Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

by Francine Prose

  Yvonne

  BEFORE THE OCCUPATION, the Chameleon Club did well, particularly with a revue called “Madame la Marquise.” The show featured a series of variations on a popular song about a marquise who keeps phoning home to learn she has lost everything, her estate has burned, her husband has killed himself. And the servants keep reassuring her that everything is fine.

  A dozen groups performed the same number. Singers in chefs’ hats acted out the lyrics while cooking up a poisonous witches’ brew. An actor crooned into a microphone wearing only a Nazi helmet and ladies’ panties. Everything is fine, Madame la Marquise. The audience admired the creativity lavished on a familiar tune with its obvious comment about the razor’s edge they were walking.

  After the invasion, no more jokes about Germans. They told German jokes at some clubs, but Yvonne wasn’t taking chances. And no more humor about everything being all right, dear Madame la Marquise. The Jewish singers were gone, and Yvonne had to scramble when the saxophone player fled to Lisbon. The black musicians had vanished too. Rarely did one see a dark face on the street. Josephine Baker had taken refuge in her château, where, according to rumor, she was aiding the Resistance.

  Yvonne did what she could with the talent left in Paris, but some spice, or spirit, was missing. The choices had narrowed, unless one had a fortune to spend on reviews like the ones in Montmartre, shows whose titles were their price tags. “Two Million.” “Three-Point Five.” After Pavel was forced to emigrate to Buenos Aires, Yvonne choreographed the dances herself, though that was not her strong suit.

  Against her better judgment, she hired a poodle act with a trainer named Pedro who dressed as Marie Antoinette. Desperate, she took on a girl named Suki, who shimmied in a nightie and never got out of bed, and a couple of tango dancers, Zolpi and Lora, a Romanian brother and sister costumed as Gypsies of the opposite sex. They doubled as fortune-tellers. Zolpi had a cousin from Yvonne’s hometown. For years the couple had been dancing at the club, begging Yvonne for a job.

  In theory, the Chameleon should have been closed when the Germans took Paris. Its counterparts in Berlin had been shuttered for years, though a few nightspots survived, thanks to their influential patrons and investors. The Chameleon Club owed its existence to the fact that it was listed in the Officers’ Edition of the military tourist guide Paris Once, published for the German soldiers who’d believed the Nazi recruiting promise: Paris for Everyone Once.

  The book described the Chameleon as a snake pit of French vice, the moral equivalent of those medical museums where visitors can study birth defects and the damage poisons do to one’s organs. In this case the sexual organs; the poison was being French. To the Germans, being French meant having lots of sex. Germans flocked to the club and spread the word: the Chameleon was good clean fun!

  It was a miracle that the club was still open, that Yvonne’s clients had a place to go and halfway decent entertainment. The floor show no longer mattered so much. The audience entertained itself. The Germans and the regulars came to look at one another. But how long could that last? People got tired of seeing the same people in the same clothes, be it a Gestapo uniform or the top half of a tuxedo.

  The club’s homosexual clientele knew how the Germans were treating their brothers across the border. The more principled stayed away, but others enjoyed the thrill of proximity to danger. It took their minds off their problems to sit near a table of German soldiers and watch a Norwegian who called himself Lady Sinbad (whom Yvonne soon fired for onstage drunkenness) do the Dance of the Seven Veils. The band learned to play “Lili Marlene” and other German songs when the drinking slowed down. These sentimental favorites got the crowd singing until they were thirsty.

  Yvonne had prided herself on knowing everything that went on in her club. But for the first time, there were certain things she chose not to see or hear.

  Fat Bernard confided in Yvonne: her real name was Berthe Klein. Yvonne said she hadn’t known that. In fact she’d already forgotten. Yvonne mentioned two forgers who frequented the Chameleon. A counterfeiter named Cigarette Butt and an elderly Hungarian with an eye patch whom Cigarette Butt called Maestro, and for whom Yvonne had great respect. Yvonne told Bernard to let them drink for free. They could provide her with Aryan papers. Bernard said she’d already asked, and they already had.

  A few weeks later German soldiers barged into the kitchen and asked to see the papers of Yvonne’s entire staff. It gave Yvonne great pleasure to watch them approve the identity card that Cigarette Butt had made for Fat Bernard.

