The Black Swan of Paris

by Karen Robards

  Without another word, Genevieve walked on as if nothing had happened, deposited her empty flute on the tray as the waiter passed and grabbed another full one, more to annoy Max than because she really wanted it. Ostentatiously sipping at the champagne, she continued to make her way along the narrow hallway that led from the dressing rooms to the stage. Tall and intimidating despite the old injury that made him walk with a pronounced limp and the aid of an elegant black stick, Max lengthened his stride until he loomed beside her.

  “Feeling full of yourself, are you?”

  To hell with sipping. She gulped a mouthful of champagne. “Feeling sick of being ordered around by you.”

  “Sure it’s not the amount of booze you’ve consumed making you feel sick?”

  She shot him a fulminating look. “You can—”

  She was interrupted by chorus girls in their elaborate costumes rushing past, as they sped on their way to get into position for the finale. Others, exiting the stage, hurried toward the greenroom where the after-show party was already getting started. With Max now half a step behind her, she made her way toward the stage, dodging performers and stagehands alike as they got caught up in the crosscurrents of the backstage in flux between numbers. A welter of low-voiced chatter cut through the frenetic music of the closing bars of the evening’s second-to-last act, the ever popular cancan, currently onstage. So many bodies in such close proximity made the enclosed area overwarm, which she supposed many might consider a blessing on this cold May night in Paris, where, as a result of the Occupation, coal and heating oil were almost as impossible to obtain as food. The smell, a mix of heavy perfumes, cigarette smoke, cosmetics, unwashed costumes and musty carpet, would probably be considered unpleasant by some. To her it was familiar and comforting, the scent of home.

  “You should already be in position.” There was a definite edge to Max’s voice. She took that as a win, because he rarely lost his patience, and drank more champagne. “You’re on in a matter of minutes.”

  “Whose fault is that? You delayed me.”

  “Being late is unprofessional. Take that as a word of warning from your manager.”

  Genevieve made a scoffing sound.

  Besides being what the Pariser Zeitung, the propaganda-filled, German-instituted Paris daily, described as the “brilliant impresario behind the dazzlingly successful international tour,” she, “the achingly beautiful star with the voice of an angel” was embarked upon, Max was indeed, officially, her manager. Unofficially, and whether she liked it or not, he was, quite simply, the man who could tell her what to do.

  She didn’t like it. She didn’t like him. Most of the time.

  Max was black haired, strong chinned, with a tanned, lived-in face, hard dark eyes and a straight blade of a nose above a surprisingly beautiful, sensitive mouth. Handsome? Her girl singers seemed to think so. While she might once have agreed, her opinion had changed radically since she’d become more closely acquainted with him. His papers said his name was Maximillian Georges Bonet, a now forty-four-year-old French citizen who was medically unfit for military service. It was in that guise, three years previously, that he’d inserted himself into her life. It was all a lie, as she’d learned to her cost far too late to do anything about it. The truth was that he was thirty-four, nine years her senior. The even more terrifying truth was that he was a British agent. A spy. Major Max Ryan, Special Operations Executive. SOE.

  And he was using her, her French nationality, her fame, the gift that was her voice, to run an espionage network that encompassed the length and breadth of Occupied Europe.

  With no regard at all for the fact that he might very well get her—get them all, the entire unknowing troupe—killed. The Germans had no mercy for spies. The Führer himself had ordered that the Geneva convention was to be disregarded for them. If they were captured, their lives could be spared only for the purpose of interrogation. As soon as the interrogation—torture—was over, they were to be shot. No exceptions.

  The knowledge made for peaceful, nightmare-free nights.

  Max had befriended her in Morocco, where she had fled in the face of the German invasion. He’d taken advantage of the one thing they genuinely had in common, music, to make her like him, make her trust him, deliberately, as she now knew. Then, when she’d turned to him for help in a moment of direst need, he’d snapped the trap shut on her.

  Instead of finding a shoulder to lean on, as she’d thought, she discovered that what she’d really done was make a deal with the devil.

  Not that she’d figured it out right away. He’d “helped her out” at the beginning, arranging first one tour and then a succession of them for her, in increasingly glittering venues. Gradually he’d assumed total control. He’d streamlined her operation, taken over her publicity, dictated where and when she performed, implemented the steps needed to cement her status as a true international star. Soon he’d had her touring nonstop, had her songs all over the radio, had her appearing alongside the greats, until now she was acknowledged far and wide as the toast of Europe.

  Also now, appearances to the contrary, the truth was that she worked for him.

  “Afraid I’ll miss my cue?” Knowing it was getting under his skin, she sipped more champagne. Mouth tightening, he plucked the flute from her hand, sloshing the cool liquid all over her fingers in the process, and thrust it into the hands of a chorus boy heading in the opposite direction. The young choriste looked affronted until he saw who had thus accosted him. The resulting change in his expression would have been comical had she been in the mood to be amused.

  Max scowled at her as the boy skittered away with the flute. “Afraid you’ll pass out onstage. Or on that perch contraption you come down on. In which case you’ll probably break your neck.”

