The Paris Affair

9 Christoph

9

Christoph

May, 1942 – Paris

The Kommandant bit into a piece of rare steak. A speck of blood settled on his chin. The sight of it made Christoph’s stomach heave. He hated coming to Maxim’s, but it was the Kommandant’s favourite place to eat.

The woman sitting next to the Kommandant giggled and wiped the blood away with her napkin. Christoph didn’t know her name; he didn’t want to. On the short journey to Maxim’s the car had stopped and the woman had got in. It wasn’t for Christoph to outwardly express judgement.

Now, she snuggled next to the Kommandant on the red banquette. Candles glowed at each table. Swirling mirrors hung on the ceiling. Lotte, with her love of shadows and light, would have been fascinated by this place. He wished he could have shown it to her in other circumstances. She’d have loved to draw the patterns. He could picture her, hair tucked behind her ears, concentrating as she held her pencil.

‘Doesn’t your bodyguard want to eat?’ The woman glanced at Christoph. Her red lipstick glistened.

‘He’s not my bodyguard, he’s my administrative assistant,’ the Kommandant said, ‘and he’s already eaten, haven’t you, Herr Leutnant Baumann?’

Christoph nodded. Dinner had been a plate of boiled ham and swede at his desk in Le Meurice. He’d been dragged here to deliver agricultural statistics to the Kommandant’s colleagues, not to eat. The meeting had finished before dessert. Christoph longed to be dismissed.

He picked up the menu. All this food – where did it come from? Could the dishes here be worth such inflated prices? A crème br?lée cost four hundred francs. It was outrageous.

Suddenly he heard a crash of glasses and a brief scream from behind the kitchen door. For a moment, the conversations and laughter ceased, then they rushed back like the tide.

‘Go and check what’s happened,’ the Kommandant said.

‘Yes, Herr Kommandant.’

The kitchen doors swung open. No one noticed Christoph at first in all the steam and activity. A man in whites, who Christophe presumed was the head chef, looked up. At the sight of Christoph’s uniform, a hush descended.

‘ Qui a crié? ’ Christoph asked.

The chef jerked his head towards the back of the kitchen. ‘It was Mlle Sylvie.’

A woman was kneeling down, surrounded by fragments of glass. Christoph glimpsed the slant of her nose, her cheekbones jutting out, the pucker of her lips.

‘ Je vais bien , it’s just the shock, that’s all,’ she said, turning round. ‘Too much haste, less speed.’

Her accent – French-Belgian perhaps – and voice was richer and fuller than most women’s. A gash on her thumb oozed blood. She was trying to tie a makeshift bandage over the cut.

‘ Puis-je aider? ’ Christoph said.

‘ Non , merci . I can do it myself.’ She gave him a brief smile, dismissing his help, but he couldn’t bring himself to go. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to pick the pieces up.’

She twisted the bandage around her hand, tied a knot and held one end between her teeth to pull it tight. He watched, captivated by her determination.

‘Done,’ she said with a nod. ‘May I go back to work?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

She fetched a blowtorch from the cupboard and disappeared to the other end of the kitchen. He gazed at the space she’d left.

‘ Tout trié ,’ the head chef said. ‘Sylvie is one of my best cooks. Tell the Kommandant, he will soon taste the finest crème br?lée in all of Paris.’

Christoph returned to the shadows and glitter of the dining room.

‘Well?’ the Kommandant said.

‘One of the cooks dropped some glasses and she cut her hand on the shards when she was trying to clear it up,’ Christoph explained. He pictured her red lips against the white fabric, the glimpse of her tongue.

‘A fuss about nothing, then. Ah, look, Liebling ,’ the Kommandant said to his companion. ‘Here comes our dessert.’

The waiter placed two ramekin dishes in front of the Kommandant and his companion. The top of the crème br?lée was like a pane of glass, perfectly browned yet translucent. The Kommandant’s spoon cracked the surface, and he ladled the golden substance into his mouth.

‘ Wunderbar ,’ he said.

The woman pushed hers away. ‘I’m sure it’s delicious, but I have my waistline to consider.’

The Kommandant laughed. ‘Here, try some,’ he said, passing the ramekin to Christoph.

Christoph was about to decline, but he was curious. So, this is what that woman in the kitchen – Sylvie – had needed the blowtorch for. He plunged the spoon into the mixture. The shard of toffee was sweet, the vanilla smooth and sublime. The textures and flavours soaked his tongue. He’d never tasted anything so delicious.

