Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 (42 page)

Yvonne heard herself order Lou Villars and Clovis Chanac to get out and never come back.

“Why me?” said Lou. “It wasn't my fault. You're blaming me for the shit this guy does?”

“You too,” said Yvonne. “Go.”

Everyone in the club was watching. Yvonne could feel the force of the crowd's desire to protect her, to turn back time to the minute before she'd insulted Lou Villars, the Minister of Information, two Germans, and the leaders of the Gasparu-Chanac gang. But Yvonne had already moved far beyond the audience's power to help her.

Bonnet glared at Yvonne and then at Chanac, blinking exaggeratedly, like a turtle. He focused on one, then the other, exuding quiet threat. Meanwhile their German friends were visibly irritated about how the evening was turning out. They'd come to see Arlette shake her ass. My memories. Boom boom boom. My memories. Boom boom boom. This was not the memory they'd imagined taking back to their hotel rooms.

Fat Bernard signaled the band to play. “Sweeter than sweet,” she sang. But nobody was paying attention to anything but the surly, slow-motion exit of Lou and her friends. No one sat at that table all night.

Lora and Zolpi tangoed frantically, then sashayed through the room. No one wanted their fortunes told. Marie Antoinette swept back onstage, but her poodles, sensing something, barked and refused to jump through hoops. Luckily, Marie-Pedro was a seasoned veteran who turned the stage fright of his “lambs” into a comic variation on his regular act.

Somehow they got through the evening. But moments after closing, Vilma, the coat check girl, asked to speak to Yvonne in private. In Yvonne's office, where she had never been, and where she struggled to memorize every detail in case she never saw it again, Vilma told Yvonne that, on his way out, Bonnet asked her to inform Yvonne that he would send his men around tomorrow afternoon to escort her to his office. Together they would make sure that misunderstandings like tonight's would never occur again.

Yvonne asked Vilma to repeat what Bonnet said. This time the girl closed her eyes so as to more accurately channel the minister's voice. This time she placed more emphasis,
his
emphasis, on
never
.

From the (Unpublished) Memoirs of Suzanne Dunois Tsenyi

To be destroyed on the occasion of its author's death

FOR ONCE, THE
movies got it right. We
were
an army of shadows, a band of friends and comrades who would have been safer as strangers. We were like students at a secret school at which failure could mean death.

My own work involved rescue rather than violence and revenge. But I would be lying if I pretended I wasn't delighted when the right target was blown up, the right evil bastard murdered. The crucial thing was to stay alive and not betray or endanger others.

After the war, things got more complex, as they always do. Cliques and factions formed. There were resentments, publicity grabs, inflated claims of personal heroism when in fact we'd all been brave. Otherwise we couldn't have done it.

On the night when Yvonne threw Lou Villars and her friends out of the Chameleon, Ricardo met me at a café where we would not be noticed. Pretending to be lovers, we exchanged a passionate kiss.

He whispered that there was a woman who needed to leave France at once.

“France?” I said. “Not just Paris?”

“France,” Ricardo said.

When I think back on that night, on the events that would cause so much pain en route to such costly triumph, I can still smell disinfectant spiced with ether, Ricardo's signature cologne. He had just come from performing a surgical operation. I knew better than to ask: had he been resetting some Nazi thug's broken nose or removing a bullet from a wounded Resistant?

You could say that our work was good training for being a human being. We cared about one another but were careful not to be nosy. Ricardo and I never discussed the fact that he had fallen in love with a man named William “Ducky” Curtis, a downed British pilot (and singer) who'd performed at the Chameleon until a German general, a regular customer, figured out that he was sending messages in code. Now Ricardo was hiding him in the hospital, claiming that Ducky was in a coma, his face completely bandaged, until the Resistance decided what to do next.

Ricardo and Ducky survived. It is one of the happier stories to have come out of that painful era. They now divide their time between London and Buenos Aires.

Ricardo and I ordered wine.
Salud
. We clinked glasses. Each of us drank a sip. Then Ricardo told me what had just happened at the Chameleon and that the woman who needed to leave was Yvonne.

