And only for Germans.
‘Well?’ he demanded, startling her for he’d raised his voice.
‘I … I had known him from before the Defeat. A regular, you understand. From time to time, after the war had ended for us, he would inquire if we had anyone suitable and if I would let him in but this … this was not possible.’
Kohler waited while she fingered her lace blouse in thought. ‘Then this … this Lucie-Marie arrived and I … I knew at once how relieved Monsieur Jacqmain would be. The stress in a man, you cannot imagine.… I let him watch her.’
‘And broke the rules.’
‘Was it such a crime? He did not touch her or any of the other girls. He only watched. One night a week … Two nights occasionally, when things were very bad with him. He paid well and it … it was good for business.’
‘But you worried about it. There could be problems. She was intransigent – you’ve said so yourself. Her papers might have been good enough to let her walk freely about town but her skin was too dark, right? yet she hungered for a little freedom. Oh bien sur, you had paid off the prefet and probably even the Kommandant but it couldn’t last, so you informed the authorities in Paris. There was the reward of 100,000 francs to consider, eh? And they, realizing what you had, came at once to put her to use.’
Kohler set the album of photographs Louis had given him into her hands. Some showed Tshaya with her wrists tightly tied and roped to an eye-bolt in a ceiling timber, the girl objecting until told what would happen to her if she refused. The back, the buttocks, the body extended. Defiance when forced to face the camera.
‘I … I was ordered to feed this … this strange desire of his by … by letting him watch her and then to let him talk to her, and to photograph her.’
‘Ordered by whom?’
The lights were dimmed, a first warning that things were about to begin in the adjacent room. ‘By Henri Doucette, her husband, the pugiliste. Gestapo of the rue Lauriston in Paris came with that one, and some of the SS also. They … they were interested in her, but … but also in Monsieur Jacqmain.’
‘Just why were the French Gestapo and the SS interested in the prospector?’
May God forgive her. ‘The diamonds some said he kept in secret.’
Diamonds that would have to be sold so as to be finally free of their threat or else face arrest and their outright theft.
‘When, exactly, did Henri Doucette and his friends come to see you?’
When had she informed on Tshaya? ‘Not until the late summer of last year. Inspector, I would have let the girl stay. I did not want to turn her in but the times, they are difficult, isn’t that so?’
‘Save the tears. Was there anything else that led them to take an interest in the prospector?’
‘They … they were watching a friend of his, a chanteuse and dance instructress he often spoke very highly of.’
Nana Theleme … ‘So, two things came about. Tshaya was here from late August 1941 until September of 1942, and the prospector visited her, and then you informed on her and Paris took a decided interest in the diamonds and immediately saw a way of finding out a little more about this friend of his, this other woman, by using Tshaya.’
‘She agreed to work for her husband. She had no other choice, nor did I.’
Again the lights were dimmed, this time urgently and repeatedly as a warning to keep silent.
Madame de Bonnevies indicated the eyepiece. ‘This girl is one we keep because the one you call Tshaya had to be replaced and there are those among you who desire that which is forbidden to them by their Nazi laws.’
When he did not respond to the rebuke, she softly added, ‘Besides the colour of the skin, the marks of the whip also excite others, Inspector. Some of those choose to come to this chamber first before taking the one you are about to see, as they did this Tshaya. It’s a spectacle. Nothing else. All is in the eye of the beholder and quite innocent.’
Still lost in thought and worried, for it was obvious the rue Lauriston had been interested in Nana Theleme for some time but for purposes of their own, namely loot, Kohler hesitated. Madame de Bonnevies motioned to the chair and softly crooned, ‘It’s begun. Please avail yourself of the pleasure. I will send Malou to you with a little wine, and Brigitte will come to pour it.’
‘A marc.’
A brandy. ‘As you wish. Both will, of course, be free to love you for ever tonight – it’s on the house – but if it is your wish, you may have the slave, though I must tell you that one has no faith in her fidelity and there are many who want her.’
A top earner.
‘Monsieur Jacqmain hated what she represented, as he did that of the girl Tshaya. To him, both represented the evil in all women, especially that of a hypocritical mother who constantly preached piety and self-denial, with the reward of everlasting life in the hereafter among the choirs of angels.’
The girl behind the amber latticework of the screen was a coal-black Senegalese with short-cropped, crinkly black hair and when her eyes flashed whitely in that finely boned and beautifully aristocratic face, they did so with an intensity Kohler found disturbing.
From time to time she turned to cross her wrists high above her head as if strung up taut. Light played softly on her back and buttocks. There were whip marks, the scars some slaver must have left. The blue-black, dusty-grey to red marks of his shackles were around her wrists, ankles and neck.
Often she clung to the latticework, seeking to join the copulating couple on the bed. At such times her pink tongue would wet her lips in hesitation. The firm dark breasts would be caught, the rosy dark nipples held.
When she began to do the only thing that was left to her, this trapped little fly in amber watched the bed with an intensity that haunted.
The couple took no notice of her for they were far too busy and the client totally unware of her in any case – he could not have seen her at all. The blonde on her hands and knees on the bed was thick-thighed and as strong as a plough-horse; the Oberfeldwebel in his undershirt, swarthy and pockmarked with old bullet wounds. The deepness of the blonde’s sighs and groans soon filled the room, the grunts of him as he stolidly rutted at her.
Canopies of heavy, wine-red velvet were draped about the headboard of the bed. The coverlet beneath the couple was armorial with fleurs de lis and fringed with tassels. The Oberfeldwebel had pushed the blonde down so that her head was well over the edge of the bed just like Marianne St-Cyr’s had been in the films … the films … ‘In … in …’ she cried. ‘Oh mon Dieu, mon Dieu, your shaft, it is so big and strong. I must come … I must!’
A tall, leaded glass terrarium on a bureau held dead branches to which iridescent sunbursts of butterflies clung as it shook. Orange on black, indigo on amber, gold on emerald green, a soft, soft lavender, all entombed.
When the slave threw her head back and gave her body to ecstasy, as did the blonde, both quivered. The scars glistened. The blonde’s naked back held none of them. Breasts, shoulders and arms throbbed until again the wrists were pressed together high above the slave’s head, and again her body felt the lash of an imaginary whip and all but buckled under each blow.
A regular circus but, ‘Ah Christ!’ breathed Kohler sadly. Had she really been beaten like that and so savagely?
The blonde was disinterestedly washing herself. The sergeant wasn’t pulling off his regulation issue rubber boot. Having paid extra not to use it, he had gambled on the bimonthly medical checks every licensed house had to have, and against the infirmary, loss of rank and the guardhouse for himself if wrong.
‘Monsieur, is it that you wish to see more?’ hazarded a sweet and hesitant voice.
Kohler felt the glass of brandy in his hand but had no recollection of either of them having put it there. The one who had spoken was a sturdy little brunette with a self-conscious smile. The raven-haired one behind her was taller, bolder and more pronounced in every way.