April in Paris (5 page)

When I stepped into the courtyard during the break one afternoon, she spoke to me. “I saw you,” she said. She was eating a sandwich on dark bread. Everyone else had to make do with French bread, the insubstantial white stuff we called
Luftbrot,
“air bread.” What army stores could have supplied her with black bread? And I smelled liverwurst, real German liverwurst.

“You saw me?” I leaned on the projecting section of the wall.

“Don’t we see each other every day?”

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 39

Although the weather was warm, Rieleck-Sostmann was wearing a calf-length coat of white fur, either rabbit or cat. Her pinned-up hair bobbed up and down as she chewed. I watched her jaw muscles.

“You go around in civilian clothes after work.” Her gray-green eyes scrutinized me curiously.

I shifted my weight onto both legs so I wouldn’t fall over. I started feeling sick on the spot. “You must have me confused with someone else,” I replied.

“Stop it,” she said, cutting me off. “Only senior officers are allowed to go out in civilian clothes, and then only with special permission.”

I knew the rules. Such offenses were harshly punished, most recently with marching orders for the Eastern Front. “I didn’t know that,” I said, searching Rieleck-Sostmann’s face.

“You’re not eating anything,” Rieleck-Sostmann said.

“I don’t eat until after work.”

“Because of the interrogations?” Her features didn’t change, but I had the feeling that she was smiling at me. “There was one fellow before you who would always get an upset stomach. A second lieutenant from Wiesbaden. He took pills for it. After he ran out of them, he got sick. Now he’s in Smolensk.”

“Fräulein Rieleck, what you saw—”

“Frau,”
she said, correcting me. “My husband fell in combat.”

She bit her lip. “Why do you pretend to be a Frenchman?”

“I wanted to see … whether my French is good enough to fool the French.”

“Why?” she asked, unimpressed. “You’re not in the secret service.”

40 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

“An ill-considered joke,” I babbled. “I did it only once.”

“You’re a dreamer, Corporal. You’re out of step with the times.” Rieleck-Sostmann crumpled up her waxed sandwich paper and got to her feet. Her high heels made her taller than I was.

“Leibold’s invited you to the Waffen-SS meeting, hasn’t he?”

I felt hot and cold. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I typed the guest list.”

Despite my fear, this announcement made me curious. “Then do you also know why the captain would invite
me
?”

“Look in the mirror, Corporal.” For the first time, she smiled.

“Do you own a decent uniform for going out? Or do you want to show up at the gathering in your
checkered suit
?”

“Please, Frau Rieleck,” I said in a low voice. “Don’t turn me in.” She was silent. I said, “I have a second uniform.”

“Be sure it’s not missing a single button. By the way, the party’s in your hotel.” She left me standing there.

In the interrogation room, in the corridor, in the office while I typed up reports, I searched my colleagues’ faces. Had Rieleck-Sostmann informed on me? Did anyone else know about my masquerade? I went so far as to initiate a conversation with one of Leibold’s bone breakers.

“Düsseldorf,” he said, surprised by my question about where he came from. Another SS corporal came up, and soon four of us were having a smoke together. During the chitchat about the Rhineland, I was relieved to note that at least the lower ranks didn’t suspect a thing.

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 41

“My adjutant’s home on leave,” Leibold said that same afternoon.

He was looking out the window at the rain falling on the garden.

Green foliage covered half the wall. “I’d like you to accompany me,” he added with a smile.

I inquired as to the reason for the meeting.

“Camaraderie.” He let his cigarette butt fall right in front of my feet. “Polish your insignia, Roth, and shine your boots.”

Back at the hotel, I got the better of my two uniforms out of the wardrobe and found it wrinkled. The laundry had closed some time ago, so I hurried down to the basement and asked the toilet attendant for advice. She was glad to help. Later that evening, the uniform, freshly pressed, was hanging next to the mirror. I put on the coat and inspected myself; the dark gray gave me a certain distinction. I snapped the forage cap onto my head and yanked my leather belt tight and straight.

In the lobby, dozens of officers, many of them escorting ladies, were mingling. Halting French, stilted atmosphere. Leibold came right on time.

