Americans in Paris_ Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation - Charles Glass [80]
Sylvia was increasingly distraught for the Joyce family, who had been delayed for months without visas on the Swiss border in Haute Savoie. Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, was mentally disturbed, and he placed her in a French asylum. Sylvia had dedicated much of her adult life to Joyce as his publisher, secretary and factotum, but she could not help him now. Nor could she do anything for her aged father in California. She relayed assistance from her old friend, Carlotta Welles Briggs, to people in Paris. Carlotta sent her a cheque for 2,000 francs in October 1940: 600 for Sylvia to give to ‘old Rose’, whose pension had not been paid; and another six hundred for ‘Rigollet’, an old man who lived in the alley behind Carlotta’s flat in Paris. (She told Sylvia to keep the remaining 800 francs for herself, one instance among many in which Carlotta aided her impoverished childhood friend.) Carlotta wrote to Sylvia from California on 2 November asking her to visit an Armenian woman named Mme Barseghian at 22 avenue Paul Appell near Montparnasse. Mme Barseghian was losing her eyesight, and her only son was in the army. ‘In case she is still there a little call from you would cheer her up no end. Give her my love in case you find her.’
On 13 November, Holly Beach Dennis wrote to Sylvia, who was then taking a break at Carlotta’s house, La Salle du Roc, near Bourré. Because she had not received any reply to her recent letters, she wondered whether Sylvia was receiving her mail. Postal services between the United States and France were slow and unreliable. All letters were subject to German censorship in France and to British censorship en route through Bermuda. ‘I told you,’ Holly wrote, ‘that Father’s mind being somewhat bewildered, due to age, Cyprian has put him in an attractive “Rest Home” on Rosemead Boulevard, near Pasadena, where he is well taken care of … Father is such a wonderful person and I believe he is as happy now in his imaginings as he was when his mind was quite clear.’ Holly, meanwhile, had moved with her husband, Frederic Dennis, and their adopted son, Freddie, back to Princeton. Sylvester, blind, deaf and senile, received visits from Carlotta Welles Briggs and his daughter Cyprian, both of whom lived nearby. Cyprian wrote to her sister in Paris, ‘The greatest blessing is that he has forgotten there is a war in Europe, and thinks of you only as you were before.’ By the time Sylvia read the letters that told her of Sylvester’s confinement, he was dead. Cyprian wrote again, just after their father died on 16 November, to assure Sylvia that he lived ‘happily till the very end, and that end couldn’t have been more merciful’.
The injured French soldier André Guillon had been in the American Hospital for two months, when a new patient moved into his room. Captain A., an Alsatian prisoner of war with two wounds in his leg, had been a German language instructor at the French military academy, Saint-Cyr. To pass the time, Guillon studied German under his tutelage.
He told me between lessons that he had had permission in 1938 to spend a year as a ‘businessman’ in Munich. I didn’t understand immediately what he was alluding to. He then gave me some information about lodgings he had in the centre of Paris … lodgings where we could meet if I liked when he left the American Hospital. His legs, practically smashed to pieces at the beginning of October, were completely healed by the 25th. And on the 30th, he disappeared. Miracle of the Intelligence Services …
During the winter, Guillon had little chance of taking sun therapy, but he walked along the corridors and outside to the terrace to strengthen his legs. At five o’clock one evening, ‘I found myself on the terrace admiring the dome of Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre, twinkling in the rays of the setting sun, and I dreamed of mosques in African lands.’ He encountered a new arrival