“There’s music playing outside!” The lieutenant stumbled out to the boulevard.
We pressed our way into the passing throng, which got denser with the approach of the blackout. The air was loud with voices and a thousand footsteps and the stamping of soldiers’ feet. Mustaches thick as thumbs, gold teeth laughingly exposed. Blood-drained faces, despite the remnants of summer tans. Soldiers were standing in front of a pathetic display window, hands clasped behind their backs. They were pretty casual about the saluting regulations, and there were few officers out and about anyway. I noticed a small sergeant hurrying across the same intersection for the fourth time, acting important, like someone late for an appointment, even though he was nothing but lost and alone.
Women outnumbered soldiers. Hirschbiegel imagined that every female who showed so much as a bare calf was a professional. Every few meters, he’d whisper loudly, “She’s one for sure!”
Wooden soles, costume jackets slung over shoulders. They crowded the street in groups of two or four, putting their heads close together and laughing. I listened to the fragments of broken German the girls used to start conversations with the soldiers. Paß mal uff—auf Wid-dersen. Laughter, cheekiness, nothing extreme. The real professionals stood out like racehorses in a herd of clueless ponies: high heels, furs on their shoulders. Exhibiting, being ogled, haggling with their eyes, disappointedly moving on. We passed a dashingly dressed boy standing beside the entrance to a café and insisting to the waiter, “Mais j’ai douze ans.” We passed an old woman wrapped in a green woolen shawl and sitting as though petrified in the darkness of her newspaper stand.
I opted for a café on the quai de la Tournelle with a view of Notre-Dame.
“Now what?” Hirschbiegel looked around impatiently at the other customers.
“Now we wait until our lucky break comes along.”
He eyed the couples around us sullenly. To do nothing but sit there thwarted his desire for conquest. “I’ve had enough stag evenings recently to last me a long time,” he grumbled.
I enjoyed the breeze coming off the river. A short while later, two young women appeared. Proper skirts, starched blouses, pretty little hats on their heads. After a brief exchange, they decided to have a seat in the café. Hirschbiegel’s spine stiffened when they headed for the table next to ours. He wiped his glistening forehead with the back of his hand. “I like the tall one with the full shirt,” he whispered. “You mind taking the delicate one?”
I agreed without really looking.
“What can they be, do you think? Seamstresses? Schoolteachers? They’re not commercial girls—you can tell that right away. When are you going to talk to them?”
I let ten minutes pass before undertaking anything.
He pressured me. “Before someone snatches them away from us,” he said.
And in fact, an elegant Frenchman appeared at the neighboring table and started a conversation.
“Now the frog’s beating us to it!” Hirschbiegel squirmed in his chair. “And the big one was exactly my type.”
The women gave the Frenchman a friendly rebuff. He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the friends he was sitting with.
Hirschbiegel poked me. “Your turn, buddy!”
I leaned over to the next table. “Excusez-moi, mesdemoiselles. On n’a pas encore dîné, mon copain et moi. Et nous ne sommes pas d’accord quel restaurant choisir.”
“Mais il y en a des excellents dans le quartier,” the delicate one said.
“What? What’s she saying?” Hirschbiegel was sitting in a pose, like an equestrian monument.
“Les demoiselles n’auraient pas une petite faim, par hasard?” I asked.
“Une toute petite faim toujours.” The big girl laughed.
“Look how she laughs,” the lieutenant said rapturously.
I explained to him that these two couldn’t afford an expensive place.
“Tell them I’ll pay for everything!” he declared. “The best, nothing but the best!” Hirschbiegel was childishly happy, clapped for the garçon, and would not be dissuaded from paying for the ladies’ drinks, as well. He suggested a posh restaurant.
By the time our meal was over, the curfew had long since begun. Hirschbiegel’s luck made him patronizing and timid at once. He proposed that we all go to rue Faillard for “a nightcap.” The big girl, a worker in a button factory, took his arm. The delicate one trotted beside me in silence.
