Mission to Paris (22 page)

Orlova started to twist the long tube of the silencer, unscrewing it from the pistol. ‘This was never going to end,’ she said. ‘So I ended it. Get his clothes off, everything but his underwear, and put that little knife in his pocket.’

Stahl was frozen, staring at Rudi.

‘Please,’ Orlova said.

He nodded and went to work untying Rudi’s shoes. Orlova took them and lined them up beneath the chair. Stahl handed her the socks, trousers – after trouble with Rudi’s belt buckle – jacket, tie, and shirt. When he was done, he saw that Orlova had folded everything into a neat pile. ‘This will go on the chair,’ she said. ‘You put him on the bed, I’ll write the note.’ She had brought with her a pencil and a sheet of cheap paper. Stahl took Rudi under the arms and pulled backwards, which tipped the chair over. ‘Shh!’ Orlova said. ‘Christ, be
quiet
.’

He dragged Rudi up onto the bed, raised his head and slipped the pillow beneath it. Orlova set the pile of clothes on the chair and put the note on the night table. Stahl read the note, written in unruly script:
I can stand it no longer
. ‘Will that do?’ Orlova said.

Stahl nodded. ‘Of course the police might wonder if it’s really suicide.’

‘They won’t pursue it. This is a certain kind of hotel, if a waiter killed himself, or if someone else killed him, doesn’t matter. Not these days it doesn’t. And there’s a good chance the hotel will get rid of the body themselves – who wants to talk to the police?’

Orlova stood at the door and looked critically at the scene in the room. Then she placed the automatic in Rudi’s hand, made a dent in the other pillow, as though a head had rested there, took a little bottle of perfume out of her bag and put a drop or two on the sheet below the dented pillow. ‘What do you think?’ she said.

‘It looks like his lover bid him goodbye, then he shot himself.’

She took one last look around, then remembered to leave the pencil by the note. She looked at Stahl and said, ‘It had to be done. In time, he would have denounced us, just as he said he would.’

Stahl nodded.

‘I’ll be going,’ Orlova said. ‘Enjoy the banquet.’

He got through it. As the grinning faces came to greet him, as medals caught the light of the chandeliers, as Goebbels’s deputy spoke at great length and flattered him and flashbulbs popped, as he read out the names of the winning films. Otto Raab was deeply moved when Stahl, after a dramatic pause, announced that
Das Berg von Hedwig
had won the grand prize, a gold Oscar-sized statuette of a mountain with a movie camera on top. Stahl delivered his speech – a tepid joke about the lion at the Berlin zoo drew a great roar of laughter. He ended with praise for the Reich National Festival of Mountain Cinema; it was only the beginning, many more festivals would follow, as German film-makers climbed to the summit of their craft. When he was done, Goebbels’s deputy presented him with a two-foot-high crystal sculpture of an eagle, a Nazi eagle, head and beak in profile, stiff wings outstretched, its claws holding a swastika in a wreath. The hideous thing was incredibly heavy, Stahl almost dropped it, but held on.

The morning flight from Tempelhof landed at Le Bourget at 2.30 p.m. There was a little bar in one corner of the terminal building where uniformed customs officers and airport workers in
bleu de travail
smocks took time off during the day. They stood at the zinc bar, drank red wine or coffee, smoked – there was always one with the stub of a Gauloise stuck to his lips – and talked in low voices. As the exhausted Stahl entered the terminal – carrying the paper-wrapped eagle, Orlova’s notes in his jacket pocket – he was met by the smell of coffee and cigarettes and the sound of quiet conversation and thanked God that he was back in France.

