Image of Luxor Obelisk, Paris illustrated by David Geister
Encounter Parisian Life and Style: Visit Paris and meet its people before the war, after liberation, and during recovery. Discover which couple would be the best dressed at the grand Opera House after the war, and the designer behind the outfit.
Immerse yourself in Chapter 13, "A Paris Inquiry," where the charm of Paris collides with the stark realities of war. Kathy and Charles dine in luxury at the Hotel Normandie, savoring a clever dish that hides the ever-present war behind a crisp crust. Their evening unfolds with elegance at the Paris Opera House, where they navigate the grandeur and grace of Swan Lake. Yet, beneath the surface of Parisian splendor lies the somber undercurrent of loss, love, and resilience. As they share a simple meal with new friends and walk the historic streets, Kathy confronts the loneliness of war and the fleeting nature of love. Through moments of quiet reflection and shared comfort, she discovers the strength to face a world filled with uncertainty. This chapter invites you to experience the highs and lows of wartime Paris, where every moment is a delicate balance between beauty and sorrow.
CHAPTER 13
A PARIS INQUIRY
They dined at white damask-covered tables served by white-jacketed waiters at the Hotel Normandie. This most luxurious hotel had been taken over as a leave center by the Army. “It’s ridiculous to be eating in so much luxury in the middle of a war,” said Charles. He carefully cut his meat which had been dipped in a batter and French fried to make a crisp crust. He tasted it and laughed. “Under that crust, we’re still at war. Taste it.”
Kathy tasted it and smiled. “Spam, it’s still better than anything we’ve managed. The sauce helps. I have to find out how the chef did that.” So, Kathy took Charles back into the kitchen and gathered recipes. The chefs were delighted to give their secrets to the heroes in American hospitals and welcomed them as American liberators.
“Freshen your lipstick, and we’ll go to the opera,” said Charles. He glanced at his watch. “You have fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes to get ready to go the Parisians Opera House in Paris, one of the most famous buildings in Paris. I ought to at least polish my buttons.”
With no more preparation than a fresh coat of lipstick, Kathy walked beside Charles up the grand curves of the famous double horseshoe staircase at the Opera House. They walked under the magnificent marble carvings and gold chandeliers. Elegantly dressed ladies smiled admiringly at Charles. Tuxedoed gentlemen smiled pleasantly at Kathy. They both wore their uniforms with pride, as the best-dressed opera-goers there.
The program was a ballet, the Swan Lake, and a pantomime, Le Coq d’Or. They shifted from the golden splendor of the Opera House to impressionistic scenery of the Swan Lake. When the music stopped, the lights went up.
The woman who sat next to Kathy tried to explain it to her, and laughed with delight at Kathy’s outlandish French accent.
“Don’t laugh at that accent,” said Kathy: “It has made me more French friends than a proper accent ever could.”
The woman’s husband invited Kathy and Charles to their apartment. “Come with us” he said. The sleeves on his jacket were frayed. Her severely simple black dress was worn looking; yet had a quality that commanded respect.
His wife said “Tonight, we have much to offer. We have good bread and aged cheese, and we have... fresh eggs.”
“We do?” Her husband was impressed. “How did you get eggs?” he said.
“You know very well how I got them. I cycled into the country to the farm.”
“We will be happy to come with you,” said Charles.
Their apartment was simple and elegant. Walls of bookshelves were lined with worn leather-bound books. A dozen lively men and women talked energetically about government. With the French now liberated from the Germans, a new form of government somehow had to be made. Left and right, Catholic and non-Catholic, de Gaullists and anti-de Gaullists, were struggling to cooperate. Kathy and Charles were not expected to say anything. They were respected enough simply by being American officers who understood some French.
At the moment when the arguments became almost violently heated, the hostess brought out bottles of wine, a loaf of bread, cheese, and a plate of deviled eggs. The guests gathered around. Each took a cheese sandwich and a glass of wine.
“Notice,” Charles said to Kathy, “that there is one-half egg per person, if you and I do not eat any.” To their hostess he said, “We will be pleased to drink a glass of your wine, but we cannot eat your food. Army regulations.”
“How long has it been since you’ve tasted a fresh egg?”
