B004U2USMY EBOK (3 page)

“Also useful for hooking bits of food out of
the garbage when he thinks nobody’s looking. He’s good with the
hook, maybe too good. Claims he can unhook a girl’s brassiere, but
I’ve declined his offer.” She winked at the Gestapo officer.

The major laughed, the businessman chuckled,
but the Gestapo officer frowned and shook his head with a confused
expression. The major repeated the joke in German and this
elicited a smile. The story was obviously embellished, but the men
didn’t seem to mind. The next was a story about a cat that ended
in the pot of their rivals across the street.

“Can you imagine, serving cats?
Ouai
,
and an English cat, too. The former ambassador left it behind when
he fled Paris in his nightgown. Please, if you’re going to put cat
meat on the menu, at least make them French cats. Everyone knows
English food is
merde.
”

Another laugh from the major, more
translation for his SS counterpart.

“My name is Gaby, and you are,
messieurs
?”

The regular army officer introduced himself
as Major Ostermann, and the businessman called himself Helmut von
Cratz. The businessman was watching her, but she couldn’t read him
as easily as the Wehrmacht officer. The major’s hungry look was
obvious enough.

“Et vous, Monsieur, le sérioux?”
she
asked the Gestapo officer.

His French was good enough for that. “I am
called Colonel Hoekman.”

Colonel Hoekman. To hear it from his own
mouth thrilled her. She’d spent more than two years not knowing,
remembering that cruel face. Yesterday, Leblanc spoke it for the
first time, and now she had confirmation: Hoekman. The bastard.
She wanted to grab a steak knife and ram it through his throat.

“Ah, a colonel.” She gave a teasing smile to
the other men. “I’m afraid a girl must cast her net for the
biggest fish.” She put a hand playfully on Hoekman’s knee. He
glanced down and then met her gaze, but didn’t pull away.

“Bah,” Major Ostermann said. “Your so-called
biggest fish is going to swim back to Berlin day after tomorrow,
next week at the latest. You won’t get a meal out of him.”

We’ll see about that.

“What this place is?” Hoekman asked in his
imperfect French. “Like One-Two-Two club? The
Egyptienne
?”

“What? No, this is a fine restaurant.”

“Then who are all the girls?”

“Well, Elyse is from Belgium, Christine is
from Provence. Those two are
Parisiennes
.”

“But are they. . .I mean, do they. . .?” He
frowned, as if searching for the words. “Work, sexually?”

Major Ostermann blinked and there was a long,
uncomfortable silence. “Please, just enjoy the Scotch,” he said at
last. “We don’t want to insult our hosts.”

Hoekman snapped something in German and
Ostermann shrugged and stared down at his drink.

Like Gabriela, the other hostesses weren’t
exactly restaurant employees, but neither was this a brothel or a
maison close
like the
Egyptienne
.
Leblanc and
Le Coq Rouge
offered opportunity, nothing more. Opportunity to meet someone who
would buy you a few pretty things, move you out of your
louse-infested rat hole. Opportunity to tear up your ration
coupons and eat real bread, drink real coffee, a real glass of
wine. Eat meat.

But you’d better sell yourself or you’d be
fighting the dishwasher’s hook for the tastiest garbage.

Ostermann and von Cratz picked up their
conversation, this time in German. Colonel Hoekman watched them
without comment.

The lights flickered and then died. The jazz
music continued in the dark without interruption and Leblanc
materialized with more candles. He had them on the tables and lit
within moments. Sconces on the walls. The light was dim, but
passable. A few minutes later, the electricity came back on and
the
patron
swept up the candles with the same practiced
hand.

Leblanc brought a bottle of wine and a basket
of bread. A few minutes later, the venison and potatoes. She took
a pitifully small slice of bread, spread as much butter as she
dared and nibbled at the corner as if participating in the meal
out of politeness. Her mouth watered and her stomach gave an
excited rumble. A moment later, she forced herself to put down the
bread, unfinished.

She tried not to stare at the venison.

Colonel Hoekman ate deliberately, almost
daintily, while the other two attacked their food with a good deal
of cutting and chewing and clanking of silverware and dishes.
Gabriela kept up a meaningless chatter. Her hand kept returning to
Hoekman’s knee. He’d come here for something other than food or
hostesses. She could see it in the way he studied people as they
came and went. What that was she couldn’t guess. Something
unpleasant, no doubt. Looking for the opportunity to arrest some
poor, innocent bastard for the crime of voicing the wrong opinion
about the war or for telling the wrong kind of joke.

