April in Paris (6 page)

Very few Wehrmacht, but many SS, with their black uniforms and death’s-head insignia. Terse nods, careless salutes. The waiter showed us to the best table—the stage was only an arm’s length away. I hesitated before taking a seat. Leibold gave me a comradely wave.

“Down in front,” someone behind me shouted.

I pulled up a chair from a neighboring table. On the stage, dancing girls were performing an animal scene. They wore sheep masks and lion masks and very little else. The band played folk melodies. While the girls hopped about, the colonel ordered two bottles. “If the champagne’s as stale as this is …” he grumbled.

At the end of the number, the lions lay down with the lambs.

The Wehrmacht contingent howled approval.

“Easy to please,” the big officer said, looking around conde-scendingly.

Without bowing, the girls disappeared from the stage. The band played a march. The pianist stood up and announced in broken German that “living nude sculptures” were next on the evening’s program.

“I’m going to need schnapps for that!” the colonel groaned.

Not waiting for the waiter to open the champagne bottles, he sent him off to fetch something stronger. The second lieutenant popped the corks. Leibold’s hand hung at his side, not far from my knee. He was beating time on the leg of my chair. I took a full glass and shifted a little to one side.

“ ‘Nude sculptures!’ ” bleated the lieutenant as four girls presented
The Bridge to Happiness
on the stage. A young man in A P R I L I N PA R I S . 49

princely garments crossed the bridge, attentively considering each of its four naked piers. The colonel poured himself some schnapps.

“This is worse than
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
!”

“Well, yes, but the one with the chignon sure is a hot-looking little beast.” The second lieutenant was alternating between schnapps and champagne.
The Bridge to Happiness
disappeared.

Accompanied by a fiddle solo, the models for the next living sculpture took up their positions. I felt Leibold’s hand gripping my bootleg.

Three young women presented
The Judgment of Paris.
Naked Greek goddesses, bearing their symbols and turning slowly in a circle. The bosomy Hera wore a red toga. Aphrodite played with a fig leaf, clumsily covering each of her naked parts in turn. The third was Pallas Athena.

I forgot Leibold’s hand, which was carefully encircling my knee, because the girl playing the war goddess was Chantal. She wore a helmet and armor, the latter cut so as to show her breasts to great advantage. Like the others, she stretched out her arm to the golden apple and turned in a circle. Her reddish brown hair gleamed in the spotlight. Her face was completely expressionless.

“That’s enough for me, gentlemen!” The colonel sprang to his feet. “I’m going to have them
appeler les dames.
” He stamped back into the salon.

Very slowly, very stiffly, I stood up, staring fixedly at the stage.

Leibold’s hand withdrew and moved toward his cigarette case. Paris, in gold makeup, was about to hand the apple to Aphrodite, but the commotion in front of the stage irritated him. He dropped the apple, which rolled behind the footlights. Merriment among the god-50 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

desses. Without finishing the scene, they disappeared behind the transparent curtain. The band played “Liebeslied.” The stage lights went out. I kept staring. Chantal, the barber’s assistant—had she really been standing there?

Leibold scrutinized me. “Which of the Graces has struck your fancy? Or was it perhaps the young man?” I registered his soft face, the drops of sweat on his forehead.

“So what’s going on?” asked the second lieutenant.

Leibold pointed toward the salon, where a bell was being rung for the second time. Without saying anything, I made my way among the tables. Leibold followed, glass in hand.

When we entered the room, madame was clapping for the girls to hurry up. They were already entering through every door. The chandelier shone more brightly. The colonel was on the sofa, waiting to review the selection. A tall girl in a blue tunic placed herself in the center, like a flagpole that the others gathered around. A second girl, looking insulted, lifted her little skirt and gave us a rear view. There was a Slavic girl with yellowish eyes and powerful teeth and a girl in a green shirt, very thin, with pronounced shoulder blades. More girls kept coming in, their faces long from suppressed yawns. The rustle of silk. The squeaking of high-heeled sandals. My eyes flew from door to door. Which door would Chantal come through?

“What do you suppose this snaggletoothed battle-ax is up to?”

The colonel laughed. “She’s even mobilized the reserves!” One girl on the flank opened her kimono. Her breasts stared dully in opposite directions. It struck me that not one of these women seemed to be really present. Their smiles looked painted on with A P R I L I N PA R I S . 51

spit and lipstick. There were two rows of them now, one behind the other.

