The Black Swan of Paris

by Karen Robards

  She was often in the building during daylight hours, so she knew what to expect even if she hadn’t actually experienced la maison close in full nighttime swing. Lush tapestries and enormous gilt-framed mirrors and chandeliers dripping jewel-colored crystals hung everywhere. To the right were the parlors, where scantily clad women waited on red velvet sofas for men to choose one to accompany them to the lavishly themed bedrooms upstairs. At first glance she could see only a sliver of one of the parlors through the beaded curtains that hung in the doorway, but as the beads swayed from the draft created by their entry, she got a better look. A knot of soldiers stood chatting with someone she couldn’t see, and a buxom blonde wearing a filmy negligee over a white brassiere and drawers rose from the far end of one of the sofas where she’d been seated with two other similarly clad girls. She smiled coquettishly at an officer with his hat tucked under his arm, who put his hand on her waist and led her away.

  Collaboration horizontale was what it was called, and it was engaged in not only by prostitutes but by many French women. Those women were scorned, but Genevieve could not find it in herself to blame a girl for using the only assets available to her to take care of herself and possibly her family. Often fraternizing with the enemy in such a way was the difference between food on the table and a roof over one’s head, or not. Sometimes it was the difference between surviving or not. She was all for surviving.

  Max’s hand slid around her elbow.

  “Come on,” he said under his breath. Leaving the wet umbrella in the bin beside the door, she went with him toward the lift at the far end of the hall.

  “Turn up the collar of your coat.” He spoke in an undertone as he jabbed the button for the lift. “One thing we don’t need right now is all the attention that goes along with somebody recognizing you.”

  Obediently flipping up the collar of her coat, she scrunched her shoulders to bring it up even higher for more protection. “Do you think anyone’s going to come this way?”

  “Probably not. The girls have their own lift.”

  He’d no sooner said that than a trio of negligee-clad girls, each with a soldier in tow, erupted through the beaded curtain. Giggling, admonishing the men to be quiet, they hurried along the hall toward the lift. The wooden soles of their high-heeled slippers clickety-clacked over the marble floor.

  Taking one look at them, she turned rounding eyes on Max. There was nowhere to hide.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he said, and without warning bent to scoop her up over his shoulder. She barely repressed a squeak at the unexpectedness of the move as he straightened, which left her hanging head down with her face against the damp wool of his coat. It was a movement of easy strength, accomplished without apparent effort on his part. Realizing the purpose behind it, she let her hands and arms dangle as the three couples arrived breathless and laughing beside them.

  “—beat them upstairs,” a soldier said, amid murmurs from all of them acknowledging Max’s presence. “I’ve got a dinner riding on it.”

  “They were still in line for the other lift, weren’t they? We’ll beat them,” a different soldier replied. “Because Mademoiselle Delphine here knew another way up.”

  A girl gave a coquettish giggle. Genevieve had her eyes squeezed shut, but a number of clicking sounds in quick succession made her think someone was repeatedly pressing the lift button.

  “Don’t worry, Liebchen, it will take us straight up to the party,” one of the girls said. “Even if your friends get into the other lift, that one always stops on every floor.”

  “Madame said we were only to use the lift in the parlor.” A different girl sounded worried.

  “The line was too long. She also told us to be flexible,” the first girl replied.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing you be flexible.” From the soldier’s tone, Genevieve could almost see the leer on his face.

  The lift dinged. A rattle announced the opening of its door. Holding her firmly in place, Max walked into the lift and turned to face the front while the others crowded in behind him.

  The space was small, her position undignified. She hung over Max’s shoulder like a couture-clad rag doll. His hand curled around her hip and his arm pressed into the backs of both thighs. He had a close-up view of her rear, and what made it worse was that she suspected he found the situation amusing. There was no help for it, though. She could do nothing but lay unmoving as the lift chugged upward. She had to admit that it was an effective way of hiding her identity, but some combination of the movement of the lift and the combined scents of Max’s damp coat, the Göring-Schnapps from the open bottle that the nearest soldier intermittently guzzled from and the girls’ cheap cologne was making her nauseated. It didn’t help that the hard shelf of Max’s shoulder pressed right into her stomach.

  There was something else digging into her stomach, too—a flat, stiff, rectangular shape. Actually, more than one. Since her evening bag was a lump in the vicinity of her hip bone, and Max’s shoulder was a smooth, muscular ledge running the width of her body, there was only one place they could be: inside her coat.

  “She all right?” a girl asked. Genevieve realized the she in question was herself, got the impression that she was being peered at and did her best to project a drunken stupor.

  “A little too much fun.” Max’s reply was easy, convincing. For what must have been the millionth time since she’d met him, she marveled at how convincingly he lied.

  The lift shuddered to a stop, the door opened and the girls with their soldiers spilled out, clattering away as the door closed.

  “Put me down,” Genevieve said with arctic dignity as the lift lurched into motion again.

  “Certainly.”

  She’d been right about the amusement. It was there in his voice.

  She found herself sliding down the front of his body until her feet were planted firmly on the floor. She pushed away from him.

  “Oh.”

