April in Paris

by Michael Wallner

  I met a Luftwaffe lieutenant and his female companion on the stairs. I came to attention; he looked past me.

  “Dans quelques minutes, j’ai temps pour toi,” the lieutenant said, awkwardly stringing the words together.

  “Pour faire quoi?” the woman asked with a laugh.

  At the reception desk, the sentry was talking to the toilet attendant, a young woman who spoke a few words of German. The sentry offered her some sweets. The chocolate bars were stuck together, and he grinned; her eyes remained serious. I walked down the hall, carrying my bag. The walls were painted dark brown, with scratches and scrapes from passing luggage. It was a corridor I walked through every day, but this time the exit seemed farther away with each step.

  “Hey, soldier!”

  I kept walking.

  “Just a second, you!”

  I turned my head, as though he couldn’t possibly be speaking to me.

  “Hirschbiegel was asking for you!” the sentry called out.

  “When?”

  “He said he knocked on your door and you weren’t there.”

  Through the glass, I saw a Luftwaffe major approaching the entrance.

  “Thanks,” I called over my shoulder, got through the door in three steps, held it open for the major, and stood ramrod-straight until he reached the reception desk. The toilet attendant disappeared into her niche.

  I hurried through the streets, as though I had some particular place to go. In spite of the sun, a cold east wind was blowing, stirring up dust as it passed. Golden seeds were stuck in horse manure. Scraps of paper circled in the air. To get my excitement under control, I murmured the names of the streets. When I passed a damaged building slated for demolition, I slowed down and looked around. A first glance made me think the place had taken a direct hit. Part of the facade hung over the sidewalk, and the support beams were ready to give way at any moment. I stepped into the entryway. Burst water pipes gaped in the remains of the walls. I listened, wiped dust off a ledge, and laid out my suit. It was an awkward process, getting out of my boots in a standing position; I hopped around and made more noise than I liked. Then I stuffed my uniform coat and trousers into the bag. For a few seconds, I stood in my underwear in the empty corridor. Steps from outside scared me, and I tried to take refuge in the collapsed stairwell. But whoever it was walked on by. Not daring to take off my ID tags, I just threw them over my shoulder so that they hung down my back, and then I quickly slipped on my shirt and pants and tied my shoes. My boots bulged in the laundry bag; I would have been conspicuous, carrying something like that. I investigated the entrance hall. The stairway curved up into a blind spot where no light fell. I addressed a quick prayer to the heavens and shoved the bag into the darkness. I was about to put on my soft felt hat when, at the last moment, I spotted the label—Klawischnigg & Söhne, München. I bit the thread off, ripped out the little strip of cloth, and threw it away. I pulled the hat down low over my forehead.

  I walked out into the street as another. I’d laid aside all my privileges; I was defenseless against both occupiers and occupied. I must not show my papers or speak my language. One false word would betray me. And by 7:30 at the latest, I had to metamorphose back into my former self. All the same, I didn’t take my watch, an heirloom engraved with a German inscription.

  The first thing I wanted was a new name, and before I could figure out why and wherefore, I opted for Antoine. Monsieur Antoine, assistant bookseller. I took the small volume out of my pocket: La Fontaine’s Fables. The book gave me security; it reinforced my biography. Monsieur Antoine, out for a stroll. Only a low-profile promenader, a young man in a check-patterned suit. His footfall sounded the same as that of the people around him. No heavy stepping, no reason for anyone to clear out of his way. I gradually returned to normal breathing and loosened my fearful grip on La Fontaine. I pushed my hat up high on my forehead. For no good reason, I smiled into the late afternoon.

  Monsieur Antoine crossed the Pont Royal and turned into the commercial streets near the quays. Fruit and vegetable stands appeared. Beside them, people were drinking red wine from little glasses. I turned the corner and was immediately surrounded by a babble of voices. Everyone spoke! I heard old men laughing after a girl with a flowered hat passed them. A fat woman shouted across the street, and three other women answered. An abbé, his shoulders gleaming in the bronze-colored light, blinked at a matron and made arcane predictions about the weather. The noisy, chattering world seized me and carried me away into the sounds and the voices. I stopped in front of an old woman with an accordion and tossed a coin into her dish.

