Cleopatra�s Perfume (37 page)

The evening in her arms was indeed a potent meditation on the power of the perfume to destroy a woman as well as to create resolve in another, to conjoin our fears and, I believe, heal our souls. I rarely experienced such intensity with a sexual partner as I did with this young woman. Love, pain and a betrayal of which I’ve yet to rid myself, knowing I sent her to another prison. But I must. For her sake as well as my own. She will be out of Laila’s hands there until the war is over. If she were sent back to Germany, I’m certain she’d find herself again in a concentration camp, where the Nazi bureaucracy that recorded every arrest, movement and death of a victim (even the lice picked from their heads, according to Anna) would kill her. She told me about seeing little children murdered with sticks and thrown into a fire burning in a pit, as well as how she stared at the corpses of Jewish men and women stacked on top of each other like firewood, their huge eyes sunken in their skulls more bone than flesh, keeping her gaze on them long enough to notice that several eyes blinked back at her.
They were still alive.

I’m still haunted by her account. Her description of life in Dachau was one of startling richness, especially the mention of the “death books” that present a clear picture of the tortures the inmates suffered and who lived and who died. How her own life was spared when she was sent to see the camp
Kommandant
and she saw a note scribbled in the margin in green ink next to her name: she was to be used as part of a sterilization experiment. When she was stripped in preparation, drawings she had made of other inmates fell out of her pockets and onto the floor. Instead of being tortured, as she
expected, the
Kommandant
was impressed with her work, noting how she captured skin tone and facial structure better than any photograph. He kept her alive to draw such pictures for him until a woman visited the camp. A dark-eyed woman with dangling earrings and a foreign accent.

I cannot put blame upon the girl’s slender shoulders for accepting Laila’s offer to be released from the concentration camp. I feel certain someday Anna will be able to return to her way of life in peace. I have told you her story; when this terrible war is over, I shall petition the Foreign Office to help her, for to do so is the only way to rescue her from oblivion. She inhabited a world parallel to mine but with key differences, such as the monsters who beat her, humiliated her and who lacked even the most elemental human emotion.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I want you to understand why I am infusing my story with the vigor of such powerful emotions so as to convey my state of mind on that seventh day of September 1940. Though days had passed since Anna’s arrest, guilt flooded me, rage overcame me, but what could
I
do? An addict. A woman whose desires didn’t go beyond the tiresome need for sex and cocaine. Selfish. Rootless. Gutless. Damn, I was going mad. Laila’s tentacles were here in London. Who would she send next? What was I going to do?

What was I going to do?

I know you are resilient enough, dear reader, to see through any melodrama or vivid and morbid descriptions to sway you and make up your own mind about what transpired. Know this, when I dabbed the perfume between my thighs on that September night and set out for an evening of frivolity, I was frightened, unnerved, and on the
edge of a nervous breakdown. I continued using drugs to make the pain go away, to block out everything I’d heard since that first day in Port Said, irritated with the Jewish girl’s solicitude regarding her plight, but never once criticizing my own obstinacy to become involved. Since then, I had been privy to a firsthand account of what was really happening in this terrible war, the suffering, the hatred, the humiliation.

But I still refused to join the fight.

The restaurant for her daughter’s upcoming twenty-first birthday party had been selected by Lady Palmer when, in a moment of exuberance and frustration, she declared it was time to stop living this “phony war” of mock air raids and the wail of that awful siren every night and return to a semblance of normalcy. To her that meant planning an elaborate celebration, but rather than have the party at a proper hotel like the Grosvenor or the Dorchester, her daughter insisted on staging her event at an establishment located in Piccadilly in an underground restaurant. Below a cinema, very expensive and smart, and very popular. Jazz, decor and great food for everyone. No doubt with the wartime food rationing, the guests would enjoy
anything
to tempt their palates, with the exception of what had become known as Woolton Pie, a low-cost dish filled with bland vegetables.

I dared to speculate who among the society crowd would be attending, as most Londoners who could leave had already done so since we expected the bombing to begin any day. The interminable waiting got on everyone’s nerves, but we were determined that as long as we lived it would not be in a Nazi England.

