Mistress of the Ritz

by Melanie Benjamin

  “But then you didn’t know what to do with me, did you?” she said with a sneer.

  “If you were a French woman—if only we—”

  “If only we what?” Blanche looks down at her hands in her lap, suddenly apprehensive.

  “If only we had a child,” Claude says bitterly, giving this loss a voice for the first time. “Why didn’t we, Blanche?” He steels himself to hear the truth. “What was wrong?”

  “I went to the doctor, once.” She shudders. As if she is remembering a cold, sterile room, white enamel basins. Being poked and prodded by a strange man—Claude shudders, as well. “There was something about my uterus. I forget—it was long ago.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me, Blanche? Why?” Claude sits down beside her but forces himself not to touch her; if he does, he is certain he will crumble. He must cling to his anger, his righteousness, for it is the only thing that will give him strength. Love certainly won’t; it never really has, has it?

  Anger—carefully tended, stoked when necessary. It is what has allowed him to do the things he’s done these years. Anger at the Germans, at the French who caved and let them in. Anger at his wife.

  Anger at her secret.

  “I don’t know, Claude. It didn’t seem to be anything we could talk about, did it? We could talk about Paris. We could talk about how much I drank, how much you ignored me. We could talk for days about those subjects! And the Ritz, always the Ritz—we could talk about that, your true mistress. But we could never really talk about us, could we? The important things?”

  “I don’t know.” Claude slumps, his head in his hands; it really has been a long day. Von Stülpnagel has been unusually demanding as of late. “Blanche, you have no idea what I sacrifice, every day—”

  “Is it as much as I sacrificed?”

  Finally. It is here, it’s walked right into the room without knocking. The secret they’ve kept hidden for decades. They had agreed, back in the beginning, not to talk about it. They each had their different reasons, but on that they agreed. What was done was done; there was no use discussing it.

  Until now.

  “I never asked you to, Blanche,” Claude says, immediately on the defense. “Never once did I say—”

  “Say what? That you wouldn’t marry a Jew?”

  Jew.

  Juif.

  Juden.

  The word is incendiary, no matter the language. Claude winces to hear her say it out loud. Only the Nazis speak that word; everyone in Paris pretends it doesn’t exist. Just as everyone in Paris pretends that they don’t exist. Except as problems to be solved, and it’s always been that way.

  Even back in 1923.

  “My name is Blanche Ross,” she said, as if trying out the words for the first time. And when Claude Auzello, manager of the Hôtel Claridge, asked this charming young American woman for her passport so that he could check her in, she hesitated before handing it to him, unable to meet his gaze.

  And he could not meet hers, either, as astonishment and disappointment flashed over his face too quickly to hide. For the name on that passport was Blanche Rubenstein, not Ross. And her religion: Jewish.

  She’d searched his face, so anxious, yet defensive. He ironed out his dismay by reminding himself that she was only a charming woman he intended to take out once or twice, so what did it matter? He was not a prejudiced man, himself—of that, Claude Auzello was most certain. Yes, he enforced the unwritten quotas at the Claridge—not too many Jews, one mustn’t make the other guests uncomfortable. But it was that way in every fine hotel in Paris. And Claude—had he not fought next to Jews in the war? Did he not know several now? The man, Bloch was his name, whom he often encountered at the Louvre—it seemed they always chose the same paintings to study at the same time, they’d even laughed about it and had a glass of wine once while they discussed Raphael’s use of shadows. And that old farmer near his parents’ house, Jacoby, who had that pretty daughter. Claude always made a point of stopping at their stand when he visited the south. No, Claude was not a prejudiced man.

  Anyway, what did this young woman’s religion matter to him? It wasn’t as if he was going to marry her, this charming American actress.

  This charming American Jew.

