B004U2USMY EBOK (2 page)

“In a manner of speaking,” Christine said.

“But how, exactly? Is it singing or
something?”

“No, not exactly. Companionship, more like.
They’re a long way from home and you know, the
boches
aren’t monsters. Most of them, I mean. They get lonely like anyone
else.”

“Ah, I see.”

Her new-found friend must have caught
something in her tone. “No, it’s not like that. You know how it is
when you get a boyfriend? Maybe you like him because he’s cute and
you think you want to marry him, but that’s not always what it’s
like, is it? Sometimes you’re just bored and you think it would be
fun to walk along the canal holding hands and stopping under the
bridges to kiss. Or maybe he’s kind of dull, but he’s rich and he
buys you nice things. It’s kind of like that.”

“So they buy you nice things?”

“Sometimes,” Christine said. “And sometimes
it’s just good food and wine and the chance to feel pretty again,
like a woman, a real woman. You understand, it’s not like those
en
carte
girls, who work for money. It’s not like a job.”

“I don’t know.”

She did know, actually. It sounded
disgusting.

“Try to be open minded,” Christine said.

“But if it’s not a job, why does the
restaurant let you in?”

“Pretty girls attract business, and besides,
Monsieur Leblanc puts us to work and doesn’t have to pay us. It’s
better than it sounds. Besides, one doesn’t have to work as a
hostess. Sometimes girls help in the kitchen while they figure out
what they want to do.”

“Kitchen work doesn’t sound so bad.”

“You know, he’s looking for another
dishwasher. I could introduce you.”

Gabriela was suspicious enough of the whole
arrangement that she started to say no, but then thought about the
Germans who made up the restaurant’s clientele. Could it be a new
place to search?

The truth was, she’d run out of places to
look. Over the last two years, she’d worn holes in her shoes
walking back and forth to the German embassy where she’d queue in
the drizzling rain only to be turned away. She’d written stacks of
letters to Vichy officials, to work-camp officers, to Todt
representatives. To anyone and everyone who might have news of her
father. No word of him or the man who’d arrested him.

And food. The restaurant would mean a break
from the ever-present gnawing, that feeling of being eaten alive
from the inside.

“Hey, come over here,” Christine said. “I
want to show you something.”

The something turned out to be the art
Christine had discovered in an outdoor shop, tucked behind an
armoire that smelled like mothballs. The paintings should have
been hanging in some gallery, rather than stuffed into a dented
metal footlocker. By the time they finished admiring the art,
Gabriela had decided to take Christine’s advice and stop by Le Coq
Rouge, to see if this Monsieur Leblanc needed help.

“That’s great,” Christine said. “It’ll be so
much better than surrendering your treasures to thieves in the
flea markets. You’ll see.”

“But in the kitchen, you understand.”

“The what?”

“Working in the kitchen,” Gabriela repeated.
She spoke as firmly as possible. “I’ll wash dishes, but I’m not
going to be a hostess.”

“Oh, that. No one will ever make you. I
promise.”

Chapter Two:

And yet it was only a few months before
Gabriela stood before Christine, wearing her only dress, her last
sliver of lipstick and a borrowed dab of perfume.

“Don’t I look like the sexiest prostitute in
Paris?” Gabriela asked.

Christine grabbed her arm. “The colonel? Did
you listen to anything I taught you?” Gabriela felt like she was
watching the scene from a distance. She couldn’t possibly be
leaving the comforting warmth and anonymity of the kitchen to
seduce the Gestapo officer. Surely that was someone else. But then
why was she dressed up like this?

“Gaby, are you listening?”

“Have you heard about the nuns buying bread?”
Gabriela asked. “A German tried to jump the queue and they
attacked him with their rosaries.”

Christine blinked. “That sounds like the
start of a joke.”

“The
boche
lost two teeth. Fourteen
nuns arrested. And what about the paper this morning? They caught
an English spy in the 3
^rd
Arrondissement. Turns out he
was a Jew. Or so the Gestapo is claiming.”

“I heard.”

“The girl who did his laundry turned him in,
and know why?” Gabriela asked.

Christine shrugged. “Because he was a Jew?”

