by Bodie Thoene
There was a long pause; then the sound of a Schubert waltz penetrated the wood of the door.
“She will just be a moment.” The boy turned apologetically. “You know . . . these females.”
Horst kept his hand on the Luger. How stupid it would be to have survived battle and be murdered on a gloomy backstreet in Warsaw. “Of course.”
The doorknob clicked, the hinges groaned slightly, and the door opened. A stream of light spilled out on Horst and the beggar.
Silhouetted in the light was a girl with blond, shoulder-length hair. Dyed, Horst reckoned, to make herself more appealing to the German clientele who were fixated on all things Aryan. Her eyes were wide and blue in an oval face and reflected her nervousness. Or was it fear? She was not much more than eighteen, if that. Wearing a flimsy, light blue cotton robe, she was small and thin, but not as starved-looking as her brother. Nevertheless, the spectre of hunger was in her eyes.
“I have brought someone, Smyka,” said the boy in an urgent tone, as if he was warning her to keep a bargain.
She did not smile or raise her eyes as she stepped aside. “Guten Abend,” she said timidly.
Horst brushed past her into a small, musty smelling room. The windows here were boarded. Fresh air would have been a relief. There was a neatly made bed in the corner and a tiny kerosene stove on the opposite wall. A curtain provided a partition for what might have been a second room, but there was nothing else.
“He is a major, Smyka,” said the boy. “I have told him you are very nice. That you have music and vodka, too.”
The girl’s eyes darted up. “I am out of vodka, Herr Major. But if you like, my brother can get some.”
Horst nodded and gestured toward the curtain.
“Oh that,” the boy said brightly. “It is nothing. Just clothes and things.” He put out his hand. “If you want vodka, you will have to pay in advance, Herr Major.”
Horst dug in his pocket and retrieved a handful of change. “Yes, I would like a drink.”
The brother and sister exchanged a look. The girl leaned in close and murmured some instruction in Polish. Then the urchin was out the door, clattering down the stairway. Schubert played on, skipping and scratching through one waltz and popping onto another.
“You will want to remove your gun and your tunic, Herr Major.”
The girl glanced at the bed and began to take off the robe.
“Wait until your brother comes back. I want to drink first.”
She managed a weak, self-conscious smile and tied the belt again. Was she relieved? “As you wish, Herr Major. Would you like to dance then?”
The curtain stirred. Someone was behind it. Horst felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He stepped away from her as she put her arms around him.
“Who is there?” he demanded hotly.
“It is nothing, Herr Major. Nothing!”
He pushed her away roughly and drew his Luger, as if to shoot through the cloth.
The girl shrieked and stumbled, throwing herself between the muzzle of the pistol and the curtain. “No! It is nothing, Herr Major! Do not shoot! Please! I beg you!”
Horst flung her aside and tore away the fabric, revealing not an enemy waiting in ambush but a crib with a child of about twelve months standing, clutching the bars.
The girl wept and clung to Horst’s boots. “Please! I told you! You see? Only a baby, Herr Major! You cannot hurt him!”
A wave of dread enveloped Horst. Suppose he had fired?
The baby began to cry.
“Why did you hide him away?” Horst shouted at her. “I might have killed him!”
“I thought . . . you would not . . . want me. I need the money, Herr Major. Please! Do not leave me! I will do anything you want!”
Horst’s breath exploded from his lungs. “Is the child yours, girl?”
“My baby brother.”
“How old are you?” He grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly to her feet. “Do not lie to me. How old?”
“Sixteen,” she cried. “Please . . . it is only me to care for them. For my brothers. Don’t leave yet! There is no other way! You can see. No kerosene. Nothing left to eat. Please stay! I will make it up to you, Herr Major!” She sank to her knees and covered her face with her hands. “God, help me! God help us!”
The record bumped to an end. The ticking of the needle against the label marked time with her sobs. Horst shoved the Luger back into the holster. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a one-hundred Reichsmark note and handed it to the baby.
Then he strode out of the room and out of the building into the foggy streets of Warsaw.
The road into Luxembourg City climbed out of a canyon and across a narrow ridge known as the Bock. Since Roman times this had been the main approach to the heights of ancient Luxembourg.
Like a broken tooth against the sky, the ruins of a tower marked the remnants of the city’s original ramparts. Legends about the founder of Luxembourg claimed that Count Sigefroi sold his soul to the devil, who built the fortress for him in a single night.
As the evening mists swirled up from the Alzette and Petrusse rivers to drift among the sloping medieval streets, it was not hard for Josie to imagine that the legend might be true. Here in this tiny neutral nation, other pacts were being made with the devil. The city was full of Gestapo agents, she had been told. Deals were struck and military information bought and sold as commonly as vegetables on market day.
Andre had changed into civilian clothes at the border. Any military uniforms made the citizens of Luxembourg nervous. They preferred the “see no evil” approach to the war. Trusting in their policy of strict neutrality, they crossed their fingers and closed their eyes to the fact that they were snug against the borders of France and Germany.
As for the state of their own army, Luxembourg kept a troop of three hundred fifty men. Who would want to overrun the Grand Duchy, they reasoned, when it was such a useful meeting place for spies of both sides?
