The Polish Officer

“Us?”

“All the—what? The little bits and pieces that always seem to wash up in Paris: Russians, Jews, the Spaniards on the run from Franco, Poles and whatnot. Castaways. People who dance naked in ateliers and wave scarfs, people who paste feathers and seashells on a board.”

“That ‘us,’” de Milja said. “The French, the real French, they’ll be safe if they mind their manners. But the others, better for them to disappear.”

She left the window, settled herself in a chair at the dining-room table. It was never clear where the office stopped and the residence began. The mahogany table was piled high with stacks of a slim volume in a pale-blue dustjacket—The Golden Shell. “You aren’t supposed to be here, are you?” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Monsieur Pavel, your, ah, predecessor. One saw him for just a moment. Here or there, in a museum or a big brasserie, someplace public.”

“That’s the recommended way.”

“But you don’t care.”

“I care,” he said. He started to qualify that, then shrugged.

She got up and went into a pantry off the dining room and started to make coffee, cigarette hanging from her lips. Her blouse was a very flat red and she wore little gold-hoop earrings. In profile, she spooned out coffee, liberally, then fiddled with a nickel-plated coffee urn. Smoke rose around her face and hung in drifts below the brass ceiling lamp. He couldn’t stop looking at her; the texture of her hair didn’t go with the color, he thought, so black it should have been coarse. But it hung loose and soft and moved as she did things with her hands.

He couldn’t stop looking at her. He had been in the apartment since the previous day, had slept in a spare room, had wanted her so badly it hurt. Anyone would, he thought; man, woman, or tree. It wasn’t that she was beautiful. More than that. Dark, and supple, with fingers that lingered on everything she touched for just a moment longer than they should. He wanted to carry her to the bed, put his hands in the waistbands of everything she was wearing and pull down. But then, at the same time, he was afraid to touch her.

On a wall above a desk hung a portrait of the publisher Max Beilis, her father, a small, handsome man with a sneer and angry, brilliant eyes. She would, of course, be his single weakness—anything she wanted.

She turned on the radio, let it warm up and tuned in the BBC. He moved closer, could smell a hint of perfume in the cigarette smoke. People who dance naked in ateliers, she’d said. Part of her world—the held breath of the audience, the brush of bare feet on cold floorboards. Her Parisian heart could not, of course, be shocked by such things.

On the BBC, modern music, atonal and discordant. Music for the fall of a city. It faded and returned, disappeared into the static, then came in strong. Not jammed, though, not yet—jamming came in rising and falling waves, they’d find that out soon enough. When the announcer came on, Genya leaned forward in concentration, lit a new cigarette, ran her hair back behind one ear.

“And now the news . . .”

The French government had left Tours and had set up shop in Bordeaux. Reynaud had stated that “France can continue the struggle only if American intervention reverses the situation by making Allied victory certain.” In the USA, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggested that, since it was hopeless for the British to fight on alone, they should surrender to Germany. Fighting continued sporadically in France, the Maginot Line was now being abandoned. German troops had crossed the Marne. German forces in Norway this, in Denmark that, in Belgium and Holland the other thing. This morning, German troops had entered Paris and occupied the city.

When it was over, another symphony.

16 July 1940. Banque Nationale de Commerce, Orleans. 11:30 a.m.

Was he French?

Monsieur LeBlanc had a second, covert, look at the man waiting behind the railing that separated bank officers from the cashiers’ windows. He was rather clever about people—who was who and what was what, as they said. Now this one had been, in his day, quite the fellow. An athlete or a soldier—a certain pride in the carriage of the shoulders indicated that. But lately, perhaps things weren’t going so well. Inexpensive glasses, hat held in both hands—an unconscious gesture of submission—scuffed shoes. A drinker? No, some wine, like all the world, but no more than his share. Death of a loved one? A strong possibility. By now, most of the refugees who’d taken the road south had found their way home, but many had died—the delicate ones, some of the strong as well.

Not French.

Monsieur LeBlanc didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. The set of the mouth or the angle of the head, a subtle gesture, revealed the foreigner, the stranger. Could he be a German? Hah! What an idea! No German would wait on the pleasure of Monsieur LeBlanc, he’d be served now, ahead of everyone else, and rightly so. Yes, you had to admire that. A shame about the war, a swastika flew over the Lycee where he’d gone to school, and German officers filled the better restaurants. On the other hand, one didn’t say so out loud but this might not turn out to be the worst possible thing for France. Hard work, discipline—the German virtues, coupled with the traditional French flair. A triumphant combination for both countries, Monsieur LeBlanc thought, in the New Europe.

“Monsieur.” He gestured toward a chair by the side of his desk.

“Bonjour, Monsieur,” said the man.

Not French.

“And you are Monsieur—?”

“Lezhev. Boris Lezhev.”

“Very well, and you will require?”

“A safe-deposit box, Monsieur.”

“You’ve moved recently to Orleans?”

“Yes, sir.”

Was that all? He waited. Evidently that was all. “And what size did you have in mind? We have three.”

“The least thick, would be best.”

Ignoramus. He meant the least large, but used the word gros, which meant thick, or heavy. Oh well, what could one do. He was tired of this shabby Russian. He reached in a drawer and took out a long sheet of yellow paper. He dipped his pen in the inkwell and began taking down Lezhev’s particulars; birth and parentage and police card number and residence and work permits and all the rest of it. When he was done, he scratched his initials on the page and went off to retrieve the list of available boxes.

At the assistant cashier’s office, a shock awaited him. This was a culturally interesting city but not a major one—Jeanne d’Arc was long gone from sleepy Orleans, now a regional business center for the farming community. But when Monsieur LeBlanc obtained the list of available boxes, there was exactly one that remained unrented. A number of local residents evidently expected good fortune to be coming their way.

As Lezhev signed forms and accepted the keys, Monsieur LeBlanc took a discreet look at his watch. Only a few minutes until noon. Excellent. What was today? Wednesday. At Tante Marie that meant, uh, blanquette de veau and baby carrots.

“Thank you, Monsieur,” said the Russian.

“You are very welcome, we’re pleased to have you, Monsieur, as our customer.”

Barbarian.

And Mildred Green wasn’t much better—Monsieur LeBlanc, had he ever encountered her, likely would have clapped his hat on his head and run the other way.

She was squat, homely, and Texan, with sparse hair, a pursed mouth, and a short temper. Her redeeming qualities were, on the other hand, only narrowly known—to American soldiers wounded in the Great War, when she’d been an army nurse, and to the American military attache in France, for whom she now worked as secretary, administrative assistant, and bull terrier.

The military attache’s office had moved down to Vichy on 5 July, panting hot on the tail of the mobile French government, which had pulled stakes in Bordeaux on the first of July and moved to Vichy on the river Allier, a stuffy old spa town with copious hotels and private houses to absorb the bureaucracy and those privileged souls allowed