“I always thought they had at most ten women here,” the big officer said, nodding, impressed.

The second lieutenant was exchanging glances with the tall girl in the tunic. After the second row was full, the latecomers lay down in front of the others. Raised eyebrows, serious expressions.

Chantal’s eyes were not among them.

“Attention, group photograph!” the colonel cried out, baring his teeth. He undid his top button and pulled at his Merit Cross.

The second lieutenant was waiting for his commanding officer to make his choice so that he, the lieutenant, could finally snap up the tall girl and vanish. Leibold lounged in an armchair, as though nothing that was happening had anything to do with him. Silence fell; the moment of decision had arrived.

“Mesdames, l’offre surpasse le
…
”
The colonel turned to me.

“How do you say
demand
?”

“Demande,”
I answered, thereby drawing all eyes.

Madame brought champagne. Leaning over the colonel, she called his attention to a full-figured angel. “
Vous connaissez cette
fille,
Flora, a recent addition?”

“No, no, not her.” Flora failed to suit the officer’s taste. He said, “The one behind her, in the second row. Fourth from the left, with the vulgar mouth. We’ve already had the pleasure.”

“Alors, monsieur,”
madame said with a nod. She waved her handkerchief in the direction of the chosen one.

“Yes, I have simple German tastes. I like plain food,” the colonel mused as the girl moved toward him, her eyes cast down.

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

“All right,” he said with a sigh, as though he’d lost interest in the remainder of the process. The second lieutenant jumped on the tunic a bit too eagerly, as though someone else might snatch her away from him. She didn’t smile.

“Lost your appetite?” Leibold stood next to me. I whiffed his expensive cologne.

“I really didn’t plan on—”

“We could go somewhere else, if you want.” He took hold of the brocade trim on my collar. His arm brushed the back of my neck. I looked into his white, tactless face. Two dozen women were still facing us. Madame played with the silver cross on her bosom. Her expression was supposed to be encouraging, but I could see her impatience. In the second row, a girl with bobbed hair yielded to a yawn; her mouth opened wide. She rubbed her eyes with her hand, making her bracelets tinkle.

“Her,” I said, and stepped away from Leibold.

Softly murmuring
“Pardon”
and leading with her narrow shoulders, the girl with the bobbed hair parted the ranks of her colleagues. Leibold didn’t stop smiling for a second as he made his way back to the bar.

The girls turned on their heels. Those who were on the floor stood up. There was a whirling of sleeves and belt ends. And then the room and the gray-green carpet were empty. On the stairs, the unchosen began to talk all at once, like girls in a boarding school.

The one with the bobbed hair waited for me to accompany her.

She put her hand in front of her mouth. All this while, I was trying to identify Chantal among the girls leaving the room, but my hopes were in vain. The bookshop owner’s daughter. The Judgment of Paris.

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 53

“Veuillez monter?”
madame suggested encouragingly.

I followed the bobbed head without touching its owner, who introduced herself, as I might have expected, as “Yvette.” I knew that Leibold was watching me from inside the door to the bar, so I didn’t turn around again.

The room was bigger than I’d imagined. I sank down onto the bed. Yvette took off her little green coat.

“Seulement un moment,”
I said.

She didn’t understand and knelt down on the carpet in front of me.

“Je pars tout de suite,”
I said. I fished some banknotes out of my breast pocket, paid her, and pushed her hands away.

“Mais qu’est-ce que t’as? Tu me voulais.”

“Oui, tu me plais beaucoup. Je suis fatigué.”

I looked at my watch. Was Chantal still in the building? How did she get from Pigalle to rue de Gaspard at night? Somewhere behind a nearby wall, the second lieutenant laughed. The girl with the bobbed hair laid her head in my lap. She was still strok-ing my hand when she fell asleep.

Tonight! This evening! Please!” Hirschbiegel bellowed, bang-ing on my door. Then, all of a sudden, he was standing in the doorway.

“Tonight we’re doing the town!” he cried out. He stared wide-eyed, trying to make me out in the darkness.

Hirschbiegel weighed two hundred and twenty-five pounds.

His legs were as thick as barrels, and he was as strong as an ox. Although he had his lieutenant’s uniforms custom-made, he still looked like a caricature in them.

