Wherever There Is Light (34 page)

The turnout was due to several factors: with the US Treasury underwriting the club, Julian could keep the prices low; Otis had his fans; and Kendall had spread the word in Saint-Germain. The intellectual gang, including Sartre, was supposedly downstairs, though Kendall had heard that Beauvoir couldn't come because she was with her lover in America, and there was a mob of students decked out in black as if staging a wake for the world. Isabella and Marcel had let it be known that an ex-GI was a part owner, which attracted veterans in droves, who, in their telltale khakis, had bumped into their share of resentment in Paris, understandably because they were flush with cash while most locals scraped to get by. The sportier ex-GIs had traded their boots for penny loafers and wore tweed sport coats, and they chased the chic French girls in their felt hats and brightly colored scarves with an impressive inventiveness.

As Julian and Kendall were waiting for a drink, an ex-GI ahead of them was with a dark-eyed looker, who was saying, “Ze professor
de psychologie
, he assign us a paper on
Psychopathia Sexualis
. Why we must study
les perversions sexuelles
, I do not
comprends
. Do ever you hear of zis book?”

“Hear of it? Baby, I'm in it. Dance with me, and later on we'll blow this joint, and I'll help you with that paper.”

After they had gone, Kendall giggled. “Fast thinker.”

Julian sent a waiter to tell Otis he had a surprise for him, and when Otis came up between sets, he saw Eddie and Fiona standing with Julian and Kendall.

“Jitterbug!” Eddie shouted.

Otis introduced Eddie to the double-barreled Gallic smooch, which would require some practice on Eddie's part. Fiona caught on fine.

“Girl,” Otis said, grinning. “You ain't shot this man yet.”

“I have to wait till Christmas. He promised to buy me a shotgun.”

“C'mon down,” Otis said. “Jules got seats by the bandstand, and I'll play you some Mr. Thelonious Monk. That cat's a hummer.”

A tobacco haze hung over the dim cellar. The walls were blond wood with engraved mirrors, and the tables were jammed. During the set, most of the audience dug the music and snapped their fingers between songs. The exception was at a table in back, where Arnaud Francoeur was sitting and whispering with Thayer and Simon. When the quartet took their next break, Kendall and Fiona headed upstairs to the WC, and Thayer followed them. Simon stayed in his chair, and Arnaud came over and said
bonsoir
to Julian.

“This is my friend Eddie.”

“Hello, Eddie,” Arnaud said.

Eddie, studying Arnaud as if he were a hissing snake, made a pistol with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and fired at him. This was not his chummiest greeting.

“A
fantastique
debut,” Arnaud said, nodding at a corner table across the cellar. “But you don't want a reputation as a rendezvous for
les tapettes
.”

Julian and Eddie looked toward the corner, where Otis was gabbing with some young men bunched around a table. Otis had one arm draped affectionately over the thin blonde next to him, and across from them a bony-faced teenager was kissing a man with a white, rhinestone-studded Stetson on his head.

Arnaud laughed, a blunt sound brimming with scorn. “We don't need more Americans turning Frenchmen into cowboys or faggots.”

“Which one are you?” Eddie asked.

From the furrows in his forehead, Arnaud appeared to be cooking up a comeback. Ultimately, he chose not to reply, a wise choice.

“
À la prochaine
,” Arnaud said, and returned to his seat.

“What'd he say?” Eddie asked.

“Until next time.”

“If that jerk-off likes his teeth, there better be no next time.”

Fiona and Eddie were in Paris for a week, and they had checked into the Trianon, so Julian packed a bag and stayed with Kendall in her suite. Eddie was a reluctant tourist, but Fiona assured him that his nights would be merrier if he did as he was told during the day. The four of them strolled up the Champs-Élysées, saw the Arc de Triomphe and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Eiffel Tower and Place de la Concorde; rode up and down the Seine on a Bateau-Mouche and explored the Luxembourg Gardens, the Tuileries, the Bois de Boulogne, the Île Saint-Louis, and the Île de la Cité. They ate dinners at Dans le Vent except for the evening they went to Chez Dumonet–Josephine for the
boeuf bourguignon
and
Grand Marnier soufflé
, and Eddie triple-tipped the waiter because he'd never gotten drunk on a dessert before.

On Sunday, with church bells ringing in the crystal air, they attended Mass at Notre-Dame. Fiona complained there were chairs instead of pews, and Eddie wondered aloud where the hunchback was hiding. By the next afternoon, Fiona got it in her head that she wanted to light a candle in every church in the city, but she gave Eddie a pass on that mission and went with Kendall.

“My wife's a firebug,” Eddie said, trying—and failing—to sound as if he were joking.

“What's wrong?”

“We can't get pregnant. Docs say she's got bad ovaries.”

“That's a shame.”

“Whatta ya gonna do?” Eddie spotted a bunch of kids staring in the window of Foucher, a chocolate shop.