Andre knew the city well. This fact surprised Josie, since while his little girl lived here he had never been to visit her. With the certainty of a homing pigeon, he made his way past the Gothic cathedral of Our Lady of Luxembourg and the Grand Palace and the National Museum, finally stopping at the Brasseur Hotel.
The place exuded the faded grandeur of the last century. The lounge was draped in deep red. A portrait of the Grand Duchess Charlotte hung over the mantel of a large open fireplace in which the logs blazed cheerfully. In the stone of the mantel beneath Charlotte was carved the national motto of Luxembourg:
“Ir woelle bleiwe was mir sin—
We want to remain who we are.”
Was the motto merely wishful thinking?
There was a large Christmas tree in the corner behind a grand piano. A thin-faced man in an old-fashioned cutaway coat played Mozart. The lounge was populated almost entirely by middle-aged men with grim eyes that darted from the pages of their newspapers to examine other grim men. With the piano providing the mood, the setting reminded Josie of an old silent movie she had seen about Mata Hari.
It was clear Andre knew the proprieter of the Brasseur. The man peered up at Josie with interest as Andre signed the register for two rooms.
“Adjoining, Monsieur Chardon?” His inquiry was discreet, but heads turned all the same. Had Andre been here with other women? Perhaps with the mother of his child?
Against her will the color rose to Josie’s face.
“No. Merci, Henri,” Andre replied. “My regular room for me. A suite for Madame Marlow.”
There was no need for a bellman. Josie had brought only a small carpetbag with one change of clothes and the blue dress. Andre carried the red-wrapped doll and an expensive leather valise.
Her suite was on the second floor near the stairs. His was on the third floor at the end of the corridor.
“Is an hour enough time?” he asked. “Dinner at eight-thirty. The dining room. I’ll come by, and we can go down together.”
He backed up a step and inclined his head in a slight bow, like a junior officer coolly accepting a command.
She closed the door of her room and turned the lock without thinking. Was she locking him out, or locking herself in? The last thing she needed was to get romantically involved with a French colonel. At this moment she wished they were each staying at different hotels. In fact, the way she was feeling, separate cities might be the only real margin of safety.
16
Caught on the Playing Board
Hot water. Josie lay back in the tub in her room at the Brasseur Hotel and let it wash over her in delicious waves. She almost regretted her promise to be ready in an hour. How wonderful it would be to simply throw on her nightgown, climb between cool sheets, and sleep for a while!
The telephone rang. She wrapped in a towel and answered it on the fifth ring. The tone of Andre was too cheerful. “Chèrie! I’ve met some old friends who are staying here. I hope you don’t mind. We are invited to join them at their table. I could not refuse without compromising you to gossip.”
She suppressed her vague sense of disappointment with the knowledge that there was safety in numbers. The way she was feeling, dinner by candlelight with Andre could be fatal. “Of course, Andre!” Did her too-cheerful tone match his?
Dressed in the cobalt blue evening dress, Josie entered the lobby of the hotel on time. Andre had already seen her in the gown—her only one. She felt like a caterpillar among the butterflies he must see all around Paris.
“Fantastic,” Andre uttered, as if seeing her for the first time.
Escorting her to the dining room, he explained that a number of foreign nationals would be at the table tonight, including an American oilman and a Polish colonel in exile.
“All men, I fear. Most English speaking.” He leaned close to her as they entered the dining room. She felt his breath on her shoulder. “You said you were vulnerable tonight. I have taken you at your word. I have provided you with, I hope, an entertaining diversion, but I cannot always say that I will be such a gentleman.”
His frank gaze made her blush again. Suddenly wide-awake, she could feel the color climb from her throat to her cheeks. He smiled at it, and she imagined that he said such things on purpose. There was a kind of power in a man who could warm a woman with a look. Was it an acquired skill, she wondered, or just some inherited talent peculiar to the French? She forced herself to remember the wizened old face of the railroad ticket clerk in Boulogne. What was it he had said about the French bulls?
“May I speak frankly?” she asked.
“But of course.”
“On our first meeting on the train to Paris, I am relieved that your eyes were closed and your mouth open most of the way from Boulogne. Otherwise I might have thought you were a dangerous man.”
“Oh, but I am! You’ll see when you know me better.” He laughed, but Josie had the distinct feeling that he was no longer joking.
The large round dining table was set before a fireplace at the far end of the salon. Four men rose in unison as they approached.
Andre introduced Josie. “This group will be all politics and war. The food is the best in Luxembourg, and this was the personal table of the German kaiser in the last war.” He pulled out her chair. “This was the kaiser’s chair.”
Introductions passed clockwise around the table: the American oilman, Hardy, thickset and sunburned, with a Southern accent; the Polish colonel, Wolinska, fine-boned, grim, and steely eyed, as though thinking about Christmas misery in Warsaw; a Canadian journalist, Tibbets, who had arrived on the Continent too late to make Christmas on the western front with his colleagues; and Medard, the elderly French assistant minister of commerce, who looked like a librarian.
The Canadian squinted curiously at Josie. “Marlow. Marlow? I knew a Marlow. Quite a ladies’ man. Put us all to shame. Danny Marlow. Any relation?”
