Marlene (45 page)

“How much are they asking for my head?” I said, and the London office refused to accept my calls again.

Their refusal wasn’t about to deter me. In London, I reunited with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who was scheduled to shoot a much-delayed picture. We didn’t resume our affair—I wasn’t about to tolerate his jealous tirades again—but he proved a delightful entrée into the high military circles of the Allied forces, which were organizing a strategy to free those parts of Europe still under attack, where I wanted to be: with the boys. I also wanted to discover as much as I could about the Allied plans for Germany, as my recent attempts to contact my family had failed, the telephone lines dead and my wires gone unanswered, as if a wall had barricaded my country.

“I’m told you like to sunbathe nude,” Patton said moments after we’d been introduced. Outside the salon, London was knee-deep in the debris of the Blitz, sirens wailing as the dead and injured were unearthed, but indoors champagne flowed and everyone seemed optimistic.

I sipped from my glass. “We’re at war, General. You can’t believe everything you hear.”

“Oh, I think this particular rumor must be true.” His small blue-gray eyes scoured me in my tailored military jacket and gored knee-length skirt. “Soldiers never lie.”

“Neither do majors,” I said. He was quite a few years older than me; with the exception of his height, he wasn’t the type of man I usually gravitated to. He had something of the stern uncle in him, a dictatorial authority that made those under his command trust him with their lives, even if the look he now gave me was anything but familial. “But,” I went on, “if I did sunbathe nude, would it be enough of a qualification to get me to the front?”

He went silent for a moment. “I’d have to see it for myself.”

“The front?”

“No.” He refilled my glass. “The sunbathing.”

HE WAS A NO-FRILLS LOVER
, which was fine. It was a no-frills situation. Afterward, as I smoked and he palmed his prized mother-of-pearl inlaid
Colt .45s, replicas of those belonging to some long-dead general he admired, he said, “So, do you really want to go to the front?”

“Yes,” I said, turning to him eagerly.

He grimaced. He did not like me smoking in bed. “It could be arranged. You can travel with my unit to Paris and then on to eastern France and Belgium, but”—he chuckled as he fended off my kisses—“only if you tell me why you truly want to go.”

“Why?” I paused in astonishment. “Why else? I’m an entertainer. I came here to entertain. Surely your boys deserve to see Marlene Dietrich after everything they have done.”

“And continue to do.” His weathered face turned somber. “It’s dangerous, more than you seem to think. This is not a Hollywood premiere. No one can guarantee your safety.”

“I survived the war in Italy. I’m sure I can survive a few shows at the front. And I don’t expect you to guarantee anything. I know what I signed up for.”

“Do you?” He went silent, chewing on his lower lip before he broke his own rule and retrieved his disgusting, half-smoked cigar from the bedside ashtray. He clamped it between his teeth; when I made to reach for my lighter, he shook his head, gnawing the cigar as he eyed me. “I think you have another reason besides this patriotic duty to show us your legs. Not that my boys would mind; I certainly don’t. But in war, mistakes are often made by those on the same side. I can’t afford to have you be my mistake.”

I went still. Should I confide in him? I only hesitated because of who I was—an American citizen, yes, hailed by my adopted country, if not the studio heads, but still with the blood of the enemy in my veins, no matter how much I might declare my abhorrence of Hitler.

“It’s Germany, isn’t it?” he said, surprising me with his insight. It shouldn’t have; he was revered for his tactical brilliance. “You want to get in there. It’s why you agreed to do the wireless program with the American Broadcast System, singing ‘Lili Marleen’ and giving rousing speeches that they broadcast into occupied territories. What did you say in that last one?”

“That all my songs are dedicated to the Allied soldiers of course.”

“‘Who are about to meet up with you boys and destroy your thousand-year Reich,’” he added wryly. “Hardly music to Hitler’s ears. You must know by now how much he hates you, the homegrown star turned Allied pet. If you’re ever captured, they’ll make an example of you. Hitler will have you shot in front of the Brandenburg Gate.”

“And Goebbels, too,” I said. “Don’t forget that he hates me even more.”

“It’s not a joke, Marlene. If you’re captured, we can’t do anything about it. We can’t risk our entire operation for one person, as admirable as you may be.”