“Not bad,” he said, looking me over. “Black would look even better on you.” He slapped me on the shoulder. We didn’t take the elevator—Leibold detested being closed up in narrow spaces.

We reached the fifth floor. General exchange of greetings. Two Gestapo agents bent over the guest list. They stared suspiciously at me, a Wehrmacht corporal in SS land. I stepped close to Leibold to make it clear I belonged there.

“I’ll let you know when I need you,” he said. He left me by the entrance and joined the brass in the salon. I’d never seen a full colonel close up before. A giant of a man, he gave Leibold a 42 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

hearty greeting. I ordered myself a glass of white wine and withdrew into a corner. Half an hour later, Anna Rieleck-Sostmann appeared. She was wearing a gray suit; its skirt covered her calves almost all the way to her ankles.

“You got an invitation, too?” I asked her, surprised.

“Telegram for Leibold,” Rieleck-Sostmann replied, holding up a briefcase. Her look said that she wanted to distinguish herself from the painted and powdered French women the officers were gathered around.

“Shall I lead you to him?”

Leibold was sitting in the salon, across from the colonel. It was strange to see the two of them there, against a background of wallpaper decorated with a pattern of crowns. As I started toward them, I felt Rieleck-Sostmann’s hand on my sleeve.

“There’s time,” she said. Her fingers lingered on my cuff links.

“What floor is your room on?”

I told her.

“And the number?”

I looked at her.

“You go ahead. I’ll knock twice,” she said. Her eyes remained cool.

“And if Leibold—”

“He won’t miss you so soon.”

I wanted to say something in reply, but Rieleck-Sostmann’s manner ruled out any protest. Slowly, I turned toward the double door, kept going, one step after another, without looking back. When I passed the watchdogs, I lifted my hand in salute. I could feel the sweat inside the shafts of my boots. My uniform A P R I L I N PA R I S . 43

coat was stuck to my armpits. On the stairs, a group of SS officers were trying to form a difficult French sentence. I hastened down three flights and through the hall. A lightbulb gave me a fright, popping and going out as I passed it. I opened my door, let it shut behind me, and stood in the room like a stranger. The bed took up practically the whole room. I neither turned on the light nor opened the curtains, even though the air was stale. As usual, there was nothing to drink. I felt a muffled drumming in my temples.

A short while later, Rieleck-Sostmann slipped into the room and closed the door without a sound. She looked at me like someone assessing a commodity and loosened her hair. With a single grab, she unfastened the buckle of my leather belt. “A bayonet would look good on you,” she said as she laid the gear aside.

“I find daggers unpractical,” I murmured. “It’s too easy to get tangled up.”

She gave me a push, and I fell onto the bed. Then she unbuttoned her jacket and blouse, but she didn’t take them off. With a high, clear sound, her skirt slid to the floor. She was wearing flesh-colored hose. She knelt over me and undid my shirt. I thought of my neighbor in the next room, who perhaps at that very moment was picking up the receiver on the other side of the thin wall. I said, “We have to be quiet.”

She grabbed me by the hips and pulled my trousers down to my knees. It made me think about the water washing over the steel framework of the Pont Solférino.

The two Gestapo agents conscientiously checked their list before they let me back into the meeting rooms.

Leibold was waiting. “You must ask permission to leave,” he said irritably.

“Latrine visit, Captain,” I said, coming to attention. When he looked away, I wiped the perspiration off my upper lip.

“You just have to hang on for another half hour. Then we’re going to Turachevsky’s with a few of these gentlemen.”

“I can’t afford to go to a nightclub, Capt—”

“Stop with the whining,” Leibold snapped. “You think they bill champagne by the glass? I’m not interested in going out with a tight-ass. Try some of the sturgeon.”

I spread a bit of the black jelly on a rusk. Since the Soviet em-bassy got cleared out, tinned food was everywhere. Also different kinds of tea, richer and stronger than the ground powder proA P R I L I N PA R I S . 45

vided by the Wehrmacht. I remembered reading horror stories about the confiscations in
Je suis partout.
Trapdoors and dun-geons, electrified tubs for burning bodies. The faces in the photographs, bleached white by the flash.

