Claude takes her hand in his. And even that can’t make her feel content.
* * *
—
BLANCHE SITS IN AN empty synagogue in the Marais, which is so heartbreakingly devoid of people. She shuts her eyes and tries to conjure up the music, the chanting, from the synagogue of her youth. Blanche’s parents—German-born Jews—were not Orthodox; women sat with the men, English was mixed with Hebrew in the service. But Reform or Orthodox, certain things are the same everywhere—the Torah, the prayers. The swirling of a mystical antiquity and always, always, that palpable sense of suffering, waiting. With her eyes squeezed shut, Blanche tries, desperately, to reclaim her past. The past she’d so thoroughly expunged that not even the Nazis believed she was Jewish.
Blanche fervently waits for something to move her, something to flicker inside her—a connection, a chain to her ancestors that will link her even more tightly to those who were taken, who are still gone, who might never return.
But nothing does. She sits for nearly an hour, and all she feels is foolish. It’s only after she leaves the building and is walking toward the Seine, passing a carousel and seeing children on it, children so young they might not, please God, remember the horrors of these years, that she cries. Because on one of those children’s jackets Blanche can make out the faint outline of the yellow star—obviously just removed so that the fabric, behind it, is a darker shade than the rest of the coat.
Blanche recognizes that outline, and she sits down on a bench, and she cries.
* * *
—
AT DINNER THAT EVENING, she finally cries for Lily.
“I did kill her, I know I did.” Tears slowly slide down her cheeks, splashing into another of Elise’s creamy soups that has gone untouched.
“No—I think—you can’t know that. Lily killed Germans, Blanche. She made her choices and she knew she would probably die because of them.”
“But if I’d not made such a scene at Maxim’s—she might have gotten away with it.”
“You must not live the rest of your life in pain because of this, my love. I think, perhaps, it’s best that I leave the Ritz?” He looks uncertain for a moment, but then he nods decisively. “Yes, I—we will leave the Ritz. We will move to that farm we used to talk about, where I can take care of you all the time. And that way, perhaps, you can forget. Maybe we should go to America? To join your family there—I could surely find a job?”
“No!” Blanche drops her spoon in the soup, splattering the tablecloth. “No! I’m not American anymore. Not after Fresnes. I belong here, in France—our scars are the same, France’s and mine. Don’t you see? I can’t go back.”
“But—”
“Claude.” Blanche sighs, reluctant to voice this out loud for fear of what he will say. “What if she is looking for me?”
“Oh, Blanche…”
“Don’t you see? The Ritz is the only place she’ll know to look for me, if—when—she comes back.”
Her husband’s eyes are so anguished, and Lily is not the one he’s mourning in this moment. Blanche sees herself reflected in those sympathetic eyes—a broken, delusional victim.
But that isn’t how she wants to be seen; that’s not how she—or Lily—deserves to be remembered. And so, drying her first—and last—tears for Lily, Blanche tells him about her plan.
When Blanche observed the child’s jacket in the park, she walked over to take a closer look. Two nuns were in charge of this small group of children—Jewish children, pale from being hidden away these long years. Blanche recognized them right away; they looked like all the children in the photographs at her parents’ house.
“Sister?” she asked one of the nuns.
“Yes?”
“Who are—who are they?” Blanche smiled at the tiny girl with the dark star outline on her jacket; the girl stuck her finger in her mouth and simply stared at Blanche until she blurted out, “Your dress is pretty!”
Blanche and the sister laughed, but then the nun took Blanche’s arm and walked her away from the children.
“Orphans, I’m afraid. They were hidden in the country, taken there from the city when their parents were—rounded up. Kind people, Catholics, hid them, cared for them, as if they were their own children—they instructed them in the Church so they could be passed off as Catholics if the Nazis came looking for them.”
“What will happen to them now? Will they be returned to their families?” But before the sister could answer, Blanche knew what she was going to say.
