by Irwin Shaw
Brandt stood up and toweled his face. “Christian,” he said seriously, through the muffling cloth, “you’re going to stay with me, aren’t you?”
“First,” Christian began, keeping his voice low, so that the rushing water from the tap obscured it, “what about that other one?”
“Françoise?” Brandt waved his hand. “Don’t worry about her. There’s plenty of room. You can sleep on the couch. Or …” He grinned. “Come to an understanding with her. Then you wouldn’t have to sleep on the couch.”
“I’m not worried about the overcrowding,” Christian said.
Brandt reached over to turn the water off. “Leave it on,” Christian said sharply, holding Brandt’s hand.
“What’s the matter with you?” Brandt asked, puzzled.
“She doesn’t like Germans, that one,” Christian said. “She can make a lot of trouble.”
“Nonsense.” With a quick movement, Brandt snapped the water off. “I know her. I guarantee that lady. She’ll grow very fond of you. Now, listen to me, promise you’ll stay …”
“All right,” Christian said slowly. “I’ll stay.” He could see Brandt’s eyes glistening. Brandt’s hand, as it patted Christian’s bare shoulder, was trembling a little.
“We’re safe, Christian,” Brandt whispered. “Finally, we’re safe …”
He turned and awkwardly put on his shirt and went out into the other room. Christian put his shirt on slowly, buttoning it carefully, looking at himself in the mirror, studying the haggard eyes, the ridged lines on his cheeks, the topography of fear and grief and exhaustion that was obscurely and invincibly marked there. He leaned close to the mirror and stared at his hair. There was a sanding of gray, heavy at the temples, glistening in little pale tips on top. God, he thought, I never saw that before. I’m getting old, old … He braced himself fiercely, hating the wave of self-pity that for a moment he had allowed to flood through him, and walked stiffly out into the living room.
The living room was cozy, with the one shaded lamp disseminating a dull rosy glow over the modern blond wood, over the pale red rug and the flowered drapes and the empty glasses and over the long, reclining figure of Françoise on the soft couch.
Brandt and Simone had gone to bed, holding hands domestically as they had gone down the hallway. After eating, after telling a jumbled, inaccurate account of the last few days, Brandt had nearly fallen asleep in his chair and Simone had fondly pulled him up by his hands and led him away, smiling in an almost motherly way at Christian and Françoise left together in the shadowy room.
“The war is over,” Brandt had mumbled in farewell, “the war is over, boys, and now I am going to sleep. Farewell, Lieutenant Brandt, of the Army of the Third Reich,” he had said with sleepy oratory, “farewell, soldier. Tomorrow once more the decadent painter of non-objective pictures awakens in his civilian bed, next to his wife.” He had pointed in a limp, gentle way at Françoise. “Be good to my friend. Love him well. He is the best of the best. Strong, delicate, tested in the fire, the hope of the new Europe, if there will be a new Europe and if there is any hope for it. Love him well.”
Shaking her head fondly, saying, “The drink has gone to the man’s tongue,” Simone had pushed him gently toward the bedroom.
“Good night,” they had heard Brandt’s mumbled valedictory in the hallway, “good night, my good dear friends …”
Then the door had closed and there had been silence in the small, feminine room, with its pale wood and its dark, night-time mirrors, its soft-colored cushions, and its silver-framed photograph of Brandt taken in beret and Basque shirt before the war.
Christian looked over at Françoise. She was staring up at the ceiling, her hands behind her head, sunk in the cushions, half her face in shadow. Her body, under the quilted blue robe, was absolutely still. Occasionally, in a lazy, small movement, she pointed the toes of one foot, encased in a satin, flat-heeled slipper, toward the end of the couch, then flipped the foot back into its original position. Vaguely, Christian remembered another quilted robe. Red, deep red, on Gretchen Hardenburg, the first time he had seen her at the door of the massive apartment in Berlin. He wondered what Mrs. Hardenburg was doing now, whether the building was still standing, whether she was alive, whether she still went around with the gray-haired Frenchwoman …
“A tired soldier,” Françoise murmured from the depths of the couch, “a very tired soldier, our Lieutenant Brandt.”
