Mustard fell on Göring’s dove-grey lapel to join an avalanche of gravy. Lipstick, a compact-several other items came out of that bag. The key to her flat, her papers, all these were laid out. ‘We shall see then,’ said Schiller. He was very proper. The long fingers dusted the powder over the pâté. He used a dinner knife to spread it evenly.
Arsenic? I wondered, as did everyone else.
Some of the pâté was placed on a bit of bread. A little more of the white powder was added, and that thing, that monstrous thing, was passed from hand to hand to her.
‘Eat it,’ he said. Her eyes found mine. Was there apology in them? Nini began to stand up to stop her. Me, I wanted to cry out, Katyana, please don’t!
Her gaze settled on each person around the table, then the ‘Giselle’ smiled wanly and said, ‘Yes, of course, Herr Obersturmführer, but you must forgive me, all of you. No one else was involved. Only myself.’
The table waited. There wasn’t a breath. Göring wet his lips. Had he ever watched a woman die like this?
She took a nibble, chewed, and swallowed most delicately, only to hear, ‘All of it,’ from Schiller, she hesitating as she touched the base of her lovely throat.
‘You must excuse me then because I’m rather full.’
Ten seconds-is that how long it takes for the burning sensation in the mouth? I know it’s a most painful death-I’ve read of this in detective stories. Who hasn’t? The victim lies on the floor, cramped with stomach pains and vomiting hard, then the violent purging starts. But nothing happened. There was no poison. Just a sip of wine and then another. ‘Salut!’ she said and grinned. ‘Are you satisfied?’
The table erupted with laughter. The scar tightened. Schiller got to his feet and bowed as he handed the pâté in its napkin back and it was passed from hand to hand. ‘For your cat, mademoiselle.’
As the handbag and its contents were returned, Dupuis didn’t join in the fun, nor did Jules or the Vuittons. For them, as for Nini and myself, the agony had been too much.
‘Seven hundred thousand francs.’
Göring sat like a potentate among the treasures in the library. He never bid himself. That was always left to Hofer. He only smoked his cigar and watched.
The Gobelin tapestry went for something like a million; the Hellenistic terra-cotta sculptures, three beautifully done heads, and a small statue of a woman whose arms had been lost centuries ago, fetch a miserable one hundred fifty thousand francs.
The icon brought only five hundred thousand; the Giordano canvas one-and-a-half million. So many things. Göring had his pick. A set of Roman coins, some Etruscan glass, two of the Renoirs from the house-Jules hated to see them go, but they were the price he had to pay.
A Limoges enamel triptych, by Pierre Reymond, sixteenth century, was someone’s loss. A Dürer Madonna and Child, in watercolours, caused the Reichsmarschall to hesitate, but he couldn’t let it go and gave a nod before filling his mouth with champagne. As the treasures were carried out to a waiting lorry by men in Luftwaffe uniform, the rest were left to be fingered and exclaimed over, for the auction had been a bit of a sham since there was only the one bidder.
‘From Avon, the train will make its way to Munich,’ confided my little sister, ‘and from there to Karinhall, his estate some ninety kilometres to the north of Berlin.’
She didn’t tell me any more, simply because it would be safest, but I knew that some of Nicki’s treasures must have been among those purchased, and that Katyana had apparently slipped away.
7
It’s getting dark. Soon Jules and the others will be cold in that house of my husband’s. Perhaps they’ll light a fire and say, ‘It will draw her in,’ but I’m used to not having any heat. Have they forgotten this?
The Cherche-Midi was once a convent. Built in the reign of the Sun King, it had thick stone walls, airless corridors, iron-bound wooden doors, and moisture that ran down the walls to freeze. Each cell had a window-just a rectangle behind iron bars and of pearl-grey glass into which God had pressed chicken wire as if one might try to escape through such a thing.
Converted to a prison during the Revolution, it held us for a while, and maybe still my name is there, scratched on the wall among all the others. Lily, taken 22 November 1943.
From the Cherche-Midi, we were sent to Drancy in late January 1944, in the Black Marias the French called the ‘iron salad shakers’. From there, in the dead of that winter we went by rail in cattle trucks to Birkenau and in the dead of the next winter to Bergen-Belsen, so me, I know a lot about cold. I know how the bones can ache, how the eyes glaze over and there are no thoughts because even that takes too much energy.
I know how Michèle Chevalier clung to life throughout all that cold because she believed in me and I had repeatedly told her she would survive. I know how they took us from our block at dawn and told us we were to die. Cher Jésus, the war was finished for them. They could have used a little humanity. Cold, I felt so cold. I tried to hold Michèle’s hand. Her fingers were like ice. I said good-bye, said, ‘I’m sorry I failed you.’ And they made me watch! Pour l’amour de Dieu, those bastards, Schiller and Dupuis! Schiller had ordered the executions. Dupuis was still in Paris, I guess; Schiller, I don’t know where. Just a voice on the telephone: ‘Kill them.’ Nothing else except, ‘Yes, you are to use the axe.’
The axe!
My SS knife is really very sharp. I’ve taken the remaining bullets out of the Luger and its clip and have laid them on a stone while there’s still light. Since there are only six of them, I’m cutting notches into each to make up the difference. They’ll open up on impact. If caught with them, my death will be horrible as it was for others I knew who had done this, but I have to be sure of things. You see, Schiller and Dupuis used to interrogate me at the Cherche-Midi. The one would start, then the other would take over. They kept it up for nearly forty-eight hours, and when they were done, I laid on the floor of my cell for three days. I had so many secrets by then, one in particular that they wanted very badly, but I told them nothing.
Schiller … Is he still alive? Did he manage to get away, to hide some place? This I really don’t know and wish I did.
Dupuis is still an inspector. Isn’t that something. But since all of us had been killed, he could claim he’d only been doing his duty and that, in the final days, he had joined the uprising in Paris just like everyone else, a résistant!
He has a wife, a son, and two daughters, all grown by now, of course, and I won’t hold it against them, only the father, and the others who were with him, but wait, please. To understand the Occupation, you have to consider that those times were often like a kind of ether. People drifted into and out of your consciousness. They came and went, and you wondered where they were.
By 1941, people had started coming out to the countryside from Paris to scrounge at the farms for eggs, meat and vegetables, or milk, and in the forest for mushrooms, acorns, even twigs for the stove. One still needed an Ausweis, the laissez-passer, and the sauf-conduit to do such a thing, and always there were the random searches on return and the danger of having everything confiscated and being accused of planning to sell it on the black market.
I think it was towards the end of April or perhaps into the first weeks of May when Dmitry Alexandrov finally showed up. It wasn’t that long after Göring’s visit. The war with Russia still hadn’t started, but the Germans had gone into Yugoslavia and Greece. Malta was being pounded; Tobruk defended against Rommel.