The Paris Architect: A Novel (25 page)

Speer rose to signal the meeting was over.

“Monsieur Bernard is a most creative man. He takes his architecture very seriously,” said Herzog, gesturing toward Lucien.

“We all do, Colonel,” replied Speer. “It is the most difficult of all the creative arts.”

“Far more difficult than the painter’s craft, I think,” said Herzog.

“Much more difficult than painting,” exclaimed Speer. “No comparison.”

Herzog had a hard time holding back a smile.

“Colonel, I want to congratulate you on your fine work in France. The facilities you have built are producing a great deal of war matériel for the Reich. We have plans for more plants, and I know you will continue to demonstrate your superior skills and planning. The Fuehrer is counting on you.”

“I’m honored to serve the Fuehrer, Reich Minister.”

“Did you tell Monsieur Bernard about the Fresnes facility?”

“No, Reich Minister, I was waiting for final confirmation of the plan.”

“Well, now you have it. This is a most important building for the Reich,” said Speer. “It will produce torpedoes for our U-boat fleet. This must be especially strong to withstand an Allied attack. They’ll do everything humanly possible to take it out. It’s absolutely critical to strengthen our submarine fleet. It must continue to destroy American ships. The Americans work day and night to produce armaments on a scale Germany can never approach. It seems never-ending.”

Lucien looked down at the rug.

“All Germans know the fine job you’re doing, Reich Minister,” said Herzog in a voice that seemed quite sincere to Lucien.

“The politics, the Gauleiters, the party—you would think they would all work together to bring total victory to Germany. But they fight me and each other tooth and nail. Even the Fuehrer can’t help me,” said Speer in a tired voice. “The silliest things can hinder production. Like Germany’s view of women. In all other countries, women work in factories making armaments, but not in Germany. Most women aren’t allowed to work in factories; it’s an affront to womanhood,” he said in disgust. “We have a new automatic assault weapon ready to go, but we can’t produce nearly enough of them, so the army still has to use a bolt-action rifle like it used in the first war.”

“Thank you for meeting with me, Reich Minister. I will double my efforts, I can assure you,” said Herzog, shaking Speer’s hand.

“I know you will. Good luck, my boy.”

Lucien extended his hand.

“Monsieur Bernard, I envy you. You’re a designer—I’m reduced to being a bureaucrat nowadays.”

“It’s been a pleasure, Reich Minister.”

“You’re very fortunate to live in such a wonderful city, monsieur. You know, the Fuehrer once said, ‘I’m ready to flatten Leningrad and Moscow without losing any peace of mind, but it would have pained me greatly if I’d had to destroy Paris.’”

Speer walked them to the door of the suite. “The Fuehrer was never interested in any of the cities he defeated except for Paris. I was with him and his sculptor, Arno Breker, when he visited for a few hours in June 1940. We went to the Eiffel Tower and Napoleon’s Tomb,” said Speer with a smile. “He thought Vienna was the more beautiful city, but I don’t agree.”

After opening the door for them, he placed his hand on Lucien’s shoulder.

“You know, I once did a plan that would redesign Berlin with a five-kilometer-long avenue as a new axis, similar to your Champs-Élysées.”

38

Adele was just seconds from reaching an orgasm when she heard a loud knocking at the door of her flat.

“Who the hell is that?” yelled Schlegal. With Adele astride him, he was also quite excited.

“Keep going, keep going, just ignore it. Don’t stop, damn it,” Adele pleaded. But the knocking became louder and faster. Adele felt Schlegal deflate beneath her.

“Goddamn it, I told you I only had half an hour before I had to get back,” said Schlegal, who grabbed Adele’s arm and tossed her off the bed as if she were a rag doll.

If she hadn’t caught hold of the blanket, she would have landed on the floor. Adele scowled at Schlegal. She wasn’t used to this type of treatment from a lover.

“Answer the goddamn door,” Schlegal said before he put a pillow over his face.

Adele put on her black silk dressing gown and walked to the door. “Yes, yes, I’m coming,” she called out. “Or rather, I was about to come,” she mumbled under her breath.

She flung open the door to face Bette, who walked through the doorway with a big smile on her face, knowing full well she’d interrupted some serious goings-on.

“And what in God’s name do you want?” Adele said.