“The laundress didn’t care if he was a Jew or
English or a spy. But his French was terrible and he wouldn’t take
any correction. That’s how she knew he was no good.”

Behind them, the clank of dishes, the smell
of caramelizing onions, the cook complaining to Leblanc about the
impossibility of working under these conditions: the dish needed
butter, the carrots were limp, this chicken was tough and stringy.
Where the hell was the garlic?

“Gaby, what are you doing?” Christine asked.

“I’m going to seduce that man. I already told
you that.”

“Listen to me. There are two other Germans at
the table. Better looking, richer, safer. Why does it have to be
the Gestapo bastard?”

“You choose your clients, I’ll choose mine.”

“Gaby, for god’s sake, it’s your first. Play
it safe.”

“Just trust me, I’ll be fine.”

“
Mais, non.
You’ll be dead.”
Christine shook her head. “What are you thinking?”

What was Gabriela thinking? She wasn’t, not
tonight. She’d had two and a half years of thinking. When she’d
pulled the stitches from the secret hem in her coat to remove the
bills she’d hidden inside, when she’d sold her grandmother’s gold
locket and her father’s silver cigarette case. When she’d taken
the job working in the kitchen and resisted Monsieur Leblanc’s
pressure to work the Germans instead. She’d thought for the last
few months as she’d scrutinized every German to step into the
restaurant.

Even in the last twenty-four hours, since
she’d told Monsieur Leblanc that she was ready, she’d had plenty
of time to think things over. Even after Christine shook her head
and tried to talk her out of it, then reluctantly sat her down and
shared tips, explained the nuances. It had all seemed surreal but
the time had now come and she couldn’t second-guess, not even a
little, or she’d never be able to go through with this.

“Look at you,” Christine said, “your hands
are trembling. You’re so scared you’re going to drop the trays.”

“I’m not scared, I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten
yet.” She caught Christine’s skeptical look. “It’s true, a crust
of
pain noir
with a cup of watery coffee for breakfast
and nothing since. What do you think I’m doing here, I’m sick of
fighting the other dishwashers over the garbage. I’m tired of
struggling.”
The part about the crust of bread and bad coffee was one hundred
percent true, the rest a lie. She may be down to her last five
francs, but she had no intention of selling her body for money.

“Now please, let me go.” She steadied the
tray of drinks. The men at the table couldn’t see her tremble.

“Please, Gaby. Just look.” Christine parted
the doors a crack.

Gabriela glanced into the lounge. Three
Germans at the table. Colonel Hoekman stood out from the other
two. He was pale-skinned, a strong-looking man with a weak chin
and too-narrow eyes. He was watching the negro band with
barely-concealed disgust. The other two men at the table sat as
far from the colonel as possible.

“Gestapo agents need comfort, too,” Gabriela
said.

Monsieur Leblanc approached from further back
in the kitchen, where he’d been arguing with the cook. “What’s
this? Oh, come on girls, gossip on your own time. We’ve got
thirsty customers. Gaby, you said you knew what you were doing.
Either get out there and prove it or change out of that dress and
go back to washing dishes.” He stepped into the lounge and snapped
his fingers for her to follow.

Gabriela followed. Christine gave one final
pleading glance, but said nothing more.

Christine may have recruited her to the
restaurant, but she really was as nice as she’d seemed that first
day in the flea markets, if a little dreamy. When she was not out
serving and seducing Germans, she sat in the back smoking
Gauloises and fawning over the drawings of Monsieur Leblanc’s son,
Roger. And gushing about the pretty trinkets given to her by
German lovers.

Monsieur Leblanc swept up to the table with
the three Germans and gestured for Gabriela to follow. “Come,
come, whiskeys for our fine guests. On the house!”

The whiskey was on the house in the same way
that the Germans were in Paris as guests.

The Germans may not pay directly, but one way
or another Leblanc would find a way to extract a few more
reichsmarks from their wallets to cover the drinks.

Leblanc stepped to one side and flashed that
wide smile again. “Our new girl. Very pretty, no?” He ran his
finger along the lace at the plunging neckline of her dress.

