by Lily Tuck
The sun is shining directly overhead. Both Irène and Liliane wear hats—Irène a pretty straw hat, Liliane a babyish cotton one. Once or twice, when the horses gallop toward them, Liliane’s face is sprayed with flecks from the sweat on the horses’ necks and this pleases her. She tries to lick the sweat off her cheek with her tongue.
In between chukkers, the polo players ride over to where Irène and Liliane are standing to change horses and, during the break, before dismounting, one of the polo players smiles down at Irène. During the next break, the same polo player reins in his horse next to her and says something that Liliane does not catch. His arms are brown and muscular, his teeth are very white.
“Sí, claro. Diego”—Yes, it’s clear. Diego, Irène repeats, smiling.
Liliane watches him dismount and wipe his forehead with a red kerchief, then take the bottle of water from his groom, drink some, and spit out a mouthful. Liliane frowns at him—spitting she knows is forbidden. He is wearing a green T-shirt with the number 1 on the back and the T-shirt is stained with sweat. Taking the reins of his new, fresh horse, a gray with red ribbons tied in his braided mane, he mounts it with a single leap and before he is properly settled in the saddle or his feet are in the stirrups—the gray horse already turning, moving toward the field in anticipation of the game—he waves his mallet at Irène.
“No one knows how the Inca builders carried the stones that weigh several tons up to Machu Picchu,” the guide starts up again. “Or how they carved them without mortar. At the time, they had neither iron nor the wheel. Their only calculating system was based on knotted strings.”
“Knotted strings,” Irène repeats.
“The knotted string is called quipu,” Diego, who, in addition to being a ranked polo player, is a banker, tells her. “A quipu is a storage device, not a calculator, and it consists of strings which are knotted to represent numbers, using a positional base 10 representation. For instance, if the Inca wanted to record the number 479, the nine touching knots were placed near the free end of the string, a space was left, then seven touching knots for the 10s, another space, and . . .”
Irène has never looked lovelier.
So far in Lima, Irène has managed to avoid her husband’s relatives. She does not dislike her mother-in-law, but she dislikes her sister-in-law, Edith, and Edith’s husband, Helmo. Peruvian by birth, Helmo nevertheless is German through and through. He and Edith are both staunchly, stubbornly patriotic at the same time that they are woefully out of touch. It is useless to discuss, argue, or exchange harsh words with them. Better to exchange no words at all.
Also, Irène never again wants to speak German—nor does she.
Irène’s mother-in-law, Emilie, although assimilated and baptized a Lutheran, at heart, remains Jewish, but does not speak of it. Instead, she speaks of other things: her house in Lima with the interior tiled courtyard, her brilliant red geraniums, her Spanish lessons with Señorita Hernandez, her incontinent, old dachshund, Maxie, and her only grandchild, Liliane.
Emilie grew up in Hamburg and spent her summers on a large family estate in Schleswig-Holstein, called Dunkelsdorf. She is fond of telling stories describing the details either remembered or invented of her life there to Liliane: the all-white roses her mother grew in the garden, the mean little pony she was made to ride, a disturbingly gory painting attributed to Delacroix that hung in the somber dining room. Her descriptions also bring to life her sisters—Marguerite, the plump, kind one, and Friederike, the beautiful one—and the much indulged and admired handsome younger brother and, finally, Mademoiselle Armand, the temperamental, sharp-tongued French governess.
Mon dieu, les allemands! Les boches—My God, the Germans! The boches. . . .
“In addition to French, we learned English, Latin, and my brother’s tutor taught us a bit of mathematics and philosophy. I’ll never forget him. His name was Dietrich von Mendel; he had a degree from Heidelberg University. A very nice young man. I often wonder what became of him—whether he married and had children,” Liliane’s grandmother tells her, smiling.
Dietrich von Mendel is one of the five million German dead at the end of World War I.
Liliane is too young to notice the smile or the look in her grandmother’s pale blue eyes (but nearsighted—Emilie’s eyes are nearly hidden by the thick lenses of her glasses). And Liliane is not interested in the nice tutor from Heidelberg University; instead she is interested in the pony her grandmother was made to ride.
“How was he mean?” she wants to know.
