The barber finished his job, and I stood up. She brushed me off. While I was paying, she didn’t deign to look at me. No one held the door open for me. Both of them were silent until I left the shop. Through the window, I could see them start talking as soon as I was outside.
My freshly cut hair made me itch. I put my hat on, thinking about taking a seat in the café on the other side of the square and waiting for Chantal to get off work. A ridiculous idea. I sauntered up rue Bonaparte to the quay. The river still looked swollen and angry. A Wehrmacht staff sergeant leaned over the parapet and told his companion that the water level was falling. The fishermen had gone home. Not for the first time, I spotted one of the little V’s. The Parisians made the V for Victory sign everywhere. Folded subway tickets, broken matches. Someone had made a V-shaped tear in a newspaper; a gust of wind blew the page in front of me.
I was already past the Eiffel Tower when I heard the ringing. It made me jump. Which church? What time was it? A second bell joined in. I started counting the strokes; at six, I turned around. When the bell struck a seventh time, I began to run along the quai d’Orsay, but not unreasonably fast. When field gray uniforms appeared, I slowed my pace. A patrol passed. I stopped under a plane tree and waited for my breathing to calm down. Then I crossed the Pont Royal, reached the neighborhood where my hotel was, and turned into the narrow alley I thought I’d made a mental note of. The streets were starting to empty out around me. Women with string shopping bags hurried by. Some sauntering young men pretended to be taking a leisurely stroll, but they knew they didn’t dare get caught outside after eight o’clock.
Hard as I tried, I couldn’t find the ruined building with the passageway again! Now I was running, looking up at the roofs of the buildings, hoping to spot a landmark. When, after yet another vain search, I found myself in front of a tailor shop for the third time, I saw in there the only possibility of getting back to my hotel.
“Are you coming with us to Turachevsky’s later?” A group of air force officers stood chatting by the door to the shop. A few meters away, I stopped and tried to get my bearings.
“I have no idea who’s performing tonight, but there’s always something going on there.”
The lieutenant noticed me. I hid my face by politely touching my hat brim and moved on. How different everything looked with the daylight gone! The dark button shop, the fence with the black V, painted over white by the Wehrmacht. Mine were the only footsteps. I hurried across the square. There were still lights in some windows, but the blackout was about to start. I found the sign for the horse butcher’s and laughed with relief. One more right—and at last I was standing in front of the damaged building. I hurried inside, felt under the stairs in the dark, grabbed the handle of my bag. With nervous hands, I changed my clothes. My wet socks didn’t want to fit inside my boots. I jumped and stamped, buttoning my uniform coat at the same time.
My hobnailed heels resounded on the pavement; without haste, the corporal made his way back to his hotel. I crossed paths with the Luftwaffe group again and saluted.
Back in my room, I fell on the bed and folded my arms behind my head. Everything inside me was racing so fast, I couldn’t think. A few centimeters away, scarcely muffled by the thin wall, someone was talking on the telephone. “Well, if you bring the sisters, I won’t call Dorine.” A brief laugh. “You’ve really taken on quite a lot! Let’s say nine-thirty, then?” The phone was hung up, and then I heard the dial rotating. I stared at the illuminated rectangle in the building across the street. My watch showed exactly eight o’clock. “Est-ce que je pourrais parler avec Mademoiselle Dorine? Elle n’est pas là? Quoi?” The window grew dark.
5
Who taught you how to remove a carburetor?”
“Qui t’a appris comment on démonte un carburateur?”
“Je sais le faire,” the boy replied.
“I just know how to.”
“Who showed you how?”
“Qui t’a montré?”
“Je ne sais plus.”
“I can’t remember.”
“Friends?”
“Maybe.”
“School friends, or grown-ups?”
“I can’t remember.”
The captain sat on the edge of the desk and swung his boot back and forth. “You should make an effort,” he said softly.
