The Paris Orphan

by Natasha Lester

  He slid into her, moving so quickly that she gasped at the overwhelming rush of sensation and she shook her head vigorously when he misunderstood her gasp and he said, “Sorry, I’ll slow down.”

  “No,” she could barely say the words. “Please don’t.”

  * * *

  After they’d recovered enough to be capable of speech, they both laughed.

  “We’re worse than sophomores at a frat house party,” he said.

  “We are,” she agreed. “I blame you entirely.”

  “Yes,” he grinned. “My fault of course.”

  He lowered her to the ground and kissed her, then moved off to the bathroom to sort out the rubber and the smile fell off Jess’s face. He had to go. And she’d miss him, of that she was certain.

  She pulled down her skirt and put her panties back on, only to have him say, when he re-emerged from the bathroom, “Can I take off all of your clothes?”

  “Surely you’re not capable of doing that again already?” she asked incredulously.

  He laughed. “No, you’ve finally worn me out. But we still have fifteen minutes and I want to lie down beside you for all of those minutes.”

  He drew her in, not kissing her now, undoing her blouse and her skirt, slipping off her underclothes. Then he lay her on the bed, removed all of his clothes and held her as close as he could, as if he wanted to sweep her inside him, one of her legs threaded between his, one of his arms wrapped over her and one wrapped under her, braided together.

  “Dan,” she said hesitantly, shy in a way she’d never been before, because there seemed, in this moment, to be so much at stake. “That night in the ballroom…” Her voice trailed off.

  He kissed her and repeated her words. “That night in the ballroom…” It was his turn to pause. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but I’d always just assumed the rumors I’d heard of you sleeping with this man and that were true. I didn’t think any less of you for it,” he hastened to add as she pulled away, his arms firm, not letting her withdraw from the embrace.

  “You’re a gorgeous woman,” he said, eyes searching out hers and holding them while he spoke. “God knows we all need to feel good from time to time but it made me think there was this divide: the men you would sleep with, and then me, who you’d never shown any interest in beyond friendship. Which was fine, because I valued our friendship more than one night of infatuation. But when you told me none of it was true, that you hadn’t been with anyone, the divide disappeared. That night in the ballroom, I couldn’t think about anything else but you, a woman I’d known as a friend, a woman who was the most beautiful thing from the inside out. When we danced,” he whispered into her ear, “and I touched your back, it was like walking into a fire and all I could do was curse myself for ruining our friendship because I knew, after feeling that, it would be impossible just to sit next to you on a sofa on a balcony ever again.”

  God, he was going to make her cry and she didn’t want to spend the last five minutes with him sobbing. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked, voice husky with emotion.

  “Jess,” he said, and his voice had changed.

  It was as if he was preparing her. She was used to that certain inflection; she’d heard it throughout the war as officers told the men which of their number had died, or what suicidal target they were to attack next, or any other of the myriad pieces of news one didn’t want to hear.

  No, no, no, she thought, unable to stop her eyes from filling with tears now. What had he said? A night of infatuation. That’s all it could be in France in April 1945 with the war still firing on. He was going to tell her that it was time to go back to being friends. But that was unthinkable.

  Then he kissed her, lips brushing hers. “There are three words I want so much to say to you, Jess. But in my experience, every time someone over here says those words, something terrible happens to one of them not long after.” He drew back and studied her face.

  It hurt just looking at him, hurt to see what he felt, which she recognized because she felt it too; she knew he was right and that if either of them said it, they’d be cursed by the words. They’d seen too many young lovers—nurses and soldiers, WACs and soldiers, Frenchwomen and soldiers—declare their love for one another and then wake up the next morning to find their love was as ill-fated as Romeo and Juliet’s, a tragedy playing out off the stage and on the battlefields of the European Theater.

  She swallowed and blinked. “Then don’t say it.” She laid her palm along his cheek. “Instead I’m going to say…” She hesitated, searching for something, some alternative that could possibly express what had happened between them. “I know you,” she said at last. “Because I do. Better than anything or anyone.”

  He kissed her again, long and searchingly, then whispered the same words—I know you—in her ear.

  When he broke off she saw that his eyes shone as brightly as hers with the knowledge that they had both exposed their already fragile hearts to a brutality of the kind they had, despite every savage act they’d witnessed, never imagined.

  He jumped out of bed, threw on his clothes and only said, “I can’t say goodbye,” before he left the room and she grabbed hold of his pillow and held it against her body, breathing in the faintest scent of him, barely able to catch her breath between sobs.

  Twenty-two

  Jess rolled into Munich in her jeep just after Dan’s division did. The city was synonymous with Hitler; it was well known to be his preferred headquarters, and the mood among the troops was buoyant. Surely if they were in Hitler’s city, the war would be over soon. Surely nobody else would die now.

  The irony of dying so near the end was uppermost in everyone’s minds—all the more reason, Jess thought, to not say those words to Dan and to not let him say them to her.

  As she followed Dan’s jeep to Prinzregentenplatz 16, Hitler’s apartment, anger surged through her. How dare Hitler run away to Berchtesgarten? How dare he not step into the street and see what he’d done? The women at the camp, the graves spread across Europe as thickly as blades of grass? How dare he be so craven? How could there be any justice, if justice was at all possible now?

