by Cara Black
Quickly, Aimee unzipped her dress, tossed her pearls in the drawer, and pulled on her ripped jeans and black leather jacket. "You're going to stay with Uncle Maurice," she told Miles Davis. She grabbed his carrier, throwing in extra dog biscuits. "Help him mind the kiosk. You like his poodle, Bizou, don't you?" He jumped in his bag, eagerly wagging his tail. "I thought so." She ran back down her stairway and hailed a taxi.
Monday Evening
HARTMUTH SAT WAITING ON the bench in the Square Georges-Cain and watched the shadows lengthen. He'd bought Provencal sweets, the same fruit calissons he used to bring Sarah. But what he really wanted to give her was himself.
What would she look like? He'd been eighteen and she fourteen the last time he'd seen her. Now they were in their sixties and briefly he wondered if he'd still be attracted to her. But all these years he'd dreamed of her, Sarah. Only her. The one woman who had entered the core of his being.
He had to take this second chance, no matter what. He refused to die full of regret. He'd draft a letter of resignation to the trade ministry citing ill health. Somehow he'd escape the Werewolves. He'd camp on her doorstep until she accepted him.
There was a slight rustle and thump in the bushes near him. He went over to investigate and found only pebbles. When he returned to the bench a figure sat huddled in a large cape. He nodded and sat back down. Then Hartmuth turned back to look.
Those eyes. Cerulean blue pools so deep he started to lose himself again and the years fell away. There was no doubt.
For a moment he was as shy and awkward as when they'd first touched. A stuttering, gangling eighteen-year-old.
Wrinkles webbed in a fine pattern from the corners of her eyes. Dark hollows lay under them and her pale skin glowed translucently in the dim streetlight. Exactly how he remembered: pearl-like and shining. A hooded cape covered all but her eyes and prominent cheekbones. And she was still beautiful.
His plastic surgery hadn't fooled her, he knew. She would notice the deep lines etched in his face and the crepey folds in his neck. And his hair, once black, had turned completely white.
She searched his face, then spoke quietly. "You look different, Helmut."
No one had called him Helmut in fifty years.
"Your face changed but your eyes are the same. I could tell it was you."
"Sarah," he breathed, hypnotized again by her eyes. "I've l-looked for you."
"You lied, Helmut, you deported my parents." She lapsed into the jumble of French and German they'd spoken. "They were dead and you knew all the time."
He'd expected anything but this. In his dreams she was as eager as he. He realized she was waiting for him to say something.
"W-we d-deported everyone then. I found out later that they were gone but I s-saved you. I kept looking for you after the war, but it was always a d-dead end, because I'd erased your r-records myself." He reached for her hands.
She pulled away and shook her head. "Is that all you can say?"
"You're the only one," he said softly, reaching again for her hands. "Ja, I'll never let you g-go again, n-never." His voice shook.
"You ruined my life," she said hoarsely. "I stayed here. Saw 'Nazi whore' written in everyone's eyes. Fifteen years old and I gave birth on a wooden floor while the concierge used metal ice tongs as forceps to pull our bastard out. At Liberation, they threw us in the street. The mob tried to lynch me while I clutched the baby and they screamed, 'Boche bastard.' Even Lili."
She paused and took a deep breath. "Of all the collabos, I was the one they hated the most, even though I'd shared your food with them."
Her eyes glittered in the dim glow of a far-off streetlight. "I stood on a statue's pedestal for eighteen hours. They tarred my forehead with a swastika. Jeering, they asked me how I could sleep with a Nazi while my family burned in the Auschwitz ovens."
He shook his head in disbelief. "We had a baby? What happened?" he rasped in pain.
"The baby died when my breast milk dried up. You know, Helmut, I've had so many reasons to hate you it's hard to pick the crucial one. After Liberation, I hid in a freezing farm cellar and fought with the hogs for their food because collaborators with shaved heads had to hide. After a year, the swastika on my forehead finally began to heal. But for years, constant infections occurred. I had to leave Europe, go away. There was nothing here for me. Nothing. No one. The only ship leaving Marseilles was bound for Algeria, so I—once a strict Kosher Jew—ended up cooking for pieds-noir, what they call French colonials, in Oran. Fair and decent people. I became part of their large household. They left after the sixties coup d'etat. Later, I married an Algerian with French blood who worked at Michelin. He understood me and we lived well, better than I ever imagined. But for me life held a hole never to be filled."