“So, there
is
an operation.”

“That’s classified. But you’ve just answered my question.”

I smoked, watching him in silence before I said, “I have family there. My mother, my sister, and my uncle . . . they’re not Nazis.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything. That’s my point.”

“I still have to find out if they’re . . .” Suddenly, I couldn’t say the words. Was my family still alive? Or had this horrendous war killed them like so many others? My mother had said they were safe, good Germans, protected by their loyalty as long as they kept their heads down. But everything had changed. The Reich was crumbling. I’d humiliated Goebbels by turning down his proposals, filing for U.S. citizenship, and flinging my contempt in his face. The Nazis knew what I’d done in Italy; they must hear me now, singing my defiance over the wireless. I couldn’t expect my family to have escaped. But I needed to see for myself. I had to know.

Patton handed me one of his revolvers. “I’m going to teach you how to shoot. And when you’ve learned, I’m going to give these to you. I want you to carry them with you at all times. If there ever comes a time, God forbid, I want you to use them. Can you do that?”

I closed my fingers around the gun, warm from his touch. I understood what he was saying. Suicide was preferable. “Yes,” I whispered. “I can.”

“Good. Because if you’d said no, the only place you’d be showing off your legs is Piccadilly Circus.”

PARIS.

What can I say about my return to the city I’d come to love, that alabaster muse whose crowded garrets had housed some of the most daring artists of our time? She wasn’t the same. She might look the same, if a bit ragged after the deprivations of occupation, but she felt different. Tense. Like a hunted animal being lured into a snare, waiting for the Free French to haul her before their pitiless tribunals.

The savage purge had begun. Suspected collaborators, including women left to fend for themselves while the Nazis held sway, were being prosecuted, their hair shorn before they were taken through the streets in a public procession, stones and filth flung at them, with not a few spontaneous executions by the mobs, resulting in corpses in tattered negligees dangling from lampposts.

Chanel was gone, her boutique shuttered. Others had fled, as well—anyone with a reason to fear the liberators would prove more punitive than the oppressors. But in the bar at the Ritz, I found an unexpected friend: Papa Hemingway, sousing it up with fellow reporters who’d raced to the city with the Allied forces to document Paris’s liberation. Papa had also participated in D-day, flying missions with the RAF, combat being his preferred aphrodisiac.

“Kraut!” he boomed, grabbing me in his bearlike embrace. “Of all the women in the world, I should have known you’d be the only one to walk into this joint—and with pistols at your belt, too.”

The pistols might be unique, but I wasn’t the only woman. Seated at the bar next to his stool was a petite, scowling brunette. I might have told her she needn’t look so unhappy, I wasn’t competition, not with Hemingway, but her terse nod when he introduced us, “Kraut, meet Mary Welsh. She writes for the
Daily Express,
” made me think twice.

I saw it at once in her sharp appraisal that no matter what I said, I was unwelcome. Papa was still married to his second wife, Martha Gellhorn, also a journalist, but I knew from his letters that the marriage was
over. Mary Welsh must be angling to pounce as soon as he got divorced, although I’d advised him that his penchant for marriage was unhealthy, seeing that he couldn’t maintain it.

However, after a stormy Channel crossing on a U-boat and a jarring ride through the bomb-torn countryside to Paris, I was in need of some amusement. Smiling at her as I linked my arm in Papa’s, I asked, “And Martha? Is she here?”

“She was.” He pinched my underarm, apprised of my wiles. “But she left to file her report in London. She’ll be back. She won’t be able to stay away.”

“I see.” I didn’t take my gaze from Mary, who sat so erect on her stool her spine might have been made of brass. “Well, then. How lovely to see a few friendly faces.”

Mary had gone pale at the mention of Papa’s wife. “Come, dear.” I glided to her, taking Papa’s stool. “I’m desperate for information.”

“Information?” She frowned at me. “I can’t divulge my sources.”

“Even on where I might find hair bleach and razors?” I leaned closer to her, but not so close that Papa would fail to overhear. “I’ve just been with General Patton on the filthiest U-boat you can imagine. I made the mistake of visiting the latrines and caught a little—how shall I put it? A teensy bug problem? Oh, nothing to worry about,” I said. “Or at least nothing a shave and delousing powder won’t solve. Only, I forgot to pack a razor, and on top of it, my roots are starting to show. See?” I bent my head, feeling her recoil as if my little problem might leap out and infest her. “I’d be so grateful. There must be some contraband here?”

