Immortal Muse (59 page)

She would protect herself from him if she had to. She would kill him if she had to—but she had some hope that wouldn't be necessary.

Still, she feared for Lotte as a Jewess, and that sent her back to her chemicals and the notes she'd made when she'd worked with Antoine in Paris—the work was difficult and laborious, especially given the problems finding appropriate supplies due to the war, but the effort consumed her. Within a week, she had a new vial of the elixir. She was determined to give it to Lotte, to convince her to take it even if she had to lie. Yes, it would change her; yes, it might destroy her as an artist; yes, Ana had no idea what taking the elixir would do to the child in Lotte's womb. But Lotte might live then, no matter what the Nazis might do to her—Anaïs couldn't bear to think of the alternative.

It was September 24th when she finished.

The rounding up of Jews in the area around Nice began that same week, the effort unexpected, sudden, and ruthless. When Anaïs, ensconced in her rooms, finally heard the rumors flickering like pale flames among the other residents, she set aside her own fear about Brunner and went to l'Ermitage.

Lotte and Alexander were no longer safe at l'Ermitage; that seemed clear. Anaïs hurried there, rehearsing in her mind what she might say to them and how she might respond if Nicolas himself was there, going over dire scenarios in her mind. She would give Lotte the elixir, saying as little about it as possible, knowing that Lotte would trust her and would take it. Then, perhaps she could help Lotte and Alexander escape along the coast and into Italy itself, where they might be able to get behind the Allied lines, or maybe they could find sanctuary among the mountains to the north. Perhaps Ana could take in the couple herself, claim that they were German cousins of hers, but not Jewish.

Nothing prepared her for what she found.

She could hear agitated voices as she approached, and she found the residents of the villa out in the courtyard, talking loudly among themselves with wild gesticulations. “Ah, M'mselle Dereux!” Madame Moore, the owner of the villa called as she approached. “It is horrible! Just horrible!”

“What is horrible?” Ana asked, dreading that she already knew the answer.

“The Nazis—they came in trucks just a few hours ago, and they took Lotte and Alex. The
bâtards
snatched them up and took them away. They wouldn't listen to us, wouldn't tell us where they were taking them. They forced them into the trucks, and Lotte, the poor girl, they practically had to drag her in, she was so distraught, and pregnant as she is . . .” Madame Moore's eyes widened suddenly. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Lotte, as they were taking her away, she said that she wanted me to be certain to give you something. She said it was vital that you have it. Come with me, come with me . . .”

Ana shook her head, wanting to run after these trucks and find Lotte (if not Alexander). But she impatiently followed Madame Moore, who escorted her up to Lotte's room in the villa and pointed to three cardboard boxes in a corner. “Those,” she said. “She said she wanted to make certain that you had them.”

Ana didn't need to open them: she knew what was in them—the paintings that Lotte had worked on so feverishly, the opera of her life:
Life? or Theater?
“I'll need a car for the boxes,” she told Madame Moore. “Please, could you call one for me? And are you certain that they didn't say where they were taking Lotte and Alexander?”

 * * * 

Madame Moore di
dn't know the answer to that last question, nor did any of the other residents of l'Ermitage, but the driver of the car who drove Anaïs back to her rooms with Lotte's boxes thought he did.

“The Nazis have taken over the Hotel Excelsior in Nice,” the driver told her. “I've heard that they're holding the Jews there until they're processed, then shipping them out by train for Drancy in Paris. And after that . . .” The shrug he gave then was more eloquent than words.

After Ana and the driver had carried Lotte's boxes into the apartment, after she'd paid the driver and had opened one of the boxes to look in at the sheets of Lotte's work, Anaïs had taken out her battered, old Tarot and laid out the cards. The reading had not been optimistic, and she could see Nicolas' influence throughout it. Angrily, she pushed the cards away on the tabletop. She took out the few old scrolls she'd gathered over the centuries, laying them out and trying to memorize the most effective spells there, knowing that none of them could match Nicolas, if it came to that. She placed the flasks she'd already prepared in her coat jacket. She couldn't concentrate; she was shaking and trembling and the vials rattled in her hands as she thrust them into the pocket. The vial of elixir for Lotte she hid in the broken heel of her shoe, gluing a strip of rubber over the hole she'd worn there. She thought of slipping the pistol into her handbag, but she was certain that she would be searched and to bring an obvious weapon would only result in her own arrest before she could get to Nicolas.

