Ricardo and Ducky survived. It is one of the happier stories to have come out of that painful era. They now divide their time between London and Buenos Aires.
Ricardo and I ordered wine. Salud. We clinked glasses. Each of us drank a sip. Then Ricardo told me what had just happened at the Chameleon and that the woman who needed to leave was Yvonne.
As far as I know, Yvonne never officially joined the Resistance, but connections were made at her club and communications exchanged. For months, as a singing cricket, Ducky had signaled the British secret service.
When you wish upon a star, a parachute will fall from the sky near Strasbourg. When you wish upon a star, a transport will land near Caen.
There was also a poodle act in which the little dogs done up as lambs would bring messages scrawled on napkins to undercover Resistants drinking at the bar. I’m not sure that Yvonne was aware of that, though formerly she’d insisted on knowing everything that happened in the Chameleon.
We convinced ourselves that certain people, like Yvonne, would always be safe. Mostly this turned out to be wrong. It was always shocking to be reminded that nothing and no one (except Picasso, I suppose) was immune to the dangers the rest of us faced.
By midnight Ricardo and I were with Yvonne, in her office. Yvonne didn’t need to know that I had already smuggled, or arranged to smuggle, forty people out of France. Forty, more or less. I didn’t keep count. Counting was unlucky. It was something the Germans did.
Yvonne needed a new passport and papers. She knew several counterfeiters she trusted, but lately for some reason they’d stopped coming to the club. Ricardo and I couldn’t look at each other. Yvonne didn’t need to know that Cigarette Butt had been deported to Germany, where, we’d heard, he was being forced to work for the other side.
Gabor’s portrait of Yvonne on the eve of her escape is among the most moving and controversial of his career. He has been criticized, as if there were something morally wrong about photographing a woman in such obvious distress. What else should he have done? There was no way to comfort her. Could he have forbidden Yvonne to think of all that had happened during the years since that first night she refused to let him take her picture?
Gabor knew what he was getting on film. Only after he got the shot did he embrace Yvonne, dry her tears with his handkerchief, and tell her in Hungarian and then in French to trust him, everything would be fine.
Gabor shot the passport-style picture that we used for the documents. Unlike the more artful portrait, this official snapshot was lost, probably after Yvonne moved to Buenos Aires, where she and Pavel opened a chic transvestite club that thrived until Péron came to power. After that she retired to Miami, where she died, decades later.
So we had Yvonne’s image. But how would we get the fake papers with Cigarette Butt gone?
I gave Yvonne a warning look: say nothing in front of Gabor.
Gabor said he knew a counterfeiter.
Ricardo frowned at me. I shrugged. Don’t blame me. I didn’t tell him.
Two hours later Gabor returned to the club with an ancient Hungarian who looked like a shriveled root vegetable with an eye patch. Up close, one could see the striking figure he’d been. Was this the person we were entrusting with Yvonne’s life? It was Gabor I trusted, and he loved Yvonne.
“Maestro!” Yvonne said.
“You two know each other,” said Gabor.
Yvonne said, “Cigarette Butt used to bring him to the club.”
Thirty-six hours later, the old man delivered the passport of a Hungarian-born Swiss citizen who looked exactly like Yvonne, an inspired work of art that would fool the most suspicious Nazi.
Whenever I heard about how this or that artist took a stance, or didn’t, during the Occupation, I wanted to tell the story of how Gabor saved Yvonne. But I never have. Perhaps some part of me changed in those years and cannot be changed back from a woman who believes: the less you say the better. The less you say about the other people. Let them tell their own stories. Interviewed about myself, I’ve had no trouble talking. Let others talk about themselves. They are entitled to privacy, even after death, another reason why I want these pages destroyed after mine.
By the time Yvonne’s documents were ready, it was no longer safe for her to travel by train. So I persuaded the baroness Lily de Rossignol to drive her across the border.
Seeing them off, I envied them. What an adventure they would have! Had I known what awaited me, I might have begged them to take me along. In fact I nearly did. Some impulse or premonition almost overcame me as I watched Yvonne and the baroness drive away from her château. Watching them leave was wrenching, though I knew that I needed to stay in Paris.