We reached the narrow, darkened street and then the apartment building. I was working on an excuse I could use to get away without spoiling Hirschbiegel’s adventure. I had no desire to go up to the flat. The lieutenant took his companion by the hand and pushed her finger against the doorbell. The abrupt buzz sounded in reply. Before Hirschbiegel pushed the door open, I noticed a movement in the shadows and flinched; ever since the afternoon in rue Jacob, the fear of being followed had taken root in my heart.
Footsteps approached. Chantal stood on the edge of the curb. She assessed the women and Hirschbiegel, looking for answers to her questions. Then she called softly, “Antoine?”
I was so happy, I didn’t know what to do. I ran to her and hesitated. “You’re still in the city?”
She was wearing a heavy jacket and carrying a bag in one hand. “You’re not alone?”
“Yes I am, yes I am,” I stammered. Then I turned in Hirschbiegel’s direction.
The lieutenant walked over to us. “Is that her?” he asked, bursting with curiosity.
“This is my friend,” I explained to Chantal. “The one who owns the flat.”
“The Jew?” Despite the unreality of the situation, she smiled. “Can I talk to you?” A glance at the women. “It won’t take long.”
“Where are you two going to go?” Hirshbiegel asked.
“Anywhere,” I said. She looked at me.
The large man inserted himself between us. “Here,” he said. With a cordial nod, he handed me the silver key.
“What about you?” I kept hold of his hand.
“There are plenty of hotels.” He made an awkward bow and returned to the two French girls. In laborious fragments, he explained that the three of them would have to move on. Protests, laughter, and then their footsteps fading away.
“Why are you still in Paris?” I asked.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Lost, dubious, and happy, I stood on the edge of the curb.
18
Chantal, I love you,” I said hoarsely.
“No,” she whispered in the darkness.
“I won’t be in Paris much longer.” I moved closer to her face.
“Why not?”
“I requested a transfer.”
“Good idea.” She touched my cheek. “Anyone who speaks our language as well as you—”
“Where I’m going, French won’t do me any good.”
She gave me a questioning look and put her arms around me. We kissed. She unhooked her dress and let it fall to the floor. We slid onto the bed. She captured my tongue between her teeth. I stroked her long, suntanned thigh. Her pelvis moved slowly. Tenderly, she took me inside her. Her soft breasts. I swirled her thick hair and pushed all thoughts aside. This night outshone everything. It was borrowed time. Afterward, I poured us some wine and spoke about what the future would bring. About a free France.
Chantal laughed, her eyes half-closed. “My father has a soft spot for the emperor.”
“Napoléon?” I touched her back.
“Papa’s not a monarchist.” She looked at me. “But before the war, he was against anything he thought sounded like a coup d’état.”
“And you?” I examined every one of her vertebrae.
“I still had short hair back then,” she said, smiling. “In the evenings, after work, Papa and Bertrand often used to sit together in the storeroom. Bertrand is Gustave’s father.
In those days, he was the barber.”
“The white-haired man who reads the newspaper?”
She nodded. “He was an ardent leftist, a member of the front populaire. He tried to convert Papa. Papa said, ‘The people demonstrating in front of the Bastille should go for a walk with their families instead. That’s a better way to spend a Sunday.’”
Sitting naked on the bed, I tried to imagine the times to come after the war, as if my mere thoughts had the power to create them. I forgot about devastated Europe and evoked an island of normality. I could tell from Chantal’s averted gaze, from her meager replies, that she didn’t believe in such a future. For her, the present was too urgent and uncertain to afford a glimpse even of tomorrow. The war was going badly for the Germans now, yet she still saw nothing but foreign uniforms in her city. It would be better in the country, she said. There were very few occupying troops in the vicinity of her grandfather’s farm.
“The countryside can’t be subjugated,” she whispered into the room. “The countryside’s stronger than the tanks that roll through it.”