“Yes,” said Christian, watching her carefully.
“He’s had a hard time, hasn’t he?” Françoise moved her toes. “It hasn’t been pleasant, the last few weeks, has it?”
“No, not very.”
“The Americans,” said Françoise, in a flat, innocent voice, “they’re very strong, very fresh, aren’t they?”
“You might say that.”
“The papers here,” Françoise shifted her weight gently and the long lines rearranged themselves in silvery shadows under the robe, “keep saying it is all going according to plan. The Americans are being cleverly contained, there will be a surprising counterattack.” The tone of lazy amusement in Françoise’s voice was very clear. “The papers are very reassuring. Mr. Brandt ought to read them more often.” She chuckled softly. The chuckle would have seemed sensual and inviting, Christian realized, if they had been talking on a different subject. “Mr. Brandt,” Françoise, said gently, “is not of the opinion that the Americans will be contained. And a counter-attack would be really surprising to him, wouldn’t it?”
“I imagine so,” Christian said, sparring, wondering: What is this woman up to?
“How about you?” She spoke abstractedly, not really to Christian, but into the warm, dusky air.
“Perhaps I share Brandt’s opinion,” Christian said.
“You’re very tired, too, aren’t you?” Françoise sat up and stared at him, her lips straight and quite sympathetic, but her heavy-lidded green eyes contracted in what seemed to Christian to be a hidden smile. “You probably want to go to sleep, too.”
“Not right now,” said Christian. Suddenly he couldn’t bear the thought of this long-limbed, green-eyed, mocking woman leaving him. “I’ve been a lot more tired than this in my time.”
“Oh,” said Françoise lying back again, “oh, what an excellent soldier. Stoical, inexhaustible. How can an army lose a war when it still has troops like that?”
Christian stared at her, hating her. She turned her head in a sleepy movement on the cushions, to look at him. The long muscles under the pale skin of her throat made a delicate new pattern of flesh and shadows in the lamplight. Finally, Christian knew, staring at her, he would have to kiss that place where the skin swept in an ivory, trembling, living sheet from the base of her throat to the half-exposed shoulder.
“I knew a boy like you long ago,” Françoise said, not smiling now, looking directly at him. “A Frenchman. Strong. Uncomplaining. A resolute patriot. I liked him very much, I must say.” The deep voice murmured in his ears. “He died in ’40. In another retreat. Do you expect to die, Sergeant?”
“No,” said Christian, slowly. “I do not expect to die.”
“Good.” Françoise’s full lips murmured into a small smile. “The best of the best, according to your friend. The hope of the new Europe. Do you consider yourself the hope of the new Europe, Sergeant?”
“Brandt was drunk.”
“Was he? Possibly. Are you sure you don’t want to go to sleep?”
“I’m sure.”
“You do look very tired, you know.”
“I do not wish to go to sleep.”
Françoise nodded gently. “The ever-waking Sergeant. Does not wish to go to sleep. Prefers to remain awake, at great personal sacrifice, and entertain a lonely French lady who is at a loose end until the Americans enter Paris …” She put her hand, palm upward, over her eyes, the loose sleeve falling back from the slender wrist and the long, sharp-nailed fingers. “Tomorrow,” she said, “we will enter your name for the Legion of H
onor, second class, service to the French nation.”
“Enough,” Christian said, without moving from his chair. “Stop making fun of me.”
“Nothing,” said Françoise flatly, “could be further from my mind. Tell me, Sergeant, as a military man, how long do you think it will be before the Americans get here?”
“Two weeks,” said Christian. “A month.”
“Oh,” Françoise said, “we are in for an interesting time, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I tell you something, Sergeant?”
“What?”
“I have remembered our little dinner party again and again. ’40?’41?”