  She pulled up at the apartment and stepped inside with Dan. Her eyes saw but her mind barely registered the SS guards’ quarters on the first floor, the bomb shelters in the basement, the library, the small conference room in which everyone from Churchill to Franco to Mussolini had once sat. The plaster cast of Hitler’s hands, which Jennings bumped into and let smash onto the floor.

  Most of the troops filtered out after a short time, hands full of crystal and cutlery engraved with the letters AH, linens and silver too; sweethearts across America destined to eat for the rest of their lives using Adolf Hitler’s spoon, or sleeping on Adolf Hitler’s sheets. Dan began setting the battalion to task, turning the place into their HQ. Maps were spread out on Hitler’s desk, someone sat in the chair once occupied by Hitler’s ass and a chorus of laughter ensued.

  Jess pushed on, upstairs, past the out-of-tune piano on which a GI was playing a bastardized version of “Königgrätzer Marsch,” past the switchboard that had a direct line to Berchtesgarten; Jennings tried it but nobody answered. She walked through Hitler’s almost girlish chintz bedroom and into the pristine bathroom. Everything was spotless, tiles polished, no black spots of mold, the towels and bathmat a plush white, a color Jess couldn’t remember seeing for the longest time because who had the time or the soap or the bleach required to bring things to such a state of purity? The anger roiled stronger than ever.

  She walked back out into the bedroom and picked up a framed photograph of the Führer. She took this into the bathroom, propping it up against the wall on the far side of the bathtub rim. Then she stood with her filthy paratroop boots on the white bathmat, marking it brown and muddy and soiled.

  She set her camera down on the vanity and was undoing the buttons of her shirt, water splashing warm and clean into the bath, when Dan came in.

  �
�What are you doing?” he asked as she slipped off her shirt.

  “Using Hitler’s bath,” she said calmly. “And you’re just in time to photograph it. You don’t need to shut the door. I don’t care who sees me.”

  None of this was about her naked body, which felt, right then, asexual. It was about making a statement to the world.

  She took off the rest of her clothes and dumped them on the stool. She left her boots, cloddish and stout, on the delicate bathmat. Then she sank into the water, only her bare shoulders and grimy face visible above the rim.

  “The Rollei’s there,” she said to Dan. “You know how to use it. Make sure you get him,” she pointed to the photograph of Hitler, “in the shot. And me. And my boots. And the dirt I’ve left on his heretofore undefiled room.”

  She picked up a washcloth and rubbed it across her shoulder blades, watching muck bleed into the white cloth. And Dan did as she asked him, taking a series of shots that didn’t diminish her anger, but perhaps showed the world something of how she, and everyone else, must feel.

  * * *

  The photograph caused a sensation. It was reproduced everywhere, featuring in all her fellow correspondents’ newspapers. And this time, nobody accused her of using her feminine wiles to get the shot. Who would want to see a haggard male journalist in a bathtub? She’d used her looks and her body, she knew—even though all that was visible was her naked back and shoulders—to say, on behalf of all those who could not, We are the victors. To give Hitler the finger, preserved in an image for all time, inescapable. And when Warren Stone bawled her out in front of the entire press camp, stopping just short of calling her a slut, every person there leapt to her defense. Which didn’t endear her to Warren, as she well knew.

  His parting shot, delivered with that omnipresent and awful smile, was to say, “For those of you wondering how to gain access to the best stories, just be sure to slip a Lieutenant Colonel into your trousers.”

  He couldn’t know. If Warren Stone ever found out how she felt about Dan and how Dan felt about her, then…She didn’t want to contemplate the end to that sentence. Still, Warren didn’t ascribe to her any feelings beyond that of a courtesan’s so perhaps she and Dan were safe. Of course letting Dan photograph her naked was, to anyone with a brain, close to a confession.

  But the worry over how much Warren knew was forgotten amidst the sudden whooping cheer that drowned out the sounds of the typewriters clacking, the poker game, and the correspondents’ chatter.

  “Hitler’s dead!” came the shout from a PRO on the telephone. “Topped himself, alongside Eva Braun.”

  “About bloody time,” Lee Carson muttered and the laughter following that understatement was uproarious, an intense rush of relief that rebounded through every person gathered there. Except that, inconceivably, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz had exhorted the German Army to continue to do their duty at their posts.

  “It’s not over yet,” the PRO concluded.

  But the party started anyway. Every typewriter in the copy room was put away. Every map was rolled up. Someone thought to stick lilac boughs in water jugs, the correspondents with the best connections provided the cognac and schnapps, and everyone put on their best and cleanest uniforms.

  It wasn’t long before General Collins filed in, along with his staff, the intelligence officers; even the censors joined in the fun. Jess watched, alert, as the officers came too, looking for Dan but not finding him. She was just walking back to the party from the ablution facilities when she felt a hand on her arm and someone dragged her into one of the many dark hallways. The hand belonged to a scent she’d know anywhere, a combination of army soap, and the slightest hint of cologne—sandalwood and citrus. And the arms, arms she’d most definitely kissed, circled around her and drew her close.

