April in Paris Read Online Free Page A

curtain. She looked more substantial in her white coat, definitely older than twenty. Her hair framed her head in ringlets and curls.
    Her large eyes looked serious. Joy warmed my belly as I involuntarily leaned forward. The clip-clipping stopped.
    “Pretty kids.” The lieutenant nodded. He added in German,
    “War’s hardest on children.”
    She laid the broom aside and went to the door. She wasn’t wearing any stockings, and I stared at her calves. As the shop bell rang, she called the boys by name. They broke off their game.
    Flushed faces, momentary paralysis. Then they understood the warning, went to the end of the street, and disappeared.
    With a flick of his wrist, the barber snatched away the towel and held up a mirror so the major could see the results of his work. The officer nodded, expressionless, and stood up. About to 26 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R
    lay the gold coin on the shop counter, he turned around and put the piece in the young woman’s hand instead. Stone-faced, she opened the till and dropped the coin inside.
    “I’m looking for a restaurant,” he said to no one in particular.
    “The Peletier.”
    The barber shook his head. The woman with the reddish brown hair didn’t answer, either.
    I pressed my fingers against my palms, stood up, and stepped in front of the major. Did I do it to impress her? Did I want to put my own disguise to the test? I’d heard of the Peletier. The SS
    ordered up women there. “It’s behind Saint-Germain-des-Prés, on the south side of the square,” I said. We looked each other in the eyes. “You can’t miss it.”
    “Merci, monsieur,” the major said, using the hard German s and putting on his cap. While his boots were still crunching over the threshold, I took my seat in the barber’s chair. The young woman swept up the German officer’s hair.
    “Why did you say they were your brothers ?” the barber said to the young woman as the major was vanishing among the crowds in the street. “Don’t play games with these people, Chantal!”
    “They’re Samuel’s kids.” She was sweeping quite close to me.
    The barber spread a fresh towel over my shoulders. I watched the young woman in the mirror.
    “How come you know the Peletier?” she asked when our eyes met. “Only pigs go there.”
    “Chantal!” The barber looked around. The old man behind the newspaper didn’t move.
    “In that case, I gave him the right directions.” I smiled. “Trim the back and sides, please.”
    A P R I L I N PA R I S . 27
    “We haven’t had the honor of serving you before, monsieur,”
    the barber said.
    What struck me about his delicate face was its long nose—as though it had been set there maliciously. “I’m here on a visit,” I said.
    “Traveling is complicated at the moment,” he remarked insin-uatingly.
    I nodded. “It took me two days. God knows how many times we stopped. The track’s closed between Thiers and Moulins.”
    I was amazed at how effortlessly my brain spit out lies. I focused mentally on an image of the Ordnance Survey map. Armed bands, enemy units, arrows and hatching, the front approximately garter-high. The barber moistened the hair on the back of my head. The scissors approached my temple. I shut my eyes.
    The place grew quiet. From time to time, the old man turned a page. The woman named Chantal was now sitting behind the till.
    The bookshop owner’s daughter, I thought, trying to imagine her growing up among thousands of books. In the evenings, her father would take down the Fables and read some of them to her.
    After Chantal herself learned to read, on fine days she would carry her books outside, sit on the stone, and immerse herself in them … The sound of the scissors made me sleepy. As though from a great distance, I saw Antoine sitting in the barber’s chair.
    Moments before, he’d aroused suspicion by giving directions to an SS man. He was also suspect because he came from out of town. Denunciations were more and more frequent;