Mistress of the Ritz

by Melanie Benjamin

  Lily sighs happily, gazing about at the gilded mirrors, the red wallpaper, the chandeliers. Maxim’s still looks like it must have during the Belle Époque, when French men proudly paraded their mistresses about, walking from table to table. Only the tables are filled with German soldiers parading their mistresses, now.

  But not for long, Blanche tells herself. Not for long.

  “I like.” Lily hiccups, then giggles. “I like it here. You know, the war has changed me.”

  “How?”

  “I think I learn to enjoy things more. The fighting—always the fighting. I’m tired of it. There will always be more fighting. More Fascists, more dictators. More bad men—and women.” Lily glances, significantly, at the French women dining with German soldiers. “But maybe my time is over now. I miss Robert,” she says, very softly, and her eyes threaten tears. Blanche is shocked, because she hasn’t seen Lily cry in a long time, not even when she got her hand slammed in the door of a lorry full of vegetables (hiding guns and ammunition) that they were in a hurry to drive to the countryside near Orléans one moonless night. Lily had broken three fingers on her left hand and never once uttered a sound.

  But now, when the end is so near, Lily, of all people, is weeping. She glances up at Blanche, smiles ruefully, asks for a handkerchief.

  “You never have handkerchiefs on you,” Blanche scolds, handing her one of her own.

  “Maybe now I do, Blanche. Maybe now I cry more.”

  “Why now, Lily? It’s a time for joy, not sadness. We’ve done wonderful things, you and I! The last thing I want to do is cry. That’s all over; it’s done.”

  “For you, yes.” Lily grins at her, admiringly. “You know what, Blanche? I never told you, but when I lost Robert, I didn’t want to be tied to this world anymore. He was, what you say—my anchor. But now you, Blanche. You make me see things different like Robert did. Like nice things, and pretty things. Like talking, not fighting. You make me care again—I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Is nice, to feel that again. Not so alone in this.”

  “I do?” Blanche is stunned—and touched beyond measure.

  “Did I ever tell you how Robert died?” Lily whispers.

  Blanche shakes her head.

  “He was rounded up with some students. They were tortured, their privates cut. Then they were lined up against a wall and shot. Like dogs. I couldn’t go to his body, after. They wouldn’t let anyone near. I don’t know where they took him.”

  “Lily, I—”

  “No—let me finish. I did things then. I brought Nazi soldiers to my room, I plunged the knife in, I fed their bodies to pigs. I forgot to eat—Heifer tried to give me soup sometimes. But I couldn’t see her, I couldn’t see anything. But once I saw you. They were putting a family in a truck, in the Marais, and you were there, watching. There was something in your face new to me. You were upset, but also—how you say? Vulnerable? Seeing you like that made me want to be good again so I could go to you. I didn’t think you’d like me the way I was, so bad. So I tried again. To live, live good, so you would be my friend again. Thank you for that, Blanche. Thank you.”

  Blanche finds she can’t look at Lily right then, so she fiddles with her napkin, toys with her champagne glass. It’s true that she’s often wondered what Lily has seen in her, why she came back into her life—and why she stayed there. Was it only for what Blanche could give her, materially—money, clothes, food, coupons? Only to recruit her in her everlasting fight against fascism? To hear that it was something more, something bigger—vital, even—renders her speechless.

  She only hopes it’s not too late.

  Lately, Blanche has been aware that she looks at people solely as arithmetic problems—three go out, two come back, we need one more to take the place. Five Nazis are better than ten Nazis but zero would be better still. Ten thousand Jews are now eight thousand Jews are now five thousand Jews and the Nazis keep trying to whittle it down to none. And she’s horrified by this change in her; she fears falling into something—well, like what Lily described. Something dark, consuming. Unlike Lily, Blanche doesn’t need to keep fighting.

  But she does need to keep saving. She needs to find something, someone, worth saving in this world again.