“Cherchez la femme!”
he shouted. “You’re not going to stand me up this time!”

Hirschbiegel came from Munich. His parents were rich. He said they even owned an apartment in Paris. As far as their son was concerned, the war was a cakewalk. The only thing that A P R I L I N PA R I S . 55

caused him anxiety was the thought of going into whorehouses alone. He was ashamed to speak to the grisettes and wanted me to smooth his path for him.

“Not tonight,” I said, pulling the covers up over my chest.

“Good God! All you do is lie around!” In one step, he reached the window and yanked the curtains aside. Droplets of sweat gleamed in his curly blond hair. He turned around and froze.

Anna Rieleck-Sostmann braced one leg against the edge of the bed and rolled up her stocking.

“Holy Christ!” Hirschbiegel exclaimed, so shocked, he toppled against the wall. “I beg your pardon! It was so dark in here.”

Even as he excused himself, he was blatantly ogling the half-naked woman. “I didn’t know you were in contact with the enemy,” he said, grinning. “Introduce me.” He’d already recovered all his former bearishness. “Maybe the three of us could—”

“Leave the room while a lady gets dressed,” Rieleck-Sostmann said. Her tone had the same effect on Hirschbiegel as it unfail-ingly had on the SS corporals in the office. The sounds of his native tongue further disconcerted him. “She’s one of ours!” he blurted out.

“Get out now, Lieutenant,” Rieleck-Sostmann said. She didn’t raise her voice at all.

“If I had only known … Please accept my apologies, Fräulein.” He groped for the door behind his back with one large pawlike hand. As he retreated, he banged into the bed, and Rieleck-Sostmann sat up menacingly. Immediately thereafter, we could hear the lieutenant’s heavy steps echoing down the hall.

“Sorry about that,” I said, touching her back.

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

“Nothing to be done. Your hotel is still less complicated than mine.” She smoothed the second stocking and looked at me. Her blond hair covered half her face. “Are you going to go out with him?”

I took one of her cigarettes. “Maybe.”

She began pinning up her hair. “Don’t you ever get the itch to play the Frenchman again?” she asked.

I struck a match. “Suppose I did. What harm would it do?”

“Well, I might denounce you as a
déserteur amoureux.
”

I could never tell when she was joking. She looked into my eyes as they reflected the match’s bright flame. On a sudden im-pulse, she got to her feet, opened the wardrobe, and took out the suit with the little checks. She smiled as she put on the jacket.

Disguised as a man, she came back to the bed and sank down on me. I endured her painful attentions. Afterward, she stood up and let the jacket slip to the floor. Aided by the mirror, she arranged her hair for the second time. I ran my tongue over my lower lip, feeling the spot where she had bitten me.

In the seconds it took Rieleck-Sostmann to make sure the hotel corridor was clear, I wished for nothing so much as normal duty far from Paris, for some office somewhere, for written sentences I could translate into German. And at the same time, I knew I’d never have it so easy anywhere else.

Rieleck-Sostmann left. For several minutes, I stared at the jacket on the carpet. I missed Monsieur Antoine. The young man who pushed his hat high on his forehead and walked through the city in soft-soled shoes. The unknown Parisian who greeted people and was greeted in turn. He enjoyed soaking up some of the warmth of this summer afternoon.

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 57

Until that day, I hadn’t had the courage to disregard Rieleck-Sostmann’s warning. I hadn’t gone back to rue Jacob, not in civilian clothes, not in my uniform. Sometimes I considered dropping into Turachevsky’s, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that, either.

I often brooded over Chantal’s presence there and tried to make sense of it. I didn’t know much about her, but one thing was obvious: She hated the occupiers. Why would she appear before them naked?

I had grown gloomy and apathetic in these past weeks. We interrogated a Gascon suspected of plotting the arson attack in the ninth arrondissement. He was taciturn, gnarled as a root, and good at hiding behind his country dialect. I often had to repeat questions before I could understand what he meant. Leibold turned this man over to the SS corporals, but it was as though they were pounding on insensible stone. The Gascon had massive shoulders that he hunched defensively when the blows began. He let the corporals thrust his head into the tub. They held him under the water interminably, but when they pulled him back up, he said nothing. They prevented him from sleeping; heavy-lidded, his jaw jutting forward, he sat there and spoke so unintel-ligibly that I was obliged to work out for myself much of what he said.