April in Paris (8 page)

The lieutenant turned off the water tap with his toes. Sudden silence.

“So the apartment’s empty?” I asked mildly.

“Isn’t that a crying shame?” He sat up. “The place isn’t big, but there’s enough room to have a good time. When can I show it to you?”

“Maybe tomorrow?” I said a touch too quickly.

The colossus rose from his bath with a mighty rush of water.

“What’s up?” he asked, standing amid glittering fountains. “First I hear nothing from you for weeks, and now you’re in a hurry?”

He reached for the towel.

“The war can’t go on forever.” I looked out the window.

With one foot still in the tub, he looked at me. “You’re right.

Pluck the rose before it fades. But I can’t tomorrow. There’s a situation review, and then in the evening there’s bridge with the colonel.” Leaving a trail of damp streaks, he left the bathroom.

“Maybe I could”—I stood up slowly—“take a look at it all the same.”

“Without me?” His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Just to see what we’d need—to make it cozy.” I followed him.

68 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

He stepped over to the chest of drawers and took out a small, delicate-looking key, silver-plated and chased. “You can enter the building at any time, but the concierge doesn’t know you. You think she’s going to let an enemy get past her?”

I considered telling him about Monsieur Antonie. “That looks like a key for a display case,” I said instead. “Not for a flat.”

After a little hesitation, he pressed the key into my hand. “Do you already have somebody in mind we could bring there for …”

His face glowed hopefully.

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” I went to the door.

“Wait a minute.” He came after me in his towel. “You don’t know where it is.”

I made a note of the address.

“And one more thing, Hirschbiegel,” I said, pointing to his gramophone. “Please, please, put on another record.”

The following evening, for the first time and not without some second thoughts, I left my ID tags in the hotel room.

More carefully than usual, I transformed myself into Monsieur Antoine. Near the bridge, I bought a rose and stuck it into my lapel as I crossed over. I returned the smiles of two ladies who were walking arm in arm. I didn’t take the customary route; instead, I approached rue Jacob obliquely, in a series of loops. The hotel signs seemed like a promise. I was in possession of something better: the key to Hirschbiegel’s apartment. I carried it in the lining of my suit coat.

I reached the Lubinsky by way of a side street and stepped onto the terrace, acting as though the reflecting facade of the barbershop across the way held no fascination for me whatsoever. My heart was pounding as I sat down. Although I knew Chantal 70 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

didn’t work in the shop on Wednesdays, I tried to make her out through the storefront window. In my imagination, she was about to notice me, too, and come walking out the door. Any minute now.

The terrace was crowded. People were talking about the cease-fire; the Wehrmacht was observing it, they said, but not the SS.

The night before, one of the fancy windows in the Hôtel Louis XV had been shot to pieces. I didn’t drink coffee; I ordered pastis instead, thinning the oily liquid with water. The taste reminded me of childhood visits to the dentist. I drank pastis for Chantal.

I had to become more French in everything; I wanted to please her, to make her laugh, to give her proof of my generosity. My thoughts wandered over her body. My hand remembered her waist, the resilience of her muscles. I had smelled her hair; what did her mouth taste like? Her back was straight, her legs strong.

Throughout these reflections, my eyes kept searching up and down the street. Whenever I saw a green dress approaching, I squinted; the woman was never Chantal. After ordering a second glass, I went inside the café and looked in every room, every corner. At the end of an hour, I paid and left. I crossed the street on unsteady legs. Inside the shop, the barber was cutting a girl’s hair.

The only other person in the dimly lighted room was the old man with the newspaper.

Two women came toward me. One said, “They don’t send twelve-year-olds to prison camp.” The other wouldn’t be consoled. “Michel’s fourteen,” she said.

