Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  Yet she simply could not leave. Armand Sadowski was somewhere near her, his feet planted on the same French soil as hers, breathing the same French air she breathed. For the moment there was no way to know exactly where any soldier was, but surely things would soon settle down. At any moment he might be able to telephone her from his barracks, assuming he was in a barracks and not a trench. He might even get leave in two or three months, since, so far at least, there had been no active fighting anywhere. Any day now, she expected to receive Armand’s first letter—he had promised to write as often as he could. As long as she remained exactly where she was, as long as she stayed put, unmoving, unmovable, right here in Paris, they were linked, they shared their future. How then could she even consider putting six thousand miles between them?

  Delphine put the passports back into the strongbox with a sense of relief. There really had not been any decision to consider, after all.

  During that winter of 1940, the drôle de guerre or the “Phony War” in which no French army moved, and even the RAF dropped only leaflets, Armand Sadowski remained in his army unit on the northwestern Maginot Line. In April the Germans invaded Norway and Denmark. On the tenth of May, Hitler ended the “Phony War” by attacking nonbelligerent Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg on his way to conquer France. The French army, disintegrating and demoralized, fought the advancing enemy alongside English troops. Within two weeks, both allies were in full retreat toward the beaches of Dunkirk.

  The miracle of the evacuation of Dunkirk, during May, rescued most of the British forces to fight another day, but the French found themselves defeated on the shores of their homeland, cut off, with no possible retreat except into the waters of the English Channel. Armand Sadowski, with hundreds of thousands of other Frenchmen, found himself a prisoner of war. Within days he was sent to work in an armaments factory in Germany.

  During the battle of Dunkirk, Delphine stayed on, waiting for news. She continued to wait during the occupation of Paris; she waited through the day in June when an armistice was signed between France and Germany and what remained of the French army on French soil was demobilized; she waited, steadfast and stubborn, through all the chaos of July and August. Late in September she was rewarded. A postcard arrived from somewhere in Germany, which told her that Armand was alive, and had enough to eat.

  Now that Germany was no longer at war with France, it became important to avoid civilian unrest in occupied France. Prisoners of war were allowed to write postcards home every two weeks. Delphine soon understood, as did every French citizen who received these postcards, that they were merely to be taken as evidence that the prisoner was alive and could still hold a pencil, but she, like so many thousands of other women, counted every day that passed between the postcards that arrived with diabolical irregularity.

  Now, in the fall of 1941, there were nineteen postcards in all in the priceless bundle that Delphine kept in her strongbox. In June of 1941, four months earlier, the world of French filmmaking had come back to life, as thirty-five new films started to be produced in less than four months, under an organization called COIC, which had the unified support of the industry in its dealings both with the Vichy government of France and the German occupiers.

  Delphine saw all too clearly that there no longer were any Jews to be found working in the cinema, but the awakening of the film industry coincided with negotiations that resulted in the return of a number of prisoners of war. Even if Armand couldn’t work as a director until the Germans were defeated, she told herself, there was now the possibility that he would be sent back to France. This hope was enough for her to live on.

  The strongest, best financed and most active producing company in France was a new company called Continental. Such major directors as Marcel Carné, Georges Lacombe, Henri Decoin and Christian-Jaque; such top stars as Pierre Fresnay, Danielle Darrieux, Jean-Louis Barrault, Louis Jourdan, Fernandel, Michel Simon and Edwige Feuillère had all signed contracts with Continental. Now Delphine de Lancel also signed, as ignorant or as apolitical as all the others, who neither knew nor cared that Continental was entirely controlled by Germans, and that its head, the autocratic Alfred Greven, who oversaw all the activities of the company, reported directly to Goebbels and was a close personal friend of Goering.

  Zany, lighthearted mysteries and fast-paced, sophisticated comedies were favorites with Continental, made to replace the American films that had proved so successful before they were banned. Continental also produced police films, written by Georges Simenon about his immortal Inspector Maigret, as well as elaborate and painstakingly made classics adapted from Zola and Balzac.