“I always follow your instructions to the letter, boss, and they were to come here promptly at 12:30 to pick up the sketches and take them to André. ‘Don’t dare be late. André needs those sketches
now
.’ Sound familiar?”

“Don’t be such a smartass, okay? I had a little last-minute business to take care of, and I lost track of the time.”

Bette walked into the salon and sat on the black art
moderne
sofa and propped her feet on the art
moderne
stainless-steel coffee table.

“Get your feet off my table. By the way, did anyone ever tell you what huge feet you have? Like canoes.”

“I’ll be out of here in a second. Still time for him to get it up again. So don’t despair, my love,” said Bette.

Adele came out of her study with a black portfolio under her arm. Bette rose from the sofa and took the portfolio from Adele. “How about a drink? You know—one for the road?”

Adele glanced toward the open bedroom door and nodded. Bette walked over to a black and steel liquor cabinet and helped herself to a generous serving of cognac.

“Save me a molecule or two of that, will you?” said Adele, tightening the belt around her gown.

Bette smiled and smacked her lips, then placed the cut glass tumbler on the top of the cabinet.

“Again, please forgive me for the coitus-interruptus, but like you’ve said before, business is business.”

“Next time, call first.”

“I’ll be sure to do that. Or maybe a singing telegram.”

“Take care,” said Adele in a singsong voice as she shoved Bette out the door.

“You will remember to come to the fitting this afternoon, around four? You will be finished with him by then?”

***

Bette found herself in the corridor and the door slammed shut behind her. She put her ear to the thick paneled door and heard shouting going on toward the rear of the flat. A smile came over her face as she walked to the lift. As she’d walked across Adele’s salon, she’d looked into the bedroom and seen a very distinctive black uniform draped over the footboard of the bed. She knew Adele adored anything in black, but that piece didn’t belong to her—nor did the Gestapo cap sitting on top of it.

Outside the entrance of Adele’s building, in the span of thirty seconds three men smiled and tipped their hats to Bette. This was nothing out of the ordinary. Last February she’d turned thirty-one, but she knew she was even more beautiful now than she’d been at nineteen when she began her modeling career. If Bette had believed in God, she would’ve thanked him for her long-lasting beauty. She knew that when she hit fifty, she would still be ravishing. Bette was a big believer in luck, and it was pure luck that she had turned out beautiful while her sister Simone had turned out as ugly as a bulldog. Just a freak happenstance of nature, she thought. Bette often shuddered when she envisioned Simone as a beauty and herself resembling something canine. It could’ve gone either way.

Bette had had to beat off men with a stick since puberty. Almost every day of her life, even Christmas and Easter, a man had called to ask her out. Bette thought it was wonderful to be beautiful. Besides the attention of men, there was no waiting in lines at stores, no waiting for tables in fine restaurants—and no paying for meals in those fine restaurants—and presents showing up unexpectedly on her doorstep. Poor Simone, her only hope of getting a man would be either to have her family pay someone to marry her or to be matched with a blind man. She was a sweet, gentle girl with a heart of gold who would make a wonderful wife and mother, but she was likely doomed to a bleak, unhappy life of spinsterhood.

There was a time when Bette wouldn’t go out with a boy unless he arranged a date for Simone. One minute after the boy saw Simone, he always vanished. Simone never showed a shred of jealousy toward her gorgeous younger sister. She would do anything for her. Bette’s mother and father had resigned themselves to the sad fact that Simone would never marry and that Bette would be the daughter who would give them their beloved grandchildren. But that would never happen. Three years ago, Bette’s doctor had explained that because of an abnormality in her uterus, she could never bear children. He’d tied her tubes and that was that. Offsetting the crushing news was the realization that she could screw as much as she wanted and never have to worry about getting pregnant. It was actually a tremendous burden off her shoulders. Many of her friends who were models had to endure the pain and anxiety of back-street abortions to continue their careers because they didn’t want to give up the good life. Not one of them wanted to be a single mother—the shame of that would be too much to bear. They’d be outcasts from their own families, who already viewed them as unrespectable.

Bette turned right onto the rue Saint-Martin, where André, Adele’s cutter, had his shop. She dropped off the portfolio, issued precise instructions, and was on her way home to her flat on the rue Payenne. One block before she reached her building, she stopped and knocked on the door of the shop of Denis Borge, a chocolatier. The shop windows were covered with shades, and presently, the edge of a shade was pulled back, then the door unlocked.