“He would reach around and try to bite me when I was getting ready to mount or he would buck to make me fall off.”
“And did you?”
Liliane has a hard time picturing her grandmother young or on horseback.
On her visits to Emilie, which usually coincide with Jeanne’s day off, Liliane also tries to play with Maxie. Inside the tiled courtyard, she throws a rubber ball for him but Maxie is too blind—cataracts have formed over his eyes—too lame, too indifferent to go after it.
“Fetch, Maxie, fetch,” she shouts at him.
When she tries to pick him up in her arms, Maxie snaps at her.
“Careful,” her grandmother says, “Maxie might bite you.”
“Like your pony,” Liliane says.
And, always, she begs her grandmother to tell her more stories.
On her days off, Jeanne leaves the house early to attend Mass at La Ermita, a red stone church a few miles from Miraflores in the Barranco district of Lima. To get there, she has to either take public transportation, the crowded, dirty bus or, if the chauffeur, Mañuel, is not occupied with driving Irène, beg a ride from him. The church, originally a fisherman’s shrine, feels right to her. A miracle occurred there—something to do with fishermen lost at sea in the fog who see a light. The light comes from the cross on the church steeple and it guides the fishermen back to the safety of land. On her knees, on the cold stone floor, surrounded by burning candles, plastic flowers, and the ornately decorated plaster statues of saints, Jeanne, a scarf tied around her head, her eyes closed, prays for the safety of her family back in Brittany. Such a long time since she has seen or had any news that she has a hard time picturing them, especially the younger ones—no longer children, teenagers now. And do they do well in school? Jeanne wonders. Are they obedient to their parents, helping out at home: milking the cow, feeding the chickens? And what about her father? Is there enough gasoline to run the boat named after her mother—Marie-Paul—and for him to fish? And the others? Has Daniel married Suzanne as he hoped to? Perhaps, they have a child—Jeanne smiles at the thought.
But, when the war is over and she leaves Peru and returns to France, Jeanne will learn that Daniel was a soldier in one of the two French divisions that stayed behind on the beaches to protect the evacuation of Dunkirk and, afterward, had to surrender to the Germans. Taken to a forced-labor camp in Poland, Daniel never came back. No doubt he was one of the nearly 25,000 French prisoners of war to die of either malnutrition, overwork, or typhoid fever.
And is Catherine still teaching school? Jeanne continues to wonder. She can almost hear how the little village children call out excitedly when they see her—Maîtresse! Maîtresse!—Teacher! Teacher! And Annick? Has she dyed her hair red the way she has always threatened to? Again, Jeanne smiles. She also thinks about her mother, Marie-Paul, whom she loves very much. So many questions! And she prays hard to soon get answers. Getting up from her knees, she lights a candle for each of them.
Then, she goes to confession.
Mon père, j’ai péché—My father, I have sinned . . .
What sins can Jeanne possibly have to confess?
That she loses patience with Liliane when, to tease her, Liliane makes as if to pick something dirty from the ground.
That she pretends not to understand when the cook asks her to keep an eye on the rice boiling on the stove while she s
teps outside for a moment and the water boils over.
That she lets the chauffeur kiss her on the way back from La Ermita, but stops him when he tries to touch her breasts.
Non, non, Mañuel, she told him, pushing away his hand.
Leaning past Jeanne, Mañuel put his hand against the door handle, not letting her out of the car.
Un besos—a kiss, Mañuel demanded in return for letting her open the car door.
Poor Jeanne.
Her timid ways, her pale skin and glasses, her starched, spotless uniform, her not joining in with the jokes and complaints in the kitchen, which, in any event, she has difficulty understanding, her not eating the spicy food, the fried beans, the tough roasted corn, her keeping herself to herself.
When the polo game is over and Diego’s team has won, Diego again rides over to where Irène is standing but, instead of dismounting, he reins in his horse and, pointing to Liliane with his whip, he says, “La niña”—the little girl.
Irène starts to shake her head, but already Liliane has let go of her hand and is reaching up to pat the horse’s wet neck. Leaning down, Diego picks up Liliane and, in one effortless motion, he sets her down in front of him. Sensing a foreign presence, the horse shakes his head up and down, and Diego speaks sharply to him at the same time that he gives the horse a slight flick with his whip as they trot off onto the empty polo field.
