Issue No. 15

So that’s what I would recreate: a living
history of Antibes through the allegorical
eyes of Bellevue. All summer long, Antibes
revealed herself to me on two levels, past
and present. Plaques, monuments and
street signs – timeworn tributes that had
faded into everyday life over the years we’d
been coming here – shared their stories.
And there, mounted above a lighting shop
three blocks up Avenue Foch, the trunk
road I’d taken more than a hundred times,
was an unassuming marble plaque: Here
lived Dr. Elie Victor Amedee Lévy, Captain;
arrested May 4, 1942; died in deportation to
Auschwitz; hero and martyr of the
Résistance; died for France.
That was the story I wanted to read in
English, right there on l’Ilette peninsula. A
fat drop of sweat ran down my calf and
deposited itself on my ankle. Skimming
was the only way. I flipped to the book’s
midsection and hunched over its yellowed
pages. A breeze kicked up. Instant airconditioning.
I was doing the right thing.
Some would say I’d been behaving oddly
all summer. I biked around town with one
eye on the road and the other scouring
second-floor facades of buildings where
plaques might appear. Friends began
calling me a history-buff. Really? History
was never, ever my thing. It always seemed
a jumble of useless dates and wars –
except, of course, when my grandmother
told vibrant stories about the wagon train
bringing my ancestors from Pennsylvania
to Iowa.
History only mattered to me when there
was a story behind it. History was
interesting only when it was alive.
The story endured.
As I continued to read on l’Ilette peninsula,
I realized I’d forgotten the story’s details –
even important ones. I’d forgotten, for
instance, how Churchill’s surprise
encounter with Lévy had begun.
On that dark night in April 1942, while they
huddled in the darkness of their
clandestine work, Lévy launched a
question to Churchill – before even
bothering to introduce the diplomat
loitering alongside them.
Where, the doctor wondered, were the
faked baptismal certificates for his two
daughters? Churchill had promised these
papers so that Lévy, a Jew, could avoid
having his house – purchased in his
daughters’ names – confiscated by the
Germans.
My cheeks were burning. The water bottle
was almost dry. I’d continue reading
elsewhere. But before leaving that eventful
site, I lingered before the copper-green
plaque. It was written in English and
French, but as with so many translations,
the two halves offered different
information.