The Resistance Girl

by Jina Bacarr

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll agree the film industry runs more efficiency without Jews, mademoiselle.’

  ‘Pardon, Captain?’

  ‘Fortunately, they’ve either fled the city or will soon be taken care of.’

  I choke on a strawberry. God knows what he means by that. I strive very hard to be pleasant but stern when I say, ‘I don’t agree. What’s happened to Jewish artistes is a persecution of a valued and talented group of individuals who make my films the wonderful experience they are.’

  ‘My dear Sylvie… may I call you Sylvie?’

  ‘Oui.’ Do I have a choice?

  ‘It’s not a persecution of Jews,’ Karl continues (he insists I call him Karl), ‘but a matter of security under the New Order to keep France safe.’

  Perhaps I raise my voice a bit too high when I counter with, ‘I still believe the Party made a mistake by allowing only non-Jews to own and distribute films. What’s next? Barring Jewish writer, actors, and directors from the studio lot?’ I realize I’ve gone too far when a Nazi general sitting nearby signals to a German solider to approach my table. Then I hear a loud cough and I see Herr Geller come out of the shadows and wave him off, then nod at me.

  The deadly look in his eyes chills me. A warning.

  Do it again and you will regret it.

  I push away my cream tarte. It doesn’t taste so sweet now.

  In spite of the frightening incident at the Hôtel Ritz, I continue to spar with Karl over everything from the German invasion of the USSR to Why are Jews no longer permitted to have radios? He laughs at my question, insisting for the same reason they’re barred from universities and the medical profession.

  They’re not Aryans.

  It’s a crazy theory I don’t buy and I don’t care how many dinners at the Ritz Karl wants to buy me, or how he can make certain I receive more food than my carte de rationnement allows, I can’t be quiet, sit back, and not stand up for my Jewish friends. Skilled tradesmen and women I work with, including Raoul.

  Karl stops sending the black Mercedes coupe for me. The brush-off, I assume. Très bon. I’m tired of playing his game. (I always meet the driver at the same place in the secluded passageway. What would my neighbors say?)

  I prepare to sell another bracelet. Diamond cuff set in platinum, a gift to myself with the success of Angeline. Funny thing. I keep the faux diamond pin I wore when I met Jock in a special box. It’s more precious to me than any jewelry I own.

  Oh, how I miss you, ma chéri.

  I admit, I almost relented with Karl to agree on something, like how nice it would be if der Fuehrer visited Paris again (he came once) so I can ask him to look into why the Germans seized my bank accounts for ‘audits’.

  I couldn’t even bring myself to do that.

  I hate the Nazis. Hate what they’re doing to Paris, to France. Damn it, I hate what they did to my Trocadéro apartment, trashing it that day. That’s the strange thing… they haven’t been back since, but I’m still afraid to stay there alone. I prefer the Faubourg where I’m among friends.

  At the same time, Emil has also been strangely absent in his pursuit of me to star in a new film. How long since our last café meeting? Two weeks… no, three. Strange, I miss his constant nagging and wonder what happened to the big deal he was working on for me to make pictures for Galerie Films.

  I decide to find out.

  24

  Sylvie

  A star is born… the sequel

  Paris

  1941

  ‘Mais non, Madame Martone, I have nothing for you today.’

  ‘It’s Mademoiselle Martone, Fräulein,’ I say with a snicker, not caring if she’s French or German. The overly rouged brunette enjoys ribbing me when I ask her if there are any messages for me. I stomped into the main reception of Galerie Films on Rue de Rivoli wearing an elegant white suit with a black braid trim and that diamond cuff platinum bracelet sparkling on my left arm. I dangle it in front of her, enjoying it while I can.

  I’m off to pawn it after this.

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow, mademoiselle… but I wouldn’t count on it.’ She goes back to her typewriter, squirming in her seat and pecking at it like a hen about to lay an egg. She can’t wait to get rid of me.

  ‘Emil-Hugo de Ville… the director, left me a message to meet him here,’ I lie.

  I tap my fingers on the counter, but the brunette won’t look up from her typing until another factor enters the picture.

