Chapter Two

Chapter Two

 Paris Nov. 1937

In the back room of a café near the University, intellectual giants met to discuss philosophy. A few students hung around the edges of the discussion and participated--if they had the courage. Emil Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Jean Wahl, and Albert Kojeve had begun this “college of sociology” and, although they mostly spoke to each other, they considered themselves a school for hope in a chaotic world. When lecturing during the day, alone in front of a large crowd of students and guests, each of these men seemed distinguished and powerful. They plucked great ideas out of the air and wove them into patterns of an intimidating intellectual complexity. For Nöelle, who had pictured herself studying ancient inscriptions in a peaceful room surrounded by potsherds and note cards,  these lectures and the contortions of modern political thought were shattering.

On the other hand, lectures on Ethnology, Egyptology, and early Greek religion, were strangely comforting. Stelae and tomb paintings, archaeological digs on the dry plains of Turkey, lonely temples on the Greek islands, these were exactly the subjects that had always exerted a magical influence on her imagination. To be sitting at last in a lecture hall and listening to the great Boreux describe the excavations at Deir-el-Medineh was the reward she had longed for throughout a difficult girlhood. Identical black notebooks began to stack up on her desk at home, each filled with her lecture notes, recorded  in tiny, satisfyingly neat, black letters and rivaling Lili’s collection of journals, in quantity if not in originality. The margins were filled with pencil sketches of her impressions and the unconscious doodlings of an anxious mind.

By day and by night she dreamed of the dust of Luxor. The lives of artisan’s working long ago in that village on the Nile became as real as her own. The Pharaoh commanded that art be made and men, women, and children sketched, chiseled, and painted. They ate bread and olives and dried yogurt at lunchtime. They watched the green waters of the Nile curl and eddy and the shadows lengthen over the tombs across the river. Such visions brought an exquisite peace to the first year of study.

After eating by herself for weeks Nöelle had fallen into a group that met habitually in the afternoons at a café near the University. Max Durand and his girlfriend Denise were both apostles of political science, Paul Clere a philosophy student, Marie-Claude Gireaux and  Georges Borosovic  were students of ethnology. They came together in pairs or threes, drank a great deal of coffee and were never calm.

Nöelle had at first listened to their debates from afar, day by day, choosing a table closer to the hubbub. She soon found herself an unquestioned member of the group. Max declared that Egyptology was as dead as the pharaohs and teased her unmercifully, insisting that she attend a few philosophy lectures. “Don’t become a mummy, little scholar! What is that bird, that sticks its head in the ground?”

“An ostrich.” It was obvious what was coming.

“You stick your head in the dust, ancient dust, the worst kind.”

“I stick my head in a midden.” She was becoming familiar with the terms.

“Exactly. You need to be exposed to some modern ideas. Anyway, if you want to make a splash in these traditional disciplines you’ll have to flush them out with some current thought.”

Denise shook her head and shot Nöelle a sympathetic look. “I’m sure she appreciates your concern, but why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself.”

Borosovic, usually her ally, in this case agreed. “He’s right. You’ll be hopelessly out of date if you don’t stay on top of the ideas of your own time. It will change the way you see everything, the past, the present, even your sherds.”

“I don’t want to change the way I see everything. I’m just getting my feet under me for the archaeology material. I don’t understand philosophy. It’s just arguments about thinking—what a stupid thing to argue about. Besides, I’m piling up Greek in here,” she pointed to her temple, “ I can’t afford to push it out with useless ideas.”

Max pushed the coffee cups and ashtrays aside and leaned across the table, his amber eyes burning. “Listen, I’m serious, Nöelle. You have a chance to hear Marcel Mauss speak, you have to take it. How are you going to explain to your students someday that you were here at the same time as Mauss, but you didn’t attend his lectures? You have to come with us.”

