Mistress of the Ritz

by Melanie Benjamin

  But most Frenchmen were not married to Americans.

  “Claude!” Her eyes were brimming, and she buried her head in his neck, and he inhaled her scent—Blanche always smelled like ripe fruit, peaches and grapes and luscious pears. “You’re getting sentimental in your old age.”

  “Blanche.” Claude shook his head; she was always teasing. When she wasn’t throwing things. “I’m serious. I—we have been playing games, you and I, have we not? For too long. I am as much at fault as you are. I’ve already seen one war and I have no wish to see another—but there is something about war that makes a man assess his life, his accomplishments—or lack of them. I am not—proud—of some things.”

  “Really?” Blanche’s face—she lit up like a young girl, and it pained Claude to observe the fact that he had not inspired such joy in his wife in a very long time. “Do you mean it? I—I don’t know what happened between us either. I think we married too hastily, too caught in all the excitement, and before I knew it I had a French passport and a suite at the Ritz and who’s going to complain about that? But we never have had a real marriage, have we? Two people who are everything to each other—who don’t need the glitz and the glamour the way we seem to. But perhaps we can start over? Whither thou goest, and all that jazz?”

  Claude could not help but laugh, as Blanche was forever mangling Biblical passages on purpose; she did not take religion seriously, as he did. No weekly confession, no fasting during Lent. She complained every time she had to kneel, on the rare occasions she accompanied him to Mass. But then again, he must give her some leeway, considering her background.

  “I would like that, Blanchette. I would like a chance to—to get to know you better.” Claude winced, because it dented his pride to admit that he did not fully understand his own wife—no, it dented his pride to admit that he wanted to.

  But these days, pride seemed a luxury few could afford.

  “So it’s settled. I’m staying by your side—I’m not leaving you. And besides, who will look after Lily when she comes back? She needs me, too.”

  Claude sighed. What was the strange attachment that drew Blanche to this dangerous woman? Take the incident of the rug, which Blanche was not aware that he knew about.

  One day, soon after she invited that person to tea at the Ritz, Blanche came to him, all innocent giggles. She had “accidentally, because I’m such a butterfingers!” dropped one of the heavy oriental rugs belonging to the Ritz out the window of their suite, in a misguided attempt to shake the dust out of it. While it was in the street, before Blanche could rush downstairs, some terrible woman had stolen it! How awful! Blanche—charmingly—shook her head at her own clumsiness, sat on his knee and played with his tie as she told him this tale.

  Of course Claude hadn’t believed her (although he had quite enjoyed the interlude upon his knee, which led to an interlude upon the bed). For the sake of peace, he pretended that he did, however. And not two days later, on her way to take a train to Spain, Lily had come to him to explain. She had asked Blanche for money for her journey. Blanche and she had arranged this farce; Lily was the crazy woman in the street who had taken the rug to be sold.

  “She is a good woman, Blanche,” Lily told Claude, and though she looked absurd, like an orphan in a baggy gray cardigan sweater over a tight black skirt, she also was as earnest a person as he’d ever encountered—with the exception of Pearl White, when she had told him the same thing, years before.

  And despite his distaste for this person and her ideals—and her presumption in telling Claude anything about his own wife—he did have to ponder the coincidence of these two similarly exasperating women reminding him how lucky he was to be married to Blanche. He was accustomed, of course, to valuing a woman through another man’s eyes—if he looked at her retreating backside when she left their table in order to powder her nose. If he winked at Claude with admiration as they passed by, his hand possessively on the small of her back. If, after a few drinks, his pals thumped him on his shoulder and made enviously lewd remarks about what must go on in the boudoir.

  But to have his wife’s worth reflected back to him by other women—it was a novel experience. And not an unpleasant one, Claude was surprised to discover. Even if one of these women was this bedraggled little Communist on her way to fight in a country not her own, and good riddance.