That night, Gabor and I were awoken by someone banging on the door. How ironic that after all those nights when Gabor tossed and turned until we got up and went for a walk, all those nights when we’d stayed awake watching the cops round up our neighbors, we were sleeping the dreamless sleep of the innocent when they came for me.
From The Devil Drives: The Life of Lou Villars
BY NATHALIE DUNOIS
Chapter Sixteen: A Chance Meeting
AFTER THE INCIDENT at the Chameleon Club, my great-aunt Suzanne was arrested on suspicion of having aided the escape of the club’s owner, Yvonne. In the reeking archives of the offices in the rue Lauriston, it is recorded that on the night of February 23, 1943, Lou Villars spent the hours between midnight and 3:00 A.M. interrogating a Mlle. Suzanne Dunois. Jean-Claude Bonnet and another guard had interviewed her earlier, so we can assume that by the time Lou arrived, my aunt had already suffered considerable violence.
How ironic that Lou’s portrait graced the cover of the book that launched the distinguished and lucrative career of my aunt’s future husband! How upsetting to find that you are at the mercy of someone who lost a legal case partly because of a photo your lover took. Someone who may blame you for having been present when she learned that her brother was dead. Suzanne must have assumed that her goose was cooked, that Lou had plenty of reasons beyond the professional to torture her—and enjoy it.
But though their paths had crossed at critical points, let me suggest that Suzanne Dunois didn’t know Lou as well as I do. My aunt could hardly have been aware of the battles raging inside the woman who walked into the room in the man’s white shirt, khaki trousers, and, ominously, a rubberized fishmonger’s apron.
Suzanne could not have known that, as she entered the cell, Lou recalled a vision she’d had as a girl: a blond woman in pain, her head thrown back, her pretty face streaked with blood. When had she imagined that? At the convent school. The strangeness of seeing her fantasy realized was so unnerving that it took Lou a while to identify the woman with the rabbity teeth as a bloodied version of the Hungarian photographer’s girlfriend.
Lately Lou had been feeling an almost maternal tenderness for the victims and for the almost childlike trust with which they entrusted themselves to her. It had come to seem so intimate, the work they did together, this ritual transaction of denial and surrender, almost like a religious ceremony, a series of sacraments culminating in confession and absolution. It wasn’t hatred Lou felt but love for the souls she was saving.
The fact that she knew Suzanne Dunois made this an unusual case. Her heart went out to the attractive Frenchwoman who’d been led astray by her foreign friends. Suzanne’s connection with the past gave Lou’s compassion a special luster. She pitied not only her victim, but also herself. She mourned the innocent she’d been when she’d worked at the cabaret for the arrogant Hungarian tramp who humiliated her in front of Bonnet and his friends, men whose good opinion she valued. The Hungarian whore who had shamed her in front of Chanac, whom she despised, which made the shame even worse.
But it wasn’t Suzanne’s fault. Suzanne was French, like her. The sooner Suzanne told Lou how they’d smuggled Yvonne out of Paris, the better their chances of catching the Hungarian brothel madam.
Lou interrogated Suzanne all night and into the
following day. This time she departed from her usual practice. This time blood was shed before the lighter appeared. My great-aunt Suzanne was a stylish woman, but she always wore long sleeves. Everyone knew that this was to hide the scars she’d gotten during the Occupation. Who else but Lou could have inflicted those marks?
At one point Lou stepped back to study her victim’s ravaged face, which looked exactly as it had when Lou had imagined this scene, as a girl. She’d mistaken it for a glimpse of Joan of Arc, but now she understood that it was a vision of an enemy of the state.
Lou was the judge, the jury, the guardian, the fierce and holy angel with the flaming sword. She took out her cigarette lighter.
She flicked it once and then again, nearer Suzanne.
She said, “Should I bring it closer?”
