by Liza Wieland
For the children of Spain, the guide whispers, the little ones poisoned by mercury, we collect three hundred francs a day.
If we keep an open mind, Natalie Barney says, too much is likely to fall into it.
The crowd in Sylvia Beach’s bookshop stills for a moment, then laughs somewhat uncertainly. From the large green velvet armchair at the front of the room, Miss Barney looks pleased. She spies Louise in the doorway, waves to her. Then she folds her hands in her lap and waits. She looks, Elizabeth realizes, like middle-aged Oscar Wilde. There was a story that he had saved her, when she was five, from a gang of marauding boys.
Miss Barney, Sylvia says, surely you don’t really believe that?
I mean it in a certain way. Sometimes it’s all right for the mind to be closed. To have one’s mind made up. But you didn’t ask me here to talk about that, Sylvia. You said I should talk about the modern world. And so I shall.
Miss Barney stops talking, gazes at the ceiling. I believe, she says, that we will have a war with Germany. Another one. Not tomorrow. Maybe not next year. But soon enough.
Clara, Elizabeth thinks, should be here. She looks at the backs of women’s heads. She counts ten rows and ten heads in each. She does not believe any one of them belongs to Clara, and that is a relief. She wonders what she would say to Clara—how she could possibly act as if they had simply gone on holiday together.
And I have had an odd realization, Natalie Barney continues. Women are simply not interested in the war effort.
An uncomfortable silence settles into the room, like fog. Heads bow as if in prayer.
If women are not heart and soul, as well as bodily, in this war, as they were in the former one, why don’t they speak up, instead of letting it be forced upon them? Violent death, rotting corpses, cold rain, mud inside your shoes, in your hair, in your nose—the men can write about that. But this war—the one that’s inevitable, why aren’t women talking about it? The government asks for our services, but not for our opinions. English women have got the vote, but it’s symbolic rather than functional. I don’t understand why men want to wage war and kill. Look at that Nazi bird. That’s what I mean. Reichsadler. What kind of animal is that?
There must be female eagles, Elizabeth says quietly.
Liberty is a woman, Miss Barney says. Wisdom is a woman. Love is a woman.
Hunting is a woman, Louise whispers.
Amazons, Elizabeth whispers back.
Obviously, Miss Barney is saying, there is some satisfaction in fighting that women have never enjoyed.
Elizabeth can’t quite get the eagle image out of her head—its cruel feet, the glare of its stupid eyes, all anger and no depth. Is there a male bird that is always male? A bird without a female of the species who’s simply less colorful? With a completely different name? She can’t think of any. Miss Moore would know. And then it comes to her: a rooster. So much arrogance over a cockscomb and a wattle. And the poor hen’s life: courted when necessary, then despised and stuffed in a henhouse.
Why this horrible insistence on bloodshed? Miss Barney says. And senseless orders telling us we have to get up and stop dreaming. And for what? To be flung on a pile of stinking bodies and forgotten. Fighting is worse than whoring, some people say, so why is one against the law and not the other? How, pray, is fighting worse? Whores don’t kill anyone.
At least not on purpose, Louise says.
We women can’t hide behind the wallpaper, Miss Barney continues. There will be fighting there, too. I mean fighting at home. The war will come into the home. Women will not be safe. Women’s frivolity, my own included, disappoints me. Do not let this war be forced upon you.
Elizabeth turns and makes her way back into the bookstore proper, the orderly shelves, the reverent hush of reading. She feels shaken, ill, desperately in need of air. She hears Louise call her name, but she does not stop until she’s outside, on rue de l’Odéon.
You’re not well, Louise says. I’ll find a taxi.
No, Elizabeth says. Thank you. I need to walk.
As far as that café, Louise says, pointing up the street. Not a step farther. We’ll have something to drink. See if that helps.
I don’t know, Elizabeth says.
What she fears most is that she will have one drink and then another, and then she will lose her resolve and begin to talk about Clara and the babies, the train ride, the soldiers, all of it. At Le Comptoir, Elizabeth insists they sit inside, at the far end of the bar, where there is some privacy. The bartender serves their beers—the large ones called formidables—with a disapproving shake of her head. Elizabeth tries to drink slowly.