And so she had. The six of them had crowded together in the lecture hall on the following afternoon, a hall far more crowded and tense than those where archaeology was discussed. The smell of wet wool and young bodies overwhelmed the dusty aromas of the meeting hall. Another stack of notebooks had begun on her desk, where she recorded the words of the sociologists and philosophers that her friends admired. These notebooks, were not neat, however, nor were they satisfying. The ideas came too thick and fast to record with precision. She could barely follow the leaps and contortions of the discussions, and was only able to capture a few of the thoughts and words that struck her as they flew past and to scrawl questions and arguments that occurred to her.

In attempting to sift some sense out from the discussion of Hegel and Durkheim, Kierkegaard and Compte,  Nöelle grasped one word, a beautiful word that leapt from the conversation into her head and stuck there. The word was “effervescence,” and when spoken by Mauss and the others it was infused with more than its straightforward sense, more even than its special sense in French. The word carried a halo, an aura created by the essential hopefulness professed by the outwardly grim and worldly philosophers. “Effervescence.” She held the word, carried it with her, turning it over in her mouth like a lemon drop, it’s sweetness never melting away. She wrote it in her notebooks, as a header before every lecture. On a Tuesday evening Max and Denise met her at a dark café to listen to the professors debate among themselves. The philosophers who seemed so large and powerful when speaking on a stage were reduced to mortal creatures in the smoky atmosphere of a public room. They shouted at one another, called each other names. No one person spoke for more than a  minute  before being interrupted by a colleague in a rush of spit and flying tobacco. Outside of the circle of great men sat a second circle of graduate students and favored apprentices, and beyond these, in the outer orbit, the younger students sat or stood, jostling for position and grinning quietly at one another when their elders became too overwrought.

Part of her understood their meaning, even without knowing more than the basics of political thought or philosophy that had been taught to everyone in secondary school. When Mauss spoke of in his slow thoughtful sentences, sitting forward, his light beard giving him an aura of age and wisdom, Nöelle was overcome by a sensation of belief, similar to that which she once had in church as the priest raised the communion cup over his head and consecrated the host   “There is a moment, we know it when it happens, when the alienated individual is transformed by a sacred interaction with others, and becomes part of something greater than himself. These are social energies, easily seen in other societies. I won’t say primitive, right my friend?” Mauss nodded toward Anatole Lewitsky, a young lecturer with a wide cheerful face. “But, let us say, societies not so bound by convention as our own. The highest expression of human endeavor comes from these rare moments of communication with other humans. We can’t achieve it on our own. Even the shaman’s journey is made sacred by the group that he serves, is it not, Lewitsky?”

The café was silent, in a rare moment of shared concentration. Nöelle could hear her own shallow breathing in the split second of silence before he continued. “This energy, that my uncle called ‘effervescence,’ is sorely lacking among us today. We all seek to be enlivened by that creativity that marks out genius, but it cannot happen without that sacred energy, rushing among us.”

Like the holy spirit, she thought, but knew better than to speak. She was probably the only one in the café, who ever went to church these days. “Who is his uncle?” she whispered to Paul.

“Durkheim. Don’t you know anything?” Paul rolled his eyes impatiently, and then they were both surprised to see their companion jumping up to speak.

Max, forgetting his place as a lowly student, blurted out an obvious question. “Isn’t that what happens when Hitler speaks and the crowds go wild? People say it is like an explosion of violence linking the crowd in some wild current…”

At the mention of Hitler, the café erupted into its own violent reaction. Nöelle could hear a few voices over the noise. Someone was yelling, “Exactly right. Anything holy can become unholy in the wrong hands.”

“And you are going to dictate who is holy and who is not? It’s always the same …” She couldn’t see above the heads of the crowd, now on their feet, a knots of damp wools and high pitched shouting.

Mauss was standing shaking his fist, “No, that is something altogether different. Don’t link these ideas with Hitler -- the sacred can only bring out the finest elements in the human soul!”