Often it has seemed clear to me, what Lou was thinking or feeling. But now as I try to imagine what exactly moved her to spare my great-aunt, I realize how little I understand. Was she moved by enduring love for the dead or sympathy for the living? Some vestige of humanity, suppressed compassion, or perhaps nostalgia for the lost happiness of the past? Was that what made Lou suspend her interrogation without getting what she wanted? I would like to think that it was Lou who persuaded her bosses to let Suzanne go, even though she hadn’t told them how they’d smuggled Yvonne out of Paris.
The whites of Suzanne’s eyes were scarlet. Her arms were a map of sores. But she hadn’t been blinded. And someone had let her live. Her courageous refusal to disclose any information gave Yvonne the time she needed to reach Spain, then Lisbon, from where she sailed for Buenos Aires.
From A Baroness by Night
BY LILY DE ROSSIGNOL
THE PHONE ONLY worked intermittently and was probably tapped. For the first time since I’d left Hollywood, people arrived unannounced. Before the Occupation no civilized French person would do that. It was such a social taboo, I can recall the exceptions: once, drunk at midnight, Gabor Tsenyi and Lionel Maine threw pebbles at my window—and were turned away. And then there was that evening when I visited Gabor, and he gave me my portrait, and we had our little misunderstanding.
But during the war, at all hours and in every sort of weather, people knocked and were admitted. I never asked how they got there or how they planned to get home, though the house in which I was living was a twenty-minute drive from Paris.
Late one night, Suzanne Dunois showed up at my door.
She was active, as was I, in the anti-Nazi cause. I would never have imagined that Gabor’s little friend would become one of my most trusted contacts. I’d thought of her as a silly girl with a pretty body. I’d never wanted to know what she thought of me: a bossy, rich, older woman with designs on her boyfriend. But by then, the fact that two comrades in arms had once been in love with the same man, and that one of them had won—all that was too insignificant to consider. Our history had been wiped clean, or almost clean, by the history around us.
Suzanne told me she knew a woman who needed to leave the country. It was already too late to risk the usual escape routes. They needed me to drive her across the Spanish border.
I asked who it was. Suzanne couldn’t say. Did I know her? The maddening girl couldn’t tell me that, either. But fine, yes, she could say that much. Yes, she thought I knew her. I offered Suzanne a glass of wine. Perhaps a drop of brandy? She said, Just water, please. Since we’d come back from the south, she’d had so little alcohol that one sip would go straight to her head.
That was typical of what still annoyed me about Suzanne, regardless of how much the war had done to change my opinion. A certain self-righteous quality, earnest, even pious. Holier than thou. But that too was the sort of thing which was no longer supposed to matter.
“One sip?” I said. “Remarkable. I envy you, I do.”
Suzanne said, “Gabor sends his regards.”
Later Gabor would claim that he too aided the Resistance. But as far as I knew then, he was mostly spending his time with Picasso and other celebrity artists, photographing their studios in Paris and in the provinces, where they waited out the war. The images he made during those years were not his best work, though there are some first-rate portraits he took in the process of shooting photos that were used for fake documents and passports.
Had Suzanne meant to hurt me by mentioning him? I hadn’t seen Gabor in a while. I asked how he was doing. Suzanne said he was fine, though he was worried about a friend. I said, Gabor is always worried. Suzanne pouted, like a child. She said he had reason to worry. There had been an “incident” at the Chameleon Club, earlier that evening. That was how I knew that Yvonne was the woman who needed to be driven across the border.
I said, “It’s a good thing I like to drive.”
I’d always admired Yvonne. Some of my most amusing evenings had been spent at her club. Sentiment overcame me, a longing for the days when Gabor and I scanned the dance floor for clues to the mystery of sex and for photographic subjects. I’d been disappointed when Yvonne let Arlette perform her repulsive routines. But they had helped save the club, where a lot of good was done, in secret, for our cause.
I would have done anything for Yvonne. I adored the idea of rescuing her, regardless of the risk. I didn’t adore the idea of being caught and taken prisoner. But I had cyanide capsules. And except for the awfulness of knowing that one’s corpse will turn that vile unflattering blue, poison wasn’t the worst way to go. That was how I’d been thinking ever since Didi’s death. Unhappiness was a great advantage in my Resistance work. Nothing fuels bravery more than the lack of the will to live. I’d come to understand why Didi, mourning Armand, had sabotaged Bonnet’s brakes.