“Pas important. Not important. We have enough food.” Charles said.
She halved each piece of egg. “I am not ashamed at how little we have to offer. I would be ashamed only if we had too much while others have nothing.”
Kathy was delighted to eat a quarter of an egg. The yolk softened smoothly on her tongue, with an unbelievable texture.
That evening Kathy stayed at the nurses’ leave center. After breakfast, Charles took her to the Army communications headquarters. He made arrangements to meet her again at the Normandie for dinner, and left.
Kathy approached the MP on guard at the front door. He saluted her. She returned the salute. “Where can I place a call to New York?”
He looked surprised and directed her to a back room on the second floor. She went up the stairs, showing her ID card and saluting her way through roomfuls of soldiers.
She finally reached someone with a higher rank, a First Lieutenant, who saluted her. Though, as a Second Lieutenant she should have saluted him. In his eyes, this established her as unmilitary. He had an armful of papers that he seemed in a hurry to take somewhere. He stood, waiting, unwilling to give her more than a moment’s attention.
“I must call New York to a Captain Roger Rockford.”
He glanced impatiently at the door. “The telephone is for military use. Only high priority calls.”
“My call is important.”
“It had better be. We’re fighting a war! Who authorized your call?”
“Major Sam Rand.”
“Who is Major Rand?”
He would scoff if she answered “psychiatrist.” Instead, she said “I haven’t heard from my fiancé in four months.”
He gasped. His eyebrows arched. His arm went up in a helpless fury. “This is a military headquarters, not a lonely-hearts club. We are fighting a war! Go to the Red Cross. See your Chaplain. But do not bother me!” He continued to mutter in disbelief as he turned and rushed out the door.
Kathy’s love was of world-wide inconsequence.
She ran down the stairs and out of the building, not taking any time to answer salutes. She headed towards the bridge facing the water. No one would be able to see the tears and red nose that she would have when she cried. But her eyes were dry. She didn’t cry at all.
She leaned on the stone wall of the bridge across the Seine. She could see the Ile de la Cite, with Notre Dame Cathedral and the Palais de Justice. Notre Dame had been built in the 12th century. Certainly, Notre Dame could see events “under the aspect of eternity” of which Charles spoke. Would anyone care about Rocky’s love eight centuries from now?
Here Mary Queen of Scots had married the Dauphin. Here Marie Antoinette came to offer thanks for the birth of a son who never became king. Here Josephine was crowned empress with Napoleon, and was then divorced by him. Here Eugénie married another Napoleon, and was exiled for long, dreary years.
From the towers of Notre Dame, grotesque gargoyles grinned down on Kathy. France, land of romance and love, hah! Were all the women of France tragic figures? Was there no lasting love?
She gazed at the sturdy square towers of Notre Dame and the graceful supporting buttress. The up-flowing lines of the cathedral showed strength and beauty. To look at it was to know enduring beauty, to be assured of lasting goodness.
Kathy went inside the cathedral, and lifted up her eyes to the ceiling. She saw the magnificence of the altar, the height of the arches, and the richness of the stained-glass windows. She knelt quietly in a pew. She watched beams of colored light change as the sun rose high at noon. The world was created good and beautiful—and man willing, could again become good and beautiful.
She went from the church toward her leave center along an avenue of art shops. Remembering she should buy two wedding presents for girlfriends at home, she stopped in a shop. A girl about her own age, the daughter of the owner, waited on her. Kathy was treated not as a customer but as an American heroine who had liberated France. Kathy had long ago abandoned the role of heroine, but allowed it to help her make friends. She invited Kathy to her home for lunch. Kathy promised herself that the next time she was in Paris she would refund the food, and lunched with the family. All afternoon they walked, seeing Paris as an artist saw it. Kathy forgot her heartbreak until she met Charles for supper and he asked about her call to New York.
After dinner they rode in a horse-drawn carriage on cobblestone streets to the Tuileries Gardens. Fountains splashed along the Champs Elysee. New York seemed far away. Couples, GIs and French girls, strolled arm in arm, and kissed in doorways and on park benches. Paris in April was romantic, and Charles put his arm around Kathy.
