The Keeper of the Walls Read online

  Lily’s lips parted, and she was speechless. For months now, she’d been scraping by, refusing to accept Jacques’s offer to help her buy food on the black market. Out of principle, she wanted nothing more than she was allowed, nothing more than the other hungry of Paris. Maryse, whose family had moved in with the Walters, had fewer scruples. She wanted Nanni to eat an occasional strawberry, and her mother-in-law, to get her fill of protein. Yet even the Steiners reluctantly bought such luxuries; there was the shame, of course, but also the fear of being noticed in these times when anonymity, for every Jew, was often worth a life.

  Now this man, whom she’d always found repulsive, was offering her an evening of German music. She’d heard, from Mark, that the Berlin Opera had been bombed by the British, and that its members had come to give a series of performances in Paris. She knew that many of her former associates, socialites she had known during the early part of her marriage, had made accommodations for the fact that high-placed German officials now took part in all the artistic and social events of le tout-Paris. She’d viewed this with a total revulsion. These were the people who, in spite of restrictions, still heated their mansions; the ones who still frequented Maxim’s and La Tour d’Argent, whose clothes were still made of silk, while she, like the rest of French women, wore rayon stockings and old clothes.

  Evidently, Baron Charles was one of those; she could feel her gorge rising, and breathed quickly to calm herself. With her anger, fear lay mixed. This was the man who’d prosecuted Misha, unjustly; and who, in only a half-veiled fashion, had threatened her family. How much did he really know?

  “I’m still a married woman,” she told him, her eyes level with his.

  Still smiling, he nodded his agreement. “Indeed. I know this. But a married woman who spends agreeable hours at the Avenue Montaigne, in the company of a charming American. Since Lend Lease went into effect two months ago, our government, and our friendly occupants, no longer consider the Americans personae gratae.”

  She found herself gasping for breath, her windpipe constricted. “Mr. MacDonald has been a friend to my family for almost twenty years,” she whispered.

  “Quite so. I just felt it wise to ... warn you, shall we say, because, after all, we’re friends too, aren’t we? Or if we aren’t yet, I should like to remedy this sad lack. Monsieur MacDonald’s remaining in Paris is a silly romantic gesture, at this point in the war, when you and I both know the Germans will win. But it’s a shame that your other friend, Frau Steiner of Vienna, wasn’t smart enough to emigrate when it was still possible.”

  He knows, Lily thought, appalled, and terrified. He knows all about me . . . about all of us!

  “The twenty-second of May is just two days away,” he said, his blue eyes narrowing, icy wedges of light in the indigo dusk. “You must give me your answer now.”

  Wolf, she thought, panicking. Wolf, held in the detention camp at Compiègne. She had to make sure he stayed alive ... as long as possible. How much longer would they keep him there? Maryse had heard nothing further . . . just that the foreign Jewish lawyers were being interned in Compiègne.

  It looked as if Baron Charles de Chaynisart was close to the Germans. He must be doing business with them, she calculated. Her eyes sought his, and she nodded, her fingers tight over her small bag. “Yes,” she said, but the sound came out strangled, guttural. She couldn’t add the normal niceties—that would have been too much. Oh, Mark, she thought, her heart stirring with pain: If only you could help me out of this one!

  He was lifting her work-roughened hand to his lips. “I have to go,” she said, and without a farewell, began to run toward Rue Lord-Byron.

  * * *

  Lily’s body was held so tensely that the ligaments in her long, graceful neck stood out. This Opera, where she had sat through countless performances at Misha’s side, now seemed like a foreign battlefield, the red velvet of its loggias and curtains a clear contrast to the feldgrau uniforms of the German officers. Next to her, his hand carelessly draped over the back of her chair, sat the Baron Charles de Chaynisart, in a tuxedo and frilled shirt.

  Amid the sea of green-gray uniforms, familiar faces of the Parisian aristocracy beamed back at her: various Princes de Polignac, a Murat, the philosopher Henry de Montherlant. She could see other famous faces from the arts: Marie Laurencin, the painter, in a sweeping gown of pink and blue gauze; Serge Lifar, the danseur; and Varvara Trubetskaya, rubies at her ears, in something with feathers and paillettes, on the arm of a stately German. “That’s General Hanesse of the Luftwaffe,” De Chaynisart whispered to her, handing her his opera glasses.