  “Que désirez-vous, mon garçon?” she asked, taking the pipe out of her mouth.

  I had resolved to speak as little as possible. Monsieur Antoine, however, found this notion mistaken. On a spring afternoon, a silent Parisian would be conspicuous. Everyone around was bustling, boisterous, and abrupt.

  There was a song I wanted to hear, a hit, but all I could think of was the refrain: “Je te veux.” The old woman nodded appreciatively, stuck the pipe into the corner of her mouth, and began. I listened to her for a while and then walked on. I noticed a lady, a madame, wearing a veil as thin as gossamer; her mouth was painted dark red. A band of teenagers ran past while a cop ambled away in the opposite direction.

  I got in line in front of a pastry shop. A small woman crowded me from behind. On the other side of the counter, a skinny shop assistant was tying up packages of cookies. I watched an apprentice, a young girl, furrowing her brow as she read a cheap novel, oblivious to the entire world. I would have been only too happy to know what she found in those words. I got the last remaining package of cookies and paid for it; the small woman gave me dirty looks. I thought about giving her the cookies, but then I laid my book on the package and stuck them both under my arm.

  While loitering in front of the shop windows, assuring myself that my suit could pass for a French model, I realized that I had turned into rue de Gaspard.

  Today, the narrow street gleamed with a different light. The sinking sun lay deep in the sky, bathing ridges and roofs in warm red. There was no one on the stone in front of the bookshop. I figured it would be senseless to search for the young woman with the cat’s face. She’d probably just happened to be there that one time, bought a book, sat on the stone, and read for a while. Then she had gone away, and there was a good chance she’d never return to rue de Gaspard.

  The bookshop was closed. Disappointed, I looked up at the name over the portal: JOFFO, LIVRES. Out of curiosity, I tried the door handle. The door opened, and the shop bell rang.

  I said in French, “May I come in?”

  “Please do, monsieur. Have a look around,” the owner replied from behind the counter.

  I went to a shelf and stood in such a way that he could see my face. I asked him, “Do you have the new translation of Anna Karenina?”

  “There’s no new translation.” The corpulent gentleman shook his head and came closer to me. “At the moment, there’s nothing of the sort being published. Prospère has shut down.”

  Looking the bookseller right in the eyes, I asked to see the old edition. Would he recognize the German corporal who had visited his shop only yesterday?

  “This is from before the war,” I remarked.

  “As I said.” He shrugged his shoulders and then noticed the little volume under my arm. “You’re reading the Fables?” He reached out a hand. “May I?”

  I gave him my favorite book.

  “This is a rare edition.” He smiled the smile of a connoisseur.

  Fear came over me. Maybe the book bore a German mark of some kind.

  Joffo turned to the copyright page. “Look here. This must be the last printing: 1936.” He looked at me. “Are you perhaps interested in selling this book?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t.” I sighed, much relieved. “It was a gift.”

  “
I know I must still have…” Much more agile than his bulk suggested, the man dashed over to the next set of shelves and pulled out the fabulous, sumptuously illustrated edition. He showed me the poem called “Fortune and the Young Boy”; the illustration was a full-page engraving by Gustave Doré.

  “I used to read from this book to my daughter when she was little,” Joffo said.

  On the margin of the page, I noticed words scribbled in a childish hand. Suddenly, I seemed to see the butterfly girl, the young woman with the reddish brown hair. My idea was crazy, but I gave it a try. “I haven’t seen your daughter at all today.”

  His head jerked up. His eyes narrowed like a boar’s. He said, “Have we met, monsieur?”

  “No,” I replied with a smile. “But I’m in the neighborhood now and again.”

  “And your name?”

