The Diaries - 01 (15 page)

“Are you lost?” he
asked in
Meridional
French.

Monika shared a
contemptuous look with Gage and turned back to the man.
 
“Go get Michel, and I don’t appreciate your
condescending tone.”
 
Her retort
consisted of her own flawless Alsatian-accented French.
 

Gage raised his
eyebrows, impressed at the sudden show of force from his lover.
 
His French wasn’t strong, but he understood the
gist of what she had said and couldn’t miss the bite of her tone. The shopkeeper
blinked for a moment, taken aback before recovering.
 
With a thin smile, he nodded and turned on
his heels, disappearing.

“Good job,” Gage
whispered in English.

“Big mistake to
piss me off that quickly,” she answered, winking at him.

Seconds later, Michel
swept in as the two were removing their coats.
 
It was as if every single item he’d chosen to wear had been picked for
its audaciousness—chunky jewelry and a matching gold scarf, a Peter
Max-inspired many-hued silken shirt, and stark white pants held by a cherry red
belt with matching red shoes.
 
He looked
at Monika, his jaw going slack.

“Monika, Monika,
my Monika!” he sang.
 
From behind the stacks
of books he glided to her, taking her hands and opening them, looking her up
and down.
 
“It has been what, four
years?
 
And you’re even prettier than
before!
 
Viens
m'enculer
,
y
ou are prettier than your gorgeous mama, and I
didn’t think that could happen.”
 
Michel
lowered her arms, turning to Gage and touching his own narrow chest with his
right hand.
 
He switched to rough German,
playfully mocking Gage’s hardened demeanor.
 
“My, my, my.
 
Who is this
beautiful specimen of male creation you have thankfully, graciously brought
into my dull, gray little world?”

Gage fidgeted uncomfortably.
 
He pulled off his sunglasses and turned his
eyes to Monika.
 
She was looking up at
him, clearly enjoying the moment.
 
“Michel, this is Gregory.
 
He is
from the U.S.”
 
Gage shot her an angry
look; he had wanted to keep his German cover.

Immediately,
Michel flipped to unaccented American English, clicking his tongue
lightly.
 
“And my favorite trip every
year is to the glorious market in New York.
 
Midtown, Chelsea, the shopping, the nightlife, the beautiful denizens—oh
the
treasures
that city has to
offer.”
 
His eyes wandered as he spoke, cupping
both hands over his heart.
 
Gage absently
wondered if the treasures he was referring to were books or something entirely
different.

Michel did a final
once-over of Gage.
 
Then, as if shaking
himself from his reverie, blinked heavily before turning back to his cousin,
staying with English.
 
“So, my dear
Moni
, what is it that brings you to our fair little city?”
 

“We need to be
alone, Michel.”

“
Alone
, alone?”

“
Oui
.”

Michel gave her a
long, curious look, finally nodding.
 
He
stepped to the rear of the store and they heard him tell the man, Gerard, to go
have a protracted cup of coffee somewhere.
 
Gerard stepped to the front, his lips pursed as he pulled on a waist
length leather jacket. With a disapproving look, he turned and exited to the
rear, the alarm beeping twice for what was presumably the back door.

“Boyfriend?” Monika
asked with a conspiratorial grin.

“Oh, doesn’t he so
wish,” Michel answered, eyes closed.
 
“Boyfriend,
no.
 
He is, however, the shrewdest book buyer
in eastern France.
 
And he’d be rich if
he knew how to manage his own money.
 
But
he doesn’t, and that’s my gain.” Michel clasped his hands and made a can’t-wait
face like a fifth grader.
 
“So, what’s
the big secret?
 
Do tell.”

Gage hitched his
thumb to the front door.
 
“Mind locking
us in?”

“Oh, Gregory,” he
sang with a cocked eyebrow, “I thought you would never ask.”

Gage looked at
Monika, widening his eyes.
 
Monika
giggled.

A minute later,
the three people were situated around a lighted viewing table in the rear of
the store.
 
Michel had poured each of
them a steaming mug of coffee, and he and Monika lit
Gauloises
as Gage went into his backpack, placing the muslin bundle on the table.
 
Gage shot a stern glance at Monika; he’d seen
her smoke once before and, as the smoke hit his nostrils, so did the familiar
craving.
 
Pushing the thought from his
mind, he unwrapped the bundle, placing before them the large 1938 diary.

Michel’s eyes
widened.
 
“Oh, Gregory, you certainly
have a
big
one there.”
 
He smiled wickedly, thrilled at his own wit.

Monika touched her
cousin’s hand.
 
“Business now, Michel.
 
Stop torturing Gregory.”

“Sorry.”

Gage slid the oversized
diary to him.
 
Michel took it, pulling on
his cigarette as he appraised the diary’s condition before laying it flat on
the table.
 
Using his thumb and
forefinger, he opened it with a carefully practiced caution.
 
The book dealer looked at the name inside the
front, turning it to the first page and reading.
 
After several pages, he looked up, staring at
his cousin.

“She wrote
beautifully.”

“Yes, she did,”
Monika agreed.

Michel sipped his
coffee, lightly smacking his lips.
 
“Now,
Monika…Gregory…I hope you know that a diary from 1938, even while nicely-written,
isn’t exactly something in high demand.”
 
He crushed out the cigarette.
 
“I
sincerely hope, as pleasant as Gregory is on my tired old eyes, that you didn’t
come all this way for that.”

Monika looked to
Gage.
 
He nodded.
 
She gripped her cousin’s forearm.

“This isn’t just
any old diary.”

“Oh?
 
And why isn’t it?”

“It was,
allegedly, written by one of Adolf Hitler’s personal servants.”

