“I believe she was speaking hypothetically.”
“The hell she was.” He turned to look out the window on his side. The car inched forward. The windshield wipers went back and forth. He turned back to her. “Hannah has a rich fantasy life. If she has to be married to a cripple, he damn well better have got that way by being a hero. I’ll tell you a secret, Charlie. Millions of men got shot in the war. Almost half a million of them died. So let’s not get melodramatic about a single wound, which was debilitating but not terminal. In other words, I do not deserve any medals. I wasn’t a hero. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, but she didn’t have to say anything. He’d already turned to look out the window again. This time he didn’t turn back until the car pulled up in front of the house. Then he barely said good night as the driver brought his chair around and he heaved himself into it.
Twelve
She swears she’ll never let it happen again. How could it happen again? She hates him. Almost as much as she hates herself.
Besides, she is terrified of the immediate consequences. What if she is pregnant with a little Fritz, as those offspring of shame are called? She remembers the stories of abortion whispered behind closed doors before the war. Dirty hovels on back streets. Cold-eyed men and women of dubious skill and certain greed. Since Vichy and the Occupation the penalties have become only more dire. The guillotine is not out of the question. Then she realizes that is one worry she doesn’t have to face. She has not had her period in months. She is not ovulating. Saved by malnutrition. Even the food he brings, most of which she gives to Vivi, is not enough to make her a woman again.
So what she has sworn will not happen again does. And again after that. It has nothing to do with the food, though the shortages are getting worse. This is a different kind of hunger.
What strange lovers they make, either locked together in desire or circling each other with suspicion. He is the conqueror and can do as he likes with her. The knowledge of his secret makes her equally dangerous to him. Sometimes she thinks the mutual fear binds them closer; at other moments she’s certain it drives them apart.
Then something strange happens. Tenderness begins to creep between them. That has to do with Vivi. His affection for her is palpable. But it has to do with more than Vivi. Another hunger stalks the cold blacked-out city, perhaps even stronger in these hopeless times than those of the body. They are both starved for a human connection. As they lie together on the narrow sofa in the room behind the shop, as they say good-bye in the murky predawn light, he is no longer the enemy or a Wehrmacht officer or a craven Jew in hiding. He is only Julian. Under other circumstances they might have become different lovers. But she does not love him.
They tell each other the stories of their lives, as if the shared knowledge is a nugget of amber that can preserve that easier, less complicated time. Or rather, he tells the story of his life and asks about hers, and gradually, as she begins to let her guard down, she asks about his.
One night, lying on the narrow sofa after they have made love, her head on his chest, his arm around her, she feels his fingers moving on her back. She can tell it is the same intricate pattern she has seen him perform as he reads or browses in the shop. She asks him what he is doing.
“Tying imaginary surgical knots. In the beginning I did it for practice. Now it has become a habit. A nervous habit, I suppose.”
“Did you always want to be a doctor?”
“For as long as I can remember.”
“Primum non nocere.”
“Please do not make sport of me.”
“I’m not making sport of you. I’m admiring you. I admire people with a purpose. Especially an altruistic purpose.”
He lifts his head to get a better view of her face. “That is the first time.”
“The first time what?”
“The first time that you have commended me.”
She doesn’t say anything to that.
“Being in the Wehrmacht must be difficult,” she goes on after a while. “In view of your desire to first do no harm.”
“It was my duty. I would have enlisted even if I had not been called up. My father was a captain in the First War. His brother died at Verdun.”
She stiffens at the undercurrent of pride in his voice, but when he speaks again, there is only shame.
“Then, as the anti-Semitism grew worse, it was my safe haven.”
The shame, as much hers as his, makes her want to soothe the wound. “You must be a very good physician to have them keep you here in Paris.” She has changed her mind about his having committed a vile act.
He lifts his head to look at her again, and this time he is smiling. The expression is rare. It is also magical in its transformative power. He is no longer the ascetic saint but a man who has once been, and perhaps might again be, happy. “I am a good physician,” he admits. “I am also fortunate.”
“In what way?”
“Early in the Occupation, a high-ranking official—I will not say how high—brought his six-year-old son to Paris. He thought it would be a good experience for the child. A few days after the boy arrived, he was taken ill with terrible stomach pains and nausea and vomiting. Also a high fever. The doctor in charge was a better officer than physician. He could not diagnose the problem. They called me in. I was junior, but they were desperate. As soon as I examined him, I realized it was a case of appendicitis.”
“That doesn’t sound as if it would be hard to diagnose.”
“The child’s pain was on the left side of his abdomen.”
“Isn’t the appendix on the right?”
“In most cases, but the boy was suffering from situs inversus. That is when the major visceral organs are on the opposite side of the body from their normal position. I performed surgery, the boy came through nicely, and the high-ranking official remains grateful.”
“So you really are a good physician.”
“That is the second time,” he says.
“Are you keeping score?” she asks, and realizes this is the first lighthearted exchange they have had. Then a moment later it turns dark, as everything must these days.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she says. “You say the first doctor was a better officer than physician. But surely the boy had been examined before, at birth or in infancy. Surely someone had discovered the, what is it called, situs inversus.”