  Despite the hardships and shortages, Yvonne raised the staff’s salaries. After all, she was paying her dishwashers to wash German spit from the glasses. She insisted the club remain a haven for runaways and strays. She took in dozens of Jewish kids and lent them money to leave the country.

  One night a British guy stayed on after everyone else had gone. He said his name was Ducky and that he was a singer, stranded in Paris. He asked for a top hat and tails, a cane and green face paint. He did his Pinocchio act for Yvonne. He played Jiminy Cricket and sang “When You Wish Upon a Star” from the Disney film, in English with a fake but convincing French accent.

  The crowd adored Ducky. They were touched by his song, and they forgave him for forgetting his lines and improvising nonsensical lyrics. Certain patterns in Ducky’s gibberish made Yvonne suspect that he was sending coded messages to someone in the room.

  Eventually Ducky didn’t show up for work. Fat Bernard passed Yvonne a note that said, The cricket has flown its cage.

  One rainy night, after hours, Arlette showed up at the Chameleon. Drenched, in a wet fur coat, she looked like a street dog. One eye was mottled purple. The corner of her mouth oozed blood. “Police, open up,” she said. She was crying. Bernard brought her back to the office. Yvonne lent Arlette a warm sweater and ordered a pot of tea and whiskey.

  Arlette said she was leaving Chanac. He’d hit her once too often. Yvonne wanted to ask why she’d been with him in the first place. But she knew the answer, which Arlette would never admit. Yvonne had never liked Arlette and her loathsome mermaid song. But compared to the present, those nights when Arlette and Lou reigned over the club seemed idyllic, a vanished paradise, lost forever.

  Arlette said, “I’ve got a new song. I’ll direct the whole production. The dances. The music. Everything. Give me a month.”

  “A month,” said Yvonne. “No longer. It’s good to have you back.”

  “Mes Souvenirs” was the runaway hit of 1943. More talented singers recorded it, but their versions weren’t half so successful. What made the song so popular weren’t the lyrics or the tune, but Arlette’s performance.

  Arlette regained a few pounds and her cute Little Mermaid body. She still looked sweet, not in a fish tail this time, but in costumes and wigs she changed throughout her routine. Though the title, “My Memories,” may have suggested a bittersweet reflection on happy times gone by, a sad tribute to loved ones lost in battle, memory was Arlette’s euphemism for sex and having babies.

  My memories, my memories, Arlette sang, dressed in a short ruffled skirt, turning her back to the audience, bending over and shaking her ass to the drumbeat on each syllable of sou-ve-nir.

  First came her memories of the soldier who stayed for one night and shipped out in the morning. Arlette ran offstage and reappeared with two identically plump, blond baby dolls. With a cute little twitch she bent to kiss each infant forehead.

  The next verse recalled the handsome farmer who kept a cow that gave her the milk she needed to nurse twin babies. The audience giggled as Arlette skipped offstage and pranced back with four dolls this time, two in tiny farmers’ berets.

  Her memories, boom boom boom, her memories, boom boom boom. And now the memory family grew to include two new baby memories of the mayor, who took pity on a poor French girl, a single mother with four children, and set up a private nursery school, paid for with all the new taxes. Arlette’s fans could laugh at the new taxes and laugh even har
der when she reappeared, arms akimbo, struggling under the weight of six squirming doll babies, three in the crook of each elbow.

  Then, lest anyone take this in the wrong spirit, lest anyone imagine that Arlette was impugning the morals of French women, a male dancer in a French army uniform and a Maréchal Pétain mask marched onstage. He presented Arlette with a medal and pronounced her Mother of the Year for having borne the most children for the glory of the French nation.

  French and Germans, soldiers and performers, transvestites and artists of all ages were happy to laugh together. Part of the fun was that everyone thought the joke was on everyone else. Everyone could have a few drinks and enjoy a song that briefly convinced them that sex and war were funny.

  One night Bernard knocked on Yvonne’s office door and said she’d better come out front. They had special guests: Jean-Claude Bonnet. Clovis Chanac. Pierre Gasparu. Two Germans.

  Oh, and Lou Villars.