  * * *

  —

  “LILY CAN TAKE CARE of herself,” Claude told Blanche now, and truer words were never spoken. “She will most likely end up the new president of the Republic, should her side win.”

  “Popsy.” Blanche bent down to put her shoe back on; she straightened her silk stockings and smoothed the front of her dress. “You are a real stick-in-the-mud, you know?”

  “That is an unfamiliar expression. But I sense it is not a flattering one.”

  Blanche laughed that hearty laugh that he so loved to hear. It was a sound he hadn’t heard much of late, until Lily came into her life, and for that he was grateful. That, he could admit.

  Claude kissed his wife, more passionately than the director of the Ritz should have done. But then, what good was being the director of the Ritz if one couldn’t kiss a beautiful woman in one’s office?

  And kissing—touching, exciting, upending—that had always been good between them. The one thing they could count on never to disappoint.

  Claude cleared his throat, about to say something more—precisely what, he didn’t quite know—when his wife pushed him away, laughing, even as she made an odd motion toward her face, as if she were brushing a cobweb away from it. For a moment, they couldn’t look at each other; their mutual vulnerability was too unfamiliar, too much.

  Blanche waved and drifted off so that he could return to his duties.

  Claude hoped she would not drift off to the bar. He did not approve of how much time she spent there; he did not approve of how much Blanche drank with these people—not her friends, but the people who called her name in delight, bought her rounds of martinis, told her secrets and lies and enchanting stories. He did not approve of the fact that she sometimes got so drunk she misplaced her handbag, or lost a shoe, or had to be discreetly placed in a chair behind the bar where Frank Meier could keep an eye on her while she snored softly, before waking up in a haze and talking nonsense. Or sometimes, the truth.

  For the truth was especially dangerous now, when spies were everywhere. Even in the plush environs of the Ritz.

  Parisians have grown used to sitting next to Nazis in cafés, theaters, on the Métro—it is no longer the sharp, wounding blow that it was in the very beginning. The Germans now merely are suffocating with their presence; the soldiers try to be courteous, in their own way. Deferential, helping old ladies cross the street, carrying heavy parcels for pregnant women—that kind of thing, that Boy Scout show.

  But always with guns holstered or rifles slung across their backs.

  Blanche thinks that if Lily was back in Paris, she would have shown up at the Ritz by now. Frank Meier—who knows everything about everybody—isn’t any help; all he can say is that Lily crossed the border into Spain sometime around the beginning of 1938 and no one’s seen her since. Which is a damn shame, because Blanche needs a friend right now, more than ever.

  Because her husband is cheating on her again.

  “There is time now only for love,” Claude had said that day in his office, before the wispy puffs of conflict had turned into thunderclouds of war. She’d believed him. Like a fool, like a wife. And those nine months in Nîmes had been a revelation; no Ritz, only a small apartment and the two of them (well, the two of them and an entire regiment of French soldiers who, Blanche discovered, loved nothing more than sitting around drinking coffee and arguing politics past, present, and future, when they weren’t drilling and preparing for an invasion that kept being postponed, until it was over almost before it began). But in those months, Blanche and Clau
de had to rely upon each other in ways they’d never had to before—at the Ritz. Not merely for creature comforts, the everyday busywork of a marriage that can be the subject of more conversation and concern than Blanche had ever suspected: the cooking and polishing and laundering. But the Auzellos had also had to rely on each other, solely, for company, for support, for earnest conversation about topics much more important than who was sleeping with whom, and where, and when; who had not paid a bill; who was going to throw a party.

  They talked about a future that loomed dark and unknowable; they reminisced in the way of lovers who have only met—eager to quickly build a shared history. In the Auzellos’ case, a history that was not full of deception and recrimination, reflected back, dazzlingly, by polished mirrors and chandeliers until it blinded. In Nîmes, in a country town within a stone’s throw of the blue Mediterranean, where the most excitement was who would win the weekly bocce tournament held in the town square, this future, uncomplicated, even boring, seemed possible.

