“I want to know what happened to them,” Gaëlle said doggedly of the Feldmanns. “We should know. Maybe Rebekah’s in one of those camps they just liberated and she’s too weak to come home. I want to go to her if she’s alive.”
“Of course,” the woman said gently, and told Gaëlle to check back in three weeks, which sounded like a long time to her. But it was worth the wait if they found her. Maybe she was one of the survivors. Rebekah had been young and strong. Gaëlle refused to believe she was dead. She was sure that with enough time they’d find her.
She went back to the hotel after that. It had been an exhausting, emotionally draining day. She was hungry but didn’t want to go to a bistro and be propositioned by the soldiers again, so she went to her room, even though she was hungry, and as soon as she lay on her bed, she fell asleep.
—
She woke up ravenous the next morning, and went to a different bistro, and there were no soldiers there. She was wearing a plain black skirt and a black jacket that had been her mother’s and was a little too grown-up for her, and flat shoes, because she was tall enough. She had café au lait and two croissants, and they were delicious, and then she remembered the card the woman at the Louvre had given her with the name and address for a possible job. She thought it might be for work as a secretary, or in an art gallery, and hoped she’d qualify. She had no training to be a secretary or a waitress or anything else, but she needed to find work soon, before her money ran out. She took it out and read it again. The name the curator had written was Lucien Lelong, which meant nothing to her, at an address she didn’t know. She got a map at a newspaper kiosk and walked to the address, and stood in front of a small elegant building. A discreet sign said “Lelong,” and two well-dressed women emerged. Gaëlle watched them, and then pressed the bell a moment later.
The door was opened by a man in a dark suit, who looked her over with some surprise and asked if she had an appointment. She could see a large reception room behind him, and still had no idea what kind of business it was. It seemed more like a home, and she wondered if the curator had sent her for a job as a maid. She was willing to accept any work she could find, as long as it was legal and not prostitution.
“I’m here for a job,” she said, trying to appear braver than she felt, and the man at the door smiled, and escorted her to a little sitting room, where he instructed her to wait for a minute, and then he disappeared. It was decorated simply with white furniture upholstered in gray silk. And there were drawings of evening gowns framed on the walls, and photographs of fashion shows with models from before the war. She wondered if it was some kind of store, but it didn’t look like one. She was still wondering when the man reappeared with a tall, thin blond woman. She had a beautiful face, and looked very severe in a slim black suit with a fashionably short skirt just below the knee. Fabric had been rationed during the war, so styles had gotten shorter and narrower, closer to the body, in order to use less fabric. The woman was wearing her hair in a tight bun and was startled when she saw Gaëlle’s clipped short hair, which appeared almost boyish but was flattering the way she’d cut it as it grew out. She was so pretty she could get away with it. The man in the dark suit went back to the door then, and left Gaëlle alone with the woman he’d introduced as Madame Cécile, who continued to observe Gaëlle intently.
“You’ve come for a job?” she asked, after she’d taken in every inch of Gaëlle, and the unfashionable suit she was wearing that looked to Cécile like a hand-me-down from her grandmother. “As a vendeuse?”—a salesgirl—Cécile interrogated her.
“That would be fine,” Gaëlle said, feeling breathless under the sharp gaze of the blond woman, although she didn’t know what she’d be selling. There was nothing to buy here. And transporting Jewish children for the OSE had been less frightening than being stared at by the woman in the chic black suit. Gaëlle knew nothing about fashion, but she could tell that the woman was stylish just by the confident, graceful way she carried herself, and she was watching every move that Gaëlle made, as though it mattered immensely. Gaëlle had never paid attention to clothes, her mother had had a local dressmaker, but nothing she wore had been remarkable or followed fashion. Mrs. Feldmann had shopped in Paris occasionally and had much nicer clothes, and a dressmaker in Lyon.
“Would you please walk across the room for me?” the woman asked her in an authoritative tone, and Gaëlle did as she was told, as the woman watched her and frowned. “Again, please. Stand up straight now and look directly ahead of you.” Gaëlle crossed the small room again as Madame Cécile nodded and seemed satisfied. “That was better,” she praised her. It was all a mystery to Gaëlle, what she was doing there, what the job might be, and what they had to sell. “You would have done well before the war,” she said cryptically. “We don’t have fashion shows since the Occupation, but we still make samples, and have girls wear them to show our clients.” And Gaëlle’s hair didn’t shock her, since they had been making clothes for the wives of German officers, as well as a few wealthy French clients for the past four years, and they had seen their share of shorn heads in Paris too, since August.
“Come with me,” she said then, and Gaëlle followed her out of the room, down a long hallway, and Madame Cécile unlocked a door with a key. They stepped into a large room full of women wearing white smocks. They were cutting fabric on long tables, fitting clothes on mannequins, and many of them were sewing by hand. Fabric was still being rationed and in short supply, but they seemed to have enough of it to keep a room full of women busy making clothes.