  There wasn’t one of them whom Yvonne wanted in her club. There wasn’t one of them whom she wanted thinking about the Chameleon. She often thought about Lou. It was uncomfortable to know that a woman she’d banned from the premises was a driver for Jean-Claude Bonnet and a torturer for the Gestapo. Also it was upsetting that the star of her show was the former girlfriend of the torturer and of one of the city’s most powerful gangsters.

  At first, after Arlette returned, Yvonne had expected Chanac every night, despite Arlette’s assurances that she had too much dirt on him for him to show his face. And when he didn’t appear, Yvonne had begun to assume that he wouldn’t.

  The club was crowded. Every table was full. The show had gotten off to a good start. Everyone was laughing. A poodle had run under Pedro’s (Marie Antoinette’s) skirt.

  Lou and her friends weren’t laughing. They stood near the doorway, glowering. Soon no one was laughing.

  When Yvonne went over to welcome them, Lou stepped forward. She shook Yvonne’s hand, embraced her in a stiff hug, then kissed her sloppily on both cheeks and said, “We’d like a table for six.” Lou’s breath smelled of whiskey and cigarettes.

  Lou’s hair was cut short and slicked back. It hurt Yvonne’s heart to see that Lou was slightly balding with a peak in front, like a man. So much time had passed, so much had been broken and could never be fixed since Lou had appeared at the door with blood on her white flannel trousers. What a sad confused girl she had been, and how age and time and bad luck had transformed her into the bully who blocked Yvonne’s path.

  Lou ranked below the others. But she used to work here. The Chameleon was her territory. This was her party.

  Lou said, “In fact I’d like my old table.”

  Yvonne turned to see who was sitting there. An older woman and a younger one, both in white tuxedos. Florencia and Lola had been coming here for years. They’d seen Yvonne talking to Lou. They recognized Bonnet and Chanac. They knew that their table used to be Lou’s. Both women got up to leave. Yvonne reminded herself to tell Fat Bernard to let them drink for free, forever.

  As the busboys whisked away the dirty dishes and brought out a new tablecloth and coasters, Lou told Yvonne, “My friends have just come from a stressful meeting. They need to relax.”

  Though it took only minutes to set the table, Yvonne apologized for the delay and told Lou that the first round was on the house. All the rounds would be on the house. It was the cost of doing business. The bartenders were alerted to water Chanac’s drinks. Only when those small but all-important details were arranged could Yvonne consider the potentially volatile situation: Chanac and Lou had come to see their mutual former girlfriend.

  Arlette always went on last, after Marie Antoinette and Zolpi and Lora. But now Yvonne made a quick decision. Let Arlette perform before Lou’s party had any more alcohol and time to figure out what to do when she sang.

  Arlette wasn’t happy about the change, but neither was she pleased to hear that two angry former lovers were in the house. She was a professional. She realized that it would be wise to tone down the shaking of her ass. Tonight’s crowd would have to make do with a lot less boom boom boom.

  Arlette was still singing the first verse, telling the story of the sailor on his one-night shore leave, when a male voice shouted hoarsely, “Abyssinia!”

  Abyssinia? The music stopped. Arlette’s jaw went slack, her arms hung down, her fat little hands paddled the air like flippers. How could a woman who made her living from striking sexy poses let herself freeze in such an unflattering attitude?

  “Abyssinia,” repeated Chanac. “Show them Abyssinia.” Then, still shouting, he informed the crowd that Arlette had a birthmark on her ass the shape and size of Abyssinia.

  Lou half rose and made a fist, as if to punch Chanac. Bonnet placed a restraining hand on Lou’s arm. Chanac watched, so enjoying the drama he’d set in motion that he lost interest in Arlette, who skipped ahead to the final verse, which she sang in a quavering version of her normally wobbly voice while the musicians struggled to figure out what key she was in.

  Yvonne had always prided herself on the calm, hospitable grace with which she’d soothed the ruffled feathers of her peacock clientele. For decades, she’d dealt so firmly but politely with those who’d overindulged that they felt free to return the next night, impeccably behaved.

