The Ghosts of Paris, page 32
She walked a few steps away, placed her jacket on the back of a chair, smoothed her blouse, and turned and looked at him, standing tall although she felt flattened.
She waited.
“It was unbelievable, Billie. What happened in Warsaw . . . The days as they wore on . . .” he said, stalling. The uprising had been a brutally drawn-out conflict, Billie knew—sixty-three long days of fighting and of waiting for help that never came.
“Tell me,” she said simply, and leaned against the wall of her hotel room, just next to the window. The edge of the window frame stuck into her back and she kept herself there, feeling the corner dig into her like a dagger from an invisible foe. She could fight a dagger, or the Austrian and his pistol. But this fight was lost years ago, years before she’d even known she was in it.
“I don’t know how much information you have about the uprising, but the Polish underground was encouraged to seize the moment, to rise up against the Nazi occupiers, and the USSR was to have been there for them, to help them rid the place of Germans.” Jack had paled and his mouth contorted at the memory. He took another sip of his drink—more of a swig, really—and continued. “It was all planned in the lead-up. The Polish people had hope, real hope, that a coordinated uprising would finally liberate them. They really believed it would happen.”
Billie knew some of what had transpired, mostly because of all the searching she’d done for her husband, realizing that his last- known whereabouts were right there, in the thick of the Warsaw conflict that he’d been documenting with his trusty Argus camera.
“Day after day it became clear that the Soviet liberators had no plan to help, and never had. They knew the underground resistance did not want to trade one occupier for another. They wanted Poland back for the Polish people. They wanted their freedom. So, the Soviets led them on—that’s how many saw it—and then sat idly by as the Polish people were slaughtered, and I do mean slaughtered, Billie. They let the Nazis take care of their future political opposition for them, let the Nazis murder thousands of people. Those who weren’t killed were dragged off to concentration camps, to be thrown into their fires or worked to death.”
He had finished his drink. Silently, she refilled it and resumed her place against the window frame. Jack seemed to be almost in a trance, not looking at her, not focusing his eyes on anything really. He was caught fully in his terrifying memories, the ending of which, she knew, would likely break some part of her.
“I had not seen anything like it. Not since Kristallnacht. And yet this was worse. No distinction was made between insurrectionists and civilians, Billie. None at all. The Nazis aimed to exterminate the entire population, every man, woman, and child. Even babies. I was with a few of the underground who escaped, and I was lucky to survive.”
“The woman?” she said.
He seemed to steel himself. “Her name was Natasza. She . . . when I first saw her, the Germans were holding her hostage. Billie, she . . . she was tied to a German tank, secured to the front of it by ropes.”
A human shield.
“This was days into the Wola massacre. The Nazi tanks, having earlier been halted by heavy resistance fighting, were protected by the bodies of Polish women and children. They were alive, Billie, tied to these tanks. This wasn’t war I was covering, I realized, not a battle—this was slaughter, torture. For two days the Nazis had run rampant through the city, raping and murdering at will. Most of those they killed were the elderly, frail and helpless, and women and children. Then as they approached positions where the Home Army still had a hold, they took those they had not already killed and tied them to the front of their tanks.”
Billie felt ill.
“That’s when I saw her . . . the Germans were using Natasza as a shield so the resistance wouldn’t fire on them. Of course, I didn’t know her name then. I broke from my position and intervened—it was foolish, I know, but I had no decision to make; I just couldn’t do anything else. It was too much to bear. Her screams. But it was very nearly a fatal mistake. I’d exposed myself, and without the Armia Krajowa—the Polish underground—I would have been killed.” He brought a shaking hand to his throat. “This is my souvenir. They . . . They . . .” He trailed off. “They tell you in my job not to intervene. I’m supposed to just record it all, document it, but how could I? How could I just stand by?” Tears spilled down his cheeks, and Billie felt her throat tighten.
He’d regretted not intervening at Kristallnacht, but they had been together then, hiding as a crowd beat a Jewish man to death, stomping his body into the street. If he’d run forward he would have died, and she well may have, too. What they’d witnessed had haunted them both ever since.
“I don’t remember much after running forward and seizing the ropes that held her,” he continued. “I know I was shot, but I don’t remember feeling it, or feeling this,” he said, and gestured to his throat. “It was my own camera strap, I’m told. I was caught by the throat, and I was dragged. I don’t remember. It’s all a blank. Natasza was Roma and because I saved her, her family helped me, cared for my wounds. I almost didn’t make it.”
Jack wiped his wet cheeks, and Billie watched as he became smaller, shrinking into himself. She had not seen him weep like this before, ever.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” he finally blurted, throwing his hands up.
“I just want to listen,” she said. “She was Roma. Her family helped you. Go on.” Her voice was cold.
“Billie, I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Try.”
For some time the hotel room was silent, and an electric vacuum came on somewhere down the hall, surreal in its banality. Billie watched her husband as he stared at a blank section of wall, his eyes unfocused, far away.
