“Second thoughts?” said the voice in his ear.
“What’s in it for him, the doorman?”
“Dunno. Must like jazz. He could be arrested. That’s what makes it exciting. Come on.”
Shouldering his bag, he followed Klaus.
“Official photographer,” said his friend.
The hand on his shoulder swung him round. The doorman looked at him. “Got your ID, son?”
Nicolai held up the Leica and, folded small, a twenty-Reichsmark note. It disappeared. They were inside.
Klaus winked. “If you’re lucky, he’ll let you have a print at cost,” he called back cheekily.
The room was hot, smoky, dark. The phonograph was on. A trumpet played. He had never heard music like this. On the phonograph at home they played classical music or his mother’s favourite dance tunes. Couples were dancing in a way he had not seen before, swaying from side to side and rolling up and down on the balls of their feet. Perhaps this was the notorious jitterbug.
“Louis Armstrong,” said Klaus knowledgeably. “Negro music is the best.”
As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he began to spot the Swing Boys. They had long hair, long sideburns; all except one, dressed exactly like Klaus, who had been razored nearly bald. Long, angry-looking scratches furrowed one side of his head.
“The Hitler Youth got him last week,” said Klaus. “They shove in here and God help you if they catch you. We’re the opposite, see?”
He saw. A pair of girls, not much older than himself, sat to one side. Both were smoking; one, with her hair hanging loose down her back and lipstick that turned her full mouth almost black, crossed her legs ostentatiously when she saw him looking; there was a flash of petticoat over tanned legs. Her sweater was tight over high breasts. Some act was announced; he didn’t catch the name. The whole place rose, applauding as the members of the group started to come out.
“Tenor sax—drums, and he’s the bass,” murmured Klaus. Nicolai stared from one face to the next in disbelief. The room fell entirely silent; they started to play. The drumbeat thrilled up his spine. Then the sax soared out the melody, sweet, breathy and sure. Like a human voice, it penetrated right through to the roots of his hair. The girl with the tight sweater started dancing on her own, hips gyrating, eyes closed. Klaus was grinning like a maniac. In a moment, his friend got up and pushed his way through until he was dancing as close to the girl as he could reasonably get. Feeling down in the dark, Nicolai found the camera. He reached down to the flashgun in his bag. He fanned out the reflector, splayed delicate fingertips and felt very carefully for a bulb. His index finger touched one, then retreated. Just getting out the apparatus was disruptive. Instead, he set the shutter to a quarter of a second, the slowest possible speed, at F2. Holding the camera in his lap, he waited for the musician to move closer to the light.
Nicolai moved the strip of film in the enlarger on to the final frame, edged another sheet of photographic paper into place. He had four blurred discards already; he had had to push the film to get any kind of image. He had been up half the night, waiting for the film to dry; he could not give up now. This was the last one. He had studied all five negatives with a magnifying glass. They might all be blurred; there was no telling until he saw the detail. He moved the head up and down, adjusted, focused, turned the enlarger on for a few seconds, waited for the image to develop. Then, still by the dim red light, he lifted the print into the tray of acetic acid and, counting to sixty, swooshed the print back and forward in the fixing tray. Then, fingers crossed, he pulled the cord of the bathroom light and held the dripping print up.
Sweat gleamed on the profile of the tenor sax player, a coal-black man in a dark suit, head thrown back, the white shirt in crisp contrast. His head and throat were huge, magnificent. His exhalation of breath was a fuzzy glinting cloud; smoke from the cigarette he had just delicately placed on the edge of the table curled up around the back of his head. There had been just enough light to lift the image from a grainy blur to this perfection. A prickling course of pleasure ran through Nicolai. He could still smell that smoke in his hair; he could still hear the jazz beat pulsating, the sax soaring and curving new shapes inside his head.
NINE
Marseilles, July 1940
“Wo sind die Nutten?”42 Voices in the corridor shouted and laughed. Heavy footsteps came right up to their door, the curtain rattled and the knob was turned several times. The door shuddered under a barrage of kicks. Ilse gestured to her father, awake and white-faced, that he must do and say nothing. The door, always bolted from the inside, strained under the onslaught.
