Why not let the bastard believe that she has a lover, too? It will do him good to think that. It will do her good to let him. And it isn’t as if she’s not thought of taking a lover before.
It’s just that she’s never been able to bring herself to. Because there are things about her husband, she is forced to admit, that she loves. And unlike the French, Blanche was raised to believe that love and sex very much were synonymous. It’s a habit she’s never been able to break—the Puritan in her (in all Americans, according to Claude) is too strong.
But she loves the way he presents himself—to her, to everyone. Even if Claude has a day off and plans only to sit with her in their apartment, reading, he shaves, he splashes his face with cologne, he grooms his hair, he dresses impeccably. Blanche can’t help but be touched by his arraying himself like this, just for her.
She loves the way Claude reads through the mail first, in case there’s something in it that might upset her. She loves the way he settles her into bed before they make love; he must fluff the pillow, arrange the sheets perfectly, arrange her into them with the delicacy of an artist deciding upon the perfect frame for a finished painting. She loves how he takes care of her needs, before his.
She loves how he reads a book, even—slowly, licking his finger to turn the pages with great care, always using one of his beautiful leather bookmarks with his name embossed upon them, making notes in a special leather-bound notebook, the pages gilded. Watching him read sometimes reminds Blanche of how he makes love, to tell the truth. And she’s never in her life met a man who could turn her on simply by turning the pages in a book.
She loves her husband, goddammit. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t savoring the triumph of making him wonder about her.
By the time Blanche crosses the Seine, however, her husband is no longer on her mind. She takes long, sure—masculine—strides, impatient to walk through the pretty little market full of blossoms and birds in cages, songbirds mostly, vivid with blue feathers, yellow. Blanche, despite her fear of birds, finds them charming, for she’d never seen anything like them back in the States. Although they don’t always sing, and they don’t always look happy, still the collective impression of these cages, filling tables, hanging from poles, is one of delight. It is so very Paris.
She selects a bench near the water and faces the market. And then Blanche sees her. Darting through the crowd, laughing before she even gets to Blanche, wearing her usual costume of mismatched clothing: a plaid scarf wrapped sloppily around her throat, black lace gloves, a baggy green woolen skirt, an aviator’s leather jacket, far too big on her.
Blanche stops herself from jumping up and waving; after all, Lily might be under surveillance; Frank Meier had hinted at this, when he delivered the note and the violets. And of course, the market is patrolled by the usual German soldiers, pausing now and again to flirt with the country girls minding the stalls under the watchful eyes of their papas. So Blanche remains where she is, looking straight ahead, until Lily sits down beside her.
Lily’s hand reaches for Blanche’s. Their fingers entwine, and Blanche’s heart skips a few beats before racing to catch up.
She had resigned herself to never seeing Lily again. Lily was dead, vanished; eulogized and buried in Blanche’s mind, her presence rationalized, filed away—she was just a woman Blanche had met on a voyage. A funny, strange little thing who made her laugh, that’s all. They knew each other for such a short time. People do that, of course—they come into your life, illuminate some dark corner you’d not even known was there, then they disappear. True connection is rare, but that’s just the way it is.
And yet, now that Lily is back, Blanche can’t contain her happiness. That rare, precious connection between two people who understand each other without having to explain it—she hadn’t imagined it, after all. Because after only one glimpse at Lily, Blanche knows that now, something good—or at least, something exciting—will happen. And Blanche needs that. Since her escapade with the British airman—that’s how she thinks of it, as an escapade, a lark, trying to downplay in her heart and mind how recklessly dangerous it was—she’s been restless.
But it wasn’t merely a lark. What she’d done was dangerous. It was important. She had been courageous, resourceful. She had saved a life.
And she’s aching to do it again.
Ever since that incredible afternoon, she’s wondered how she can truly get involved in what people are starting to call, whenever the Germans aren’t within earshot, the Resistance. She even sought out Frank Meier about it, in a café near the Palais-Royal on a rare day off from the bar, but he’d raised his hand to silence her even before she could complete a sentence.
