffing littered the floor.

David walked out of the room and into the hall. The door to the adjoining room was open, and David looked in, then halted abruptly.

“I am glad you can’t see this,” he said to the unconscious child in his arms. An old man lay slumped on the floor with a bullet hole through his head.