The Black Swan of Paris

by Karen Robards

  “Yes.”

  “Of course you are. You’re the Black Swan. A star. That is so you. You were always one to land on your feet, no matter what.” Emmy’s tone was fond, rueful. “One day you’ll have to tell me how that came about. We looked for you after you left, you know, and once we found you’d gone to America, I wrote, more than once. So did Maman.” She looked inquiringly at Genevieve, who shook her head: she’d never received the letters. Not surprising, since she’d constantly been on the road with the band. “Once we figured out that the famous Genevieve Dumont was our very own Genevra, we kept track of you. Maman wanted to come see you in person, but the war began—and then we didn’t want to pull you into this.” The slightest of smiles. “We should have known that you would find a way to get yourself right in the thick of it anyway.” She pulled her scarf out of her pocket and put it on again as she moved toward the hall. “Come, I must go. And so must you. It’s much safer to keep meetings like this brief.”

  They were almost at the front door when Genevieve gave voice to something that had only just begun to trouble her. “Will I see you again?”

  Emmy finished tying the scarf beneath her chin. “In Paris? I don’t know. I’m going to have to work fast if I’m to get to Maman in time. If I succeed, I may have to leave the country with her right away. If something goes wrong—well. Nothing in life is certain, is it? But let’s hope so. I hope so.”

  Genevieve stopped walking. Having just found her sister again, her heart was heavy at the thought of losing her.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said. “I’m sorry I stayed away so long.”

  Emmy stopped walking, too. The sisters stood facing each other.

  “It hurt Maman badly.” The look Emmy gave her was stern.

  “And—Papa?” The catch in her voice when she spoke of him would, she suspected, be there for a long time to come.

  “He thought you were safe in Switzerland, well into the war. He was happy you were safe. And then, when he knew you were the Black Swan, he was so proud.”

  “I should have come back,” she said. “I should have written. I just—I couldn’t. I—”

  “Blamed us for your daughter’s death. I know.”

  The pain stabbed through Genevieve, sharp as a knife. “I didn’t blame you, I—I didn’t want to pretend she never existed.” She couldn’t talk about Vivi still and so went mute as the familiar choking sensation strangled all utterance.

  But Emmy had once known her well. And, it seemed, she still did.

  “Oh, Genny, I’m so sorry about what happened.” Emmy wrapped her arms around her just as she had done when they were girls, and the younger one was hurt or suffering in some way, and held her tightly. Hugging her back, Genevieve found a surprising amount of comfort in the warm embrace of the big sister she’d always turned to in times of trouble. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through. I’m sorry for everything I did that contributed to it. And I did contribute to it, even though I had no idea at the time. I found out—much later—that what you said about Alain and Madeline Fabron was true.”

  Genevieve closed her eyes against the pain. “I told you,” she said into Emmy’s hair. Her voice was scratchy, but she was grateful to be able to speak at all.

  “I know. I never should have brought him home, I never should have married him and I should have listened to you about him when you tried to warn me. My only excuse is I was so young. And so in love.”

  If there was ever a time to hold on to a grudge, now—in the height of war, where life and family were more precious than anything—wasn’t it. “It’s in the past,” Genevieve said. Her voice was stronger, and she could breathe again.

  Letting go, Emmy stepped back, only to catch Genevieve’s hands and look at her earnestly. “It is, but—there’s something I have to tell you. I was going to wait until after we deal with Maman, but who can say where any of us will be then? And you should know.” She took a breath. “Phillippe’s death...it wasn’t an accident.” She swallowed hard. “Alain killed him.”

  Genevieve felt as if, for a moment, the ground shook. “What?”