So here it was again. Right out. “My husband.”
The Canadian swallowed hard. He scratched his chin and took a sip of wine. “I never knew Danny was married.”
Andre glanced at her with that inscrutable smile. Was he enjoying the fact that she was blushing again? Thankfully the conversation rushed past the subject of Daniel’s forgetting to tell anyone he had a wife back in the States. The Canadian murmured words of sympathy, and then the topic leaped to offensives, defense, the Germans, the English, politics, and war.
“Neutrality,” spat the Polish colonel. “Americans call themselves neutral, safe on the far side of the Atlantic. I say Americans are another yellow race.”
The face of the oilman grew redder with the affront. “I’m in Europe to put French tankers under the protection of our flag. France will be in need of American neutrality in shipping if this goes on a long time.”
“The last war was a long one,” said the French commerce minister, “and we won it. Therefore this will likely be a long war and we will win.”
“History repeats itself,” agreed the Canadian journalist. “Time won for the Allies. In 1914 the Allies were disorganized and unprepared. But time, working for us, assured our victory.”
Andre Chardon remained silent, complacent, as if the topic bored him.
The French minister went on. It was apparent he was a well-read man. He quoted every government newspaper and magazine and arrived at his version of the truth about the inevitable outcome of this war. “An impregnable defense cannot be taken. The Maginot Line constitutes an impregnable defense. The Belgians also have their own Maginot between them and Germany. Belgium is on our border and is impregnable. And Luxembourg! A maze of mountains and valleys. Impassable to artillery. Therefore France cannot be taken. We wait it out. And if France cannot be taken, Germany is beaten.”
“That may be true,” commented the American oilman, “but suppose Hitler has some secret weapon? I sent my family home at the thought of it.”
The French minister scoffed. “He has nothing but the tanks and dive-bombers he used against Poland, a very weak and unprepared nation.”
The Polish colonel bristled. “You are wrong! It was not the tanks or dive-bombers we were unprepared for. It was the way the Germans used them. It was not history repeating itself, but something new and terrible. A war of movement!”
The French minister wagged his head at the naïveté of the Polish colonel. “Of course they moved across the Polish plains. But through the Maginot? Never. Through tank traps and barbed wire? Through the Ardennes and Dutch floods and the Belgian defenses? In the face of our air force? C’est ridicule, Monsieur! France is impregnable. If we cannot be beaten, then Hitler is beaten.”
For a moment it looked like the table might come to blows. Josie shifted her gaze from one debater to the next as though she were watching a tennis match. Andre Chardon continued to say nothing at all. Josie found his calm demeanor disquieting. Did Andre have any opinion? Was he unmoved by the terrible fate of Poland? For the first time she saw him as cold and detached. She smoldered inside as she listened to empty prattle that could not alter what she had lived through in Warsaw.
The Polish colonel, a cavalry officer, was the only man among them who had tasted battle. He now found himself in what he considered a group of ignorant café generals. He became increasingly sullen as the minutes ticked past.
Dinner was ordered. Colonel Wolinska recited tales of horror to the unimpressed French minister, who babbled about the need to maintain the French economy. The oilman agreed that commerce must be protected.
“While France delays converting commercial factories into armament facilities for fear of harming a peacetime industry, the German nation puts all its energies into preparation for war,” said the Polish colonel. He narrowed his eyes in disgust. “You are talking politics
. There is a difference between politics and war. The Nazis know that. The Allies do not. France talks and talks while the Germans march and kill. That is the weakness of France—why France remains unprepared.”
The Canadian replied in a patronizing tone, “Unprepared? The French fortifications are unlike any the world has seen before, my dear colonel.”
“The only defense for France is to attack first. But even now it may be too late for that. Poland is destroyed. The Germans are moving their armies again. This time they gather at your precious, invincible Maginot.”
The first course was served.
The colonel was calm again for a moment. He had angered the complacent allies at the table and so had won a small battle in his own bitter eyes.
“Defeatist!” spat the French minister.
It was evident that Josie had been meant to somehow restrain the potential volatility of the dinner guests. At least the Polish colonel and the French minister had not yet thrown the goose-liver paté at one another. But Josie was falling down on the job. The conversation moved on to poison gas, which might humanely murder all of Paris in its sleep or possibly peel the population alive like so many ripe bananas.
Then the inevitable question arose: What was this all about, anyway? It was no longer about Poland. Poland was gone. So why the naval blockade against Germany? Why the blustering on both sides?
“And what do you think, Colonel Chardon?” asked the American. “Is this a righteous war?”
Andre turned his gaze first on the Canadian journalist and then on Josie. “Some poet said it. That boys and girls and women who would groan to see a child pull off an insect’s leg all like to read of war. It is the best amusement of our morning meal. Until we face death ourselves, until it touches someone we love, the death of strangers is an amusement we savor in the papers. Other people’s sons. Other people’s brothers, husbands, and fathers. Hitler says war is about honor, dying with courage. I think it is more about breaking the tedium of ordinary life . . . a terrible game of chess between Hitler and every other government in Europe, and we are all caught on the playing board.”