Above the entrance to the house, the curly-haired, ruff-encircled stone head of a smiling young woman from the Middle Ages gave welcome to all who entered. The street was not that of the rosebushes as commonly thought, but of the ros, the teeth along the raddle or wooden bar over and through which the warp was drawn as it was wound on to the beam of the loom to keep its width constant and prevent it from being entangled.
Many other houses and apartments in the quartier and elsewhere had been emptied just like this of their furnishings and fittings, even the doors and hinges in some cases.
‘The Aktion-M squads,’ he said. The M was for Mobel, the Deutsch for furniture.
They’d been thorough, those squads of Parisian labourers and their masters. All items thought useful to resettled or bombed-out Germans, especially those of the SS and Gestapo in the newly acquired Lebensraum of Slavic countries, had been taken. One special task force, the Sonderstab Musik, dealt only with the musical instruments of the deported. Three warehouses alone just to the north of the city were crammed with pianos; one other, on the rue de Bassano, but a few steps to the east of the Etoile and off the Champs-Elysees in the Eighth and Sixteenth and very close to the SS of the avenue Foch and the French Gestapo of the rue Lauriston, held trumpets, clarinets, violins and violas, et cetera. Last year alone, forty thousand tons of such furnishings had been shipped to that Lebensraum, and yes indeed Prefet Talbotte had availed himself of the safe-deposit-box contents of some of those who had been deported and had been threatened with exposure, but had now chosen to be accommodating.
‘Because of what it implies, Hermann isn’t going to like where that stamp collection came from,’ he said aloud and to himself alone, ‘but first, the seller of it, Mademoiselle Noelle Jourdan of 25 place des Vosges.’
The Cafe de la Paix occupied much of the ground floor of the Hotel Grand, that sumptuous palace of seven hundred rooms that had been opened on the fifth of May 1862 by the Empress Eugenie. A home away from home, the cafe was busy even though at three forty-seven in the afternoon most should have been working. Wasn’t there a war on?
Of course there was, Kohler silently snorted as another waiter brusquely squeezed past him with a heavily laden tray, and everywhere there was the aroma of real coffee mingled with those of expensive perfume and pungent with tobacco smoke. Nice … Ach du lieber Gott, it must be, but if the Fuhrer only knew. Certainly not all here were with their girlfriends; certainly too, though, among the ranks present there wasn’t one below that of a Leutnant, but didn’t the Fuhrer desperately need men at the Russian front?
Uniform or not, Blitzmadel or not, the Occupier behaved as if he or she had the world by the balls. Here also there was none of that Nur Attrapen, that Only-for-Show nonsense on bar bottles of coloured water as seen in the everyday citizen’s watering holes, none of those demands for ration tickets or the chalked-up pas d’alcools signs that spelled out the no-alcohol days. Though many of the Parisiennes glanced up at him from their tables, their men friends seemed not to notice and were too busily on the make or simply couldn’t be bothered even though they damned well must know he was a cop and why he was here clutching a copy of Le Matin.
Louis would have said, Look closer still. See how a waiter nods in answer to a male whisper, then gives a curt nod towards a table where someone else’s petite amie flashes downcast eyes-pimping, are they, some of these waiters? Hasn’t a carefully passed one hundred- shy;franc note just been tucked away? Girls and middle-aged women, some with their wedding rings hidden, who hang on every word their companions utter even though some of them can’t understand too many and are doing their best to catch up three nights a week-was it three that Madame Adrienne Guillaumet left her children alone in the flat and went to the Ecole Centrale to teach Deutsch to females such as these and to older men? Older, since there aren’t too many young Frenchman around are there?
Had her assailant known of her? Louis would have asked and said, Oh for sure, that taxi was stolen from the stand out there, but more importantly, from in here one can see whether such a theft was possible and when best to strike.
Had her assailant been watching for her, Hermann, having stalked her for days or weeks only to at last lift his glass or cup in salute and silently say, All right, ma fille, it’s now your turn?
A regular, Hermann, of this establishment and others, the Lido especially, or had he been one of her students?
Must every possibility be examined, and if so, if some of the waiters were pimping, weren’t others betraying those same girls to those who would do them harm? Beyond the heavily draped, plush burgundy curtains that would be tightly closed during the blackout, there were bird’s-eye views of place de l’Opera and the white-railed entrance to the metro whose subterranean-leading slot opened on to the boulevard des Capucines like an inclined mine shaft. Any female leaving that entrance and heading for the cafe would be seen well before she got here; seen, too, if earnestly engaging a taxi for later, or had she been sitting here for an hour or more at one of these tables or at one out under the awning and next to the warmth of that charcoal brazier, she smiling shyly, listening intently and maybe, yes, maybe laying a hand fondly on that of her lover? Had she been upstairs first, eh, to one of those seven hundred rooms since officers and Bonzen from home were billeted in many of them? Sure the officers, and all others in uniform, weren’t supposed to take women to their rooms, but who the hell was going to police such a thing in a place like this? Had her lover been one of Von Schaumburg’s men? Had he got up and gone out there to hire that taxi for her and chosen Take Me simply because he had known that’s what she wanted or had already let him have?
A child’s birthday cake, Hermann, Louis would have cautioned. The flour, the sugar …
‘MONSIEUR, I MUST INSIST THAT YOU DO NOT WANDER ABOUT AMONG THE TABLES GETTING IN THE ROAD. PLEASE OBEY THE NOTICE AND WAIT IN LINE TO BE SEATED!’
Lieber Christus im Himmel, what the hell was this and from a mere waiter? ‘Gestapo, mon fin. Kripo, Paris-Central. A few small questions. Nothing difficult unless you want to make it that way. Clear a table. Ja, that one will do, and bring me a cafe noir avec un pousse-cafe.’
A black coffee with a liqueur. Louis would have loved it. His partner playing Gestapo, but only when absolutely necessary. ‘Spit in them and I’ll not just see you arrested but shot.’
4
Number 25 place des Vosges was little different from the rest of the thirty-six arcaded pavilions whose steeply pitched roofs with dormers were sometimes bull’s-eye-windowed. Loose slates gave momentarily trapped cascades. Broken, once-painted shutters were open.
‘From a swamp to a palace to a horse market, to this,’ said St-Cyr sadly to himself. Grand-maman had said that to him once, that good woman having dragged him here at the age of six to learn a little history.
He’d been particularly bad, had stolen from her handbag. Just a few centimes … Well, five actually. Always, though, the memory would come rushing at him when here, no matter how desperate the circumstance. ‘A sliver, Jean-Louis,’ she had said. ‘A splinter from the lance of his opponent. Who would have thought such a thing possible? A king? Henry II and a bout of jousting? Oh for sure, they didn’t have carousels whose operators demanded cash. They were far too busy, but a little fun all the same, eh? A careless impulse? A tournament whose spine of heartwood found the visor slit of his armour to pierce the eye and brain!’