  Emmy tightened her grip on her hands. “That morning, the morning after our wedding, long before you came to talk to Maman and me, Alain went out very early for a walk, to smoke a cigarette and to check on the car. To get to the garages, it was necessary to walk along the path through the ornamental ponds, so that’s what he did. Phillippe saw Alain on the path, or was waiting for Alain by the car—I’m not sure about that part. Alain never said exactly. But he confronted Alain about betraying me, about being with Madeline Fabron. He didn’t say anything about you being with him when he saw them together, and I never told Alain what you said to me. I didn’t want Alain to hate you, and I suspect Phillippe wanted to keep you out of it, too. In any case, Alain never knew you knew. Which was well for you, for us all, because he attacked Phillippe over it, and killed him and threw him into the pond, and just...just walked away and went on our honeymoon with me, as if nothing had happened at all.”

  Genevieve felt disoriented, dizzy. “My God, Emmy.” The crushing weight of what might have been settled like a vise around her heart until it seemed to struggle to beat. Her love for Phillippe rose up from where she had so long ago tucked it away to make every cell in her body quiver with pain. The difference that having him alive and with them would have made in her and Vivi’s life—the ramifications were so enormous that she could barely take them in. The one absolute certainty that cut through the rest was that if Phillippe had been alive, he would have married her, and she would never have been whisked away to Lourmarin in disgrace to have her baby—and Vivi would not have died. “How have you lived with this? How could you possibly have lived with this?”

  “I didn’t know.” Emmy’s grip on her hands was all that was keeping Genevieve from sinking to the floor. Her own hands were icy. Her nails dug into Emmy’s palms. Far from noticing, Emmy held on tight and looked at Genevieve with sorrow and compassion and guilt all combined in her eyes. “Not for a long time. I was blind to what he was. Deliberately so, I think. He was handsome and charming, on the surface, at least, and rich—rich was important then. You know how things were with us, so bad Papa even feared losing Rocheford. So I saw what I wanted to see. I was a fool, I know. Underneath it all he was beastly, horrible, as I eventually found out to my sorrow.”

  “Was it bad? The marriage?” Genevieve could scarcely get the words out. But it was obvious to her that Emmy was hurting, too.

  Emmy grimaced. “After only a few months, he started to hit me. By the time we’d been married a year, everything I did made him angry and it kept getting worse. When I came with Maman to see you in Lourmarin that time? I was already worried about being gone too long, about what he would accuse me of doing while I was away and how angry he would be when I got home. If I even spoke to a man, he thought I had taken a lover. He was...cruel. He said if I told anybody what he did to me or left him, he would kill me. God forgive me, as bad as it was with him, I was sure those were just idle threats. Then one night he told me what he had done to Phillippe. He taunted me with it. That was too much—too terrible. I knew I couldn’t stay. I ran away the next day despite his threats and went home to Rocheford. But Papa wasn’t there, and Alain came after me. By then I was frightened to death of what he’d do, to Maman as well as me. I was going to go to the police, tell them about Phillippe, but I had no proof, and if Alain found out I told and they didn’t arrest him...” Emmy shivered. “As he kept telling me, his family was so rich and had so much power that by then I was convinced he could get away with anything. But he was actually almost nice, that day, and so polite to Maman, acting as if nothing were wrong. Trying to fool her. Trying to get me to come back to him. I had told Maman about all of it, about what he had done to Phillippe, about everything. She was so brave, so calm, playing along with him, letting on that she thought nothing of me arriving at Rocheford a
s I had and that I would go back with him as a matter of course. And I was thinking never, never, never, but I was so scared. And then... Alain died. That night, before Papa ever even got home. Just went into some kind of fit and dropped down dead. It was so unexpected—and such a blessing! The whole time afterward, up until we buried him, I kept saying thank you to God in my prayers.”

  “Oh, Em.” Now it was Genevieve’s turn to hold on to and steady her sister, who was looking as pale and emotional as she still felt.