What Natalie Barney said, she begins. About frivolity. I wish I were writing.
Have you thought about psychoanalysis? Louise says. I’ve heard it can work wonders. You’ll write better and more easily.
If I wrote more easily, Elizabeth says, I wouldn’t recognize myself. And as for better. Well, I would like that very much, but I’m not sure it’s possible.
Maybe you need to go home?
I need a typewriter, Elizabeth says. Sylvia wrote to me about it. I can have hers. Now that she’s back from America. I meant to say something to her tonight, but well . . .
Drink got to you first, Louise says, tapping the side of Elizabeth’s glass.
Elizabeth raises the glass. It’s empty. The urge to talk about Clara passes. She can feel it drain away incrementally, as if it were an ache driven out by medicine.
Elizabeth and Sigrid stand outside Sylvia’s apartment on rue de l’Odéon. They hear shouting, then loud weeping, then silence. Elizabeth lifts her hand to press the bell. The ringing drowns under the splinter and splash of glass shattering.
No typewriter today, Sigrid says.
But I need it, Elizabeth says.
A tall woman with a small, ironic mouth and wild black hair lets herself out of the building. She carries a large box camera, a Leica. Elizabeth understands that this must be Gisèle. She speaks to Sigrid in German. She seems to be laughing, but then there are tears in her eyes.
Gisèle asks if she can take your photograph instead, Sigrid says. Instead of Sylvia’s. Instead of the typewriter.
The last thing Elizabeth expected today was to be photographed. Still, she has come all the way here from Mrs. Miller’s apartment, trusting that tomorrow she would start writing again, the typewriter her mechanical muse, as Louise put it.
Gisèle says, Sigrid continues, you have a face like a heart. Like a child also.
Gisèle steps between them, links her arms through theirs.
On y va, she says, leading them across the street to Sylvia’s bookstore. Inside, she roams from one end of the room to the other, like a great lioness, calculating the strength and angle of the sunlight. She poses Elizabeth by the front window so that the afternoon light falls on the right side of her face. Elizabeth cannot see the effect, but she can tell from Sigrid’s expression, a gaze of horror and interest, that something alarming is about to happen.
Is it that bad? Elizabeth says.
Sigrid says nothing.
Gut, Gisèle says.
Behind Gisèle, Elizabeth notices a silver frame, and in it what she at first believes to be a picture of a corpse, a chalk-white face, eyes startled open by death, a shadow looming off to the left. The picture is familiar, her cousin Arthur, or her father, though she couldn’t really remember that face, those peeled-open eyes. It’s as if she’s gone into time and gotten stuck there. The image blinks, and then she understands—she’s looking into a mirror. Elizabeth cannot feel her own eyes in her head: the mirror has stolen her away. Or that old trick: two mirrors facing each other make an infinity of images. That’s what she feels—infinitely away—even surrounded by these two beautiful Germans. Or maybe because of that, because their beauty makes her feel invisible.
Sylvie est triste? Elizabeth says. Sigrid translates, and Gisèle shrugs. Elizabeth listens patiently to another exchange in ricocheting German between Sigrid and Gisèle
.
Gisèle thinks Sylvia was away too long, Sigrid says.
But she was ill, Elizabeth says. And before that, her father was ill. And then he died.
Gisèle is behind her camera, where no illness can reach her. Elizabeth remembers that Sylvia and Adrienne said this: as a photographer, Gisèle was very powerful. She could get her subjects to do whatever she asked, beyond reason and decorum. They would embrace strangers, take off their clothes, strike shocking and erotic poses. Gisèle could make them become symbols, Sylvia had said, but Adrienne had corrected her. Ironique, she had insisted.
Elizabeth wonders if she is becoming ironic right now, her face half in shadow.
As if summoned by this thought, Sylvia steps out of the building across the street, into the sun, and shields her eyes, even though she is wearing dark glasses. She grips a suitcase. She glances down at her wristwatch, then stares, drops the suitcase, and taps furiously on the face of the watch with the first two fingers of her right hand.
Vater Armbanduhr, Gisèle says.
Sigrid translates: her father’s watch.
And it decides to stop now, Elizabeth says quietly. She looks away from Gisèle and Sigrid, watches Sylvia remove her sunglasses and fasten her gaze on Elizabeth. Gisèle snaps the picture.
