The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  The old woman didn’t condemn her for it. ‘I admire you for showing the Occupiers how these things ought to be done, Madame.’

  Alexandrine was appreciative. ‘I never dress down for the queues.’

  ‘Quite so. What are we Parisiennes without our style? Lose that and we’ve lost it all, I say.’

  Alexandrine nodded, clearly warmed by the words. She opened the voluminous bag at her arm. ‘I have something I was going to give away today. Perhaps you might like it? I think it would look well on you, Alma.’ She produced a Hermès scarf, patterned with horses.

  The old woman’s eyes lit up. ‘Madame – you don’t want it?’

  ‘Not anymore.’ Alexandrine draped it around Alma’s neck. Polly remembered the unexpected pleasure the Comtesse had found when giving away the contents of her suitcase in the exodus. She knew this had fuelled her to repeat the largesse. ‘There. Doesn’t it suit her, Suzette?’ She completed the knot.

  Suzette winked at Alma. ‘More money than sense.’

  ‘You are very kind to an old woman,’ said Alma. She planted a kiss on Alexandrine’s cheek.

  Polly’s little group had reached the head of the queue, with only the young gendarme’s say-so to come before they could enter the butcher’s shop. Cold and bored, yet far better fed than any of the women in the queue, the man stared into space.

  ‘I want to see Tommy,’ said Suzette, from nowhere.

  Ripples of reaction passed through Polly and Alexandrine. Both were all too aware of the gendarme. Alexandrine glanced at Polly, who tried to implore Alexandrine wordlessly. How could the Comtesse ever imagine she didn’t know about Eduarde’s son, Polly thought, even if she wasn’t secretly resisting with him? Then Polly feared that she, in turn, was deluding herself. How much did Alexandrine know of Tommy’s actions?

  ‘He is safe and sound, you mustn’t worry yourself,’ said Alexandrine, at last.

  ‘But I do worry. And so, I want to see him.’

  Alma had tuned out, fluffing at the scarf.

  ‘I told you,’ said Alexandrine, ‘he is safe and sound. Don’t you think it’s a good thing that he stays that way?’

  ‘Did he put himself on the Jew register?’

  Alexandrine kept her voice very low. ‘How would I know that?’

  ‘And that’s your “safe and sound”, is it? You should know, Madame. I only pray that he didn’t.’

  Polly watched carefully as Alexandrine reconsidered her answer. ‘Of course, he didn’t, Suzette. It would have exposed him. He knows why he’s been hidden.’

  ‘You know nothing,’ said Suzette. ‘He was writing to me, we had a secret system – hiding letters for each other in the Tuileries until I begged him to stop. It had become too dangerous.’

  Polly guiltily recalled the letter to Suzette that she had read.

  ‘I didn’t want him outside in the streets. Now I don’t hear anything at all from him.’ There were tears in Suzette’s eyes. ‘You resent me because I helped raise that boy.’

  Alexandrine said nothing, and Polly knew why. It was true.

  ‘His mother died,’ said Suzette.

  ‘The Hungarian slut.’ Alexandrine spat the words automatically.

  ‘She was dead and he was just a tiny kid.’

  ‘Eduarde’s kid to his mistress,’ Alexandrine reminded her. ‘Not me.’

  ‘None so heartless as the wronged,’ Suzette said. But the look she gave Polly was pleading, before she turned to Alexandrine again. ‘Where do you think this is going, Madame?’

  ‘Where what is going?’

  ‘Their rules. The krauts. What waits for us all at the end of it, do you think?’

  Alexandrine seemed to hesitate.

  ‘Well, waits for me, anyway,’ said Suzette. ‘You’ll be all right, Madame. You’re not a Jew, after all.’

  Polly saw the old servant had skilfully pricked Alexandrine’s Achilles heel.

  ‘Please stop saying that. I converted.’

  ‘For the jewels and the clothes. God wasn’t fooled by your phony faith, even if the rabbi was.’

  Alexandrine closed her eyes, vulnerable to Suzette’s barbed tongue.

  ‘No idea what’s ahead for the Jews then?’ Suzette prodded her.

  Alexandrine had nothing to say.

  ‘Let me know when you think of something,’ Suzette said, turning her back on her. ‘And when you do, you might even let me see the boy.’