  “It’s over,” Emmy said. “After he died, I just wanted to forget about him. I could have gone to the police about Phillippe then, but what would have been the point? And there was still no proof. So I did nothing, just stayed home with Maman and Papa and tried to forget it all, everything Alain had done, all the bad things that had happened. I thought my life was over, that I would live hidden away at Rocheford forever, and I was fine with that. Then I met David, who is the kindest bear of a man. So big and gentle. And he took me away, and the war came and... Now he’s in a POW camp at the mercy of the Germans, who have none.” Her lips quivered, and Genevieve could see the worry and fear for her husband in Emmy’s eyes. But before she could say anything, Emmy’s lips firmed and her eyes took on a determined glint. “Anyway, here we are.”

  “Here we are,” Genevieve agreed. The sisters looked deep into each other’s eyes. Genevieve drew strength from what she found for her in Emmy’s gaze, and she thought Emmy did the same.

  “But you—what I suffered doesn’t compare to what you suffered, and are still suffering. I can see it in your face. To lose your little girl as you did—it must have been hell. It must be hell.”

  More pain squeezed Genevieve’s heart.

  “I can’t...” Shaking her head, she tried to explain that she couldn’t talk about it, but the words wouldn’t come. She saw in Emmy’s face that her sister understood.

  “One more thing you should know,” Emmy said, and Genevieve almost winced in anticipation of something else that would cause pain. “The last time we spoke, Papa said one reason he was fighting so hard to drive out the Nazis was so that France would be safe and life would go back to the way it was and you could come home and we could all be together again.”

  Genevieve’s heart felt as if it were cracking in two. Papa, she thought, as all the love they’d shared rose up inside her like a dawning sun, filling her with its brightness and warmth. She pictured its rays expanding beyond her body through the universe to hopefully find and touch him, too.

  He’s with Vivi now. A crystal-clear image of her tall, handsome father holding hands with her beautiful little girl appeared like a sunburst in her mind’s eye, comforting her with its promise of eternity, strengthening her with its assurance of the immortality of the bond they shared. Phillippe appeared in the picture, too, on Vivi’s other side, so young, so stalwart and handsome and just as she remembered him, and the thought that Vivi was with them, that the three of them had found one another, allowed her poor broken heart to finally begin to heal.

  “The past is the past,” Emmy said with brisk resolve. “All we can do is think of Maman now.”

  Taking a deep breath, Genevieve tucked that moment of precious communion away deep inside her heart and turned her focus to the present. “Yes.”

  Emmy gave her hands one last squeeze before releasing them. “We should go. We don’t want to leave together. You go first. I’ll follow in a few minutes and head in a different direction.”

  “All right.”

  Reaching the door, Emmy stopped with one hand on the knob to give her a long look, as if to memorize a dear face she might not see again. Even as Genevieve recognized that look for what it was, Emmy opened the door. A gust of cool air swept in, disturbing the dust, making Genevieve clutch the brim of her hat to keep it from blowing off. Emmy swept a pseudocasual look up and down the street, then turned back, gesturing for her to exit.

  “Be careful, bébé,” she said as Genevieve walked past her.

  Genevieve’s chest felt tight at hearing the once despised nickname in her sister’s dearly familiar voice. Shades of their shared childhood twirled through her head. She ached for the innocence of those halcyon days.

  She ached for her sister, her family. For what might have been.

  “You, too.” The smile she threw over her shoulder at Emmy was tremulous. Then she stepped out into the bright spring sunlight. An unexpected whirring sound caused her to glance down, to find the pinwheel spinning merrily in the midst of the swaying flowers at her feet.

  The door closed behind her with a whoosh and a click, and any chance for one last parting word with her sister was lost. There was nothing for it but to walk on down the stairs and head back toward the hotel.

  More people were out and about now, patronizing the shops, occupying several small tables of an outdoor café, going on about the business of their daily lives. A car sputtered past her, its roof laden with the round tanks containing the natural gas that fueled it in this time of strict gasoline rationing.

  As she neared the end of the street, she glanced back because she simply couldn’t help herself.