  I hear a soft baby voice behind me say, ‘Oh… are you meeting Emil here today, too, Mademoiselle…?’

  I spin around. ‘Sylvie Martone.’

  She double blinks. ‘Pardon…?’

  ‘The actress,’ I emphasize. ‘I made the Ninette films when I was about your age.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ She giggles. ‘Then again, your films were before my time.’ In spite of her dipsy mannerisms, she has a certain appeal. Curly red ringlets fall loosely around her shoulders, a full bosom, round hips. Green eyes.

  ‘Really?’ I raise a brow. That hit me in the gut. Unfortunately, she’s right. She can’t be more than eighteen. A light goes on in my brain as I slide my extravagant bracelet up and down my forearm to keep my nerves from exploding. ‘I imagine Emil promised you a part in his next picture, Mademoiselle…’

  ‘Bibi Charmont. Enchanté.’

  ‘Enchanté,’ I repeat, surprised when in a gesture of camaraderie, she extends her hand and smiles big. ‘You’re a pretty girl, Bibi,’ I say, meaning it, ‘but you’ve got to project your voice if you want to impress Emil to give you a speaking role.’

  She gives me a smile that says there’s more to her being here than a walk-on. ‘Pardon, Mademoiselle Martone, Emil is starring me in his next picture.’

  ‘He’s what…?’ My mouth is hanging open.

  ‘Emil says he can make me a film star if I leave everything behind and become his protégé.’

  ‘Oh, did he now?’

  Where have I heard those words before? How can I ever forget them? He said the exact same thing to me when I was sixteen, hungry to act, and so vulnerable.

  For once I’m caught without a snappy comeback. Now I know why Emil hasn’t contacted me though I sent messages to him at the Hȏtel Ritz. He’s found a new protégé.

  ‘Ah, Sylvie, I see you’ve met Bibi.’ Emil arrives with a sweep of his white Panama hat in a grand gesture and drags me away out of hearing. Bibi doesn’t notice. She’s too busy chatting up the brunette and showing off her new red manicure. ‘What are you doing here?’

  I refuse to play nice and meet his dark eyes with a piercing stare he won’t forget. ‘What did she mean she’s starring in your new picture?’

  He’s not the least embarrassed I found out. ‘Face it, Sylvie, you didn’t play ball with the Nazis. I had to find someone else. Bibi is young, ambitious, a new face. Granted, she doesn’t have your talent and Captain Lunzer made it his prerogative to demand I produce the charming Sylvie Martone, but she’s more than willing to cozy up to him when he returns from an assignment in Berlin.’

  ‘Just like that, I’m old news?’

  ‘These Nazis control everything, Sylvie, even us. On the outside, the film business tells the world we’re run by the French. The reality is Herr Goebbels pulls the strings from Berlin.’

  ‘So I’m on his blacklist, too?’

  I was warned this would happen by my ‘friend’ Herr Geller. I didn’t believe it.

  ‘That’s the funny thing about these Germans. They’re so worried about what the rest of Europe and America thinks about this Occupation as well as here in France, they will go to great lengths to keep up a good front with their propaganda. Including showing life in Paris in a flattering manner and keeping French film stars like you out in the public eye.’

  ‘What are trying to say, Emil? Spill it.’

  ‘If you change your mind about cooperating and I mean cooperating in every way, you know where to find me.’

  ‘Yo
u mean collaborating,’ I shoot back, feeling the sting of what he’s suggesting hurting my pride.

  ‘How you interpret it is up to you.’ He puts his hat back on. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me…’

  Without another word, he rejoins Bibi and the brunette personally escorts them to the executive film offices. Emil doesn’t glance back at me, though I have the strangest feeling he’s hoping I rethink my position.

  His tossing me aside for a younger actress hurt. Far more than I thought it would.

  Like an old rag doll with her stuffing kicked out of her, I spend the rest of the afternoon walking the boulevards. Up and down the grand avenues filled with German soldiers and their damned tourist maps, drinking beer, singing while someone plays the accordion. Nazi officers speeding through the streets in their open touring cars like kings in shiny, black carriages. I’ve never felt so alone, so useless. How can I fight them? I should try to get to London like other actors have done, make anti-Nazi films, but I’d feel like a traitor to France if I abandon my country and my faithful film crew in their time of need. God knows if I’ll get to work with them again.

