The Rose Café by John Hanson Mitchell Page B

a church group around the internment camps east of Perpignan.
    â€œThey helped out with a milk-distribution network,” he said. “But at the same time they were trading in the black market. Later I heard they began escorting Jewish children over the Spanish border crossings. Working with chasseurs , you know, the local people who help refugees across borders.”
    I asked their names.
    â€œPierce, I think. Mary and her husband, don’t remember his name. She was very pretty, I recall. She used to dress in rather appealing clothes and distract the guards so they wouldn’t check people’s documents so carefully. I liked her, but her husband, he was a bit of a prig. Holier than thou. That kind of chap, don’t you know. I think the Gestapo caught up with them at one point but they managed to pay somebody off and got free. I happen to know that they were very good at getting forged exit visas for people, letters of transit, that sort of thing.”
    I had heard of this couple and had even seen them once or twice at a restaurant called the Rathskeller where my parents would sometimes eat. I remember my mother pointing them out and telling me some stories about them.
    â€œDid this woman have gray hair that she would tie back in a bun?” I asked. This was an unusual hairstyle for the period.
    â€œYes, although she had black hair back then. Very attractive, with straight dark eyebrows and haunting blue eyes. But how did you know them?”
    â€œI didn’t. I would just see them around the town,” I said.
    In fact this couple was active in leftist causes in the town and was somehow associated with my father, who was also a political animal and later had been caught up in the McCarthy scandals, as had the Pierces.
    All this made me wonder why le Baron knew them—of all people—so I asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said. “I was around that area at the time. One accumulates people as one ages,” he said. “People. Things. Sometimes wives. They used to talk about their home a lot. I think the man, whatever his name was, missed his home. He used to talk about those cliffs.”
    â€œI think they were in some kind of trouble in our town,” I said. “They were accused of being communists.”
    â€œReally?” he said. “They were such a likable couple. So you are a student here in France, I take it?” he asked in a friendly manner, clearly indicating that we were to change the subject.
    I told him I was, and he asked me why I had chosen to go to school in Europe rather than America.
    â€œThere are perfectly good colleges there, are there not?” he said.
    When he spoke to you he looked directly at you, with a fixed-from-under stare. It was a gaze that was clearly intended just for you, as if he had forgotten altogether that he was there to play cards with the locals and had come solely to talk to me in particular.
    I tried to answer, but in fact I wasn’t sure I had an answer.
    He carried on, though, and began to ask me about student life both in Paris and back in the United States, and the more I told him the more he asked. He seemed to grow increasingly interested in my life, and even began to veer into personal matters. Did I have a girlfriend. What was I doing in the neighborhood in Nice where I had lived (not a particularly savory area, I gathered, although I’m not sure I knew that then) and on and on, and all the while I was growing more and more interested in his life but was unable to ask.
    Other than his wings of silvery hair and tanned good looks, the most characteristic thing about le Baron was his eyes. They reminded me of the sea beyond the harbor: bright with sun, ultramarine, with an interior light that gleamed even in the half-light of the bar. Whenever he asked a question he lowered his head slightly and fixed your eye confidentially. It was a little solicitous, and slightly disconcerting.
    â€œWhat time is