I felt detached from all this somehow, going about my daily routine, thinking about how I felt powerless to face the truth about what I’d become. Stripped of all the fancy adornment of my sexual needs, I knew I must look back on what happened to me in Cairo and interpret it for what it was: I was acting out my illusions about sex, creating a myth that even
I
could not uphold with my wild ways, that to ever find such a love as I’d had with Lord Marlowe, I must allow a man to know me, my flaws as well as my strengths. It was a sad awakening, one I was not able to accept, and so I tossed it away with a wave of my wrist when I sniffed the white powder and proceeded to continue peering forward into the identical mirage I had created for myself in the Near East. I existed for sex, nothing more. And the war wasn’t going to change that.

So when Lady Palmer and her daughter dropped in for tea on occasion and I saw the bloom on Flavia’s pretty face, aglow with youth and gifted with the hope young people have that life awaits them, I admit I understood her yen to stage this birthday party and to live for today. Hadn’t I done the same with my years of decadent rootlessness and irresponsibility? I had even helped her convince her mother, Lady Palmer, to stay in London rather than join the other city dwellers flooding the country hotels or private homes (sitting and reading and eating and drinking, wondering if they had fled for nothing), no doubt because of the dashing RAF officer I spotted her with at the Coconut Grove nightclub.
A brilliant chap who blasted his way through the skies over Dunkirk and sailed straight into battle with five Messerschmitts on his tail and brought down two,
to hear Flavia tell it, all in an effort to return to her arms.

I must admit a pang of envy shot through me when I heard her go on about her young flier, my own loneliness haunting me until I reached the ineffable pleasure the drug gave me, far more commanding, more comforting than the farewell of an officer about to leave for the front, knowing so many of them would not return. I knew my drug would always be there for me, though I didn’t use every day. I could take a hit and not think about it for a day or a week, especially during the London springtime and summer when the parks were green and overflowing with succulent tulips waving their farewells in the breeze.

But autumn was upon us and the thought of spending a cold London winter under the threat of invasion tore me apart. Every night we heard the bombers flying overhead on their way to Liverpool or the Midlands and every night we held our breath, waiting.

I continued on this wayward folly for months, believing it would never end, but I must admit, I looked forward to the birthday party after this time of turmoil in my life, to donning a slinky backless gown that embodied the prewar, aristocratic luxury gone from London. I wanted to emit a certain seductiveness, to titillate and tease the libidos of those gentlemen who knew about my reputation but who never had the opportunity to taste the forbidden fruit of what many assumed was my debauched experiences in the Near East. Erotic, arousing in its implications.

Thank you, dear reader, for listening to me recount all that happened during that year, as the details are instrumental to setting the scene for what is about to take place on that night in London when the skies turned dark with the appearance of three hundred fifty Nazi bombers escorted by six hundred fighters over
the city, the scream of the bombs filling the air with its sharp sound and the knowledge that at last what we feared most had come to pass.

That night, the horror of the London Blitz began, and my own glamorous life as I knew it ended.

London

September 7, 1940

S
aturday. Five p.m. No one paid attention to the monotonous droning in the distance, a buzzing in our ears that we deemed more of a nuisance than a warning as we made our way downstairs to the underground restaurant, our gas masks slung over our shoulders (we carried them everywhere—they became a kind of charm). But we had no time for war tonight. This was a birthday party, a night of celebration. Vanilla cake (sweetened with carrots since sugar was rationed) with candles waiting to be lit, pudding and apple tarts tempted us to indulge in dessert before dinner, which consisted of creamed fish and mashed potatoes. Dangling red paper chains hung from the numerous glass mosaics decorating the walls. Cold drinks, iced and ready. It had been a hot, sunny day and everyone looked forward to an evening where the exuberance of youth reigned over
the stodginess of an older generation unwilling to show fear. We believed we were slipping through the looking glass of ordinary life as if by magic into a visual tapestry promising flirting, romance
and,
I promised my burning clit, sex.