The photograph that will come out of this moment is one of the few Elizabeth likes of herself. She looks different, older. Thinner and fearless. Changed.
Sylvia lifts the suitcase again and starts across the street. Gisèle lowers the camera and watches her approach with great apprehension. At the last minute, she raises the camera to cover her face, as if expecting to be slapped or punched. Sylvia pushes open the door, shoves her suitcase inside.
There’s an apartment upstairs, Sylvia says, but no kitchen. May I come over sometimes for dinner?
Mais oui, Gisèle says. And lunch, she adds, in English.
I’ll be at work then, Sylvia says.
Elizabeth hears this exchange, but she’s also studying Gisèle and Sigrid, the way they fill the shadow in the room, fill it in really, so that the two of them, in their dark jackets, seem to be joined, the space between them elided, run together, made whole. She feels cold. These tall, beautiful women from that dangerous country. They understand each other perfectly. Nothing new to learn. She can almost see them, alone with each other, an upstairs room, light pouring over their bodies.
Be careful, Sylvia says, as if to everyone. She begins to climb the stairs, then stops.
Ça va? Gisèle says.
Elizabeth, Sylvia says. The typewriter. I have it for you up here. Come take a look. Your friend can come, too.
Elizabeth breaks from the pose, steps out of the mirror’s frame, and follows Sylvia. At the foot of the stairs, she turns to wait for Sigrid.
A moment, Sigrid says. She and Gisèle have not moved.
The apartment upstairs is one room, a sink, a folding screen in front of the toilet.
I wouldn’t want a kitchen anyway, Sylvia says. What if something caught fire? All the books.
Adrienne has a kitchen above her shop, Elizabeth says.
Adrienne prefers to take chances. Isn’t that obvious?
There’s no sound from below. Sylvia and Elizabeth exchange a long look. Then downstairs, the shop door opens. Elizabeth walks to the window, watches as Gisèle crosses back to Adrienne’s apartment building and disappears inside.
Sylvia rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. She lets out a sob that’s as piercing as a siren.
She’s gone to Adrienne, Sylvia says, because she’s afraid. And Adrienne is afraid. I can go back to America, but Adrienne has to stay here. She knows what’s coming. Gisèle has already been through it, with the Nazis, when she got out of Berlin. They think I’m lucky. Or they think I’ll betray them. They think Americans can’t keep secrets, that under the least pressure, we’ll tell anybody anything they want to hear.
Elizabeth would like to put her arms around Sylvia, but she finds she cannot move.
Do you think that’s true, Elizabeth?
I hope not, Elizabeth says. But I hope I’m never tested.
In Le Boeuf sur le Toit, there is loud music and frenetic dancing, and, in the corner farthest from the door, André Gide presides over a table of men in evening dress. Vom Rath guides Elizabeth and Sigrid to a table halfway into the room. He orders a bottle of champagne. He gazes steadily at Elizabeth, but not in any meaningful way, and she wonders if he even recognized her in the Gare du Nord. The doe-eyed Polish boy materializes out of the noise and cigarette smoke and takes the fourth seat, beside vom Rath, who does not seem to notice. Vom Rath is waiting for something, not the champagne, and Elizabeth realizes he is waiting to be seen. And then he is observed, recognized, like a kind of percussive burst. Men rise from their chairs, step away from the bar, helplessly, drawn to the table. They kiss vom Rath on both cheeks and then again, they offer cigarettes, a few set down sweating glasses. They have been waiting for him, these drinks clutched in their hands for some time, hours maybe. Vom Rath introduces some—Jean-Luc, Matthieu, Pierre, Victor—but not others. The champagne arrives, and the waiter fills their glasses.
Racontez-moi, vom Rath says in a theatrical whisper, les cancans!
Magda Fontanges, Victor says. He tells the story in French and then translates for Elizabeth. She shot the French ambassador, the count de Chambrun.
Oh! Elizabeth says. That’s Clara’s brother-in-law!
You know him? Victor says. He grips Elizabeth’s hand.
Not really.
Victor’s grip relaxes. Magda was Mussolini’s lover, he says, but the count warned him against her. Her lawyer reads from her diary. Mussolini tells her she is better than Ethiopia.
