Immortal Muse

by Stephen Leigh

  Ana shook her head, wanting to run after these trucks and find Lotte (if not Alexander). But she impatiently followed Madame Moore, who escorted her up to Lotte’s room in the villa and pointed to three cardboard boxes in a corner. “Those,” she said. “She said she wanted to make certain that you had them.”

  Ana didn’t need to open them: she knew what was in them—the paintings that Lotte had worked on so feverishly, the opera of her life: Life? or Theater? “I’ll need a car for the boxes,” she told Madame Moore. “Please, could you call one for me? And are you certain that they didn’t say where they were taking Lotte and Alexander?”

  *

  Madame Moore didn’t know the answer to that last question, nor did any of the other residents of l’Ermitage, but the driver of the car who drove Anaïs back to her rooms with Lotte’s boxes thought he did.

  “The Nazis have taken over the Hotel Excelsior in Nice,” the driver told her. “I’ve heard that they’re holding the Jews there until they’re processed, then shipping them out by train for Drancy in Paris. And after that …” The shrug he gave then was more eloquent than words.

  After Ana and the driver had carried Lotte’s boxes into the apartment, after she’d paid the driver and had opened one of the boxes to look in at the sheets of Lotte’s work, Anaïs had taken out her battered, old Tarot and laid out the cards. The reading had not been optimistic, and she could see Nicolas’ influence throughout it. Angrily, she pushed the cards away on the tabletop. She took out the few old scrolls she’d gathered over the centuries, laying them out and trying to memorize the most effective spells there, knowing that none of them could match Nicolas, if it came to that. She placed the flasks she’d already prepared in her coat jacket. She couldn’t concentrate; she was shaking and trembling and the vials rattled in her hands as she thrust them into the pocket. The vial of elixir for Lotte she hid in the broken heel of her shoe, gluing a strip of rubber over the hole she’d worn there. She thought of slipping the pistol into her handbag, but she was certain that she would be searched and to bring an obvious weapon would only result in her own arrest before she could get to Nicolas.

  We agreed to a truce back in Vienna. He’ll keep to it. She repeated the thought, over and over, as if sheer repetition could make it true. But at least part of her feared that would not be the case. All the centuries, has he ever shown that he would stop?

  To that she had no answer. To that, there was no answer.

  A few hours later, she was standing in front of the Hotel Excelsior, staring at the guards loitering at the entrance and the blood-red swastikas draped over the building’s facade. Ana felt cold, as if a winter wind from the mountains had invaded the coast; all the fine hairs on her arms were standing up and her stomach roiled. She could taste acid at the back of her throat. She thought she could feel eyes—Nicolas’ eyes—staring at her from the windows of the hotel. Almost, she turned and fled, but the thought of Lotte somewhere inside made her plant her feet and swallow hard. She strode up to a cluster of uniformed guards near the entrance.

  “I wish to see Hauptsturmführer Brunner,” she told the man in broken German.

  “Your papers, M’mselle?” the guard asked, holding out his hand. He spoke passable French. His gaze was cold and appraising, his gaze traveling from her face down to her shoes and back, touching each part of her body as intimately as a hand. He took the identification that Ana handed him. “You’re a French citizen?”

  “Oui,” she told him. “I am.”

  “And your business here?”

  “That is between me and the Hauptsturmführer.”

  The sniff of disdain, or perhaps amusement, was audible. “The Hauptsturmführer, I regret, takes very few appointments with citizens. If you could perhaps tell me more, I might be able to direct you to someone who might help you.”

  “Tell Hauptsturmführer Brunner that Perenelle wishes to see him.”

  The guard looked puzzled. “Perenelle? But your name …”

  “Tell him that,” Anaïs said. “I promise you that you won’t get into any trouble. He’ll want to talk to me. I guarantee you.”

  The guard stared hard at her for several seconds before calling over another officer and telling him something in quick, guttural German while handing him Ana’s identification papers. She heard the name “Perenelle” repeated. The other man saluted and hurried off into the lobby of the hotel while the guard waited with Anaïs. Several minutes later, the officer returned. He looked at her strangely. “I’m to search M’mselle Dereux for weapons, then take her to the Hauptsturmführer’s office,” he said.