Julian chuckled. “I bet you got a plan.”

“Go talk French.”

Within minutes, the displays in the Foucher window were bare, and children were parading down Rue du Bac with chocolate-smeared faces.

When Eddie and Julian got back to the hotel, Fiona and Kendall were still out, so they had a beer on the terrace of a café outside the Sorbonne.

“It's lonely without you at home,” Eddie said.

“Isn't it fun for you and Abe to steal my money?”

“There's that.” Eddie lit a cigarette. “You ever coming back?”

“I don't know.”

“It's better you're here than being a miserable fuck in New Jersey.”

“I wasn't a miserable fuck.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“I wasn't.”

“Monsieur I-Wasn't-a-Miserable-Fuck, would ya ask the waiter for another beer?”

On Fiona and Eddie's last day in Paris, they ate lunch with Kendall and Julian at La Palette. They had planned to go to the Louvre when they were done, but they hadn't factored in Eddie eating a
croque-monsieur
and discovering that champagne was such a dandy complement to hot ham and cheese that he handled two bottles by himself and announced that he preferred napping to art.

“Don't you want to learn anything?” Fiona asked.

“I like to keep it simple.”

Fiona snorted. “You're a master at keeping yourself simple.”

“Secret of my success.”

Julian told Kendall and Fiona to go ahead; he'd take Eddie to the hotel.

The women walked down to Quai Malaquais. The city was dissolving from the rousing green of summer to the softer hues of fall, and in the drowsy light, lovers and parents with children in tow stopped at the bookstalls and kiosks on the quay or watched painters try to capture the burnished magic of the Seine.

Fiona said, “That man does things to me.”

Kendall laughed. “He's your husband; he's supposed to.”

“Not just those things. He makes me feel safe when he comes home and worries me when he's late. Makes me believe I'd hate my life without him. Even when he acts like a feckin eejit.”

Kendall suddenly felt sad, thinking about not having Julian. “That's ‘fucking idiot' in Irish?”

Now it was Fiona's turn to laugh. “And my Edward's middle name.”

As they went over to the Right Bank on the Pont du Carrousel, Kendall said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Go on, darlin'.”

“Do you tell Eddie everything?”

“About old flames?”

“No, things that happen, things—”

“Bad things?”

In a voice softer than a sigh, Kendall said, “Things like that.”

Fiona took her arm. “You tell him because that's what a husband's for. He knows sometimes you don't want to wash your hair and you can yell at him for nothing if you're in a mood and you got sin in you to spare, and he loves you anyway. You tell him because you'll hate yourself for not telling him, and the trouble with that kind of hatred is you get used to it.”

Just over the bridge, families were gathered around a young fellow, skinny as a pipe cleaner, holding out his right arm so red-faced goldfinches could land there while he fed seeds to them.

“It has a way of working out,” Fiona said, and after she deposited five hundred francs in the basket by the man's bare feet, she and Kendall walked on to the museum.

K
endall's war. Her memories of the war. They were all hers, and her photographs were just part of the story. And not the most agonizing part, the part that Kendall kept to herself. After settling in Paris she thought her memories would fade. No luck. The images became more detailed, and excruciating to recall. She told herself that she wanted to tell someone. Not someone—Julian. Except he wasn't in Paris then, and once he showed up, Kendall was hesitant to put her experience into words, as if by telling her story it would become impossible to revise or forget.

What changed her mind? Fiona's advice was some of it. But mainly it was the evening Kendall was waiting for Julian to arrive and sifting through a box of her photographs, and it occurred to her that sometimes images weren't enough. Sometimes you needed words.

The Negro soldiers of the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion called her Angel, as in “Hey, Angel, you make us famous yet?” That was Kendall's assignment, she supposed, making them famous. Officers pissing in General Eisenhower's ear doubted that colored troops had the brains or courage to fight, though without them Kendall would have missed the war. Léo Sapir had peddled her photographs of Londoners living and dying in the rubble left behind by German bombs to
Look
and the
Picture Post
, but American military commanders balked at putting women correspondents in harm's way, and Kendall, a Negro who wasn't employed by a publication, was at the back of the line. In October 1944, four months after D-Day, as the 614th was preparing to ship out for France, Kendall finally received her press credentials. Léo had cut a deal for her with the National Negro Publishers Association, which supplied stories and photos to Negro papers across the United States.

The soldiers started calling her Angel because even in her helmet, with a hole cut in back for her ponytail, you could see Kendall's face, as pretty as a cameo carved in amber. By November, they had another reason. Kendall was photographing the crew of a self-propelled cannon when the Germans let loose with their
Nebelwerfers
, which sent rockets screeching through the sky like vengeful phantoms. A soldier yelled, “Incoming!” and Kendall and the crew hit the dirt. Rockets exploded around them, yet except for the ringing in their ears, no one was injured. Now it was “Angel” because her presence explained a miracle:
Damn
,
Angel
,
you really is a angel
. . . .