  And when they did marry, she was the one who offered to have a new passport made (Claude did not approve of the word “forged”). “I’ve been thinking of changing my name anyway, Popsy. You know how the movie business is. Everybody does it.” And he’d believed her; he’d been overjoyed, actually. When she proudly showed him her new passport, the handiwork of that little Turk, Greep, he’d given her a small gold cross on a chain that used to be his grandmother’s, and promised he would help her get instruction in the Catholic faith.

  Claude was as thorough a Catholic as any Frenchman raised by a devout mother and indifferent father. He went to Mass once a week, he celebrated the feast days, he made confession before taking Communion. So when Blanche never got around to converting, it had disappointed him more than he had anticipated.

  The passport had been officially renewed, many times over. The gold cross, she only wore after 1940. It was a costume, nothing more. Claude looks at it now, hanging delicately off his wife’s slender throat. Visible, always visible, to their German guests.

  “But it was a good thing you did it, after all,” Claude says. “Even if it was for your vanity.”

  “Vanity?” Blanche recoils from him. “You fool. If you don’t know by now, Claude Auzello—I did it for you. For you, for your career here at your precious Ritz! The first time you took me here, I knew what I had to do. I knew a Jewish wife would be a liability for you. So I did it: I changed my religion, erased my past, not for me—I knew I had no chance in the movies—but for you.”

  “No—” Claude’s vision is blurry, as if he’s had a blow to the head. “That’s not what you said, back then—you said you’d thought of doing it before you even came to France.”

  “Thinking about it and doing it are two different things. Had I not met you—had I not fallen in love with you like a damn fool—I’d still be Blanche Rubenstein.” She says it bitterly, and her face is twisted—with guilt, Claude recognizes. Guilt, for hiding in plain sight, for surviving, while so many Jews no longer existed.

  Guilt. For marrying him.

  “Every day I see them rounded up, I hate myself a little bit more.” Her words are jagged stones, shattering the protective bubble he had thought he’d encased her in here at the Ritz. Not to mention the nobility he sometimes felt—yes, he could admit it—in marrying her in the first place. “I hate you, too.”

  “Yes, I—I understand,” Claude says, wearily.

  “If we understand so much about each other, Claude, then why have we lived all these years so—so—apart?”

  Claude can’t answer. They are facing each other, and there is despair in her eyes, despair he is feeling, too. Despair—and wariness. All their lies, they cling to them with fierce loyalty, they will not give them up. Not even now. Perhaps these lies are the fuel that drives the Auzellos, each of them, to do—what it is they have done.

  But are these the last moments they will have together? Because of what she just confessed—he’s almost forgotten, so tangled up are they now in their shared disappointment with each other. But yes, of course—Blanche did a terrible thing. A brave—but foolish—thing.

  Isn’t it time to tell his wife the truth? To have one moment of candor, of love, before she’s wrenched from him?

  He takes a breath; he wonders if this is actually the bravest thing he has done: deciding to speak honestly with his wife of twenty-one years.

  “Blanche, I have not done what you thought I have, those nights when the phone rang.”

  Her eyebrows raise questioningly; he notices, for the first time, that her bottom lip has a small red mark on it, she must have bitten it a
t some point; it looks tender, sore, and he wonders if she’s in pain.

  “I have not been seeing a mistress. I have been—working, in my own way, to get rid of them. The Nazis. To disrupt them. I have been passing on information to someone else. I have, occasionally, helped transport, sometimes hide, people. Jews—even here.” Again—why does he have such trouble with the word? They never say that this is who they are hiding, Martin and himself. They know, of course. But they never say it; they never give these unnamed people any kind of heritage or past. And isn’t it, really, what the Nazis are intending to do, but in such a more terrible way? Erasing a people? Eradicating an entire race? He and Martin, in truth, have reduced the Jews to a problem that needs to be solved. Nothing more.

  “Claude, you have been—part of the Resistance, too?” Blanche sits next to him and—to his astonishment—takes his hand.

  “Yes—what? What do you mean, ‘too’?” Now it’s Claude’s turn to gaze at his spouse in disbelief.