  The search was thorough and humiliating, and Anaïs was glad that she’d decided against bringing the pistol. They took her into a small office in the hotel and made her strip to her underwear in front of them, then brought in a female adjunct to search that. Her vials were discovered nearly immediately; they looked at them strangely, shaking the powder inside, then put them in a small box and carried them away. Though they looked at her shoes, they missed the vial of elixir.

  Afterward, the officer of the guard allowed Ana time to put her clothing back on, then walked alongside her through the east wing of the hotel. Hauptsturmführer Brunner’s office was in one of the airy suites bordering the courtyard. The officer walked Ana between an array of desks hastily set in the hotel’s wide corridors and past several guards into one of the rooms of the suite. Music was playing softly in the room from a phonograph in one corner; Ana felt the chill traverse her spine as she recognized the melody: the Spring allegro movement from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. And the painting on the wall to her left: it was one of Klimt’s portraits of her.

  The doors to the room’s balcony were open, the gauzy folds of the curtains billowing in a breeze. A short man stood there with his back to them, dressed in a crisp SS officer’s uniform. He was smoking a cigarette and staring down from the balcony of the apartment into the court. Ana saw her papers open on his desk, and the flasks that had been taken from her. The officer clicked polished, booted heels together and raised his arm in the Nazi salute. “Hauptsturmführer,” he said over the music, “the woman who wanted to see you.”

  The man on the balcony turned, and Ana was staring once more into Nicolas’ face. He drew in a long inhalation from his cigarette and blew smoke from his nose as he tossed the cigarette over the balcony rail. He smiled as he entered the room, putting the bulk of the desk between himself and Ana, though he didn’t sit. His forefinger rolled one of the glass vials across the blotter. “Sie können gehen,” he told the officer. You may go. The officer saluted again and left the room, closing the doors behind him. “I wonder what you intended with these,” Nicolas said, switching to French. “I thought we came to an agreement in Venice.” He clucked his tongue, shaking his head. “Why, I might think you didn’t trust me.”

  “We had a truce,” she agreed. “Forgive me if it seems I didn’t entirely trust you to keep it.”

  He grinned at that, lifting his finger from the flask. “Well, my dear, this is a most unexpected pleasure.”

  “Irony really doesn’t suit you, Nicolas,” Ana told him. She glanced pointedly at his uniform, at the insignia of the SS pinned there. “But it looks as if this war has.”

  His smile broadened. “Oh, indeed, it has,” he answered, and she could hear a terrifying satisfaction in his voice. “Quite well, in fact. This war and the Reich have given me the chance to do good work. Important work. Work I find …” He seemed to consider the words. “Deeply and intensely satisfying on many levels.”

  “Good work? Sending Jews to forced labor camps? Stealing their houses and their money from them, just as you did so long ago?”

  The smile twitched. “You mean, forcing them to make justifiable reparations for what they have stolen from the people of the world?” he answered. “And making certain that they will never rape our people again? As I said, mine is very satisfying work and very necessary, no matter what you might think. You were always too symp
athetic; it was one of your many faults, Perenelle. Or should I say …” He tapped the papers on his desk and peered at them. “Anaïs. You do surprise me; I truly hadn’t the slightest idea that you were here. I would have thought you’d be in a safer place like the Americas. I’ll admit that I’d put out feelers, looking for you after …” He grinned then: a jackal’s grin, a hyena’s amusement. “… after Vienna, poor Klimt, and our agreement. I promised to stay away, but I didn’t promise to never know where you were and who you were with. The people I hired told me that you went to the United States, but then they lost you there; I thought you were still there. Yet here you are, presenting yourself to me all unasked for. And conveniently disarmed, it seems. I must ask: why?”

  “You have someone in your custody. I want her released.”

