Frances
Paris
My throat was scratchy and my head felt heavy, but I didn’t move from my spot at the window of the library.
I’d been sitting there most of the day, and my rear quarters were numb from the hard window seat, but still I didn’t move.
It was like watching some awful accident, or hearing a tragic story, but I couldn’t tear myself away.
I’d actually been sitting here for days now – on and off. I’d watched as the people of Paris began streaming out of the city. A river of Parisians, walking, cycling, riding in cars, in wagons, carts, vans and trucks to escape what was coming.
I didn’t blame them for leaving – following the government who’d fled to the south.
But I didn’t go with them. Paris was my adopted home, but it was where I belonged.
And I wasn’t French. I had no family or friends in other parts of the country whom I could call upon for help. I belonged here. In the library.
I shifted on the seat, straightening my legs and feeling the blood rush into my feet and make them tingle.
The tanks had started rumbling through the city early this morning, before the sun had properly come up. I wasn’t normally at work so early, but I’d not been able to sleep, so I’d cycled slowly through the quiet streets, just as dawn was breaking.
I’d made myself a mug of coffee and settled into my position, in time to see the first tanks arrive.
They were two streets away – easily visible from my high window – and they were noisy.
There was no chance anyone could miss the ominous growl of their treads on the cobbled streets.
Nor the loud announcements telling Parisians to stay inside.
The flags weren’t easy to miss either. Huge black pennants adorned with swastikas, flying from the vehicles.
‘Frances, you’re being overly dramatic,’ my high school science teacher would say to me when I announced I didn’t understand a word of chemistry.
And it was that I thought of now, as I saw the Nazis arrive in Paris.
They were being overly dramatic. Arriving with tanks and flags and guns, to make a point.
As though we’d not all seen this coming.
I stayed there all day, with my coffee half-drunk and cold beside me.
And now it was late. Darkness was rolling in, just as the tanks had.
And all across Paris, the lights were going out.
Flickers at windows were hidden. Thick curtains yanked across doorways.
I sat there, watching the night get darker and the lights fade, until all I could see was my own reflection in the glass.
And I wondered what on earth was going to happen now.