Diego! Liliane hears Irène call out.
Diego has his arm firmly around Liliane’s waist as she bounces uncomfortably on the horse’s neck, but she doesn’t mind.
Also, her cotton hat has come untied and falls to the ground and she is glad that Diego makes no move to retrieve it.
Diego! Irène calls again. Already, she sounds far away.
IV
In 1946, the war over, Rudy, Irène, and Liliane return to Paris and stay at the Hôtel Raphaël on the Avenue Kléber. Built in 1925, the hotel once boasted eighty-six luxurious bedrooms furnished with precious Oriental carpets, Louis XV antiques, and expensive velvet drapes, but by the time Rudy, Irène, and Liliane arrive, the carpets, the furniture, the drapes are definitely the worse for wear—as is the city, suffering still from the scarcities and deprivations caused by the German occupation.
During the war, senior German officers and staff members of the German Military Command had taken up residence in the best Paris hotels, the Crillon, the Meurice, the Lutetia, the George V, and the Raphaël—Hitler once dined with General Otto von Stülpnagel at the Hôtel Raphaël. One of the German officers staying at the Hôtel Raphaël was the Wehrmacht captain Ernst Jünger, an acclaimed but controversial writer, whose most popular and semi-autobiographical novel Storm of Steel was based on his World War I experiences. Jünger was a regular presence at Parisian theater, cabarets, and expensive restaurants and he fraternized with such well-known French writers and artists as Sacha Guitry, Jean Cocteau, the French publisher Gaston Gallimard, Pablo Picasso, and the American heiress Florence Gould. He was also linked with the so-called Stauffenberg bomb plot, the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944, by the anti-Nazi conservatives, a group of mostly old Prussian officers that included the German military commander in occupied France, General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel (first cousin to Otto von Stülpnagel whom he succeeded), and the Supreme Field Commander West General Günther von Kluge. Many of the conspirators were said to be nervously awaiting the outcome of the assassination attempt at the Hôtel Raphaël and, afterward when it failed—four people were killed in the blast, including Hitler’s stenographer, while Hitler only suffered scorched trousers and a perforated eardrum—Kluge committed suicide and Stülpnagel, after attempting to shoot himself and succeeding in only blinding himself, was hanged. Shortly after the Normandy landings, Jünger, who had never belonged to the Nazi Party, and was considered a “good German,” managed to check out of the Hôtel Raphaël in time—paying his bill and leaving a bunch of flowers at the desk—and return to Berlin where, instead of being executed or punished, he was merely dismissed from the army. Banned from publishing for a few years, he was rehabilitated in the 1950s and went on to write and publish more than fifty books. He also lived to be 102.
Liliane goes to a small French school called Les Abeilles (The Bees) on Avenue Georges Mandel. Every morning, according to the arrangement made by Rudy and Irène, and before he begins his shift, Maurice, the one-armed hotel elevator man, walks her there. On the way to school, his empty sleeve neatly folded and tucked inside his uniform pocket, Maurice holds Liliane’s hand firmly in his and teaches her the words to songs:
Il etait un petit navire,
Qui n’avait ja-ja jamais navigué,
Ohé! Ohé! Ohé! Ohé! Matelot . . .
There was once a little boat,
That never had sailed,
Ahoy! Ahoy! Ahoy! Ahoy! Sailor . . .
and
Malbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre,
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,
Ne sait quand reviendra,
Ne sait quand reviendra
Marlborough has gone to war,
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,
Who know when he will come back,
Who knows when he will come back
In the first song, the youngest sailor picks the short straw when the food on board the ship runs out and is chosen to be eaten by the others; in the second song, the Duke of Marlborough has been killed in battle and will not be coming home to his waiting wife. As Liliane sings along with Maurice, she would like to ask him how he lost his arm but she never does.