The Kommandant pulled the waiter aside. ‘I’d like to meet the chef who made this.’

Hastily, Christoph put the dish down. The thought of seeing her again made him nervous. After a few minutes, Sylvie came out of the kitchen, trailing reluctantly behind the head chef, her eyes downcast.

‘This is Mlle Sylvie. She made the dessert, Kommandant,’ the head chef said. ‘I insist on my sous-chefs taking the credit, even if they are women.’

‘ Bon soir ,’ the Kommandant said to Sylvie. His unctuous tone made Christoph’s skin crawl. ‘May I congratulate you on the best crème br?lée I’ve ever eaten. Isn’t that right, Herr Leutnant?’

‘It’s the only crème br?lée I’ve ever eaten, Herr Kommandant,’ Christoph said. His words seemed inadequate, clumsy even. Sylvie glanced at him but didn’t smile. He could feel her disapproval radiating like heat from a fire.

The Kommandant didn’t seem to notice.

‘What a novelty – a female chef in an establishment such as this. I suppose the absence of men has allowed the women to rise.’ His eyes roamed over her body and settled on the bandage around her hand.

‘So, it was you we heard scream. Gave us all a fright. Be more careful next time.’ He waved her away.

Sylvie followed the head chef back to the kitchen. She didn’t look back at Christoph, not once, but then why should she? He was just another soldier in German uniform. Perhaps beneath her brittle exterior she was as soft and sweet as the custard of the crème br?lée. Christoph sighed. He’d never know.

On his days off, Christoph liked to walk through the city. The day after meeting Sylvie at Maxim’s, he wandered south, towards the vast cemetery of Montparnasse. The woman from Maxim’s, Sylvie, lingered in his mind, just as the taste of the crème br?lée lingered on his tongue. He couldn’t put his finger on how or why, but the very thought of her sharpened his senses.

On these walks, Christoph hoped to find the Paris that his French tutor had told him about: vibrant and bustling, the cafés full of philosophers, artists and poets. No doubt they still existed, in a narrowed form, furtive and wary, perhaps on the Left Bank, but they could never exist for Christoph. The hard clack of his boots as he crossed the Seine by the Gare d’Orsay caused the civilians he passed to harden their faces.

Halfway down boulevard Raspail, a crowd had gathered. A truck stood outside one of the buildings, and Christoph saw the distinctive round caps of the French police.

‘Hey, you there,’ one of the policemen called out to Christoph. ‘Want to help us do your dirty work?’ He laughed.

‘I’m an administrator,’ Christoph said. ‘I’m not really …’

‘ Bien s?r , we know how it is,’ the policeman said. He turned back to his fellow officers. ‘Let’s get these ones loaded in.’

A subdued group of men and women stood encircled by the police. Each wore a yellow star sewn tightly on to their jacket. Since May, more and more Jews had been singled out in this way. Christoph found it abhorrent. It made him ashamed of his uniform.

One of the women was crying and pleading with the police. ‘Please, don’t take me, my child is only young. I beg you.’

The policemen ignored her and pushed her into the back of the truck along with the others.

‘Please,’ the woman shouted to those watching, ‘help my child!’

Christoph followed where she pointed. The tear-stained face of a boy, no more than eight years old, peered out of the window on the second floor of the building. Before anyone could respond, the truck’s engine started, a cloud of diesel fumes choked the air, and it drove away. The crowd tutted, moaning about the disruption, but gradually, they dispersed, continuing with their day.

Christoph looked up at the window again. The child had gone. Was no one heeding the woman’s plea? He went towards the door of the building, but it was locked. Surely one of the neighbours will help the child, he thought. More police arrived on the street. A lorry pulled up. He couldn’t risk getting involved. Soon the apartment would be emptied and sealed off. The furniture would be sent to Germany. He prayed to God the child was safe.

The cemetery at Montparnasse was almost deserted. Christoph’s stomach churned from the desolation in the woman’s voice. He was ashamed that he’d heard her pain, yet done nothing.

Wandering among the graves, he found Baudelaire’s cenotaph. Les Fleurs du Mal had been his French tutor’s favourite text. A line came to Christoph now, as he stood in front of the great poet’s memorial: How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

The first time he heard this, Christoph had imagined the lines were spoken by an old man looking back on his life and his youth. But now, the round-up of Jewish people fresh in his mind, Christoph realized that even a young man could suffer that way. He didn’t know how to recover the man he once had been.