The moment of bliss evaporated. The old philosopher had, for a moment, conjured the very essence of which he had spoken, binding them all in the hope that a fine bold spirit could unite the forces of good in the world. She imagined some ancient priest fanning a holy flame, for a moment could almost imagine that flame outshining the fires of the barbarian camps across the border. But of course, those fascist fires kept burning while this group disintegrated into a quarrelsome bunch of old men in a smoky café. Close to tears, she grabbed her coat, and push her way through crowd, making for the door.

“Wait, wait, all of you!” A golden man had jumped up on a chair to be heard. He gestured toward Nöelle at the door. “You’re driving away your young disciples, my friends!  This is the reason we meet here. To feel, to believe in this idea of effervescence. We light each other on fire, and so we should, so we must. This is our college of the study of man, our café university. “ The noise faded to a mutter and there was some sheepish laughter. “Let us agree then, together we study in our own fields, and we meet here to keep the electricity flowing among us. Marcel will light up his students, and we will light a fire under ours in a small way. These are the youth,” he gestured again at Nöelle and the other young people crowded into the back of the room, “They will inherit this old Europe, and they need what every flint we can provide to light their own fires!”

He had even the waiters cheering. And then he was calling for champagne, “Who better than the French to understand effervescence!” She found herself with a foaming glass in her hand and the stranger beside her, one arm around her shoulder answering every toast with the refrain, “To effervescence!” 

He murmured into her ear. “You should have more patience. Professors talk a lot, but they are stronger than they seem.” 

“Are you a professor?” 

“I am now.” He laughed and waved his drink at Mauss.

“You don’t look like one.” He looked, as a matter of fact, like a giant from a Nazi poster, his  wiry gold curls combed back from a broad forehead, a craggy tanned face, and eyes of an unlikely blue.

“I know, I know. You’re thinking I look like an Aryan prince.” Reluctantly she moved away from his arm.

“Prince? That might be a bit strong,” flirting easily. It must be the champagne.

He bowed and pulled a sad face. “I’m desolated, Mademoiselle.” 

The champagne having, predictably, dried up as suddenly as it appeared, her group began to move toward the door. “I have to go.”

“Can I walk you somewhere?”

“I’m with  my friends.” Stupid. She should have said yes.

He took her coat and helped her into it. “Do you know any of them?” He inclined his head toward the knot of professors, now laughing good-naturedly at the bar. She shook her head.

“Then I’m forced to introduce myself. Borislav Habart”

“Let me guess, an ethnologist.”

“Good guess, you noticed we have a lot of them. But no, I’m afraid, just a humble artist. I work at the Museum of Man, with their collections and give the odd lecture now and then on various subjects in ancient art. And you?”

“A student. Egyptology … perhaps.”

Max beckoned from the door and she could see Denise nudging him to quit.

She backed away, “Thank you for the champagne.”

“So, you refuse to tell me your name? I knew I should have gotten a proper introduction!”

“Oh!” she was blushing now. “Nöelle. Nöelle de Cassignac.”

Surprisingly, no one teased her on the way home. They were too busy ribbing Max for asking the question that started the argument.  They made a noisy group descending the Metro stairs and an old woman shook her head at them as they surged around her. The harsh light of the subway train made the old look very old and the young very young. No one else seemed to have felt what she did listening to Professor Mauss. No one else seemed to feel the effects of that word. Incandescence. No, effervescence. The two words fused in her imagination into a bright cool light. She thought of the serene faces of the pharaoh on the walls of his holy city, and the narrow halos hovering over the heads of medieval saints.

Denise took her arm. “I’m glad you came with us. I hate being the only girl in this bunch,” she whispered. “Besides, I think we have you to thank for the champagne.”

She hoped to run into Boris Habart again, but, working among the boxes she did not. It soon became obvious, however, that everyone knew who he was. Agnes, one of the normally the quietest of the secretaries became animated when speaking of him.