But gradually, Hoekman’s glances fell more
and more on her neck and bust line and less toward the door. By
dessert, she would make her offer. Word it cleverly enough and
he’d think he’d seduced her, rather than the other way around. The
conversation between the other two Germans switched back to
French.

“Have you seen Roger Leblanc’s drawings?”
Major Ostermann asked. He had downed several drinks and loosened
up considerably.

“Roger Leblanc?” Colonel Hoekman asked.

“The owner’s son. He’s quite talented.”

“Ah, yes, the. . .how you say?” He said
something in German.

“Deviant? Well, yes, I suppose he might be
homosexual,” Ostermann said with a frown. “They all are, aren’t
they? We wouldn’t have a museum in Europe if you cleared out all
the homosexuals.”

Gabriela had no idea if Roger was or wasn’t,
but she didn’t like the sneer in Hoekman’s voice. The Germans were
strange about these things. You might very well take a man like
Hoekman for a homosexual himself. Big and strong looking, but with
a pursed-lipped, almost pious look around his mouth and a
perpetually arched eyebrow.

Her father had once told her that the priests
and bishops who were most anxious about rooting out and denouncing
sodomites were invariably acting out of self-loathing for their
own, similar inclinations. She wondered if you could say the same
thing about fascists. She hoped not, in Hoekman’s case.

“He’s not homosexual, just a sensitive
artistic type,” she said.

Colonel Hoekman snorted. “Another word for
deviant,
ja
? This is why I do not like art. All deviants.”

“But the drawings are quite good,” Ostermann
said. “You should see them, Colonel. Isn’t that right, Helmut?”

Helmut von Cratz shrugged. “They’re not bad,
I suppose. For an amateur.”

“Oh, come on. Where’s the boy, I’ll show
you.”

“There is no need,” Colonel Hoekman said.

This was no good. A distraction, at best. But
there was something else, like a warning. A bad feeling. A
struggle between these three men coming to the surface, perhaps.
She didn’t need it.

“Oh, I agree with the colonel,” Gabriela
said. “There’s no point. The boy’s all right, but it’s amateur
stuff, really. Besides, it doesn’t seem Roger’s around. I think he
went out.”

But now that he’d staked a position, the
major seemed determined to defend it. “How about Leblanc, where
the devil did he get to?”

“Never mind,” von Cratz said. “Didn’t you
hear what he said? The colonel’s not interested.”

Major Ostermann frowned and picked up his
wine glass. It might have died there, but just then Monsieur
Leblanc stepped out of the kitchen. Ostermann gestured
impatiently.

Leblanc hurried over with hands clasped. “
Oui,
monsieur?
”

“Where’s your son? We want to see some of his
drawings.”

Leblanc licked his lips and glanced from one
man to the other. Gabriela gave him a tiny shake of the head. She
couldn’t tell if he caught the warning.

“Well, you see I was about to send him out.
We need mushrooms, and—”

“Oh, never mind mushrooms,” Ostermann said.
“Let’s see these drawings. Come on, Hoekman is a real art
connoisseur. I told him we had a budding
artiste
on our
hands. This is the real stuff. Where’s the boy? Bring him out. I
insist.”

“Yes, of course.”

Gabriela brushed her hand against Hoekman’s
knee, tried to say something witty, but he was preoccupied now. He
stared hard at Roger Leblanc as the boy came out with his father.
Roger carried a battered leather portfolio under one arm. A
cigarette dangled at his lips.

Roger had the untidy look of a zazou: long
hair slicked into a duck tail in the back, too much color and
cloth on his clothing in defiance of wartime rations, narrow tie.
When she saw him in the street he always wore dark glasses and
carried an umbrella over his arm,
a la
Neville
Chamberlain, never open no matter the weather. The look had the
odd effect of making him look much older than seventeen, and at
the same time like a child playing dress-up.

Hoekman snapped his fingers. “Let’s see them,
come on.”

“Easy, easy,” Major Ostermann said. “This boy
is an artist, let him show the drawings his own way.”