“Nothing doing, Blanche,” the big man said. “I was glad I could help you—that time. But Claude would murder me in my sleep if he found out I got you involved further. And you know the reason why.”
“Yes, but—”
“Blanche, I don’t envy you. I know it looks like you have everything but you and I both know that you don’t.”
Her cheeks felt hot; she was overwhelmed by his confession and so she studied her coffee, to hide her face. To disguise how touched she was that someone saw her, truly. Someone recognized her loneliness, her restlessness—and knew the reason at the root of it.
“But Claude—your husband is my employer. I hide a lot from him and I don’t mind that I do. But you, well, you’re different. You’re his wife, and he cares deeply for you and worries.”
“He has a strange way of showing it.” But she didn’t elaborate. Frank—who knew everything that happened at the Ritz—surely was aware of Claude’s nocturnal activities.
“I’m in no position to judge anybody” was all Frank would say about that, and the subject was closed.
That didn’t mean she was content to resume her shadowy seat on the sidelines, relegated to watching the horror unfolding all around her, hidden by the brocade curtains in the Ritz. But she had no idea who else to turn to, who else to ask how she could do more.
Until Lily sits beside her again.
At first, Blanche thinks she’s simply going to gossip about where she traveled, how she got her new cropped haircut, what the wine was like in Spain. The kind of conversation that Blanche is accustomed to, at the Ritz.
So it takes a few moments for her mind to catch up; it takes a few moments for her to register that Lily is telling her fantastic stories not of sightseeing and hotel rooms but of battle, of gore, of nights spent in caves with peasants, of bombs falling from the sky. She mentions someone named Heifer, someone named Muscat.
Lily tells her of making love in the open air with Robert at night, after fighting, their guns on the ground beside them.
And Blanche imagines that love must be sweeter, when death is so close you can touch it.
Now Lily is telling her about Paris, it seems—Blanche has to concentrate, so overwhelmed by the pictures in her head that she hasn’t been keeping up with the torrent of words flowing from her friend’s mouth, as if she cannot stop them, as if they’ve been locked deep within her until this moment when Blanche hands her a key. Blanche studies Lily, suddenly concerned, and sees, finally, how thin her friend is, how pale, how her eyes burn with fury.
Lily is talking about a man now. A man who made a noose out of the tricolor flag and hung himself off the Pont de l’Alma the day after the Germans marched into Paris. And nobody stopped him, not even her.
Apparently, Lily and Robert joined forces with students in the early days. They fought back when ordinary French citizens, too stunned by the tidal wave that had swept over them, could not.
“How is Robert?” Blanche finally has to stem Lily’s words; they are too terrible. “I hope I can meet him this time. You were in such a hurry to leave for Spain—”
“Robert,” Lily interrupts, “is dead.”
“Oh, Lily.” Blanche’s
eyes sting with tears—absurd, she thinks, to mourn someone she’s never met. She’s shaken by her emotion, when Lily’s eyes are as dry and unblinking as a doll’s. So Blanche studies a bird in its cage, in an end stall of the market. It’s a mustard-colored bird with iridescent blue on its wings, and it hops up and down, from its perch to the cage floor, over and over as if it’s having a fit.
“Early days,” Lily continues, as if Blanche had asked. “Right after the filthy Germans invaded us. Maybe I tell you someday. I pray they fry in hell.”
“I know that some of them are terrible, yes, but there are boys among them, boys who didn’t want to be here, who aren’t as bad as the others—”
“They’re monsters, Blanche. Things aren’t like in your Ritz now. What’s going on in Poland, in Austria—it’s happening here, too.”
