Danielle Steel: Kaleidoscope

“What is your name? Mine is Sam.”

She hesitated for a long time, thinking he didn't need to know it, and then shrugged, as though talking to herself. “Solange Bertrand.” But she did not hold out her hand in introduction. “You go?” She looked at him hopefully and he gestured toward the cafe across the street.

“One cup of coffee, then I go? Please?”

For an instant, he thought she would get angry again, and then, her shoulders drooping for the first time, she seemed to hesitate.

“ Je suis très fatiguée. ” She pointed to the books. He knew she couldn't be going to school at the moment. Everything was disrupted.

“Do you go to school usually?”

“Teaching … little boy at home … very sick … tuberculose. ”

He nodded. Everything about her seemed noble. “Aren't you hungry?” She didn't seem to understand and he made the eating gesture again, and this time she laughed, showing beautiful teeth and a smile that made his heart do cartwheels.

“ D'accord … d'accord … ” She held up one hand, fingers splayed. “ Cinq minutes … five minute!”

“You'll have to drink fast and their coffee is pretty hot …” He felt as though he were flying as he took the string bag from her and led her across the street to the cafe. The owner greeted her as though he knew her, and seemed interested by the fact that she was there with an American soldier. She called him Julien and they chatted for a moment before she ordered a cup of tea, but she refused to order anything to eat until Sam ordered for her. He ordered some cheese and bread, and in spite of herself, she devoured it. He noticed then for the first time, how thin she was when he looked at her closely. The proud shoulders were mostly bones, and she had long graceful fingers. She sipped the hot tea carefully and seemed grateful for the steaming liquid.

“Why you do this?” She asked him after she had sipped the tea. She shook her head slowly. “ Je ne comprends pas. ”

He was unable to explain even to her why he felt so compelled to speak to her, but the moment he had laid eyes on her, he knew he had to.

“I'm not sure.” He looked pensive, and she seemed not to understand. He threw up his hands to show her he didn't know himself. And then he tried to explain it, touching his heart, and then his eyes. “I felt something different the first time I saw you.”

She seemed to disapprove and glanced at the other girls in the cafe, with American soldiers, but he was quick to shake his head. “No, no … not like that… more …” He indicated “bigger” with his hands, and she looked sadly at him as though she knew better.

“ Ça n'existe pas … it do not exist.”

“What doesn't?”

She touched her heart and indicated “bigger,” as he had.

“Have you lost someone in the war? …”He hated to ask, “Your husband?”

Slowly she shook her head, and then not knowing why, she told him. “My father … my brother … the Germans kill them … my mother die of tuberculose. … My father, my brother, dans la Résistance.”

“And you?”

“ J'ai soigné ma mére … I … take sick my mother …”

“You took care of your mother?” She nodded.

“ J'avais peur ”—she waved her hand in annoyance at herself, and then indicated fright—“ de la Résistance … because my mother she need me very much…. My brother was sixteen …” Her eyes filled with tears then, and without thinking he reached out and touched Solange's hand, and miraculously she let him, for an instant at least, before drawing it away to take another sip of tea, which gave her the breather she needed from the emotions of the moment.

“Do you have other family?” She looked blank. “More brothers? Sisters? Aunts and uncles?”

She shook her head, her eyes serious. She had been alone for two years now. Alone against the Germans. Tutoring to make enough money to survive. She had often thought of the Resistance after her mother died, but she was too frightened, and her brother had died such a pointless death. He hadn't died for glory, he had died betrayed by one of their French neighbors. Everyone seemed to be collaborating, and a traitor. Except for a handful of loyal Frenchmen, and they were being hunted down and slaughtered. Everything had changed. And Solange along with it. The laughing, ebullient girl she had once been, had become a smoldering, angry, distant woman. And yet this boy had somehow reached out and touched her and she knew it. Worse yet, she liked it. It made her feel human again.

“How old are you, Solange?”

“ Dix-neuf …” She thought about it for a minute, trying to find the right numbers in English. “Ninety.” She said quietly and then he laughed at her, and shook his head.

“No, I don't think so. Nineteen?” Suddenly, she realized what she had said, and she laughed too, for the first time, looking suddenly young again and more beautiful than ever. “You look terrific for ninety.”

“ Et vous? ” She asked the same question of him.

“Twenty-two.” It was suddenly like boy-and-girl exchanges anywhere, except that they had both seen so much of life. She in Paris, and he with his bayonet, killing Germans.

“ Vous étiez étudiant? … student?”

He nodded. “At a place called Harvard, in Boston.” He was still proud of it, even now, oddly enough with her it still seemed to matter, and he was doubly proud when he saw a light of recognition in her eyes.

“ 'Arvard?”

“You've heard of it?”

“ Bien sÛr … of course! … like la Sorbonne, no?”

“Probably.” He was pleased that she knew it, and they exchanged a smile. The tea and bread and cheese were long gone, but she didn't seem so anxious to leave now. “Could I see you tomorrow, Solange? To go for a walk maybe? Or lunch? … dinner?” He realized how hungry she was now, how little food she probably had, and he felt it his duty to feed her.

She started to shake her head and indicated the books in the string bag.

“After? … or before? … please … I don't know how long I will be here.” There was already talk of their leaving Paris and moving on to Germany, and he couldn't bear the thought of leaving her. Not now … not yet … and maybe not ever. It was his first taste of puppy love, and he was totally in her thrall as he gazed into the green eyes that seemed so much gentler now, and so full of wisdom.

She sighed. He was so persistent. And in spite of herself, she liked him. During the entire Occupation, she had not made friends with a single German, and certainly no soldier, and she didn't see why the liberation should be any different, and yet … and yet, this boy was different. And she knew it.

“ D'accord, ” she said reluctantly.

“Don't look so excited,” he teased and she looked confused as he smiled, and took her hand again. “Thank you.”

They stood up slowly then and he walked her to her door across the street. She gave him a formal little handshake and thanked him for dinner, and then with a resolute sound, the heavy door closed behind her. As Sam made his way slowly through the streets of Paris, he felt as though his whole life had changed in only a few hours. He wasn't sure how, but he knew that this woman … this girl … this extraordinary creature … had come into his life for a reason.

Chapter 2

“Where were you last night?” Arthur yawned as they had breakfast together in the dining room of the hotel where they were quartered. It was the Hôtel Idéal on the rue Saint-Sebastien, and troops were being billeted in similar quarters all over Paris. Arthur himself had had a particularly pleasant evening, which ended with too much wine, but not too many women.