Mme Kantéronig, an elderly lady who no doubt has seen better days and is now reduced to earning her living as a governess, picks Liliane up from school. Together, they walk back to the Hôtel Raphaël. If the weather is fine and Mme Kantéronig has not forgotten to bring Liliane’s roller skates, they stop off at the Trocadéro and Liliane can roller-skate on the broad terrace there; she can also roller-skate back to the hotel on the Avenue Kléber sidewalk—waiting at street crossings for Mme Kantéronig to catch up. In the evening, Liliane and Mme Kantéronig order from room service and eat dinner together.
The food at Les Abeilles is terrible—worse than terrible. A fish dish that one day, despite threats from the teacher in charge of the lunchroom, Liliane refuses to eat reappears for her at lunch the following day. The school has only a single WC for both the boys and the girls—a hole in the floor—and Liliane never goes. She holds it in all day. At the beginning of the school year, Liliane takes piano lessons but after three or four lessons, the teacher complains to Irène that Liliane is tone-deaf and that she is wasting her time and Irène her money and the lessons stop. In addition, Liliane, who is first put in neuvième, a class equivalent to the third grade, is soon demoted to dixième, equivalent to second grade, when it becomes clear that she does not know French grammar or how to spell. A black-and-white class photo shows a motley group of nine poorly dressed, spindly legged, undernourished-looking children. Only Liliane looks remotely robust.
Rudy and Irène have the adjoining bedroom to Liliane’s in the Hôtel Raphaël. At night the door is kept shut, yet Liliane can hear them argue. She can also hear Rudy leave to spend the night elsewhere.
“Chérie, are you awake?” Irène says, opening the door that connects the two bedrooms.
Pretending to be asleep, Liliane does not answer.
Quietly, Irène comes over and kisses Liliane’s cheek and Liliane has difficulty keeping her eyes shut and her breathing regular.
She can smell her mother’s perfume. Always the same one—Joy, the most expensive perfume in the world; an ounce consists of ten thousand jasmine flowers and three hundred roses.
Where does Rudy go? Years later, he will stay at the Hôtel Royal Monceau, as elegant and expensive as the Hôtel Raphaël, and twice as large. During the Fontainebleau Conference, Ho Chi Minh spends nearly two months at the Royal Monceau while
attempting to negotiate a peace agreement with the French; the negotiations for the Israeli Declaration of Independence that is eventually signed by David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir take place in the hotel lounges; King Farouk of Egypt stays at the Royal Monceau as well—he takes up an entire floor of the hotel and once when Liliane accidentally gets off the elevator on King Farouk’s floor, his Bedouin bodyguards, stationed in the hallway, indicate with menacing gestures that she must leave.
Although most of his work after the war is in Rome, Rudy, who has been made a French citizen, comes to Paris often on business. In addition to Astoria Films, his Italian film company, he has a French film company called Gladiator Productions, and the office, conveniently, is across the street from the Hôtel Royal Monceau, on Avenue Hoche.
Before the war, Rudy produces La Maison du Maltais (Sirocco in English) and Le Dernier Tournant (a French adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice) with Charles Smadja. Charles Smadja is the business associate who came to visit Rudy while he was interned at the camp in Marolles; Smadja is also the one who, during that troubled time, agreed to give Irène money—money that belonged to Rudy—so that she could leave the country on the condition that she sleep with him. Irène threatened to tell Rudy, but for some reason she never did.
After the war, Rudy works with Émile Natan, and together they produce the musical Violettes Impériales with the Basque singer Luis Mariano. Mariano seduces the Gypsy heroine Carmen Sevilla, in the title role, by repeatedly singing to her in his grating tenor voice:
L’amour est un bouquet de violette
Love is a bouquet of violets
They also produce La Belle Otero with María Félix playing the famous courtesan whose lovers—each of whom gave her a pearl necklace—included Prince Albert I of Monaco, King Edward VII of England, the king of Serbia, the king of Spain, and the Russian Grand Dukes Peter and Nicholas. Men were said to have fought duels and/or committed suicide over Otero and a number of legends grew up around her, including the legend that the twin cupolas of the Hôtel Carlton in Cannes were modeled on her breasts. Otero amassed a huge fortune but gambled it all away and died in a state of poverty. “Women,” she was supposed to have declared, “have one mission in life: to be beautiful. When they grow old, they must break all the mirrors.”