Paris: The Novel

Jewish house is safe.” Then she hugged Laïla very close, but she didn’t say what they could do about it.
    The next day was fine, and Laïla wondered if maybe her father would reappear and everything would be normal again. But at nine in the morning, they heard heavy steps coming up the stairs to the landing where their apartment was, and her mother suddenly told her to hide and not to make a sound.
    “Wait a little while. Then go to your cousin Hélène,” she said. “She’ll look after you until I get back.”
    So Laïla ran and hid in a closet. She heard the door open and heard the men take her mother away with them. And then there was only silence.
    For about an hour, Laïla waited in the apartment. When she opened the door and looked out, the landing was empty. She went down the stairs and out into the rue La Fayette.
    She started walking up the street toward the Gare du Nord, because Cousin Hélène lived on a street behind the station. But before she reachedthe Gare du Nord, she passed a little square with a church, and a few benches; and she sat on one of these and considered what she was about to do.
    Although she was only seven, Laïla always thought for herself. She had a logical and practical intelligence. And the more she thought about it, the more the little girl wondered if her mother’s instructions were right. If no Jewish house was safe, she reasoned, then Cousin Hélène’s house wasn’t safe either. The only place she might be safe was a house that was not Jewish. And she tried to think of someone she knew who wasn’t Jewish.
    Then she remembered, a little while ago, her father pointing out a house to her and telling her: “There’s a very nice lady who lives in there. She’s keeping some things for me.”
    “Why?” she had asked.
    “Because I can trust her. She’ll keep them safe. Just remember that. You can always go there to get our things, one day.”
    She hadn’t known why he said this, but she had remembered the house.
    Now she wondered: Was the lady Jewish? Laïla had a feeling that she wasn’t.

    When the little girl turned up on the doorstep of L’Invitation au Voyage just before noon, Louise was quite astonished. She was just going up to her own apartment nearby to have lunch with Esmé. The little girl said who she was, and did she know her father. Yes, Louise said, she did. Then the child wanted to know if she was Jewish. No, Louise said, she wasn’t.
    Then Laïla told her what had happened.
    Louise had to think quickly, then. Her first impulse had been to take the girl up to have lunch with little Esmé. But Esmé was with his nanny. The fewer people who knew about Laïla the better. So she took the little girl up to her office at the top of the house and closed the door.
    She quickly telephoned the nanny to say she’d been delayed, gave Laïla something to eat and sat down to think. After ten minutes, she telephoned Charlie. Fortunately he was in Paris. She asked him to come around. Then she told Laïla to stay where she was and not make a sound, and that she’d be back in an hour. Locking the door behind her, she made her way downstairs and went to see Esmé.

    “You can’t keep her here, the place is full of Germans,” said Charlie decisively. “If the parents show up, there’s no problem. But …”—he made a sad face—“they may not.”
    “I can’t keep going around to the parents’ apartment or even the gallery. It’ll look suspicious,” Louise remarked.
    “Don’t worry. I have men who can take care of that.” He smiled. Whomever he worked with in the Resistance, he never gave Louise any details. “If the parents appear, they’ll be told she’s safe, and I’ll get her back to them. If it’s what they want.”
    “But where will she go in the meantime?” asked Louise.
    “Oh”—Charlie grinned—“that’s the easy bit. Some country air will do her good. The last place anyone’s ever going to look for a little Jewish girl is my father’s château on the Loire.”
    “But will he agree?”
    “He’ll do it for me.” Charlie paused. “I’m busy tonight, though. I can have an alibi all ready by this time tomorrow, and I’ll drive her down in the car. But can you keep her until then?”
    “I wonder where.”
    Charlie considered, made a suggestion and departed.

    That evening, Schmid decided to celebrate. The Jacob woman had been panic-stricken. Though she didn’t exactly contradict her husband, she became so confused when