“I heard he’s the son of a Russian countess, but he says he grew up in Hungary. Everybody says he was arrested by the Germans for being a communist and he spent time in prison before he came here, but I’ve never hear him say so.”

“But, how do you know him, Agnes?” The smallest of questions would keep her going on this topic indefinitely.

“Oh, he was always around the old museum. He’ll have an office in the new one too, no doubt.” Her voice lowered as she spoke of their supervisor, “Madame Rellion likes him very much. She says he’s quite brilliant and the director of the museum is having Habart do sketches for some of the exhibits.”

Gossip suggested that Madame Rellion was having an affair with Monsieur le Directeur, Moise Chambrel. Agnes’ demeanor, however, suggested that it was Habart who was of special interest.

“But I thought Madame and Chambrel …”

Agnes peered into the corridor before continuing. “Yes, yes, well she is often seen leaving with him, that’s a fact. But she adores Boris Habart. And who would not?  So charming, so handsome, so funny.” Her face turned pink at the thought.

Nöelle found this news disturbing. So, he was charming to everyone.

December, 1937

The day of departure for Berlin drew closer and, strangely she had not seen Boris Hobart again. She made pretexts to visit other parts of the museum premises and toured the new building, but never ran into him. He was often in her thoughts, although she was impatient with romantic fantasies when other’s wasted time on them. Perhaps it wasn’t the man so much as the way he made her feel. During those few moments of flirtation she hadn’t felt awkward or unusual. She had felt like an ordinary girl, pretty enough to flirt with the handsomest man in the room. Confident enough to need nothing from him. Would it be the same if they met again?  Maybe people just grew out of their awkward stages and one day feared nothing. At least nothing in the social milieu.

Also, there was no word from Fleury. She began to hope he had forgotten her. In December she entertained no longing for adventure. Longed in fact, only for a comforting and sybaritic vacation, surrounded by Cette’s new wealth and enjoying her happiness.

 Marcelline took the news well. No longer depressed, she had her own plans for the holidays. “Caroline Ford, the American girl, and a bunch of us are going up for a ski holiday. I was going to ask you if you wanted to come, but since you usually go to Cette…” 

Friday, early evening and the drawing room was already filling with friends. Slim men of indeterminate age sipped American cocktails from wide-rimmed glasses. Always fewer women than men. The women were sprinkled judiciously through the crowd like parsley on a platter of deviled eggs, just enough to make the presentation interesting, but not so many as to deflect attention from the main attraction. The clothes in the room must have made the fortune of several tailors, for every suit and cocktail dress was perfectly fitted. Every shoulder was broad, every waist slim. Nary a pucker or wrinkle marred their casual poses. Marcelline’s silky bob shone blue-black as she surveyed the room, her gaze coming to rest at last on Nöelle’s skirt and jacket.

“My dear, you can’t go to the cousins looking like that again. Now that they are practically royal, you’ll look a fool. I’ll tell you what. I had to send back a couple of evening dresses, perfectly hideous. So, I’ve a credit at the dressmakers. Tomorrow, you and I, we’ll go and put together a few outfits. I refuse to let you leave Paris looking like a German!” Laughing at her own wit, Marcelline wrinkled her brow. “You’ve quite developed a bosom this year. I think one of my evening gowns would fit you now.”

Poised to object, Nöelle realized that her mother was right. She didn’t want to embarrass Cette in front of her new family. At the wedding in July, her cousin and her aunt had pressed her to borrow from the collection of sundresses that hung in the dressing room they were using as a closet in the old schloss. Part castle, part villa and housing 75 guests from the old families of Europe, the ancient building echoed with the clatter of high heels and laughter. The dresses had been useful. Since the girls were of a similar build and shared the extremely fair skin and quick color that marked Papa’s side of the family, they had always been able to share clothes, although the borrowing went mostly one way. Even their features were similar, small at the nose, wide at the mouth, long at the eye. Somehow these coalesced into an angelic prettiness on Cette’s face and fell short of it in Nöelle’s, her mouth a little larger, her eyes a bit too long, her nose and chin just that much fiercer than her cousin’s. And of course, Nöelle had inherited Marcelline’s dark hair and the resulting black eyebrows. The dark slash of brow and grey eyes rather than blue made the greatest distinction between the two girls. Aunt Francesca used to call them Rose Red and Snow White after their favorite fairy tale.