“Shit,” the German voice said. The deep voice of Paul, the barman, called down from above: the gentlemen should come upstairs. Soldiers’ boots hammered up the stairs, they heard the distant laughter of women. Her father’s face had the rigidity of fear and was hazed with sweat. She took his hand to reassure him. Relaxing, he turned over. Soon he would sleep. Ilse, who could not get used to the clamour, who could not help imagining all that went on up above, lay awake.
Rising at seven to the silence of the house, she crept about in the shuttered gloom and felt for her clothes. The wardrobe let out a depressing odour of mothballs. Renée’s elderly mother had died two months earlier. The linen in the cupboard was new and the finest quality, destined for a country house that had not been bought and now never would be. Upstairs, the house stank of cigarettes and wine, rank smells of sex and excitement. She went out, pulling the curtain to behind her, and tiptoed along the corridor past Renée’s rooms. She made her way along the alleyway that ran past the Clocher des Accoules. Jumping down the stairs along the handsome old façade of the Maison Diamantée, she trailed a hand, for luck, across the faceted stones which gave it its name. She hurried towards the light, the sun. The fishermen were stringing out their nets to dry. In the port a person could breathe.
On the quay, she headed straight for the Hôtel de Ville. The city, with its generally shabby but always knowing air, was growing familiar. She admired the purposeful way the Marseilles housewives trotted about with their baguettes and their little string shopping bags, their demeanour suggesting that they were real working women, not dawdlers. Crowds were forever coming down from the station or going to it, there was a crush up and down the Boulevard Dugommier and along the Canebière, and trickling into the Vieux Port. By mid-morning, the hot, dusty streets were packed. It was easy to pick out the refugees with their heavy coats and hangdog expressions. Whenever she heard a snatch of German she walked a step or two behind her compatriots, hoping for a hint as to what they were planning. Most wandered about as she did, aimlessly going from place to place. It was still possible that her mother would come to find them in France. Then she would surely turn up here. Everyone had to pass through Marseilles, the only port the Germans did not control directly. The Kriegsmarine was in charge of all the Atlantic ports.
Every day, trainloads of French soldiers arrived, waiting to be let out of the army and sent home. The process seemed to go at a snail’s pace. They packed out the front and rear platforms of the trams, an endless flow of dirty-looking infantrymen or colonials with bright red fezes or chechias.43 She noticed a group of Senegalese, proud, elegant men, their turbaned heads held high and pinned with a great gilt star. She looked hard at the Foreign Legion volunteers who carried their kepis in dust covers. One day the treizième DBLE would arrive in Marseilles, ready to embark for home. One fine morning, surely, Willy would be among them. She walked and looked and hoped a little longer. At the corner, she would stop to buy the Petit Marseillais: “Donnez-moi le menteur,”44 the Marseillais said. The radio told lies, just like the newspapers. Everybody knew it.
The people who had laughed at the Führer and made jokes had all been wrong. France had surrendered unconditionally. They signed the document in the very same wagon-lit and in the very piece of forest where the Germans had surrendered to Maréchal Foch in November 1918. Army engineers had towed the carriage from the m
useum built to hold it all the way to the siding; Hitler had insisted on it. Every newspaper had carried the picture. The Germans occupied Paris and the north, along a line north and west of Geneva going nearly up to Tours and skirting Poitiers, then going down the Atlantic coast and right to the Spanish border. The new French government under Maréchal Pétain and his cabinet, subservient to the rights of the occupying power, had gone to a little town called Vichy, not far from Lyons.
At the corner by La Sainte Trinité, an old woman swept the pavement vigorously. Ilse paused. She looked too frail for this good work.
“Let me help, Madame,” she said, reaching for the broom. While Ilse swept up cigarette butts in little eddies of dirt, the old lady watched critically, pointing out places she had missed.