Blanche’s stomach churns with revulsion and guilt—right this moment, in all probability, Claude is serving tea to the very monsters who murdered Lily’s Robert. And she—why, she had made it a point to tell Astrid how pretty her hair was this morning. She’d sat with Friedrich yesterday while he read a letter from his girl back home—she’d even hugged the boy when he revealed, with big tears in his blue eyes, that the girl had another beau, a soldier in the SS stationed in Berlin.
And Blanche understands that she has to get out of the Ritz. She has to see what is happening in Paris beyond those walls. If she doesn’t, how can she live with herself?
How can she atone for her lies?
“Seeing you is good for me,” Lily says, and Blanche is touched, deeply, although she knows she doesn’t deserve Lily’s friendship. “And I have other lover now. He hates the Nazis, too, and he has bigger plans, fine plans.” She wipes her nose with her sleeve, refusing Blanche’s offer of a handkerchief, and grins. But her freckles are like black ink spots against her pale skin.
“But he’s not like Robert, is he?”
“No, Lorenzo is not my man. He is just a man. There is difference.”
“And don’t I know it.” Blanche sighs, knowing that for her, Claude has never been “just a man.” He is infuriating, pompous, possessive, immoral. All the things J’Ali had been—all the things “a man” is. But in the beginning, at least, Claude had been so much more.
“Come meet my friends, Blanche. Well, not my friends, not like you—these people, I don’t care about like you. But we have fought together. And that does something, you know?”
“Battle brings people together. Claude’s told me so many times.”
“But I also—I also have to ignore them—how you say? Deny them? If I have to. I have to leave them behind, for bigger good. I couldn’t do that to you, Blanche.”
Blanche looks at her, sharply, not sure if Lily’s telling the truth or buttering her up for something, because nothing Lily has said or done in the past has indicated that she has any attachment to anyone other than Robert. And even he, Blanche suspects, could have been sacrificed to what Lily felt was the greater good.
But before she can ask, Lily declares, “Is time, now.”
Blanche has a choice, she understands; the moment is upon her, the one she’s been seeking. She could use a swig of gin to steady her racing heart, dry her sweaty palms.
Blanche looks around; the market is crowded with German soldiers patrolling, even as some of the vendors are starting to put sheets over the birdcages, preparing to pack up and leave as it’s getting very close to evening.
And she watches Lily disappear into the maze of stalls.
As calmly as possible, Claude strolls out the door, walking the streets—it is getting to be early evening, but he still has plenty of time. So he stops at a café for a glass of wine and to pretend to read the paper that is nothing but Nazi propaganda and lies, all the while wondering about his wife. Where did she go? Why was she so calm, insouciant? Could she possibly have a lover, too? How was that even possible when she’s been, by and large, right under his nose at the Ritz all these months?
But no, of course she couldn’t. She is his wife. Unthinkable—
So why is Claude thinking it?
He can scarcely sip the wine, his stomach is roiling so, but he realizes that appearances matter. So he drinks it, pays the bill, nodding at a couple of guests of the Ritz who are out and about, too—“It is a fine evening for a walk, is it not, Monsieur Auzello?” “Oui, the finest so far this autumn.”—and he resumes his stroll, hoping to be able to calm down, shrug away his suspicions. For he has to be able to perform his duties; it is vital that he does.
Passing soldiers who tip their hats to him, Claude remains rather stunned by the politeness their occupiers continue to display, their obvious efforts not to offend the citizenry. Claude has witnessed German soldiers get up and give their seats on the Métro to French women. But it is all for show; he keeps waiting—everyone does—for the shoe to drop, for the Nazis to show their true colors. Especially after that abominable exhibition they held about the Jews—Le Juif et la France.
Claude continues his perambulation, all the way over the Seine, to the Left Bank, which is not as teeming with German soldiers as the Right. He makes his way toward the Panthéon, crossing the Luxembourg Gardens, which are crowded with lovers, mothers and their children, the carousel still in operation, a band playing in the bandstand. However, it is a German military band playing beer hall music, loud oom-pah-pahs that assault his sensibilities, not to mention eardrums.