  The young gendarme signalled. It was their turn to go in. Suzette slipped her arm through Alma’s and the two old women went inside together. Polly hesitated, poised to follow. Alexandrine remained where she stood, unable to move, ashamed.

  ‘Alexandrine?’

  The gendarme clocked her. ‘What’s wrong with you, Madame? Don’t you want your pork sausage?’

  The Comtesse bristled.

  The gendarme thought himself a wit. ‘But you’re a kike, aren’t you? You won’t want your ham baguette either.’

  ‘We are going inside, Monsieur,’ said Polly, holding her hand out for Alexandrine.

  But the aristocrat didn’t take it, regarding the young gendarme as she would a social inferior. ‘Forgive me, Monsieur, but your accent confuses. Are you French – or are you German?’

  It was the uniformed man’s turn to bristle.

  ‘Are you deaf?’ he challenged. ‘I’m more French than you’ll ever be, Jew.’ He stepped forward and shoved Alexandrine towards the shop entrance. ‘Buy your butcher’s meat or go.’

  Polly knew that Alexandrine had never been handled in such a manner by anyone. Paralysed on the shop step, she saw the Comtesse brush imaginary dirt from where his hands had dared touch her. ‘That is not necessary, Monsieur.’

  ‘This uniform says what’s necessary, Jew.’ He shoved her harder, and on the cold winter pavement Alexandrine lost her balance and slipped heavily to her knees.

  Polly jumped to help her. ‘Alexandrine!’

  But the gendarme pushed her back to the door. ‘Leave it.’

  Alexandrine had grazed the flesh under her stockings. Those in the queue had fallen silent, watching in fear. She tried to right herself.

  ‘Stay there, Jew.’ The gendarme held his pistol on her. ‘Now apologise.’

  Polly remembered the confidence that a weapon could bring. Where was Marjorie’s gun now? she wondered. Was it being put to a use any better than she could have put it to here? She fantasised about snatching the gendarme’s weapon from his hands. How would he speak to them then, she wondered? Would he find his last shred of respect?

  ‘For what should I apologise, Monsieur?’ Alexandrine asked him. ‘For the misunderstanding?’

  Through the door, Polly could see Suzette with Alma, making their selections, oblivious.

  ‘I regret I was confused,’ said Alexandrine. ‘The truth of your origins is so obvious to me now.’

  The rough treatment had excited the gendarme, his enjoyment of it obvious. He had grown hard in his trousers. Yet Polly saw that he wavered, as if unsure of how next to proceed with a well-spoken woman he had felled on the pavement. He was no older than Polly was; new and inexperienced, over-reacting to tiny provocations – or perhaps the gendarmerie had been instructed to do whatever they liked these days. She doubted he’d had his pistol long. What would come now, she wondered, a rape overture?

  ‘Please. The lady has apologised, Monsieur Gendarme,’ said a voice from behind Alexandrine. Polly saw an elderly Jewish man take himself out of the line. ‘She regrets her mistake, you can see that.’

  Alexandrine allowed him to help her get to her feet, with Polly’s assistance. When she was standing again, the gendarme regarded all three of them with open contempt. ‘You think of yourself as some classy piece of tail,’ he spat at Alexandrine.

  Polly was shaking now. He would smell her fear. He would smell the fear in all of them and start firing his gun. Who would stop him? Polly wondered.

  Alexandrine’s aristocratic breeding compelled her to respond to him as a
woman of the upper class. ‘What I think is unimportant these days. What do you think, Monsieur?’

  ‘I think I’ll fuck your pussy off if I see you again,’ he told her. ‘I’ll bring my mates along.’

  As if the violence of his words hadn’t occurred to her, Alexandrine hooked her handbag at her elbow and straightened her coat. Her leg was bleeding from where she’d struck it. ‘I did indeed make a mistake, Monsieur,’ she said, not to the gendarme, but to the elderly man, ‘I know now exactly what nationality this officer is and I will not have reason to ask him again.’ She turned to the baby-faced policeman. ‘Heil Hitler.’

  He frowned, stymied by this.

  ‘Polly?’ Alexandrine clearly had no intention of entering the store and now made to leave. She tried to walk with élan but found that her knee hobbled her.

  ‘Here, lean on my arm,’ said Polly. She knew it was selfish to think they’d have nothing to eat from this episode.