“Would you like a lemonade?”
She was not from the church at all, but the owner of the tiny cafébar on the adjoining corner. Amused, Ilse went in. In the semi-gloom a labourer nursed a marc with his morning coffee. Otherwise the bar was empty. The old lady reached down a bottle of lemonade and unstoppered it, pouring the liquid slowly into a tall glass. Ilse liked the darkness of this place, the old rich smells. She had no idea what a bar in Wuppertal smelt like, or Krefeld. She had never been in one. The lemonade was very good. Ilse savoured the treat.
“You’re a good girl. Look at the time. You’d better be off to school,” she said.
“Thank you, Madame.”
“Come back tomorrow!” the bar owner called.
She had gone into a bar and nothing bad had happened. She hurried away, pretending she had a school to go to, then doubled back to the church. Inside, she knelt, concentrated.
“Dear God,” she prayed, “please make my father be all right. Bring him to life, please. And help us to get to safety.”
She did not mention her mother because of a new fear she had. Like a snatch of song she could not get out of her head, like a bad dream, the idea of her mother being wrong kept recurring. Why had she not come? Ilse had been forced to choose and she had chosen her father. As a result, everything had gone wrong. God was punishing her.
The short figure of La Tatie was stumping up ahead, wheezing and coughing. Ilse caught up with her just before she reached the house. Together, they cleared up the bottles and glasses, emptied brimming ash-trays and swept the two main rooms. In her kitchen along the corridor, Renée’s voice rose just before noon, the rich, soaring contralto singing one popular song after another. Through all this, her father slept. Day after day, he either slept or lay silent. Ilse went to wake him, tapping his hand or cheek. His skin had become pink and healthy-looking.
“Wake up. Renée will come soon,” she said.
She and her father had lived in solitude for ten months. But it was here, over these last four weeks surrounded by people and noise, that Ilse had come to understand what real loneliness was. It was the absence of hope.
“She’s cooking now. Very good food. You should wake up now.” He opened his eyes.
“Vati, talk to me. Please.”
He sat up. He seemed properly awake. “Good food,” he said. “Yes. We’ve fallen on our feet.”
“Yes, you’re right.” She tried an even brighter tone. “On your feet, Vati. If you were, Renée wouldn’t have to wash you, would she?” She knelt at the side of the bed. It was not much of a joke, but he could have tried to smile. He was looking at the door, waiting.
“Won’t you try and get up, Vati?”
She wanted to shake him really hard, until his bones rattled.
Renée sat on the bed, tipping Otto a little to one side. Though big, she was muscle rather than fat, with exquisite hands and feet. She unfolded a fresh white linen napkin, placed it round him and creased it, with care, under his chin. He opened his mouth and drank his soup obediently. She dabbed a dribble of soup from his chin and fed him another spoonful, her mouth curving down in concentration. In profile, as now, with her solid jowls and dramatic nose, she looked like a smooth-faced Roman emperor of great cruelty and strength. Ilse shuddered. Her father opened his mouth and closed it again, like a baby. He smiled at Renée. They both liked it, the baby-feeding, just as they liked her washing him.
Renée, an excellent cook, used ingredients that did not exist in the markets, where meat was scarce and butter nonexistent. In the black market, where she bought her wine and spirits, she could get her hands on butter and chickens and real coffee. She had boiled beef just as Otto liked it, thick sliced with boiled potatoes and horseradish sauce. She cut the meat up, held the fork out. Otto chewed, smiling his appreciation. He had gained three kilos in as many weeks.
“German soldiers nearly broke in here last night,” Ilse said abruptly, her voice shaking a little.
“Not soldiers,” said Renée calmly. “Officials, bureaucrats; they belong to the Armistice Commission stationed in Marseilles. It’s good that they come here. Then my girls can find out what those bastards are up to. Don’t worry. They’ll soon learn where to go.”
Her father tugged at her arm: that meant that she should translate what Renée said. Ilse ignored him.