From downstairs in the street, a German song reached our ears like a stray dream. I took Chantal in my arms and told her that Gustave was dead. She lay still, completely rigid. After awhile, I realized that she was crying.
Suddenly, I said, “I could go underground.”
She laughed through her tears. “You—a deserter?”
The fact that she didn’t take me seriously, not even for a second, annoyed me.
“You’re not French,” she said. “You’re just a Frenchman in your dreams.” She ran her fingers through my hair.
I pulled my head away and declared that I intended to abandon the idea of a university education. After periods of great destruction, simple things are needed, I said. Wood and stone. I planned to employ my skills as a manual worker. People with such abilities would be in demand in Paris, too.
“Where will you go, Chantal?” Our breathing coincided for a few gasps and then separated again.
“Away from Paris.”
The thought that we were lying next to each other for the last time paralyzed me. I stared over at the window. Sounds announced the arrival of morning. Had Chantal said a single word, I would have gone away with her, to wherever she wanted, that very night.
She pulled the covers over her feet. “Whatever happens,” she whispered, “don’t ever go back to Turachevsky’s.”
“If I hadn’t gone there, we’d never have seen each other again.” I smiled.
“Promise me.”
“It’s hardly likely I’ll have another opportunity to go there.”
“Promise me anyway.”
I laid two fingers on her mouth and made the vow.
“The Fables, you remember?” She rolled over so that she could see me better. “Everything’s in the Fables.”
I nodded. My head was getting heavy.
“All roads are in the Fables,” Chantal said.
The image of the fox and the grapes crossed my mind. I opened my eyes once more and saw her smiling at me. Outside, the blackness was gradually turning gray.
19
December was severe. I climbed over mounds of cleared snow, entered the headquarters building in rue des Saussaies, and looked on empty-eyed as the PFC in the security passage checked my papers every day as if for the first time. Then I climbed the marble steps, went into the unit offices, sat at my place, and greeted Rieleck-Sostmann.
My colleagues talked—guardedly, in approximate terms—about the Eastern Front. Of late, the catchwords were redistribution of forces and breathing space. Things were bound to heat up soon in the west, too. On the eighteenth, Rommel had arrived in Fontainebleau to lead the defense of the Atlantic Wall. This development caused some concern in rue des Saussaies. I didn’t participate in the conversations, and no one invited me to join in. The others knew I had my marching orders.
The ambiguity of my situation and my service here, which was becoming more senseless and brutal with each passing week, was just about over. The necessary papers had been issued. Leibold had only to write in a date. Montenegrin-Serbian border area, specific locality unknown, a new company, new comrades. The days passed.
I found myself inadvertently staring at a situation report in an open folder.: “1. Russian Offensive Against Army Group South Ukraine./ 2. Defection of Bulgaria./ 3. Order to Evacuate Greece and the Aegean./ 4. Progressive Withdrawal from Southeast Bastion; Transition to Definitive Defense of Fortified Sava-Theiss Line.” The word Definitive was underlined.
I looked at a map. My new assignment would be there, in mountain country. The front wiggled through the karst like a snake run mad. I waited. This delay in my departure was pure torment, but I didn’t speak of that to Leibold. Christmastime came closer. I hoped I would leave Paris before the year was out.
Stories shortened the time for me. I lived in them. As soon as I went off duty, I picked up a book. I read novels, tales, whatever I could get my hands on. I browsed the booksellers’ stalls every day, bought something, and devoured the words. Sometimes I went through two books in a single evening. The ones I liked the best had to do with glory and the performance of great tasks. At night, I thought about Chantal, imagining her life in the country, conjecturing about what she did during the brief, dark days, what clothes she wore, what she ate. I clung tightly to the belief that we hadn’t said good-bye forever.
