They walked down past the Hôtel de Ville with the tricolor flags flying from balconies, across the Pont d'Arcole to the floodlit Notre Dame, now camouflaged by sheeted scaffolding, where a crew was giving her a face-lift, down the Ile de la Cite to the Pont Neuf and past the shadowy Louvre and her darkened office, across the shimmery Seine on Pont Royal to the Left Bank.
Down the elegant rue du Bac they strolled along lively, crowded Boulevard Saint Germain, where even on this cool November night the sidewalk tables were full of smoking, drinking patrons gesturing, laughing, and people-watching. Models, students, tourists, and the cell-phone set.
On Ile St. Louis, around the corner from her apartment, they stopped for a sorbet at Berthillon, famous for the best glace in Paris. Aimee chose mango lime and Morbier, vanilla bean. Finally they stopped in front of her dark building.
She kissed him on both cheeks. He clutched her arms, not letting her go. Uneasily, she tried to back away.
"Invite me up?" he whispered in her ear.
"We have a beautiful friendship, Morbier, let's keep it that way. Don't forget about our plan," she said. She entered the door before he could make another advance that he would feel embarrassed about in the morning.
Miles Davis greeted her enthusiastically at her door. She laughed and scooped him up in her arms.
She picked up her phone on the first ring.
"Luna?" breathed Yves.
Aimee's throat caught before she could answer.
"You left without saying goodbye."
Aimee paused, what do I do?
As if he could read her thoughts, he said, "Get back over here. The entry code is 2223. I'm waiting." He hung up.
He sounded so sure of himself that it made her angry. Well, she wouldn't go. How could a coherent, rational woman voluntarily want to sleep with a member of an Aryan supremacist group?
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."