  How had he known? Even the direction of her gaze was not a mystery to him. Inwardly, she was quaking with a mixture of fear and horror at even being in such company. But outwardly, she displayed only a polite coolness, hoping that this subtle wall would be enough to protect her. For she felt naked and vulnerable, though to which particular danger she was still unsure. The Germans around her, laughing as they exited to the lobby to drink champagne at intermission, seemed harmless enough. Yet . . . she was an impostor, a Jew parading as a gentile in a world where Jews were no longer considered human beings, so that their rights were being stripped from them as if they’d been animals. She’d heard rumors.

  Horribly ashamed, she’d nevertheless forced herself to tell Kira about the invitation. And then they’d looked through her wardrobe, and realized, with yet more dismay, that she owned nothing suitable for such a soirée. But yesterday, when she’d returned from her mother’s, Madame Antiquet had shown her the big box that had arrived that morning. In it had lain a gown of the softest emerald silk, trimmed with seed pearls; a pair of exquisite silk pumps, to match, and a small silver bag. And so, feeling like a condemned prisoner mounting the scaffold, Lily had clothed herself as he . . . this diabolical man she detested . . . had willed for her to appear at his side, for all Paris to witness.

  “You look superb,” he’d said, picking her up in a royal blue six-cylinder Mercedes-Benz, as sumptuous as a limousine.

  “Thank you ...for your generosity.”

  “I simply wanted you to know how I think of you. You are a queen, my dear Princess . . . and I should like to treat you so.”

  Now she peered through the mother-of-pearl glasses, suddenly immersed in a child’s game of searching for famous faces. Faces from her past, faces that should not have been here, faces that, creased in obsequious smiles, had lost every trace of their former dignity. Did I live in such a world, among such venal people? she asked herself, shocked.

  “Let’s take a walk into the lobby,” De Chaynisart was whispering to her, bending very close. She wanted to shrivel against her seat, but merely nodded, and rose. The perfect gown fell in graceful folds to the floor, and she had no choice but to lay her gloved hand on his proffered arm.

  The lobby, brightly lit by its crystal chandeliers, was alive with elegant people. Charles de Chaynisart ordered champagne, and began to stroll among groups of people. He was playing at nonchalance . . . wanting to be seen with her, she knew. Desperately, she kept her eyes averted from anyone who seemed familiar, until, finally, a woman rushed up and embraced her. “Lily! Good God, you’d dropped out of existence!” It was Marie-Laure de Noailles, one of the upper crust with whom Misha had once been on friendly terms. A hostess whose father was a Jew, but who now was an accommodating collaborationist.

  Others were pressing by. “It’s the loveliest woman in Paris,” a man declared. She recognized Léon Daudet, a right-wing intellectual. He’d echoed De Chaynisart, but in her youth, le tout-Paris had called her this. Mechanically, she smiled, like a puppet. And De Chaynisart beamed, possessively.

  And then it was the turn of a youngish man in a trim tuxedo, whose face Lily was certain she’d seen before. De Chaynisart was thrusting his hand out, color jumping to his cheekbones. “My dear Otto,” he was declaring. “The spectacle is wonderful . . . von Karajan is the best!”

  Lily, in spite of herself, watched, fascinated. S
he knew now who this was, even before the Baron formally introduced them. “Herr Otto Abetz, the ambassador from the Reich . . . Madame la Princesse Liliane Brasilova.”

  Abetz was, she thought, no older than Mark, or her brother. He was bringing her hand to his lips, and she did not feel afraid, as she did with De Chaynisart himself. Abetz looked distinctive, subtle, intellectual . . . not at all like the German soldiers who were strutting everywhere about. Had he not been connected with the Führer, he might have been a likable man, a gentleman. “Your reputation precedes you,” he was saying to her, his smile sincere. “It’s true, what Daudet said: you are the loveliest woman here. I’d heard of you—who hasn’t?—but had never had the pleasure of seeing, firsthand, one of the wonders of the world.”

  “A wonder that belongs to me,” the Baron specified.