  But now all the emotions she’d held in check, anger and irritation, contempt and disgust, grief over the loss of her voice, the nights she’d stayed up worrying about the club, the mornings she’d woken in fear of being deported, every insult and anxiety, every petty criminal, cop, government official, and German soldier who’d purposely or accidentally offended her or her customers, every ass she’d had to kiss, everything that Lou and her friends represented, all of it swirled together and stirred up something inside Yvonne, something present but so dormant she’d hardly suspected its existence.

  Yvonne heard herself order Lou Villars and Clovis Chanac to get out and never come back.

  “Why me?” said Lou. “It wasn’t my fault. You’re blaming me for the shit this guy does?”

  “You too,” said Yvonne. “Go.”

  Everyone in the club was watching. Yvonne could feel the force of the crowd’s desire to protect her, to turn back time to the minute before she’d insulted Lou Villars, the Minister of Information, two Germans, and the leaders of the Gasparu-Chanac gang. But Yvonne had already moved far beyond the audience’s power to help her.

  Bonnet glared at Yvonne and then at Chanac, blinking exaggeratedly, like a turtle. He focused on one, then the other, exuding quiet threat. Meanwhile their German friends were visibly irritated about how the evening was turning out. They’d come to see Arlette shake her ass. My memories. Boom boom boom. My memories. Boom boom boom. This was not the memory they’d imagined taking back to their hotel rooms.

  Fat Bernard signaled the band to play. “Sweeter than sweet,” she sang. But nobody was paying attention to anything but the surly, slow-motion exit of Lou and her friends. No one sat at that table all night.

  Lora and Zolpi tangoed frantically, then sashayed through the room. No one wanted their fortunes told. Marie Antoinette swept back onstage, but her poodles, sensing something, barked and refused to jump through hoops. Luckily, Marie-Pedro was a seasoned veteran who turned the stage fright of his “lambs” into a comic variation on his regular act.

  Somehow they got through the evening. But moments after closing, Vilma, the coat check girl, asked to speak to Yvonne in private. In Yvonne’s office, where she had never been, and where she struggled to memorize every detail in case she never saw it again, Vilma told Yvonne that, on his way out, Bonnet asked her to inform Yvonne that he would send his men around tomorrow afternoon to escort her to his office. Together they would make sure that misunderstandings like tonight’s would never occur again.

  Yvonne asked Vilma to repeat what Bonnet said. This time the girl closed her eyes so as to more accurately channel the minister’s voice. This time she placed more emphasis, his emphasis, on never.r />
  From the (Unpublished) Memoirs of Suzanne Dunois Tsenyi

  To be destroyed on the occasion of its author’s death

  FOR ONCE, THE movies got it right. We were an army of shadows, a band of friends and comrades who would have been safer as strangers. We were like students at a secret school at which failure could mean death.

  My own work involved rescue rather than violence and revenge. But I would be lying if I pretended I wasn’t delighted when the right target was blown up, the right evil bastard murdered. The crucial thing was to stay alive and not betray or endanger others.

  After the war, things got more complex, as they always do. Cliques and factions formed. There were resentments, publicity grabs, inflated claims of personal heroism when in fact we’d all been brave. Otherwise we couldn’t have done it.

  On the night when Yvonne threw Lou Villars and her friends out of the Chameleon, Ricardo met me at a café where we would not be noticed. Pretending to be lovers, we exchanged a passionate kiss.

  He whispered that there was a woman who needed to leave France at once.

  “France?” I said. “Not just Paris?”

  “France,” Ricardo said.

  When I think back on that night, on the events that would cause so much pain en route to such costly triumph, I can still smell disinfectant spiced with ether, Ricardo’s signature cologne. He had just come from performing a surgical operation. I knew better than to ask: had he been resetting some Nazi thug’s broken nose or removing a bullet from a wounded Resistant?

  You could say that our work was good training for being a human being. We cared about one another but were careful not to be nosy. Ricardo and I never discussed the fact that he had fallen in love with a man named William “Ducky” Curtis, a downed British pilot (and singer) who’d performed at the Chameleon until a German general, a regular customer, figured out that he was sending messages in code. Now Ricardo was hiding him in the hospital, claiming that Ducky was in a coma, his face completely bandaged, until the Resistance decided what to do next.