  One thing I know for sure.

  I see the writing on the wall. I’m thirty-one. I’m a star.

  But for how much longer with the Nazis in charge?

  I wish I had an angel like Ninette to give me the strength to get through this.

  I do. The girl smiles like an angel and reads books and is everything a young Parisienne should be with big, beautiful doll eyes.

  Halette. Raoul’s daughter.

  I’ve seen how she takes care of her father since her mother died and is so willing to help with her young cousins. And she’s such a champion for my pictures – she boosts me up when I’m down, reminding me I worked hard to get where I am, that it didn’t come easy.

  I find myself walking in an eastwardly direction toward the doll and candle shop, toward the Rue des Rosiers in the Marais district, looking for a friendly face. I turn down a somewhat narrow street with high stone buildings and see an old man sitting on a stool, carving in wood. An old woman pushing a cart filled with rags. A young woman with a baby on her hip, tickling the child under the chin and laughing. Quiet, normal life in this section of Paris where Jews have lived since the thirteenth century. No German soldiers anywhere. I say a prayer of thanks. I need to step out of the idyllic fairyland the Nazis have created on the boulevards with their ‘smiling, happy French people’ propaganda they want to show the world.

  I stop by the doll and candle shop, looking for Raoul. He’s not here, but Halette is watching the shop so her Aunt Hela can find milk for the little ones.

  ‘You look so sad, mademoiselle.’

  ‘Do I?’

  I find her making a classic display of tall, scented lavender candles surrounded by costumed dolls. The Dutch doll I saw the other day is among them so I pick it up and start unbraiding her hair. A nervous gesture and Halette notices.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

  ‘Do you think I’m old, Halette?’ I don’t look up from my menial task, enjoying the repetitious action of re-braiding the doll’s hair as a form of therapy for my tortured soul.

  ‘You, mademoiselle? Mais non, you’re as beautiful now as when you played Ninette.’

  I look up at her, surprised. ‘You weren’t even born when I made those films.’

  ‘No, mademoiselle, but they show the old films at the Gaumont when they have nothing new. I like them the best.’ She sighs. ‘I wish you’d make new films filled with romance and pretty costumes, like the dolls wear.’ She holds up a doll dressed like Marie Antoinette and claps the doll’s hands together. ‘Oui, oui, mademoiselle!’ she mimics the doll’s voice and cocks her head at an angle. ‘We don’t like those awful German films… off with their heads!’

  I can’t help but laugh at her jubilance. ‘Oh, how I’d love to go back to work and entertain people and tell the stories they love. I don’t know anything else but acting, and in my heart, I know it’s what I do best.’

  ‘That’s what Papa says, too, mademoiselle.’

  ‘Call me Sylvie, please.’

  She smiles at the intimacy of calling me by first name, a grown-up thing for this young girl with so much charm of her own. ‘Merci… Sylvie. Papa says you’re a wonderful actress, the best he’s ever worked with.’

  ‘And your papa is a wonderful writer.’

  She puts down the doll and exhales. ‘No one will hire him since the Germans came to Paris.’

  ‘He’s not the only one, Halette. I can’t get an acting job unless I…’ I let my thought hang in the air like the scent of lavender wafting toward me. I finish braiding the doll’s hair, my moment of grace ended. I have to make a decision. ‘If you had to tell a lie to do something good, Halette, would you do it?’

  Unfair of me to ask her, but sometimes the best wisdom comes from someone so young who see things clearer than I can.

  ‘Well,’ she begins, ‘it’s like when the German soldiers come into the shop poking around, I don’t tell them they’re horrible people for making everyone so unhappy, but I don’t say I like them either. I just smile. Papa says they can’t arrest you for that.’

  In spite of myself, I grin. Her logic strikes me as true.

  I can agree to make pictures for Galerie run by the French even if German investors are behind it. In doing so, I’m not saying I like the Germans, but in their eyes I’m not working against them either, which will please Emil. And Herr Geller. That man terrifies me.

