The woman went first. When she let go of my hand I realized I’d been holding it since we began running. Once underground, we were jostled into a corner, pushed together ever closer by the arrival of each newcomer, the last of whom was the traffic policeman who had waved us in. Several more people were left outside, complaining loudly, while the warden urged them to seek another shelter. A sense of improvisation pervaded the entire scene: there were no chairs, so everyone had to stand, including a one-legged veteran of the last war. The walls were lined with shelves bearing wheels of cheese and racks loaded with dusty bottles of wines and spirits. Hams and sausages were suspended from above. The bistro owner stood on a box in the corner, hands on hips, eyeing the room for thieves.

The trapdoor was lowered, plunging us into a gloom barely relieved by a single naked bulb buzzing overhead. There must have been forty or fifty people squeezed together in that cellar. My companion was pressed up against me, her hair brushing the stubble of my chin. The sirens outside stopped their wailing and the room was engulfed by a heart-pounding silence as everyone listened for the sound of the destruction that was surely about to rain down from the heavens. I wondered if, by the time we emerged from our hiding place, the Paris we knew would still exist. But then, I thought, if the building above us was bombed we’d be buried alive.

I felt her body tremble like a captive bird and put my arms around her, not to embrace her but to push back against the weight of human bodies crushing us both. My nostrils were stinging with the smell of the sweat of the crowd and my shirt was sticky. My heart thumped wildly—there it was, that sharp stab of pain with every heartbeat, the premonition of my mortality. I had pills for this pain, pills I never took. Her cheek was pressed against my chest. I was frightened too, but I’d been frightened so long fear had become a part of me, twisting its way around and through me like a vine, sustained by the same sap that kept the rest of me alive.