She slowly pulled the hood off until it draped in folds on her shoulders. Short, white bristly hair surrounded her head like a halo, highlighting the jagged, pinkish swastika scar on her forehead. It glowed in the dim light.
Hartmuth gasped.
Her voice wobbled when she spoke again. "I never really liked men to touch me, after you and after the baby. At first, it was hard even with my husband. He was a good, patient man and put up with me until I was ready. My insides had been butchered with those tongs, I couldn't have children."
Hartmuth listened in anguish. He took her hand and caressed it but she was oblivious, determined to finish.
"Algeria changed, I'd grown no roots there. But now I had papers, a little money. After my poor husband died this year, I felt so lonely that I returned to France. In Paris, at least I felt that any ghosts would be ghosts I knew. I wanted to live in the Marais again, the only home I knew. I could walk by my parents' apartment every day, even if another generation born after the war lived there. But it's so expensive here. With my references I found a job. I found out what happened to my family. I found out what you did to the tenants in our building."
Hartmuth stammered, "A-l-ll I c-could do was save your life and love you, I couldn't save the others, we had to f-follow orders, it was war. I was eighteen and you were the most beautiful being that I had ever t-touched. I wrote poetry after I'd see you. Dreams swam in my head. I wanted to take you to live in Hamburg."
"You've living in the past," she said.
He took her face in his hands. "I love you, Sarah."
She turned her head away for the first time. How could he make her feel like that again? That longing! She almost reached out to him but her parents' faces floated in front of her. She shook her head. "Your mind is in a past we never had."
"You don't have to speak, I know your heart. You feel guilty that you still love the enemy," he said. "What we have doesn't recognize borders or religion."
"Rutting in the dirt?" she said. "Eating like pigs while others starved? Hiding in the catacombs, always hiding, afraid to be seen. . .what was that?"
He hung his head. "I never wanted you to have pain, n-never. Even when there was no hope that you were still alive, you haunted me."
Her voice quavered. "I want to kill you, I planned to do it but"—she put her head down, defeated—"I can't."
"Sarah, can you f-ff-orgive me?" Hartmuth sobbed, his head in his hands. When he finally looked up, she was gone. He had never felt more alone.
Monday Evening
SARAH BOLTED HER GARRET door and curled up on the bed. Several hours were left until her shift began the next morning. She clutched the spot where her yellow star had been and tried not to remember. Tried to forget but she couldn't.
It was 1942, the stickiest and most humid day recorded in a September for thirty years. Not a breath of air stirred. School, already started and with compositions due, had settled into a tedious routine. As routine as the Nazi Occupation allowed. Only she and Lili Stein wore yellow stars embroidered on their school smocks.
"Want to see something?" Lili, plain and pigeon-toed, asked her after school.
Surprised that a sixteen-year-old would deign to notice her, she'd nodded
eagerly and followed. At fourteen, she felt proud that an older girl wanted her company. Cool air wafted from darkened courtyards as they passed quiet rue Payenne. Lace curtains hung lifelessly from windows normally shuttered against the heat.
At the Square Georges-Cain they sat on benches in the shade of plane trees, by the Roman pillars. No one was out, it was too hot. There was no petrol for cars and horse carts clomped over cobblestones in the distance. Fetid, dense air clung over the Seine in a wide band.
They took off their white pinafores and dipped them in the urnlike fountain. Giggling, they swabbed their sweaty necks and faces with cool, clear cistern water. Lili sat back, her small eyes full of concern.
"Something fell out of your satchel before mathematics," Lili said. "But I picked it up so no one would see it."
She pulled a almond-shaped calisson, a speciality of Aix-en-Provence, from her pocket.
Sarah stirred guiltily.
"Where'd this come from?" Lili asked.
"Look, Lili," Sarah said.
"Stop." Lili interrupted her. "Don't tell me because then I'd have to turn you in. I might have to do that anyway, Sarah Strauss!"