  Lily felt the shivers going up and down her spine, and she turned to the two men and smiled. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but today, no woman belongs to a man. She belongs to herself. The most loving gift a man can bring her is to recognize this freedom, and hope that she will come to him of her own free choice.”

  She hadn’t intended to deliver a speech, especially in front of the German ambassador. But the evening, and all the months since France had been conquered, had been pressing her further and further to the wall, until now, suffocating from so many indignities, she hadn’t checked herself. But when she’d finished, she felt the blood racing to her face, and flooding it. De Chaynisart looked gray, the color of papyrus, and his nostrils were twitching. She felt an odd exhilaration, having, for a brief instant, humiliated him.

  Otto Abetz started to laugh. “Bravo, Princess! I quite agree. Which is one of the reasons I married a Frenchwoman. You know your own worth. I admire that.” Turning to the Baron, he added: “And I assume that you and the Princess will be coming later to our small gathering at the embassy? For a light supper, my dear Charles.”

  Afterward, while De Chaynisart strutted back with her to their loggia, he remarked, with obvious pride: “You charmed him. Very good indeed. When you were married to Mikhail Brasilov, you had quite another reputation: you were meek, cowed, and mild. I believe his departure freed the best part of you . . . dearest Lily.”

  What have I done? she thought, appalled. I’ve invited myself to the hornet’s nest. . . .

  * * *

  The reception halls of the German Embassy were of a luxury that insulted her. Only this morning, she’d stood in line for four hours and returned home with a loaf of bread that was ninety-eight percent inedible, composed of pea-meal and various bean flours. The French . . . the honest people, who didn’t prostitute themselves to the conqueror, were starving. Maryse had paid fifteen francs on the black market for an extra egg for Nanni. And here, on sideboards that stretched for meters and meters, on lace, hand-embroidered lengths of cloth, silver and crystal trays displayed caviar, smoked salmon, roast venison, and domed platters exhibited pheasant surrounded by tiny artichokes. On yet another table, pushed against a far wall, stood mounds of tiny, glazed petit fours, and three charlotte russes topped with whipped cream in stiff, white peaks. A bartender was taking orders, and Charles de Chaynisart requested two coupes of Dom Pérignon 1916.

  He seemed to know everybody. He bowed to Alice Epting, wife of the director of the German Institute, and to various uniformed Nazis ramrod straight in their feldgraus. Lily remained by the door to the library, hoping not to be noticed.

  From where she stood, the front entrance was clearly in her line of vision. A butler was letting in the late-comers. Who, she wondered, had opted not to come crawling, as sycophants, to the Reich’s envoy? With cool disgust, she now watched, fascinated by a sight that no longer surprised, simply confirmed her sadness for the fall of the French. Even Jean Cocteau, the writer, was here.

  For a moment, Charles’s form eclipsed the sight of those entering. “I’ve brought you a little of everything,” he was murmuring, holding out a dish of the finest Limoges china, filled to the brim with delicacies. “The venison isn’t quite up to par. But I have a castle in the Loire. If you like, we’ll go there, and hunt together. You must look ravishing as Diana.”

  “I’ve always hated the sight of blood,” she replied. “I’ve never hunted in my life.”

  “Then I shall have to initiate you. It’s hypocritical, my dear Lily, to turn from the slaughter of animals, when we are all carnivores. Somebody, you realize, has to bring down the deer, or shoot the partridge.”

  He was blocking the view, and so she did not see the front door opening once more, and a couple being helped out of their elegant outdoor clothing. The woman was bone-thin, with magnificent legs encased in perfect silk stockings. She was wearing a cocktail-length dress of burgundy taffeta, cut low, trimly hugging her sides, with a shimmer of ruffles on the hips. Around her neck was a choker of gleaming pearls and garnets. Her oval face was hard, its cheekbones pronounced, her eyes almost Oriental slits of a strange, amber hue. Her hair was jet black, pushed into a knot of stiff curls that emerged below a burgundy turban.

  Near her, a tall, handsome, dark man of early middle age fussed with his gloves. His hair was neatly pompadoured, and his long, slightly aquiline nose gave his great, dark eyes a certain sinister detachment. He looked like a Roman diplomat. But Lily hadn’t noticed him, concentrating instead on the ruffle of Charles’s stiff shirt. Trying to tune out the insidiousness of his tone, while forcing her eyes to steady her through the tiny focal point of an innocuous shirt ruffle: He can’t hurt me. We’re at a party. No one can hurt me here . . . not tonight.