Roger opened his portfolio and held out the
first drawing with a look of practiced indifference. A woman
feeding bread crumbs to pigeons. The old woman’s face drew
Gabriela’s attention. Quiet desperation. And her hands, held out
as if imploring the pigeons to eat, not offering.

The Germans leaned forward and studied the
drawing. Gabriela returned her hand to Colonel Hoekman’s knee. He
glanced at her neckline and there was something smoldering in his
look. Very good.

Christine and Virginie came out of the
kitchen. Christine caught her eye with an imploring look, but
Gabriela looked away.

Roger flipped to the next drawing. A man
kneading bread. It was good, too. His hands, especially. Roger
flipped to the next. It was only partially finished, but it caught
her eye at once.

He’d drawn an elegantly dressed couple,
strolling arm-in-arm through what looked like the
Jardin de
Tuileries,
with other couples only hinted at with a line or
two. The only other completed detail was the face of a child,
playing with a line or two of what would become a dog. A look of
innocent delight on his face. That look made her heart ache.

“I remember that,” Gabriela said. “When
people used to walk like that.”

Hoekman snorted and said something in German.
She understood without needing a translation.
What, people in
Paris don’t take walks anymore?

Christine looked over Roger’s shoulder. “Ah,
that’s good.”

Her face looked younger at that angle. It was
the expression she wore when Gabriela and Christine wandered the
flea markets. Christine liked to look at the art. Once, they found
what appeared to be a genuine Corot. Who had been desperate enough
to sell such a beautiful thing to filthy, uncaring men?

Roger was no Camille Corot, god no. But there
was a spark of native genius in those drawings. Roger flipped to
the next. Too soon; Gabriela wasn’t done studying the child’s
face.

“Enough.” Hoekman waved his hand. “It is
deviant art.”

“Oh, come on. It’s good, admit it,” Ostermann
said.

“It is deviant.” The colonel turned to the
third man, asked a question in German.

Von Cratz shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I don’t
know anything about art. Or deviants for that matter.”

“Go on, then,” Monsieur Leblanc told his son.
He sounded relieved. “You’re done here, and I need those
mushrooms.”

Roger slipped the drawings into his
portfolio. “Yeah, what kind of mushrooms?” He leaned over and
insolently tapped the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray at
the Germans’ table.

“One hundred grams of
pieds de mouton.”

“Oh, is that all?” Roger asked sarcastically.
“You sure you don’t want some white truffles? I hear you can get
them in Vichy, if you’re friends with Marshall Petain and willing
to sell the family jewels.”

Leblanc darted a look at the Germans. Hoekman
had produced a notebook and was jotting something. He didn’t seem
to have heard. Or maybe he had and he was now writing it down.

“Don’t be smart with me. Look, if Pierre
doesn’t have them, get something. Use your judgment. Not the
girolles
.
The last ones were terrible. Now make it quick, the sub-prefect
will be here with his wife in twenty minutes, and you know what he
always orders.”

Roger stood for a long second, then shuffled
off. Leblanc gave his apologies and disappeared into the back
room. The three men started arguing in German—probably about
whether all zazous were sodomites, or just most of them—until
Gabriela said, “Oh, leave that alone. He’s just a pretentious boy.
Besides, everyone knows where to find the best art in France.”

“Where is that,
mademoiselle
?” Major
Ostermann asked.

“Why, Berlin, of course.”

At last she coaxed a smile from Colonel
Hoekman. He put his hand beneath the tablecloth and rested it on
her knee. Gabriela gave him a raised eyebrow, put her hand over
his as if she were going to push it away in shock, but then slid
his hand higher, onto her thigh. She giggled.

And suppressed a shudder. Horror, hatred,
anticipation. What would her father say, whoring herself to
fascists? No, she knew what he’d say.

Hija, you never abandon someone you love.

Papá
had shown her just how far to go. When he was in hiding and they
arrested Mother, he’d made a bargain to turn himself over in order
to free her. After six months in jail, and many tearful letters
from family members, he was freed. But he didn’t stop there.
Papá
voluntarily crossed back
into Nationalist territory to search for a brother and an aunt in
Sevilla. And then, tried to bribe Gaby’s way out of France while
he prepared to face the Gestapo.