  Brunner/Nicolas gave a loud, uproarious laugh at that. He slapped the top of his desk hard enough that the vials rattled. “Truly? So I’ve accidentally snatched up your latest artist and lover, all unknowing—is that what you’re telling me? Now there’s irony for you, Perenelle. Priceless. And ‘her,’ too.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “So modern of you, and she’s evidently a Jewess besides, or I wouldn’t have her … Why, Perenelle, you’ve become positively decadent. So tell me, why should I do what you ask and release this person for you?”

  “Because you made a promise that we would end our long dance. Because I spared your life in Vienna. You can pay me back for that now. Release her—let her go.”

  “And the name of this paragon?”

  “Charlotte Salomon,” Ana told him. “Or rather, Charlotte Nagler now. Your people took her and her husband earlier this morning.”

  “She has a husband, too.” His eyebrows rose, wrinkling his forehead. “Another Jew as well. You are surprising. So you’re begging me for the life of a worthless Jewess, after all these long centuries?”

  “Oui,” she told him. “Or rather, I’m not begging you; I’m telling you that you owe me that much and more because you’re still standing here and not buried headless in Vienna—though looking at you now, I have to question my slowness then. How many people have died because I didn’t move quickly enough?”

  He sniffed; it might have been a laugh. “Feeling guilty, are you, ma cherie? So you want me to release this one woman to appease your conscience? Not the husband, too?”

  “It’s Charlotte I’m concerned about,” Ana told him. “But yes, I’m asking you to release Alexander also, because of what it would mean to Charlotte. Then I’ll leave and you and I can go our own ways.” The Vivaldi movement reached its quiet, resolute conclusion.

  “Ah, so there’s coldness in you still,” Brunner said. He seemed almost delighted. “And do I hear some jealousy as well toward the husband?”

  She ignored the jibe. “You’ll do it, then? You’ll let her go?”

  Brunner seemed to almost sigh. “Once, your offer would have been a delight. Why, even just fifty years ago …” He shook his head. The phonograph needle hit the last groove of the record; she could hear the repeated impact of the needle as the turntable continued to turn. Hiss, thump. Hiss, thump. “So you haven’t given this lover of yours the true elixir? No, you haven’t, or you wouldn’t look so worried. You wouldn’t have come here to beg me for her release.” He shook his head in mock sadness. “Just as with poor Antoine, just as with me, you’ve been too slow.”

  “Nicolas—”

  He raised his hand, stopping her protest. He moved from behind the desk and went to the door of his office. She heard him speaking to one of the guards in the next room, and he heard the name “Charlotte Nagler” in Brunner’s quick German, then the sound of heels clicking together. Nicolas came back in the room. He went to the desk again, standing behind it and rolling her flasks idly across the blotter with a forefinger. He didn’t speak for several seconds, then looked up at her.

  “I imagined the moment of finally killing you for so long, Perenelle. Especially after our last time together in Vienna, I’ve thought how delicious it would be, seeing your head roll from your shoulders and watching the blood pulse from your body, seeing your mouth gaping as if to speak and your eyes finally, finally going empty and dead. Forever dead, the way you wanted it for me.” The tone of his voice made Ana shiver again. She heard the needle of the record—hiss, thump—and Nicolas moved to the phonograph and lifted the needle.

  “Yet when you had me, when you could have killed me and I saw you hesitate, when you agreed to our little ‘truce’ …” He lifted his shoulders and looked past Ana to the door of his office. “Ah, but here’s our little Jewess, and pregnant, too …”

  Ana turned and saw a haggard, frightened Lotte at the door. Brunner gestured, and the guard holding her pushed her into the office and closed the door again behind her. Lotte stumbled, and Ana caught her. They hugged each other tightly. “I thought I’d never see you again, Ana,” Lotte said. “When they came …”

  Ana kept her gaze on Brunner, but took Lotte’s hand. “Shh. Come on. We’re leaving.”

  “No,” Brunner said. “The door’s locked, and I’m afraid I’ve misled you, Perenelle. Promises mean very little to me. For both of us, our entire lives are snared in lies. Both of us are required to lie to stay alive, aren’t we?”

  Lotte pulled at Ana’s arm, speaking to her softly and desperately. “What does he mean? Why is he calling you Perenelle?”