We agreed to a truce back in Vienna. He'll keep to it.
She repeated the thought, over and over, as if sheer repetition could make it true. But at least part of her feared that would not be the case.
All the centuries, has he ever shown that he would stop?

To that she had no answer. To that, there
was
no answer.

A few hours later, she was standing in front of the Hotel Excelsior, staring at the guards loitering at the entrance and the blood-red swastikas draped over the building's facade. Ana felt cold, as if a winter wind from the mountains had invaded the coast; all the fine hairs on her arms were standing up and her stomach roiled. She could taste acid at the back of her throat. She thought she could feel eyes—Nicolas' eyes—staring at her from the windows of the hotel. Almost, she turned and fled, but the thought of Lotte somewhere inside made her plant her feet and swallow hard. She strode up to a cluster of uniformed guards near the entrance.

“I wish to see Hauptsturmführer Brunner,” she told the man in broken German.

“Your papers, M'mselle?” the guard asked, holding out his hand. He spoke passable French. His gaze was cold and appraising, his gaze traveling from her face down to her shoes and back, touching each part of her body as intimately as a hand. He took the identification that Ana handed him. “You're a French citizen?”

“
Oui
,” she told him. “I am.”

“And your business here?”

“That is between me and the Hauptsturmführer.”

The sniff of disdain, or perhaps amusement, was audible. “The Hauptsturmführer, I regret, takes very few appointments with citizens. If you could perhaps tell me more, I might be able to direct you to someone who might help you.”

“Tell Hauptsturmführer Brunner that Perenelle wishes to see him.”

The guard looked puzzled. “Perenelle? But your name . . .”

“Tell him that,” Anaïs said. “I promise you that you won't get into any trouble. He'll want to talk to me. I guarantee you.”

The guard stared hard at her for several seconds before calling over another officer and telling him something in quick, guttural German while handing him Ana's identification papers. She heard the name “Perenelle” repeated. The other man saluted and hurried off into the lobby of the hotel while the guard waited with Anaïs. Several minutes later, the officer returned. He looked at her strangely. “I'm to search M'mselle Dereux for weapons, then take her to the Hauptsturmführer's office,” he said.

The search was thorough and humiliating, and Anaïs was glad that she'd decided against bringing the pistol. They took her into a small office in the hotel and made her strip to her underwear in front of them, then brought in a female adjunct to search that. Her vials were discovered nearly immediately; they looked at them strangely, shaking the powder inside, then put them in a small box and carried them away. Though they looked at her shoes, they missed the vial of elixir.

Afterward, the officer of the guard allowed Ana time to put her clothing back on, then walked alongside her through the east wing of the hotel. Hauptsturmführer Brunner's office was in one of the airy suites bordering the courtyard. The officer walked Ana between an array of desks hastily set in the hotel's wide corridors and past several guards into one of the rooms of the suite. Music was playing softly in the room from a phonograph in one corner; Ana felt the chill traverse her spine as she recognized the melody: the Spring allegro movement from Vivaldi's
The Four Seasons
. And the painting on the wall to her left: it was one of Klimt's portraits of her.

The doors to the room's balcony were open, the gauzy folds of the curtains billowing in a breeze. A short man stood there with his back to them, dressed in a crisp SS officer's uniform. He was smoking a cigarette and staring down from the balcony of the apartment into the court. Ana saw her papers open on his desk, and the flasks that had been taken from her. The officer clicked polished, booted heels together and raised his arm in the Nazi salute. “Hauptsturmführer,” he said over the music, “the woman who wanted to see you.”