Michel’s fingers
went back to the diary.
 
He spoke as he
considered it.
 
“Indeed?
 
Are you certain?”

“Pretty certain,”
Gage replied.

“Does she mention
Hitler?”

“Oh, yes,” Monika
answered with a smirk.

“Well, then, the
value just went up…by quite a bit.”

“That’s not all,
Michel,” she said.

He looked at her,
removing his thick, cobalt-framed glasses.
 
“
Moni
…you’ve got that impish look you used to
have as a child when you would sneak my cigarettes out to the garden.”

She eyed him for a
moment.
 
“The author, Hitler’s servant, was
secretly
Jewish
.”
 
The appropriate shock registered on Michel’s
face.

“You are certain?”

“Quite,” Gage
replied.

Michel’s chest
rose and fell with his deep breaths.
 
“I
have the feeling there’s more,” he whispered.
 

Monika took
Michel’s hand, squeezing it.
 
“He was
having an affair with her, Michel.
 
Adolf
Hitler, Jew-hater, was screwing a Jewish woman, and he didn’t
even know it
.”

Michel disentangled
his left hand from hers.
 
His right hand
slid carefully away from the diary.
 
He
stared down at it as if it might crumble to dust any second.
 
“I…I don’t even know where to begin,” was all
he could mutter.
 
He quickly slid on a
pair of rubber gloves, gently touching the book as his breath now came in quick
rasps.

“Go on,” Gage
said, encouraging her.

“Michel, focus for
a second…there’s one more thing.”
 

The book dealer jerked
his head up, his brown eyes wide on his cousin.
 
He closed his mouth, struggling to swallow.
 

Monika poked her finger
in the direction of the diary, her voice a reverent whisper.
 
“Michel, the servant was
pregnant
when she wrote this.
 
Pregnant by Adolf Hitler.
 
We’ve
got stacks of her diaries to prove it, each written as beautifully as this one.”

“Would that
classify them as rare, valuable books?” Gage asked dryly.

Michel held a gloved
hand to his heart, tightly squeezing Gage’s forearm with his other.
 
“Je
vous
aime
, Gregory, je
vous
aime
!”

***

While Monika
enjoyed a well-deserved late afternoon nap, Gage sat alone in the small
brasserie around the corner from the hotel.
 
In front of him were a mineral water and an untouched crepe.
 
The door bell jingled occasionally, the
customers a mix of locals and tourists.
 
Most drank their coffee inside, chatting amiably or relaxing with a newspaper
or book.
 
Gage didn’t converse with
anyone.
 
There was no novel in his
hand.
 
He simply sat there, his narrowed eyes
hidden by the sunglasses.
 

The owner checked
on him every few minutes, a worried frown on her aged face.
 
Gage would glance up, force a smile, tell her
he was fine in his simple French.
 
His sweaty
palms were flat on the table; it was the only way he could keep them from
shaking.

There was no
explaining why the panic attacks came when they did.

Earlier, after the
meeting with Michel, Gage and Monika had killed time by window shopping.
 
A toy store displayed its hottest items in a
large plate glass window, no doubt trying to snag the early Christmas
shopper.
 
Reminiscing, Gage stopped to
stare at the old-fashioned train set as the engine pulled a long set of cars
through the cornucopia of toys that seemed of higher quality than what one
might see back in the States.

It was then that what
must have been a brother and sister pushed by him, mashing their faces into the
glass.
 
Gage didn’t have children and
wasn’t around them often, making it difficult for him to be able to guess their
age.
 
This pair was surely under ten, the
sister probably a few years older than the brother.
 
In her flowing French, it was readily
apparent she was bossy, ordering her brother to look at one toy, then another.
 
The young boy dutifully obeyed, rosy cheeks
alight, a smile dominating his face.
 
Gage enjoyed watching their delight, thinking back to his own childhood,
remembering the time he’d received his first electric train.
 
Then, another memory forced its way through.

No, please.
 
Not now.

Crete, and all
hell that came with it, blew into his mind like a raging wildfire on a windy summer’s
day.

“Why don’t you go
take a nap?” he had said somewhat forcefully to Monika.
 
His face was pale and, despite the cold, a
film of sweat had appeared on his forehead.
 
He slipped on his dark, wraparound sunglasses, struggling to swallow.

“Gage, are you
okay?”

“Not really.”
 
He tried to soften his face, not
succeeding.
 
He pulled her aside.
 
“Back there, with your cousin.
 
I guess I’m concerned that we told him too
much.”

Monika seemed
hurt.
 
“I trust Michel, Gage.
 
He won’t do anything but help us.”

“This is big,
Monika.
 
Bigger than you can imagine
because of the man trying to find me.
 
While Michel might be trustworthy, from here on we need to contain any
information about what we’ve found, and especially about who I am.”

“Why are you just
now saying all this?”

He squeezed his
temples with his hands, angered with himself for displacing his anguish on
Monika.
 
She was only trying to help.

“Please…just go back
to the hotel, Monika.
 
I need an hour
alone.”

Monika opened her
hands, perplexed, finally turning from him, staring down the hill toward the
river and snowy countryside.

“I need to think
some things through, and when I do, I’ll feel better.
 
Go to the room, take a nap.
 
I’ll come get you later.”
 
His tone left room for no argument.
 
Monika pulled her bag tightly to her shoulder
and hurried off to the hotel.

Gage had staggered
to the Moselle River, leaning over the railing as his mind opened the
floodgates of dreadful remembrance.
 
It
wasn’t unlike a disturbing movie he despised but was forced to watch anyway.
 
He clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head
violently, pushing the thoughts backward.