  “Claude, all those times you thought I was drunk, out with Lily—‘carousing,’ as you like to say—I was working. With Lily and her friends, Communists and students, mostly from other countries. I’ve—I’ve gotten people out of France. I’ve passed on information. In a different way, I think, than you—I have pretended to be other people. I’ve been to the coast. To farms out in the country. I haven’t stayed here at the Ritz, or even in Paris.”

  Claude can only stare at her, this small woman. Her smile, her voice, her attitude have always been bigger than her physical body. His wife. His princess, in need of rescue. His problem, in need of solving.

  His Blanche—a soldier of the Resistance?

  “But when Lily and that Lorenzo, when they came here—?”

  “It was more than merely a little adventure for me,” Blanche confesses, but with a touching, proud lift of her chin. “We’d been working together for a long time by then. I’ve given them things from the Ritz—clothing, stolen ration cards, food. But I didn’t want them to come here. I tried to keep my activities elsewhere. The only time I really did anything here was one night, during an air raid—I turned the lights on in the kitchen, for the Allies.”

  “That was you? I thought—I went down to do the same, but they were already on.”

  “Oh, Claude.” Blanche laughs, but it’s a rueful, sad sound to his still-unbelieving ears.

  “So all this time, we’ve been doing the same thing? We’ve had the same goal? And all this time, we’ve been at each other’s throats.”

  “It’s a damn shame, isn’t it? And now—”

  “And now it’s too late.” Claude pulls her hand to his chest, just above his heart.

  He does not know what else to do with this woman. Not a princess, no, not at all. Not in need of rescuing anymore—if she ever was. She is flesh and blood. Jewish. And far, far braver than he has ever imagined.

  “Now what, Claude?”

  “We wait—I could try to get you away, but we haven’t succeeded much lately, Martin and I. The Nazis are everywhere now that the end is near, and it has not ended well for those we’ve tried to save. It’s better for you to stay here, I think. We can only hope that my influence, the Ritz, will make a difference. So tonight, like everyone else in Paris, we wait.”

  She nods, and they stay like this, her head on his shoulder, his hand in hers, for a long time, until finally they stretch out on the bed. They remain fully clothed; tonight, they need to be ready.

  At one point, Claude realizes he has drifted off because he awakens with a jolt. He was so certain he could not sleep a wink. But the revelations, the unfamiliar emotions—they have taken their toll. He holds himself very still, and hears his wife’s steady breathing. So she must be asleep now, too.

  This is the moment when Claude remembers—remembers that he has a gun.

  He eases himself out of the bed, creeps down to his office—the German soldiers on patrol don’t give him a second glance—and unlocks a certain drawer in his desk. He checks the chamber of the pistol for bullets; it is full. He has oiled it and cleaned it every month, despite the fact that he’s never had an occasion to fire it. But there is no sense in owning a gun unless one maintains it.

  Tucking it into the pocket of his jacket, he nods at the soldiers on his way back to his suite. He crawls into bed, so carefully, and gazes at his wife.

  Blanche is lying on her back, her eyes closed, her lips parted. She is breathing regularly, shallow breaths, so she must not be deeply asleep. Claude still cannot quite fathom this woman doing the brave deeds she says she did. But he believes her. Because he needs to believe her, he needs his marriage to mean something, be something more than he thought it was. Because in war, a man needs someone to fight for. He’s had the Ritz, true. And a wife.

  But he didn’t know how heroic, how remarkable—how precious—she was, until now, his wife.

  His Jewish wife.

  Still gazing at her, Claude curls his finger around the trigger of the gun. Can he do it? Can he truly put the gun to her head and pull the trigger?

  He turns away from her, shuddering with horror, with revulsion; he buries his head in the pillow, unable to blot out the picture of Nazis tearing up the Ritz, looking for her. Blanche being tortured or raped; lined up against a wall and mowed down by those Germans. His guests. The people he’s bowed and scraped to these last four years.

  How can he let that happen to her? Even if it means doing the impossible?