  Ana didn’t answer. Brunner started to come around the desk toward them, and Ana put herself in front of Lotte as they retreated, their footsteps hushed in the deep carpet of the suite. “I’ve had a long time to think about you and me since Vienna,” he said, almost casually, “and you know what I’ve realized, Perenelle? We both seek out what gives us the most pleasure: you and your artists; me and, well, you know what I enjoy.” Another step; another retreat. “I’ve been wondering if you and I aren’t irrevocably connected; that when we took the elixir, the universe demanded balance. You became what you became, and so I became what I am, in order to maintain equilibrium.” Step and retreat. “I came to realize that what I want isn’t your death, Perenelle; it’s your anguish and your agony, your guilt and your sorrow. And I want it forever.”

  The last word was a harsh whisper, the very lack of volume deepening the threat.

  Another step, and now Lotte’s back was to the wall of the room. Ana heard the frame of Klimt’s painting rattle on the plaster as Lotte made contact. Brunner was still three steps away from them; as she watched he took another step. “Stay away from me,” she told him. “From us.”

  He laughed. “No,” he answered. “I’ll never do that entirely, my darling. Fate has brought us together yet again, and who am I to deny fate?”

  Ana’s mind was in a fury. The small vial of elixir in her shoe seemed to burn underneath her. If I can stop him, even for a minute, I might have enough time to get the elixir, to make Lotte drink it, and she’d be safer …

  As Brunner started to take a final step, Anaïs moved away from Lotte and raised her hands, shouting a phrase in Arabic. Blue flames huffed into existence, flying away from her in a hissing, shrieking ball that engulfed Brunner and sent him staggering backward. But though she expected the fire to sear away his uniform and his flesh, to send him crumpling to the floor, she heard him shout in the same language in return; with a wave of his hands, the fire vanished, leaving him untouched. He brushed at a few dark singe marks on the brown uniform.

  “That was well played,” he told her. She could see rage pulling at the muscles of his face. “I didn’t expect magic from you, and you nearly caught me. But you were never very good at magic.” Ana saw him lift the flap of the holster on his wide belt and slide his Luger from its leather nest. “Tell me, do you have magic prepared against this?”

  The report of the pistol was loud and sudden, and Ana screamed as the bullet tore into her knee, ripping at bone, cartilage, and muscle and sending the other spells she had prepared flying away in her mind. Ana collapsed to the floor, blood pouring from the wound,
writhing on the carpet, the pain blocking out everything else. She saw Lotte rushing toward her, but Brunner pointed his Luger at her and Lotte backed away to the wall again, hands cradling her stomach as if she could protect the baby inside. Lotte was sobbing and moaning, sinking down the wall to the carpet herself. Brunner walked up calmly to where Ana lay. She looked up at him, at the tendrils of smoke still trailing from the muzzle of his Luger.

  “Let me tell you what will happen now, Perenelle. I’m going to watch you die. Again—because I know the torment that coming back will cost you.” The weapon barked and jumped twice more, the bullets this time tearing through her stomach and abdomen. Ana shrieked in pain, in concert with a wail of terror from Lotte. She felt Brunner’s hand unbuttoning her blouse; his fingers lifted the pendant on its chain. He laughed at that and dropped the pendant again. The muzzle of the Luger pressed hot and hard against her left breast. “Stay awake, ma petite colombe. Listen to me so you know what happens next. I’ve a new promise for you: I will make certain that your Charlotte gets very special treatment.”

  She heard him speaking through the roar of blood and the pain, but her vision had gone red and she could no longer see him clearly. Lotte cried in the background.

  “There will be no forced labor for her,” he continued. “No, no. Instead, I’ll make certain that she learns firsthand what Auschwitz does best. Remember that, Perenelle, when you come back; your failures killed her. And here’s another promise: next time I’ll have you watch your lover die first before I take care of you. Won’t that be exquisite? There’s something for you to look forward to in your next life. It won’t be soon—maybe thirty years, or fifty, or another century entirely. But I’ll find you again, because you have a weakness I don’t have, ma cherie. You actually care about people, and I don’t. Now … say good-bye for a time.”