The policeman had surprised her. Bridgette had expected him to become bored with his sentry detail by now, but he basked in the attention he received as “guardian of the wall” and took great pride in his diligence that so far, he believed, had protected the mural from defacement. One day a small park bench, hand carpentered, had appeared beside the painting to give his legs a break. Residents dropped off cups of tea and occasionally, at the bidding of parents barely able to feed them, children slipped a sweet or item of fruit into Achim’s hand. Daily, he was asked to pose for snapshots and sign autographs.

Bridgette’s amazement at the neighborhood’s reception of the mural was surprising as well. As word of the painting grew, it had gained an even broader audience. Residents from other districts had begun visiting it. German soldiers and their girlfriends sought it out on weekend strolls. Art students studied it as an exhibit. Flowers were left at the foot of the wall. At first, to explain her presence and allay suspicion should she have to stroke in a code mark, Bridgette made a point to appear with palette and brush to add more depth and color to a stargazer, a lily pad, a cloud. For Bridgette, her palette and brush provided escape from days of catering to the demands of revolting wives and mistresses whose illusions of superiority were based solely on the authority their husbands and lovers wielded over a subjected people. At times she almost forgot the purpose of the mural.

Afraid that she would oversleep, that night Bridgette hardly closed an eye. The penetrating cold made a good night’s rest impossible anyway. A few days before, the farmer who had supplied wood for the convent had been shot for harboring a family of Jews. Fifteen minutes before six o’clock, Bridgette grabbed her brushes and paints and slipped down the flight of narrow stairs to the courtyard, creaked open the ancient door bolted during the night, and poked her head out. The street was empty and quiet but for the forlorn barking of a dog far off in the Latin Quarter. Quickly, under the murky glow of the blue-shrouded streetlamps, she drew a thin diagonal line through the mural’s central dragonfly and added a few strokes of shadows to the other symbols as a warning to beware of a trap.

Minutes later, precisely at six o’clock, Achim Fleischer, beside himself, pounded on the bolted courtyard door until a little nun, dispatched from morning prayers, came running to see what the hammering was all about. She slid open the pocket door of the small window, and inquired, out of breath, how she might be of help to monsieur.