  Tucking the gun beneath his pillow, Claude shuts his eyes against the sadistic images that continue to assault him no matter which way he turns his head.

  They make it through the night, the gun still cool beneath Claude’s pillow. He showers, dresses, and conceals the gun in some laundry that he tells Blanche needs to be done. She doesn’t reply; she only prepares to shower herself. She has inky crescents beneath her eyes; her face, devoid of makeup, is pale and her bottom lip now has a purplish bruise.

  She is beautiful.

  “See, I told you.” Claude knots his tie with shaky fingers. “It will be fine, I’m sure. But stay here today, just in case, please, Blanche? Don’t go out.”

  “All right, Claude.” She meets his gaze, steadily—bravely. For now, there is nothing more to say other than “I love you.”

  They embrace, these Auzellos. A tender, forgiving, acknowledging embrace neither wants to end.

  But Claude is the one who gently pushes her away; he picks up the laundry pile and leaves his wife. All alone. Unprotected. But no. She is at the Ritz. Nothing bad can happen to anyone at the Ritz—Claude told her that, long ago.

  * * *

  —

  TWO HOURS LATER, FRANK Meier comes running to Claude in his office, out of breath.

  “They’ve taken her, Claude. The Gestapo. They’ve taken Blanche.”

  And all Claude can think of is the chance he had, the night before—the one chance to save her from this. But he couldn’t do it; he was too much of a coward. Too much of a husband—the kind of husband she’s deserved, all these years. The kind who can’t bear to hurt his wife.

  Claude dashes up to their rooms, but it is just as Frank said.

  Blanche is gone.

  Which one of these bastards turned her in? Who at the Ritz said, Yes, of course, she’s in room three-twenty-five? Was it the one who handed her a fresh rose just the other day? One of the chambermaids—Blanche had caught one, she said she was Hungarian to cover up her odd accent—searching through her wardrobe last week? Was it Astrid—who has turned into an even more pathetic version of herself, her hair hanging loose and uncurled, her lipstick smeared as if she’s always just applied it before eating something, her smile nonexistent?

  Was it someone even closer?

  As she is marched out through the Place Vendôme doors, Blanche cranes her neck and torso, despite the fact that her hands are tied behi
nd her, searching for him. But Claude isn’t here—why isn’t he here? Who will tell him she’s gone? What will he say? What will he do, that husband of hers who said he had to protect her, no matter the cost?

  The man who also said he had to protect the Ritz?

  Even as she’s shoved into the back of a canvas-covered truck with other women, all in handcuffs, still Blanche twists her body around to look back at the Ritz as the truck pulls away; she longs to see him running after her—the need is so deep it’s a physical craving. The gallant little man who rescued her so long ago—where is he now?

  But then she thinks, if the final glimpse she has of him is that last one, when he paused in the doorway and gave her a look of such lingering, wistful love, it will be enough. At least, they had last night. When they finally told each other the truth. And allowed the secret they shared to come out of hiding. To seek the light.

  When she finally said it out loud, after all these years—

  She, Blanche Auzello, is a Jew.

  * * *

  —

  LE JUIF ET LA FRANCE.

  It was autumn of 1941. The propaganda arm of the German military had decided to put on a show—let’s put on a show, kids! But this was no family musical starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. Not by a long shot. Claude and Blanche went to see it, for all the Nazis at the Ritz kept asking if they had. And the Auzellos knew they really didn’t have a choice; it was something on the scale of a command performance, a litmus test for everyone working at the Ritz.

  So the Auzellos dutifully went. There were no yellow stars on the street—not yet; that came later. On the surface, Blanche looked as she’d looked these twenty or so years. A blond American Catholic from Cleveland, Ohio, married to a French Catholic from Paris, France.

  Before they left, as Blanche pinned her hat in her hair with trembling fingers, she remembered being told, back when she was younger, more careless, that she didn’t look “too Jewy.” A film producer told her that. He meant it as a compliment.