by Jane Thynne
‘Fräulein Vine. Or can I call you Clara . . .? You must call me Hans.’
Reuber propped one ankle across his leg and curled a hand round his glass of beer.
‘Can I say how flattered and surprised we were to have you visit our company.’
‘I was a bit surprised myself, actually. But it’ll be an honour to contribute.’
‘Indeed. Here’s to your good health.’ He raised his glass, and tipped a little down his throat. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘Just off the Avenue Foch.’
‘Very nice. I’m at the Crillon. They’ve given me a fabulous room. It looks out over the Place de la Concorde. Here.’ He hauled a booklet from his top pocket and Clara saw the familiar stationery of the Ministry of Propaganda. ‘Before we go any further you might want to take a look at our briefing. These are the guidelines for our performances.’
Clara scanned the first page, recognizing in the dreary official bullet points the familiar mix of hectoring and bureaucracy that was copyright of Joseph Goebbels.
Pieces in foxtrot rhythm are not to exceed twenty per cent of the repertoire.
Musical pace must not exceed the degree of allegro commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation.
Music of the barbarian races conducive to dark instincts is banned.
‘Dark instincts?’
‘Ah yes. On that subject Herr Doktor Goebbels is most particular.’
‘That much I do know.’
Reuber spooned a dollop of foie gras onto a square of toasted brioche and shrugged complicitly. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that we have such formidable competition. Most of the cabarets have reopened. The Don Juan, Eve, Chez Elle, the Tabarin, the Lido – they’re all going strong. Not to mention the Moulin Rouge and the floor show at the Sheherazade. Every soldier in the Reich has heard of the Moulin Rouge and you know what young men are. The girls here are nothing like the ones you see in Berlin.’
Most of the girls appearing in Berlin’s theatres now resembled statues by Arno Breker, the Führer’s favourite sculptor – hefty nudes with sleek flanks and the blank docility of Friesian cows.
‘So how can you compete?’ said Clara. ‘Without invoking “dark instincts”?’
‘A question that has been at the forefront of my mind and the only answer I’ve come up with is to offer them a little of everything – starting with my own humble performance,’ he grinned with transparently false modesty, ‘followed by a magician, a chorus act, a few musical numbers and at the end a song from you to bring the whole show together. With luck it should remind them of the Request Concert back home. Nobody could call that a dark instinct.’
‘You’re not saying the audience can request any song?’
‘Don’t panic. I decide the songs. And I’ll make sure you know the request in advance. Tonight, I’m thinking of Schön ist die Nacht. You know it, of course?’
How could she not know the most popular song of the past year? Back in Berlin you could not set foot in a nightclub without hearing its wistful strains. It mingled nostalgia with a joyful love of the old Berlin.
Reuber winked and tipped the beer down his throat.
‘Truth is, and don’t tell Herr Doktor Goebbels, I have made the smallest concession to the dark instincts. I’ve had a consignment of girls sent from the Folies-Bergère to satisfy the more basic of appetites. Young men expect that kind of thing and we wouldn’t want to disappoint them, especially in Paris. But their lasting impression,’ his voice lowered to a seductive whisper, ‘will be of you. And if your voice evokes any man’s dark instincts, as I fear it may, then I can’t be held responsible.’
With this blatant flirtation, his eyes bored into hers and momentarily Clara wondered if, perhaps, Reuber might be covertly exercising his hypnotic powers. Then she reassured herself that she would not easily be susceptible to hypnosis; her need for control was too great, and the idea of relaxing her grip and letting anyone else command her thoughts was a kind of horror. You got enough practice at that in Berlin, where a torrent of heavy-handed government propaganda issued day and night from radios and public loudspeakers, edging its way into every corner of the soul. Yet it wouldn’t do to be complacent. There was obviously far more to Hans Reuber than his silky demeanour might suggest. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here in Paris, trying to discover if he was a spy.
