The Irresistible Mr Wrong

by Jeremy Scott

  The horror of the event was flashed around the globe to an outraged world, timid in its response. President Trujillo in his own country was already under censure as a result of his own atrocity, the genocide he’d inflicted on Haitian immigrants. The aid he received from the US together with the highly advantageous sugar quota favouring the island was about to be withdrawn. However, the PR company Trujillo employed in New York saw in Hitler’s persecution of the Jews an opportunity for him to redeem his tarnished image. In a well-publicised gesture he announced that, small though his island was, he would be happy to accept 100,000 Jewish refugees. This was at a time when both the US and Britain maintained strict, even cruel, quotas on whom they would admit, despite their professed condemnation of Hitler’s pogrom. An article commending Trujillo appeared in the Washington Post; his humane offer was acknowledged, and particularly approved by the Jewish lobby in Washington.

  The PR company issued the press with colour photographs of the area the Benefactor had designated to be a Jewish homeland, which lacked housing but otherwise looked to be a beachside Eden. It was not an empty gesture but a shrewd move on Trujillo’s part for more than one reason. His own people were idle and feckless, and to introduce a skilled industrious group of immigrants who had particular reason to owe him loyalty could only benefit the economy. The move was uncharacteristic on his part, as it was his own land that he was bestowing – though this is somewhat less generous than it sounds for by now over half the island’s habitable land personally belonged to him.

  At the Paris embassy Rubi was well aware of this development; it obtained prominent exposure in French and other European newspapers. He was no businessman and had no desire to become one, but he could do basic arithmetic. One hundred thousand would-be immigrants to the republic meant that Dominican embassies and consulates in Europe would need to issue 100,000 visas to enter the island. Rubi had access to unlimited blank visas; they required only a rubber stamp and his own signature to become valid. He sold them for up to $5,000 apiece. The market was brisk, the cash flowed in. He could afford to be generous, giving them away for free to people he had only just met. He liked to please, women but also men. To dispense salvation in a casual throwaway gesture was irresistible. His brother Cesar – also working for Trujillo in the diplomatic service – after the war explained the source of Rubi’s wealth quite candidly, ‘He got rich selling visas to Jews. Didn’t everybody?’

  The occupation of Paris put a stop to Rubi’s business, bringing with it some personal inconvenience. The embassies of the neutral countries, of which the Dominican Republic was one, were obliged to relocate in Vichy in the unoccupied zone of France. It inhabited comfortable premises in the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, but social life in the little town was limited and dull. Often Rubi drove to Paris, where he retained his apartment, to look for something more to his taste. He continued to receive many invitations, one from a French diplomat still in the city, Count André de Limur…

  Now, only a few weeks later, Danielle is in love with him, and he with her. Just twenty-four years old, she has played in thirty films. Mayerling may have turned her into an international star, but her fan base in France and Germany was already huge. Fame has not turned her head; she is firmly grounded, professional and disciplined. Married life with Henri Decoin, so much older than her, has been domestically stable and largely occupied by work. Perhaps too stable – for even in adolescence she’s never had the opportunity to slip the leash. Her last picture, Premier Rendezvous, is now on general release in France and soon will be in Germany. It is a light romantic comedy well suited to an audience with a need to escape briefly from the realities of defeat and occupation. It is charming and upbeat with a happy ending. There are two other pictures in preparation lined up for her, but for the moment she is idle, fancy-free and in love. It is a condition she has rarely had the opportunity to enjoy.

  Occupied Paris is a limbo-land with disconcerting aspects of normality. There are hardly any cars or buses, the Metro stops between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. to save electricity. When open, its station entrances are watched over by French gendarmes, who salute every German officer with obsequious deference. Great red flags with swastikas are flying everywhere and drape the front of public buildings. There are wall posters all over town: VERBOTEN! It is forbidden to listen to foreign radio broadcasts or to refuse German currency. Notices in cafés prohibit German soldiers from dancing, You may not while so many of our brave men are being shot down over England. There are signs in bars and restaurants: NO JEWS. Jewish- owned shops not displaying a notice JEWISH ENTERPRISE are subject to closure and confiscation of the premises.

  The German army has seized 90 per cent of the forty million tons of coal that France consumes annually and there is no gas for cooking. Often the electricity supply is switched off for hours at a time. It’s been a cold hard winter. Long queues form outside food shops before they open for business in the morning, what they have to sell is scant and gone within an hour. Food is still being produced in the country, but without petrol there is no way of transporting it to the city. This restriction is evaded by Maxim’s and a handful of other Michelin-starred restaurants, which have a clientele of ranking German officers and an arrangement; here the quality remains superb.

  Elsewhere, food is so short that some people have taken to keeping chickens on the balcony of their apartments. Men are wearing scarves in place of ties, their collars are worn out and shirts not to be found. Yet the couturiers Schiaparelli, Molyneux and Coco Chanel continue to show their seasonal collections. Theatres, concert halls and cinemas are full. The show ends, the audience disperses to reach home before curfew and silence descends on the darkened city, disturbed only by the booted tramp of military patrols.