They saw my reflection in a shop window. I turned aside and sniffed my rose. At that moment, I spotted Chantal on the other A P R I L I N PA R I S . 71

side of the street, in the Lubinsky. She really had come; she’d taken our date seriously! I waved to her and started to walk back across the street. A military vehicle rattled past, hiding her from my sight for a few seconds. As though she hadn’t noticed me, Chantal slipped between tables and left the café again. I called her name; she didn’t turn around. I thought I’d catch up with her in a few strides, but she was faster. Whenever I tried to get closer to her, she picked up the pace; if I fell back, she went slower, too. I started running, determined to put an end to this incomprehensible game. Chantal turned into a narrow side street. It was a while before I caught sight of her again. After a series of such inexplicable maneuvers, we were getting closer to rue de Gaspard, without having exchanged a single word. She pushed open the door in the gate and went in. Before it closed again, I stepped through as well, ran past the junk dealer’s place, and saw Chantal disappear into the bookshop. Why had she led me here?

I reached the big rock and looked up at the entrance. Inside, Joffo was waiting on two sergeants who were buying picture postcards. I waited with mounting curiosity until the soldiers left the shop, and then I went in.

The bookseller was standing at the counter in the rear of the shop, arranging books into two stacks. No trace of Chantal. I set off the shop bell and wished him good evening. As I moved toward him, Joffo stepped to one side. For a moment, I lost sight of him. When I got to the counter, I cast a glance into the stockroom behind it, where I figured Chantal was.

Someone grabbed me and forced my arms behind my back.

Strong hands held me tightly. The attack came so unexpectedly, I 72 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

banged my head on the counter. Gasping, I tried to turn around, but the iron grip I was in didn’t yield at all. Two men pulled me upright and shoved me ahead of them. As I staggered, I recognized one of them as old Joffo. He and the other man took me into the stockroom. I braced my feet against the floorboards, tried to free my arms. A trapdoor in the floor stood open. They drove me toward the opening; I started to cry out, got pushed, staggered; they held on to me when I was on the verge of falling through. I struck my head against a beam and felt my feet stumbling down some stairs until I reached solid ground. Packed earth: a cellar. They set me on a chair. Now I recognized the second man—it was the barber from rue Jacob. He skillfully tied my hands behind my back while Joffo closed the trapdoor above us.

Cutting pain in my wrists. I straightened up a little and stared into the light of a single swaying lightbulb.

“Welcome,” said Joffo. He pulled up another chair and sat down. “Today was the day you paraded down our little street once too often.”

My throat was dry, and there was a pounding in my temples.

“What is the meaning of this, monsieur?”

“Who are you? What do you want from us?”

I tried to sit up straight despite my bonds. “What are you talking about?”

The barber felt my pockets. His nose cast a heavy shadow over his mouth. Finding nothing, he drew his hand back. “Where are your papers?”

In that moment, I saw myself the way I had seen others. Tied to a chair under a blinding light, and asked questions to which there were no answers.

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 73

“They got lost.”

“Who are you?”

“A Frenchman, like yourself.”

“A Frenchman and a collaborator,” the barber replied.

“Who says so?” Angrily, I shifted myself forward.

“Who are the people you’re in contact with? Vichy? Gestapo?”

I considered my answer. The truth was worse than either of them guessed. I wasn’t collaborating; I was the real thing. I was the most complete and immediate witness to the interrogations, the first to learn everything the SS wanted to know. When I stopped and thought about it, I realized that at that moment I was face-to-face with the
enemy.
Thought fragments flashed through my head.

Communist workers, courageous priests, and veterans of the first war belonged to the Resistance. There were duplicating machines in cellars. Slogans scrawled on house walls and palisade fences.

Some woman on the cleaning staff had smuggled information out of Transport Command. There was the boy who stole the carburetors in order to cripple a prisoner transport. Mostly isolated cases. There didn’t appear to be any organization or any hierarchy, just a few weapons. Was
this
the adversary that Leibold and his team feared and fought against with all their might? An old bookseller and a bad-tempered barber?

“How did your papers get lost?”

“A raid. The Germans,” I replied.

“You’re an informer,” the bookseller declared, shaking his head.

I looked at him indignantly. “Don’t informers always have the best papers?”

Joffo smoothed his bushy beard. “Tell me what happened to your passport.”

74 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

I searched my memory of the interrogations in rue des Saussaies. When was Leibold most likely to believe his prisoners?