“A physician had.”
“Then why didn’t the father know?”
“Because the mother did not tell him. I learned this when she arrived in Paris. She thanked me for the boy’s life and begged my discretion. Her husband is a high-ranking member of the Nazi party. By his lights, by Nazi doctrine, the boy is damaged, a stain upon the Aryan race, useless to society, unworthy of life. She was afraid of what her husband might do if he found out about the boy’s condition.”
She pulls away and sits staring at him in the darkness. “And this is the country you’re willing to fight for?”
“Germany was not always like this.” It is his constant refrain. “And before you condemn me, remember what the professor who came into the shop asking for books on eugenics said. For years the United States was ahead of Germany in euthanasia and racial purification. It is only thanks to the Führer that we have caught up and outstripped them.”
She hears the irony in his voice, but it is not enough, and he knows it. He sits up, puts his feet on the cold floor, and reaches for his uniform.
“If it is any consolation,” he says, “and I realize it is not, I adhered to the mother’s wishes. I never told the father of the son’s condition. I even explained that the position of the scar so far to the left was the result of a new surgical technique.”
She reaches out and puts a hand on his back, the delinquent consoling the criminal, or the other way around.
But she does not love him. On that point she is adamant.
Nonetheless, a kind of d
omesticity sets in. Once, he infuriates her—infuriates her about a book, as if they were living a normal life in normal times—by pronouncing Emma Bovary a neurotic. Then he redeems himself with his sympathy for Dorothea Brooke. Books are important to them. Words are important to them. He is the one who teaches her the phrase “Hitler made me a Jew.”
* * *
Holding Vivi’s hand, Charlotte comes out of the apartment building, then stops and stands staring. The woman across the street looks like Simone. She goes on gawking at the emaciated, unkempt figure. It is Simone.
Simone sees her at the same moment. They start toward each other and meet in the middle of the street. A few years ago that would have been dangerous, but there is no traffic. They stand for a moment torn between laughter at the miracle of it and tears at the joy. Then, as Charlotte takes a step closer to embrace, Simone takes a step back. Charlotte is stung, and shamed. Simone knows.
“I need delousing,” Simone says.
Charlotte exhales in relief.
Vivi tugs on the skirt of Simone’s filthy dress and lifts her arms to be picked up. “Soon, my darling, soon,” Simone says.
“You’re free!”
“For the moment.”
“How did you get out?”
“Don’t try to fathom the Nazi mind. First things first. Do you have anything, vinegar, olive oil, mayonnaise?” She runs through the home remedies for getting rid of lice. Charlotte says she can’t remember the last time she had any of those things, then remembers the tube of petroleum jelly Julian brought for Vivi’s rashes. They turn and go back into the apartment building.
On the way up the stairs, they encounter the concierge coming down, her bad leg thumping heavily on each step. Simone turns and flattens herself against the wall. The concierge puts her hand on Simone’s shoulder and gently turns her away from the wall.
“Welcome home, Madame Halevy,” she says, and her voice is kind, though in the old days, she hadn’t approved of Simone. She’d found her too bold.
“Why were you avoiding Madame Rey?” Charlotte asks as they continue up the stairs.
“I wasn’t. It was a reflex. In the camp, we were forbidden to look directly at the guards. If we passed one of them in a hall or on a staircase, we had to flatten ourselves against the wall. If you didn’t…” Her voice trails off.
“How on earth does Madame Rey know something like that?”
“Radio-Loge,” Simone says, using the term for the concierge rumor mill. “I’m not the only one who was released from Drancy. Remember Monsieur Bendit, the proprietor of the café in the rue des Écoles who used to try to flirt with us? They arrested him, they released him, then they arrested him again. They do that sometimes. I think it’s part of their sadism.”
“Have you had word of Sophie?” Charlotte asks as she unlocks the door to the flat.
“She and my mother didn’t know I was arrested, thank heavens. And thank you for not telling them. Last I heard, they were both safe in the south.”
Charlotte goes into her bedroom and returns with the petroleum jelly, clean underwear, and a dress and hands them all to Simone.
Simone takes everything and looks at the tube of petroleum jelly. “How on earth did you get your hands on this?”
“Luck,” Charlotte answers too quickly. “And an endless queue. I also have some black bread and a few mouthfuls of sausage,” she adds as she starts toward the kitchen.
“Bread, sausage, petroleum jelly. Tell the truth, Charlotte, you have a lover in the black market.”
“Dozens. But come eat.”
“First the delousing. I can’t feel human until then.” She takes the petroleum jelly and clean clothes from Charlotte. “I’m headed for the public baths.” She hesitates. “They’re still open, aren’t they?”
“And crowded.”
“Then I’d better hurry. I’ll come by the shop when I’m a new woman.”