“’40.”
“I wore a white dress. You looked very handsome. Tall, straight, intelligent, conquering, shining in your uniform, the young god of mechanized warfare.” She chuckled.
“You are making fun of me again,” Christian said. “It is not pleasant.”
“I was very much impressed with you.” She waved her hand, as though to stop a contradiction that Christian had no idea of voicing. “Honestly, I was. I was very cold to you, wasn’t I?” Again the small, remembering chuckle. “You have no idea how difficult it was for me to manage it. I am far from impervious, Sergeant, to the attractions of young men. And you were so beautiful, Sergeant …” The sleepy, hypnotic voice whispering musically in the darkened, civilized room, seemed remote, unreal. “So ripe with conquest, so arrogant, so beautiful. It took all my enormous powers of self-control. You are less arrogant, now, aren’t you, Sergeant?”
“Yes,” said Christian, feeling himself between sleeping and waking, rhythmically adrift on a soft, perfumed, subtly dangerous tide. “Not arrogant at all any more.”
“You’re very tired now,” the woman murmured. “A little gray. And I noticed that you limp a bit, too. In ’40 it did not seem you could ever grow tired. You might die, then, I thought, in one glorious burst of fire, but never weary, never … You are very different now, Sergeant, very different. By ordinary standards, one would never say you were beautiful now, with your limp and your graying hair and your thin face … But I’m going to tell you something, Sergeant. I am a woman of peculiar tastes. Your uniform is no longer shining. Your face is gray. No one would ever believe that there is a resemblance in you to the young god of mechanized warfare …” A final hint of soft laughter echoed in her voice. “But I find you much more attractive tonight, Sergeant, infinitely more …”
She stopped speaking, her opium-like voice dying among the shadows of the cushioned couch.
Christian stood up. He went over and stared at her for a moment. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, smiling with candor.
He knelt swiftly and kissed her.
He lay beside her in the dark bed. The curtains on the window were open, blowing gently in the summer night wind. A pale silvery wash of moonlight draped and made soft the outlines of the bureau, the vanity table, the chairs with his clothes thrown over them.
It had been a passionate, knowing, drowning experience, a sensual milestone in his journey among women, an unreticent flood of desire which had swept away all the hours of flight, all memory of the smells of the broken ambulance convoy, all memory of the marching, the dying French boy, the hateful bicycle, the sandy-eyed groping retreat along the crowded roads in the little stolen automobile. All war had vanished here in the soft bed and the moonlit room. For the first time since his arrival in France so many years ago, and so late in the game, Christian realized, the promise which he had once believed in and finally forgotten, the promise of magnificent and accomplished women, had been fulfilled.
The German-hater … He grinned and turned his head. Her hair rumbled in a dark, fragrant mass on the pillow, Françoise was lying beside him, touching his skin lightly with the tips of her fingers, her eyes once more mysterious in the wavering pale light.
She smiled slowly. “See,” she said, “you weren’t so terribly tired, after all, were you?”
They chuckled together. He moved his head and kissed the smooth, silvery sheet of skin where her throat joined her shoulder, drowsily submerged in the mingled textures of skin and hair, swimming hazily in the living double fragrance of hair and skin.
“There is something to be said,” Françoise whispered, “for all retreats.”
Through the open window came the sound of soldiers marching, hobnails making a remote military rhythmic clatter, pleasant and meaningless heard this way in a hidden room through the tangled perfumed strands of his mistress’ hair.
“I knew it, as soon as I saw you,” Françoise said. “The first time, long ago, that it could be like this. Formidable. I could tell.”
“Why did you wait so long?” Christian pulled back gently, turning, looking up at the pattern the moonlight, reflected from a mirror, made on the ceiling. “God, the time we’ve wasted. Why didn’t you do this then?”
“I was not making love to Germans, then,” Françoise said coolly. “I did not think it was admirable to surrender everything in the country to the conqueror. You may not believe this, and I don’t care whether you do or not, but you are the first German I have permitted to touch me.”
