I Looked for the One My Heart Loves by Dominique MARNY Page A

happen. Would the British and Americans pound Paris before trying to enter it? Maybe the Germans, in an act of desperation, would decide to blow up the city! It was what her father feared. And she kept thinking about Alexis. For many days now, she had seen fifteen-year-old boys handling guns. Was Alexis doing the same thing, running the risk of getting killed? Trying to set her mind at ease, she convinced herself that he wasn’t back in Paris yet.
    On the evening of August 24, Anne was watching the darkening sky when the sirens began to blare. In the dining room, her mother was leaning out the window, talking to a neighbor.
    She turned to Anne and said, “The suburbs are in flames, but apparently General Leclerc’s troops are in Paris!” She dabbed her eyes with a hanky and added, “I have a hard time believing it.”
    There was fighting on the roofs of Paris and bombs fell everywhere during the night. The Chastels ran to the shelter on Rue Girardon. With each explosion, Anne shivered. They couldn’t die just as the enemy was about to leave for good! Some nearby parts of town were hit by the bombs, including around the Sacré-Coeur. There were victims, but the nightmare was coming to an end.
    A week later, Anne and Agnès went to the Champs-Elysées­, where the American army had settled. Their trucks were parked near the Arc de Triomphe. Swamped by requests, some soldiers in khaki uniforms agreed to pose for a picture beside a group of female admirers. Children kept asking them for chocolate bars and gum. In an odd mix of French and English, conversations began. Sometimes, spontaneous­ applause broke out. A woman tried to climb onto a tank to wave a French flag. A soldier gave her a hand. She thanked him with a sultry kiss.
    The same scenes played out repeatedly in the following weeks. The liberators drove up and down the streets in their jeeps. In Montmartre, they settled in Place du Tertre and next to the Moulin de la Galette. Slowly, the neighborhood was getting back on its feet. With sadness, people spoke of the ones who were gone: those who died during the bombings, those who were arrested and then deported, the prisoners of war who were now expected back. Shopkeepers began to put out on their shelves the few things they had for sale. Anne had to relearn how to leave her apartment building without fearing a stray bullet, to sleep without waking up with a start at the sound of the sirens, not to worry when her parents or Bernard were late. Still, too many memories haunted her, of refugees squeezing into basements and tunnels waiting for a place to live, of the countless orphans being cared for at the neighborhood’s adoption centers. One morning, she felt like she was going to break down. Face buried in her pillow, she silently cried over all the tragedy surrounding her, that and man’s injustice and cruelty. Her own anguish was overwhelming, as she felt she had no control over any aspect of her life.
    The school year began. After all the excitement following the liberation of Paris, students had difficulty concentrating in class. Some felt that the war was over, but Anne disagreed.
    Then winter came, so terribly cold! Once again, Parisians had to struggle to make up for shortages of coal and gas. Exhausted by the hardships, Monique grew sick, bronchitis that turned into pneumonia. She had to be hospitalized. At the sight of her father’s troubled expression, Anne got scared.
    â€œIs Mama going to be okay?”
    â€œOf course she is! The doctors are going to make her feel all better again.”
    In the Church of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, Anne lit a candle, which she added to the dozens of others. No prayer came to her lips as she gazed at the flames illuminating the statue of the Virgin Mary. All she needed was a tangible light, a symbol …
    During her mother’s absence, Anne took care of the housework, which made her even more determined not to devote