Really the Blues

by Joseph Koenig

  Where he excelled in his predicaments was in stalling while hoping for the best. Carla might choose to end the pregnancy herself. The blame, the crime, the sin would be hers, and he could be appalled. And there was a better than even chance that the baby would be born the right color. Carla was pure white, and he was fair. He needed to consult a geneticist, talk to the Gypsies.

  But there was a larger problem. If Carla was pro-German and anti-Semitic, her attitude toward Negroes was obvious. It was one thing to distance himself from other blacks, to make disparaging remarks about them to people who mistook him for white, occasionally to mouth the same disparagements to himself, but unforgivable in his wife. How could he live with her without becoming like her, become like her while learning to love the child? He would always be fearful that his secret would come out, and Carla would hate him, hate the child too, want them murdered.

  She said, “Now what are you thinking of?”

  “Of marriage.”

  “Is it such a difficult decision?”

  “Look at us,” he said. “Do you call this the proper setting for a proposal?”

  She smiled opaquely. “There have been worse.”

  “Me, I’m a romantic,” he said, and shut his eyes.

  But he didn’t drop off. When she woke up before dawn to go to the toilet, she was alone.

  The sun was shaking loose of the horizon when Weiler’s car arrived at the Tuileries. Dismissing his driver, he walked along an alley of London plane trees toward the old musee at the northwest corner. At his side was a soldier whose face and neck were a welter of scars, a quiet man who paused under the banner above the entrance. The hearts of men were stirred by different things. For this simple soldier, Weiler observed, it was a patriotic slogan. For himself, nothing could be as moving as seeing the City of Light under the control of the Reich. What captured Maier’s heart remained a mystery, assuming the colonel had one.

  On the bench outside Maier’s office on the second floor, the soldier, a Corporal Schneuring, stared at the wall while Weiler fidgeted. Weiler was counting on the corporal for information that would cause Colonel Maier to quit regarding him as a lackey. Maier was due at 8:00. Weiler had shown up well ahead of time to impress the colonel with his devotion to duty.

  At 7:40, as Weiler checked his watch for the hundredth time, Maier’s door opened. The colonel seemed less surprised to see him there than Weiler did to notice a pallet on the floor. A suite of rooms had been reserved for Maier at the Claridge, Paris’s swankiest hotel, but evidently he was an ascetic who preferred not to take his rest between clean sheets on a comfortable mattress. Was he a hater of Paris and its fleshpots, one of those career military men whose fondness for barracks living had instilled a distaste for luxury? Weiler debated it as Maier rolled up his blankets, heaved them into a closet, and opened the windows wide.

  Aside from a large desk and several chairs, the office was unfurnished. The desk was a gorgeous French antique that had belonged to one of the Louises, taken from the museum galleries for Maier. There was nothing on it but a green blotter, some papers, a lamp. Not a coffee pot anywhere in the enormous room. Weiler hadn’t been expecting an elaborate breakfast, but not to be offered even a cup of coffee and a croissant seemed inhospitable even from a man who preferred to sleep on the floor.

  “Allow me to introduce Engineer Corporal Schneuring. He is a sapper who examined the scene on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré,” Weiler said. “You will want to hear directly from him what was found.”

  The colonel sized up Schneuring with the same reverence for his scars that the corporal had for the patriotic banner over the façade. “Yes, please, Corporal Schneuring,” he said warmly. “Tell me.”

  “I determined conclusively that the apartment house was destroyed in a dynamite blast. Chemical analysis of material retrieved from the rubble indicates that the explosive was fabricated from amatol, a mixture of TNT and aluminum nitrate.”

  “Yes, Corporal,” Maier said. “And what do these facts tell us?”

  “That the dynamite probably was obtained from our stores or from those of the French military, sir.”

  To Weiler, Maier appeared somewhat bored. “Have you—either of you—determined who detonated it?”

  Weiler was ready with an answer. Schneuring had it faster.

  “No one, sir. The blast originated in a storage locker in the cellar. The explosives were kept there, and probably were set off by accident.”

  “Yes, but by whom?”

  The question was for Weiler, but Schneuring again was first to reply. “It is beyond my competence to answer.”

  “Wait outside while I continue the discussion with Major Weiler,” Maier said.

  Schneuring performed a crisp about-face. When the door had closed behind him, Maier said to Weiler, “Is it beyond your competence as well?”

  “I am not an expert on bombs, or bomb-makers.”

  “Expertise is not a requirement for a sound opinion,” Maier said. “A healthy intuition is.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but I don’t—”

  “You know that whoever placed it there meant it for use against us. We don’t distribute dynamite as a matter of course to our enemies. You know that much.”

  “Which residents of the city can be identified as enemies?”

  “First and foremost above everyone else, you mean? Those resisting the occupation, I should say.”

  “There is no organized resistance. Parisians are like most Frenchmen, only more so, docile and cowardly, concerned with nothing beyond their personal comfort. Ethnic psychologists tell us they are among the last peoples in Europe from whom we can expect organized resistance.”

  “Not all Parisians can be depended upon to accept German rule. The Jews, for instance, and the communists don’t take kindly to having us here,” Maier said. “Rumors of attempts to organize against us are common currency in Berlin.”

