Mission to Paris (15 page)

At Building K, a different Renate Steiner. Dark-haired and fair-skinned, with a sharp jawline and a pointy nose, she wore the same blue work-smock over a long dress, thick stockings, and laced boots. But her smile, ironic and subtly challenging, was not to be seen, and her faded blue eyes, that had caught his interest, were swollen and faintly red. Was something wrong? He didn’t know her well enough to ask. Better just to assume her life, like his, like everybody else’s, had its ups and downs.

‘Thank you for coming over,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’re tired – when you work with Avila you don’t take time off, because he never does.’

‘I’m used to hard work,’ he said. ‘All going well?’

She shrugged. ‘Well enough, I guess. Let’s get you into uniform, Fredric.’ She nodded towards a curtain in one corner, her changing room, and handed him the uniform. ‘While you change clothes, I’ll get your boots,’ she said.

He reappeared as Colonel Vadic, his Foreign Legion uniform bleached out and artfully torn at the sleeve. She looked him over with a critical eye, then shook her head.
Lord, why me?
As she snatched a lump of tailor’s chalk from her work table she said, ‘I’m training a new seamstress, so there
will
be mistakes.’ With a strong hand she grabbed the shoulder of his tunic, moved it back and forth, then flattened it out and drew a line for a new seam. ‘And I have three more of these,’ she said, irritation in her voice. ‘A duplicate of this one, because God-only-knows what happens on movie sets, one even more distressed, for your travels in the desert, and the last one, terribly ratty, that you try to sell at the used-clothing stall in the souk. The merchant has a funny line about it, if I remember correctly.’

It took some time – there was something wrong with each uniform – and the late-afternoon light outside the windows began to fade towards an early dusk. Holding a few pins between her lips, she knelt and changed the length of his trousers, then stood, stared at him for a long minute, and said, ‘Let’s get rid of that button on your breast pocket.’ She found a razor blade with a covered edge and sliced off a button. ‘I’ll fix the flap so it doesn’t lie flat but I don’t need to do that now. Have a look.’

He turned and faced the full-length mirror. ‘It looks just right,’ he said. In the mirror, he could see her over his shoulder. From a desk by the far wall, a telephone rang – the French signal, two short rings. Then again, and a third time, but Renate didn’t move. She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. The phone continued to ring. It was as though the two of them were frozen in place. At last the ringing stopped and she sank down in a chair and held her hands over her face. Stahl turned around. From beneath her hands, in a voice fighting through tears, she said, ‘I’ll have to pull …’ She stopped, then went on, ‘I’ll have to pull the threads out, where the button was.’ Stahl waited patiently, a sympathetic man in a tattered uniform.

She dropped her hands and said, ‘Oh you must forgive me.’

His voice was low and gentle as he said, ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’

The kindness undid her. She took a handkerchief from the pocket of her smock and wept silently, hiding her face behind the white square. When the telephone rang again, one sob escaped her. Stahl couldn’t bear it. He walked over to her and rested a light hand on her shoulder. Then was startled as she suddenly rose from the chair, threw her arms around him, and pressed her face against his chest. He held her carefully, desperate to say
something
, but what came to him, some version of
please don’t cry
, was worse than silence. At last the phone stopped ringing, she let him go and went and stood by her work table, turned away from him. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘You needn’t say a word.’

‘It’s just that … I have trouble at home. Bad trouble. Trouble I can’t fix.’

‘That’s very hard for a woman.’

She nodded, then blew her nose, took a deep breath, and exhaled. ‘He calls me and says frightening things, he wants to …’

‘To what?’

‘I can’t say it out loud. He is going to … he doesn’t want to live any more.’

‘Your husband?’

‘We’re not married but yes, he is my husband.’

‘Renate,’ Stahl said softly, ‘I can go outside, you know, have a cigarette …’

From Renate, the suggestion of a nod, then, quietly, ‘I know.’ She paused, then said, ‘I really can’t bear it any longer. I just can’t.’

‘Would it help you to talk about it?’

A brief shrug, then once again, trying to calm herself, she took a breath and let it out. ‘An old story, I expect you know the whole thing. He was an important journalist in Berlin, but he is nothing here. He can’t write in French, not well enough he can’t. So he does a few pieces, diatribes, for the émigré magazines and gets a few francs, but it’s me who makes the money.’