  “It’s a swing.” Knowing he was watching, she slowly and deliberately licked the sticky sweetness of the drying drink from her fingers. “That would be inconvenient, wouldn’t it? Whatever would you do?” She made big, mocking eyes at him.

  “Mademoiselle Dumont, there you are! We must get you into place!” Pierre Lafont, the theater’s resident stage manager, came panting up. Around fifty, short and flush-faced with a shiny bald head and a suit that, by the way it hung on him, revealed that he had once been a much heavier man, he seemed to be perpetually sweating.

  “I know, Pierre. I was delayed.” The quick smile she gave him was apologetic. If anything went awry, it was he, not she, who would suffer reprisals.

  “Herr Obergruppenführer Wagner is once again honoring us with his presence.” Pierre’s tone was carefully neutral: it was dangerous to say anything that was not extremely complimentary about any of the Nazi officers clogging Paris, but Wagner, the SS’s most notorious interrogator, inspired more fear than most. Pierre’s eyes, however, revealed his true state of mind: they were round with nerves. “He is in his usual seat.”

  “How lovely,” she said. Including tonight, they had five nights remaining in their three-week run at this, the Casino de Paris, one of the city’s most famous music halls. She had first become aware of Wagner’s attendance on the night of her second show, when he’d had an enormous bouquet of flowers along with a note of extravagant praise for her performance carried to her onstage during curtain calls. He hadn’t missed a show since.

  “You’ve acquired quite a notable admirer, it seems.” Max’s expression matched his voice: bland as an almond.

  She wanted to slay him with a glance. Instead, mindful that they weren’t alone, she smiled.

  “It seems I have,” she agreed, and had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes narrow. She swept ahead of him into the backstage area, careful to stay out of the way of the girls in the wings as they ran in two at a time to join the high-kicking double chorus line revolving onstage. She was in costume, in a tight, strapless black bustier-style bodysuit glittering with sequins that lent her slender figure a voluptuousness it didn
’t actually possess and a full, trailing skirt composed of dyed-black ostrich feathers that made opulent swishing sounds as they brushed across the stage’s wooden floor. The skirt parted in front to showcase her long, slim legs in sheer black stockings that were attached to the bodysuit by black satin suspenders. Black peep-toe shoes, a black velvet ribbon worn as a choker, and a headdress of three tall black ostrich plumes completed her ensemble, which was designed to play off both a repeating line in her finale song about waiting for a lover who would return as surely as birds come home to their nest and the nickname Max and his team had bestowed on her.

  Inspired, she assumed, by her coloring—black hair, milky skin and changeable blue-green eyes—they had dubbed her the Black Swan. At this very moment the nickname, along with her image on the aforementioned swing, adorned large posters plastered all over Paris: The Black Swan Sings! The Black Swan Swings! Come See the Black Swan in Seasons of Love at the Casino de Paris, April 29 to May 21!

  “Mademoiselle. If you will.” Pierre scurried around her to gesture anxiously at the ladderlike staircase that led to the catwalk high above.

  “Afterward we go to the party at the Spanish embassy,” Max reminded her in an undertone as she put a foot on the first of the rung-like steps. Ah, yes, the Spanish embassy, where she would be expected to once again put her life on the line by helping him with his spying.

  “I’m feeling a little under the weather. Perhaps I’ll be too ill to attend.” She threw the riposte over her shoulder. Her words were purely an attempt to irritate him. Refusing was not an option, she knew.

  “By then the effects of the champagne will have worn off.”

  She was already climbing and used that as an excuse to pretend she hadn’t heard. Her head swam unexpectedly. Maybe she really had overdone it with the drinking—all right, she had—but her encounter with baby Anna combined with today’s date had just been too much to bear. Max was right—it was important that she keep a clear head, but the pain had been so searingly intense that if she hadn’t found something to dull it, she wouldn’t have been able to function at all. Max should be thankful she’d managed to get through the show, she thought, and took a firmer grip on the iron safety rails and paid extra attention to how she placed her feet. If she were to fall...

  She had a lightning vision of an open window, of curtains fluttering in the breeze.

  Her mind reeled. Her heart took a great leap in her chest. She froze in place, utterly unable to move.

  For the briefest of moments, it felt as if time and space had dissolved.

  With a major effort of will, she banished the horrifying snippet of memory.

  Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to keep climbing.

  When she reached the top—a breath-stealing height—she stepped out onto the narrow metal catwalk. Keeping a tight grip on the rail, she glanced down to find that, while Pierre had gone, Max still stood at the foot of the stairs where she had left him. His head was tipped back as he watched her. A swirl of color and activity surrounded him as the chorus girls, in their jewel-toned bird costumes, hurried to line up for the closing number, jostling one another and the exiting cancan dancers, but he remained unmoving, a study in austere black.

  “Mademoiselle Dumont, forgive me, but we must hurry. The overture is beginning.”

  Startled by the whisper—she hadn’t heard anyone approach—she looked up to find one of the stagehands at her elbow. His name was Yves, she remembered, and yes, he was right, there were the opening violins. Carefully gripping the guardrail, she followed him along the catwalk to where the elaborately gilded and flower-festooned swing awaited her. He helped her get into position on the narrow velvet seat, then spread the long feathers of her skirt out behind her so that they would fall just right. She adjusted her headdress and the front of her skirt to show her legs to best advantage and listened as the rest of the orchestra joined the violins. The idea with this number was that she was supposed to be a bird on the kind of arched swing typically found in bird cages. Suspended high above the audience, she would sing the popular love song that was almost always a showstopper.