This trip, as Uncle Fleury had noted, the cousins would be attending high level Wehrmacht social functions and mingling with top bureaucrats from the current regime. It would be impossible to look as good as Cette with her pale Nordic beauty, but at least she could represent the French flair, with a little help from mother. Fleury’s had eyes lit up, when he heard the description of the events the girls would be attending in Berlin over the holidays. The interest remained unspoken, but surely an alert guest might pick up tidbits useful to the opposition.

“C’est bon, Maman. That can be my Christmas present.” As much as she loved shopping, Marcelline was notorious for her poor selection of gifts.

“Excellent! I’ll pick you up tomorrow, early. Say 10:00. I’ll bring some of my gowns for you to try. Tell the maid on your way out to bring some down from last year. Now, excuse me mon ange, I have to go stir things up.”

Ten was early by Marcelline’s standards and would leave time to work on the Greek vocabulary. She watched her mother’s thread her way among the crowd, erect and elegant, the her watered-silk cocktail dress lying smoothly across her hips, her legs still slim, her neck as smooth and graceful as ever. It wouldn’t hurt to learn a thing or two from the woman. Nöelle unconsciously smoothed the wrinkles from her own suit,  well-cut, but rumpled from a day of rushing from place to place on the metro, dusty in the back from perching on a window bay in the crowded lecture hall. The high-necked black sweater had seen better days, was a hand-me-down long ago from Cette or Marcelline. Her shoes were practical, she wore no jewelry or scarf, except the wool one wrinkled into a ball in her coat pocket. No little accent sparkled on her lapel. Marcelline pointed out time and again that such details, correctly employed, made all the difference. The cut, the accent, the fragrance – these marked a Frenchwoman. It wouldn’t hurt to try a little harder to be a woman of the world when she crossed the border. If she was going to Germany, she would go as a chic Frenchwoman.  A better, bolder version of herself.

Despite the sunshine, Saturday shoppers wore furs to ward off the sharp wind sweeping across the Place Vendomé. The broad square was the center of fashionable commerce and home to designers famed all over the world. Exclusive boutiques lined streets surrounding the square. Chanel, Guerlain, Worth, Lanvin, all originated here. Marcelline’s favorite boutique,  La Belle Planète ,boasted an address just off the glittering Rue de la Paix. Simple and moderne, all mirror and glass. A slim mannequin modeled a trendy suit in ice blue wool, the skirt fitted at the top and belling slightly at mid-calf, the jacket boxy, splattered with lozenge-shapes in bronze and green, and trimmed in Japanese braid. It was impossible to imagine wearing such a thing on the train, much less on the metro. It  didn’t bode well for the day.

The struggle lasted from eleven until two o’clock. Marcelline insisted on the latest cuts and silhouettes and on unusual colors and wanted to order all new undergarments. She lost on the first count but made some headway on the other two. Noelle insisted on simple cuts and practical fabrics. She won on both counts. Madame Lisette, the storeowner, tiny, ancient, and voluble, made peace between them, while, at the same time measuring, fitting, calling for fabric samples, flourishing trays of buttons, and  waiting on other customers. Seamtresses, assistants and models flew back and forth from the fitting room to the backstock to the showroom, rainbow lengths of wool, silk, gauze, and taffeta piled in their arms. “Garnet? Trimmed in navy? Or perhaps trimmed in black satin? Or better yet trimmed in a Chinese floral binding. What have you got against russet?  Much more fashionable than garnet this year. Not ice-blue? Why ever not? It’s stunning, you’ll be noticed where ever you go in such a color. Then sea green perhaps? Too bright! Mais non! Perhaps the same, but duller, a stormy sea green, a velvet collar? No, no, no, those buttons are too military; they’ll looking cheap, believe me once they are on, you’ll hate them -- mother-of-pearl, dyed to match, or these, carved bone from Africa? Or these, metal again, but with a lovely floral motif, very ancien regime…” The words and opinions flew over her head like a flock of starlings.