They had practically drowned the boy in the tub. They’d also dislocated three more of his fingers. The doctor was a second lieutenant, a thickset man with a goatee and manicured hands. He didn’t give the boy any sort of anesthetic before pressing his finger joints back into place. Without a cry, without a whimper, and without warning, the boy threw up. The doctor complained about the puke on his waistcoat. Afterward, the captain provided the delinquent with some details of the new tortures that awaited him. Only then did the boy confess to having stolen the carburetors. This information had no actual relevance. The registry office had long since requisitioned other buses for prisoner transport. What they really wanted to know was where the Resistance fighters were hiding. The two corporals took up their positions in front of the boy again. I turned my head away.
“Smoke break?” The captain was staring at me. Had he noticed that I’d closed my eyes? He gave me permission to leave the room. At first, I thought it was so I wouldn’t be a witness. But then I saw from the look on his face that he was sparing my feelings. As we went out, I heard the first scream.
The captain was an Austrian named Leibold. In the interrogation room and behind the desk, he appeared icy and harsh, but outside the office, he liked to talk about home. His fine-featured face looked lost under his bald crown. Almost daily, we stood for a while together at the end of the hall, where the windows gave onto an unlikely garden instead of the street. Roses were budding there, and wild vines crept up the walls like green down.
“I miss the mountains,” Leibold said, offering me a cigarette. “Do you know the area around Sankt Wolfgang, in the Salzkammergut?” He talked about the animals he liked, about the flowers and fruit he’d picked. About upland meadows and lake villages, about the solitude and the sheer rock faces where you needed ropes and crampons. I blew smoke against the windowpane. While he spoke, I watched a one-armed man mow the grass with a scythe attached to the leather harness he wore.
Leibold fell silent, waiting for a reply. “I’m a city person,” I confessed.
“Then you must like Paris.”
I flicked ash off my cigarette. “Sometimes our presence here seems unreal.”
I noticed his watchful look and quickly corrected myself. “Unreal, but justified.” My eyes roamed around the garden. “How long do you suppose it took him to learn to use that scythe with one arm?”
Leibold stepped behind me. “War is the mother of invention,” he said. Expensive cologne, a hint of moth powder. “How do you spend your evenings, Roth?”
“In my hotel, mostly.” I didn’t move.
“You never have any fun?”
I heard the crackling as he dragged on his cigarette.
“I read a lot.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“These…places, these bars, are too loud for me.”
“There are others.”
“I can’t afford those.” I looked at him so unexpectedly that he turned his eyes aside.
“I’ll show you such a bar sometime.” It sounded like an order. He straightened his back. “The doctor should have had enough time to bring the kid around by now.”
“What will happen to him—afterward?” I ground out the cigarette butt under my shoe.
“Drancy,” Leibold answered. “But that’s not my decision.”
The prison camp in Drancy was filled to overflowing; firing squads freed up space for new arrivals. And trains left every day for the armament factories on the Rhine.
I spent the whole evening sitting in my room a
nd reading. Later, I stared at the darkened windows. The man on the telephone next door declared that Dorine had failed to meet his expectations. Hirschbiegel, wallowing in his bath over my head, played “Ma Pomme” on his gramophone eight times in a row.
The next afternoon, desire and curiosity overcame fear once again. I pulled the checkered suit out of the wardrobe, took a fresh shirt, and picked out a tie. When the sentry saw me with my laundry bag for the second time in two days, he made a joke about cleanliness, hoping to get a laugh out of the toilet attendant. She said, “Une bonne soirée, ’err Corporal.”
I stepped out onto the street, walked to the passageway, and did my quick-change routine as smoothly as an actor. I laid out my street shoes, unlaced and ready, so I wouldn’t have to take so much as a step in the dirty corridor in my stocking feet. Finally, I packed the parts of my uniform in the cloth bag in such a way that later I’d be able to take them out and put them on in the correct order.