Sarah pulled a box out of her satchel and thrust it into Lili's palm.
Lili squealed in delight, "I can't believe it." She opened the box and popped a sweet in her mouth, moaning. "Luscious!" Savoring the taste, she grabbed some more. "The pink ones taste the best."
Sarah let Lili finish the sweets in the Provencal metal box painted with fruit and vines. Their legs dangled in the cool, bubbling water. Dragonflies buzzed in the green hedge. Everything felt smooth, peaceful—as if the war wasn't happening.
Lili's eyes narrowed. "What else do you have?"
"I can get more if you keep this between us," Sarah said. "Are you ready to leave Paris if Madame Pagnol finds a way to help us escape to the unoccupied zone?"
"Of course, I'm waiting for her to give the word, she said it might happen next week," Lili confided. "Madame told me trains are still running down south but you have to hike over the mountains to get to the free zone. Village scouts will take you but they want a lot of this." Lili rubbed her fingertips together and gave her a knowing look.
"Money?" Sarah asked naively.
"Of course, or jewelry, maybe even food," Lili said.
Sarah tugged her satchel nervously. She had never traveled outside of the Marais, let alone Paris. "Will we go together?"
"Two yellow stars at once? Hard to say." Lili eyed her. "Bring more of these. I need to keep the welcome warm with my concierge."
"But that might draw attention." Uneasy, Sarah shook her head. "I don't want that."
"You'll get Gestapo attention, Sarah Strauss, if I can't shut her up!"
The next day at school, their teacher, Madame Pagnol, informed them that an escape opportunity might occur at a moment's notice. So for several weeks after school, they met at the Square Georges-Cain to discuss plans.
Lili's identity card, with the J for Jewish, had been issued on her sixteenth birthday, as was the custom in France. Sarah knew if Lili claimed ration coupons, the Nazis would demand her identity card and then ship her directly to Drancy prison. She also realized Lili subsisted on whatever food she shared with her.
Every night Helmut reassured Sarah that he had checked the holding camps for her parents. He promised to find them and do his best to get them food. But he was so generous, she felt guilty. Guilty in taking the food even though she fed Lili and others in her old building.
Most of the time she succeeded in ignoring her warring emotions—her guilt versus her growing feelings for him. She didn't like to admit to herself how handsome he looked, his dark eyes glowing in the candle-lit cavern, like those of film stars she'd seen in her older sister's cinema magazines before the war. She told herself he'd understand when she escaped. As a Jew, it was her duty to escape.
Most of Helmut's food was quite exotic, especially for Jews who were raised kosher. She didn't care much for the foie gras in the Fauchon tins.
"My concierge says Fauchon is the fanciest food store in Paris," Lili said one day, munching eagerly. "The rabbi will excuse us for eating food not kosher, won't he?"
She heard doubt in Lili's voice for the first time. "There's not much choice. Anyway, it's goose liver, not pork."
Lili had looked away but not before Sarah saw relief on her face.
That night another roundup occurred in the Marais. Bottle green open-backed buses rumbled through the dark streets, full of Jews clutching crying babies and suitcases. She and Lili grew nervous. Every day it became more dangerous to walk on the street with a yellow star.
An unusual orange dusk had painted the sky, she remembered, in late October. One afternoon after Sarah had said goodbye to Lili she returned to the catacomb. She had always liked coming back to its dark, cool safety. She had even discovered another exit to the Square Georges-Cain and some large marble busts poking through the dirt. One looked like the picture of Caesar Augustus Madame Pagnol had pointed out in their history book. Like the bust they'd seen on a class field trip to the park when Madame took their photo.
Behind a wooden post, she heard crackling and looked up. Lili stood, wedged in a niche littered with femur bones. "Who are you informing on?" she said matter-of-factly, her mouth half-full of nougat.
Sarah stood bolt upright in surprise, bumping her head on the earthen ceiling. "How did you get in here?"
Lili ignored her question. "You must be an informer to get this food. Come on, I won't say anything." She paused. "You better be careful, you don't look so thin anymore."
"How did you get in here?"
"I've followed you for days, silly. You're not very observant," Lili said, crawling through the dirt. "Nice and cool in here."