  Her sister hurried in the opposite direction, a nondescript brown figure with her head lowered and her shoulders hunched against the wind. With a shopping bag hanging from her arm and a seam drawn up the backs of her bare legs to simulate the stockings she couldn’t obtain, she looked like one more anxious housewife whose primary preoccupation was finding enough food to feed her family, on her way to queue up for whatever her coupons might allow her to purchase for the day.

  It took an effort to look away. But Genevieve did, and walked on. The next time she glanced back, Emmy was nowhere in sight.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The note she’d left for Max loomed large in her mind. As she made her way to La Fleur Rouge, Genevieve fervently hoped he hadn’t yet seen it and she could tear it up without him ever knowing anything about it. The excuse she’d come up with in case he had found it after all felt flimsy, and she really didn’t want to have to trot it out.

  All the hallmarks of a rehearsal in progress—a blast of music, the thump of dancing feet, the smell of sweat—greeted her as the lift doors opened.

  She’d left the note propped against the lamp where he couldn’t miss it. It was gone. Her stomach sank even as her appearance garnered a clamorous response.

  “Hello, Genevieve!”

  “Look, Genevieve, I learned the steps!”

  “Genevieve, Madame says we must turn to the left, but I thought—”

  A single look around confirmed Max wasn’t there. Anxiety quickened her breathing.

  Rehearsal didn’t pause just because she’d arrived. The space was crowded with pirouetting, bell-kicking choristes, the girls bare legged and barefoot in leotards and the boys bare chested and barefoot in tights. They continued belting out “La chanson du maçon,” a new addition to the second act, even as she waved and answered back in response to the greetings, took off her hat and coat, grabbed a leotard from the costume rack and went into the bathroom to change.

  She was drained both physically and emotionally, and sick with worry over her mother. But the hard truth of the matter was she had a show that night, and the next night, and the next, with only a few days off here and there. That was her future ad infinitum. Rehearsing was a necessary component of what she did. Having skipped the previous day’s rehearsal, she could not miss this one.

  The show must go on was a fact of theatrical life.

  In addition, she had to keep up the regular rhythm of her life as Genevieve Dumont in order to do the work Max needed her to do. The survival of her mother was uppermost in importance, but at the moment there was nothing more she could do to ensure that. She could only trust that Emmy had Lillian’s rescue in hand.

  When the number started at the top again, she was dressed and ready and plunged right in. With Mada
me Arnault at the piano pounding away, and the chorus coming in and out on cue, she sang and danced her way through first the numbers that were deemed to need extra work, then the others. Finally, she ran through the opening song of the second act, a plaintive “Parlez-moi d’amour” in which she, alone onstage, accompanied herself on the piano.

  Rehearsal ended in the early afternoon. On tenterhooks about where Max was and what he was doing, she went into the bathroom to wash and change before heading downstairs, where a car and driver, presumably Otto, would be waiting to take her back to the Ritz. She was prepared to grill Otto about Max’s whereabouts, but as it happened she didn’t have to.

  Max sat at the piano, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his dark head bent, his broad shoulders partially blocking out the light from one of the windows. The familiar smell of his Gauloise drew her like a beckoning finger. As she walked toward him, she realized that he was idly picking out the notes of “Parlez-moi d’amour.”

  Have you found her? Have you—please, God, no—killed her?

  His face was untroubled. His hands, those tan, long-fingered hands, moved over the keys with the sensitivity of an artist.

  He didn’t look like a man who’d just come from murdering or ordering the murder of a helpless woman.

  On the other hand, he also didn’t look like a British spy.

  She was so wound up with fear for her mother that she no longer trusted her instincts where he was concerned.

  He stopped playing when he saw her, took the cigarette out of his mouth and stubbed it out.

  “You wanted to see me?” he asked as she stopped beside the piano.

  The note. Of course, he was referring to the note. She trotted out the excuse she’d come up with for it.