I was Antoine again! Stepping lightly as I strolled down the street, I bought a flower just so I could hold it in my hand. Without ever getting too far from the river, I walked southeast, passed the two islands, and crossed over to the left bank of the river just before coming to the Gare d’Austerlitz.
Monsieur Antoine turned into rue Jacob and sat down in the Café Lubinsky, across the square from the barbershop. I ordered un crème. As there was no milk, they served me powdered milk in a little marmalade bowl with my coffee. I pushed my hat back on my head and waited. At the table next to me, a woman was telling a story about a sixteen-year-old girl from the neighborhood who, out of unrequited love, had denounced a schoolmate. The girl wrote an anonymous letter to the German commanding general, the woman said. The military police showed up at three in the morning. The young man was able to make good his escape at the last minute, she explained. He got away over the rooftops.
I raised my head: Chantal’s silhouette had appeared behind the glass panes of the barbershop. I kept my eyes glued to the entrance. After a few minutes, she stepped outside, shook some clumps of hair into a garbage can, and held the door for a customer. A gray-haired cop approached from the other side. They stood together, he gesticulating with his nightstick, she pushing her ringlets behind her ear. The cop put his hand to the brim of his cap, took his leave, and strolled on. Chantal went into the shop and spoke to the barber. They laughed.
The following afternoon, I realized she didn’t work at the barbershop every day; I waited for her in vain. The day after that, she chatted with the friendly Jew who had the haberdashery shop next door. He was the father of the youngsters who played in the street. Since the SS major’s visit, the barbershop seemed to be popular with the Germans. One afternoon, I counted four men in field gray uniforms waiting for a haircut.
At 7:05, Chantal would pull down the rolling shutters. A minute later, she’d appear out of the side alley, closing her handbag. Until that moment, I’d have to guess what dress she had on under the long white coat she wore for work. Then I could see whether I’d guessed right. One day, it was the green one with the pale blue stripes. On the next, a particularly warm day, she had chosen a dress with red polka dots; the skirt swung out around her legs as she walked. As soon as she passed the Lubinsky, I’d pay—without haste—wait until she was almost out of sight, and follow her. She didn’t take the most direct route to rue de Gaspard; instead, she’d make a detour past the lycée and linger at newsstands, studying the headlines. She usually bought vegetables and picked up a loaf of bread. I watched her while she dawdled, drawing out the last minutes before the curfew so she could stay outside as long as possible. Finally—it would already be dark—she’d stop in front of the black gate, take a last look at the busy street, and disappear. I rarely followed her past this point. On the occasions when I did go through the entrance, I could hear Chantal’s footsteps echoing up ahead. When she passed the big stone, the light coming from the bookshop provided me with a last glimpse of the color of her dress.
Once she vanished from sight, my day was over, too. I crossed the Pont Royal, went into the abandoned building, slipped into my uniform and boots, and returned to my hotel. I’d encounter fathers rushing to be with their families and mothers pushing their baby carriages home at top speed. Around this time of day, Parisians had an irritated look in their eyes; instead of enjoying the evening, they were fearful of being found on the streets of their own city. I walked into the hotel, entered my name in the sentry’s register, left a message for Hirschbiegel informing him that I was too tired to go out, and threw myself on the bed without removing my boots. Throughout that time, I slept very badly. If the telephone man on the other side of the wall didn’t keep me awake, then the warning shots fired by the patrols enforcing the curfew did the job. I often heard screaming, but only in my dreams. The red spots on Chantal’s dress glimmered in the gray hours before dawn.
6
Her name was Anna Rieleck-Sostmann, and she was unusually tall. She worked for Leibold, ostensibly as a typist, but in reality she was responsible for the organization of his entire department. The lower ranks, not one of whom had graduated from anything resembling high school, were glad to be under the direction of Anna Rieleck-Sostmann. She was the queen bee of Leibold’s staff.