 Finally, in a moment of silence, alone in the dressing room, Nöelle burst into tears. There was something about making decision after rapid-fire decision that drained her of energy. Again, the simplest, most basic skills needed in daily interaction eluded her. The time when those practical skills could mean life or death drew nearer each day. On top of everything else, she had yet to hear back from Fleury concerning his plans for her. Quite possibly he’d found her unsuitable; still the least he could do was tell her. A note would’ve done the trick. Another 10 days and she’d be gone. Some relief came with the thought that she might not have to go through with it, but more powerful was a feeling of loss. A strong part of her had stood up to say “yes” to something she believed in. She had been willing to take a risk to help others. By doing so, she knew, she was also helping herself. She could not become the person she wanted to be without making some contribution when the world was such a mess.

She wiped her tears on the fitting smock and surveyed herself in the long dressing room mirror. She looked strong. Her hair lay in a modest roll at the nape of her neck. Jaw clenched. The underwear, definitely a bit dingy. She patted her face with powder from her almost-bare compact, trying to rub away the remains of tears. Back in her own clothes, Nöelle hoped the ordeal was over, at least for the day. Another fitting would take place next week.

In the outer part of the shop, things had settled down. Ladies drifted away for leisurely lunches. Madame’s voice could be heard in the back blending with her mother’s demanding one. Something about seam bindings. Nöelle wandered over to the shop window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the glow from the Place Vendomé. The buildings there had been designed in the 1600’s as a beautiful façade behind which government and educational buildings were to be built. The full plan had never been carried out, but the honey-colored stone buildings retained the elegance and serenity planned by that long-ago city architect. She didn’t spend much time in this part of town, but the mansard roofs, the ornate pilasters, and the shops in the lower level arcades still seemed to her the most elegant spot in Paris. Maybe not the heart of Paris, but certainly its top hat. She longed to escape and walk there now, running her fingers along the bas reliefs at the base of the Napoleon’s column. She and her father used to do that, while waiting for her mother to finish shopping. They had craned their necks like tourists to see the gold-plated statue of Napoleon in Ceasar’s toga that crowned the metal tower. She had played in its long shadow and Papa had guided her fingers along the figures in relief at the base and told her stories about the Corisican general’s defeat of Prussian troops and how they melted down German cannons to make the column.

The window of the showroom faced the wrong way, however, and barely a glimpse of the square could be seen from its broad windows. Instead she looked at the evening gowns and winter suits on display and tried to ignore her own reflection. “Mademoiselle Nöelle! I am so happy to run into you.” Madame Hoffman, from the Sabbath dinner at Lili’s some weeks ago. “I was waving at you from the window,” she went on,  “but you seemed deep in thought, so…I came in.” The young woman looked around nervously. “It’s such an elegant shop, I hated to, but…”

“Madame Hoffman, how lovely to see you. It’s my mother’s favorite boutique. We’re getting some travelling clothes.”

“Yes, I know. Lili told me you’d be here. I was running late, but I’m glad I didn’t miss you.”

Nöelle frowned. Lili told the woman about this date with her mother? “Miss me?”

Madame Hoffman seemed nervous, her handbag clasped tightly in one hand, a huge umbrella in the other, despite the blue sky outside. “Yes. I have Lili’s umbrella. Her umbrella.”

“What?” Nöelle was confused.

“Yes, she left it at our house last week, perhaps you’d return it to her for me?” The Hoffman girl’s eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Well, I guess so. I mean, of course I can. But you were just there yesterday for dinner.” And Lili never used an umbrella.

