The Heart of the Ritz

by Luke Devenish

  It was only when talking with Polly that he found a semblance of peace; a return to the comfort of certainty that had once seemed unbreakable. Jürgen’s new certainty was a simpler one: the conviction of love. When spending an hour with Polly, an untouched girl, Jürgen’s mind often wandered to a time he believed could not be far off, a future when he and Polly shared domesticity. Love gave Jürgen the certainty that this bliss would come soon.

  These thoughts were uppermost in his mind as he wandered the exhibition hall of the Musée de l’Orangerie, ostensibly looking at the sculptural supermen created by Breker, but really looking only for Polly. He had something for her in his jacket; something precious. They had arranged to meet – the Ritz being difficult for the conducting of love affairs that were anything other than lust trysts – and they had chosen the Breker exhibition because, while it was no less public, it was unarguably blameless. He had seen it four times; the first at the opening night soirée when the crush of sycophants had blocked out the art. He had returned when the crowds were less and was startled to find the experience of viewing the sculptures akin to catching himself in the mirror when stepping out of a bath. Breker’s subjects were Aryan titans; specimens of physical perfection. Jürgen saw himself in all of them and could just as well have been a model for Breker, so close was the resemblance, he thought. Indeed, if Polly had been a lesser girl, of the sort he had known in abundance before her, Jürgen might have claimed that he was the model, just to boost himself that little bit more in her eyes. He knew he could never tell such a bald lie to Polly, of course, and yet the choice of the Breker exhibition for their rendezvous had still seemed ideal for the reflected appeal the sculptures might cast upon him. Breker’s supermen were nudes. Perhaps, Jürgen hoped, the sight of his marble doubles would instil desire in Polly. He and she had been intimate for months but their relationship was not at all sexual. Polly’s chasteness was nourishing, his love for her thrived in its soil. Yet still he was a man of needs.

  The arrest of the Comtesse and her servant in the Marais round-up had upset Polly, coming as it had barely six months after the internment of Frau Huckstepp. Lest Polly labour under the falsehood that the Wehrmacht had been part of it, Jürgen had been at pains to make clear that the entire initiative had been that of the French Government – the gendarmerie had enforced it, after all. Polly had accepted this without conflict, which had been a great relief for Jürgen. He only wished that the rest of the city might have spared the Occupiers blame as well. The screams of Jewish children being shoved onto the green and cream buses before dawn had pulled non-Jews from their beds to stare down from their windows in horror. A change had come over Paris as a consequence. No longer did the city feel like a vacation spot to Jürgen’s compatriots. Once, their shows of politeness, their sharp, crisp uniforms, their blond and blue-eyed sex appeal had made for an easy time of it when out on the streets. Now, this was markedly less so. In response to new provocations from Parisians the authorities had upped reprisals.

  He saw Polly now among the sculptures and a smile came instantly to him. ‘Polly.’

  ‘Hello Günther.’ She was dressed beautifully; her smile matched his own. ‘You wore your uniform for me.’

  He was bashful; a boy. ‘Of course. You asked me to.’ She was inspecting every inch of him in it. He made himself stand taller next to the towering nudes. ‘I have a new suit I had thought I would wear, though,’ he said, ‘bought from Printemps.’ He knew she liked shops. ‘You would appreciate it.’

  ‘Is it shiny?’

  Was she teasing him? ‘I suppose it is. It is still very new.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s very nice but I do like your Wehrmacht uniform best. That’s why I hoped you would wear it for me.’

  ‘Then how could I not?’ His heart was soaring. She slipped her arm through his, mindful of the holstered pistol at his side.

  They proceeded to look at the sculptures in companionable silence; the hall full of stark naked Aryans.

  ‘That one looks like you, Günther.’

  He blushed scarlet as if he was the virgin.

  ‘He really does. He has your face.’