When I stepped into the courtyard during the break one afternoon, she spoke to me. “I saw you,” she said. She was eating a sandwich on dark bread. Everyone else had to make do with French bread, the insubstantial white stuff we called Luftbrot, “air bread.” What army stores could have supplied her with black bread? And I smelled liverwurst, real German liverwurst.
“You saw me?” I leaned on the projecting section of the wall. “Don’t we see each other every day?”
Although the weather was warm, Rieleck-Sostmann was wearing a calf-length coat of white fur, either rabbit or cat. Her pinned-up hair bobbed up and down as she chewed. I watched her jaw muscles.
“You go around in civilian clothes after work.” Her gray-green eyes scrutinized me curiously.
I shifted my weight onto both legs so I wouldn’t fall over. I started feeling sick on the spot. “You must have me confused with someone else,” I replied.
“Stop it,” she said, cutting me off. “Only senior officers are allowed to go out in civilian clothes, and then only with special permission.”
I knew the rules. Such offenses were harshly punished, most recently with marching orders for the Eastern Front. “I didn’t know that,” I said, searching Rieleck-Sostmann’s face.
“You’re not eating anything,” Rieleck-Sostmann said.
“I don’t eat until after work.”
“Because of the interrogations?” Her features didn’t change, but I had the feeling that she was smiling at me. “There was one fellow before you who would always get an upset stomach. A second lieutenant from Wiesbaden. He took pills for it. After he ran out of them, he got sick. Now he’s in Smolensk.”
“Fräulein Rieleck, what you saw—”
“Frau,” she said, correcting me. “My husband fell in combat.” She bit her lip. “Why do you pretend to be a Frenchman?”
“I wanted to see…whether my French is good enough to fool the French.”
“Why?” she asked, unimpressed. “You’re not in the secret service.”
“An ill-considered joke,” I babbled. “I did it only once.”
“You’re a dreamer, Corporal. You’re out of step with the times.” Rieleck-Sostmann crumpled up her waxed sandwich paper and got to her feet. Her high heels made her taller than I was. “Leibold’s invited you to the Waffen-SS meeting, hasn’t he?”
I felt hot and cold. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I typed the guest list.”
Despite my fear, this announcement made me curious. “Then do you also know why the captain would invite me?”
“Look in the mirror, Corporal.” For the first time, she smiled. “Do you own a decent
uniform for going out? Or do you want to show up at the gathering in your checkered suit?”
“Please, Frau Rieleck,” I said in a low voice. “Don’t turn me in.” She was silent. I said, “I have a second uniform.”
“Be sure it’s not missing a single button. By the way, the party’s in your hotel.” She left me standing there.
In the interrogation room, in the corridor, in the office while I typed up reports, I searched my colleagues’ faces. Had Rieleck-Sostmann informed on me? Did anyone else know about my masquerade? I went so far as to initiate a conversation with one of Leibold’s bone breakers.
“Düsseldorf,” he said, surprised by my question about where he came from. Another SS corporal came up, and soon four of us were having a smoke together. During the chitchat about the Rhineland, I was relieved to note that at least the lower ranks didn’t suspect a thing.
“My adjutant’s home on leave,” Leibold said that same afternoon. He was looking out the window at the rain falling on the garden. Green foliage covered half the wall. “I’d like you to accompany me,” he added with a smile.
I inquired as to the reason for the meeting.
“Camaraderie.” He let his cigarette butt fall right in front of my feet. “Polish your insignia, Roth, and shine your boots.”
Back at the hotel, I got the better of my two uniforms out of the wardrobe and found it wrinkled. The laundry had closed some time ago, so I hurried down to the basement and asked the toilet attendant for advice. She was glad to help. Later that evening, the uniform, freshly pressed, was hanging next to the mirror. I put on the coat and inspected myself; the dark gray gave me a certain distinction. I snapped the forage cap onto my head and yanked my leather belt tight and straight.
In the lobby, dozens of officers, many of them escorting ladies, were mingling. Halting French, stilted atmosphere. Leibold came right on time.
April in Paris Page 3