“Her family were performers, they all were. It was how she survived, I think. She used to perform in a circus, walking the rope and performing these amazing feats, and when the war came she did work for the underground as a courier. She was so agile that she could hide anywhere, even in the smallest places. Once she was captured and I rushed forward and freed her . . . I . . . From that moment on I was no longer a photojournalist. I put down my camera and joined the fight.”
Jack’s hand shook as he brought the glass of whisky to his lips and emptied it again. The air itself had become as tense as a tightrope under pressure, the stillness in the hotel room almost suffocating.
“So, you left me for this woman, Natasza,” she managed, wanting to hear him say it, confirm it.
“It’s not that simple. I had a responsibility. She became . . . with child.”
She took a long, jagged breath. “Jesus, Jack.”
“It was once, once, and it was a mistake. It was a terrible mistake. I was barely myself, spending weeks on end in their caravan, hiding away, coming in and out of consciousness. Billie, I was close to death. I was grateful to Natasza and my feelings became . . . confused and I . . . we . . . Once I knew the consequences of that moment of weakness, I couldn’t just leave her . . . leave them. I made a terrible mistake, and I’ve had to pay for that these past three years.”
“You have had to pay?” Billie said, the rage welling up now. “You? I don’t think I am quite ready to hear how much you’ve had to pay for breaking your vows to me. With respect, Jack, I thought you were dead. I thought your body lay lifeless in some ditch in Warsaw. I . . .” Her mind went back to that terrible corpse in the basement of the Institut Médico-Légal de Paris, thinking it was him, thinking that bloated, decomposing body was actually him. “You know, only a couple of nights ago I thought I might be looking at your corpse at the Paris morgue!” Angry tears were springing from her eyes now as she recalled the horror and sickness she’d felt. “I really thought I was looking at you, Jack. I thought you’d been fished out of the Seine.”
“Oh, Billie,” he said, and rushed to her side, enveloping her in those arms she had so longed for. There was solace to be found there, or there had been once. Finally, she was in his embrace, and yet nothing was as it should be; everything was wrong.
“Instead you had another family in Poland,” she said quietly, and he pulled back.
“It’s . . . It’s not quite like that,” Jack began to explain, but stopped himself, seeing her face twisted with pain. “It doesn’t matter.”
Doesn’t matter?
“I never meant to betray you.”
With great restraint, Billie slid away, away from that place in Jack’s arms where she had sought comfort so many times before. She felt cold inside. “War is terrible, Jack. It is. But we all have to own what we do with it, what choices we make in the heat of the moment.” Her voice had never sounded so icy.
“You must despise me, and I can’t blame you,” he said, looking wounded, his brow furrowed.
She closed her eyes, deep in thought. Somehow, she did not quite despise him.
“I wronged you, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it. Billie, I’ve brought you something. I should have given you this long ago. I am truly so sorry for what I did.” He placed an envelope on the table, his eyes lingering on her. Those bright hazel eyes.
Jack.
While she stood against the cold window, feeling sick inside, he walked across the room, away from her, opened the door, and closed it softly behind him.
Jack was gone.
And just like that, her heart was shattered again.
Thirty-one
Bang.
Someone was knocking on her hotel room door again.
Bang, bang, bang.
Billie did not want to answer. Only half-aware of what she was doing, still dressed in her blouse and skirt, she had only just cocooned herself within the white, wrinkled linens of the bed and she wasn’t sure she was keen to emerge.
The banging wouldn’t stop.
“Billie?”
This wasn’t Jack’s voice. Jack had been there and then Jack had left. Jack was alive, had another family now, a child with another woman . . .
“Billie, it’s Sam. Are you all right in there?”
Billie blinked. She realized again—for she had been in this fugue state for some uncertain length of time—that her fag was burning down and needed ashing. She dispassionately inspected it, noting the red lipstick stains on the end, turned in place where she was sitting, and crushed it in the overflowing ashtray on the bedside table. With a touch of disdain, she looked down at herself, her clothes crumpled and the white sheets twisted around her. Vaguely, she recalled being sick in the lavatory after her husband left, using the mouthwash to gargle, and then splashing her face with water before crawling under the sheets as if they would somehow shield her, just as she had sought comfort within them the night before.
“I’m not decent,” she called out for lack of a better excuse. “Wait.”
Time blurred, and the knocking resumed.
Bang.
Bang, bang.
“Billie, it’s Sam. I’m worried about you. I’m with a porter. We have a key, and I’m coming in.”
She opened her eyes. The sun was setting on Paris. She couldn’t stay like this. And she couldn’t let her assistant—her . . . what? Paris fling?—see her this way. She couldn’t allow herself to be this way.
“Wait. Just wait!” she called out.
With a burst of determination, Billie threw off the covers, swung her legs out, and stood, then noted the unacceptable condition of her clothes and frowned. “I’ll be just a minute,” she called toward the door, hurriedly undressed, leaving her foundation garments on, threw the soft hotel robe around her body, and cinched it at the waist. Billie took several paces toward the door, realized how it might look, and thought again.