  ‘We Germans all look the same,’ he joked. Unconsciously, he assessed the sculpture’s bunched genitals before flicking his eyes to hers. She was assessing them, too. His scarlet cheeks went crimson. He moved her on, ever conscious of the precious item he carried inside his jacket. ‘There is something I should like to talk to you about tonight, Polly.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Polly, ‘there’s something I should like to talk about with you, too.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A moment’s pause. ‘There is no hurry for it, of course. We are looking at the sculptures.’

  ‘I have a confession, Günther.’

  A moment’s alarm. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have seen them before.’

  He chuckled. ‘So have I. Three times at least already, perhaps four.’

  ‘I certainly like them,’ said Polly, ‘especially the one that looks so much like you.’

  He resisted the near-overpowering urge to turn back to check it again.

  ‘It is such a nice evening outside,’ said Polly, ‘why don’t we walk by the Seine for a while instead?’

  He thought of the nocturnal privacy afforded by the Right Bank quays. In the daytime they were choked with sunbathers; by night they were alluringly still. ‘That would be nice,’ he said.

  Her arm still in his, they left the gallery together and strolled down a path in the Tuileries gardens. The summer air was heavy and scented. It was already past dusk and the last of the birds were reaching their symphony crescendo in the plane trees. ‘I hope I never leave Paris,’ he told her, spontaneously.

  She turned in surprise. ‘But don’t you miss the Fatherland?’

  He was losing his head to her, but how else should one be with the love of one’s life except honest? ‘Not so much lately, no.’

  She smiled. ‘But your family in Saxony?’

  There’d never been love there, only land. ‘I doubt they miss me.’

  ‘Oh, Günther, I’m sure they do.’

  He didn’t want her troubling herself with it. ‘They say Paris ruins you forever once you’ve seen it. So, what does it do once you’ve lived in it then?’ he wondered.

  ‘It transforms you,’ said Polly, sagely.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jürgen. ‘This is why I wish never to leave.’

  They had reached the road at the riverside and could see the steps by the Pont Royal that led down. ‘Let’s take those to go to the lower quay,’ suggested Polly, ‘right by the water, it’ll be lovely.’

  Jürgen felt his heart quicken. ‘All right then.’

  They crossed the carless road and strolled along the pavement that led to the Pont. Jürgen felt Polly’s fingers press his bicep, the touch unaccountably erotic. They passed another German on the flagstones; a slim-hipped youngster with a shock of blond hair and a blue serge suit just like the one Jürgen had purchased from Printemps. It too was shiny.

  ‘I think we Germans might lack imagination,’ he joked.

  ‘Hmm?’

  She hadn’t seen it. He patted her hand.

  They reached the Pont Royal. Down the flight of stone steps lay the lower quay, so inviting in the last light of dusk. The Seine gently lapped at the edge. There seemed to be few other strollers out.

  They began to descend. A figure stirred. A girl was slumped on the stairs. As they passed her, Jürgen saw she had a begging bowl before her; the girl was sightless. Recognition stirred. ‘I know that kid.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The blind girl – she lives at the Ritz.’

  They had passed her by now and so Polly had to turn to look. ‘No, she doesn’t.’

  ‘Are you sure? She looks like her.’

  ‘But how would she get all the way here when she can’t even see?’

  He had no answer to that question, and within a se
cond had forgotten it anyway.

  They reached the lower quay. The night air was cooler, trees rustled overhead. ‘And has Paris transformed you?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Ah.’ Where to begin on this count, he thought.

  ‘I suppose that’s a yes?’

  He stopped now. Took both her hands inside his. The gift he had in his jacket pocket was begging to make itself known. ‘Polly . . .’ he started.

  ‘Describe it to me, Günther?’

  ‘What, my love?’ He had called her that without even thinking.

  She didn’t flinch. ‘Your Paris transformation – what has changed about you in the two years that you’ve lived here?’

  His thoughts had become scattered. He wanted to talk about other things. ‘Let me see . . .’

  ‘Do you believe still?’

  ‘Believe what?’

  Her eyes raked him. ‘In what you’re supposed to believe as a German?’

