Maman shoots Chloe a warning look. “Adalyn,” she says, “why don’t you play us something on the piano?”
I get to my feet without hesitation, flexing my fingers. I’ve been playing since I was eight, taking lessons twice a week with a woman, Mathilde, who lives near the school. I like to practice on our little piano at home, the same one Papa grew up playing before his injury, but there’s something extraordinary about sitting down at a gleaming grand piano like the one in the corner of the drawing room. In happier times, I would bring my song books to Madame LaRoche’s and play for hours.
As I open the piano bench and sift around for something to play, I hear Madame LaRoche’s voice.
“Is she still taking lessons, Odette?”
“She was, but her teacher is in the Free Zone now. Adalyn, what did Mathilde say in the last letter you received from her?”
“That she was looking at getting a permit to return to Paris,” I reply.
“I hope she is successful,” says Madame LaRoche. “A talent like yours shouldn’t go to waste.”
I find the score for one of my favorite pieces, Mozart’s Piano Sonata no. 16 in C major. Papa introduced me to it; he said the sound reminded him of springtime.
As my fingers begin to dance across the keys, I let the fluttering notes transport me to a dinner party Madame LaRoche threw early last year; Papa was with us, and we talked and laughed late into the evening, as nobody had to be home before any sort of curfew. We stopped to listen to a band of street musicians on the way home, and Papa asked Maman to dance right there on the sidewalk. My eyes drift toward the window, but of course, the curtains are pulled shut so the light can’t seep out. Somewhere out there stands the Eiffel Tower with a Nazi flag flying on top. Everything in Paris has changed, and I can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever be so carefree again.
At half past six I finish playing and we migrate to the dining room, where the staff lays out a meal of lamb and potatoes.
Amid the clinking of cutlery, we hear a car go by in the street below, and our six sets of eyes dart toward the window. The everyday purr of an engine has taken on a hair-raising quality, for it’s not the French who drive cars these days. Nobody takes another bite until the sound has faded away.
Madame LaRoche looks across the table at Maman. “When you arrived, did you notice all the Germans on our street?”
“Yes, Chloe was quick to mention it,” Maman replies a little pointedly. “There certainly seemed to be more of them than normal.”
“No number of Germans is normal,” Chloe interjects.
Maman pretends not to have heard her. “Is there a reason for it, Geneviève?”
“There is,” says Madame LaRoche a bit nervously. She glances toward the window again. “The Germans have been moving into a number of homes in the Eighth. Some of the places they stay in like houseguests; others they seize altogether.”
I shudder at the thought of a German in our home—his boots on the carpet, his jacket hanging over the chair in Papa’s study. A classmate of mine, Anette, has one of them staying with her family. He claimed the master bedroom, which forced Anette’s parents to sleep in her bedroom, which forced Anette to squeeze into bed with her two little sisters. “It’s lucky that you were spared,” I say to Madame LaRoche.
“It’s the first time we’ve been happy to have one of the smaller apartments on the block,” she admits. “But as I’ve been saying to the girls, just in case it does happen, we must try to keep a positive attitude about these Germans. It’s like you were saying, Odette: There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
“A positive attitude is the best way to get through this,” Maman says in agreement.
“And in any case, they aren’t all big bad wolves,” Madame LaRoche says. She waits until she is satisfied that everybody at the table is listening, and then she launches into a story. “I was walking home with my shopping the other day, and it was so sunny out, so I thought, Why don’t I take the long way home and enjoy the weather? Well, I turn the corner, and the first thing I see is my favorite bistro—a place I’ve been eating at since I was a little girl—with German signs on it. Some ridiculous long name. And I didn’t recognize anyone inside—they were all men in uniform. And, well, it just hit me like a train. I can’t explain what came over me—I was weak in the knees! I thought I might faint right there in the middle of the road!
“But then I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I look up into the face of a German. I tell him, ‘No, no, please leave me be’—I’m already frazzled enough—but he invites me to sit down at a table with him. I didn’t want to be rude, so I obliged, and I have to say, we ended up having a pleasant enough conversation. He spoke excellent French, and he told me what a beautiful city we live in. He even asked for sightseeing recommendations.”
“And he gave you the champagne,” Marie points out.
“Yes,” Madame LaRoche says with a mischievous smile, raising her glass. “And he gave me the champagne.”
Across the table, Chloe bristles.
With a smile plastered to my face, I listen as Marie and Monique muse about the other rationed items they could try to get from the Germans. I wonder how they would react if they knew what I did on Friday. It’s the kind of thing people would expect from Chloe, maybe, but never from me, the one who typically follows rules to a tee. I keep the memory to myself, turning it over and over like a shiny coin in my pocket.
Back at the apartment, when we’ve both changed into our pajamas, Chloe flops face-first onto my bed.
“That was terrible,” she moans into the comforter.
Gingerly, I lie down next to her, thinking about how to respond. Chloe is my best friend in the world—closer to me than Charlotte and Simone combined—but these days, it’s hard to know how much of myself I should share with her. I know the way she is, and my worst fear is that I’ll somehow encourage her to do something reckless and stupid again, like confronting another Wehrmacht officer head-on. Yesterday she got away with it, but the next time it could be different.
“I agree that parts of it were terrible, but it wasn’t all bad,” I say.
Chloe flops over onto her back like a fish on dry land, disbelief written across her face.
“Yes, it was all bad! I had to sit there and listen to stupid Madame LaRoche go on about how much she loves the Germans. She probably wants one of them to move in with her. More champagne to go around!”
“Chloe . . .”
“Why doesn’t everybody hate the Germans like I do? Why doesn’t everybody feel this . . . damn . . . angry?” She flings a pillow across the room, and it knocks over a pile of books next to the window. “Why don’t you feel this angry, Adalyn? You just sit there all the time with that smile on your face.”
“I don’t know, Chloe.” I fidget with the hem of my nightgown because I can’t look her in the eye. Then, smiling wryly, I say, “The day the war is over, I’m going to tell Madame LaRoche she’s insufferable.”
Chloe and I made up a game when we were cooped up at Uncle Gérard’s farmhouse last spring. The rules are simple: You go back and forth naming all the fun things you can’t wait to do when the war is over.