  “Ready, mademoiselle?” Yves asked.

  At her nod he signaled the stagehands who worked the crank that would swing her out into the darkness high above the audience and then lower her until she was in the center of the cavernous open space. He unhooked the tether that had held the swing in place and gave her a push, and she was away.

  The first movement of the swing was always the worst, a wide arc that was dizzying at the best of times. Tonight the effects of the champagne magnified the vertiginous feeling until she couldn’t be quite sure whether the room was spinning or her head was. Holding on tightly, she took in the horseshoe shape of the vast auditorium, the tiers of boxes rising nearly to the domed ceiling, the orchestra seats far below. Once, as a starstruck eleven-year-old, she’d sat in one of those seats with her family, practically vibrating with excitement. Her mother sat on her right, her sister on her left and her father on her sister’s other side. They’d been happy then, the four of them, with no idea at all of what the future held. She and her sister clasped hands, rapt, as they watched Josephine Baker on that very same stage where she now performed. The trip to the theater had been a surprise treat that their parents had arranged, despite the slightly risqué nature of the show, because she and her sister had been such fans. She could still remember the glittering costumes, the live doves released onstage to fly out over the audience—and how electrified she’d been by the singer herself, with her easy charisma and bright, jazzy voice. That was the first time she’d known: I want to be a singer. But such a thing then, had seemed ridiculous, impossible. She’d been part of a family, part of a world, and as such had carried the weight of expectations and hopes and dreams that were not necessarily her own, even though, at the time, she’d never even thought to question them.

  Ironically, in the end she’d gotten what she’d wished for that night, but the cost had been—everything. Everything she’d loved. Everyone she’d loved. That world she’d inhabited—precious in retrospect—ripped asunder. The realization was almost more than she could bear.

  The ache in her chest was crushing in its intensity.

  Her suddenly blurry gaze swept over red velvet upholstery and gilded moldings and the gorgeous arched stained-glass window that was the Casino de Paris’s trademark—where she found the slap in the face she needed to bring the present back into focus. Tonight, just as it had been every night of her run and presumably every night of the last four years, the iconic window was defaced by the giant swastika banner draped across it.

  Her stomach clenched as she stared at it. It seemed to take over the space, just as the Germans had taken over everything else in Paris. Shops, bookstores, cafés, restaurants, theaters, music halls, even brothels, were overrun with them. They filled the buses, the trains, the sidewalks, the streets. Swastikas hung from the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre-Dame: the conquerors’ silent crow of victory. The Louvre was empty of paintings, the schools were missing students, shops were closed, houses left empty. Their occupation of the city had devolved into a reign of terror, but from the beginning they had made a point of promoting and protecting the arts. Even while they imposed untold suffering on millions, they seemed determined to show the world that the cultural life of Paris was flourishing under their rule. Although nearly everything performance related required approval from the Propaganda Staffel, artists of all description were given tremendous leeway by the otherwise brutally restrictive regime. Composers, playwrights, musicians, actors, dancers and singers were celebrated. In Germany, Paris was touted as the new holiday resort for the Herrenvolk. The Nazi motto of Jeder einmal in Paris, “Everyone once in Paris,” promised each German soldier at least one month in the City of Light. The soldiers, particularly the officers, flocked to visit, bringing their wives and children with them to shop and sightsee and be entertained.


  Looking down as she was lowered into place, Genevieve saw that seats were filled with a sea of gray-green uniforms. The Nazis continued to turn out for her in droves.

  She thought of her Aryan certificate, which she was required to possess to appear onstage, tucked away in a drawer in her dressing room.

  She thought of Anna—and Anna’s mother.

  She thought of—

  She felt suddenly nauseous. And it had nothing at all to do with the champagne.

  Her hands gripped the chains so tightly she could feel, through their velvet casing, the metal links digging into her skin.

  The familiar whoosh of the curtains opening revealed dozens of chorus girls in their bright bird plumage pirouetting across the stage. Soon more would enter from the back of the auditorium and dance down the aisles, twirling chiffon scarves above their heads to simulate birds in flight. Beautiful staging for a beautiful song.

  The spotlight hit her. Its warmth was welcome. Its brightness was blinding.

  The audience looked up as one. Genevieve took a deep breath.

  You can do this. One more time.

  Swinging languorously above their heads, Genevieve smiled down at the upturned faces and began to sing.

  “J’attendrai...”

  Chapter Four

  They started first on Jean-Claude. Both he and Andre had been stripped to their skivvies, then chained to metal chairs bolted to the stone floor. The chairs were perhaps six feet apart, with a spotlight on a stand between them. The spotlight was turned so it pointed at Jean-Claude. He blinked nervously and licked his lips, trapped in a pool of bright white light.

  Without so much as asking him a question, one of them grabbed his smallest finger and pulled the nail off with pliers.