  Now, however—

  Now that they’re back in Paris, now that war has come and moved on, leaving this crazy reality; now that the world has splintered into shards of unrecognizable images, puzzle pieces that will never fit together, and the only real thing, the only thing that makes sense, is love—

  Now that once again Claude nags, scolds, lectures her to carry her passport, to behave herself, don’t antagonize the Germans, he’s worried sick about her, what was he thinking, not putting her on a boat to America himself, back when he could, mon Dieu, what would he ever do without her, his Blanchette—

  This imagined uncomplicated future doesn’t seem possible, after all.

  Blanche had thought that the one good thing that had come from this nightmare was that, at least, she and Claude were finally over all the—Frenchness of their marriage. The stupid arrogance—and inability to keep his pecker in his pants—of the French male, as embodied by her husband. He’d sworn, he’d promised, that day in his office, when he first voiced his fear about the Germans, that he was through with her. That Blanche was the only thing that mattered to him, from now on.

  Ha!

  A month ago, when they had just turned off the lights for the night, the phone in their suite rang once, just once, and Blanche wondered if it was a signal of some kind. Then she chided herself for imagining that everything these days is a sign or a code or a portent of impending doom, and not simply an accident or a coincidence.

  However, Claude leapt up out of bed at the ring, but didn’t attempt to answer it; instead, he threw on some fresh clothes and splashed cologne on his face. “Your mistress?” Blanche teased, for she didn’t really believe it. And so it was like a slap across her drowsy, stupidly contented face when Claude, after only a moment’s hesitation, said, “Yes.”

  And left.

  Just like that.

  And it happens again and again, and it isn’t always a Thursday, like it was before the war; the phone will ring its one ring of betrayal any day of the week now and Claude runs off, eager as a teenage boy, no longer the beaten-down man, barely recognizable to her, who’d first returned to the Ritz. No, Blanche’s husband is newly energized, filled with purpose—a man’s purpose: sex, vitality, vanity—and she knows the reason why.

  And is it even the same “her”? Or is this a new one, maybe a fräulein instead of a mademoiselle, for the city is lousy with sleek blond German secretaries, all of whom make themselves up to look like Marlene Dietrich?

  Blanche has no idea, and when she taunts Claude, baits him, tries to get him to reveal more; when she throws a bottle of precious perfume across the room, runs to the door to prevent him from leaving, calls him a bastard, a son of a bitch, and every other name she can think of—all he does is press his lips tightly together, gaze at her sadly, and push her aside on his way out. To her.

  And Blanche—the American who married a French man and finds herself, in a time of world-upending chaos, unable to leave, is, for the first time in this marriage, unable to punish him. And worse, reliant on him, the man who cheats on her, for her very survival.

  But Blanche has to torment her husband somehow; it’s the price she must extract from him, the bounty that keeps her own morals in check and so, one day, she leaves the hotel. She hurries down the narrow rue Cambon, around toward the wide open Place Vendôme. It used to be filled with a long line of the most luxurious cars you could imagine, Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, all accompanied by chauffeurs in livery, standing idly by or polishing the chrome while they waited for their owners inside the Ritz. Now, the only cars in view are the hated black Mercedes with the taunting swastikas on the doors. And an absurd number of tanks, as if, should the Allies invade, the Nazis plan to make a last stand at the Ritz.

  Blanche makes her way through the Tuileries, damp and cold today, some late-blooming flowers—mums, roses—still valiantly giving their all. No longer does she stroll the Champs; it’s too full of Germans playing tourist—snapping photos with their cameras, posing with civilians who try to smile, forced as they are to pose with their captors—so she ducks across it, walking narrower streets, passing café after café with the words written, accusingly, menacingly, on blackboards perched on the sidewalk: Les Juifs ne sont pas admis ici.

  Jews are not allowed here.