They sat on an iron bench on the edge of the Place de la Concorde. “Here we have the Luxor Obelisk. It’s Paris’s oldest monument and the oldest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Charles. “Rameses II erected that in Egypt in 1250 BC—twenty-one centuries ago. As a gift to France, it was moved here in 1833.”
“I don’t know who Rameses II was, and I can’t imagine twenty-one centuries.” She didn’t care about Rameses, and she didn’t think Charles cared either.
He pulled her toward him, and her head fit nicely on his shoulder. His fingers brushed her hair, while he talked of Rameses. “He was the Pharaoh whose daughter rescued Moses from the bulrushes. Twenty-one centuries...” His mouth was on her hair, and his words were muffled. His hand on her chin, he tilted her head back, and kissed her lips.
The kiss upset Kathy. The strong and contradictory feelings of the day could only be resolved in tears. She cried, and felt herself stupid for crying. Charles was patient with her weeping. He just patted her shoulder until she was calm.
Then he spoke quietly. “Right now, this seems sad. Right now, this is sad. But in time, in time it won’t seem so bad. It fades away. You will start again.”
Kathy raised her head to protest, but Charles pushed it gently back onto his shoulder, saying, “I know what I’m saying. I’ve lived through real tragedies. When I was in eighth grade, when our family was gathered round the table for Sunday dinner, my father slumped forward in his chair, his head on his plate, dead. A heart attack.
“My mother never recovered. She died two months later, which I still feel sad about. But I managed, with my older brother taking care of me. Maybe I depended on him too much, but he was all I had. I had to work my way through college. But it was a good life, with just my brother and me.
“Then when I was a sophomore, my brother died. I was alone.”
Charles continued, “I rebelled against these three deaths. First with a passionate fury, and then later with a determination to fight death. I would be a doctor. I was a promising student and was given a scholarship to medical school. It was a start at picking up the pieces.
“Then when I was a senior, I married. I was lonely, and wanted a family. We were happy, for a while. Then we had a baby girl. I refused the school scholarship, and instead worked as bacteriologist to support my family. I didn’t mind giving up medical school because I loved my wife and our daughter. The day the baby was eight months old, I came home from the lab to find a note on the kitchen table. My wife had left me, and taken our daughter to her mother. She said she just didn’t like married life. She’s still a career woman, never remarried.”
Charles paused, rubbing Kathy’s hair. “Yes, I’ve known real tragedy. I’ve lost my family, rebuilt a life, lost my career, and lost another family. In time I recovered again and rebuilt another life. I married again. This time I had better judgment. I know the love between my wife and me will never fail. We have a little boy, three years old. Then came the war. Monday, I had a letter that my boy is sick—and here I am in France, helpless.”
They sat on an iron bench on the Place de la Concorde in front of the obelisk that was the oldest thing they’d ever seen. Kathy searched for words to help him, to comfort him, and could find none. She sat in silence wondering what to do, and then she knew what to do. She put her arms around his neck, pulled his face down to hers, and kissed him. Man and woman were made to stand together against the loneliness and insecurity of this world.
Back in their own mess the next evening, eating from plastic trays on wooden tables, Kathy looked at the men and women with new sympathy. Yesterday she had been preoccupied with her own anguish. Today she knew they were all struggling against the same loneliness and insecurity. Each girl was away from everything familiar to her. They were in a foreign land where the streets were cobblestone and the language strange. Their clothes were impressive uniforms, yet were not enjoyable like dresses or skirts and sweaters. Even their underwear was olive drab.
It was as though they had all left their homes for an evening at a theater, and were partaking in a play about war. Or as though their real selves were sitting at home in a warm, comfortable living room on overstuffed furniture, reading a book. They knew that when the war ended, and the book was closed, they would look around and find themselves back on the same furniture in the same living room.
They all lived like this. There was no continuity between their old familiar life and this strange life. The essence of the story was the finding of someone to stand beside you against the war-torn world. Then, to continue to stay at each other’s side to withstand the horrors of the war.
I hope you enjoyed Chapter 13. I'd love for you to return and read more about Girls in a World at War. Each chapter reveals new depths of their experiences, and I can't wait to share more with you.
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