“There are no families to return them to. Their parents, older siblings—they’re gone.”
“But surely they have relatives in America, other countries—aunts or uncles who escaped, that they could go to?”
“Oh, we wouldn’t want that, would we? These souls are Catholic now, bless them! Baptized, every one of them! We’ll put them in Catholic homes, of course. They’re so young, they’ll never remember that they’re—they’ll never remember their past.” The sister beamed at her charges, sallow-skinned, dark-haired—expressions of utter sadness and patience in their eyes, when they weren’t engaged in play.
How do you recognize a Semite?
Blanche Rubenstein knew all too well.
“Sister, you would be surprised about how much they’ll remember. Trust me. It’s not so easy to forget.” Blanche reached into her purse and handed the sister the rest of her found money. “For Christ’s sake—excuse me, Sister—buy them new coats, at least. Ones without stars.”
“Claude,” she says to him now—excited, perhaps even happy, for the first time in so long. “Claude, I have an idea. A way to, well—atone, maybe, for what I did. I’d like to help Jewish orphans find Jewish homes. Some of them are being raised as Catholic, so that they will never know where they came from or who they are. I’d like to do something about that.”
She smiles across at her husband, whose face is full of admiration, not pity. She wants to keep that look in his face, now and forever. She lost it, once. She won’t let that happen again.
“What you sacrificed for me, for all of Paris, and now that you want to do this—” he begins, but Blanche shakes her head.
“Oh, Popsy, don’t make a big deal about it.” She picks up her spoon, ravenous—another surprise. “At the time, it really didn’t seem that important to me. That’s not entirely true, it turns out. But this way—if I help these kids, if I get them back to their families, no matter how far away—I feel like I’m reclaiming my faith again. You don’t mind, do you?” She peers at him, anxious; she never knows when his Catholicism will flare up like a persistent rash.
“Mind? I will help you, Blanchette. We can raise money, have fundraisers at the Ritz—we know lawyers, for I’m sure this is complicated, legally. I am only humbled that you would ask my help.”
“Well, who the hell would I ask but my husband? You’re a good man, Claude Auzello. Even if you do your best to hide it sometimes.”
The Auzellos beam at each other across the table. They know, finally, the truth of each other; she’s so proud of him, of what he did during the war, keeping the Ritz and all its employees together, and still finding a way to strike a blow against the Nazis, who were his guests. His captors. Blanche can’t think of anyone else who had as difficult—as peculiar—a job as he did, during all this.
Blanche knows he’s proud of her, too. Sometimes he can barely look her in the eye when he talks of what she did. He is humbled by her, but he shouldn’t be. They’re both brave as hell, these Auzellos and Rubensteins.
Finally, after twenty-one years, they have a marriage that even a Frenchman can’t destroy.
When the first contingent of Americans sails to France after VE Day, they experience something of a shock. As do Blanche and Claude.
“Blanche! You’re alive!” Foxy Sondheim squeals, throws her fur muff in the air,
and throws herself on Blanche.
“Last I looked, I was,” Blanche replies, puzzled—she raises her eyebrows at Claude as Foxy begins to weep.
“But Winchell—Walter Winchell, in his column a year or so ago, said you’d been shot by the Nazis! We all thought you were dead—everyone in New York! We even threw a wake at the Ritz for you!”
“Really?” A huge grin lights up Blanche’s face; she ushers Foxy into the bar and Claude brings them a bottle of champagne. Foxy is a tall New York fashion designer who was a loyal guest before the war; she’s part of a group recently sent over by the U.S. Department of State. And Claude, of course, is anxious to remind these returning Americans and Brits that the Ritz is very much still open for business.
“I made Winchell’s column? Did you hear that, Popsy?”
Blanche is truly tickled, making Foxy repeat the story for everyone who didn’t hear it the first time. Then Blanche begins to tell Foxy about her work with the orphans—“I can put you down for, what? Five hundred dollars? It has to be American money—no francs, you cheapskate!”—and Foxy laughs, while Claude leaves them to reminisce and catch up.