  The old man reappeared at Alexandrine’s left, supporting her other arm. ‘Please go back, Monsieur,’ she told him, ‘don’t lose your place in the queue.’

  But he wouldn’t. ‘I know you, Madame,’ he whispered to Alexandrine.

  Alexandrine indulged this, as she always did, when someone recognised her face from a society page or similar.

  ‘You wed the Comte Ducru-Batailley.’

  Polly saw this surprised her. ‘Yes, Monsieur, I did.’

  ‘I sometimes help the rabbi at the Synagogue de la Victoire,’ he told her. ‘I was there on the day you converted.’

  Alexandrine stopped still. Would he insult her now? Polly wondered. Would he call her guardian a fraud?

  But the old man’s eyes were glistening. ‘It was so beautiful to see – I thought myself privileged for it. You were resplendent that day, Madame. The love that you had for God shone from your face like a sunrise.’

  Alexandrine’s voice nearly broke. ‘Thank you, Monsieur. It was a very special day. I’m so honoured you witnessed it.’

  He held tight on her arm, a quiet desperation in his eyes. ‘What will happen to us, Madame?’

  She glanced at Polly. ‘Happen?’

  He cocked his head at the hateful gendarme they had left in their wake. ‘His kind are no better than the krauts these days. The things they once muttered behind their hands they shout openly now. What will it lead to, Madame? What do they plan for us?’

  To Polly’s mind, Alexandrine should have been made fearful by this. Yet she watched as her guardian’s heart seemed to soar with the joy of inclusion. ‘Whatever it might be, Monsieur, we will survive it as one,’ she promised him, tender.

  He nodded, comforted. ‘Has it ever been otherwise for us?’

  * * *

  This little joke is a gift to you from the Freedom Volunteers.

  A Parisian man reports to his wife some horrible news. At 9.20 the previous evening, a wicked Jew attacked and killed a German in the Metro. He even ate the German’s entrails, starting with the heart.

  The wife laughs herself silly at this, ‘You’ll believe anything you hear, Pierre!’

  ‘But it’s true!’ her husband insists.

  ‘No, my love, it’s impossible.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘First,’ says the wife, ‘Jews don’t eat pigs; second, Germans have no heart; and, third, at 9.20 in the evening everyone is at home listening to the BBC.’

  Smiling – always smiling – Tommy held his folded identification papers ready in his hand. But the pair of Wehrmacht sentries at the Barbès-Rochechouart Metro entrance didn’t want them. They almost never wanted them, now. First, as they had come to do routinely with him, they looked at his hair, then they looked at his face. Then Tommy kept his easy smile in place as they drew further assumptions from his height and build, before finally reading him as German, or something like German, and thus something like them. Indeed, Tommy was just like them. For him, looking in the face of any Wehrmacht sentry was to look in a mirror.

  Then the sentry looked at Odile on his arm.

  On these excursions the younger girl left her shaded glasses inside her pocket and her stick at home. They had realised early on that nothing about her blindness should seem too theatrical to observers, in case it was doubted, and so Odile kept her eyes exposed for the world – and Wehrmacht sentries – to see them for what they were: milky and useless. It was hard to keep a good ham down, however. Odile enjoyed adding a tic to the spectacle.

  ‘What’s wrong with the kid?’ the sentry asked Tommy in German. The other sentry started checking the papers of people standing behind them in the line.

  At these times Tommy was thankful he’d learned German at school. ‘She’s simple,’ he told the sentry.

  Mouth gaping, Odile directed her sightless eyes to the German’s voice. Tommy guessed she was going to dribble.

  ‘Poor thing,’ said the sentry, wincing, and Tommy read him as one of those Occupiers whose ideological foundations were shaky. There sometimes seemed to be more of those than fanatics.

  ‘She’s my cousin,’ Tommy offered, softer. He put his arm around Odile’s shoulder. ‘She can’t help how she is. She’s only got me in the world to look after her.’

  ‘I know how it is, brother,’ said the sentry, sympathetic. He waved them inside.

  Tommy kept his arm around Odile as they descended the stairs.

  ‘You’re cuddly,’ Odile snickered.

  ‘Stop it. Do you want to fall down?’

  ‘No, I want to feel nice and safe in your arms,’ Odile joked.

  It suddenly felt to Tommy that there was more than a word of truth to this. He looked long at her sideways, seeing her anew, as Odile remained apparently oblivious.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Your face looks different . . .’

