Excerpt
The Mademoiselle Alliance
1I Never Want to LeaveMorocco, 1928I’m eighteen years old and I’m standing in a street with my husband of just two days beside me and I wish my eyes were cameras and could capture everything I see. The turquoise domes that crown the buildings, the white cloths that helmet the heads of the men. The veiled women who are permitted only a thin net strip to look out onto the world. Do they revel in the anonymity, or do they want to tear off those claustrophobic skins and expose their faces to the bright, hot sunshine of Tangier?
Above me, perpendicular streets cascade through a tangle of houses with filigree balustrades wreathed like lace around them. To my right are laden donkeys and motorcars, a bazaar selling silk and leather, olives and guns. Guards with stories engraved on their sword belts stand in the niches of temples. Naked men wail incantations to a worshipful crowd. Through it all, a descant melody hums: the muezzin calling in tongues I don’t yet understand, but that make my musician-trained body shiver as if I’ve just heard Bach for the very first time.
“Can we explore?” I’m already lunging toward the scent of cinnamon and saffron, wanting to taste it on my tongue.
“There’s more than enough heat, dirt, and poverty waiting for us in Rabat.”
The voice of my husband, Edouard Meric, is brusque and I stop.
It’s the first time he’s spoken to me with anything other than amusement, affection, or pride. He’s eight years older, an army officer working for the French Intelligence Service in Morocco. His dark eyes and brooding air made me think of a breathtakingly real Heathcliff the first time I saw him, but right now he looks more glowering than gothic. He’s the man some might say I’ve given up my dreams of being a concert pianist for, but I can barely recollect that, now that I’m in Morocco and the adventurous spirit born within me years ago as I explored Shanghai with my amah is quivering like the plucked string of a cello.
“We need to get there before dark,” he says, tone conciliatory now.
I climb into the car. The driver punches the accelerator and we lurch, stall, restart.
I almost whisper that I’m a much better driver and could probably take on the task, but my sister advised me to introduce Edouard to my unconventionalities one by one. So I settle for peeling off my gloves and discarding my shawl and hat, which isn’t proper in public, but layers are meant for a less tropical climate.
Through the Spanish zone, the roads are so brutal it feels like our car is being tossed from trough to crest of a twelve-foot wave. Edouard’s expression is grim, so I take his hand and his frown recedes. Such is the power of love—one hand woven into another’s banishes all unhappiness. I smile and his lips turn up in response.
When we reach French Morocco and the roads level out, it’s easier to speak. Edouard flaps a handkerchief back and forth. “God, it’s hot.”
It
is warm, but not in the humidly oppressive way of Shanghai or even Marseille, where I was born. This heat sparkles like diamonds.
“Take off your jacket,” I say, glad of my sleeveless dress, which allows my bare arm to bask on the sill of the open window.
Jacket gone, I undo Edouard’s cuff links and roll up his sleeves. “Better?”
“Better,” he agrees.
I rest my head contentedly on his shoulder until Rabat rises up before us, like a crown atop a cliff the color of fire, having burned down everything in its path to reach this place of triumph.
“Look!” I cry, thrusting my head through the car window.
Then I turn around and seize my husband’s hands. “I love you,” I tell him, a vow more urgent than anything I said on our wedding day. “And I love it here. I never want to leave.”
When I lean over to kiss him, he shakes his head. “Not here.” Then he winks. “But definitely later.”
I don’t think I’ve ever smiled the way I do now at the foot of Rabat, ready to throw myself into my next two adventures—one that will take place in this country, and one that will take place in our home, between the two of us, wife and one very handsome husband whom I’d give my heart to, were it possible to pluck it from my chest and hold it out in the palm of my hand.
2How Lucky I Am to Be FrenchParis, 1936“Third place!” I cry, bursting into my apartment in a way I never would have dared had I still been in Morocco. It’s taken four years for my body to learn not to check itself. But anger never greets me here. Instead, my children do, and they’re eager to know if I won the Monte Carlo Rally.
“Maybe you’ll do better next time,” my six-year-old son says, and I laugh, as does my mother, who’s been looking after Béatrice and Christian.
“Do you know how many people wish they’d come in third?” I crouch down to my children’s level, hugging them close.
“People with small dreams,” Christian says as Béatrice winds her fingers into my hair.
I look up at my mother, trying to hide the furrowing of my brow. Have I given them great expectations when I should be encouraging a less constellated outlook?
No. That’s why I left Morocco. So my children could grow up believing they could reach not just for the moon, but for universes longed for and unknown.
I grin at Christian. “Next time I won’t come home unless I win.”
I tickle his sister, who looks momentarily worried that I mean it. But these two are the North Star of my existence. I would
never abandon them.
“I left before breakfast so I could see you before bedtime,” I tell her.
“Before breakfast?” repeats my four-year-old daughter, eyes like dinner plates. Breakfasts at the Monte Carlo Beach Hotel are her idea of paradise, and only the most unswerving devotion would make someone skip such a feast.
“That’s how much I love you,” I tell her, and she giggles.
When I stand, my eye falls on the headline of the newspaper on the table:
Le Chancelier Hitler Dénonce Versailles: Les troupes allemandes sont entrées en Rhénanie.
Yes, Hitler has all but torn up the Treaty of Versailles and occupied the Rhineland, right on the border of France, an act akin to war. “That’s also why I left Monte Carlo early,” I murmur to my mother, exuberance gone.
She squeezes my hand.
Perhaps it was silly not to stay for the awards ceremony because of something happening hundreds of kilometers away. But while my marriage vows might be all but shattered, the one vow I’ll never break is the one I made when I fled Rabat—that my children matter more than anything. I need to be in Paris with them.
“Let’s get ice cream,” I say. “Race you!”
We dash out the door as fast as if the police are chasing us. Christian wins, whooping, and Béatrice and I come in equally last; we both suffer from a congenital hip condition. Mine worries at me like a mistrustful husband if I don’t venerate it enough, and hers has always been worse, making running difficult.
“really, we came in second,” I tell her, and she beams.
Soon our hands are sticky; Béatrice’s face is pink and Christian’s chocolate-stained. Mine is smeared with love.
My sister, Yvonne, hosts an evening salon that attracts artists, journalists like me, military intelligence officers, and men of influence. They’ll all be talking about Hitler and the Rhineland, and if I want to find out what it might mean for my family, then I need to attend. So I pull out a red silk dress, something to lift my spirits, dimmed by France’s and Britain’s responses to Hitler—gutless shrugs. Since when do you allow a bully to keep what he’s stolen?
I’m too familiar with tyrants not to know they never reveal their true ambitions until it’s too late to stop them.
My hip spasms, dampening my mood further, and I know I’m going to have to work hard to hide my limp tonight. But the cure for that is to step into the dress and make up my face with lipstick and a smile.
“
Maman!” Christian says when I stop to kiss him good night. “You look so pretty.”
His words see me out the door with barely a hitch in my step.
Yvonne greets me with kisses before taking my arm, which means I’m not disguising my limp as well as I’d hoped. But it’s a relief to lean on her for a moment. Until she deposits me with a group of women discussing why it’s essential to own a country home so their busy husbands have a place for repose.
“Let’s see how long you last.” She grins before slipping away.
If only it were possible to commit siblicide with a champagne coupe.