Production for
Après la Guerre
began that afternoon, 11 November, with scenes that could be shot on sets built in the studios at Joinville, and a few exteriors using local settings. Location shooting was now to take place in and around Beirut, where it would be ‘summer’ – sunshine and blue sky – in December, so Deschelles and Avila were pleased with the weather, the cold rain and gloom of November, appropriate for scenes in the Balkans as the story wound to its finale. Some trouble with the screenwriters here, the script specified a death scene for Stahl’s Colonel Vadic but Deschelles argued that they couldn’t kill off
Fredric Stahl
, so it would have to be rewritten. He
almost
dies but, nursed back to health by the loving false countess, he survives. Avila argued the other way, Deschelles allowed him to lose gracefully, and in return agreed to ask Paramount for money to shoot the Hungarian castle scenes in a Hungarian castle.

The first time that cameras rolled in a film was traditionally a superstitious moment for the cast and crew, an omen of what was to come. Avila was smart, and chose a scene that he felt would go well – Pasquin’s comic night of love with a heavy-set Turkish woman, the wife of a local policeman. The script called for a dog that had to scratch at a bedroom door – the husband was on the other side, unaware that his wife had returned home, unaware that she was in bed with Pasquin’s sergeant. For this scene Avila had chosen a French bulldog, a good character to play against the roly-poly Pasquin.

But the dog wouldn’t scratch at the door, it simply stood there like a rock while its trainer, on the other side of the door, called out first commands, then baby-talk endearments, and finally tried to tempt it with hazelnut ice cream, its favorite treat. Time went by, a certain anxiety began to spread through the people on the set, a half-naked Pasquin sat up in bed and shouted, ‘Scratch the fucking door, goddamn it!’ but the bulldog merely turned its head towards the source of the noise and broke wind.
That
relieved the tension – the ‘Turkish wife’ laughed so hard that tears rolled down her chubby face and her make-up had to be reapplied.

At last, one of the prop men came to the rescue, with a trick he’d seen in other productions. From his prop room he produced a stuffed toy, a tabby cat. When he showed it to the dog, the animal went crazy, it
hated
cats, and the prop man only just managed to snatch the toy away before it was savaged. Avila was now poised to call out ‘Action’, the cameraman was ready, the trainer took the tabby cat outside the room and closed the door, and the dog stood there. Immediately, a conference was held – do without the scratching at the door? From Avila, an emphatic
no
. So the prop man tried one last thing: he pushed the cat’s tail beneath the door and when the trainer released the bulldog it galloped towards the tail and, when the prop man on the other side whisked it away, the dog scratched at the door as though he was trying to tear it to pieces. The cameras rolled, the policeman’s wife said, ‘Oh my God, he smells my husband,’ Avila said ‘Cut!’ and the cast and crew applauded.

They were on the set until 5.30, Avila had met his day’s quota – two minutes of film – and Stahl, though he ached to go back to the Claridge and get into a hot shower, had one final chore ahead of him. Renate Steiner was expecting his appearance at her workroom in Building K. Colonel Vadic had to wear, at several points in the film, a thin cotton long-sleeved undershirt with buttons at the top – a khaki-coloured garment meant to look like Foreign Legion issue. This could not be bought in Paris, so a seamstress ran one up, a duplicate to follow once Stahl had a fitting.

It was a long walk to Building K in the cold fading twilight but Steiner’s workroom was warm, heated by a small charcoal stove in one corner. And Renate was glad to see him – a sweet smile, kisses on both cheeks. ‘You seem to be doing better,’ Stahl said. ‘The last time I was here …’ She’d been in tears with husband trouble.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘One’s personal life … But everything’s different now.’

‘You’ve made up? Your husband found a job?’

‘My husband found a girlfriend,’ she said. ‘And off they went. I was miserable for a week, then I discovered how relieved I was to have him gone – thank heaven for sexy little Monique! Oh, that sounds terribly cold, doesn’t it.’

‘Not to me.’

She shrugged. ‘If we hadn’t had to run away from Germany everything might have been all right but … that’s just what happened.’

‘You do seem different,’ Stahl said.

‘Freedom,’ she said. ‘It’s good for me. Now, Fredric, would you be so kind as to take off your shirt? You can go behind the curtain if you like.’