  “I’ve been stationed in Paris since the first days of the occupation, and have heard nothing. What do they know in—?”

  Weiler’s throat caught. A good thing, perhaps.

  “Until now the threat has not been specific,” Maier said. “I wouldn’t like to consider what it might do to our position here if it becomes more pointed. We cannot allow an opposition to take root. An increase in the roundup of Jews and politically unreliable elements is a good first step, while you find whoever placed explosives in the apartment house and we continue to look for the killers of Borge Janssen.”

  “It seems counter-productive to interfere,” Weiler said, “when they do our work for us so well.”

  “Janssen was not a friend of Germany when he died. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that his killers were out to do us a favor, or even that it is a good thing. I rather prefer that it had been the Gestapo that knocked him off. We could question the lot of the Paris bureau, determine the guilty parties, and return to Germany as bullets were being put in their brains. Unfortunately he wasn’t killed by our side, but by the would-be dynamiters, killers more treacherous than he. And more dangerous.”

  “Why do you make that negative assessment, if I may ask?”

  “In war, to prepare for anything less than the most calamitous possibilities is to court disaster. Bad enough that Janssen turned up in Paris, but his unexplained death made to look like suicide is more troubling than if it hadn’t happened.”

  Weiler saw it differently. That was his opinion. He wanted to explain, but Maier’s glance toward the door was a signal that he should leave. As he shut it, he looked back at the colonel studying papers at his desk. Breakfast could wait. Could wait forever if it was up to the Colonel Maiers of the world.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Simone pulled on his pants, watching Mavis wriggle into her girdle through the half-open door. He wouldn’t call Mavis shy, but there was never a time she got herself together that she didn’t make sure there was a door between them. It was when she was out of her clothes that the lights went on and
she did a star turn. He’d been with women with odder quirks, but none with Mavis’s manners. She rarely used curse words in public.

  Catching him peeking, she kicked the door shut. “Let me have my stockings,” she said, and her hand came out for them. He was curious why she played the games she played, but didn’t bring it up. It might cause her to reflect about herself, something he didn’t want her to do.

  She came out straightening her seams, and then she stepped into her heels, which matched the red of her hair. A shade darker than a fire engine, it got her noticed without being tossed from the best places. Her lipstick was a similar color, but violet eyes were her best feature, even with crow’s-feet starting to show. Mavis was getting up in age, close to thirty. In a year or two Simone would have to cut her loose. But in the soft light she wasn’t bad. He’d advise her to keep to the shadows, where he usually could be found himself.

  “You’re giving me claustrophobia,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Quit standing over me,” she said. “You’ve been on my feet since New York. You told me we’d be traveling in style, but that stateroom didn’t have a porthole where I could catch a breath of fresh air. I couldn’t even turn around without bumping into you. I’m black and blue up to my ankles.”

  “It was your first time on a liner.”

  “So?”

  “That’s how they are, a little cramped. You think it was different up on A deck for his royal former highness and the Simpson broad? I bet she had as many black and blue marks as you without raising a stink.”

  “I bet she did,” Mavis said, “and some bite marks to go with them. But I bet she wasn’t sick the whole way over like I was.”

  Simone backed away from her and was rewarded with a frown.

  “This room,” Mavis said, “it isn’t any bigger than what we had on the Normandie.”

  “You ain’t seasick now? Let me know if you are.”

  “I could be coming down with it again,” she said. “It feels like the walls are closing in.”

  “Would you be seein’ Paris if you weren’t travelin’ on my dollar? It’s an expensive city to get around in. We got to cut back on some luxuries.”

  “All I’ve seen of it are various ceilings. I could have stayed home and done that without being nauseous.”

  What other woman complained about a free trip to the most romantic city in Europe? Mavis was an ingrate. A little green around the gills, he’d admit, but an ingrate nevertheless. “You look beautiful tonight,” he said.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  If she didn’t show some appreciation fast, she could swim back to the States, or work off her passage studying ceilings over the shoulder of some of the Germans they’d run into. “I mean it,” he said. “Beautiful.”

  “From someone else, I would take it as a compliment,” she said. “Coming from you, it sounds dirty.”

  “It don’t mean you’re not,” he said. “Learn to accept a remark the way it’s intended.”

  She held out her arms, said “Come here,” and undid his tie. He thought she was going to get lovey dovey, waste precious time. Instead she retied the knot and jammed it under his chin. “You look better now,” she said. “I wouldn’t say beautiful. Better. Are you ready to go?”

  He dug a finger behind the knot for breathing room, didn’t mention that he’d been ready for half an hour.

  The language of the lobby of the Hotel LaBottiere was German. A young couple with tourist stickers from the Tyrol on their luggage was checking in. Simone appraised them as newlyweds from her shy smile and lipstick on the man’s collar. There was plenty of traffic to and from the Carillon Room, the restaurant with sidewalk seating, most of it uniformed. Simone made himself comfortable in a sofa by the desk, while Mavis settled in an easy chair near the bar. She really did look beautiful tonight. Why didn’t she take his word for it? Would he be here with a woman who wasn’t?