  ‘I hope you get an acting job soon, Sylvie. It’s so difficult to get through the days. I can’t see my friends, Aunt Hela is always rushing about trying to get food, and Papa spends long hours away from home… If I could go to the pictures and see a beautiful story with you as the heroine then I could forget the Nazis for a little while.’

  I see the longing in her eyes for a way to escape the yoke of the German occupiers and I realize she’s not alone, there are thousands of schoolgirls, secretaries, mothers, grandmothers… all who need a way to find the strength to get through this.

  I’m not so vain I believe I can save Paris, but I can make life better.

  I hold onto the doll tighter, like I wish I could hold onto Halette to save her from what I fear is coming. These are dangerous times for anyone of the Jewish faith. The French police did a roundup of foreign Jews, mostly Polish, with rumors of more arrests coming.

  I can’t stand by and not do something. Some women fight behind the lines blowing up railway lines, others distribute pamphlets decrying the Occupation.

  I’m a cinema star. I must use that to fight the Nazis.

  I come to grips with the idea of playing a new, dangerous game to achieve the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life. To keep my Jewish friends safe. I can do that by keeping my ears open and spying on Captain Lunzer and his military cronies for information. To do so, I’ll pretend to fall in line with Emil’s request to tow the mark with the SS officer, not that I’d ever sleep with him. I’ll have to rely on his hunger for me to keep him at bay.

  Of course, I tell Halette nothing of what’s brewing in my mind.

  We chat for a while longer as the afternoon beats through the windows, heating up the shop with bursts of sunshine. The glass is so shiny, it’s like a shield against everything evil outside these walls and I pray it is, that nothing happens to my dear friend Raoul and his family.

  ‘If the Nazis do come and make a show of authority, you won’t be safe here, Halette.’

  ‘But I will, Sylvie.’ She grins. ‘Come, I will show you a secret no one knows.’

  Halette closes up the shop and locks the front door. Then she unlatches the gold-leaf mirror cabinet holding the precious antique dolls and pulls a lever, and voilà, the cabinet opens revealing a small hiding place behind it big enough for one, two people.

  ‘Papa says this hidden alcove was used to store arms and gold during the Revolution,’ she says, getting inside and closing it, then opening it f
rom the inside. ‘The owner hid a beautiful aristocrat here who frequented the shop and was kind to his children.’

  ‘I pray you never need it, Halette.’

  We clasp hands, embrace, then before I bid her au revoir, she insists I take the Dutch doll. ‘Papa would want you to have it,’ she says and wraps it up in soft peach tissue paper.

  I will treasure it always.

  ‘I’ll do a picture for Galerie Films, Emil, on one condition.’

  ‘Ah, so my beautiful Sylvie has come to her senses at last.’ He narrows his eyes. ‘You want a bigger salary?’

  I hold back a smile at his comment though the moment is difficult for me. It took me all morning to get up the guts to return to our table at Café de la Paix. I found Emil here alone… reading the newspaper and watching the pretty girls stroll by.

  ‘I want Raoul to write the script.’

  Emil balks. ‘He’s Jewish. The answer is no.’

  Has it come to that?

  In one word, yes. Jewish bank accounts have been seized and their safe deposit boxes ripped open. No wonder Emil is running scared.

  Even more heartbreaking is when Raoul confides in me he’s worried he can’t get Halette to America since the Nazis have forbidden Jews to move from their current homes, as if they’re taking an official count. A count of Jews, but for what? More disheartening, the word ‘Jew’ must be stamped in red on their identity cards. To get past the Occupation authorities, Raoul needs new identity cards for Halette and himself and Hela’s family – false ones – and that costs money.

  The money he gets for writing the script will pay for those identity cards.

  ‘He can write the script under a pseudonym,’ I offer up, talking so fast he can’t say no again. ‘You can pay him in cash. Who will know?’

  Emil smirks. ‘We have to choose our battles these days, ma petite,’ he says. ‘You can’t ride two trains at once.’

  I huff and puff. This is ridiculous. ‘What’s going to get you a box office hit, Emil?’ I counter. ‘A good script by Raoul? Or a lousy script by a hack?’