The first thing Christine had done after
Gabriela told her she was ready to move out of the kitchen was
drag her back to the
marché aux puces
and buy her a red
dress and a pair of shoes. It had seemed an extravagance, but
Christine insisted she could pay her back when she worked her
charms as a hostess. It was Gabriela’s first time in the flea
market as a buyer.

Gabriela fed the Germans her most seductive
smile. She bent for effect when she put the drinks onto the table
to give them a view down her dress. As expected, their eyes dipped
to her freckled breasts.

The restaurant was slow tonight, with only a
few
miliciens
—French paramilitary—and a larger table of
German officers on the opposite side, who had waved away any
company and feasted on a leg of lamb and loaves of
boules de
pain blanc
, the kind of white bread the average Parisian
hadn’t seen in years. Nearby, a fat Austrian businessman sat
having wine and Camembert with his regular hostess.

The restaurant décor was faded elegance. Dark
oak paneling. A thick, woven carpet on the floor, now showing its
age, paint that hadn’t been freshened since 1940 and the debacle
.
Always the debacle. One never used the words
surrender
or
capitulation
. It was as if the Germans were an act of God,
like a volcano that had erupted in their midst, killing and
burning. One didn’t fight these things, one simply adapted. And
what could you do anyway when they cut your rations or when they
arrested your neighbor without explanation? Just shrug, drink your
watered-down coffee and be thankful it wasn’t worse.

She put a drink in front of each of the men.
“Your dinner will be out shortly. Meanwhile, may I interest you in
some whiskey?”

“You’ve outdone yourself this time,” the
first man said to Leblanc in lightly-accented French. “Free drinks
with a pretty girl, how can we say no?”

He was a handsome Wehrmacht officer in a
crisp uniform. The man to his right was just as good-looking, with
blond hair and strong Aryan features. Unlike the other two, he
wore a business suit instead of a uniform. The third man, the
Gestapo officer, sat stiffly, his hat on the table in front of
him. A silver eagle decorated his hat, straight-winged, gripping a
wreath and swastika in its talons. Below the eagle, a silver
skull. The man’s gray uniform was finely pressed, his boots
polished. It was late in the night, but nothing was out of place
in his uniform or hair.

Gabriela served the drinks while Leblanc
produced a brass lighter to light the candles.

The Gestapo officer held the glass to the
light of the candle at their table, said something in German to
the other two.

“You do not like the whiskey,
Monsieur?
It
is genuine Scotch.” Gabriela gave him a sly smile. “Isn’t that
naughty of us?”

“Very impressive,” he said with a heavy
accent.

“Only the best for my clients,” Leblanc said.
His smile looked forced. He would be worrying about this new
customer. Did he look offended at the presence of the illegally
imported Scotch?

A fourth glass sat on the tray. Unlike the
other three, it held a strong, unpleasant French whiskey, made in
an illegal still somewhere in the Dordogne. You could have bought
a barrel of the stuff for what Leblanc would pay for a single
glass of the Scotch given the Germans.

She handed the empty tray to Leblanc and slid
into the seat next to the Gestapo officer with the fourth glass in
hand. “May I join you
messieurs
?”

“But of course,” the regular army major said
in lightly accented French. He said something in German to the
Gestapo officer, who nodded.

She took a sip, tried not to make a face. She
imagined that a Russian soldier on the Eastern Front, hiding
behind a barrier of dead, frozen horses with a rifle in his hand
and suffering a gangrenous wound in the thigh, might find this
drink a suitable companion for a chill winter night. She’d have
preferred a nice Chablis.

“I’d better see to the kitchen,” Leblanc
said. “Gaby, anything for you?”

“I’m not hungry,” she lied, “so maybe just a
bit of bread.” It was the agreement with Leblanc. She could work,
but no salary and no freebies from the kitchen.

The alcohol slid straight through her empty
stomach and to her head. “Did Monsieur Leblanc tell you about the
new one-armed dishwasher?” she asked. “He can balance a stack of
plates on his hook.”

The major grinned. “Really?”

These three weren’t friends; she could sense
the discomfort the major and the businessman felt for the Gestapo
agent. Was it business or circumstance that brought these men
together? It didn’t matter, she needed to warm things up if she
didn’t want them to leave the restaurant separately and alone.