An hour later, Charlotte looks up from the accounts she is trying to balance and sees Simone standing outside the shop. Her long dark hair is still wet, and the dress hangs on her as if on a scarecrow. Before the Occupation they were the same size. Now Charlotte is gaunt and Simone is skeletal. She is peering into the shop, trying to make out who, if anyone, is inside. When she sees there is no one except Charlotte, she opens the door and steps in. She used to be fearless. The camp has made her wary.
Charlotte makes a pot of what has become known as acorn juice, one of the names for the ingenious but awful-tasting ersatz coffees, and they perch on stools behind the counter, talking quietly, falling silent when customers come into the store, though a few of the regulars stop when they see Simone, as if they’re seeing a ghost. Then they cross the shop to her. Some embrace and kiss her; others take her hands and say how happy they are to see her. No one asks where she has been. They know. No one asks what it was like. They do not want to know.
Charlotte does not want to know either, any more than Simone wants to talk about it, but she cannot help herself, and Charlotte has no choice but to listen to the stories of crowding and hunger, squalor and disease, the minor indignities of overflowing slop pails and women serving as human shields to afford a modicum of privacy for other women who are menstruating, and the inescapable gratuitous violence. But worst of all, Simone says, is the inhuman sorting of human beings for the transports. The memory of that makes her fall silent.
“I went by my old apartment,” she says after a while. “Strangers are living there. The worst part is they’re French.” She shakes her head. “Not that it would be any better if the boches had requisitioned it.”
“Come stay at the flat with Vivi and me.” Charlotte does not want to think of Simone moving into the room behind the shop. There are no traces of Julian. She is careful to see that he leaves nothing behind. But the room seems to her to be redolent of him, to reek of their passion, to give off a stench of their illicitness. She is sure someone, especially someone as attuned to her as Simone, will sense it.
Simone thanks her but says she can’t stay in Paris. “They let me out now, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be arrested again. And the second time, you’re even more likely to end up on a transport.”
“Where will you go?”
Before Simone has a chance to answer, the bell above the door jingles, and Julian steps into the shop. He stops when he sees Simone, as some of the regular customers did, but unlike them, he does not rush over to welcome her. He glances at Charlotte. She meets his gaze, then looks away quickly. That is all it takes. Charlotte recognizes the phenomenon because she has had experience with it, though not in such dire circumstances.
Shortly before she and Laurent were married, his parents gave a party for them. The world was hurtling toward war, but the formalities must be observed. With the world hurtling toward war, it was more important than ever to observe the formalities. She still remembers the city beyond the open doors to the balcony turning a smoky blue as it does at that hour and the aroma of exhaust from the traffic below mingling with expensive perfumes. A woman, slightly older, wearing a Chanel suit she also remembers, came over to Laurent and kissed him on both cheeks. There was nothing unusual in that. But something about the way her hand lingered on his arm and his discomfort at the introduction gave them away.
“You were lovers,” Charlotte said after the woman moved on.
He shook his head, but the gesture was not persuasive. That was how well she had known Laurent then. And that is how well Simone knows her now.
Simone is silent, watching Julian as he picks up a book, barely glances at it, puts it back, picks up another, repeats the gestures, and leaves the shop.
“Now I understand the petroleum jelly and the bread and sausage,” she says when he is gone.
Charlotte does not try to deny it. That will only make matters worse. She knows she shouldn’t try to explain either, but she cannot help herself. “Vivi was sick and hungry.”
“Do you know anyone in Paris who isn’t? Except for the filthy boch
es and their collabos.”
“He’s the one who bribed the guards to get the packages to you.”
“He’s the one who put me there in the first place.”
“He’s a doctor in the army, not a guard or Gestapo or SS.”
“He’s a boche.”
Charlotte has one more explanation, but she cannot use it. It would be a betrayal of Julian’s secret. And it would only make Simone hate him more.
Simone stands.
“Where are you going?”
“I told you. I can’t stay in Paris.”
“Yes, but where will you go?”
Simone smiles. The expression is anything but kindly. “I couldn’t have told you before. It would have been too dangerous, for you as well as for me. I certainly won’t now.”
“You can’t think I’d give you away?”
Simone goes on staring at her for a long moment. “I don’t know what to think. I thought I did, but I don’t. Not anymore.”
* * *
She hears of Simone twice more before the end of the war. Monsieur Grassin, her father’s ethnographer friend, tells her on one of his visits to the shop that Simone is in hiding somewhere in the south. He doesn’t say where in the south. Charlotte tells herself that is ordinary discretion, not personal distrust. Then later, in the camp, a woman who knew both of them before the war reports that Simone was arrested again. This time she was not so lucky in the deportation sweepstakes.
* * *
She tells Julian he must stop coming to the shop. It has nothing to do with Simone. Well, perhaps something to do with Simone. But mainly she is afraid. It is too dangerous, she insists. He doesn’t argue with her. He doesn’t even try to say good-bye. At least not to her. But he picks up Vivi, holds her for a moment, and tells her to be a good girl and listen to her maman. When he tries to put her down, she clings to him. He peels away her arms reluctantly.
“If things were different…,” he says, and strokes Vivi’s head.
Paris Never Leaves You Page 14