  In the grand old tradition of filmmakers everywhere, Continental produced the movies the audience wanted to see, the wartime equivalent of the films Hollywood had made during the Depression, when movies about the rich had been so popular. In Continental’s films there was no pro-German propaganda, since the war had never happened; everyone had more than enough to eat, tobacco was not rationed, alcohol was plentiful, no one was ever cold, and German was never spoken. The time frame of most of their product was an idealized mid-1930s, in a France inhabited solely by the French.

  Delphine was grateful for the requirement to go back to work, the obligation to keep busy that allowed her so blessedly little time in which to think. She threw herself into a wildly popular series copied from The Thin Man. She played a character named Mila-Malou, the girl Friday of one Inspector Wens, played by the great actor Pierre Fresnay. Delphine, who had never truly envied another woman, envied lighthearted, silly, frivolous Mila-Malou. The madcap girl Friday reminded her of herself, only three years ago.

  When Bruno’s elite tank corps, which had seen no action, was demobilized after the Armistice, he returned to Paris as quickly as possible. He took no comfort in having been right about the outcome of the war—the problem was how to make his future, which he did not doubt for a minute would be lived under the Thousand Year Reich, as pleasant as possible. Of course, he reflected, a truly clever man, who didn’t mind being bored, would have settled in Switzerland years ago, but there was no use regretting that missed opportunity. La Banque Duvivier Frères had not reopened its doors, and in the monumental confusion of the early post-Armistice days, Bruno could not foresee the future of any private bank.

  What, he asked himself, would any sensible Frenchman do in such circumstances? What did every Frenchman and Frenchwoman know was the best place to live during an upheaval of the political order? Where was the natural haven in which to remain until matters sorted themselves out and it was safe to return to normal life? Where was there always something to eat and something to sell? On the family farm, if one had a farm, or at the family château, if one had a château. Land. It was the only thing that mattered in the end, after all, he thought as he made his way to Champagne.

  By the time Bruno arrived at Valmont, a Führer of Champagne had already been appointed by the occupation authorities: Herr Klaebisch, a member of a prominent Rhineland winemaking family. When Vicomte Jean-Luc de Lancel told his grandson that Klaebisch’s office in Rheims had ordered that between three and four hundred thousand bottles of champagne must be sent by the province to the German armed forces each week, Bruno merely shrugged. It was only to be expected, he thought, and certainly indicated that the Germans had a large stake in continuing to keep the people of Champagne productive, and the vineyard owners in business. He resolved to learn everything he could about a business that had never before interested him. The fortunes of war, he told himself, as he set his mind to mastering viniculture, must, of necessity, include the good as well as the bad.

  Within a year, Bruno, always keeping in mind that the Wehrmacht was his biggest customer, had managed to learn an impressive amount about the making of champagne. He toured the Lancel vineyards vigilantly, mounted on a fine horse for which he never lacked fodder. Nor, as he had foreseen, did he ever go hungry. Even before the invasion of May, Anette de Lancel, remembering the Great War, had given orders
to turn the rich soil of her rose garden into a vegetable garden, and several of the older servants were entrusted with keeping chickens, rabbits, pigs, a bull and several cows in outbuildings erected in hidden clearings of the small forest that belonged to the château. The domestics at Valmont attacked these tasks with zeal, for they knew that the Vicomtesse would not let them suffer hunger, even if they couldn’t look forward to the kitchen feasts of prewar days.

  Jean-Luc’s invaluable triumvirate of cellarmen, the Martin cousins, were all well over the age of automatic mobilization. Because they were essential in their specialized jobs, they had been allowed to remain on the land. Twice a year, many of the other skilled workers in the vineyards, who had been taken prisoner when the enemy entered France through Champagne, and were now working in Germany, were sent home for the vital pruning of the vines in March and the gathering of the harvest in September. Nevertheless, like all the other wine producers, the House of Lancel now relied on a sadly depleted labor force, and, as in the Great War, the women and children and old men of Champagne became workers in the fields. Under Bruno’s watchful eye, these strong peasants, highly motivated and loyal to the Lancels, managed to keep the vineyards productive. The old Vicomte had grown infirm overnight, with the outbreak of war. They looked to Bruno to replace him, and did not question his orders.