I raced forward into that night with the giddiness of a young girl, the breezes warm, my libido aroused. Over the past year, I had drifted from one infatuation to another, survived the turmoil of quick sex without commitment, suppressed my disappointment when I smelled the scent of another woman upon a man’s lapel, delighted in exaltation over a new conquest, then suffered through days of self-reproach for my selfishness. To be shocked by my actions, dear reader, is to be shocked by the times in which I lived. We were at war. I beg you not to ignore that.

I continued tonight more desperate than ever on my mad escapade of sexual conquests, not in the least subdued by my recent brush with Laila’s unbelievable scheme to remove Cleopatra’s perfume from my grasp. More than ever, I was careful to wear the perfume at all times, if only a dab, and to keep a small amount in a round pill box in a secret compartment in my clutch.

Wiping the light sweat off the back of my neck, I had to remind myself that it was autumn. I arrived early to the party, as had several others, including a dapper, older gentleman (one of the few in attendance not in uniform) who asked me if I was Flavia’s school chum. I lowered my eyes, wondering who he was, though I was secretly flattered by his remark.
No,
I answered, wetting my red lips. I was a friend of Lady Palmer, I told him, which drew an intake of breath on his part and a glance up and down my slim body as well as an invitation to supper if I was free tomorrow. I accepted his in
vitation. He was a family friend from Canada, I discovered, here in London on business.

For the Foreign Office? I dared to ask. He smiled as if I’d guessed correctly, but he wouldn’t admit to anything. I was already tipsy
and
high when I bounced off what I considered a witty remark about how Sir_____ had approached
me
to be a spy.

“Did I hear you say you’re going to be a spy, Lady Marlowe?” Flavia asked, joining us. Her look of surprise then delight lifted her arched brows, brightening her delicate features with a sensuality most becoming to her.

Picking up a glass of chilled wine, I said, “No, dear, I turned him down. I’m not the Mata Hari type.”

“You’re beautiful enough to be a spy, milady,” she added with a sincerity that surprised me, then taking me by the elbow and begging the gentleman to allow her to steal me away, she led me over toward an occupied banquette set against a wall of mirrors so we could talk privately. “
And
you have courage.”

“Whatever are you talking about, Flavia?” I asked, curious.

“I’ll never forget how you stood up to that Egyptian in Port Said and saved me from making a fool out of myself.” She paused, her forehead wrinkling, her body shuddering, as she professed to repeat the lamentable story of that entire erotic episode, disturbing me.

“Flavia,” I insisted, “there’s no reason for you to say anything to anyone about what happened.” I prayed she wasn’t of the mind to yield to every caprice of a young girl to exaggerate her holiday adventures in order to sound mature. I need not have been alarmed.

“My whole life would have been ruined if it hadn’t been for your
intervention,” she protested with utmost indignation. “I never would have met Tommy and be as happy as I am tonight.”

“Flavia, I—I…”

“I owe you so much, Lady Marlowe,” she said with conviction. “I can never repay you.”

I would remember those words long after this night, echoing in my head over and over for days to come, but at this moment her praise embarrassed me so I changed the subject.

“Where is Lady Palmer?” I asked, looking around the restaurant and not seeing the doting form of the girl’s mother.

“Mummy will be round soon. She’s bringing my birthday present with her.” Flavia leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I know what it is.”

“You do?” I asked, pretending to be shocked. I knew what it was, but at Lady Palmer’s request, I’d kept the secret.

“She’s bringing Tommy. He’s home on special leave. We’re to be married next week.” She swooned, wrapping her arms around herself and imagining him already pressed against her swelling breasts and giving free rein to the warm caresses she had held so long in check. “I can’t wait to see him.”

“I know you’ll both be very happy,” I said, meaning it, but the drama erupted into something I never expected. Jealousy. Not of the girl. I was indeed happy for her. But my instinctive, primitive need for the happiness of such a love turned my mood so low I slid down into the somber depths of a despair I hadn’t experienced in years. I no longer saw myself as a seductress in white satin, but a lonely woman without love, a woman who substituted the white powder for happiness.