“What?”
“General von Stülpnagel demands to see you at once!”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
Sighing, Claude puts down his papers and crosses over to the Vendôme side, nodding at the guards standing alert in all the doorways, pistols in holsters, who are not alarmed by his presence here. After all, he is Herr Auzello—practically one of them.
Von Stülpnagel has been even more unpredictable than usual, lately—one moment snarling orders to round up civilians to be shot in retaliation against acts of the Resistance, one hundred or so per attack.
One hundred civilians for a lousy German or two. How odd, that this has seeped into Parisians’ consciousness, their conversation, even. It is simply the way it is. They are in danger of becoming immune to the horrors surrounding them. This is what an occupation does—it wears you down until you accept evil. Until you can no longer fully define it, even. Let alone recognize it.
Then von Stülpnagel will grow expansive, friendly; inviting Claude into his office to share a glass of brandy as if they are truly friends. In those moments, the man seems almost human.
Until the next roundup of civilians.
Claude tries to avoid him as much as possible, as of late, because of his unpredictability. But a summons is a summons—
Unless it is not. For when Claude attains the Nazi’s office and is ushered in by the sentry, von Stülpnagel looks at him in confusion.
“No, I did not request you, Herr Auzello,” the German says and Claude notices that today, it is “Herr Auzello” and not “Claude, my friend.” A useful distinction, and so Claude immediately is on his toes, alert.
There are papers all over the German’s desk, and it requires of Claude every ounce of constraint not to look at them, not to see if there are names of those he knows—perhaps has loved—on them.
“My apologies.” With a bow, Claude turns to go.
“But wait—while you’re here, Auzello, my tea is cold.”
Ah. Now it is merely “Auzello.”
“I’ll have someone bring you a new pot momentarily.” Claude turns back around with a smooth, professional smile.
“Since you’re here, you can do it yourself.”
Claude stiffens; it is not his job and this man knows it well. He is smiling too smugly; he is watching Claude too intently, almost as if he’s hoping that Claude will argue. But Claude tells himself this: Do not make him angry. Do not make any of them angry. If they are happy here, within these majestic walls where I am in charge, then perhaps they won’t round up as many citizens today.
There have been times lately—like now—when Claude marvels at how he is able to fill out his clothes, resemble a body with structure, bones, and muscles, when he feels liquefied by rage and helplessness. Cells and molecules—how can they retain their structure, when such evil fills the world, fills the Ritz, tainting it with its putridness?
When the Germans leave, Claude vows, he will scrub the place from top to bottom with bleach with his own hands, if necessary; he will convince Marie-Louise to re-wallpaper it, tear out the old carpets and rugs, buy new. Everything new—crystal and china and linen, even the chandeliers, such a matter of pride to her. Anything to be rid of the merest whiff, faintest memories, of these vile men.
And the memories of himself bowing to them, doing his job, just as he always had done. He knows that he will continue to bow to them in the days, the weeks, the months, the years ahead.
“Of course, Herr Stülpnagel.” Claude takes the cold silver pot as if it is an honor, and leaves.
As he walks back toward his office, he searches for the young man who summoned him, but the boy has vanished. However, Claude does recognize his wife seated in the lobby of the rue Cambon side, nonchalantly reading a newspaper—something she does not usually do—and an unfamiliar melody begins to play in his brain, a tune of foreboding, suspicion. Especially when she drops the newspaper as soon as Claude appears, and nods at someone across the lobby.
That same young bellhop, who colors bright red when he sees Claude, and sprints away like a startled hare.
Claude hands the empty teapot to another bellhop, returns to his office, takes two antacids, and waits.
He doesn’t have to wait very long.
By nightfall, the rue Cambon side of the Ritz is crawling with German officers, the alert having gone out that members of the Resistance are hiding somewhere in the Ritz Paris. On the Place Vendôme.
It doesn’t take long for Claude to uncover the truth. The young bellhop is easily persuaded to spill all, over a glass of wine and a promise of more responsibility. The lad is part of the Resistance, he says too eagerly—Claude shakes his head, afraid for this young man’s fate if he is so willing to reveal the truth when barely pressed—and there is a wounded man who needs medical help. Claude’s wife—his lovely wife, the youth says admiringly; his wonderful wife—has offered a room at the Ritz while the man recovers from his gunshot wound, accompanied by his friend, a woman.
And what is the name of this friend, Claude asks, although he already knows the answer.
Lily, of course. Lily Kharmanyoff.
It transpired that when Claude was over on the other side of the hotel, bowing to von Stülpnagel, the two had checked into four-fourteen as a honeymooning couple, thanks to Blanche’s intervention. Claude dismisses the young man, grabs his house keys, and takes the stairs two at a time up to room four-fourteen. In his anger, he doesn’t bother to knock; he unlocks the door and bursts into the room. He was fortunate, he realized later, that he wasn’t shot on the spot.
Lily, wearing some of Blanche’s clothes—Claude recognizes them at once—is seated on the edge of the bed, which is occupied by a swarthy-looking man, shirtless, so that Claude can see the bloodied bandage around his abdomen. He automatically winces; blood is the only thing that the launderers cannot remove from sheets. And new linen is very difficult to attain these days.