  Dan’s voice murmured in her ear, “Sorry about the ambush.”

  He kissed her, long and deeply, the kind of kiss that made her stomach clench and her skin flush. She worked her hands under his shirt and felt his intake of breath when her fingers trailed unrelentingly up his body. He dived his hand down to the hem of her skirt, found his way underneath and was tracing a path up her thigh when they both heard, very close by, “Sir!”

  Neither moved, Jess’s hands still resting on his chest, his fingers still touching her thigh, both of them hoping it was a different “Sir” being sought, not Dan.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Hallworth!” The sound came again and they both looked at one another.

  “You’re going to have to move your hands or I’ll never be able to leave,” he whispered.

  “Move them here?” Jess whispered back, shifting her hands down his chest to the waistband of his trousers where she slipped the tips of her fingers inside.

  He couldn’t stop the surprised yelp of a laugh, which was loud, definitely loud enough to give them away.

  “That you, Sir?” Jennings’ voice was close, just around the corner.

  Dan ripped himself away and walked back in the direction of the party, while Jess waited for a few seconds, long enough to hear Jennings’ voice say, “You all right, Sir? You look flushed,” at which she grinned, but then sobered up, realizing there was another man in the hallway now.

  He lit a cigarette and blew smoke in Jess’s direction.

  Warren Stone. How much had he seen?

  He answered her unspoken question.

  “Last time,” he drawled, “I accused you of sleeping with the Lieutenant Colonel, you made me look like a fool. But who’s the fool now? Won’t you hate it, now the press camp has mostly forgiven you for being a woman, if they find out you really have parlayed your sexual favors to get every single one of your pictures and your stories?”

  What could she say? Because of the way the system worked, some women—Martha, Iris, Lee, perhaps herself—were able to transmit more newsworthy stories than the other women as their relationships came with a side-serve of access. But that wasn’t why they had those relationships. If she’d had something to throw at Warren, she would. But besides praying that his cigarette butt might catch alight and singe his always polished shoes, Jess had no ammunition.

  He handed her a sheet of paper. She took it from him reluctantly before she realized it was hers, that it was a page of notes she’d transcribed from the conversation she’d had with Marie-Laure and her mother. “Where did you get this?” she asked coldly.

  “When the table was cleared for the party, this ended up on the floor,” Warren replied. “Lucky I found it. I didn’t realize you were so interested in rape.”

  Jess shivered. She wanted to walk away but turning her back on Warren Stone right now took more courage than she possessed.

  Thank God for Marty, who must have spotted Warren heading the same way as Jess and Dan and come to warn her. “Your drink’s getting warm,” she said to Jess when she came upon her. Then she rounded on Warren. “For God’s sake, leave her alone. The war’s nearly over. You won’t have to look at her for much longer. Or maybe that’s the problem?”

  “Let’s just go,” Jess said to Martha, not wanting to hear what Warren might say in reply.

  * * *

  The day after the party, desperate to get out of the press camp and away from Warren, Jess went looking for a story. She drove to the outskirts of the city, where she met a young woman who rent her heart a little more. Jess had stopped to refill her water canteen at the woman’s house, which the woman allowed, but she was most insistent that Jess not have anything more.

  “I have a special pass,” the woman said in German. “I have already provided food and shelter to the American soldiers and they gave me a pass to prove I have done what I needed to. They said I should show it to other soldiers who stop here.”

  “A pass?” Jess asked, brow furrowed. “Can you show me?” No such pass existed, as far as she knew.

  The woman, who was pretty—blonde, blue-eyed, shapely, about sixteen—went off to get her pass. She held it out to Jess.

  As Jess read the words, sh
e wanted to be sick. To whom it may concern, you are now looking at the best piece in Germany.

  The girl didn’t have a word of English and she obviously had no idea what it said or that any American soldier she showed it to might well do…what?

  “Did the man who gave you this…” Jess faltered. “Was he kind? Or did he hurt you?”

  “The Americans saved us,” the girl said simply.

  They can take anything they want. The unsaid words sparked like a flashbulb providing an illumination neither Jess nor the girl desired.

  What to do except photograph both the girl and the note, to write it all down, to save it for the piece Jess still hadn’t written. The piece that taunted Jess for her cowardice. The piece that made her as craven as any Nazi.

  She drove furiously back into Munich, stopping at headquarters on Prinzregentenplatz, where Jennings let her have a desk and didn’t ask her why she wanted to write the story there instead of at the press camp. Dan found her just as she’d finished. She showed him what she’d written.

  Dan sighed as he read her words. “A woman came to headquarters this morning and asked me if she had the right to refuse a soldier who wanted her daughters.”

  Jess’s mouth fell open.

  “I told her that of course she had the right,” Dan continued. “So she asked to have her complaint recorded: two soldiers entered her apartment last night and told her they were going to amuse themselves with her daughters. She wanted to throw them out but they had guns and she didn’t know if it was perhaps a new rule, that the soldiers could do what they wanted. I took down what she said and passed the complaint on to Major Thompson, CO of the company I thought the men were from.”