Chapter Two
Two
Freedom felt a lot like an unmoored boat adrift at sea. Marcel Laurent moved with the other passengers from Gare d’Orsay, but as the sounds of trains faded and the crowd around him dispersed, he had no idea where he should go. His feet slowed.
He had only the clothes on his back. No money.
No flat to return to. Certainly there was no band or ticker tape parade to welcome him home.
He craned his neck up toward the French sunshine, wishing it felt a little warmer, felt different than it had in Germany.
Wishing . . . wishing the train had taken him back in time, not just back to Paris.
He’d imagined, as he lay night after night on his unforgiving bunk in the POW camp, that coming home would feel like victory.
He’d imagined that returning would be full of cheering crowds and waving streamers—not for him, but for the mass of people he’d imagined would be coming home with him, after a miraculous end to the war.
Yet here he stood, alone, not even sure who to thank for his freedom.
The grim-faced commandant had said he was part of a prisoner exchange program, but Marcel didn’t know why, or who had done the exchanging, or even what had been exchanged for him.
Had his name been pulled randomly from a hat?
Had the camp commandant been so eager to get rid of him and his “degenerate” music?
At that thought, his lips tugged up a bit.
Marcel could play Bach and Beethoven and Mozart, Liszt and Wagner and Strauss.
And, on the decrepit old upright piano they’d had at the camp, he had .
. . until he realized the commandant and officers enjoyed it so much.
Jazz, though—jazz had earned him sneers from the brass, commands to stop soiling their ears with the music they said belonged to the “inferior Blacks.”
He’d played it every chance he got. First any song he could think of, then, when memory failed him—jazz had never been his true love, after all—he’d resorted to composing his own.
Not all the Nazi soldiers hated it, even though they were supposed to. Several had always taken over guard duty whenever he sat down at the piano, and he’d seen their feet tapping.
His stomach twisted. It wasn’t fair, the effect music had on people. It was hard to view the enemy as faceless monsters when they were wiping tears from their eyes after a nocturne or tapping their foot in time to his syncopated beat.
“Marcel! Marcel Laurent!”
Marcel had already drifted to a halt, but now he turned.
The voice had sounded familiar, but only vaguely.
Not a friend, not family. The accent hadn’t been quite native, the voice deep and .
. . and perfectly suited to the barrel-chested man who pushed his way through the crowd, his jacket and hat looking so obscenely fine compared to the threadbare uniforms Marcel had been used to seeing that he had to blink.
He searched his mind for a name, landing on one as the smiling gentleman pounced, gripping his hand and pumping it. “Monsieur Grigoryan. How good to see you again.”
The Armenian’s smile was a good deal brighter than the sun. “Ah, you remember me!”
The fellow ought to be used to it—he’d made a name for himself by being a patron of the arts more generous than most. And in Paris, that was saying something.
“Of course,” Marcel said, knowing his own smile would look as weathered and worn as he felt.
“Though I confess I’m a bit surprised you remember me. ”
“Remember you?” Grigoryan gripped Marcel’s elbow and used it to propel him forward. “I’ve been negotiating for months for your release. And here you are!”
“Negotiating . . .” Maybe this was all a dream. That made more sense than, well . . . this. “Why would you do that?”
Only after the question slipped out did he pause to think that maybe it wasn’t the right thing to say. Thank you probably would have been better.
Grigoryan laughed, the sound so loud and unfettered that Marcel found himself stiffening, turning, waiting for the camp guards to saunter up and demand they quiet down. But the only German soldiers he saw were conferring over a map at the corner and didn’t pay them any attention.
“I was distressed to learn you’d joined the military,” Grigoryan said, motioning him toward the nearest metro station.
“I’d been ready to reach out to you about an opportunity when I heard the news, and then .
. . well, tragedy, yes?” The man shook his head, eyes going stormy.
“So many good men killed or taken prisoner. So much changed here in Paris.”
“Did it?” Marcel looked around as they walked. There were posters pasted to walls that hadn’t been there when he left, to be sure—Nazi propaganda. There were German soldiers everywhere.
But the women were still dressed to impress. Restaurants were still open. People still laughed as they strode down the streets.