Yvonne and I were instructed to travel as many hours a day as we could, respecting local curfews. Suzanne gave us convincingly authentic coupons for gas, which I hadn’t been able to get since Didi’s death. Given the danger and the seriousness of the mission, I had to repress a shiver of pleasure when I realized I could once again fill up the Juno-Diane and take it on out for a spin.
If I got tired, we were to pull over and hide the car as best we could and sleep by the side of the road. Hotels might have Yvonne’s picture. If we were stopped, we should say that Yvonne was a naturalized Swiss citizen of Brazilian-Hungarian descent. Her mother was dying in Rio. She was booked on a boat from Lisbon. She had the necessary papers, including one stamped with the seal of a German admiral who had once been a personal friend.
Suzanne gave me a bottle of pills. She said they were for courage. Nazi drugs the Luftwaffe pilots took to stay awake. For years we’d been hearing about these drugs. They were legendary in our circle. I didn’t ask where they’d come from. I assumed from Ricardo.
Later, when I learned that Suzanne was arrested on the night we left, I felt not only guilty but morally unclean to think that, while she was being tortured, Yvonne and I were having the time of our lives! I do remember noticing that Suzanne looked stricken as she watched us drive off. For a moment, I considered turning around and asking her to come with us. Though it would have been crowded in the Juno-Diane.
For the first half hour Yvonne kept her eyes closed. I thought, This could be a long ride. But after I persuaded her to take one of the pills, she became much friendlier and eventually quite chatty.
We had plenty to talk about. We talked about everything, really. Yvonne’s childhood, raising ducks, delivering babies. The grateful new father who paid her way to Paris because she’d saved his child. Anecdotes from the early days of the Chameleon Club. How she’d wanted to be interesting, wearing red and keeping pet lizards.
I told her all about Didi, how we met and how he died. She said she was sorry. She’d known some but not all of the story. Her opinion was that Didi had meant to kill Bonnet, which made him a hero. After decades at the Chameleon, Yvonne didn’t have to be convinced that Didi and I loved one another as much as any “ordinary” married couple.
I’m not sure why we avoided the subject of our mutual friend Gabor. Nor did I feel
I could ask Yvonne why she’d let Arlette sing those wicked songs. Didi had done business with Germans. None of us were clean. I believed, or chose to believe, that not one Jew had been killed because of a luxury sedan, or a song-and-dance routine performed by a lesbian couple dressed as a sailor and a mermaid.
Neither Yvonne nor I had forgotten what had happened to the millions of innocent people who’d been less lucky than we were. We were nervous but fatalistic. We would see what happened. The pills gave us stamina, courage, and hope, which (along with luck) was all we needed.
We flirted and giggled our way through the roadblocks and checkpoints. The guards believed our story. Two attractive middle-aged women, a dying mother, a boat waiting to take the grieving daughter home to Brazil. When she had to, Yvonne looked devastated, which was probably how she felt.
Several times they made us get out so they could admire the car. They walked around it gingerly, as if it were a bomb that might explode. I understand what sort of men they were, these German oppressors, these traitors to the French people. But it is a testament to human decency and civilization that none of them acted on the impulse to shoot us and steal the car.
The weather was good, the road empty except for the convoys of soldiers who honked their horns and whistled at us, or the car, as we passed.
The car ran like a dream. Thank you, Didi. Thank you, Armand. We stayed awake the whole time. The curfews didn’t seem to apply to us. No one stopped us for driving at night. The gods were on our side.
This is what I’d been missing! A friend and a bottle of Nazi bomber pills. If only Yvonne and I could have been friends before. I realized those were different times, and we were different people.
Yvonne described the scene with Lou, Bonnet, Arlette, and Chanac in the club. The story went back so far and had so many subplots that it got us all the way to Limoges. There a garage staffed by Resistants checked out the car, gave us food, and even collected a few of our phony petrol coupons.
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 Page 41
