April in Paris (10 page)

tenant bent down toward his companion, a listless blond woman.

Three Silesian PFCs wearing badly fitting uniforms conversed in their thick dialect. Probably reservists, I thought. You saw more and more of them in the city; the combat troops were disappearing east-ward. The men’s arms were full of packages, so much so that they were unable to salute a passing captain with anything but their eyes.

Next came two promenading Parisian ladies; their faces looked hollow, their lips and cheeks sucked in. They patted their hairdos nervously as I passed by.

I was getting close to the Trinité square. It was after hours in the pastry shop, but the line of customers waiting to get in had kept the place from closing on time. In their midst stood an officer from the municipal administration, who, it seemed, had broken into line; several small women assailed him. Meanwhile, the rolling shutters came down, and the closed sign was displayed.

The officer went off grumbling, as did the housewives. Posters announced guest performances in Paris by the Berlin State Opera.

On the posters, a prima donna’s dazzling white face and a bouquet of flowers. When I neared the Pigalle quarter, I thought I needed to rest. Actually, I wanted to give my anxiety a little time. I went into a bar and ordered a glass of absinthe. As I drank, I grasped my uniform sleeve with my free hand, as though trying to touch my current existence, my present. I paid and left.

Now I was only a few streets away. Between the buildings came the muffled sound of thunder burrowing behind the clouds. It wouldn’t rain tonight. I passed the Scheherazade. The doorman made an enticing gesture, but I didn’t slow down.

And there was Turachevsky’s, looking deserted and unreal. I 90 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

came to a stop a few meters from the door. My collar was too tight; my forehead was sweaty. A group of privates pushed past, cheerfully inviting me to join their party. I stepped to the door with them. Madame herself let us in.

“You’re rather early, gentlemen,” she said with a professional smile.

A swarm of girls and women charged the sofas and settees.

They wore simple white smocks—the kimonos would appear after midnight, when the officers were there. I stuck my forage cap under my epaulet and looked around.

“And you, my son?” Madame’s fan whirled. “We’ve met before,
n’est-ce pas?
You prefer—let me guess.” She liked to keep business moving along briskly; indecisive customers slowed down her turnover.

I anticipated her recommendation and disappeared into the bar, where I ordered an absinthe and sat at one of the farther tables. The tenor stepped onto the stage, surrounded by ladies in evening dress. He sang about the “little difference.” The soldiers started clapping for the dance show. The atmosphere was lighter and freer than it had been the night I was there with the officers.

This group drank the less expensive booze, but in great quantities; many guys needed to get their courage up before venturing into the salon.

The girls danced to the strains of the invincibly popular “Ma Pomme”: one step left, three steps right, howls from the blond audience. The piano player struggled with the tempo. Confusion among the dancers, girlish legs moving in disaccord. The little or-chestra played stubbornly on.

How mellow it is in here, I thought. Letting the green spirit A P R I L I N PA R I S . 91

take effect, I opened a button or two on my uniform and observed my fingers as they beat time to the music. The fear was still there, but masked. I was waiting for whatever came next.

Some half-naked girls used a dwarf as a watering can. The little fellow cried out in a croaking voice, “Water the vegetables!

Don’t let my little flowers dry up!” Laughter. A man with performing pigeons induced the pampered birds to jump through hoops and pull a pretty little wagon. He was shouted off the stage when his artistes shit on his evening coat. The rubber man picked up a harmonica with his feet and played a German march.

The dancers appeared in innumerable costumes, ten girls at a time; Chantal was never among them. I was suspended in a green fog. The reason for my visit had fled into other spheres. I watched the piano player and admired his ability to accompany whatever was happening on the stage and make his way flawlessly through all the current hits. He was a man in his fifties. I imagined his life.

Studies at the conservatoire, interrupted from 1914 to 1918 by the war. Afterward, concerts in small towns and marriage to a singer, who sacrificed her career for their children; his playing kept the family afloat. Cabarets, barrooms, and finally this whorehouse in Pigalle. He was paid by the hour. The more tunes he banged out, the more money he took home. Sometimes a plastered major stuck a hundred-franc note into his pocket so that he would play

“Schön Rosmarin” or “Lippen Schweigen.”