Still, Claude marvels at how peaceful, unmenacing, the world can appear while the sun still shines, even if faintly. Nights, of course, are different.
“Bonsoir, mon ami!” The young man beckons to Claude from an outdoor café table, shoved against a window. It isn’t too far from the coal brazier, so he keeps his gloves in his coat pocket. The younger man rises when Claude joins him and kisses him on both cheeks before they take their seats.
The two women already seated, one blond, one brunette, smile; they wear a little too much paint for Claude’s tastes, but they are appealing—noticeable—in their gaiety, their easy laughter, their easier blushes; he kisses them both on the cheek and takes the empty chair next to the blonde.
Claude studies him. There is something so rakish about this fellow, Martin, and Claude’s curiosity, as always, is aroused. Devilishly handsome with black curly hair and green eyes, he dresses with panache—always the silk scarf about his neck, like an aviator—and every female within a mile is irresistibly drawn to him. Claude himself has never commanded such attention from the fairer sex, not even in his younger days, and he is man enough to admit that he is jealous of this fellow, especially since he must be at least fifteen years younger. Claude is very glad that Blanche has no cause to meet him.
As Claude orders his coffee, he finds himself wondering, again, what Martin did before the war. (He has no such curiosity about the women, even as the blonde nestles against his shoulder and plays with his lapel.)
As far as Claude is aware, Martin does not have a permanent home, although naturally Claude has no cause to know for sure. They keep those kinds of details from each other, even though Martin is quite aware of Claude’s position at the Ritz. And of course, he understands all about Blanche, somehow; it is his bargaining chip.
“I am curious, Martin.” Claude decides to ask him, for they have grown to truly like each other these past few months, or so Claude tells himself. It isn’t simply that they are business associates in an unusual time. No, even if Claude had met him before (like all Parisians, Claude has divided his entire life, his entire way of looking at people and situations, into before the invasion and after), Claude likes to think that he would have been Martin’s friend. Claude admires his associate’s mind, constantly churning, seeing three moves ahead of any chess game. His savoir faire, his ability to imbue even the smallest movement—like signaling for more coffee, as he does now—with flair.
“Curious about what, my frien
d?” Leaning back in his chair until it’s balancing on the two back legs, Martin smiles, devastatingly, at two women seated next to them, even as the blonde and brunette—Simone and Michele are their names—scowl. The other women immediately giggle and simper.
“What did you do before?”
“Claude, Claude, you understand the rules.” Indeed, he does. No personal questions. No one at this table, save for Claude, has a past.
“Claude,” Simone purrs into his ear. “You are a naughty boy!” She squeezes his thigh, not unpleasantly.
“Yes.” Claude smiles at her, as one does at an irritating child. “But you must allow me. I am a student of human nature. One must be, to run a hotel. And you seem to know plenty about me.”
Martin sighs. He rights his chair and leans over the small café table. The lamps from inside the restaurant backlight him so that his curly hair resembles a halo. All about the foursome, people are chatting; there is French music—an old recording of Mistinguett singing “Mon Homme”—it’s scratchy, the music thin to the ears, but it is still French. If you try, you can almost convince yourself it is a typical Paris autumn evening; the air carries only waning hints of warmth and the geraniums are starting to fade in their pots, their brave reds and pinks no longer standing out so colorfully against the black wrought-iron railings.
That is, until it dawns on you that dotted among the tables are those gray-green uniforms of the ordinary German soldier, speaking his ugly native tongue. Until you register the absolute absence of motor traffic on the streets. Until you take a good look at the bicycles propped against railings and streetlights and see that the rubber tires have been patched and patched and patched again. That on every table is a ration book. On every French face, every so often, flashes a startled look, as if one has just awakened from a dream. A wonderful, elusive dream.
“Claude, that is fair. OK, my friend. You really want to know?”
Mistress of the Ritz Page 16