“I believe you,” Christian said. And he did, because whatever else her faults might be, dishonesty was certainly not one of them.
“Don’t think it was easy,” Françoise said. “I am not a nun.”
“Oh, no,” said Christian gravely. “I will put that in writing.” Françoise did not laugh. “You were not the only one,” she said. “So many magnificent young men, such a pleasant variety of young men … But, not one of them, not one … The conquerors did not get anything … Not until tonight …”
Christian hesitated, vaguely troubled. “Why,” he asked, “why have you changed now?”
“Oh, it’s all right now.” Françoise laughed, a sly, sleepy, satisfied, womanly laugh. “It’s perfectly all right now. You’re not a conqueror any more, darling, you’re a refugee …” She twisted over to him and kissed him. “Now,” she said, “it is time to sleep.…”
She moved over to her side of the bed. Lying flat on her back, with her arms chastely at her side, her long body sweepingly outlined under the white blur of the sheet, she dropped off to slumber. Her breath came in an even, healthy rhythm in the quiet room.
Christian did not sleep. He lay uncomfortably, with growing rigidity, listening to the breathing of the woman beside him, staring at the moon and mirror-flecked ceiling. Outside, there was the noise of the hobnailed patrol again, increasing and receding on the silent pavement. It did not sound remote any more, or pleasant, or meaningless.
Refugee, Christian remembered, and remembered the low, mocking laugh that accompanied it. He turned his head a little and looked at Françoise. Even as she slept, he imagined seeing a tiny, superior, victorious smile at the corner of the long, passionate mouth. Christian Diestl, the non-conquering refugee, finally given the franchise of the Parisienne’s bed. The French, he remembered, they will beat us all yet. And, what’s worse, they know it.
With growing rage, staring at the long, beautiful face on the pillow beside him, he felt used, seduced, and for what an ironic and superior purpose! And Brandt, drunk and hopeful and exhausted in the next room, caught by another trap, with the trademark, “Made in France,” also on it.
Lying there he began to hate Brandt for being so willingly trapped. Christian thought of all the men he had touched and who had died. Hardenburg, Kraus, Behr, the brave, hopeless little Frenchman on the road to Paris, the boy on the bicycle, the farmer in the town-hall cellar next to the open yellow coffin, the men in his platoon in Normandy, the American firing up, half-naked and crazily courageous, from the mined bridge in Italy. It is unjust, he thought, for the soft ones to survive where the hard ones die. Brandt, with his civilian cunning, luxurious in the silk Parisian bed, was a sick rebuke to them all. There were too many men, as it was, who knew on which doors to knock and what to say when they were opened. The good had fallen, should
the weak now luxuriate? Death was the best cure for luxury, and easily applied. Better friends than Brandt had. died beside him for four years; should Brandt be left alive to suck on Hardenburg’s bones? The end justifies the means—and after the geometric slaughter, was the end to be Civilian Brandt, after three or four easy months in an American stockade, returning to his soft French wife, painting his silly, piddling pictures, apologizing for the next twenty years to the victors for the hard, dead men he had betrayed? Death had been in Christian’s touch from the beginning—now, at the end, out of a sentimental notion of friendship, was he to spare only the least deserving? Was that all he had learned in four years of killing?
Suddenly it was intolerable to think of Brandt snoring softly in the next room, intolerable for himself to remain in bed next to the handsome woman who had used him so comfortably and mercilessly. He slid noiselessly onto the floor and walked barefooted and naked over to the window. He stared out over the roofs of the sleeping city, the chimneys shining under the moon, the pale streets winding away narrowly with their memories of other centuries, the river shining under its bridges in the distance. He could hear the patrol from the window, faint and brave across the still dark air, and he got a glimpse of it as it crossed an intersection. Five men walking deliberately and cautiously down the night-time streets of the enemy, vulnerable, stolid, pathetic, friends …