Stahl was silent. He went behind the curtain, retrieved his pack of Gauloises, took one himself and offered her the pack. She drew one out, he lit both cigarettes. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘You’re right. I
have
seen this before, but if he can somehow hang on, life will improve.’ And, yes, it sometimes did, but often it did not, and émigré suicides were all too common.

‘I tell him that. He says he has lost his manhood.’

Her face was taut with anguish, Stahl tried to say something, anything. ‘Oh, men can be like that, it’s …’

‘Fredric, I think I am done for the day.’

‘I understand, let me change and I’ll be gone in a minute.’

‘Please don’t be angry with me. He will call again, and it’s easier if I’m alone when I talk to him. It can go on … for a long time.’

Stahl changed quickly, struggling to unlace the heavy boots. The phone rang as he reached the door. He waved goodbye to Renate, who nodded gratefully and lifted the receiver.

2 November. In northern Europe, the fog of autumn had settled over the cities. When Stahl looked out of his window at dawn, the street lay under a white mist that shifted with the wind and there were halos on the streetlamps, automobiles were no more than dim headlights moving slowly past the hotel, while pedestrians appeared for a moment, then faded into shapes and vanished.

Later on, at the desk in the lobby of the Claridge, there was a letter from the Baroness von Reschke on her elegant notepaper. Yet another cocktail party was planned, her friends were hoping he could make a little time for them, and she was eager to see him again. ‘I had hoped we could be closer, my dear, could take tea together some afternoon, just the two of us, but I will settle for your enchanting presence at my party.’ She meant? Oh Christ, she’d made it very clear what she meant. Tête-à-tête, so to speak, literally head-to-head but people went on from there, didn’t they. South. That was where
she
wanted them to go. In front of a camera he would have reacted darkly, in the lobby he just made a face.

Also: a telegram from Buzzy Mehlman, his agent, who had seen a translation of the
Le Matin
article. Stahl was astonished at the speed of the response, and counted the intervening days on his fingers. Had Mme Boulanger sent the story by cable?
Spare no expense
. This made Stahl uncomfortable – could it really be all that important? And the text of Buzzy’s message didn’t make him feel any easier:

Great article in Le Matin stop Good coverage of film and Stahl successes stop Political opinion puzzling we think that unnecessary stop No reaction from Warner Bros but one story like this plenty stop Hope you’re healthy and loving Paree you can always telephone if you like stop

Signed: Buzz

Mme Boulanger, true to her word, had scheduled a lunch for him that afternoon with André Sokoloff, the lead journalist at the newspaper
Paris-Soir
. Jean Avila would be spending the day with his production designer and art director in another building at Joinville, where sets were being built for the movie, so Stahl had the day off. The lunch was at 1.00 p.m. at a brasserie just off the Place Bastille. Stahl, tired of being driven around, took the Métro.

Mme Boulanger had made sure the brasserie people
knew who he was
, thus the
propriétaire
himself, one Papa Heininger – all straight-backed dignity and old-fashioned courtesy – greeted Stahl and showed him to ‘our most requested table’. Table 14, according to a heavy silver stand, which may have been their most requested table, but it had a hole in the vast mirror above the banquette. Otherwise, Stahl thought, the brasserie was the perfection of its type: hurrying waiters with old-fashioned whiskers, abundant gold leaf and red plush, and the very air itself, a heady blend of perfume, tobacco smoke, and grilled sausage. At least one room in heaven, Stahl thought, would smell like this.

André Sokoloff arrived a moment later, moving at the fast pace of the man who is perpetually late; a cigarette between his lips, a buckled leather briefcase beneath his arm. He was, Stahl thought, the essential Parisian, the essential Parisian
journalist
. After they’d shaken hands, Sokoloff sat opposite Stahl and said, ‘You know this place? The famous Brasserie Heininger?’

‘Famous for what?’ Stahl said, suspecting that a joke lay ahead.

‘It’s a restaurant with a
story
,’ Sokoloff said. ‘See that hole in the mirror? A year ago, in June I think, they had a Bulgarian headwaiter here, called Omaraeff, much too involved in émigré politics, who got himself shot in the ladies’ WC. He was hiding in a stall and pulled his pants down, which, since it was the
ladies
’ WC, was a mistake. “A fatal mistake”, as we say. Meanwhile, another member of the gang kept the dinner crowd entertained by running a tommy gun around the dining room – remember I said
Bulgarian
émigré politics, which tend to be dramatic. Well, there went all the mirrors, except for the one behind you, which had only a single bullet hole and was left as Omaraeff’s memorial. Now that wouldn’t matter, in this city, if the
choucroute
wasn’t top-notch, but it is. You like
choucroute garnie
, sauerkraut and sausage?’