  Blanche takes another sip of champagne, savoring it—savoring a new vision of the future, a future without Nazis, but with Lily. Her friend, that she’s brought back to life—Goddamn, but isn’t Blanche wonderful? Isn’t Lily remarkable? Aren’t they both the bee’s knees—she remembers Pearl, so long gone, who used to say that a lot: Isn’t he the bee’s knees? Blanche raises a toast to Pearl.

  And one to Claude.

  It’s funny, she often thinks. She’s helped so many people these last few years, people who were strangers to her, really; she had no idea if they were good people or bad, if they cheated on their wives or if they kicked their dogs. She helped them, no questions asked, because they didn’t wear a Nazi uniform. She can at least try to do the same for the man who once loved her so. She can at least remain by his side, no more running away, and help him become the man he used to be.

  She is very good at this, Blanche understands. Saving—fallen airmen, wounded Resistance fighters, lonely German soldiers, Lily. Now Claude. This damn war—it’s shown her that, at least.

  “So maybe now you will see me at the Ritz. I’ll live there—with you!” Lily grins. “And Claude—won’t he be surprise? I’ll have a room, we’ll do nice things together—you’ll show me how to be a lady! And you have friends, important friends. Maybe they write my story in a book, eh? I would like that. I would like to be famous.”

  “I’m sure as hell that Hemingway would love to put you in a book—he can write one featuring both of us. For Whom the Cocktail Shaker Tolls.” Blanche raises her glass in a toast, Lily clinks hers against it, and they order two more. “I wonder where he is right now? Arm-wrestling a German somewhere?”

  They are giddy, the two of them, these two warriors hiding in pretty clothes. All the times they pretended to be drunk, to fall off the Ritz barstools, to sing in the elevator—they’d never had as much fun, they’d never laughed, as they are laughing now. The world looks different—the colors brighter; there’s music in the air even when the violinists in the restaurant pause their playing. There’s music everywhere; Blanche’s ears thrum with a beat, a vibration. Everyone is laughing, too—they are, the Germans are, along with their girls.

  And that’s what starts to get to Lily—the girls.

  “Look at them,” she whispers. “Those girls. Those no-goodniks. What shame do they have?”

  “Oh, forget about it.” Blanche spears a bite of melon, savoring its refreshing flavor. “They’ll get theirs, when the Americans come.”

  She says this loudly—more loudly than she’d intended. Because the Germans at the table next to them freeze. So does Lily.

  But—another gulp of champagne, the promising future so bright and close she could touch it—Blanche decides she doesn’t give a good goddamn. Because it’s true—nothing matters! The Americans are coming and they will soon be gone, these vile, filthy Nazis in their uniforms the color of pine trees, their fat well-fed faces, their obnoxious, guttural voices, explosive laughter, evil, evil thoughts and deeds. People are gone from Paris—vanished, forever. Because of them.

  “To the Americans,” Blanche sings it out loud for the world is so bright, almost too bright; she’s not felt this vivacious in so long, she needs to shout, to dance—she struggles out of her chair, giggling, and after a moment, so does Lily, and they clink their glasses together and Blanche shouts out—

  “To the Americans! Coming to rid us of these German swine!”

  Dimly, she’s aware of a collective hush, of shocked faces, frozen smiles, but who the hell cares? She is gorgeous, this Blanche, and so is Lily—they are gorgeous women who have done heroic things and it will soon be all o
ver, the sun will always shine from now on.

  Next to them, the German soldiers abruptly stand. They raise their own glasses in a toast—reaching out to clink glasses to Lily and Blanche.

  “Heil Hitler!”

  Her arm shoots out; Blanche flings her champagne in the face of one of the soldiers.

  “God damn Hitler and all of you to hell,” she sings, laughing triumphantly—until, abruptly, she stops.