“Mademoiselle, take the umbrella.” She’d lowered her voice and her gloved hand was shaking as she pushed it into Nöelle’s hand.

Nöelle obeyed, still frowning.

“It’s sure to be sleeting in Berlin. You’ll need to borrow it.”

“Yes, the weather’s always nasty this time of year in Berlin,” she spoke without thinking, still thrown off by the unexpected encounter. The tips of Madame Hoffman’s gloves had been carefully darned and her coat carried the little wool balls of a garment too often worn.

“Very nasty in Berlin, right now. Quite.” The young woman squeezed Nöelle’s arm hard enough to leave a bruise. “So don’t lose your umbrella. I hope you aren’t as absent minded as your friend, eh?”

What was she trying to say? Was the girl trying to warn her against making a trip into Germany?

“Mademoiselle,” her small gloved fingers were hurting now, digging into the flesh of her arm and shaking it. Her face still bore a tense smile. Voice falling to a whisper, she added, “Monsieur Bardet, Uncle Fleury, he told me you’d be needing an umbrella.”

Nöelle’s face went scarlet. From her calves to her neck a prickling tide of panic washed over her. How could she be so stupid? Thank God they were in France now, and not downtown Berlin, where someone might already have noticed the peculiar exchange.

A shop assistant emerged from behind the velvet drape. “Can I help you Madame?”  Her brown eyes became pellet-like as she took in the Hoffman girl’s coat and home-knitted beret.

“Yes.” Nöelle turned toward the glass cases that housed accessories. “This is my friend …”she searched frantically for her companion’s first name, “Anna Hoffman. It’s her birthday and I wanted to buy her a pair of gloves.”

Now it was Madame Hoffman, who turned red. “I couldn’t…”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve been looking forward to it all day. One needs something to get through all those fittings, not to mention a few arguments with my Maman,” she smiled at the salesgirl and rolled her eyes. A typical daughterly rebellion. “And it was so nice of you to save me a trip and come all this way to return my umbrella. You know how these days before a trip are, just packed, and with school…”

The clerk laid out several of the cheapest cotton gloves they carried, in greys and fawns.

 “No. Nothing like this.” Nöelle said. “Something in calfskin, maybe fur lined?”

Anna Hoffman had reluctantly pulled her gloves off to reveal pink, work worn hands. Forgetting her embarrassment, she turned a pair of hand stitched gloves over, rubbing her fingers across the soft kid. “Cashmere,” she breathed, looking at the lining.

“Yes, thank you. A pair of these. In black, I think.”

“Parfait.” The sales girl said, looking at her curiously. “I’ll put them on your mother’s account.”

Her companion drew a sharp breath, but Nöelle was ahead of her.

“Of course not. I have cash, if you please. And I’d like a nice box and gift wrap. Be sure you use plenty of ribbon.”  Nöelle was hoping the transaction could be completed before her mother finished with her fitting, but if not, then so be it. Moments later the girl returned with a lavishly beribboned box and placed it into the establishment’s distinctive white shopping bag, striped with emerald green. Such a bag informed the world that a purchase had just been made at La Belle Planète. The young women hugged each other at the door, exchanging the kiss on both cheeks. Both exclaimed their thanks and Nöelle whispered, “Sorry I was so dense. This is the last thing I was expecting.”

“It always is! Get used to that. And, a word of advice—remember everyone you meet. Everyone, everywhere, even in the background, especially in the background. Memorize the faces and try to associate every face with a place, more important, even, than names. Names come and go, but a face and where you saw it, that can save your life. Good luck.” Another quick squeeze and the door chimed after her. The German woman vanished into the lunchtime crowd.

The day no longer seemed normal, but the umbrella did. A little heavy, but, then it was a big umbrella. Black and utilitarian. Not too new, not too old. Perfect. At least she hoped so.