‘The young lady’s taken,’ Lode snaps. ‘Get lost.’
‘I’d rather hear it from the lady herself,’ says Karel, the ersatz Prussian, calmly.
‘Forget to clean your ears this morning?’
‘It’s all right, Lode.’
‘Ah, the charming young lady can produce sound.’
‘If you’re not careful there’ll only be one sound coming out of your throat.’
Lode gets up. He’s standing nose to nose with Karel.
Yvette tugs on his wrist. ‘Stop it.’
‘You have your papers on you, I hope.’
Lode shakes his head in disbelief, looks at me and says, ‘This feller’s asking me for my papers. Can you believe it?’ Lode pulls out his badge and holds it in the SS man’s face. ‘What do you think of this?’
Behind our table the officers’ girlfriends are complaining about not being able to see any more.
‘Sit down!’ one of them hisses.
Imagine you really are sitting at our table, as I’ve described it. You’re sitting with us in the lion’s den, surrounded by Germans and people who want to be German, and sooner rather than later. Would you stop Yvette from dancing with a member of the SS? I can already see you shaking your head. What difference does it make now? you think. Wasn’t everyone convinced by then that the Germans had already won and you were better off going along with it? Definitely, but all the same there were some people who didn’t entirely trust it, who thought it madness to assume that the facts as they were at that moment would remain the facts and that the whole thing couldn’t flip completely in no time at all, with black becoming white again and vice versa. I’m not saying everyone felt like that, far from it. There were some who kept waiting, weighing things up and watching, without ever taking a position one way or the other. Still sitting on the fence, as if they were back in the thirties, before the war had even started. Some of them, the ones who didn’t stop thinking, felt like they’d ended up in a lottery with all they have and hold, where every twist of fate could have dire consequences, maybe not right away, but later, definitely. Stand out from the crowd and who knows, maybe you’ll pay the price after the war. In that world some bastard might later, when the fortunes of war have taken a definitive turn, suddenly remember that a beautiful woman by the name of Yvette dared to cut the rug with an ersatz Prussian. Maybe that was why Lode jumped down Karel’s throat like that, which in the moment itself was far from cautious (and something I tried to warn him against). And as it turned out it was more trouble than it was worth, because naturally it was your future great-grandmother who overruled her brother, and the friend she had an eye on, by making her own decision, if only to put an end to all their nonsense.
Yvette grabs Karel by the hand and whispers, ‘Come on.’
Before Lode can say a word they’ve headed off to the dance floor, hand in hand.
‘Fool,’ I say.
‘Me, a fool? That’s rich. What about you, Will? You’re just letting it happen. When that bloke goes for a leak later, he’ll bump into me. And then he’ll be bleating for Mama.’
‘And what will that solve?’
‘It makes me want to puke. Friday for instance… unbelievable. I’m on patrol with André. A lady comes up to us beside herself with fright. Two blokes at the station. Not even in uniform. They’re asking everyone who comes out of the station for their papers to see if they’re Jewish. Can you believe it? We go there and ask them for their papers. No, they don’t have them on them. And they give us a look as if that’s completely normal and we’re fools for asking. “Sicherheitsdienst,” says one of them, “that’s who we’re working for. Official orders. Stay out of it.” But the thing is, they weren’t even German!’
‘Not so loud.’
Lode looks around and carries on in a whisper. ‘André tells them that they can’t just go around behaving like that. You know what one of them said?’
‘You’re getting too wound up, Lode, you have to be careful of that.’
‘Kiss my arse.’
But he still casts a quick glance around, before continuing angrily, ‘One of those bastards looks us over and asks calm as you please if we’re really in the police force. Don’t you get it? If we take that, we’ve all moved into the madhouse to stay, fancy dress every day with us as the resident clowns. Wanting to know if our uniforms were real… Anyway, we took ’em in. Big fuss at the station, of course.’
‘Meine Damen und Herren, ladies and gentlemen, liebes Publikum, it is my pleasure to introduce to you a young lady who will take to the stage of Café Atlantic to entertain you with the wonderful songs of Zarah Leander. Give her a big round of applause… La… Esterella!’
People clap. Some even whistle.
A young, fairly large and rather shy woman emerges. Her warm lips mumble thanks. She looks at the pianist, then launches into a nostalgic Gypsy song to more loud applause. Yvette and Karel dance again, while she keeps looking at the singer. ‘Sie singt wie eine Kanone,’ I hear a German officer behind us laughing.
Yvette and Karel return as La Esterella is starting her third song. He nods as if there hasn’t been so much as an angry word between us and doesn’t hesitate to accept the chair Yvette offers him. Lode clenches his fists, but his sister glares at him so hard he has no choice but to bite back his anger.
‘So, Wilfried, are you in the force too?’
‘Probationary constable,’ I nod. Now, all of a sudden, Karel does know who I