But Foxy comes to him later and expresses her shock over Blanche’s appearance.
“What happened to her, Claude? What really happened here, during the war?”
“We are so glad to have you back, Madame Sondheim,” Claude replies. “How is your suite? The same as before, I sincerely hope? We are fine, do not worry about Blanche. She is a survivor.”
“She sure is.” Foxy hands him her dog’s leash, which he takes with a resigned smile. “Like the Eiffel Tower itself!”
Yes, she is, Claude thinks proudly. Blanche is triumphant, precious, brave. She is everything Paris is, or should be—beauty untouched by these grim years, soul unbowed, unbroken. Yes, bad things have happened. But Paris—and Blanche—will survive; music will play once more, tourist boats filled with citizens, not soldiers, will meander up and down the Seine, broken windows will be replaced by newer, shinier ones, gardens that were trampled by boots will be replanted.
But it will be—complicated.
Claude realizes this the moment the trains start arriving, disgorging their passengers that aren’t people but skeletons. From Germany they come, starting this early autumn of 1945. From Poland. From Austria. From places called Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Dachau. Skeletons who can barely walk, with tattoos of numbers on their forearms. Claude sees them, staggering about Paris, blinking, stunned at being alive. Stunned at seeing the Eiffel Tower again, the Tuileries, the Arc; tears in their eyes to find themselves back home. And Claude understands that they who had survived the Occupation in Paris aren’t so noble, after all; what he has done wasn’t really so brave, so wondrous. Not even what Blanche had endured can compare to what these survivors have seen, heard, experienced. He, like everyone else, has to look away when he encounters them—sitting in a café, wearing too many layers no matter the temperature; seated on benches in the gardens, faces turned toward the sun with eyes closed tightly, taking deep, shattering breaths of fresh air, of life itself, trying to fill out their bodies with this air, this life.
What was the Occupation, compared to the atrocities these souls have endured? Claude is ashamed to think of how he had chafed at what he had to do when the Nazis were at the Ritz—the serving, the fetching, the bowing. He is so ashamed that he vows never to talk about it, or what he had done with Martin. And in this way he is like every other French citizen—collectively, almost as if they gathered in the Opéra and had a mass meeting about it, Parisians decide to draw a veil over those years. Unlike when the Great War ended, Claude realizes that there will be no getting together to swap war stories. This privilege is left to the Allies who had fought and liberated.
What is left to the French is too enormous and complicated, a great tangle of threads of all hues and heft that one cannot begin to unravel. There was bravery, but there was also collaboration. There was defiance, but there was also acquiescence. Some people suffered, but most did not.
So what can Paris do but—live on? Look forward? Take pride in the past that is distant, heroic—and plan for a future that is not predicated too much on national pride. In a way, this binds Parisians together, after the citizen tribunals run their course and the skeletons become, at least in appearance, people again: the unspoken consensus that it’s best not to look too closely at the war years, and instead, concentrate on the future.
Like Blanche is doing, with her work with the orphans; she sells her clothing that she can no longer wear, her designer dresses, to raise funds. Several influential Jews form committees to look into these war orphanages, and there are tensions between the Catholic and the Jewish communities over it. But then again, if there weren’t tensions between Parisians it wouldn’t be Paris, would it? So Blanche raises money and argues with nuns and priests and it keeps her happy, keeps her busy.
Keeps her from thinking too much about Lily.
Many of these returning guests are on their way to cover the Nuremberg trials, and when those trials result in ten executions and one suicide (their old friend Hermann Göring), Claude shakes his head sorrowfully.
“We have just lost eleven steady customers,” he says, and the roar of laughter that greets his little joke is very gratifying, indeed.
At the Ritz, commanding his staff, Claude does not feel old. At the Ritz, in its rosy, flattering light, Blanche does not look twice her age.
