The Day a Nightmare Began

My husband and I relocated to Paris, France in 1935. Being a gay couple in Depression-era Virginia. Ugh. We bid adieu and set up shop in the City of Lights. There was perhaps no better place to be alive than Paris in the 30's. Unless it was Paris in the 20's, if the stories were to be believed. We'd settled in nicely and become full-fledged Francophones. I had taken a job as a university professor of American history and Darren was a chemistry and biology teacher in a boarding school. We were in my office one warm, summer afternoon in June 1940. I was grading papers for a summer seminar on American colonial expansion after the 7 Years War and Darren was helping, though truthfully, he was sitting in the windowsill looking out at the quiet, tree-lined street two stories below. It looked like he was watching someone.


"At this rate, we'll be late for dinner with the Sorensons," I said, noting that he wasn't actually helping grade papers.


"Sorry," he said, distracted.


"What's bothering you?"


He took in a breath to speak, when I heard shouting below. It sounded like a fight had broken out. I put down my pen and came over to the window. My jaw dropped. They actually did it. The papers said they might, but no one believed they would actually do it. I recognized the uniforms and jackboots from the pictures I'd seen. I think my heart stopped.


"We need to go." I said, swallowing hard.


He looked at me, wild-eyed, "Go where? There are actual Nazis outside."


"Um?"


He sprang from his seat, "You know what they do to people like us. They did it in Poland they'll do it here. We're intellectuals and homosexuals."


We heard a cadre of soldiers stop at the entrance to the building, underneath my window. They pointed at Darren.


"Get away from there," I grabbed him by the shoulder as a bullet shattered the glass and knocked a hole in the plaster ceiling. Bits of plaster dust snowed down on us.


"They won't hurt us," I said, "We're Americans."


"America hasn't done shit to help stop Nazis, what makes you think they'll start now?"


We heard the door downstairs being smashed in. They knew we were here, and they'd breached the building. I was in a full-blown panic. Darren and I went to the door and peeked out. We heard a woman scream and a thud and the screaming stopped. Therese. She was another professor whose office was downstairs. Was she dead? Unconscious? Regardless, we knew we were next.


I shut the door and pulled Darren towards a small storage closet.


"What's in here?"


I went in and slid a bookcase that sat along the back wall to the side.


"What?" Darren said, disbelievingly.


I shoved him inside the small hole in the wall.


"What is this?"


"According to Therese, it was built during the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War to hide from the Prussians."


"And now we're hiding from the Germans."


"History repeating itself," I said wryly. I closed the closet door and joined him in the cramped space behind the bookcase.


We wrestled the bookcase back in place.


"I guess we're back in the closet," Darren said.


I couldn't help but smile at his quick wit.


He held his hand up as though in a toast, "And they laughed the laugh of the damned."


"Shh," I said as we heard my office door being shouldered open. I assume they knew they were in the right room because a bullet had marked it.


We both fell silent. I could hear my heart thundering in my ears and I'm sure Darren felt it too. He reached out his hand and grasped mine. We stared at the small opening we'd come through, praying silently that the soldiers didn't check the closet too thoroughly. He was squeezing my hand hard enough I could feel his pulse.


We could hear them talking and shouting in German, of course. I had no idea what they were saying, but context gave some clues. We were being hunted. I shudder to think what they would do to us if they found us crouched in this dank little room like the vermin they considered us to be.


I heard them rifling through my desk. Their tone was one of disgust. We heard the closet door being yanked open. It was now or never. If they found us, we would wish to be killed immediately.


I looked over at Darren. His eyes were closed, a tear trailing down his cheek. I could tell he was reciting the Lord's Prayer. When he got to "deliver us from evil," I almost let out a sob, but I knew I could not. Even God could not save us from those people out there.


I heard someone coming down the corridor outside my office. A gunshot rang out and we heard the thump of a body hitting the floor. I had no idea who, but someone was now dead.


I let out a shout and Darren's hand slapped over my mouth and pulled me to the floor. He leaned over me like he might kiss me, but I knew that was the furthest thing from his mind. We heard shuffling and the soldiers stomped out of my office. Of all things to notice, I heard a hitch in their stride. Tears streamed down when I realized it was because they were stepping over the dead body in the doorway.


We waited in silence until we were sure they had left the building. We slid out of our hole and put a piece of paper over Dr. Michelet's lifeless face. We had no way to do anything more proper. I was going to have to call his wife. I also knew that this was only the beginning of the nightmare.


That is our story of the day the Nazi occupation of Paris began.