The Polish Officer

the color of dust. The BBC had a particular, very identifiable, sound to it, and they worried about neighbors, or people passing in the street. Some Parisians had seen right away that Germans should be treated like other visitors; groomed and fed and milked. The characteristic British voice, amid the static and hiss, meant there was a “terrorist” or a “Bolshevik” in the neighborhood, and you could get a damn good price for one of those if you knew who to talk to down at the local police station.

It was too hot and dirty for clothes, so they stripped at the foot of the narrow staircase and climbed up in their underwear. They sat on a sprung old sofa that somebody had covered with a sheet, and put the radio on the floor, with picture wire run up into the eaves as an aerial. In the evening, when reception was marginally better, Genya would stare into space as she concentrated on the radio voice; bare brown arms clasping her knees, hair limp in the humid summer air, sweat glistening between her breasts.

Midnight in the century, someone called that time, and she was the perfect companion for it. He was lucky, he thought, that at the end he had a woman to be with. Because the end had pretty clearly come. First Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland. Then France. Now England. It wasn’t a question of if, only how. And then a matter—not uncomplicated—of working out your personal arrangements with what was called the New Europe.

On the subject of the immediate future, two French generals had recently been heard from. Weygand, who’d helped the Poles beat the Russians in 1920, had said that the Germans would “wring England’s neck like a chicken.” De Gaulle, a former defense minister, had surfaced in London and was trying to sell the French the idea of resistance, while L’Humanite, the communist newspaper, called him a British agent, and advised French workers to welcome German soldiers and to make them feel at home.

On the sweltering evening of 15 August, the BBC had “music for dancing, with the Harry Thorndyke Society Orchestra from Brighton,” then the news: “In the skies over Britain today, more than one thousand five hundred sorties were flown against various targets, met by hundreds of RAF fighter planes and turned back.”

Then, Harry Thorndyke himself: “Good evening, everybody. Good evening, good evening. Tonight, we thought it might be just the thing to pay a call on Mr. Cole Porter—thank you, thank you—and so now, without further ado, why don’t we just . . . ‘Begin the Beguine’?”

Genya flopped over on her stomach, hands beneath her chin. They listened to the music in silence for a while, then she said, “How long will it take?”

“A few weeks.”

“Perhaps the English planes can win.”

“Perhaps. But the German planes are probably better.”

“We French had fighter planes, you know. Made by a certain Monsieur Bloch—and very rich he got, too. They were known as ‘cerceuils volants,’ flying coffins, but nobody thought it mattered. An opportunity for the French pilots to show how much more skillful and courageous they were than their German opponents, who had superior machines.”

There was no answering that.

“It’s hot,” she said. “I smell.”

There was no answering that either. The music played, through the crackling night air, and they listened, preoccupied and silent. He unhooked her bra, and she pushed herself up so he could get it free of her. He rubbed his finger across the welt it had made on the skin of her back.

“Why does it do that?”

“Too tight,” she said. “And cheap. I buy them from the Arab carts up on the boulevard Clichy.”

“What about these?”

“Silk.”

He slid her panties down.

“You like that?” she said.

“Yes.”

“French girls have the most beautiful asses in Europe.”

“Well, this French girl.”

“No, Alexander, I am serious. Women are cold on this point, there’s no illusion. And we are just built the way we are. What I wonder is, do you suppose that it’s why they always come here?”

“You mean this is what the conquerors are after?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps they are. And the gold. Steel mills, castles. Bloodstock and paintings. Your watch.” He traced his finger along her curves.

“Alexander?”

“Yes?”

“Should we go to Switzerland?”

He thought for a time. “They’d just kick us out. And everybody in Europe can’t go to Switzerland.”

“Yes, but we can, I think. There’s time to do that, for the moment. And if we stay here, I feel in my heart that they will kill us. We don’t matter to anybody, my sweet boy, not to anybody at all.”

“I don’t think,” he said slowly, “that it’s time to run.”

She closed her eyes, moved her hips a little, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, a sorrowful sound. “You know what it is, Alexander? I like to fuck. It’s that simple. To drink a glass of wine. Just to watch the day go by in the most pointless way.”

“Really? You like those sorts of things?”

“All right, I give up. Go ahead and get me killed. But you know what will be my revenge? I’ll leave a will and have a statue built in a public square: it will be you and I, just exactly as we are now, in polished stone. Patriots in 1940 it will be called. A true-life monument for the tourists to visit. Ow! Yes, good, that’s exactly what you’ll be doing on the statue.”

“Lezhev, you must help me.”

It was just a manner of speaking, but when Freddi Schoen used the expression, even over the noisy line of a French telephone, the must had a way of lingering in the air.

“Of course. What is it?”

“First of all, please understand that I am in love.”

“Bravo.”

“No, Lezhev, I beg you, don’t make light of it. She is, it is, just don’t, all right?”

“You are smitten.”

“Yes. It’s true. Cupid’s arrow—it was an ambush, completely a surprise. A dinner in Passy, I didn’t want to go. The man’s in textiles, a vicomte he says, some sort of complicated business connection with my family. Expecting the worst, I went. And then . . .”

“She is French?”

“Very. And of the most elevated family—that’s the problem.”

“Problem?”

“Well, here is what happened. I arrived late, and very excited. I had just taken a country estate; a lovely place and, great good luck for me, an open lease, so I can have it as long as I like. The owner was most accommodating. So naturally I talked about it at the dinner—where it was, and how old, and the river—and she was delighted. ‘Ah, les collines d’Artois, mais qu’elles sont belles!’ she said. So I said, ‘But you must come and see it.’ And I could tell she wanted to but there was, how to say, a momentary sense of frost in the air. Then I realized!

For me to ask her there alone would be most awkward, but with friends ...So quickly I added that a couple I knew was coming on Sunday, wouldn’t she join us for lunch? And Mama and Papa too, I insist! But no, as soon as they heard there was another couple, they were occupied. So, now . . .”

“We’re the couple.”

“You must say yes!”

“Yes. And with pleasure.”

“Thank heaven. I’ll have Fauchon do the picnic, in wicker hampers, with Dom Perignon, and monogrammed champagne flutes, and lobsters, and the napkins they have that fit in the little leather loops in the hamper. What do