  “Antoine…” My eyes quickly searched book spines. Strings of letters, gold embossing, a curved r and e, and over there an anthology entitled Les Barbares. “Antoine Rebarbes,” I said. I took a deep breath.

  “You’re from Paris?”

  “From outside of Paris,” I said as calmly as possible. “Will you wrap up the Tolstoy for me?”

  He hesitated before going behind the counter and wrapping Anna Karenina in brown paper. I pulled a banknote out of my pocket.

  “Oh? They’re printing these again?” Joffo held the new bill against the light. My money came from the offices of the Wehrmacht.

  “I was wondering that myself.”

  “About time,” he said, turning the bill over and over. “The old ones fall apart in your fingers.”

  The banknote disappeared into the cash drawer. He counted out the change. “Where did you meet my daughter?” he asked craftily. “In the salon, perhaps?”

  I hesitated. What kind of salon would I be likely to meet her in? I said, “Right, in the salon.” I took my coins and turned to go.

  The suspicious Joffo came after me. “You’re in the neighborhood only now and then, and you get your hair cut here?”

  I tried to guess the connection as I opened the door. “Why not? He’s an excellent barber.” I smiled and stepped outside.

  Joffo held on to the door so the bell wouldn’t ring twice.

  “Good evening, monsieur,” I said over my shoulder. I felt his eyes on me as I walked away. The key was turning in the lock. I started on my way back through the narrow street.

  “How much for the pendulum clock?” I asked the junk dealer.

  He named half the price from the last time.

  I stepped out onto the boulevard.

  4

  I was hot. My jacket was slung over my shoulder, and I had my hat pushed back on my head. For the past hour, I’d been looking for a salon de coiffure. Children were climbing noisily over garbage cans in rue Jacob. I came to a stop. There was no sign over the entrance and only a little light inside. As I looked more closely, however, I could see two bottom-heavy chairs, some bottles on a shelf, and in front of the shelf a man of average height with a pair of scissors in his hand. On the right, customers sat waiting. I walked on. After a few steps, I turned back. I entered the shop and looked around; no sign of the cat girl.

  “You won’t have long to wait, monsieur.” The boss was hardly older than I was. He was wearing a close-fitting jacket that buttoned up the side. “There’s just this gentleman ahead of you.”

  Two customers were on their feet, paying, and blocking my view of a third. The two left the shop.

  I saw the leather belt, the black cap on a knee, the silver death’s head. An SS major. His boot heels clicked together when he stood up. The barber gestured to his chair, inviting the officer to sit down. Just as I was about to slip out, he looked at me. I dropped onto a seat next to an old man with a newspaper.

  “Would monsieur like a nice short haircut?” the barber asked, throwing a towel across the major’s shoulders as soon as he settled into the chair.

  The officer looked at himself in the mirror without interest. He understood nothing and pointed to the side where he wanted the part. The barber sprayed water on the back of his neck.

  My eyes fell on the holster. The metal plate was shiny, as though it were a toy pistol. Passersby outside stopped to watch as the barber drew his comb through the SS officer’s hair.

  The scissors clicked. The barber’s fingers moved rapidly up and down the back of the officer’s head. Smooth, supple hands, browned by the sun. I crossed my arms.

  During the interrogation, the boy’s fingers had stuck out from his hands like spokes from a broken wheel, motionless, stiff—as though they no longer belonged to him. He didn’t cry out while they were dislocating his fingers; it was only later that he wept. I forced myself to think about other hands. The hands of the man fishing on the Pont Royal: one laid flat on the parapet, the other clutching the rod with great tenderness. Only the fingertips had pulled at the line, furtively, as if the fisherman himself were not supposed to notice this manipulation. The SS officer had big freckled hands. They lay calmly in his lap. Clip-clip, over the nape of his neck and the back of his head.

  The door opened. A mother was dragging her son to get a haircut. She saw the officer and stopped short.

  “Oh, oh,” she said. “In that case, I’ll look in later.” Then she disappeared, pulling her baffled son behind her.