Breaking eye contact she focused on the square outside, where a photographer with a Leica and an official armband was taking pictures of a flower seller. The old woman, planted behind a cart of tulips more riotous and scarlet than the swastika banner draped on the building behind them, was gnarled and impassive like an ancient stump. As the German photographer crouched and snapped around her she remained unsmiling, hands crossed on the head of a stick, and only the slight droop at the edges of her mouth suggesting apprehension of what was to come.
‘Everywhere you look, someone’s taking a picture.’
‘Goebbels has promised that Paris will be a recreational city for the Reich,’ said Reuber, following her gaze. ‘Apparently people at home are desperate for pictures and that sort of thing can’t be left to chance. The city must look attractive, whatever his private feelings about it.’
His meaning was plain. Goebbels hated France, Germany’s historic enemy, yet this was to be a model occupation and it was important to project the image of a thriving city whose citizens were happily coexisting with their conquerors. Courting lovers in the parks, busy cafés lining the boulevards, beautiful girls, old men playing the accordion. All the clichés. Clara recalled the busload of German soldiers, their faces alight with excitement, and one soldier throwing a bar of chocolate to a group of pretty girls. Paris was to be one big tourist brochure saturated with colour; the soaring blue of the sky, the pulsing pinks and yellows in the shop windows, the stately jade of the Tuileries. So much more vivid than the indomitable buildings of Berlin, with their leaden façades rising starkly against a bone-bleached sky.
‘It would be hard to take a bad photo of such a beautiful city.’
Reuber smiled.
‘And we Germans are especially susceptible to beauty.’
It was only a whisper, the subtlest of intimations, and in other circumstances Clara would have chosen to ignore it, but the seductive fire of Reuber’s eyes encouraged her. She had barely two days to ensnare this man and discover if he was, as Schellenberg suspected, a foreign agent. After which she needed to decide what to do with that information.
‘Perhaps, Hans . . .’ She met his smouldering gaze full on, then lowered her eyes and stroked a finger down the side of her glass. ‘You could show me around.’
He paused, drained his beer and wiped his mouth with satisfaction.
‘I can think of nothing I would like more. Shall we say tonight, after the performance?’
That evening the theatre was packed. A sea of grey-green uniforms. Cigarette smoke, mingled with cosmetic powder, twirled up through the arc lights. Row upon row of young faces, the undisputed masters of Europe, sat glorying in their easy conquest. Reuber’s decision to hire girls from the Folies-Bergère was inspired. Many of the troops were too young to remember the time of Weimar Germany, when their own country’s cabarets were the most risqué in the world, so they greeted the high-kicking French girls, in their feathers and tutus, with a raucous glee that would have had Goebbels slamming his desk in rage. At the end, Clara’s song provided just the right touch of nostalgia to send them home with a glow in their hearts.
Clara had dressed carefully, with her new silk underclothes beneath the Prussian blue Madame Grès evening dress and a single strand of pearls. She wondered if she would end the evening in Reuber’s room at the Crillon and, if so, whether it would be possible to be drunk enough to get that far, yet remain sufficiently sober to persuade him to reveal his hand.
He met her backstage, still in his costume of evening dress with a tideline of orange make-up around the edge of his face. He undid his bow ti
e and tucked it in his top pocket.
‘Why don’t we walk up to the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur? You can see the whole of the city from there. If you’re not here for long, it’s a sight you shouldn’t miss.’
They made their way uphill through Montmartre’s tilting, cobble-stoned streets, beneath the mottled trees of the Place du Tertre, towards the basilica’s bone-white domes. In the moonlight their design seemed fiddly and intricate, like an outsized ivory trinket on the skyline. Even at this hour, the area was humming with life. Clara glanced through the door of a smoke-filled salon to see women in brightly coloured silk dining with German officers, and a pile of caps, with glinting silver badges, stacked precipitously above the coat rack. These Parisiennes had no competition from the female German auxiliary workers, the secretaries and telephone operators who had arrived to service the command posts in their drab uniforms and no make-up, and they knew it. The excitement showed on their faces. A snatch of song travelled on the breeze. Edith Piaf, the little sparrow, singing Embrasse-moi.