Grigoryan followed Marcel’s gaze, then shook his head. “Many, it is true, only want to go on living life as they always have. But they are fooling themselves. Nothing is the same. Nothing.”
That, at least, felt like truth to Marcel’s weary soul.
He gave no reply as the magnate purchased their tickets, and given that they reached the platform just as the train arrived, there was no time to ask where they were going.
So he followed, settled beside the man on the bench, and wondered how long this anchorless feeling would last. How long he’d follow whoever led him without question. How long until he woke up.
Grigoryan checked his watch. “We should arrive just in time.”
“Arrive where?” There. That almost sounded like he cared where they were going.
“The Paris Opera.” This time, the Armenian’s smile didn’t look bright. It looked tense. Weary. Concerned.
It shouldn’t have soothed him. Marcel glanced down at his companion’s watch as well.
It wasn’t even noon yet. How was it so early?
It seemed like this day had begun ages ago.
Though, in his defense, he’d been traveling since yesterday.
Maybe it wasn’t that it felt early. Maybe it was that it felt late.
He’d scarcely dozed for five minutes at a time, certain that at any moment they’d stop the train, haul him and the other prisoners of war outside, and shoot them.
If his end was so near at hand, he wanted to be awake to see it coming.
Yet here he was instead. Heading to one of his favorite places in the world, it seemed. “The Opera,” he echoed. “At this time of day?”
“We’re not going inside. Just to the steps. I received a tip that there will be a surprise concert there today.”
The way Grigoryan said those words made him think surprise concert was a euphemism for something else. “Oh? Who’s playing?”
Grigoryan sent him a steady, sharp gaze. “The Berlin Philharmonic.”
He knew the man was gauging his reaction. Knew something hinged on whatever reaction he gave. But for the life of him, Marcel couldn’t make enough sense of the words to know how to react, or why his reaction mattered. “The Berlin Philharmonic.” He was little better than a parrot.
He’d seen the orchestra once, fifteen years ago. He’d been a teenager, traveling with his father for business. The show had been a gift—even then, Marcel felt most alive with music, and his father had understood that.
Why were they here, though? His brows knit. “Since when does the Berlin Philharmonic travel outside of Germany?”
Grigoryan’s lips twitched. “Haven’t you heard?” His voice was low, gravelly, tight. “This is Germany now.”
Marcel’s nostrils flared. “No. It’s not.”
“Glad someone remembers that.” The man leaned back and drew in a bracing breath. “I want you to see the performance. But don’t watch the musicians, if you please. Watch the people. Then, you will come to my home. You will eat, you will rest. And we will talk about why I wanted you back in France.”
Perhaps he’d grown too used to following orders. Perhaps he was curious enough that he didn’t even consider objecting. Perhaps he was too tired to ask anything else. Marcel nodded, rested his head against the side of the train, and let the familiar rhythm soothe him. Lull him. Seep into his soul.
Home. He was home.
He must have dozed off, because he jerked back to awareness when Grigoryan gave his knee a shake and said, “Our stop. Up we go.”
A moment later they emerged from the underground, back into the spring sunshine, and were striding down the Boulevard des Capucines.
Marcel’s eyes waited for their first glimpse of the Palais Garnier, and his chest went tight when he found it towering over the street with its white stone, its soaring columns, the green-copper rotunda catching the eye as it had always done.
He’d worked so hard to earn a position with the Opera.
All the years of study, all the positions in lesser orchestras, improving his art and earning a name for himself.
Finally, finally he’d sat at the piano on that incomparable stage.
It had seemed that God had heard all his prayers, delivered him all his dreams. He’d seen his own name in musical reviews, followed by praise upon heaping praise.
And then, the pinnacle. He’d conducted the orchestra, exactly once. One performance that had left him with a euphoria he thought he’d never descend from.
The next morning, every newspaper had been full, not of musical reviews, but of doom. Germany had taken Poland. Germany was advancing toward France. War had come.
The Phony War, they called it now. Because while France had been digging in to protect their supposedly undefeatable line of defense, Germany did nothing to engage.
All that tension, all that planning, all those men who had joined up like he had, determined to take his piece of the glory defending his homeland .
. . all for nothing. Months of inaction, of second-guessing.
And then defeat, in the blink of an eye.