At the Ritz, everything will be as it was. Because that is what the Ritz does; it causes you to forget the very last thing you saw before you entered its opulence—even if that very last thing was the worst of humanity. The Ritz will provide relief, will provide distraction, will provide the best champagne to wash down bile, will provide the softest towels to absorb despair.
Balance—Claude had always believed himself to be a man capable of apportioning the correct value to every part of his life. Work, religion, relaxation, friends, family, education, physical activity. Love. Devotion. In his mind, there was a scale, and on one side was the Ritz, and on the other side was Blanche, and the two scales were equal, symmetrical; the scales never moved, one never slid up while the other hung heavier.
But when Blanche was taken, he realized he had not apportioned her value correctly, after all. The scales were off; he’d been putting his thumb in the side that represented the Ritz.
He will never make that mistake again. He will do his duties, and do them well. He will continue to uphold the values of César Ritz, further his legacy, ensure its success. He will go to Mass, he will walk the streets at night, he will continue to have his favorite views of the Arc, his favorite gardens, his favorite cafés. He will sob unabashedly when he hears “La Marseillaise.”
But his heart will be Blanche’s, alone.
Blanche is dead.
It’s been a very long time since that day in Fresnes prison. That day when Blanche called out my name, and I was so happy to hear it. So happy to have made a friend who could not deny me, even if it meant sealing my fate.
Heifer wouldn’t have called my name. Lorenzo wouldn’t have looked at me. None of them would mourn me. But Blanche, she did; Blanche rushed to me; Blanche called out “Lily!” And when they took me away, I didn’t feel alone and forgotten. I never thought I would find hope in the midst of pain and despair; I never thought I would find graciousness in the midst of war.
But because of Blanche, I did.
I kept track of her at first, when she and the others left Fresnes that day. I kept track of her, and Claude, and the Ritz. I watched her courageously try to snatch at life again.
And for a long time, she succeeded.
Blanche and Claude Auzello grew old, suddenly. Blanche gained weight and no longer dyed her hair. Claude shriveled, his hair graying and thinning.
And these two who had battled, who had raged, who began with a passion so
fierce and heady that it blinded them for years—suddenly, they treated each other as old married couples do: with tenderness, with exasperation, but always with love, polished over time so that the rough edges were no longer visible and only the smooth patina showed.
Blanche worried about Claude’s workload, his smoking, his incessant fussing over her. She fretted when she saw him being pushed aside, stuck in his old-fashioned ways as the Ritz moved into a new, more modern era. He worried about her drinking, her headaches, her sudden outbursts, more frequent as the years piled up and the memories, the pain took their toll—she screamed in German, said foul things, spat over the upstairs railing of the grand staircase. She would take to her bed for days unable to eat, unable to bear the light.
And Claude would despair. His inability to destroy her demons, to keep her safe, consumed him. “I must help her,” he whispered so that only Robert and I—who were the only ones listening, it must be said—could hear. “I must keep her safe, I must protect her.”
Oh, Claude.
It is devastating to see a loved one suffer; it is harder to bear than your own pain. Love is despair, love is delight. Love is fear, love is hope. Love is mercy.
Love is anger.
When Claude officially retired—unwillingly—the Auzellos were presented with a silver tray with the years of his service engraved on it, and they waved goodbye and Claude leaned on his wife as they walked out the door of the Ritz. They left with promises to return soon for a drink or tea or maybe lunch. But they will not keep those promises.
Because now, only a few days later, Blanche is dead.
And so is Claude.
An accident, it must have been—that’s what everyone says. A tragic accident, because nobody who knows Claude Auzello can conceive of him hurting his wife—look at what she’d been through, in the war. He must have been cleaning his gun and it accidentally went off. Surely, it was only his despair at losing her that made him turn the gun on himself, that is what everyone says as they hear the news, weep, pray, toast to the memory of the Auzellos of the Ritz—and then go on about their business, the business of the living.
Mistress of the Ritz Page 29