Negotiating the flight of vertiginous steps leading down from the basilica, Reuber offered Clara his arm and she took it, pressing deliberately close. When they reached the semi-circular terrace below he did not detach himself. She sensed the pulse of male attraction and his understanding that she was making him an offer. An offer that he would surely not decline.
Before them was a vista as astonishing as anything to be found on the walls of the Louvre. A tapestry of lead roofs, domes and spires, a panorama of the city in all its grandeur, bisected by the glint of the Seine. This was the spot where Paris presented herself voluptuously for tourists’ eyes in full knowledge of her mythical beauty, even if the city was observing a blackout, and only the faint blue gleam of painted street lights punctuated the gloom. The ville lumière had become the ville éteinte – the extinguished city.
‘That song you sang was perfect tonight. It must have made those men feel quite at home.’
‘I doubt any of them were homesick.’
‘Why would they be, when they have this city to explore? As we do. It’s a shame that the Frontbühne should only have you for two nights.’
Reuber was testing her, she recognized. Suspicious.
‘I know it’s not long but I’m afraid I had other commitments. I wanted to do my bit for the troops though.’
‘Of course.’
‘And I’m sure my real motivation for being in France is the same as yours.’
He lifted an enquiring eyebrow.
‘Which is?’
She gestured at the view before them.
‘To see this, of course. Paris!’
‘Oh. Naturally.’
On the shadowed gravel a few pigeons still strutted and bowed. Reuber leaned his arms on the parapet, took a cigarette out of his pocket and struck a match against the stone of the balustrade.
‘So tell me. Why you are really here?’
A rush of alarm prickled her skin.
‘I thought I’d explained.’
He scrutinized her as carefully as a card player watching for a tell on his opponent’s face, searching for some tic or involuntary twitch that would give the truth away.
‘Forgive me, my dear Fräulein, if I speak frankly. But a surprise guest, brought in for just two performances? And a lady who, although you gave a very good performance, is not widely known for her voice? That might be understandable if you were – with due respect – a big star. An Olga Chekhova, perhaps. Paris is a popular posting and I’m sure there are any number of celebrity names who would like a break here, so when I was informed of your arrival, I asked myself some questions. Why is this beautiful woman being sent to Paris?’
‘Because I requested it?’
‘Sure. I thought of that. I said to myself maybe this is one of those young women whose whims Doktor Goebbels is keen to satisfy. That was eminently possible. But for only two nights? Even the most loyal citizen of the Reich would want to leave Berlin for more than two nights. I began to think that your visit had less to do with Paris, and more to do with me.’
Though outwardly she remained unruffled, Clara was alarmed at the speed with which Reuber had come to this conclusion. Had she been careless? How was it possible that she had allowed some fracture in her façade of a guileless actress, dazzled by Paris and all too happy to succumb to a celebrity’s charms?
At that moment a shriek echoed from the steps of the basilica behind them. A group of soldiers were entertaining three local girls and one man had just delivered a playful slap on the black satin rear of his new girlfriend, who responded with a shout of laughter as she brushed him playfully off and pushed a curl of fair hair behind her ear.
Reuber’s face darkened.
‘The papers here say the French look forward to being welcomed into the National Socialist adventure. But I’ve heard the locals have already coined a name for this awkward situation. Le temps des autruches. The time of ostriches. The Parisians will ignore our occupation so long as we Germans behave in a civilized fashion. At least, I think that’s the term they use. Civilized. I’ve always wondered at the French definition of that word.’