“What’s the Commission?”
“Officials sent from Germany. Why should the Germans bother to occupy the south, when our diligent French do all their work for them?” She did not call it work, she called it “conneries,” a bad word which Ilse would have been hard put to translate, had she wished to try. But she did not wish to. She picked up the little bag she had prepared and went out. Going along the corridor with the blue roses, she heard the bolt shoot to behind her. The roses on the next floor were pink and those on the floor above yellow. She knew many untranslatable things that she was not supposed to know at all.
The best jewellers were on the Canebière. She chose one that, being neither too luxurious nor too mean, seemed to represent the right milieu. The doorbell jangled as she went in. An old man came out of a back room and squinted at the pieces in her mother’s jewellery roll with his loupe. Everybody was selling things; he had too much already. Ilse turned to go.
“Mademoiselle,” he said casually, “I’ll take the brooch. The chains are ordinary, but perhaps I will put them in the window of the shop for a couple of weeks. If they sell you can have a third of the money.”
Suppressing her anger, she said that she would think about it. Without cash, they would never get out of France.
“Madame Renée, may I ask you something?”
“Of course.” She was sitting at the little bureau, doing some sort of paperwork.
“Madame, where’s a good place to sell jewellery?”
“What’ve you got?”
With reluctance, she held out her jewellery. Turning on a reading light, Renée unrolled the leather case. Her sitting room gave onto a tiny and very dark courtyard full of plants shedding a greeny pallor. A huge, elaborate armoire with glass fronts was crammed with china, another contained crystal glasses; even the chandelier was cut glass. The diamond ring was far too small for Renée’s fingers, which were very smooth and dimpled. But the pearl necklace with its lovely lustre sat well on her fine skin. She stood and went to the glass to admire it. Then, sitting down once more, she ran the gold chains through her fingers, weighed them mentally. She touched the platinum brooch with her long fingernail; it was a caress.
“I’ll take the pearls.”
It could not be helped; Ilse tried to disguise the blow.
Renée took a roll of money from the drawer of her cupboard and peeled off half a dozen big notes. She saw Ilse’s surprise. “For the time being business is good,” she said. “I have always helped my friends. That is my luxury.”
She smiled and Ilse tried to smile back, though she could not put much life into it. The pearls her mother had only ever worn on special occasions, the ones she wore in her wedding photograph, now lay around Renée’s throat.
“I want to buy visas and tickets to get out of France.”
“Tickets? That’s only for the high-ups. Our police check everybody. The G
ermans have given them nice long lists of who to catch.” “Salauds” was the word she used for the police. “Unofficially, when your father is better, we will find a way. But first he must get stronger.”
“He is stronger.”
She shook her head.
“Surely, Madame, surely you want to get rid of us,” Ilse said, choosing her words carefully.
“Ilse. A man like your father must be very careful.”
Ilse frowned. She wondered how this woman knew all that she did. With one long finger, Renée tapped the side of her nose. She could not begin to imagine what her father had managed to communicate when they did not share a language and he hardly spoke, even to his own daughter.
Renée’s mother kept two books beside her Bible: a life of the saints with much emphasis on the martyrdom of the blessed Sainte Cathérine, and L’Abbé Tigrane by Ferdinand Fabre, tales of provincial life. The old lady must have been very religious. Each time she read them, Ilse knew more words and skipped fewer. When her eyes were too tired to carry on, she would sit staring into the near darkness listening to her father’s breathing and to the noises of the house. The way the linens lay folded in perfect alignment seemed to Ilse to be just like the parallel scars on her hand, which were healing nicely, little train tracks which she ran her thumb across. She wondered if she had changed her destiny by making those marks. She thought about her guardian angel when, with drooping eyes, she finally lay down in the big bed next to a clean-shaven Otto smelling of eau de cologne. Once he had suggested that she might prefer to sleep alone. Wordlessly, she shook her head. She could not bear to be alone, listening to the noises of the night, wondering what bed he had gone to, in a house which had so many.
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