  As Blanche realizes what she’s done, she can’t breathe, can barely think. Staring into the enraged face of the soldier, she knows she ought to beg his forgiveness but the words won’t come, not in German, not in French, not in English. He wipes the dripping liquid from his face with a napkin, but otherwise betrays no emotion. His companions do, however; one of them lurches toward the two women, but is stopped by the man whom Blanche has so recklessly baptized. The liquid has darkened the front of his shirt but the buttons are glittering, dripping champagne.

  “Nein,” he says to his companions.

  “Lily, I—” But Lily shoots her a look, and Blanche instantly understands. In the stunned silence, everyone heard her name—the companion of the woman who just threw a glass of champagne in a Nazi officer’s face. And her name is in their books. Maybe Blanche’s is, too, by now. Certainly, her face is better known, at least to some of the patrons here, for she recognizes many of them from the Ritz.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Blanche whispers as the maître d’ makes an elaborate fuss out of handing out napkins and mopping up the mess. Blanche is certain that they’ll be arrested before they step a foot out the door, but they have to at least try to get away.

  They make it out of the restaurant, shuddering with every step; Blanche believes that each breath she takes will be her last, and is astonished by every new one. She leads Lily down the street, away from the river toward the Ritz, toward wherever Lily hangs her hat these days. They don’t speak.

  Finally, they stop running; they face each other for a moment. Blanche opens her mouth to say something—that she’s sorry, that she’s not—but before any words can form themselves, Lily darts away.

  But then she spins around, runs back, and hugs Blanche, fiercely, before vanishing into the dark.

  Blanche makes it back to the Ritz, looking over her shoulder the entire way. Stumbling up the stairs, she hurries into the suite, locks the door and sits there, waiting for Claude, as the light of this formerly brilliant day—a day of hope, a day of jubilation—fades to the familiar sinister darkness. Every step in the hallway is meant for her, it has to be. She waits and waits for a knock on the door, a summons that must inevitably come, and by the time Claude finally turns his key in the lock and opens the door, she’s so tightly wound that she runs to him, falling into his surprised arms with a hysterical laugh.

  “Oh, Claude, Claude—you’ll never believe what I’ve done now!”

  “What? See here, Blanche, what is it?” She’s so distraught; her eyes are wild, her makeup smeared into a grotesque mask. Taking her by the shoulders, Claude sits her down, glancing at his watch. It’s late; he’s hungry.

  What has she done now?

  She begins to explain, at first haltingly, then finally it all pours out of her as if she is at confession. She tells him what she’s done at Maxim’s, with Lily. She tells Claude everything, finishing with the part where she threw her champagne into the German’s face.

  Blanche threw champagne. Into a German’s face.

  “My God.” That is all Claude can say at first. He darts to the window, peering out onto the rue Cambon, glimpses nothing out of the ordinary, but pulls the drapes shut. As if that will prevent them from storming the Ritz, from tearing the place apart. From taking her away.

  She looks so vulnerable, so bruised, sitting on the bed. Like she did on their honeymoon, when she’d done something almost as foolish—tried to throw herself from the train—and ran away, and he found her, eyes red from weeping, at the train station. Too fragile-looking, too slight, to have done the thing she says she did. Claude at first wants to take her in his arms, soothe her, put her back together again.

  But then the rage, surging through his veins, lassoes him when he’s halfway across the room, arms already reaching out to embrace his wife. All he’s done! All the care he’s taken to keep her safe, to keep them all safe under his watch; to preserve the Ritz for it means something to him, yes; something important, the one part of France that is his to keep from being tainted, from being stomped under Aryan boots. All the effort he’s made—to the point of ulcers, he’s certain of it—to control his temper when each day, serving and scraping and bowing, his every muscle strains to reach out, to slap, scratch, pummel. How many times has Claude longed to throw champagne into a fat German’s face? To tell him—and his Hitler—to go to hell? To get out of his Ritz, his France?

  But Claude does not. Because he is a sensible person, an adult. Unlike his foolish wife. The anger overpowers everything else, and he allows it to do so.