Something in his tone, an acid mix of disdain and subversion, put Clara on alert. It was like a pheromone in the air, a high-frequency vibration just on the edge of hearing. A signal, transmitting itself more carefully and enigmatically than any military code. Goebbels said there were concerns that Reuber was a traitor, and given that those suspicions stemmed from Reinhard Heydrich’s security empire, the Sicherheitsdienst, whose reach and power could scarcely be overestimated, they were more than likely to be true. So what was Reuber signalling – and how should Clara respond?
To show her entire hand so soon and with no evidence was a dangerous step. Disclosing her own allegiance would be lethal if Reuber was merely a patriotic German, intent on nothing more than giving everything he had to the war effort. Yet if she revealed that she had been sent to check his own loyalty, well – that need say nothing more than that she had succumbed to his seductive charm.
She cast an involuntary glance around, trying to calibrate the situation. An old woman, a concierge from the basilica, approached and passed them, with a hard, bony face like a bird, but the look she cast was one of hatred rather than suspicion. It said only that they were Germans, and she wished them dead.
‘If I had to guess I would say you were here to report on me.’
Clara decided to act on instinct. After all, there was no time to lose.
‘I suppose I should be honest with you. I’m not just here to entertain the troops. My presence here has to do with Walter Schellenberg.’
‘Schellenberg?’
‘He has questions about your allegiance to the Fatherland.’
The silence seemed to last for ever before he said, ‘I guessed as much.’
‘How?’
The hypnotist looked ahead grimly. Despite the exquisite skyline spread out before him like a seductive woman showcasing her charms, the beauty of the scene was lost on him. Reuber was, in his mind, pacing the gaunt grey streets of his home city.
‘Herr Schellenberg has long been suspicious of me.’
‘What makes you say that?’
Another silence. Then suddenly his sombre expression was lit by a shaft of jollity.
‘All right. I’ll tell you how I found out. It makes an amusing tale.’
‘There’s not much amusing about the SD.’
‘Oh, I think you’ll find this entertaining. It came about last year. Heydrich was worried about high-level leaks that were making their way to the French and the British about plans for the invasion of France so he asked Schellenberg to investigate. The man’s famously lucky and in no time at all he had a break. A lady called Kitty Schmidt was arrested crossing the Dutch border and this lady happened to own a brothel called Salon Kitty. It’s in Giesebrechtstrasse in Charlottenburg and quite a place by all accounts, frequented by a lot of foreign diplomats. Anyhow Frau Schmidt had amassed a smal
l fortune in a British bank account and decided it was time to cut loose and make her way to retirement. Unfortunately for her she was caught, and there were any amount of charges she was facing – false documents, currency smuggling, you name it – but when Schellenberg got wind of it he dropped all the charges on condition that she go back to the brothel and take up where she left off. Only before it reopened, it was fitted out with cameras and double walls constructed with concealed microphones so that every word spoken would be recorded by Gestapo agents in the basement. That way he would have plenty of material for blackmail and entrapment.’
‘How ingenious he is.’ Yet again the thoroughness of Schellenberg chilled her.
‘And cunning. Never underestimate his cunning. That’s exactly why he’s been made head of Germany’s entire counter-espionage department at such a young age. He’s brilliantly clever and pays enormous attention to detail. He never cuts corners. He hand-picked twenty special girls and had them assessed by psychiatrists to weed out the emotionally weak and unreliable, then sent them for two months to some hotel in the Bavarian Alps to learn a whole routine – codes, how to identify military insignia, current affairs, foreign languages – and now they’ve been put to work in the brothel. And you know the funny thing?’
Reuber gave a bitter grin and ground out his cigarette on the stone in front of him.
‘The only serious transgression they’ve uncovered so far is that Mussolini likes to make fun of Hitler in private. He does comic imitations of our Führer to entertain his dinner guests. That information comes straight from the mouth of the Duce’s own son-in-law. Once the transcript was shown to the Führer, relations between Germany and Italy have never been the same.’
Clara stalled. The account itself seemed perfectly credible, yet how did a stage celebrity like Hans Reuber come to know it?
‘When did you hear this story? Do you visit the brothel yourself?’