  To her surprise the walls of the lift swirled around her. She staggered and had to grab onto the front of his coat to steady herself.

  “All right?”

  “No.”

  “Next time you might want to think twice before you go getting drunk,” he said.

  “Next time you might want to give me some warning before you go flipping me upside down. And I’m not drunk.” Her retort was completely overshadowed by the small but embarrassing burp that interrupted it. “Precisely.”

  Still hanging on to his coat, she tried for a frown but had the feeling the look she gave him was more of an unfocused squint. The lift stopped and the door opened. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he swept her out with him into what, except for the light spilling from the lift, was pitch blackness.

  In a testament to the building’s thick walls and sturdy construction, a sibilant hiss from the radiators was the only sound. The lift door rattled shut at the same time as he flipped a wall switch. Two small ceiling fixtures came on, illuminating the space.

  The studio took up the entire sixth floor. They stood in the large open area used for rehearsals. It had hardwood floors, heavy curtains over the windows, a ballet bar and mirrors across one wall, a Bösendorfer piano against another, and a sofa and small dining table against a third. Hanging racks overflowing with costumes were lined up near the piano. Several chairs were scattered around. A partitioned-off corner that wasn’t quite a room because it lacked a fourth wall contained a bed, a chest and rudimentary cooking facilities. A bathroom opened off that.

  “I feel sick,” Genevieve announced. The floor seemed to be undulating beneath her feet. She tightened her grip on him.

  “I’m not surprised. Do we need to head for the bathroom?”

  “I need to sit down.”

  “Come on, then.” He shepherded her over to the sofa, then undid the quartet of large silver buttons that fastened her coat with his usual anno
ying efficiency and started easing her out of it. “Here, let’s get your coat off first.”

  That reminded her. She blinked up at him. “There’s something inside it.”

  “What?”

  His mild response didn’t fool her. It was there in his face: he knew. She grabbed at her coat when he would have lifted it away from her and hugged it tight. She could feel the solid rectangular shapes. As she’d suspected, they were inside her coat, inserted between the brocade and the silk lining.

  The look she gave him was accusing. “While I was in the embassy. That’s why you were so keen to look after the coats. You had something put in there.”

  He tugged the coat out of her hands. “Sit down.”

  She wasn’t usually that compliant, but her head was spinning. Or maybe the room was. She sat. “Tell me.”

  “Spanish citizenship documents.” He laid the coat carefully over a chair and took off his own, throwing it down beside hers. “Twelve sets.”

  Her eyes widened. Such documents were more valuable than gold. Literal lifesavers, they were a shield that could protect vulnerable individuals from the Nazis while enabling them to travel openly throughout France and the occupied territories and cross the border into Spain and safety. On the other hand, being caught smuggling them out of the embassy was an almost guaranteed route to getting tortured and executed. And she’d been the one smuggling them.

  Her voice was an indignant croak. “Who are they for?”

  He shook his head. Of course he wasn’t going to tell her. If she’d been slightly more clearheaded she wouldn’t have asked. Max played things close to the vest, always.

  “Why wasn’t I told?”

  “Because it’s much easier to act innocent when you are innocent.” He pulled one end of his tie to undo the neat bow, then undid the top button of his shirt.

  “If I’d been searched...”

  “You would have been astonished at the discovery, as any innocent person would be. And you would have said, ‘I have no idea how they got in there.’ And you most likely would have been believed, because you are who you are, and because your reaction would have been genuine, and because once you took it off, anyone could have had access to your coat.” He moved away. “Anyway, you weren’t searched. You have a pass, remember?”

  She made a scoffing sound. “You keep saying that. One day some soldier is going to ignore it.”

  “I doubt that. The Black Swan is far too famous.”

  “I hate that stupid nickname. Swans don’t even sing.”

  “Some say they do. When they’re dying.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “It’s about crafting an image. Differentiating you from the other girl singers. Which you’ve got to admit we’ve done. Everybody from here to Zanzibar knows the Black Swan.”

  “Maybe that’s because I have a three-octave vocal range.” This time her hand made it over her mouth in time to stifle another embarrassing burp.

  He threw her a glimmering half smile. “Could be.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He was halfway across the room. He never stepped out of character enough to abandon the limp or the stick, but as she’d observed before when he was out of public view, his damaged leg didn’t slow him down at all. The leg was badly scarred, which he claimed was from a motorbike accident. But she had her doubts about how debilitating the injury actually was.

  “To make coffee. You need it.”

  “Real coffee?” There was longing in her voice.

  “Close enough.”

  Close enough meant ersatz coffee, made from something like roasted chestnuts. Real coffee was almost impossible to get anymore, unless you were a high-ranking German or someone who hobnobbed with high-ranking Germans. She fared better in that and most other regards than the majority of Occupied Europe’s increasingly desperate citizens. She felt guilty about it, even though staying at the Ritz and having access to things such as real coffee was part of her job and, as Max had told her countless times when her conscience assailed her, ultimately for the greater good. Her thoughts were so muddled and her feelings so conflicted on the subject that she gave up on both and merely watched while he busied himself with a kettle and cups. He made coffee as he did everything else, with no wasted movements.