Chantal came on as a sultan’s favorite wife. The other girls wore black wigs; holding little cymbals, they gathered in a circle around Chantal. She tossed back her own real hair and greeted the sultan. Frivolous laughter started to well up inside me. The pianist was playing chords in fifths that sounded more Chinese 92 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

than Arabic. The stage pasha had Chantal dance the Dance of the Veils while the other girls obsequiously offered themselves to him. When the last bit of fabric had fallen, Chantal left the stage.

The soldiers applauded. I tore through my own veil and stood up.

With no more thought for the danger I’d been brooding over for hours, I stumbled in the general direction of the band.

“Accès interdit, monsieur,”
the piano player called out without interrupting the flow of his harem music. Turning my head, I gave him a glassy smile, disappeared behind the velvet border, and collided with the tenor. In the harsh glare of a spotlight, I could see that he was an old man. Watery eyes looked me up and down; white hair peeked out from under his pitch-black wig.

“Ready for a duet, soldier?” His lips were painted so as to make his mouth look like a little heart. Thick powder masked a skin rash, and a scarf covered his wrinkled neck. I pushed him aside and stumbled into the narrow passage. My hobnailed boots made considerable noise.

“Vous allez où, m’sieur?”
As he spoke, the stage manager moved a control on the light board and a garish violet shimmer was reflected from the stage.

“Chantal,” I said hoarsely, and left the man behind me.

Bluish light in the corridor. Scraps of words and laughter from behind closed doors. I stood there, reeling and helpless. From the stage, the strains of the “Toreador Song.” I called Chantal. The conversations fell silent for a moment and then began again. Fi-nale and flourish; feeble applause.

“Come out here, Chantal!” The weight of my own voice sent me staggering against a paper wall, which began to move. Dancing girls flitted past; some ran into me. Brief curses.

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 93

The sultan appeared before me.
“Quittez la scène, les boches!”

A muscular forearm crushed itself against the back of my neck, forcing me to bend down.

“Georges, t’es fou?”
The girls, practically naked, grabbed the patriot from behind and pulled him back. The grip on my neck disappeared; the women gathered around me.
“Tout va bien,
monsieur. Vous vous amusez? On peut aider?”

I gasped for air. “Chantal!”

Whispering around me:
“Qu’est-ce qu’il veut? Ça vous dit
quelque chose, Chantal?”
In the background, the tenor began the song about his Froufrou’s faithlessness. The girls swore.
“Léonard
a déjà commencé. Putain!”
They left me standing there, threw on another bit of fabric as they ran, and bounded onto the stage.

At the end of the corridor, I reached a door. It hung askew, hinges squealing, and opened outward onto an inner courtyard, overgrown with ivy and lighted by the summer moon. Chimney-high walls on every side, and crouched in a corner, Chantal. I leaned against the door frame; she looked up. It took her several seconds to process the combination of my face and my uniform.

Then she sprang to her feet, deeply shocked, quivering from head to toe. She had covered herself with a faded dressing gown. The summer breeze played with her hair.

“Chantal.” After all the opening lines I’d come up with, this was the only word that occurred to me. I started to go over to her.

My boot heels made a sharp sound on the worn, shiny threshold.

“I want to warn you.”

“Devil,” she said in a low voice, snatching together the lapels of her dressing gown. “You devil.”

“I’ve been looking for you, Chantal.” She tried to dash past 94 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

me, but the courtyard was small, and I was able to spring to the side and catch her arm. She turned around, stepped close to me, and spit. The absinthe made me sluggish and strong. She didn’t get away.

“Chantal, listen to me!” I shouted. It came out in German.

“German pig! Let me go!”

She struck me in the face as hard as she could; the following blow landed very low on my abdomen. I staggered and crashed into the wall. In one bound, she was through the door. The old wood splintered as it slammed behind her. I followed, my elbows pressed against my belly.

“I have to warn you, Chantal!”

A door opposite me opened a crack. When the dwarf saw my uniform, he quickly drew back. Darkness in the corridor. My footsteps hammered the floor as I went after her. I followed her all through the backstage labyrinth at Turachevsky’s. Once, I saw the tail of her gown disappearing around a corner. Astonished performers jumped aside; cigarette-smoking girls in kimonos pressed themselves against the wall.