  She’d thrown him. He saw flashes of his masters at the Ritz; fat pansy Göring the transvestite with his bowl full of jewels and his pupils like pinpricks with dope. Jürgen tried to blink these pictures away, tried to think of the Führer, so remote, so unknowable – it was better not to know; ignorance meant stainlessness in the end. ‘Of course, I do, my love – why would I not believe?’

  ‘Because of the Jews?’ she wondered.

  There was movement on the steps, but he was blind to it, caught in a conversation he’d not wanted. He reached into his uniform jacket. ‘Polly, I want to tell you something – ask you something, really.’

  ‘I know. And I want to tell you something, too, Günther.’

  His hand gripped the little box, fingering the hinge of the lid. ‘All right. But who should go first?’

  She glanced where his hand bulged expectantly in his jacket. ‘I will,’ she told him. ‘It won’t take very long. You see, this is for Alexandrine.’

  He blinked. ‘What is?’

  ‘And Suzette. It’s for both of them, Günther. It’s for all of them, all the Jews.’

  He was confused. ‘What is, Polly? What are you talking about?’

  The sudden scuffle of feet on the quay stones made him glance behind just as he received the first hammer blow. He didn’t feel pain, only annoyance that someone had interrupted the interlude. With the second blow to his temple he had a déjà vu vision; his assailant was the same shock-haired German in shiny blue serge. The third and fourth blows brought pain to him now, and the awakening of instinct; he went to reach for the Luger at his side, but his trigger hand was still thrust inside his jacket, gripping at the box. Instinct clashed with instinct until another blow came, then a fresh assault: a breath-stopping punch to his groin. He looked down to see that it was not a punch, but a knife wound; the blind girl from the steps had stabbed at him.

  Jürgen fell to the ground, an artery severed. More hammer blows rained upon him. ‘Stop –’ he tried to tell his fellow German.

  Polly slipped the gun from his holster; the ammunition magazines.

  ‘Stop it, my love.’

  The last blow took the light from his eyes.

  It was only as they pushed his body into the river – Polly with Tommy and Odile – that Jürgen’s trigger hand came free from his jacket. The little Cartier box that he clutched in his fingers had opened in the violence.

  Lana Mae’s emerald, now set into a ring, glittered for a moment on the surface of the Seine, before it sank, disappearing, never to be given in love.

  PART FOUR

  Interception

  15

  21 July 1944

  Polly’s discipline of maintaining resistance had almost taken on a meditative quality in the two years that had passed since she and her friends had killed Jürgen. The Occupation had entered its fifth year. Polly had been a girl of sixteen when she’d began fighting back, and now she was twenty, her girlhood gone. She had acquired an air of circumspection to her bearing – a steady heart and an ordered mind. As Polly’s commitment to resistance had deepened, so had the need to disguise it.

  And so, Polly experienced victories as if she’d gleaned them from a newspaper, stripped of emotion, scattered among seemingly inconsequential things. Among these trivial triumphs was the attack where grenades had been tossed inside a hotel entrance in the German-favoured 9th arrondissement. There was a similar incident at the exclusively German restaurant at the Porte d’Asnières. There was the grenade that was thrown at a Wehrmacht patrol crossing the Boulevard de Courcelles – a privately gratifying act for being close to the house of the late Comte. Then there were the derailments of trains leaving Gare de l’Est on the horrific ride east to Poland.

  With every resistance victory, Polly thought of Lana Mae and Alexandrine. Her private thoughts took on the tone of a chatty letter to them; a letter never to be sent. Of Alexandrine’s fate, Polly knew nothing, which was both agonising and energising. So much of what Polly did in resistance was fuelled by her rage and grief for the missing Comtesse.

  Polly knew her guardians would have grimly enjoyed dissecting the details of daily life in Paris now. There was the chronic soap shortage, for instance, that had made riding on the Metro in the warmer months beyond endurable. There was the fashion of dressing shabbily which had become chic in some circles. There was the mania for women wearing trousers, not just because it made cycling easier, but because these clothes so often belonged to men who had been killed or made prisoner. There was the French Government’s response to this trend – condemnations of the trouser-wearers for their moral turpitude – which was universally, hilariously, ignored.