  The rain had picked up again, drumming against the windows, its steady rhythm soporific.

  “It feels like it’s been weeks since we’ve seen the sun,” she said.

  “I like the rain. Reminds me of home.”

  He played the louche Frenchman so well that sometimes it was hard to remember that he was actually a Brit.

  “Do you miss it? England?” she asked. To her certain knowledge, he hadn’t been back to his home country in at least three years, and as she had met him in Morocco, it had been longer than that, probably since the war began. Despite how well she knew him, she actually knew very little about him. Well, very little that was true. All the things he’d told her about his past during the first, blinders-on part of their association had turned out to be lies, and since she’d discovered who and what he actually was, their conversations about his background had been almost nonexistent. She’d been furiously angry at him for a long time, but gradually her anger had faded until it was now more in the nature of resentment that bubbled uneasily beneath the surface of their working relationship. Time had given her the perspective to acknowledge that all he had done had been in service of his country, and as for his lies to her—well, she’d told him lies, too.

  “Sometimes.” His back was turned as he filled the kettle with water and put it to heat on the single burner. “Usually when I feel like popping down to the pub for a pint.” He shot her a quick smile over his shoulder. “Which is most days.”

  With a sniff of faux disdain she said, “We French, we prefer wine.”

  “You also prefer coffee to tea. And eat snails.”

  For a moment, one moment only, she succumbed to a reluctant smile.

  A few raindrops still glistened in the black waves of his hair, she noticed, and noticed, too, how well evening clothes became the long, lean lines of his body. He looked handsome, and urbane, every inch the violence-eschewing musician turned businessman he pretended to be. Ordinarily the sheep’s clothing that covered what she had learned the hard way was the wolf beneath was impenetrable, but there was something about him tonight, a kind of electric energy, a restlessness, that made her wonder if perhaps there was more going on than she knew. Probably. But she wasn’t going to worry about it, or think about Max, or anything else, because worrying about something you could do nothing about was useless; in Max’s case she’d already made that mistake once, and right now merely thinking at all made her head hurt. The sofa was comfortable, and she let her head drop onto its cushioned back just as she had in the car.

  “Hungry?” he asked. He was opening cabinets in the kitchen area.

  “No,” she said to the ceiling, revolted by the thought of food.

  He laughed.

  She was smiling again, she discovered. The homely kitchen sounds as Max rattled around were comforting. Almost, almost, she could let go of the grief and regret and fear and all the other bad emotions that had been plaguing her so badly for the last twenty-four hours.

  Her lids felt heavy. They kept wanting to close. If she could only rest them for a second...

  On the thought, her eyes closed.

  And, finally, Vivi caught up with her.

  Chapter Nine

  Somewhere a woman screamed, over and over, world without end. Shrill, heartbreaking screams full of terror and dread. They split the air, split her heart.

  Her chest ached, her throat burned. She ran as fast as she could, heart jolting.

  A flutter of white silk. A splash of crimson on gray stone ground.

  Too late.

  It was only as she acknowled
ged it, faced it, that she realized that the screams tearing apart the once bright afternoon were hers.

  The pain woke Genevieve with a jolt, as it always did. Where it always did. Before she knew, before the horrible cold finality of it descended, before she was forced to confront the hideous truth that Vivi—that her child, her baby daughter—was dead.

  Before what had to be the worst agony a human being could suffer slashed her heart to ribbons and forever scarred her soul.

  She’d tried all day to outwit the dream, tried to ward it off, tried to escape it.

  She hadn’t succeeded. It had her in its clutches now, inflicting its torture, flaying her with guilt, regret, grief. Impossible to believe that so much time had passed, that she’d existed in this world for seven years without Vivi in it. Her arms ached to hold her little girl just one more time; the glimpse she’d had of her in the dream had been so real that it seemed impossible that it was not. She’d seen her riot of black curls and chubby little body and wide smile; she’d felt her, in her heart and her soul, truer than a memory, more vivid than any dream.

  Right now, in this foggy gray moment between sleep and wakefulness, the anguish felt new again. She had to remind herself that the past was the inalterable past, and she was Genevieve now. The eighteen-year-old she’d been on that day, her birthday, had nothing to do with the woman she was now.

  If only she never had to go through another damned birthday again.

  Genevieve lay perfectly still, struggling to breathe, while the weight of what felt like a thousand heavy stones crushed her chest.

  She tried her best to thrust the dream away. A beloved phantom lingered.

  Vivi, Vivi, Vivi.

  I’m so sorry.

  Hot tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She did her best to escape the memories, the pain, by turning away from them and striking out into the clouds of groggy gray, fighting through the mist toward consciousness.

  Nearby, voices. Men. She kept fighting, concentrated on them.

  “—betrayed. Both cells are lost.”

  That voice belonged to a stranger. A native-born Frenchman, she thought: his accent was from Picardy. His voice was low and harsh with urgency. She stayed perfectly still—she wasn’t sure she could have moved if she tried—as it penetrated the lingering miasma of the dream.