The Flight Portfolio

by Julie Orringer

Marseille, more than any place he’d ever been, was the province of unexpected convergences, of hidden things brought to light, of things that bore one name in public and another in private.

that it was a mollusk, and that it moved forward into new chambers as it aged, walling off the past behind

Paris reeked of sex, opera, art, and decadent poverty, Marseille reeked of underground crime, opportunism, trafficked cocaine, rowdy tavern song.

what he’d loved most was to be behind the wheel of his long yellow Packard, in the company of some bright pretty boys and genteelly iconoclastic girls, well supplied with gin, en route to some amusement or other; and it was true of him now at thirty-two, true of the man he’d grown into, whose current mission was to rescue the intellectual treasure of Europe.

his eyes were turned toward the sky, cloud reflecting cloud.

the lap and luff of the sea on the ash-blue shore.

Clotilde,

wasn’t long before the first summons arrived from Fullerton, delivered by a crimson-cheeked bicycle messenger who looked as though he’d been plucked from an ecclesiastic ceiling mural.

birds winging away from the rain as fast as fear.

How long had it been since they’d existed in grammatical proximity? It

Would they really have children? Would they assemble an establishment, as it was called in Victorian novels? A housemaid, a gardener, a driveway-clearer?

postprandial

“Bravo, Monsieur Grant,” Breton said, and everyone applauded. “A secret history.”

threatened into a state of crisp perfection,

Corydon.”

LITTLE OH MY TOO LITTLE THANKS FOR THIS ALL WHICH GIVING ME YOU KEPT ONLY YOUR WINGS YOUR WIT AND A NAME OTHERS SHALL SING

“ma vie n’est plus la mienne. Elle appartient à quelqu’un d’autre.”

obduracy.

Harry Bingham’s newly vacated desk with an air of pachydermlike rectitude.

Varian stood thinking of Chagall, of his opinion that the last look at a town was the most important.

The familiar streets were passing, receding, those buildings and squares and markets that had made up the landscape of his mind for the past twelve months.

The Power of Indignation,

Surrender on Demand.

Andy Marino, in his biography A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry,

the real Flight Portfolio, a collection of lithographs Fry assembled in 1965 to help raise money for the organization he had founded; Chagall, Lam, Lipchitz, and Masson, among others, all contributed work.)

Centre Américain de Secours.

http://www.varianfry.org

For a virtual tour of the Villa Air Bel, see http://villaairbel1940.fr/.

See https://www.rescue.org/ to learn how you can help.