As soon as Claude enters the room, Lily springs up, and makes for a pistol on the nightstand. When she sees it is him, she puts it down with a laugh.
A laugh!
“Claude, you give us scare,” she says merrily. “My God! This is Lorenzo.”
The man—his eyes half-closed in pain—grunts.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Claude snaps, trying to keep his voice down. He has no idea if the room is being watched or someone has an ear pressed against the door; he tries his best to keep on the lookout for that kind of thing but the truth is, he can never be certain. Claude suspects that there are some German spies among the staff. Not many, but probably one or two. There have to be. The Boche wouldn’t be stupid enough not to plant spies on this side of the hotel, even though they maintain it is Claude’s alone to run.
Lily lowers her voice, too; she is no longer laughing. Her eyes never stray from his as she tells Claude the tale. “Lorenzo, he was shot. So was the Nazi. Only one of them is still alive. We didn’t know what to do with Lorenzo, so I got Blanche. We had him in the back of a café around the corner. Blanche say that we could come to the Ritz, and he could rest here. She knew a doctor, too. He gave Lorenzo morphine and we checked in like new marrieds. Blanche, she—she made sure you weren’t around when we did. She sent you off on wild goose egg chase.”
“Yes, I know.” Claude is shaking with anger—and terror. This is the first time, to his knowledge, that the Ritz has harbored an actively sought member of the Resistance. The Germans must be knocking on doors all over Paris looking for this man. And he is here. In Claude’s hotel.
And Lily has involved Blanche in it.
“How dare you ask Blanche to help you?” Claude is too angry to be as guarded as he usually is.
Lily only shrugs.
“She’s not to be trusted, Lily. I hate to say it about my own wife but the way she
drinks—and I know why she does and I don’t blame her—but Blanche, she’s like a child, refusing to grow up! And the way you two carouse and play around—how on earth did you get involved in all this?”
Lily sits down on the bed again, careful not to disturb Lorenzo, who has drifted off to sleep.
“Do not be angry with Blanche. Is all me. I promise she—she has never done anything like this, anything dangerous at all. I was desperate, you see?” Lily’s eyes fill with tears, and she starts to wipe her nose with her sleeve, but Claude can’t allow that. Reluctantly, he offers her his own handkerchief.
“Desperate,” she continues, her narrow shoulders shaking with sobs, her big eyes swimming up at him, repentant. “Blanche is my friend, my very good friend, and I love her, I want her to be safe. Like you. But one thing is different between you and me, Claude.” Suddenly those eyes are dry, suspicious; the change startles him.
“What?”
“I see Blanche. I see her truly. Not like you. But like you I don’t want any harm to come to her. I promise, I won’t do this again.”
“Good. How is he?” Claude can’t help but be concerned; Lorenzo, even in his sleep, is moaning.
“He’ll be fine. He can’t be moved, though.”
“For how long?”
She shrugs. “Two days? Three?”
Claude paces while Lily watches him, that gun still within reach, but Claude pays her no mind. He is thinking. Another delivery for Martin—he can call him up, say he has two more packages than he needs, and can Martin take them off his hands?
That was the code they had devised months ago: “packages” were those who needed to be hidden, “parcels” were those who needed to be exposed. Bushels of apples denoted troop movements. Vegetables were substitutes for the German high command—they’d gleefully decided on the code word for Göring: “potato.”
This was the game Claude was playing. This was what allowed him to walk proudly again like a Frenchman; this was what he left to do when the phone rang at night. He did not, as Blanche thought, run off to meet his mistress. No, he ran off—as eagerly, as ardently, as a lover—to meet Martin, who had been able to organize some of the other hotel directors. Through Martin’s “business” of supplying produce to the hotels via outside contacts in Switzerland, they were able to relay what was going on in the hotels to the Allies. It had only started out as information being shared.
But now, they had moved on to people, as well. Fortunately, the Ritz had very large cupboards—as did most of the hotels that the Germans had commandeered and that remained open.
The women—Michele and Simone—were mere window dressing (although Claude suspected that the two were involved in other, more dangerous games when they weren’t hanging on to Martin’s and Claude’s arms, but that was one of the rules Martin had set down: no questions). The Nazis were generally so dazzled by these two brilliantly beautiful women, they didn’t pay attention to what Claude and Martin were discussing at the table right next to them, or in the club where they were all listening to jazz, or on the bench along the Seine. And Frenchmen walking off, arm in arm with Frenchwomen—again, the Nazis didn’t think this unusual enough to pursue.
No one need know that, once upstairs in the Auzellos’ apartment, Claude and Simone slept in separate beds, and she always left before dawn. It wasn’t as if Claude couldn’t have made love to this beautiful woman—she’d let him know that she was willing; and he was certainly, most nights, aroused enough, exhilarated by the game they were playing, the blow they were striking against the Boche.
But Claude had promised Blanche, that day in his office, before they left for Nîmes. He had never made such a promise earlier in their marriage and so his affairs, before, were guiltless. But he had promised her, and she was a vulnerable, unstable woman. While it disturbed him that she thought he was sleeping with another woman, he felt a perverse sense of honor in not doing so. Even in a time of war.