  Despite the exigencies of occupation, the good life continues in parallel at another level; its infrastructure is not destroyed by defeat. It requires a little time to get to know the order of the new order, a little adjustment and rearrangement is involved but soon the invader is recognised for what he is: just another consumer, and received appropriately.

  Both Danielle and Rubi own cars with Service Publique plates, but civilian autos are so few they are often stopped at road blocks. Always the scene plays the same way: a German warrant officer steps to the driver’s wound-down window, asking to see their papers. Rubi hands them over. The man glances at both sets, spots Danielle’s name, and bends to the window to see if it is really her. His face lights up in recognition. Excitedly he beckons up his soldiers, they crowd around. Invariably it ends with her signing autographs.

  Danielle possesses the universal passport of celebrity, and as her escort so does Rubi. It’s a new experience for him. He’s well-known in some of the best places, a regular. But Danielle is identifiable on sight by almost everybody, they’ve watched this enchanting young woman grow up on screen, she’s been part of their own growing-up and is almost family. But who is he? Most people have no idea, but the two make such a handsome couple and are so obviously in love.

  Rubi returns to Vichy from time to time, to put in an appearance at the embassy, but he is more concerned with the pursuit of his new romance. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and America declares war on the Axis powers, Trujillo throws in his lot with his patron and does the same. It is only pragmatic as it requires no further contribution on his part, but it would not be the dictator’s nature to declare war without a declamatory gesture so he locks up the German staff of their embassy in one of the island’s ghastly prisons.

  In response the Germans arrest Rubi, intern him at Bad Nauheim, and hold him as hostage to their release. Conditions in the resort in no way replicate those in Trujillo’s repulsive jails, though it is unlikely the German diplomats were actually shackled in their own filth. Bad Nauheim is a spa town where rich invalids take the waters, which has become an internment centre for foreign nationals. Rubi is at liberty provided he remains within the confines of the town and, as jails go, it’s not so bad. ‘There were friends, women, girl
s, everything you would need to kill time. They organised card games and social events. You could dance … We indulged in drunken parties with white wine.’

  Danielle is distraught at her lover’s arrest. Others might reach for a lawyer in the circumstances, a star calls her studio. She goes to Greven at Continental, where she is under contract for her next two pictures. She is his biggest asset and he receives her warmly, giving her the stock reassurance, ‘Don’t worry, the studio will take care of everything.’ He goes on to say that Premier Rendezvous is about to open in Berlin; he’d like her and the cast to make a promotional tour and attend the launch. She is happy to agree, it may provide an opportunity to visit Rubi.

  In all, six members of the cast fly to Berlin where they spend three days, shepherded by publicists from head office. This is the first new French movie to run in Germany since the outbreak of war, and its opening signals the trade and cultural concord between the two countries. The delegation of French artistes is received with some pomp and ceremony by the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, and his wife, who declares herself an ardent fan of Danielle’s movies. The actress has no difficulty getting cosy with her in an intimate chat about the man she loves who has been snatched away to imprisonment. Madame Goebbels is particularly fascinated because she already knows Rubi, she met him and his then-wife, Flor, at the Olympic Games in 1936. It is a drama of the heart Danielle confides to her, the best quality of gossip. Touched by what she hears, Madame Goebbels promises to have a word with her husband.

  Love conquers all. The impediments in Danielle’s path are brushed away and she is granted a special pass allowing her to spend ten days in Bad Nauheim with the man she is now describing as her fiancé. The permit is easy to obtain, requiring only a token concession on her part: she agrees to sing at a concert for German troops. She stays with Rubi in the town, recognised by everyone in the overcrowded milieu of rich invalids and international diplomats interned here. Soon after, Trujillo releases the embassy staff from jail in the republic, they are repatriated to Germany shaken but unharmed. Rubi is let free. He returns to Vichy, where Danielle is waiting for him, and they are married there on 18 September 1942. In the Dominican Republic, Flor learns the fact from a newspaper.

  That same autumn, Life magazine publishes a blacklist of French entertainers who have been tried in absentia and convicted by the French Resistance of betraying their country by collaborating with the Nazis: Sacha Guitry, Maurice Chevalier, Mistinguett, Arletty (the mistress of German general Hanese) … and Danielle.

  If she’d stayed married to Decoin, she would not have made the same mistakes. He had guided her career and would have prevented the moves which progressively put her further into danger. The initial step on that path had been taken, aged eighteen, when she made her first picture for Greven at the German company Continental. It was without political significance at the time, but her later actions built upon that foundation of suspect loyalty, together with the fact she’d shot several movies in Berlin. Now she is a star, and all she does receives coverage. She seems to lead a charmed life: she travels in her own car which has Service Publique plates and evidently petrol, she moves around France unhindered by the restrictions placed on everyone else. She’d taken a lead part in a highly visible promotional tour in Berlin, been feted by Goebbels – and, crucially, she had entertained German troops.