  These signs are everywhere now; the Nazis “encouraged” all store owners and café owners to put them up. Chalkboard by chalkboard, letter by letter, Paris is turning into Berlin. The street signs are being replaced: German names for the streets are on top, with the French names in smaller print on the bottom. German films primarily play in the cinemas. Radio Paris, as well as live music—the string quartets of the Ritz or the brassier bands in the Luxembourg Gardens—is now an odd combination of works by Strauss followed by works by Debussy. German music to educate the French as to the superiority of the Aryan race, but French music—dutifully performed by artists such as Maurice Chevalier and Mistinguett—to pacify them and keep them in their places. Although, according to Claude, the Nazi officers who walk around singing snippets from Wagner in public, privately, in their suites, play records by American artists like Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.

  No jazz, however. All the black musicians who were so popular in clubs such as Chez Bricktop before the war, like Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway, packed up their horns and left right before the Nazis came; their “black music” has been outlawed altogether. Even Josephine Baker, so beloved here, skipped town in a hurry, once the invasion started.

  Every Sunday, as if they think it’s a special treat for the citizens, the Germans march up the Champs. Regiments of soldiers, their black boots striking the pavement, rifles against their shoulders, heads held high. Every Sunday, this damned parade. Just to remind Paris—as if it could ever forget—who, exactly, is in charge.

  Synagogues and temples are empty. Curtains in the Marais—the poor Jewish quarter—are always drawn tightly. Lest the light from the Shabbat candlesticks escape. Lest a chant be heard.

  Blanche doesn’t walk in the Marais very often these days. She used to; it reminded her of parts of New York, the vendors and the men in their long black coats and tall black hats, the women with their heads covered. There was a time when she sought the Marais out, more often than she probably should have, for reasons she couldn’t always explain.

  But no more. Blanche can’t bear to see the Nazis pounding on doors. The first time she witnessed a family—they spoke German, so they probably had fled to Paris only a couple of years before—herded into a truck, the children crying for a misplaced pet, the parents with terror and resignation both etched into their faces, she flattened herself against a wall, her heart beating so confusingly that she heard her pulse in her ears. She had seen images of this in newspapers and newsreels, before the Germans came.

  Blanche couldn’t believe, however, that it was happening on the streets of Paris. She couldn’t compr
ehend that she was one of a group of Parisians watching this, horrified, but also untouched. As if this was a play, happening to actors. Not people. Not people who breathed the same air as she did, who ate the same bread, who drank the same water. Because if this was happening to people, not actors—

  It could happen to her, too. To any of them.

  That day, she rushed back to the Ritz; even though the same uniforms she’d just seen on the street doing despicable things were present there, too—standing sentry at the front entrance; strolling the Hallway of Dreams, deep in discussion; off duty, their hats removed, their jackets folded over their arms, walking up the stairs of the Cambon side with certain French guests or signaling for a drink in the bar—still, she felt safer.

  Was it because Claude was there? Or because it wasn’t quite so hard to pretend to be who she had to be, in the rosy, flattering light of the Ritz?

  Blanche shudders as she passes a Nazi soldier now, patrolling the sidewalk of the avenue Montaigne; he nods at her, and she nods back, and it is such a normal exchange, yet it still feels strange. Menacing. But he’s just a foot soldier, nobody important; she tries to forget him as soon as they pass.

  This is rather a posh neighborhood, and she still can’t believe she convinced frugal Claude to lease an apartment here. The luxury fashion houses—Patou, Vuitton—are all dark and boarded up; their owners have fled somewhere, wherever the wealthy of France with an ounce of sense have fled; sometimes Blanche imagines them all on an island in the Mediterranean, running out of champagne and turning on one another, burying one another in the sand.

  She inserts her key in the front door of their building, and nods to the concierge, a nasty old woman who has never liked Blanche, who looks startled to see her. Then she climbs the stairs up to the fifth floor, and lets herself into their apartment, calling out, “Elise? Elise, it’s Madame Auzello.”