He held up his hand to stop her protest. “Not only is it my duty as aParisien, but it is also very, very inexpensive.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1944
PARIS
Fabrice Clement
When Fabrice was a young child, he liked nothing more than to watch his father, Marc-Antoine, carve. His heart would fill with admiration and wonder, and a fervent desire to be just like him: to bring forth a figure where once there was none.
Now, Fabrice felt frustration. Embarrassment. Even disdain.
His father’s chisel never stopped as he whittled a small piece of butternut wood to repair the chunk blown out of the crown of the four-foot-tall Madonna on the workbench in front of him. Once that was complete, he would turn to re-creating her missing left hand.
“After all, how can she pray for us with only one hand?” Marc-Antoine had said when she first arrived in the shop. “We need all the help she can give us.”
The Madonna had been an innocent bystander, caught in a skirmish between Nazi soldiers and a small Résistance cell outside of Dijon. Somehow a local farmer knew to bring her here for help, to Marc-Antoine Clement’s workshop in thecinquiemearrondissement. An aroma of onions lingered about her; she was covered in the bulbs whilebeing smuggled to Paris in the back of a delivery truck. Fabrice’s mother, Germaine, was busy laundering and patching the Madonna’s singed royal blue velvet robes; though the sculpture had carved wooden skirts, she seemed almost naked without her luxurious textiles.
Fabrice watched his father’s skilled hands hover above the gap in the crown, hitting rhythmically in atink tink tink, bits of wood flying like tiny paper airplanes with each tap.
“Papa, I want to contribute to the war effort,” said Fabrice.
“You are too young. We’ve gone over this.”
“Butyouwere only sixteen when you left your family to join the fight in the First World War,” Fabrice said, struggling against the humiliating sensation of tears burning the backs of his eyes. “That’s only a year older than I am now.”
“An important year; acrucialyear. I was a young man; you are still a boy,” said Marc-Antoine. He picked up a piece of fine-grit sandpaper, carefully ran it along the rough-hewn edge he had just chiseled, lifted the piece into the light, and blew. Wood dust flew through a shaft of orangey late-afternoon light, the particles looking like specks of gold, a miniature fireworks display like those they used to set off over the Champs-Élysées on Bastille Day, before the Nazis marched into Paris and the bans went into effect. Fabrice had read that the Free French Forces still marched every Bastille Day in London; the image of brave, exiled soldiers celebrating the beloved national holiday abroad filled his chest with a disorienting mix of pride and rage.
“God forbid, if this war goes on for another year,” Marc-Antoine continued, “we can talk about it then.”
“I can’twaitanother year,” said Fabrice, mimicking what his friend Claude had said to him earlier when talking Fabrice into attending the clandestine meeting. “And neither can France.”
“Have you forgotten that I was shot for my trouble?Twoyears,” Marc-Antoine said, holding up two calloused fingers. Small nicks and splinters covered his fingers: the by-product of his craft. “For two yearsof my life I languished in a German hospital. No one expected me to survive.No one. By the time I was released, my parents were dead, my family home in shambles.”
Fabrice used to crawl into his father’s lap and beg to be shown the scar, fascinated by the puckered skin, shiny and raised in some parts, sunken in others, a stark red against the white skin of his chest. How could a German bullet find your gut, and yet not leave you dead? Fabrice would plead to be told the story, over and over: the confusing cacaphony of the battlefield, the heroic actions of the medics, waking up days later in a German hospital...
Now, though, Fabrice wondered about the nice things his father had to say about his time in the German medical center: the pretty nurses, the caring doctors, the officer who declared his survival a miracle.
The Germans were the invaders; there was no room for kind thoughts.
“I’m not a child,” Fabrice insisted. “I can contribute. It doesn’t have to be combat. There are other ways—”
“What your country needs from you now is your carpentry skills,” his father reiterated. “Not your blood. Besides, this family does enough for the war effort right here in this atelier. Now, use that rottenstone to polish the filler on the John the Baptist from Tarcenay. I finally finished him last night.”
Marc-Antoine’s workshop had become a secret repository of sculpted artworks from rural churches and museums, châteaux and fine homes. Fabrice found the work insignificant, toosmallcompared to the crucial struggles playing out on the streets of Paris outside these walls; still, he acknowledged that his father was taking a risk. Though these rustic saints and cupids, angels and saviors were nothing akin to the valuable artworks the Nazis had looted from the Louvre, they had an intrinsic cultural value reflected in their artistry and tradition.
Simply helping to maintain the histories of small-town chapels could be sufficient grounds for a death warrant, depending on the mood and character of the soldier who stumbled across their stash, orthe dictates of the officer in charge, or the judgment of the dreaded Gestapo.
Fabrice barely remembered France’s humiliating defeat after the six-week blitzkrieg in 1940. He had been only eleven at the time, and was convinced along with everyone else that France’s fighting forces were up to the job. But the Nazis were a different breed.
In World War I, the Great War, the bloodshed had been based on a struggle over territory. This time the Nazis seemed to want to appropriate the very cultural life of France, to win Paris over by flattery as much as through repression. German officers mingled with Parisians in cafés and cabarets and nightclubs, acquired cases of fine wine and great art, and wolfed down foie gras and champagne. Their German-language newspapers glorified French singers, playwrights, and actors. The occupying forces even took it upon themselves to resuscitate the film industry in an attempt to show that French cultural life was flourishing under occupation. The Nazis declared that France was destined to become the holiday resort of theHerrenvolk, the master race.
Many Parisians found themselves collaborating out of sheer necessity. Fabrice had never blamed them; with Nazis living amongst them, and the threat of starvation looming, who could cast stones? Still, Fabrice felt compelled to act.
“Instead of volunteering to get yourself shot, you should thank the heavens we are in Paris instead of in my hometown. As hard as things are here, they are worse in Provence under the Vichy government.” Marc-Antoine put down his tools and turned toward his son. His tone softened. “Don’t you understand, my boy? Listen to me: Just getting enough to eat, merelysurviving, is an act of rebellion.”
The Madonna gazed back at Fabrice, her beatific expression never changing. Her mien of placid acceptance angered Fabrice.