I walked around unobtrusively, plate in hand, among the crowd of uniforms. Looking out the window, I could see a Frenchwoman in a robe, standing on the balcony across the street and gazing at the noisy gathering. When I learned out, she disappeared into the darkness of her apartment. I stared at the dark rectangle. What was Chantal doing at that moment? Did she live with her father? Was their flat above the bookstore? For the first time, I wondered why I’d never yet seen her with a man. The barber, perhaps?

“Are you dreaming, Roth?”

The champagne made Leibold’s normally melancholy eyes glitter. “We’re off,” he said, putting on his cap. When his bald pate was covered up, he looked years younger.

Four SS officers were going to share the car. Mine was the only Wehrmacht uniform. Things threatened to be a bit tight in the backseat, so I offered to take the Métro, suggesting that we could meet up again at the Trinité stop. Leibold brushed off that idea with a joke: They wouldn’t want to throw me in with all the com-mon soldiers hurrying to get back to their quarters before lights-out, he said. When I got in the car, the colonel looked peeved.

Leibold unbuckled his dagger and laid it on his knee. I pressed myself up against the door.

“Do you know what I found on my way out of the officers’

mess?” the colonel asked. “A brochure.”

We drove off.

46 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

The second lieutenant in the front seat turned around. “Indecent photos?”

“Indecent but amusing,” the colonel said with a laugh. “A woman, shot from behind, wearing nothing but a pair of short lederhosen. They had oval windows cut in them, and the cheeks of her butt were showing through!”

During the ensuing laughter, Leibold observed me with searching eyes. We passed the Pont Solférino. The invisible water roared.

“Now’s the best time for Turachevsky’s,” the lieutenant in the front seat said. “After midnight, the Wehrmacht starts drifting in.

Then the couches tend to get crowded. One night, I counted eight grunts sitting on a single sofa.” His bleating laugh was smothered by a look from the colonel.

“I heard a Negro sing there once,” Leibold said. “Totally amazing.”

“I hope there’s a dance show tonight,” the colonel replied.

They fell silent until we got to rue de Clichy. The streets were practically empty. There were a few German civilians and a woman in a hurry. Her wooden sandals clattered as she ran.

When she heard the German car, she disappeared into a building.

A blue light burning in the entrance to the Scheherazade reflected off the visor of the night porter’s cap.

We stopped in front of Turachevsky’s. I jumped out and opened the captain’s door.

“Don’t make such a face,” Leibold hissed.

Before the second lieutenant could lay a hand on the doorbell, the door was opened.

“What’s this? The place is empty.” The colonel looked all A P R I L I N PA R I S . 47

around. “Usually, you have to ring like crazy before they can hear you.”

I was the last to enter the lobby. Sofas and chaise longues.

High overhead, a chandelier glittered in the smokeless air.

“It’s early yet,” the colonel muttered.

The woman who greeted guests came toward us, wearing a blue silk dress. In one hand, she clutched a wadded-up lace handkerchief, which she was drumming against her forehead. “Ah,
mon Dieu,
good evening, what ees up, holy smoke?” she cried out. “Where are your friends,
les messieurs soldats
?”

The officers looked at one another.

“It’s so lovely and warm out, madame, such a fine evening.

People prefer to stay outside.”

“But what you talking,
m’sieur l’officier
? All soldier have gone to Russia, gone last night, on the railroad.”

“Damned nonsense!” the colonel cut in.
“Je vous assure,
madame
, no German soldier is leaving Paris for the east. Who starts these bloody latrine rumors?”

“Hopefully, you are right,” madame replied, somewhat relieved.
“Encore deux jours comme ça et je dois congédier les filles.”

She fanned her bosom with the handkerchief. “
Quelle horreur,
cette guerre de Russie.
They say Germans have lost many men.”

“On the contrary, madame.” The colonel adopted a severe tone. “
Il faut garder votre sangfroid, je vous en prie.
The German losses are meager when compared with the world-historical di-mensions of our successes.” With that, he left the matron’s side, stalked resonantly across the room, and disappeared into the bar.

Our convoy fell in behind him.

Civilians from the embassies, one of them wearing gaiters. The 48 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

other civilians were rip-off artists, black marketeers, and pimps.