  Why, Bruno asked himself as he rode about on his tours of inspection, should he be so stupid as to assume that the German character was monolithic? Surely human nature, in all its fascinating variations, operated amid the ranks of the victors as it had among the rich of Paris when he had entered the world of banking. True, his own personal currency had been devalued; no longer did his title and his family command instant respect, no longer was his acceptance of an invitation enough to bring him a social advantage that could be turned to a business end.

  Yet, was it not possible that among the conquerors there were men who would respond to being treated without the covert hostility of most of the population? They would be suspicious of any attitude that smacked of over-friendliness from a Lancel, or indeed from any Frenchman, but surely civility … merely civility, purely civility … might be the opening wedge that would lead him to some … opportunity. There had to exist an opportunity, he told himself, an opportunity that it was still too soon to envision clearly. There were always opportunities for a man who was on the alert for them, in wartime as well as in peacetime, and now, in this time of Armistice, in this ambiguous, unsettled period, there should be more opportunities than ever. France had lost the war, but Bruno did not intend to lose the Armistice.

  The Führer of Champagne’s office sent out regular inspectors, in their shiny black Citroëns and their well-polished jackboots, to make sure that the champagne firms were doing everything necessary to meet their quotas. The mighty Luftwaffe and the mighty navy had a priority on a constant supply of champagne—as well as a mighty thirst—and it was well known that the wily Champenois had to be closely watched. These inspectors, therefore, were frequently men who had been in the winegrowing business themselves, for it only made sense to send men who could tell the difference between a bunch of properly tended Pinot Meunier grapes and a turnip.

  How, Bruno brooded, did one show civility to one’s conqueror without falling into servility? You could hardly invite a man to taste a particularly fine glass of a wine that belongs, to all intents, to him. You could be polite, yes, but politeness had little value when a lack of politeness could cost you your life.

  But could you not, without arousing suspicion, reasonably ask advice of these experienced winemakers, especially when you were not a Champenois yourself, when you had not been bred to the soil? And in asking advice, you could, even as you did so, convey the sense that you were confiding your own personal problems as if to—not a friend, no, perhaps not that, perhaps never that—but to an equal. How many men, he asked himself as he looked at his trust-inspiring features in the mirror as he shaved, did not enjoy giving advice? How many men did not take some hidden pleasure in being treated as an equal by an aristocrat, even a vanquished aristocrat?

  Within a surprisingly short amount of time, it became known by certain of the major representatives of the Führer of Champagne’s office in Rheims that young Lancel, out at Valmont, was understandably ignorant about certain fundamentals of the culture of the vine. He was, so he had explained as he accompanied them on their inspections, holding down his position of responsibility only because his grandfather was too old to properly run the business, certainly too old to patrol the vineyards on horseback as tirelessly as he himself did.

  A Paris banker stuck here—well, they certainly didn’t feel sorry for him; they were stuck in Champagne themselves—but, on the other hand, he was not as difficult to deal with as were so many of the others, not by a long shot. What’s more, Lancel was smart enough to ask for advice when he needed it, which was often, and not too stiff-necked to take it and use it. If more of the French were like Lancel, their own jobs would be made considerably easier. And, come to think of it, more pleasant. They didn’t enjoy being away from their homes and families, they didn’t enjoy living with the infernal paperwork from Berlin, with the pressure to supply the quotas of wine, or with the studied invisibility with which most of the population of Rheims and Epernay treated them.

  With Bruno de Lancel, not one of the inspectors was treated as an occupier, none of them ever suspected his well-hidden pride or his normal arrogance. Yet Bruno’s policy was undetectable by any Frenchman who might bother to observe him. It lay purely in a crucial nuance of manner, in an agreeably neutral shading, in his naturally pleasant voice, in a willingness to look at them directly, to venture a small and harmless joke, to make an assumption that they shared a common humanity, all done with the bred-in-the-bone graciousness with which he had gone fishing for banking commissions not many years ago.