  “Goodness,” Charles was saying. “Familiar faces, my dear.”

  She looked over, surprised. A complete stillness settled over her. Across the room, the tall dark man in his tuxedo, his arm protecting the shoulders of the thin woman in the turban, had frozen too, his eyes on Lily. For barely three seconds, he hesitated. And then, patting his companion quickly on the hand, he strode over.

  “Lily,” he said, in front of her now.

  “Hello, Claude.”

  “Baron . . . how do you do?”

  De Chaynisart acknowledged Lily’s brother with a tilt of his head.

  “Nice to see you again,” Charles said, his ironic smile like a moon crescent on his smooth face. “Henriette looks so attractive with her new, dark hair. Almost . . . Asiatic.”

  Claude was laughing. “She’ll appreciate your remark. The last thing my wife wants to be is a typical French bourgeoise.”

  There lingered a moment of awkwardness. De Chaynisart brought his immaculate fingers to Lily’s long, swan’s neck, and caressed the inviting crook of her shoulder. “Enjoy yourselves, children,” he said amiably. “I haven’t spent a quiet moment with Madame Bruisson since . . . when was that, Claude? Oh, yes—General Hanesse’s last banquet . . . three weeks ago.”

  Lily watched him glide over to Rirette, and lead her into one of the reception rooms. Claude’s face seemed marbled, chilled, suddenly withdrawn. “I never thought I’d find you here,” she said at last, her vibrant tone catching in her throat.

  “Nor I you. I had no idea . . . Baron Charles de Chaynisart . . .”

  “The man who set my husband up. Did you know this, Claude?”

  “Lily,” he broke in, “we haven’t seen each other for several years. Misha’s gone now—all the better for you, I always thought. Why can’t we, for once, try to keep things pleasant between us? Let’s not talk of the past.”

  Color jumped to her cheeks. “Tell me, then!” she cried. “You seem to know this man very well! And all the German high society! How, Claude? What have you been doing, for them to include you in every dinner, in every party? And you look good. Not like a hungry Frenchman suffering from restrictions.”

  Claude’s nostrils distended. “Lily, you were always naïve. Germany is going to win this war, and the new Europe will be, as Laval predicted, with the Reich at its center, controlling all, and the other countries feeding it its raw materials. If the French p
lay the game well, then we shall have a more prominent place in this reworked society.”

  “And you . . . believe in this?”

  He shrugged, and let his shoulders rise and fall. “I believe in not getting left out. And, to tell you the truth, after the disasters of the Third Republic, and particularly of Blum’s year, the Nazi ideal suits me fine. France needs Fascism, Lily. The Fascists . . . the Nazis . . . believe in ironclad discipline, and in a strict oligarchy. I’ve lost my faith in democracy. The Communists have proved to me that in any democracy, they will take over. And I much prefer Hitler to Stalin.”

  ‘They’re exactly the same.”

  “No, they aren’t. Hitler sees to it that the smart man profits. A man can get somewhere in Nazism . . . not in Communism.”

  “And Dachau? You approve of that, too?”

  His upper lip rose in a sneer of derision. “The Jews have controlled the world long enough,” he declared. “Now it’s time the real elite took over. Yes, Lily: I believe in purifying the world. The Jews are selfish, ugly people who have conspired with Communism through the century. I’d like them all gone, absolutely! No more golden ghettos, no more Rothschilds, no more kike regime behind the Bank of France. The Jews are upstarts, and intruders, in our country. They had no right to immigrate and take over our banks, our industry. They had no right to marry their sons to our clean, French daughters.”

  Her temples beating, Lily stood immobile, entranced by her brother’s words. His face was a strange red hue brought on by the exhilaration of his own words, of his own powerful emotion of hatred. Good God, she thought: all his life, this has been the only feeling that has moved him. He hated me, and had to get the best of me; he hated Misha, and had to eliminate him. He married a woman who could strengthen his hatred, his jealousy, his anger. But most of all, he hates himself, and doesn’t even know it.