As far as I know, Yvonne never officially joined the Resistance, but connections were made at her club and communications exchanged. For months, as a singing cricket, Ducky had signaled the British secret service.

When you wish upon a star, a parachute will fall from the sky near Strasbourg. When you wish upon a star, a transport will land near Caen.

There was also a poodle act in which the little dogs done up as lambs would bring messages scrawled on napkins to undercover Resistants drinking at the bar. I'm not sure that Yvonne was aware of that, though formerly she'd insisted on knowing everything that happened in the Chameleon.

We convinced ourselves that certain people, like Yvonne, would always be safe. Mostly this turned out to be wrong. It was always shocking to be reminded that nothing and no one (except Picasso, I suppose) was immune to the dangers the rest of us faced.

By midnight Ricardo and I were with Yvonne, in her office. Yvonne didn't need to know that I had already smuggled, or arranged to smuggle, forty people out of France. Forty, more or less. I didn't keep count. Counting was unlucky. It was something the Germans did.

Yvonne needed a new passport and papers. She knew several counterfeiters she trusted, but lately for some reason they'd stopped coming to the club. Ricardo and I couldn't look at each other. Yvonne didn't need to know that Cigarette Butt had been deported to Germany, where, we'd heard, he was being forced to work for the other side.

 

Gabor's portrait of Yvonne on the eve of her escape is among the most moving and controversial of his career. He has been criticized, as if there were something morally wrong about photographing a woman in such obvious distress. What else should he have done? There was no way to comfort her. Could he have forbidden Yvonne to think of all that had happened during the years since that first night she refused to let him take her picture?

Gabor knew what he was getting on film. Only after he got the shot did he embrace Yvonne, dry her tears with his handkerchief, and tell her in Hungarian and then in French to trust him, everything would be fine.

Gabor shot the passport-style picture that we used for the documents. Unlike the more artful portrait, this official snapshot was lost, probably after Yvonne moved to Buenos Aires, where she and Pavel opened a chic transvestite club that thrived until Péron came to power. After that she retired to Miami, where she died, decades later.

So we had Yvonne's image. But how would we get the fake papers with Cigarette Butt gone?

I gave Yvonne a warning look: say nothing in front of Gabor.

Gabor said he knew a counterfeiter.

Ricardo frowned at me. I shrugged. Don't blame me. I didn't tell him.

Two hours later Gabor returned to the club with an ancient Hungarian who looked like a shriveled root vegetable with an eye patch. Up close, one could see the striking figure he'd been. Was this the person we were entrusting with Yvonne's life? It was Gabor I trusted, and he loved Yvonne.

“Maestro!” Yvonne said.

“You two know each other,” said Gabor.

Yvonne said, “Cigarette Butt used to bring him to the club.”

Thirty-six hours later, the old man delivered the passport of a Hungarian-born Swiss citizen who looked exactly like Yvonne, an inspired work of art that would fool the most suspicious Nazi.

Whenever I heard about how this or that artist took a stance, or didn't, during the Occupation, I wanted to tell the story of how Gabor saved Yvonne. But I never have. Perhaps some part of me changed in those years and cannot be changed back from a woman who believes: the less you say the better. The less you say about the
other people
. Let them tell their own stories. Interviewed about myself, I've had no trouble talking. Let others talk about themselves. They are entitled to privacy, even after death, another reason why I want these pages destroyed after mine.

By the time Yvonne's documents were ready, it was no longer safe for her to travel by train. So I persuaded the baroness Lily de Rossignol to drive her across the border.

Seeing them off, I envied them. What an adventure they would have! Had I known what awaited me, I might have begged them to take me along. In fact I nearly did. Some impulse or premonition almost overcame me as I watched Yvonne and the baroness drive away from her château. Watching them leave was wrenching, though I knew that I needed to stay in Paris.

That night, Gabor and I were awoken by someone banging on the door. How ironic that after all those nights when Gabor tossed and turned until we got up and went for a walk, all those nights when we'd stayed awake watching the cops round up our neighbors, we were sleeping the dreamless sleep of the innocent when they came for me.