  “Blanche, Blanche, I told you. I told you not to see that dangerous woman. I forbade it! And look at you, you idiot, you fool. You did it anyway, you disobeyed me and isn’t that what you always do? You’re not a woman, you’re a child. A spoiled child, for too long I’ve protected you. Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you for this? They’re killing anyone who even looks at them crossly, let alone throws a drink in their faces. They know the Americans are coming, they’re doomed, and they’re lashing out.”

  “Maybe they won’t,” she falters, as if she doesn’t believe what she’s saying, either. “After all, you—the Ritz—”

  “The Ritz can’t protect you now, Blanche.”

  “But I’ve done so many other—”

  “You’ve done what? Tell me, Blanche. I’m your husband. If you’ve done anything else, you must tell me. I demand that you tell me. It is my duty to try to protect—”

  “Protect me? From what? You just said the Ritz can’t protect me now. And maybe I don’t want it to anymore—maybe I’m sick of you treating me like a child.”

  “Because you act like one!”

  “No, I don’t.” She says this quietly, firmly—in a voice he’s not accustomed to hearing from his operatic wife. It is this voice that punctures Claude’s rage. Blanche is composed, serious. A steel glint in those usually soft brown eyes, a look that says I must be reckoned with. Claude has never seen this look before.

  “Blanche, of course you do—the hysterics, the drinking, the playing around with Lily while I’m trying to keep this place running, keep you safe—”

  “Keep kowtowing to the Nazis?”

  Claude winces. But he will not be judged by his wife, the woman who just threw a drink in a Nazi’s face. “It is my job, Blanche. You seem to forget that the reason you’ve been able to live out this occupation with enough food to eat, a soft bed in which to sleep, is because of my job. You have no idea, truly, what I deal with every day.”

  “Why don’t you try telling me?”

  “Because you—you aren’t to be—”

  “You don’t trust me, do you, Claude?” Blanche—instead of looking devastated—appears amused; is there laughter in her eyes?

  “Well, Blanche—given your—habits—”

  “Do you want to know something rich? I don’t trust you, either.”

  Claude cannot believe this. All his life, he has been the most trustworthy person he’s known. Others have said it. It has been the most memorable part of his personality and he’s learned to embrace it, stop wishing that he was memorable for other things, like that fellow Martin. How can his own wife say she can’t trust him? It is the most wounding thing she has ever said to him in a marriage full of words that are missiles, aimed at the heart.

  “I haven’t trusted you since you first took a mistress,” she continues, so coolly that the words seem to slice into him—not missiles,
but knives. “But I especially don’t trust you now, the way you behave to your guests. Maybe you’ll turn me in yourself.”

  “Blanche! How can you say such a thing? I have done nothing dishonorable. You have no idea what I’ve done, these past years—”

  “And you have no idea, truly, what I’m capable of—”

  “Throwing drinks into Nazis’ faces? Very brave, Blanche. Very stupid. Not to mention extremely selfish.”

  “Selfish?” She laughs, a disturbing, bitter cackle. “Oh, that’s priceless. You, accusing me of being selfish. What about your mistresses? So many I can’t count? What about you sneaking away even now, even during this horrible war?”

  “That’s different, that’s—” Claude has to sit down; how has this escalated so quickly? One minute Blanche is crying, confessing to him her folly; the next, they’re chasing around the same old, tired argument, as if nothing has happened at all these last four years.

  When, in fact, everything has happened.

  Blanche continues—but still in this eerily calm manner. And so, he has to wonder if she’s right; if, perhaps, he hasn’t any idea of what she’s capable of. “You say you worry about me, that you want to keep me safe, that I’m to sit here and do nothing while the whole world is upside down. While people are dying. You don’t think about what that does to me—to sit idly by, to watch. But you leave me anyway, you run off every time the phone rings, and what am I to think about that? I think that I’m not enough. But then I’ve never been enough for you, have I?”

  “Blanche, why must we go through this again? I chose you—you’re my wife. I respected you enough to rescue you from that man. I loved you enough to marry you, when that scoundrel wouldn’t.”