Vom Rath places his right hand over his heart. Magda, la belle pute, he says.
Monsieur! S’il vous plaît! Sigrid says, gesturing toward Elizabeth.
Pardon, vom Rath says. He lifts the champagne bottle from the bucket, refills Elizabeth’s glass, speaks to Sigrid in German.
He says he’s very sorry, Sigrid tells Elizabeth. He forgot you were here. Il y a poli de chinois. The men laugh wildly and Sigrid looks pleased with herself.
I don’t think I want to know what that means, Elizabeth says.
Sigrid promises to tell her later.
* * *
To be taken by storm, to be kissed on the throat, to have her undone hair falling around us like a curtain, to lie on top of her, to feel her skin is mine, to feel her body shake, the pulsing at her very core, to believe she is fighting me, to believe she is both close and far, far away, to kiss her eyelids, to shock her into ecstasy, to remove her clothes without unbuttoning, her hands inside my blouse, the cool of the sheets, the fiery rub of blankets, the tick of a fan keeping time with our bodies, the rest of the world silenced as if we were underwater, except for her breathing, the sighs that break into sound from her belly to her chest to her throat and out into the air between us, the moment just before and just after. Her shoes across the room, one on its side, the inner sole lolling like a tongue. Her tongue, pointed like the head of a snake, and relentless. Clothes pooled on the floor, a painter’s palette, daubs of clothes, all over the room. Don’t pick them up yet. Don’t pick them up ever.
* * *
They are cruel, Sigrid says, the führer and Mussolini. In all the photographs, they hold a stick or a riding crop. To beat someone. This gives them pleasure. I think sometimes what they want is not about the country, really. They want to violate. It is like sex. They want to shove everyone up against a wall in a dark room. They want this very badly, no matter the consequences. And certain sorts of people make them very nervous. People who have unusual magic.
Who? says Elizabeth, fascinated by the idea. Who has unusual magic?
You do, Sigrid says. I do. Gisèle does. Gypsies. The insane. Hitler would have killed your mother right away.
Don’t, Elizabeth says.
All right, Sigrid says. Twins. Twins have the magic. They are two
of the same thing. How can you tell which is which? The question is too distracting. Too philosophical. Yes, twins are the worst. The rest of us are dirty, disgusting creatures living in slime. Twins are not dirty. They are a living puzzle. They are a surprise. They are surreal.
I know that, Elizabeth says.
She does not say: That is why they must be saved.
After typing all morning, happily, a delicious sense of promise, Elizabeth walks aimlessly down boulevard Saint-Michel. Clamoring tourists appear to anger the Parisian shopkeepers. The sunlight seems hysterically bright. Objects gleam sharply from storefronts. A flash in the front window of a bridal shop catches her eye, and there is Sigrid, running her hand over the white confection of a dress. Elizabeth stops, dumbfounded. Sigrid is speaking to someone who stands half hidden behind the mannequin. Elizabeth observes animated happiness in Sigrid’s expression, but as she stares, this joy becomes too much, overacting, a parody, and for this reason alone she does not want to reveal herself or even be observed by chance. Still, there is a distinctly proprietary air in the way Sigrid lifts and drops the folds of the voluminous white skirt. Against the taffeta, Sigrid’s hand appears to be quite large and oddly dark. She runs her index finger up the bodice slowly, so that Elizabeth notes the uneven ride of the finger’s path over the sequins and seed pearls, a broken road, and she remembers the moment in the car when Louise lost control of the wheel. With her hand on the dress’s bosom, Sigrid appears to be listening to the hidden figure—this attitude of attention is obvious, almost stylized, the cocked head, the raised eyebrows, the eye rolling—as if Sigrid knows she has an audience. Then her expression darkens, her brows knit. She looks almost pained.
Vom Rath emerges from behind the mannequin and gazes out the window. Elizabeth wonders if she is dreaming. He wears his usual suit and tie, but he is carrying an enormous bouquet of lilies, white lilies against his black suit—as if he is on his way to a grand funeral, as if this bridal shop would be precisely the place one would stop before attending to the graver business of the grave. It’s as if he has concocted this scene and now must get a look at his audience.