  A Frenchman using a walking stick and a straw boater to cultivate a lackadaisical resemblance to Maurice Chevalier offered to buy her a drink. Mavis shook her head, but the Frenchman kept on feeding her a line. Simone was about to wise him up that he wasn’t wanted, when he figured it out for himself and walked off.

  Next to try his luck was a man who pulled out a lighter as Mavis was putting a cigarette to her lips. Simone couldn’t see his face, but the lighter wasn’t a Zippo. A good thing. If Mavis would let him, he’d hang a NO AMERICANS sign around her neck. The man was definitely not American, probably not French either, judging by the stiff way he held himself. Mavis grasped his hand as she touched the cigarette to the flame, in no hurry to let go. He was taking her upstairs when Simone left. Mavis was set for the night. Her new friend seemed to be a gentleman who would buy her supper. Simone had time now to grab a few drinks and catch a show, maybe at La Caverne Negre.

  The lobby was deserted when he returned to the LaBottiere at two. From the landing he saw a knife’s edge of light under his door. Inside, Mavis was sitting up in bed, scribbling on hotel stationery. “Have a nice time?” he said.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “That’s good.”

  “And better.”

  “Who was he?”

  “A junior assistant something or other from the—” She flipped through the papers in her lap. “The M-E-S-S-E-R-S-C-H-M-I-T-T Company.”

  “What’s he doing in Paris?”

  “Looking for a location to put up a factory to build airplanes.” She pronounced it aeroplanes. “Fighters, and bombers, and also some whaddaya call them, dirg—dirigig—hell, you know, blimps.”

  “Got it all in your head?”

  “Not there.” She gave him the papers. “I’m tight. I wrote it down.”

  “What good would you be if you weren’t?” He leered at her. Before she could ask what he was getting at, he said, “You did all right. We’ll take tomorrow off and visit the Louvre.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An art museum. They got Mona Lisa there.”

  Mavis pulled a face.

  “Somethin’ the matter?”

  “I thought we could go up the Eiffel Tower and admire the view.”

  “Someone’ll be happy to pay for this information. I’ll take you when we’re flush. It’ll be more fun.”

  “Do you have a someone in mind?”

  Simone nodded. “The other side.”

  “The other side? That’s our side. The Germans, they already know about the factory.”

  “You and me, that’s one side,” he said. “The whole world, that’s another.”

  “I don’t care that we do business with Nazis,” she said. “But if it’s all the same, I don’t want to fuck any more of them.”

  “Think of it like this,” Simone said. “You’re doin’ it for America.”

  “Why can’t we see the sights tomorrow? I spent the entire night looking at the—”

  “The ceiling,” Simone said.

  “The floor. You don’t know about Germans?”

  “Thought I did.”

  “Don’t take my word.”

  Mavis had met him on the fourth floor of the Michigan House on State Street in Chicago running naked and bleeding past his door. She was there for a singing engagement in the Stockyards Lounge, which had ended badly. Laryngitis had robbed her of her voice, and she’d been booed loudly and canned on the spot. Her manager/boyfriend—Mr. Fifty Percent, she called him—gave her a beating that cost her a tooth and a deviated septum. She told Simone that she was an actress, a contract player at Monogram Pictures who had appeared in six Poverty Row oaters, had lines in four of them, and twice was kissed by Tex Ritter at the fadeout. Her career had stalled when the studio ran short of cash, and she had jumped at Mr. Fifty Percent’s offer to reinvent her as a nightclub thrush. Left high and dry, battered and hoarse in a city where she didn’t know a soul, she’d gratefully accepted Simone’s invitation to show her the European capitals. He was tightfisted, but not a bad sort, keeping
the tight fists to himself. She’d been excited about seeing Paris, and having seen what she had for six days was in a hurry to return home.

  The walls were closer when she woke at eleven, alone. Simone had threatened to cut her loose, but why would he do that after reeling in their first big fish? Trying to make sense of it, she remembered something he’d said before they went to sleep, while she was in the tub washing the German out of her. He had to go down to the telephone exchange and ring up a fellow back home who would know what to do with information about a German aircraft plant on the outskirts of Paris. Eleven A.M. here meant it was late afternoon in the States, so that was what he probably was doing. And if he wasn’t, and she never saw him again? Sleeping with a Nazi wasn’t something she recommended, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t do it again, do it as often as she had to to work off a return ticket from the most romantic city in Europe.

  “I want you to know what this call is costin’,” Simone said. “Seventy-five dollars the first three minutes, and twenty-five for every one after that. ’Less you care to reverse the charges, I can do without small talk. Am I makin’ myself understood?”

  “That little speech just set you back ten bucks,” said the man on the other end of the line, whose name was Lem Perkins. “Whyn’t you get around to what you want?”

  “Don’t expect too much till we have a deal. But I have learned,” Simone said, “that Messerschmitt Aircraft, Inc. is lookin’ to put up an assembly line outside Paris. As we speak, I’m workin’ on gettin’ my hooks on blueprints and other goodies from the junior executive scoutin’ out a site.”

  “Hot stuff,” said Perkins. “Someone will pay handsomely to have it. One thing you’re forgetting, though.”