I seldom opened my door when Hirschbiegel knocked, which was generally late in the evening. His armored infantry unit was being transferred to duty on the Atlantic Wall. He’d experienced war as a cakewalk for three and a half years, and now he was supposed to face the Allied invasion force, of all things. The lieutenant was happy because he’d been posted to the western portion of the Normandy coast and not to the Calais sector, where the attack was expected to come. His baths got longer and longer; he concealed his nervousness behind Bavarian grumbling. On the rare evenings when I went out with him, I felt uncomfortable and went back to the hotel early. I’d already said adieu to the city; Paris was the past.
So the invitation was all the more surprising. “Christmas party,” Leibold said.
We were standing beside our preferred window, looking out at the garden. Snow was weighing down the unmown autumn grass. Leibold had recently started smoking continuously. His nicotine-yellowed fingers clashed with his well-groomed hands. “We’ll take the opportunity to drink to your transfer.” He dropped ash from his cigarette and smiled.
“Has it gone through?” I asked the question as joyfully as if Leibold were granting me home leave.
He named the nightclub where the party was going to be. “We’re starting early. There’s a colonel coming in from Chartres, and he has to go back there later tonight.”
I promised to be at the nightclub, which was near the Trinité stop, shortly before eight o’clock. “Might I bring someone with me?” I asked. Leibold shrugged his shoulders; his hands clasped behind his back, he returned to his office.
Back at the hotel, I changed my clothes, climbed up to Hirschbiegel’s room, and told him about the invitation.
“I’d rather not,” the fat man said, carefully checking around his bathtub to make sure everything was ready.
“We wouldn’t stay long. They have to go back to Chartres tonight.”
“I have an aversion to the death’s-head boys,” he answered. “Besides, if my colonel found out I went to an SS Christmas party, there’d be hell to pay.” Hirschbiegel stepped out of his tent-size underpants.
I leaned my forehead against the windowpane. “Leibold’s not the worst,” I muttered.
While the lieutenant soaked his large body in hot water, I described the place and the women one could meet there. Gradually, he fell in with the idea. We left at 7:30. On the way, Hirschbiegel pointed at a poster for the collaborationist speaker Philippe Henriot. Over their compatriot’
s mouth and nose, the Resistance had pasted a notice: A LA POPULATION!
“Shouldn’t you report such a thing?” he asked, smiling and nudging me. I stuck my hands in my pockets.
At Leibold’s table, there were two decorated majors, a pair of adjutants, and a colonel who turned out to be from the First SS Panzer Division.
When we walked in, Hirschbiegel held me back. “Why not bring Himmler along, too?” he said. Grumbling, he followed me to the SS table.
Leibold introduced me. “When things get French, Corporal Roth is very handy,” he declared, anticipating the amazement of his fellow officers, who otherwise wouldn’t have tolerated the presence of a corporal at their table. Leibold offered me the seat next to his. Hirschbiegel wound up sitting in the midst of the black uniforms. He was giving me evil looks, because there was nary a woman to be seen in the whole place.
The nightclub proved to be a total disaster. The brass from Chartres considered the wine an affront. The maître d’hôtel apologized; his good stock, he said, had been confiscated in a raid.
“It’s your own fault for not hiding it better!” The colonel, an impressively large man with graying hair, laughed.
A change of venue was discussed. The gentlemen plumped for the usual nightspot itinerary, through the streets near the Seine. Then the conversation turned to its main topic, the rumored invasion, but all in a tone that suggested the event would take place exclusively on a sand table. The Fourth Panzers moving west, supply lines secured, antiaircraft defenses set up along the Marne line. If Göring could just keep up production of the Junkers JU-52 bomber, the “ol’ JU.” Air superiority, that was still the key. In theory, the problem was solved.
Shortly before ten o’clock, the colonel said, “There’s this Frenchman who cooks for us. He recommended a club with a strange name—Polish, I think. Emil, do you remember what he called it?”
From the start, Major Emil had tried to converse with me in French, putting his vocabulary to the test. He was a rather formal but engaging fellow from Detmold. To my surprise, he knew the Fables. On the way to the car, he walked beside me and quoted from memory:
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