Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [105]
‘My German customers were always rare, but of course after I was classified as “the enemy,” they stopped coming altogether–until a last outstanding visit ended the series,’ Sylvia wrote in her memoir. ‘A high-ranking German officer, who had got out of a huge grey military car, stopped to look at a copy of Finnegans Wake that was in the window.’ The officer came into the shop and said to Sylvia in fluent English, ‘I want that copy of Finnegans Wake you’ve got in the window.’ She recalled the encounter in an interview: ‘“Well,” I said, “that’s the only copy left in Paris, and you can’t have it … You don’t understand that anyhow. You don’t know Joyce.” And he said, “But we admire James Joyce very much in Germany.” He was very angry, and he went out and got into his great car, his great military car, surrounded with other fellows in helmets and drove away.’
At Christmas, Sylvia was unable to communicate with her family in the United States. For friends in Paris, she made a list of Christmas presents: chocolates, which rationing had turned into luxuries, for Adrienne and her assistant, an aspiring young writer named Maurice Saillet, as well as to Adrienne’s mother and Paul Valéry’s wife, Jeannie Gobillard. Françoise Bernheim, the 29-year-old Jewish volunteer at Shakespeare and Company, received from Sylvia a bound copy of Ulysses. Then, just after Christmas, the Wehrmacht officer who had demanded Sylvia’s only copy of Finnegans Wake returned.
He came back again in about ten days, and he said, ‘Your copy of Finnegans Wake is gone from the window. What did you do with it?’ I said, ‘I’ve put it away. It’s for me.’ He was so furious. He said, ‘Well, you know, we’re coming this afternoon to confiscate all your goods.’ I said, ‘Very well. Do so.’ And he said, ‘Now, will you sell Finnegans Wake?’ And I said, ‘Not at all. Come along.’ So, he disappeared in a rage, booming down the street. The only people who had cars in Paris were the Germans. I immediately had everything removed from my shop. In about two hours, there wasn’t a book left in it, not only Finnegans Wake but everything else disappeared. And the concierge [Mme Allier] told me to put everything in an empty apartment in that house. So, we piled up the stairs with all these things in clothes baskets. All my friends came rushing to the rescue, all my French friends, the ones who were left. And we hid everything upstairs.
When the Germans came that afternoon, I peered out the windows. They were all shuttered up. I had the name Shakespeare and Company painted off the front by the house painters, who lived in the house. And the carpenters took down the shelves even. Everything was removed. And the shutters were up. The Germans must have come and saw nothing, nothing left at all. And I retired upstairs.
The entire contents of Shakespeare and Company were stored on the fourth floor, where no one could find them. Sylvia hid the rarest documents, including James Joyce’s original manuscripts, at Adrienne’s. Adrienne wrote in ‘A Letter to Friends in the Free Zone’, published in February 1942, ‘You ask me how Sylvia Beach is doing. She is still in Paris, which she never left. She had to shut her bookshop a few days ago. Now that she has leisure she is going to start her memoirs.’
Shakespeare and Company had been Sylvia’s life for twenty-two years. The occupation had now taken it away, as it had contact with her family and her friends outside France. ‘After escaping from what I feared more