At last, the salon opened out in front of me. I stumbled over the edge of the carpet, lost my balance, and fell to the floor under the chandelier. The women on the sofas giggled. Madame entered. Before I could explain it all to her, a pair of boots appeared in front of me. As my eyes wandered upward, I recognized the second lieutenant’s face. He laughed his familiar bleating laugh.

Behind him, the colonel interrupted his concentration on light-ing his cigar to cast a surprised glance in my direction. I got to my feet quickly, unsteadily. The green fairy had flown away. I came to attention.

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 95

“Stand at ease,” the colonel growled. “We’re not on the drill field.” His face softened into a fleshy grin. “The kids are playing hide-and-seek in here,” he said. The second lieutenant giggled.

My eyes looked feverishly for Chantal. Innumerable doors, a curtain in front of a passageway. Steps leading somewhere.

His cigar successfully lighted, the colonel paid no more attention to me. He and his retinue disappeared into the bar. I stood under the chandelier and started feeling sick. Very slowly, exaggeratedly slowly, I pulled my forage cap out of my epaulet and put it on my head. Madame’s farewell sounded from far away. I stepped into the night air.

I’d made everything worse. Chantal’s suspicion was now a certainty: I was the enemy, the German pig. I could do nothing more for her. I set out at a half trot across the square. The green fairy had left behind a dark, burning sensation; I needed water.

Back in my hotel room, I drank from the faucet greedily, like an ox. Bright moonlit night; dreamless sleep. I kept my boots on.

August was hot. The order of the day in rue des Saussaies granted shirtsleeve privileges. Leibold did not allow himself this convenience. Uniform jacket, belt buckle, Merit Cross snug against his throat. He gave the impression of someone who always felt cold.

“Today,” he said.

Days had passed since we’d last had a smoke together by the window. Down in the garden, the wilting grass was knee-high.

No one did anything about it. I missed the one-armed gardener.

“Today, I have an appointment at the barber’s,” Leibold said with a thin smile. “We seem to be dealing with a pretty large cell.”

“The barbershop?” I considered the plane tree, whose leaves were turning red.

He nodded and said, “Rue Jacob.” I stared at the point in the A P R I L I N PA R I S . 97

window where the mullion crossed the transom. The cross dissolved in the sunlight. “Do you know this shop?”

I cleared my throat. “I’m sure I’ve passed it a time or two.”

He moved closer. “After this evening, it won’t exist anymore.”

I took the cigarette he offered. He waited until the first cloud of smoke had ascended above us before continuing. “The Gascon will be there. Turning out pamphlets, probably. We figure the machine’s in the cellar.”

“A night operation?” I asked.

“Not necessarily.” Leibold shook his head. “The Parisians have to see how far we’re willing to go.” He held his cigarette perpen-dicular to the floor, balancing the ash. “You’ll probably have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

“I understand, Captain.”

“Are you feeling well?” His face came nearer.

“How do you mean?” I straightened my spine.

“Of late, you haven’t been all there, my friend. I’ve noticed it for a while now.”

I was startled. Inconspicuous, appropriate—that’s what I wanted to be. I didn’t want anyone focusing on me. “Hasn’t my performance been—”

“It’s not work-related,” he said, waving dismissively. Ashes fell on his sleeve. “Tell me, man to man: What’s eating you?”

“Nothing, Herr Leibold—that is, Captain.” I came to attention. “I’ll try harder from now on, sir.”

“You’re a hard fellow to figure out, Corporal,” the bald man said. “Can I help you in some way?” I could feel his sincerity, and I knew how dangerous such sympathy was. “Take the afternoon 98 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

off.” Leibold threw down his cigarette and ground it out under his heel. No privilege, I thought. Normality. Distance. “Rest and relax,” he said. “Why not go swimming? It’ll probably be your last chance this year.” He wiped his skull with a white handkerchief. I clicked my heels together too late and watched the black uniform disappear at the end of the hall.

No sound from anywhere. The hotel appeared deserted. Nobody walking down the corridors, nobody making a phone call. Everyone was on duty somewhere else. Except me, there alone, lying on my bed and listening. Faint traffic noise. A single drip in the bathroom. I felt like the only living creature in the building. With every minute that I lost, the possibility of doing anything grew smaller. But my chances of survival increased. I had to make a decision; I had to act. I remained where I was—on my back. I shoved a pillow under my head and gazed at the shepherd girls.