  The initial acceptance of the Nazis in occupied France has changed now, along with the course of the Second World War. At first appeasement derived from defeat and acceptance of the fact that the Boches looked to be here forever. Now with America’s entry into the war that outcome appears less likely. It is anyway remarkable that the pact of non-resistance in exchange for peaceful occupation – a condition that Ambassador Bullitt was in no position to provide, far less ensure – has lasted as long as it did. The first assassination of a German sailor took place in the summer of 1941. Then an officer was knifed at the Bastille metro station. Everyone on the platform was arrested and all were shot next day. Other attacks followed, and in response hostages – communists, Jews, Freemasons, captured resistants or anyone held in a police station for violating curfew – were shot. In the winter of 1941– 1942 fifty hostages were shot in retribution for the killing of one lieutenant-colonel.

  For Danielle, Vichy no longer is a safe haven. The romantic adventure she’d entered on with Rubi in her first grown-up affair has shifted into melodrama shot through with a most unsettling menace; she cannot feel secure anywhere in France. They move to Megève in the zone occupied by the Italians. It is a small fashionable skiing resort with one good hotel and three decent restaurants. The idea of lying low here is naïve; Rubi is incapable of lying low. Danielle is outed within days.

  She cannot appeal to her studio for help – her studio is part cause of this censure and ever-present threat of reprisal. She can only turn to Rubi, who is completely unreliable but in this case has the shady connections for what is necessary. He obtains new identities and new papers. Both Dominican nationals, they become Mr and Mrs Rubira. Dressed in clothes as dowdy, worn and patched as the rest of the population, they move to a farm in the country east of Paris where they hide out with Danielle’s sister, her husband and their two children.

  There they remain as refugees. Danielle is badly shaken by the threats and hate mail she received in Vichy. She fears for her life, and worse, if she were to be snatched by a Resistance group. She has good reason to be afraid: when Paris is finally reoccupied in 1944, it will be followed by two weeks of licensed revenge. Many are shot, but women who have slept with the enemy have their heads shaved and are exposed to public humiliation. In exemplary punishment a group of some hundred women are rounded up, stripped, shaved, force-fed paraffin oil and marched naked in column through the streets of Paris before a baying crowd of onlookers.

  Danielle and Rubi wait out the war in anonymity and obscurity on the farm. It is not ideal to be sharing their accommodation with another couple and children. Both of them have previously avoided domesticity of this sort, it’s not an easy adaptation. Their circumstances are inconvenient and claustrophobic, but for Danielle not to be making films is painful. It is not that she is driven by ambition for her career, but she loved to practise the art she’d become good at. It is a loss like that of hearing to a musician or sight to a painter, a death in the soul.

  As for Rubi … for him life in a shared farmhouse noisy with kids in a rural nowhere three miles from the nearest bar tabac, which is frequented only by peasants, represents the seventh circle of hell. He has nothing to do, he’s bored. He doesn’t read books as she does, can’t enjoy music except to dance to and talk above. He doesn’t like being without a surrounding scene, lights, action, ambient extras, music and background noise. He’s a social life-form, a fish deprived of the water in which it swims and needs to survive.

  The couple has been together four years. The first act of their love affair has run its course. It was a great first act and a brilliant opening to a stylish drama with a lead cast of two. The occupation had provided an appropriately cinematic setting to their romance. A beautiful couple recognised everywhere, they had played their parts with élan, for they were in love. But now passion is absent along with illusion and an audience. In the cramped proximity of the farmhouse mystery is also gone – they know each other too well. For him she’s not the woman he loved, the glamorous creature he married. He’s been with countless women, what made Danielle so special was her stardom, the aura that embraced him too in her company. That was what had drawn him to her and might have kept him in thrall still – but now that very stardom and glamour has become a liability she cannot afford to display.

  In practical matters they are to a large extent self-sufficient in their isolation. He explains, ‘I became a peasant. I bought a cow to get butter, pigs to make hams, sheep to make grilled chops. I learned how to herd cattle. Danielle saw to her chickens…’ She accepts the situation they are in. Her life is not rich in choices at that moment. S
he is weary in the confines of their self-exile, and beneath the weariness she’s always aware of a chronic low-grade fear; it is debilitating.

  From time to time Rubi comes up with a reason he has to be in Paris. Danielle is quite used to his infidelities by now. On each occasion he disappears for three or four days, using his false identity in a city where many know him. He is a national of a country at war with Germany, an alien with forged papers. His arrest inevitably would lead to Danielle’s exposure. It does not appear to trouble him that each new dalliance puts his wife at risk.

  With D-Day and the Allied invasion of Europe leading to the reoccupation of Paris, Danielle’s fears of reprisal are only increased. It is reported that the Committee of National Cleansing and Purification wish to question her at a hearing. But it is the offer of the lead in a film, Adieu Cherie, to start shooting that autumn, that draws her and Rubi to Paris.

  The US embassy has reopened. The city is full of Americans, military and civilian. Danielle and Rubi are invited to a party for William Randolph Hearst Jnr. They are given a lift home by a press attaché at the Greek embassy, Spiro Vassilopoulos, and his wife Edmée. Their car has gone only a short distance on Boulevard Malesherbes when Vassilopoulos slows down in response to a police whistle. Three men with Sten guns flag the vehicle to a stop. ‘Keep driving!’ Rubi tells him urgently.