"You followed me—why?" Then Sarah added it up. "Lili, don't be greedy. I share with others. You get enough."
"My concierge is greedy. Another family moved into my apartment," Lili said, picking at stones embedded in the dirt wall. "If I don't give her more I can't stay with her."
Sarah registered the dark shadows under Lili's eyes, her gaunt cheeks, and the patched soles of her shoes. "I'll try to get more. The trains will be running again soon. We'll escape!"
Lili stared at her. "Who do you inform on?"
"No one! A soldier trades with me," Sarah said defensively.
"What kind of soldier? What do you do for him?"
"What do you care, Lili? Thanks to me you're eating." She tried not to feel ashamed. "Leave it at that."
Some clods of dirt fell. Panic-stricken, she saw Helmut descend, blocking the weak light. Lili began screaming and backed into the wall. A black-uniformed Helmut smiled quizzically, staring from one to the other. Then he gently put his hand over Lili's mouth, sat her down, and beckoned to Sarah with his finger.
"It's all right, Lili, he won't hurt you," she mumbled.
Lili's terror-stricken expression alternated between accusing glances and a dawning recognition of why this Nazi was visiting Sarah. Helmut pulled some fancy tinned salmon out of his pocket and put it in Lili's hands.
"Ja, ja, take it, s'il vous plaît," and he put his finger over his mouth. "Shhh. . .ca va?"
His eyes narrowed. Lili's blotchy red face registered both hunger and fear. She opened her fists and gingerly took the tins of salmon without touching his fingers.
He shrugged. "Sarah," he said, putting his arm around her waist. "Ja, your guest has few manners."
Her cheeks were on fire. Lili looked jealously at the two of them. She realized Lili viewed them as lovers.
"Tell him thank you and leave quietly," Sarah said, averting her eyes from Lili's face.
"Merci," came out of Lili's mouth in a high-pitched squeak. She quickly scrambled up the ladder rungs.
Helmut asked, "Who is she?"
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Just my schoolmate, silly and stupid, she wears a yellow star. Don't worry." She pushed Lili's expression out of her mind.
Helmut looke
d at his watch. "I just came to say I've something to pick up then I'll be back." He'd traded his shift because he hated leaving her alone at night.
He pulled out a string of oily bratwurst from his SS kit bag and winked. "Some butcher in Hanover's contribution to the war effort."
Later he returned with duck terrine marbled in aspic and herbs. They ate while candle wax dripped lazily across the tea box. She tutored him in French after they ate, as she usually did. Her large wool sweater fell off her shoulders as she corrected his verb conjugations with a thick pencil.
"Très bien, Helmut, good work." She smiled. "Bravo."
He set the notebook down and pulled her toward him. Unbuttoning his uniform with one hand, he spread the jacket down as a pillow over the dense earth. She grew alarmed and gripped her fingers in the dirt. She'd had no brothers, never even seen her own father without his shirt. Taut muscles spread above Helmut's lean chest, his skin glistened.
Torn between gratitude and fear, she was paralyzed. Wasn't he looking for her parents? Giving her food? The Nazis who'd supervised the police roundups in her neighborhood hadn't been like him. Helmut was always so funny and generous with food. Under the flickering candlelight he laid her down and her black hair tangled in the storm trooper insignia glinting off his jacket. She went rigid.
She shook her head. "Non, Helmut."
Tracing her features with his finger, he cupped her face in his other hand. As he opened his mouth to speak, she winced. She wanted him to stop.
"Don't worry, Sarah, I won't h-hurt you." He drew close, rubbing her pearl white cheek with his.
She inhaled his smoky scent as he burrowed his face in her neck. He gently brushed the side of her neck with his lips, his kisses went down the front of her throat.
Tears welled in her eyes. Why was he doing this? His lips trailed down her navel and waves of heat passed through her. He kissed under her nipple and up the side of her breast, all the time caressing her face. For a long time he stroked the hollows of her cheeks and kissed behind her ears and her eyes, just holding her. She moaned. Now she didn't want him to stop. Finally their shadows entwined and rocked back and forth on the cavern walls of the old Roman catacomb.