  Against the barber’s will, the major turned his head and observed the children playing noisily outside the door. “Yours?” he wanted to know.

  “No, monsieur.” The barber carefully turned the officer’s head back to the proper position.

  “Whose are they?” the major asked in awkward French.

  “They’re my brothers,” said a woman’s voice.

  Holding a broom in one hand, she stepped through a beaded curtain. She looked more substantial in her white coat, definitely older than twenty. Her hair framed her head in ringlets and curls. Her large eyes looked serious. Joy warmed my belly as I involuntarily leaned forward. The clip-clipping stopped.

  “Pretty kids.” The lieutenant nodded. He added in German, “War’s hardest on children.”

  She laid the broom aside and went to the door. She wasn’t wearing any stockings, and I stared at her calves. As the shop bell rang, she called the boys by name. They broke off their game. Flushed faces, momentary paralysis. Then they understood the warning, went to the end of the street, and disappeared.

  With a flick of his wrist, the barber snatched away the towel and held up a mirror so the major could see the results of his work. The officer nodded, expressionless, and stood up. About to lay the gold coin on the shop counter, he turned around and put the piece in the young woman’s hand instead. Stone-faced, she opened the till and dropped the coin inside.

  “I’m looking for a restaurant,” he said to no one in particular. “The Peletier.”

  The barber shook his head. The woman with the reddish brown hair didn’t answer, either.

  I pressed my fingers against my palms, stood up, and stepped in front of the major. Did I do it to impress her? Did I want to put my own disguise to the test? I’d heard of the Peletier. The SS ordered up women there. “It’s behind Saint-Germain-des-Prés, on the south side of the square,” I said. We looked each other in the eyes. “You can’t miss it.”

  “Merci, monsieur,” the major said, using the hard German s and putting on his cap. While his boots were still crunching over the threshold, I took my seat in the barber’s chair. The young woman swept up the German officer’s hair.

  “Why did you say they were your brothers?” the barber said to the young woman as the major was vanishing among the crowds in the street. “Don’t play games with these people, Chantal!”

  “They’re Samuel’s kids.” She was sweeping quite close to me.

  The barber spread a fresh towel over my shoulders. I watched the young woman in the mirror.
r />   “How come you know the Peletier?” she asked when our eyes met. “Only pigs go there.”

  “Chantal!” The barber looked around. The old man behind the newspaper didn’t move.

  “In that case, I gave him the right directions.” I smiled. “Trim the back and sides, please.”

  “We haven’t had the honor of serving you before, monsieur,” the barber said.

  What struck me about his delicate face was its long nose—as though it had been set there maliciously. “I’m here on a visit,” I said.

  “Traveling is complicated at the moment,” he remarked insinuatingly.

  I nodded. “It took me two days. God knows how many times we stopped. The track’s closed between Thiers and Moulins.”

  I was amazed at how effortlessly my brain spit out lies. I focused mentally on an image of the Ordnance Survey map. Armed bands, enemy units, arrows and hatching, the front approximately garter-high. The barber moistened the hair on the back of my head. The scissors approached my temple. I shut my eyes. The place grew quiet. From time to time, the old man turned a page. The woman named Chantal was now sitting behind the till. The bookshop owner’s daughter, I thought, trying to imagine her growing up among thousands of books. In the evenings, her father would take down the Fables and read some of them to her. After Chantal herself learned to read, on fine days she would carry her books outside, sit on the stone, and immerse herself in them…The sound of the scissors made me sleepy. As though from a great distance, I saw Antoine sitting in the barber’s chair. Moments before, he’d aroused suspicion by giving directions to an SS man. He was also suspect because he came from out of town. Denunciations were more and more frequent; collaborators and informers were everywhere. The French didn’t even trust one another. Monsieur Antoine couldn’t speak to Chantal, neither in the shop nor on the street. For a German, on the other hand, meeting women was easy in those days. Women in German company were exempt from curfew rules, and the bars were full. Parisian women fed their families by going out with German officers. I opened my eyes and watched Chantal in the mirror.