The man on the balcony turned, and Ana was staring once more into Nicolas' face. He drew in a long inhalation from his cigarette and blew smoke from his nose as he tossed the cigarette over the balcony rail. He smiled as he entered the room, putting the bulk of the desk between himself and Ana, though he didn't sit. His forefinger rolled one of the glass vials across the blotter.
“Sie können gehen,”
he told the officer.
You may go.
The officer saluted again and left the room, closing the doors behind him. “I wonder what you intended with these,” Nicolas said, switching to French. “I thought we came to an agreement in Venice.” He clucked his tongue, shaking his head. “Why, I might think you didn't trust me.”

“We had a truce,” she agreed. “Forgive me if it seems I didn't entirely trust you to keep it.”

He grinned at that, lifting his finger from the flask. “Well, my dear, this is a most unexpected pleasure.”

“Irony really doesn't suit you, Nicolas,” Ana told him. She glanced pointedly at his uniform, at the insignia of the SS pinned there. “But it looks as if this war has.”

His smile broadened. “Oh, indeed
,
it has,” he answered, and she could hear a terrifying satisfaction in his voice. “Quite well, in fact. This war and the Reich have given me the chance to do good work. Important work. Work I find . . .” He seemed to consider the words. “Deeply and intensely satisfying on many levels.”

“Good work? Sending Jews to forced labor camps? Stealing their houses and their money from them, just as you did so long ago?”

The smile twitched. “You mean, forcing them to make justifiable reparations for what they have stolen from the people of the world?” he answered. “And making certain that they will never rape our people again? As I said, mine is very satisfying work and very necessary, no matter what you might think. You were always too sympathetic; it was one of your many faults, Perenelle. Or should I say . . .” He tapped the papers on his desk and peered at them. “Anaïs. You
do
surprise me; I truly hadn't the slightest idea that you were here. I would have thought you'd be in a safer place like the Americas. I'll admit that I'd put out feelers, looking for you after . . .” He grinned then: a jackal's grin, a hyena's amusement. “. . . after Vienna, poor Klimt, and our agreement. I promised to stay away, but I didn't promise to never know where you were and who you were with. The people I hired told me that you went to the United States, but then they lost you there; I thought you were
still
there. Yet here you are, presenting yourself to me all unasked for. And conveniently disarmed, it seems. I must ask: why?”

“You have someone in your custody. I want her released.”

Brunner/Nicolas gave a loud, uproarious laugh at that. He slapped the top of his desk hard enough that the vials rattled. “Truly? So I've accidentally snatched up your latest artist and lover, all unknowing—is that what you're telling me? Now there's irony for you, Perenelle. Priceless. And ‘her,' too.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “So
modern
of you, and she's evidently a Jewess besides, or I wouldn't have her . . . Why, Perenelle, you've become positively decadent. So tell me, why should I do what you ask and release this person for you?”

“Because you made a promise that we would end our long dance. Because I spared your life in Vienna. You can pay me back for that now. Release her—let her go.”

“And the name of this paragon?”

“Charlotte Salomon,” Ana told him. “Or rather, Charlotte Nagler now. Your people took her and her husband earlier this morning.”

“She has a husband, too.” His eyebrows rose, wrinkling his forehead. “Another Jew as well. You
are
surprising. So you're begging me for the life of a worthless Jewess, after all these long centuries?”

“
Oui
,” she told him. “Or rather, I'm not begging you; I'm telling you that you owe me that much and more because you're still standing here and not buried headless in Vienna—though looking at you now, I have to question my slowness then. How many people have died because I didn't move quickly enough?”

He sniffed; it might have been a laugh. “Feeling guilty, are you,
ma cherie
? So you want me to release this one woman to appease your conscience? Not the husband, too?”

“It's Charlotte I'm concerned about,” Ana told him. “But yes, I'm asking you to release Alexander also, because of what it would mean to Charlotte. Then I'll leave and you and I can go our own ways.” The Vivaldi movement reached its quiet, resolute conclusion.

“Ah, so there's coldness in you still,” Brunner said. He seemed almost delighted. “And do I hear some jealousy as well toward the husband?”