“Good afternoon, Denis,” said Bette.

“Mademoiselle Bette, so good to see you,” gushed Denis. All shopkeepers fawned over Bette.

“I’m here for my chocolates. Are they ready?”

“Of course, they’ve been ready since yesterday. I’d never forget your order. All the special items are here as you wished.” Denis handed her a small brown paper bag to inspect. She reached her hand in and picked through the individually wrapped candies.

“You’re an angel, Denis. Chocolates are harder to come by than diamonds these days.”

“I’ll always fill any order you wish. You’re my best customer, Mademoiselle Bette. Every two weeks for almost the past year. I envy you. You eat so much chocolate and never gain a gram. How do you do it?”

Bette looked down shyly at the floor and smiled. “It’s just my metabolism. I can eat a lot. I can devour an entire baguette slathered with butter in one sitting.”

“I definitely can’t manage that without paying for it, if you know what I mean,” said Denis, patting his enormous belly. Bette playfully gave it a poke and Denis laughed delightedly. Because of rationing, shopkeepers, grocers, and butchers in Paris had a newfound power during the Occupation and lorded it over their customers, but they never treated Bette unfairly—another advantage to being beautiful.

“Good-bye, my friend. I’ll see you on the fourteenth.”

When Bette reached the top floor of the building where her flat was located, she knocked three times on the door, paused, then knocked three more times before she unlocked the door. Once inside, she called out in a gentle voice, “I’m home, my little ones.”

Like small animals cautiously peeking out of their burrows, a six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl appeared at the edge of the doorway to the living room.

“It’s chocolate time, come and get it,” cooed Bette as she held the bag toward the children.

Slowly, smiles came over their faces, and they took the bag from her.

“Remember what I told you.”

“Fifty-fifty,” they sang out in unison.

Bette watched with delight as they divvied up the candy. Then, as they always did, the children offered her a piece, which she took from them and popped into her mouth.

She always wondered if she would’ve raised children as well-behaved and polite as the Kaminskys had. Bette had never paid any attention to the children who had lived on the second floor of her building. She had been on cordial terms with Mr. and Mrs. Kaminsky but had never said more than “how do you do” or “good morning” to them. That all changed over a year ago when Mrs. Kaminsky and another woman knocked on her door late one night. She told Bette that she’d just received a call informing her that the French police were on the way to arrest her family. She was desperate to find someone to hide her children. Bette had nothing against Jews but knew full well that helping them meant certain death. Bette tried brushing them off, saying she knew nothing about raising children, but Mrs. Kaminsky began to cry and plead with her. Normally a refined and well-dressed woman whom Bette admired, she was now reduced to a terrified, miserable supplicant. She wailed loudly and went down on her knees, offering a huge wad of cash to Bette. Just to stop the woman’s hysterics, Bette told her to bring them up, along with their clothes.

Minutes later, there were two frightened children in their pajamas holding each other tightly in the middle of Bette’s living room. She went over to the window that overlooked the street and saw a police car pull up. Three French policemen got out and ran into her building. She expected to hear shouting and crying from the stairwell, but it was eerily quiet. Ten minutes later, she saw Mr. and Mrs. Kaminsky get in the police car, which drove off. She would never see them again. Bette had turned to face the children, who were still huddled together. She smiled at them and extended her hand. “Come, let’s have some chocolate.” At that moment, Bette, with her hard-as-nails attitude about the world, had thought this was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

Very quickly she realized that it had been the best thing.

39

“But didn’t the Jews kill Christ, Father?”

“That’s debatable, my son. But even if they did, I’d still help them.”

Schlegal liked Father Jacques’s nerve. He’d always hated the clergy, Protestant or Catholic. All self-righteous fools. His men had discovered that the old priest had been running a safe house for Jewish children in Montparnasse before they were whisked across the Pyrenees and into Spain. Another priest from Carcassonne who escorted the children had also been caught. Schlegal was slowly circling the chair where Father Jacques had been sitting since 2:00 a.m. The priest didn’t show the slightest sign of fatigue. In fact, he seemed quite cheerful as the morning light streamed through the window of the interrogation room.