Especially in a time of war.
Watching Lily—so fierce, so tired, so dirty—Claude makes a decision.
“If you don’t leave this room, if you do not, under any circumstances, pick up that phone and ask for anything, or answer the door, or open the drapes, you may stay—and I can get him out of the country to recover, if that’s what you think he needs to do. I have—some contacts.”
Lily’s dark eyes flicker—in surprise, Claude realizes. Then he winces, as the astonishment blossoms on her face.
“You? You—Claude—you? I can’t—how—I never would have guessed!”
Claude holds himself as if he were a much taller man; he looks down his nose at this girl. “I am a Frenchman, Lily, after all. But one thing—you must not tell Blanche. Not a word. She can’t know—she can’t suspect, because she can’t be endangered. There are things—there are things you don’t know about my wife, trust me. I think you ought to leave the country, too; and frankly I’d be relieved if you did, because I can’t have Blanche put in danger again.”
“I think you are wrong about some things, Claude Auzello. About your wife. But is not my place. I thank you, but we will stay in Paris, Lorenzo and me, as long as the damn Nazis are here. We have work to do.”
“Three days, then. That’s all, you understand? I can’t keep him here longer than that. I can’t endanger the staff. But I can send you somewhere else, nearby.”
She nods and reaches over to brush Lorenzo’s hair out of his eyes and in that moment, Claude sees Lily as a woman, a tender-hearted woman, and he doesn’t despise her.
“I’ll send up some food.”
“Blanche already did.”
“Of course. Well, don’t involve Blanche further. Lily, do you understand me? I can’t have that.”
“You can’t have that?” Again, she looks amused, narrowing her eyes at him. “Really?”
“Yes. Now, do as I say.”
She nods and begins to unroll a fresh bandage. Claude turns to leave.
“You a good man, Claude Auzello,” she says.
He opens his mouth to reply but does not. He simply leaves them there; what should it matter to him, what this woman thinks of him? But there is an unfamiliar warmth in his heart that causes him to admit that it does matter because he longs to have a woman admire him again—
No, not merely a woman. He longs to have his wife admire him and look at him the way she did, once.
He cannot afford that vanity, for too many reasons, one of which is the unfortunate fact that he cannot trust her, so he cannot tell Blanche that he knows of her involvement in this. Let his wife think that she has deceived him, for once. Let her have her fun, her little child’s adventure; she deserves it, he supposes. After all, she truly must be bored by now, simply waiting, idling, even at the Ritz.
However.
As luck would have it, even as Claude was talking to Lily and Lorenzo, more chaos invaded the Ritz, this time aimed at Coco Chanel herself. For Mademoiselle managed to get herself kidnapped by two other members of the Resistance. It was as if they were multiplying even in the short time it took for Claude to talk to Lily, and he had to wonder what was stirring them, all of a sudden.
Well, perhaps “kidnap” was too strong a word. The two were waiting for Chanel in her suite—no one will admit how they got in, but Claude has his suspicions—and they threw a bag over her head and took her to a deserted warehouse, where they told her they knew of her relationship with von Dincklage, and that when the war was over, she would pay.
Two hours later, they returned her. Chanel was fine, and not too rattled. Naturally, Claude called on her as soon as she was back, to offer his sympathies and his regrets and a promise to get to the bottom of this, as much as was in his power—that this could happen to Mademoiselle Chanel! In the Ritz! How unspeakable! How terrible!
(How appropriate, Claude thought, even as he stormed and vowed and placated
. The woman was an embarrassment to her country, a traitor.)
Chanel may have been appeased by Claude’s little show, but von Dincklage is furious. So furious that he informs Claude he believes the two members of the Resistance are still in the hotel, and that the Germans are going to search every room on the rue Cambon side. And if Claude does not cooperate they will break the doors down themselves; and naturally the Ritz will be responsible for the price of replacing them, and Claude’s name will be written down on a list that he would rather it not be written down on.
Spatzy, Claude sees immediately, will not be distracted by quenelles.
Nodding thoughtfully, he stalls for time searching for his house keys. Even though the Nazis are not at the moment searching for Lily and her lover, the fact remains that they are here and Lorenzo might be recognized. Lily, of course, is known as Blanche’s drunk friend so she will probably be fine—and for the first time, Claude wonders about that, the convenience of it—but then he pushes it out of his mind because there are more pressing matters at hand.
Finally, Claude “finds” his keys and follows the four German soldiers, weapons drawn, out of his office, his pulse pounding in his ears, his hands shaking so that the keys make a jaunty musical accompaniment.
He cannot believe it, Claude simply cannot believe it. Weapons are drawn—in the Hôtel Ritz, on the Place Vendôme. For the first time danger, real danger, the kind of thing that takes place elsewhere in Paris—in alleys, abandoned lots, dark streets at night—has permeated the hallowed walls of César Ritz’s palace.
Finally, the war has truly come to the Ritz. And there is a part of Claude—the part that is not currently pulverized by fear—that is relieved. Perhaps—jubilant? For they are all in the fight, now.
Mistress of the Ritz Page 20