From
The Devil Drives: The Life of Lou Villars

BY
NATHALIE DUNOIS

Chapter Sixteen: A Chance Meeting

 

AFTER THE INCIDENT
at the Chameleon Club, my great-aunt Suzanne was arrested on suspicion of having aided the escape of the club's owner, Yvonne. In the reeking archives of the offices in the rue Lauriston, it is recorded that on the night of February 23, 1943, Lou Villars spent the hours between midnight and 3:00
A.M
. interrogating a Mlle. Suzanne Dunois. Jean-Claude Bonnet and another guard had interviewed her earlier, so we can assume that by the time Lou arrived, my aunt had already suffered considerable violence.

How ironic that Lou's portrait graced the cover of the book that launched the distinguished and lucrative career of my aunt's future husband! How upsetting to find that you are at the mercy of someone who lost a legal case partly because of a photo your lover took. Someone who may blame
you
for having been present when she learned that her brother was dead. Suzanne must have assumed that her goose was cooked, that Lou had plenty of reasons beyond the professional to torture her—and enjoy it.

But though their paths had crossed at critical points, let me suggest that Suzanne Dunois didn't know Lou as well as I do. My aunt could hardly have been aware of the battles raging inside the woman who walked into the room in the man's white shirt, khaki trousers, and, ominously, a rubberized fishmonger's apron.

Suzanne could not have known that, as she entered the cell, Lou recalled a vision she'd had as a girl: a blond woman in pain, her head thrown back, her pretty face streaked with blood. When had she imagined that? At the convent school. The strangeness of seeing her fantasy realized was so unnerving that it took Lou a while to identify the woman with the rabbity teeth as a bloodied version of the Hungarian photographer's girlfriend.

Lately Lou had been feeling an almost maternal tenderness for the victims and for the almost childlike trust with which they entrusted themselves to her. It had come to seem so intimate, the work they did together, this ritual transaction of denial and surrender, almost like a religious ceremony, a series of sacraments culminating in confession and absolution. It wasn't hatred Lou felt but love for the souls she was saving.

The fact that she knew Suzanne Dunois made this an unusual case. Her heart went out to the attractive Frenchwoman who'd been led astray by her foreign friends. Suzanne's connection with the past gave Lou's compassion a special luster. She pitied not only her victim, but also herself. She mourned the innocent she'd been when she'd worked at the cabaret for the arrogant Hungarian tramp who humiliated her in front of Bonnet and his friends, men whose good opinion she valued. The Hungarian whore who had shamed her in front of Chanac, whom she despised, which made the shame even worse.

But it wasn't Suzanne's fault. Suzanne was French, like her. The sooner Suzanne told Lou how they'd smuggled Yvonne out of Paris, the better their chances of catching the Hungarian brothel madam.

Lou interrogated Suzanne all night and into the following day. This time she departed from her usual practice. This time blood was shed before the lighter appeared. My great-aunt Suzanne was a stylish woman, but she always wore long sleeves. Everyone knew that this was to hide the scars she'd gotten during the Occupation. Who else but Lou could have inflicted those marks?

At one point Lou stepped back to study her victim's ravaged face, which looked exactly as it had when Lou had imagined this scene, as a girl. She'd mistaken it for a glimpse of Joan of Arc, but now she understood that it was a vision of an enemy of the state.

Lou was the judge, the jury, the guardian, the fierce and holy angel with the flaming sword. She took out her cigarette lighter.

She flicked it once and then again, nearer Suzanne.

She said, “Should I bring it closer?”

Often it has seemed clear to me, what Lou was thinking or feeling. But now as I try to imagine what exactly moved her to spare my great-aunt, I realize how little I understand. Was she moved by enduring love for the dead or sympathy for the living? Some vestige of humanity, suppressed compassion, or perhaps nostalgia for the lost happiness of the past? Was that what made Lou suspend her interrogation without getting what she wanted? I would like to think that it was Lou who persuaded her bosses to let Suzanne go, even though she hadn't told them how they'd smuggled Yvonne out of Paris.

The whites of Suzanne's eyes were scarlet. Her arms were a map of sores. But she hadn't been blinded. And someone had let her live. Her courageous refusal to disclose any information gave Yvonne the time she needed to reach Spain, then Lisbon, from where she sailed for Buenos Aires.