‘“Like” really isn’t the word. It’s well beyond that.’

‘Good. It always includes a sublime frankfurter and a pork chop. And to drink, I expect Warner Bros. would buy us champagne, but beer is what you want with
choucroute
.’

‘
Dark
beer,’ Stahl said. ‘And plenty of it.’

‘I can see we’ll get along just fine,’ Sokoloff said, and half turned to look for a waiter, who rushed over to the table. Sokoloff was about Stahl’s age, good-looking in a craggy way, with a face careworn beyond his years, tousled brown hair, the dark complexion of the Latin French, and a certain set of the mouth: eager to laugh if it got the chance. As the waiter trotted off, Sokoloff said, ‘When the beer comes, we should drink to the estimable Mme Boulanger, she’s one of the good souls in this rats’ nest – I mean Parisian journalism.’

‘With pleasure,’ Stahl said. ‘She’s been a friend. And I begin to think I need to have as many of those as I possibly can.’

‘That’s
always
true,’ Sokoloff said. ‘Now we could follow one of our unwritten laws – no talk about politics or work during a meal. But, if you don’t mind, I’ll break one more rule today and we’ll do it anyhow. So then, tell me what’s going on.’

‘These people – only
Le Matin
so far but I get the feeling there’s more coming – are, how to say,
after
me.’

Sokoloff grinned. ‘After
you
? Only in your honour am I not sitting facing the door.’

‘Is it that bad?’

‘Not yet, but give it time.’

‘Well, I’ll let you know if a Bulgarian émigré comes through the door with a tommy gun.’

‘Do that, and we’ll continue our conversation under the table – which might be the best place to talk about the savage
Le Matin
. But I should start by telling you about
Paris-Soir
, where I work. We are the most respected – or hated, depends who you talk to – news organization in Paris, we also publish magazines,
Marie Claire
and
Paris Match
, and we own the station known as Radio 37. Saint-Exupéry has written for us, so has Cocteau, and Blaise Cendrars. But the most important thing about
Paris-Soir
is that we don’t take bribes – not in any form. We have a wealthy publisher who is as much of an idealist as any publisher can be. We also occupy the democratic centre; with the communist
L’Humanité
far to our left, and
Le Matin
and others well to our right. When Henry Luce said in
Time
magazine that French newspapers sold their editorial policies to the highest bidder, he was sued for libel by
Le Matin, Le Journal
, and
Le Temps
– three newspapers of the right who sold their editorial policies to the highest bidder.’

With a tray balanced on the splayed fingers of one hand, the waiter arrived. Resting the tray on a service rack, he set a platter on the table and said, nearly sang, ‘
Choucroute garnie!
’ then added a crock of hot mustard and two glasses of dark Alsatian beer.

Stahl raised his glass and said, ‘
Salut
, Mme Boulanger.’

Sokoloff imitated Stahl’s gesture and said, ‘Mme Boulanger.’ Then he drank and said, ‘Mm. Anyhow, the newspapers here are divided like the country, where cordial animosity has become something much more dangerous. This smouldered away for years, then came the Popular Front of 1936 – socialists, democrats, and communists – with Léon Blum, who is Jewish, as prime minister. The parties of the right were enraged; a fascist gang dragged Blum from his car, beat him badly, almost killed him. And if anyone wondered why, they wrote on the walls
MIEUX HITLER QUE BLUM
, better Hitler than Blum. Yes, mean-spirited, yes, caustic, but, in the end, far worse. In fact, they meant it.’

‘Meant it? Meant what? That Adolf Hitler should govern France? I’m sorry but I find that hard to believe.’

‘So do I. Or, rather, so
did
I. What the right has in mind is that Hitler would
dominate
France – with treaties by preference but with tanks if necessary. Democracy – which to the right is another way of saying “socialism”, if not outright Bolshevism – to be destroyed, and replaced by a Bonapartist authoritarian government which will finish with the labour unions and the intellectuals once and for all.’