  It was with her lost guardians ever in mind that Polly observed ‘dry’ Paris three days every week, when the cafés could not serve alcohol. The city was without gas; electricity was unreliable. People cooked as best they could over ten-gallon cans welded together, yet everyone was constantly hungry. Diets were supplemented by rutabaga, a variety of turnip once thought fit only for cattle. Each day’s new dawn brought a cacophony of rooster crows to the city; people tended their undeclared poultry in back alleys, rooftops, garrets and broom closets. Others stole outside before sunrise to chop protected blades of grass from the few remaining parks for the rabbits they raised in their bathtubs.

  With both her lost guardians uppermost in her thoughts, Polly embraced with particular passion the year’s greatest publishing sensation, Autant en emporte le vent, a translated American novel, originally titled Gone with the Wind. There’d been an obsession for this book among the women of Paris. Polly had read and re-read it and had cried at it often. The spirited heroine’s hardships in another, far-off war in the past, somehow made the sufferings experienced by women in this one even more poignant.

  * * *

  The Belgian griffons stirred only seconds before Mimi did: the air raid sirens had started; a nightly event in Paris now that the tide of the war had seemingly turned against Hitler. Mimi lifted her head from her pillow and fumbled for her spectacles in order to glance at her trusted Swiss wall clock. It was just on 02.15. The Allies had become as punctual as the Occupiers. Mimi patted the heads of her griffons and told them to stay at her heels. She slipped out of her bed, found her mules easily on the rug where she’d left them, before wrapping herself in her old peignoir. She moved to the entrance of her suite without pause, opening the doors to let herself and the dogs into the corridor, and pulling the doors softly shut behind her.

  Taking care to stick to the carpeted parts of the stairs, through fear of the noise she might make on the boards, Mimi descended the two flights to the lobby. The area was deserted: the Cambon bar closed; l’Espadon long done for the evening. Satisfied, Mimi continued her descent to the basement level, all the way to the kitchens. The sirens cried on in the streets, unignorable even below ground. Mimi’s memory for every last detail of the Ritz was unrivalled; she picked her way through the eccentric maze of storerooms, cellars and hallways, until she reached the Vendôme side of the hotel and entered the basement kitchen there
.

  The kitchen was wrapped in darkness. Yet Mimi went smoothly to the wall box that housed the electrical switches and waited, holding her breath for a moment, while she muttered a simple prayer. The shriek of the sirens was joined by the distant rumble of aircraft; the Allied bombers were now very near. Mimi knew exactly which switch did what, and so she flicked the one she needed.

  Outside, in the Place Vendôme, the beautiful seventeenth-century façade of the world-famous Hôtel Ritz was abruptly floodlit: the perfect means for the Allied planes overhead to orient themselves above darkened Paris and find their intended targets. Mimi had no fear at all that the Ritz might be bombed; everyone knew that the planes sought German military facilities, far from the Place Vendôme, somewhere out by the railway yards in the suburbs. No one in central Paris even bothered with air raid shelters these days, preferring to put pillows over their heads and sleep through the attacks.

  Mimi left the lights on for as long as her nerves held. Tonight, this was exactly five minutes before she flicked them off; long enough for the Allied planes to fly past overhead; long enough for Mimi to hear the first of their bombs detonate.

  When Mimi traced her way back through the basement rooms, the little griffons paused at the closed door to a storeroom, sniffing at the threshold.

  ‘What’s there, girls? What’s so interesting?’

  She tried the door handle: locked.

  ‘There’s nothing, no one – let’s go back to our bed.’

  Mimi was well prepared with an explanation should she have actually encountered someone. The dogs needed to relieve themselves, she would have claimed, but the street was too dangerous; and so, she had placed a litter box for this purpose below stairs. She had even trained the dogs to use it, should proof be required.