Behind me, Papa roared with laughter and bellowed at the bartender, “A drink for Miss Dietrich. The best whiskey in the house.”

Mary Welsh glowered.

What could she do? She found my razor and bleach on the black market, and I made a point of attaching myself to them. I joined Papa in the bathroom as he shaved, perched on the toilet as he regaled me with news about the war from his sources. He insisted on my company at the Allied parties, saying that whenever I showed up in my khakis, with my
skirt hiked several inches above regulation requirements and sporting my newly dyed coiffure, “Somehow, like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, caviar and liquor follow.”

Mary eventually warmed to me, a fellow woman in a male-dominated arena. One night as we applied lipstick together, she suddenly giggled. “He proposed to me. As soon as he’s rid of that bitch Gellhorn, we’re going to get married.” She eyed me in the mirror. “She’s no good for him. Too ambitious. She competes with him for everything. She thinks she’s the better writer.”

“Perhaps she is.” I returned her stare. “Women often do things better than men, but we also often have to go to extra lengths to prove it.”

Before I departed for my engagement with the troops, I offered her and Papa my bed, as I had a full in my suite and they were sleeping in twins. Mary was so delighted with my evident acceptance of their engagement, over the Ritz manager’s protests she helped me haul the entire bedstead to their room. Papa never slept in my bed, however, as he’d left the night before to report from the eastern front.

I couldn’t help but smile as I drove out with Patton the next day, wondering how Mary Welsh would enjoy the surprise I’d deliberately left for her, crawling within my sheets.

Perhaps a teensy bug problem of her own would teach her that if screwing another woman’s husband was acceptable, conniving to break up his marriage was not.

VII

I
f Italy had been purgatory, Belgium was hell.

It was one of the coldest winters on record, a fanged wind spitting sleet and snow, biting through my layers of wool and droopy fleece long johns. I caught lice, and had dysentery and frostbite; I performed for the boys in my spangled gowns and left the stage with my feet turning blue in my high heels and my teeth chattering so much, I couldn’t speak. Patton had a charcoal stove installed in my tent; he had one in his, too, which I preferred to share. Everyone knew we were lovers, and the boys only liked me more because of it. “Legs,” they dubbed me, which was also the official password Patton gave me, Legs Marlene, and their joy in seeing me singing my heart out every night before they went out to risk their lives made every discomfort bearable.

But the frostbite nearly cost me one of my toes and an incipient infection in my jaw forced me to return to Paris for treatment. Once I recovered, I joined Noël Coward and Maurice Chevalier for a musical performance, but as soon as I could, I went back to the front in early February, following the epic lightning strike of the Battle of the Bulge. Patton was now in Aachen, the first German city to fall en route to Berlin, which the Soviets had encircled. In Aachen, I did another show, only this time I sat squeezed
between two bodyguards, my pistols at my hips as I rode in Patton’s open-air jeep at the head of the Third Army. As the German people who’d survived the Allied bombardment gathered at the roadside in freezing temperatures, I called out my name through a megaphone, requesting immediate evacuation of the streets so our tanks could pass.

No one fired a shot at me. Regardless of the USO warning that I had a bounty on my head or Patton’s advice that Germans reviled me for my stance, I found only limpid acceptance in those with whom I stopped to speak, the hunger and fear scoring their faces turning to befuddled awe when they realized who I was.

“Lola-Lola,” one woman whispered. “You’re the Blue Angel.”

No one denounced me. No one shook their fist or turned their back. Regardless of the bile Goebbels had spewed, it seemed not everyone had been hoodwinked into thinking I was the enemy. Still, when a reporter for the International News Service asked me what I thought about the destruction, compared with my life in Hollywood, I had to blink back sudden tears.

“I’m not thinking about the movies,” I replied. “I may never think about movies again. As for all this”—I gazed at the wreckage, the toppled buildings and rubble-piled avenues, the charred parks, the destitute scavenging for anything to eat or drink—“I hate to see it, but I guess Germany deserves everything that’s coming to her.”