It’s been a year since the invasion. The Nazis have been expelled from France. Soon, the war will be over, or so I hear. It’s excellent news. The troops are happy. They’re ready to go back home, back to America; the land of the free. I’m happy, too. But I’m not with them. I’m not ready to return to Philadelphia. I’m not ready to leave this place. Paris. It’s beautiful here. Even with all its broken pieces, all the damage caused by the Nazis, even with all the smoke, I still find it breathtaking. But that’s not really why I want to be in Paris. It’s not why I’m hoping this war lasts a bit longer. It’s none of that.
I don’t want to leave Paris because I’m in love. A damsel stole my heart. She’s called Maria. Maria Taliatha.
I met Maria at a coffee shop. Café Du Monde. It’s down Rue de la Harpe, the cobblestoned street in the middle of Paris. It was a cold, wet morning, and I had nothing to do. Jean-Pierre, the son of the Delacours, the family I was billeted with, suggested that I go down the next street for a cup of latte. “It will warm you up,” he said in French.
The waitress was a beautiful blonde. With dark green eyes. She kept smiling at me.
“Tu ès belle” I muttered when she brought my latte.
“Merci” she laughed. She inquired if I was a Yankee.
“Pourqoui?” I asked.
“Because you have an accent” she said in perfect English.
I was embarrassed. I’d been learning French from Jean-Pierre for five months, and he’d only told me a week ago that I spoke perfect French. Like a Parisian. Obviously, he’d lied to me.
I grinned at her. “C’est faux.”
She laughed again. “You’re funny.”
I asked for her name.
“Mariama Taliatha” she said. “My friends call me Maria.”
She was Romanian. A gypsy. Her family moved to France when she was three. I asked her how she spoke English so flawlessly and she said she’d lived in Oxford for four years studying Literature and Painting.
“Yes, monsieur, I’m a painter, not a waitress” she said. “I’m only running this shop for my brother who’s taken ill.”
She went back to get me another cup of latte.
“Pardonez moi,” I apologized for my lack of courtesy. “I never told you my name. I am Abel Smith. A soldier.”
“I know” she said. “I see many of you guys around.”
“So what do you do all day; paint?” I asked, eager to make conversation.
“No. I’m also a dancer. And a poet.”
A poet. I told her to prove it, to write me a poem.
“It will cost you, Monsieur Smith.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Not money.” But she wouldn’t tell me. I went back to the coffee shop next morning and she was gone. Her brother, who was back to running the place, told me she was in Marseille for a dancing gig and wouldn’t be back in Paris for a week.
That night, and many nights after, I found myself thinking about Maria. I couldn’t help it. She was in my dreams. In my thoughts. I felt like a kid with a crush. And I was heartbroken when two weeks after that wet morning, I still hadn’t seen Maria. She was still in Marseille.
I left a note with her brother at the coffee shop, because I was returning to the front and I needed her to know that I may not come back. At least, not alive. For three days, I flew over the German-French border, firing at a Nazi contingent that laid siege there. On the last day of my air-assault, a German plane gunned me down. I should have died, but I ended up in a hospital bed in Metz, my left arm splintered and my ribs broken in three places. I was a bandaged mess. A month later, when I could walk with much less pain, I was sent back to the Delacours to recuperate.
It was dawn the next morning. I was barely awake when Mrs. Delacour knocked on my door. “Tu as une visiteuse, Abel.” I had a visitor.
Next thing I knew, there stood Maria by my bed, in a purple tunic. Smiling. “How are you, Monsieur Smith?”
“You left me to die,” I quipped.
She’d gotten my message from her brother two days after I left and had come around to ask of me. She’d given her telephone number to Jean-Pierre, who called her yesterday to inform her of my return.
“I have your poem” she grinned.
“Read it to me.”
“Well, it’s very short. And it’s in French.”
“Doesn’t matter, Maria” I said. “I will understand.”
She unfolded a small craggy paper and, looking me in the eye, she read softly. “Il aime mon café. Il aime mon lait. Mais je oser savoir s’il avait aime mon baiser.” He loves my coffee. He loves my milk. But I’m daring to know, if he’d love my kiss.
I burst into laughter. So hard my ribs hurt again. It wasn’t funny. But I didn’t know what else to do.
“If you don’t stop making fun of me, I will give you a Gypsy curse” she warned.
I asked how much I owed her. And she said it’s in the poem. I owed her a kiss.
“A French one? American? What type?” I asked.
“O Dieu” she giggled. “You’re not well enough for a French kiss, Monsieur Smith.”
So I paid her in American. Soft, and smooth, and gentlemanly. But like the Gypsy she was, Maria stole my heart in return. I loved her before I knew it. I came for war, only to fall.
Many times, we went to Lyon to see the concerts that played there. And, twice, we went to visit the Taliathas, Maria’s family. I met Fonso Taliatha, her father. He was a fat loud man.
“What do you intend to do with my daughter, Abel?” he asked me one time in a thick Romanian accent.
“Marry her.” I said.
“But you’re American,” Fonso said. “And you’ll go back across the pond to your home when the war is over.”
“Yes. Maria will come with me to Philadelphia.”
“No, Abel” Fonso shook his head. “Maria stays in France. Gypsies stick together; you don’t break them apart.”
Maria said her father was right. She wouldn’t leave France for anything.
“Not even for me?”
“I love you, Abel” she said, “with all my heart. But I know I’ll regret if I come with you to America. France is my home.”
The Soldier’s Dilemma, they call it. When a man goes to war and find love and he has to choose between home and heart. I’ve heard them talk about it. And I remember swearing I will never be a victim.
But I was. And still am.
The Allied forces are almost in Berlin, and soon we will win the war. Once we get Hitler and take his head it will be over. And then what? I go back to America, back to Philadelphia, back to nothing. But if I stay, I can find a job in Paris. A writer for the local newspaper, maybe. Or a stage actor; Paris loves the theatre, so long as I better my French, I could land a job in no time. My father has passed away but my mother still lives, and she’s all I have for a home. Once I can afford it, she’ll join me in Paris. In this magnificent city. I know she will love it. Everybody does. And then I can have my home and heart at the same place.
I can do it. I must do it. For Maria. For me. For love…For Paris.