When they gave up and whimpered, or when they grew outraged and rebellious? I looked Joffo straight in the eyes.

“They stopped the Paris train,” I said sullenly.

“Where?”

“A little before Thiers. Supposedly, the tracks were cut. Every -

one had to get off. The soldiers took away my ID. To verify it, they said. I never got it back.”

“What kind of soldiers?”

“The ones with the death’s head.” I didn’t take my eyes off the bookseller.

“Why should the SS take an interest in you, of all people?”

The barber stepped closer to me.

“Haven’t got a clue. They held me for two days.”

“In which prison?” The old fellow’s eyes, his boar’s eyes, scrutinized me attentively.

“No prison. A
Lager.
A camp in the woods.”

Details—camp lists, deportation plans, sabotage reports—

churned around in my head. I examined everything to see what would fit into my story.

“On the third day, I heard an officer say we were going to be put in a transport convoy.” I struggled against the ropes. “But I had no desire to be dragged off to Germany to make artillery shells.”

“You escaped?” the barber asked in disbelief.

Joffo bent forward. “How?”

“We were supposed to be taken to a transit camp south of A P R I L I N PA R I S . 75

Moulins. On the way, the tracks went up a steep hill. The train slowed down, and I jumped out.” I lowered my head.

Silence. I felt the two of them look at each other. “Hmm,” said Joffo. “None of this can be verified.”

The barber planted himself in front of me. “We can make you tell us the truth!”

In my mind’s eye, I saw the tub full of water, the broken limbs, the corporals striking blow after blow. The threat sounded phony.

The small-boned fellow didn’t look as though he’d had much experience in hitting people.

The old man sat down and made himself comfortable. “You’re staying here until you tell us everything we want to know.”

That was impossible: I had to be out of there by midnight. A corporal who didn’t make it back to his quarters by lights-out could get away with a reprimand. But not showing up for duty in rue des Saussaies would be no trifling matter.

“What about the apartment you stay in?” Joffo asked. “The place in the second arrondissement.”

This revelation was like a blow. Chantal! Clearly, she’d reported on me to her father. No, not to her father—to her cell leader. In a flash, I understood; I realized that it was
Chantal
who had struck up a conversation with
me.
She’d lulled me into a sense of security with the
Fables.
She’d gone out with me for a whole evening, raising my hopes. I cursed my vanity, cursed myself, for letting her take me in like that.

“The apartment,” Joffo repeated.

I thought about the key in my pocket. If they searched me more thoroughly, they’d find it.

76 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

“Belongs to a friend,” I replied.

“Is he an informer, too?” the barber asked.

In a split second, I remembered Hirschbiegel’s mentioning a proxy. His name?

I laughed. “You think someone named
Isaak Wasserlof
’s an informer for the Germans?”

“He’s a Jew?” The barber was astounded.

They held a brief whispered powwow.

“If you live in the second,” Joffo said, “why are you in this neighborhood so often?”

“You should be able to figure out the answer to that.” My smile was not a success.

“Chantal?” her father asked. “But why her? There are thousands of other girls.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know, either, monsieur.”

The barber butted in. “I don’t believe you’re sniffing around here just on account of Chantal,” he said. “Where do you come from?”

I invented names. Parents, grandparents. I described the streets of my childhood and evoked my friendship with Wasserlof, who’d invited me to stay with him in Paris. In the hope that the Sorbonne would start holding classes again, I said, I’d come to register for the fall semester. But then my papers had been taken away, and …

“Have you applied for new papers?” the barber asked. “Show us the thing they give you, the confirmation.”

I laughed harshly. “Have you got any idea how many hours I’ve spent standing in the application line? And I’ve never once reached the front of it.”

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 77

Remarkably, they seemed to believe that one. Typical German harassment. Having to wait days and weeks in the halls of the records office for a new “certificate” that would never be issued: This was the Parisian reality. For a moment, they were ready to believe they were dealing with a young Frenchman who’d fallen in love with the bookseller’s daughter. Taking advantage of the mood swing, I asked Joffo to untie me. He examined my swollen wrists and gave a sign to the barber, who stepped behind me and began to undo the cords.