  ‘It does? How?’

  He tried to find the right words. ‘Not quite so . . . pouty.’

  ‘That’s a compliment, is it?’

  Tommy didn’t know what it was. He flushed his thoughts away. ‘Just stop teasing. We’re here now.’

  The two of them reached the end of the stairs and began to make their way along the corridor to the platform. It didn’t matter which platform they chose; the destination was always meaningless.

  This Metro, like too many others Tommy had been to lately, was plastered with posters for a so-called exhibition the authorities had opened at the Palais Berlitz, in the 2nd arrondissement. Billed as ‘The Jew in France’, it promised to show how the evil depth of the Judaic influence leeched at the nation. Loudspeakers promoted the exhibition up and down boulevards, from the Opéra to the Place de la République. The image selected for the poster was unapologetically ugly: a woman on the ground, covered with the French flag, with a vulture perched on her belly. The caption read, ‘Frenchmen, help me!’

  ‘Has this place got any of those shitty posters?’ Odile whispered.

  Tommy grunted a disgusted yes.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Odile. ‘It deserves what it gets then. How long ’til the next train comes?’

  Tommy looked for the clock. ‘About twelve minutes.’

  ‘Even better. We won’t have to miss one and wait. The next one will give us enough time.’

  ‘Let’s do it then.’

  Odile squeezed Tommy’s arm in resolve.

  They now fell into the act they’d rehearsed. Tommy began to guide them to a spot he deemed suitable; somewhere neither too close to other commuters on the platform, or so far away as to lose all the benefit of witnesses. With an ideal spot found, and aware there were now lots of eyes upon them – him being a German-looking blond boy with a blind girl on his arm – Tommy stooped to tie up his shoelace, having deliberately untied it in the street. This left Odile ‘unsupervised’ to walk freely to the edge of the platform.

  Odile began to sing, her voice full-throated and warm:

  ‘Wait for me in this country of France

  I’ll be back soon, keep confident . . .’

  �
�Monsieur!’ A woman who was watching them pointed at Odile. ‘Your friend?’

  Tommy looked up from his shoelace to Odile’s back. ‘She’ll be all right, Madame. She knows her way. She just likes to sing and listen for the trains.’ He went back to tying the knot.

  The woman accepted that, but still looked uneasy, her eyes fixed on Odile.

  Odile was toeing at the platform edge. ‘I wanna go,’ she called to Tommy over her shoulder.

  ‘We are going,’ Tommy answered, ‘as soon as the train comes.’

  But he had apparently misinterpreted.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said the woman who had called out to him. She now pointedly looked away.

  Others followed her like a wave, turning their faces from an unwelcome spectacle.

  ‘Oh, my heavens . . .’

  ‘That’s too dreadful.’

  Odile had turned around and hitched up her skirt, hanging her behind over the edge of the platform. She was urinating onto the tracks.

  ‘Don’t!’ hissed Tommy. He leapt up. The pissing dribbled to a stop and Odile covered herself. ‘I’m so sorry, Mesdames,’ a mortified Tommy told the witnesses collectively, and then to Odile he said: ‘I’ll take you to the urinal, you’re disgusting.’ He began to drag the blind girl back the way they’d come in.

  People looked acutely embarrassed for them.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mesdames,’ Tommy repeated.

  He knew no one had seen what Odile had dropped onto the tracks in the act of relieving herself.

  There was the sudden rush of warm air that said a train was approaching from the tunnel. Tommy and Odile stopped. ‘It’s come early,’ whispered Odile, horrified.

  ‘Stay cool,’ said Tommy.

  The train rattled into the Metro station, and in doing so, set off the little device that Odile had tossed from the platform. A projectile shot forward from where the train’s front wheel triggered it, and broke into dozens of tiny, flickering pieces of paper that rained onto the heads of commuters. New butterflies.

  Tommy and Odile began calmly ascending the platform stairs.

  A young German officer, little older than they were, rushed past them, heading down; he was a naval ensign, dressed in the whites of the Kriegsmarine. Tommy turned to look after him. The young ensign slowed down, making his way towards the first-class carriage at the centre, reserved for Occupiers. As he placed his foot on the threshold of the door, another young man, French, no older than eighteen, stepped forward from the group of commuters.