She didn’t want to make it look to Sam—her assistant—like she’d been in bed with her husband—though of course he didn’t know that her visitor was her long-lost husband. Not yet, anyway. What a confusing affair this all was, wanting to show her assistant that she had not been too intimate with her husband. Forget it. Forget it all. Billie completed her journey to the door, hauled it open, ushered Sam inside, and shut it behind him, thanking the porter without raising her eyes.
“You mustn’t look at me,” she said to Sam, covering her eyes with one hand. “I’ve been sick but I’m okay. Just give me a few minutes to—”
“I’ve been so worried. I could not raise you and eventually I . . . Why, Billie, you look—”
“Don’t,” she warned him, and disappeared to the lavatory, leaving him to sit on the settee from which her not-dead, long-lost husband had delivered his devastating news.
The reflection in the hotel mirror was not flattering. She took some time to remove the smudged mascara shadowing her bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes, within which her blue-green irises seemed to glow with the almost supernatural clarity of her pain. She splashed her face with cool water and started again. It was a new day. Well, not quite a new day, but it was the start of a new phase for Billie, whether she liked it or not. The best thing to do is to get yourself together and move on, she reminded herself under her breath. Her mother had taught her that. Perhaps she hadn’t taught her quite well enough.
Darling, he’s not coming back, Ella had said, and Billie should have listened. He was never going to come back to her. It was over, had been years ago.
“I think we need to go out, Sam,” she said, once she’d emerged from the bathroom and small changing area with its modesty screen. “Tomorrow morning, we move.”
Billie walked over to where Sam was sitting, arriving in a cloud of French perfume, a vision of smoky nighttime Parisian glamour in a beaded emerald dress that she’d previously shunned for being too revealing. “I’m terribly sorry about before,” she said. “It’s been quite a day.”
Her eyes were still red, but no one would be examining them too closely, she suspected. Except Sam, perhaps. Billie hadn’t been sure what she’d packed the dress for exactly, but now she knew. Everyone needed a dress like this when in Paris. It was where she’d bought it in early 1940, only a few months before the Nazis had goose-stepped their way into the city and changed everything. It was like it belonged here, in free Paris, on her, on a newly free woman.
The occupation was over.
Sam blinked and stood to greet her. His mouth parted, not quite falling open. “You look like . . .”
She raised a brow, daring him to say something about her bloodshot eyes.
“. . . a goddess.”
Billie smiled. She could still do that, it seemed—smile.
“Who was that, Billie? You seemed distressed. And you were sick?”
“That was my husband,” she explained.
He blanched. “Your . . . ?”
“Apparently he is quite alive,” she said flatly.
Sam’s mouth fell open. “Billie . . . but I thought . . . ?” He tried to get words out but stopped. “Oh, I’m sorry if . . . last night . . . I mean, I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know. I didn’t know. How could you have known I was not, in fact, a widow and my husband would come waltzing into my hotel room after total silence for three long years? After all, we thought we might have been looking at his corpse two days ago at the morgue.”
“Billie, I don’t know what to say.”
“Let’s go out. I mean it,” she said. “I can’t be here right now. I really can’t. I need to leave this room and get some fresh air. Or a drink. Yes, a drink.” She glanced at the near-empty bottle of whisky. “Let’s go to the bar, Sam. Please.” She took a step toward him. “Please, Sam, take me to the bar. Now.”
“Monsieur, may I have turndown service tonight?” Billie requested at the front desk of the Ritz Paris, and if the clerk there detected the slight desperation in her voice, he did not indicate it. “Better yet, would a full clean be possible? Yes, a clean. We check out tomorrow.”
“Of course, mademoiselle. I will arrange it right away,” he replied with utmost courtesy, despite the hour. It was already early evening. She’d lost untold hours smoking nearly her full supply of cigarettes and staring at the Paris skyline from her crumpled bed, barely aware of anything beyond the visitor who had just walked out on her.
Now Billie simply could not imagine reentering her hotel room. Not after Jack had been there. And just after being comforted by dear Sam! It figured somehow that Jack bloody Rake had to choose the same day to walk in and declare that he was alive and with someone else now, with his own family, for goddess’s sake. Facing the tiniest lingering scent of the man would be too much.
Perhaps she would force Sam into a gaudy night in Pigalle. Even if it was too late to get tickets for the Grand Guignol, they could find their own real-life mayhem and terror if the past day was anything to go on, she thought darkly.
But first a drink.
Billie saw that Sam had questions on his tongue, but as usual he was too polite to voice them.
“I do rather need a drink,” she said under her breath, and gestured to Le Grand Bar, saw the crowd, and turned around on the spot. Le Petit Bar was far smaller and more intimate, as the name suggested. She made for the entrance, holding on tightly to Sam, barely seeing through eyes that would not focus as they were led to a free table. Jack’s words kept replaying in her ears.
There was a woman . . .
Sam called the waiter over. “The lady needs a drink.” He leaned into her. “What do you want? Champagne cocktail?”
She shook her head. “Champagne is for celebrating.”
“Madame, the Ritz Paris Champagne Cocktail is most agreeable,” the waiter said in flawless, accented English, “but if the lady is looking for something stronger, may I recommend a cocktail I favor, of cognac, Pineau de Charentes, a drop of Grand Marnier . . .”
