‘The day-shift is ending,’ whispered Giselle le Roy, and he felt the trembling in her, felt how terrified she was of this place. ‘Broken, my Hermann. Most of the girls who work here are finished after six months. Two I know of went mad after only a week. One killed herself in the bathtub with electricity. There were three German soldiers with her and it caused a terrible scandal. The General von Schaumburg had the house closed for five days and Madame Morelle carted off to prison, but the demand is so constant he was forced to back down and have her released. Now she reigns in triumph and they’re the best of friends. Ah! those few days she spent between sheet metal were far better than any medal he could ever have pinned to her.’
They were jostled by pedestrians, all of whom were forced to use the opposite of the street. Giselle’s cheeks were cold. As she clung to him, her lips quivered with each urgent kiss until she whispered at last, ‘Please be careful. Don’t ever force me to work in there.’
‘“Force you to work”? Hey, how could I do a thing like that to you or to anyone? Just wait in the café around the corner, eh? See what you can pick up. I want Violette Belanger’s pimp.’
This was not the first time Hermann had used her for such things, and none of those times had been very good. Ah no, they hadn’t. But this …? Her horoscope hadn’t been right. Her skin still crept. A killer with a knitting needle-the Sandman-ah! there could be no connection to the mackerel, the pimp, but still her apprehension would not leave her. ‘I will see, that is all I can promise, but if you feel the need to release your little burden in there because duty demands it, me, I shall try to understand.’
‘Hey, you’re the only one for me.’
‘And Oona, please? What of her? Is she not also the only one for you?’
They had been all over this too many times. ‘Relax. Aren’t I looking after both of you?’
‘You’re never home, and when you are, you are either too busy visiting les maisons de tolérance or sound asleep!’
Each time the door opened to let someone in or out, the black-out curtains hid everything but the impatient shuffling of cleated boots on uncarpeted stairs.
‘Sixty-seven girls,’ said Giselle tartly. ‘Twenty to a shift with seven in reserve and each will have between fifteen and thirty, maybe even forty slashes in Madame Morelle’s little book when her working day has ended. Even the graveyard shift here is busy, since at curfew the doors, they are locked and all must stay within, and that is when the fun really begins. Ticks also, yes, in lieu of slashes.’ She clucked her tongue and sucked in the breath of practicality as she tallied the take.
‘Ticks for what?’ he hazarded.
‘For the things a girl does when a man wants a little something different. Actually, those times, they are often much quicker and a lot easier.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh yourself. You will not find everything in there, my Hermann. Most of it will be the straight in and out with quantities of Vaseline or olive oil. Please see that you are not tempted even if it is necessary!’
In tears, she stamped on his toes and left him in the cold with only the sweet scent of her, bathed regularly because Oona insisted on it, touched with Mirage, that delicate perfume Louis’s chanteuse wore, and warm if only in memory, her violet eyes no doubt flashing daggers of warning.
Half-Greek, half-Midi French and with skin so soft against the straight jet black hair, and cheeks as rosy as her nipples. A perfect hourglass in black mesh stockings and nothing else at times. Sweet heaven with strongly decisive brows and a mind of her own. She’d make one hell of a shopkeeper or barkeep and absolutely right for that little place in Spain or Portugal when the time came to start another family. Ah yes, and ah damn. The Occupation couldn’t last for ever and he knew it, but would they be allowed to leave and would she really want to run a shop? Of course not.
Crossing the road, he spoke in German to the nearest Feldgendarm. ‘Kohler, Gestapo Paris-Central, here to ask Madame Morelle a few questions.’
A breath of sauerkraut, boiled leeks and sausage overwhelmed him. ‘Then wait in line. Take your turn. Hey, my fine Gestapo dick, do you want us to have a riot on our hands?’
Ah Gott im Himmel! ‘Five hundred francs. Will that stop the riot?’
‘Five thousand.’
He could tell the bastard was grinning, and waited for the rest. ‘Und you pay for all who have to let you go ahead of them.’
‘Now, look-’
‘Then wait in line. Heinrich, Martin, Klaus,’ he called out. ‘Hey, it’s early yet, but already we have a troublemaker on our hands.’
‘I’ll wait in line.’
‘You do that. We lock the doors at midnight and it all begins again at five a.m. Seven days a week.’
The thought of Hermann in there was worrisome. Faint blue pinpricks of light fevered the frigid darkness of the rue Chabanais as fireflies would the other side of the moon. Breath billowed, shoulders touched-Giselle’s wooden-soled shoes kept up a constant click-clack on the icy pavement. No one gave way. People collided. The sound of bicycles out on the street was their only warning, their bells too late.
Unfamiliar with the area-ah! it had always been far too high-class a district for her-she much preferred Montparnasse, the boulevard Saint-Germain and the house of Madame Chabot on the rue Danton. There, in her own little world, she had been content and welcomed always as one of the regulars. But here? she asked, feeling suddenly lonely. Here I am nothing. The rue de Rivoli, the Palais-Royal, even the Bibliothèque Nationale were all very near and nice, of course, but had always exuded vibrations of ‘Stay away. You don’t belong’.
Reaching the corner at last, she found a lamppost against which to lean and get her bearings.
‘How much?’ asked a voice out of the darkness, too near.
‘It’s not for sale.’
She felt a hand explore her seat and hip, a shoulder, the breath of him on her cheek, and said softly, ‘I have a straight razor in my hand, monsieur. Please don’t make me use it.’
‘Putain!’ he hissed and drifted off into the ether. Two others made their tries-did she telegraph vibrations of her own even after nearly six months of near-chastity with Hermann?
When she found the café, it was down two sets of iron-railinged stone stairs into an even deeper darkness from which the stench of urine, sour wine and cheap perfume rushed at her. Girls and their pimps kissed and made love against the walls in spite of the cold or perhaps because of it. She could hear them whispering, sighing, moaning urgently even as the muted sounds of the traffic from above came to her. The Café of the Turning Hour-she could just make out its name when a match was struck and a burly, pockmarked little maquereau glared lewdly at her and grinned.
Entering after the swift little parasite in his tight-fitting overcoat and fedora, she saw at a glance that the place was nothing more than a hole in the wall, a slot down which the zinc counter ran endlessly to one side, and at this, elbows touched as bankrolls were flashed to impress each other and apéritifs were sipped. A cosy place, the smell of oily onion soup mingling with that of cigarette smoke, vin ordinaire, pastis and brandy. A place where one could not simply ask for the name of a girl’s pimp, since too many questions would be asked in return.
Squeezing between the clientele and the wall to whose flaking plaster clung the peeling posters of another age, she made her way until at last, all eyes watching, she was able to take a place at the zinc. ‘Un café noir avec un pousse-café, s’il vous plaît,’ she said. A coffee with a liqueur on the side. Ah merde, they had all stopped talking in order to listen.