earned twelve hundred francs a month, Serebin got about three times that.
“Can you invade the trust?”
“No.”
“Ah, grampa.”
And the Germans? Was he not, a Mischlingmann, half-Jewish?
No longer. His German friend had arranged for a baptismal certificate, mailed to the office of the Paris Gestapo from Odessa.
“You asked?”
“He offered.”
“Oh dear,” Polanyi said.
Serebin spent all day on the train, after a few hours of bad dreams at the Palas Hotel. There’d been a room reserved in his name. “We will help you,” Polanyi said, “when we think you need it. But Serebin you have always been, and Serebin you must remain.”
On 5 December, 1940, the Istanbul-Paris train pulled into the Gare de Lyon a little after four in the afternoon. There had been the customary delays-venal border guards at the Yugoslav frontier, a Croatian blizzard, a Bulgarian cow, but the engineer made up time on Mussolini’s well-maintained track between Trieste and the Simplon tunnel and so, in the end, the train was only a few hours late getting into Paris.
I. A. Serebin, traveling on the French passport issued to the etranger resident, paused for a time outside the station. There was snow falling in Paris, not sticking to the street, just blowing around in the gray air, and Serebin spent a moment staring at the sky. The first driver in the line of waiting taxis was watching him. “Regardez, Marcel,” he said. “This one’s happy to be home.” Marcel, a lean Alsatian shepherd, made a brief sound in his throat, not quite a bark.
They were right. Serebin tossed his valise in the back of the cab and climbed in after it. “In the rue Dragon,” he said. “Number twenty-two.” As the driver started the engine, a woman came to the passenger side window. A Parisian housewife, she wore a wool scarf tied over her head and the ubiquitous black coat, and carried a string bag of battered pears and a baguette. She broke an end off the bread and offered it to the dog, who took it gently in his mouth, dropped it between his paws, and looked up at the driver before licking the crust. “You are very kind, madame,” the driver said gravely, putting the car in gear.
He drove off slowly, down a street with a few people on bicycles but no other cars at all. The taxi was a gazogene, a tank of natural gas mounted upright in the lidless trunk, its top rising well above the roof. Gasoline was precious to the Germans, and the allocation for occupied countries was only two percent of their use before the war.
Across the Pont d’Austerlitz, then along the quai by the river, low in its walls in winter, the water dark and opaque on a sunless afternoon. For Serebin, every breath was gold. This city. The driver took the Boulevard St.- Germain at the Pont Sully. “Come a long way?”
“From Istanbul.”
“Bon Dieu.”
“Yes, three days and nights.”
“Must have been a pleasure, before the war.”
“It was. All red plush and crystal.”
“The Orient Express.”
“Yes.”
The driver laughed. “And beautiful Russian spies, like the movies.”
They drove very slowly along the boulevard, through the 5th Arrondissement and into the 6th. Serebin watched the side streets going by; rue Gregoire de Tours, rue de Buci-a shopping street, rue de l’Echaude. Then the Place St.-Germain-des-Pres, with a Metro station and the smart cafes-the Flore and the Deux Magots. Then, his very own rue du Dragon. Cheap restaurant with neon signs, a club called Le Pony-it was clearly a nighttime street, with the usual Parisian tenements crowded together above the sidewalk.
“Here we are,” the driver said.
The Hotel Winchester. Le Vanshestaire, a hopeful grasp at English gentility by the owners of 1900, now run- down and drifting just below quaint. Serebin paid the driver and added a generous tip, took his valise and briefcase, and entered the musty old lobby. He greeted the proprietaire behind the desk and climbed five flights to his “suite”- two rooms instead of one and a tiny bathroom.
In the bedroom, he went directly to the French doors that served as windows, opened them, and looked out into the street. His red geraniums, the famous Roi du Balcon, king of the balcony, had been dutifully watered during his absence but they were fast approaching the end of their days. In the room, a narrow, creaky bed with a maroon coverlet, an armoire, things he liked tacked to the wall-a Fantin-Latour postcard, an ink drawing of a nude dancer, an old photograph of the Pont Marie, an emigre’s watercolor of the Normandy countryside, a publicity still from a movie theatre, Jean Gabin and Michelle Morgan in Port of Shadows, and a framed Brassai of a pimp and his girl in a Montmartre cafe. He had a telephone, a clamshell used as an ashtray, a Russian calendar from 1937.
Serebin looked out at the wet cobblestone street, at the half-lit windows of the shops, at the gray sky and the falling snow.
Home.
8 December. The social club of the International Russian Union was on the rue Daru, a few doors down from the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the Russian Orthodox church in Paris. Inside, a few men played cards or read and reread the newspaper.
“I can’t believe you came back.” Ulzhen looked gloomy, a Gauloise hung from his lips, there was gray ash on the lapels of his jacket.
Serebin shrugged.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I had to leave, but I didn’t like it where I went, so I came back.”
Ulzhen shook his head-who could talk to a crazy man? Boris Ulzhen had been a successful impresario in St. Petersburg, staged ballets and plays and concerts. Now he worked for a florist on the rue de la Paix, made up arrangements, delivered bouquets, bought wreaths and urns from emigres who stole them from the cemeteries. His wife had managed to smuggle jewelry out of Russia in 1922 and by miracles and penury they made the money last ten years, then tried to go to America but it was too late. Ulzhen was also the director of the IRU in Paris, nominally Serebin’s boss but, more important, a trusted friend.
“Terrible about Goldbark,” he said.
“It is. And nobody really knows why it happened.”
“It happened because it happened. Next it will happen to me and, you know what? I wouldn’t care.”
“Don’t say that, Boris.”
“Send the crate of eggplants. I’ll tip the deliveryman.”
Serebin laughed. “You’ll survive. Life will get better.”
“We hardly have heat. My daughter is seeing a German.” He frowned at the idea. “Last year she had a Jewish boyfriend, but he disappeared.”
“Probably went to the Unoccupied Zone.”
“I hope so, I hope so. They’re going to do to them here what they did in Germany.”
Serebin nodded, the rumors were everywhere.
“Better not to talk about it,” Ulzhen said. “When’s the magazine coming out?”
“As soon as I do the work. Maybe after Christmas.”
“Be nice for Christmas, no?”
“I suppose.”
“Got anything special?”
Serebin thought it over. “About the same.”
“It’s good for morale, what with winter coming. Not much festive, this year. So, at least a few poems. What about it?”
“I’ll try.”
“I’d be grateful if you would,” Ulzhen said.
“Boris, I want to get in touch with Ivan Kostyka. I called at the office on Montaigne but they said he wasn’t in