  Within months of his arrival at Valmont, Bruno had obtained an Ausweis, the paper that let him travel to Paris. Authorization for his trip had not been difficult to arrange, since his previous residence in Paris gave him every explanation for an absence of several days to make sure that his house was intact.

  As he approached his front door he saw a German soldier standing guard. Cautiously he went around to the delivery entrance and rang the bell. Georges, his old butler, opened the door and exclaimed, with surprise and happiness, “Monsieur le Vicomte, thank God!”

  “How did you get back, Georges?” Bruno asked after he entered the “office,” a sort of catch-all pantry outside the kitchen. “When I came through Paris after the Armistice I found the house empty.”

  “We all fled Paris,” Georges answered, “and after we managed to return, we learned that you had gone to the château. We understood, of course—your duty lay there.”

  “Who lives here now?” Bruno demanded, noticing in a swift glance that Georges had been polishing his best silver when he had arrived. From the kitchen came the smell of roasting beef, and every surface of the office was shining with cleanliness.

  “The house was requisitioned by a General von Stern. He works for General von Choltitz, in the bureau of cultural affairs, and speaks excellent French. We have been fortunate, Monsieur le Vicomte, the general has kept everyone on, even your valet, Boris, who is convinced that von Stern has never had the services of a valet before. He is, thank God, a very quiet man, interested in antiquities, a great admirer of your collection of armor and books. Nothing has been changed, Monsieur, the house is exactly as you left it.”

  “He has no wife, no children?”

  “I doubt it. There are no photographs of them, and that’s a sure sign, in my experience. Often he brings home a woman of the streets, but he never keeps her overnight.”

  “Does he entertain?”

  “Occasionally a few other officers, quiet men like himself. They discuss painting and architecture, not the war.” Georges shrugged. “The dinners are far from brilliant, Monsieur, but they eat heartily and they enjoy the best bottles
from your cellar.”

  “A small price to pay, Georges. You reassure me. Perhaps it would be prudent, for the sake of all of you, if I showed this general the courtesy of thanking him for taking care of my treasures?” Bruno murmured.

  “Purely temporary care, would you say, Monsieur le Vicomte?” Georges asked in a low tone of hope.

  “Naturally only temporary, why should you even question it?” Bruno responded. He gave his card to the butler. “Present this to von Stern. Ask him if I may come by tomorrow at his convenience to thank him. I should like to see for myself what kind of man is sleeping in my bed.”

  “I understand, Monsieur le Vicomte. What is the news of Mademoiselle de Lancel? And of Madame your grandmother and Monsieur your grandfather, if I may ask?”

  “Sad, Georges, sad. Mademoiselle Delphine seems to have shut herself away from everyone … even I have no news of her … and my grandfather is finally showing his age. Only my grandmother still has retained any of her old spirit.”

  “We all count on you, Monsieur le Vicomte. You are much in our thoughts.”

  “Thank you, Georges. Leave word about my meeting with your general at my hotel.”

  “Never ‘my general,’ Monsieur le Vicomte,” Georges protested as he let Bruno out.

  “A joke, Georges. We must still laugh, must we not?”

  Within minutes Bruno had taken the measure of General von Stern. A Prussian of the most minor aristocracy, he judged, from a long-impoverished family, a man who no more fit the title of general than Bruno himself, a scholar in early middle age, who, because of his specialized knowledge, was one of Goering’s handpicked experts, spending his days seeking out the greatest works of art in France, to be sent to Germany for the Marshal’s personal collection. A mild enough man, von Stern, Bruno realized, not unattractive and sufficiently well bred to be faintly uneasy with Bruno, as if he knew that, conqueror or not, he had no right to the magnificent house on the Rue de Lille. Bruno was quick to put him at his ease.