Stahl took off his sweater, then unbuttoned his shirt and hung it over the back of a chair. He was just muscular enough, no bare-to-the-waist pirate but not at all soft, that he didn’t mind being seen in his skin. Steiner held the khaki undershirt up by its shoulders and showed it to Stahl. ‘What do you think?’

‘I like it.’

‘It’s your women fans who must like it, so it should show the outline of your shoulders and chest, then loosen a bit as it falls to the waist.’

‘What do I wear down below?’

‘Uniform trousers, then civilian trousers. These were voluminous in the script and tied with a string but that’s just writers, Avila wants to show your bottom half. Now it’s Gilles Brecker who gets the big trousers. How is his wrist, by the way?’

‘We’re shooting around him for another two weeks, then he’ll be fine.’

Stahl slid the undershirt over his head; Renate had perched on a high stool and lit a cigarette, shaking the match out as she looked critically at the fit of the shirt. ‘Can you turn sideways?’

He did.

‘Now the back.’

He turned his back to her.

‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘For a first try.’

She put her cigarette out in an ashtray and, pins in mouth, set about refitting the undershirt. She was very close to him, he could smell some sort of woodsy perfume, and when she reached up beneath the shirt her hand was warm against his skin. ‘If I stick you just yell,’ she said, her words slurred by the pins in her mouth.

‘I will,’ Stahl said.

She kept on fussing with the shirt, stepping back for a look, then repositioning the pins to move a seam. Stahl hitched up his trousers because, to his surprise, not an unpleasant surprise, he’d become excited and he didn’t want her to see it. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘Pulling up my pants.’

‘Well, don’t. Just stand still.’ Then she said ‘
Merde!
’ and withdrew her hand, a drop of blood on the ball of her index finger. This she put in her mouth for a moment, took it out and pressed her thumb against it. Looking for something to cover the pinprick, she walked over to her work table. Stahl couldn’t take his eyes off the back view. She wore, as usual, a smock over a long skirt, which should have hidden the motion beneath but didn’t quite. He hadn’t noticed this the last time he’d seen her – was she wearing a different skirt? Had she changed for his eyes? That idea he liked very well but he knew it was wishful thinking. Probably.

At the table she found a strip of adhesive tape, tore off a piece with her teeth and stuck it on her finger. That done, she mumbled, ‘Goddamn thimble,’ and went rummaging through mounds of fabric, retrieved only a scissors and a magazine photo, then gave up. She turned, walked back and stood in front of him. ‘You can take it off now,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry this took so long.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I expect you want to go home and have a drink.’

‘I do.’ Then, after a moment, ‘Is there anything here?’

‘There is, but …’

‘But what?’

‘I have Strega.’

‘Strega!’
Of all things
. ‘The witch,’ he said, translating the Italian word. It was a liqueur made of mountain herbs, secret herbs – a strange taste, sweet at first, then something more.

She walked over to a cabinet, took out a bottle of Strega and two cloudy glasses, poured some thick, dark-gold liqueur in each, returned and handed him a glass. ‘
Salut
,’ she said.

‘To us,’ he said and immediately regretted it. He was acting like a teenager.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘To us. You like it?’

‘It’s been a while since I’ve had it.’

‘Myself I like it.’

‘I like it too.’

‘Good. Want some more?’

‘Please.’

‘Aren’t you getting cold?’

‘Not at all. I don’t mind being undressed.’

‘Hm. Well …’ She took the undershirt back to her table and said, ‘You’ve been very patient.’

He put his shirt back on, buttoning it as he walked over and stood next to her, their shoulders almost touching. For a moment, neither of them moved, then Stahl said, ‘I guess I should go.’

‘I will need another fitting once it’s been resewn.’

‘When is that?’

‘Oh, tomorrow. Can you stop by when the filming’s over?’

‘I’ll see you then.’

Stahl found a taxi on the street that bordered the studio and, settled in the back seat, felt the excitement of a man who’d found treasure. He’d been drawn to her the first time they met but she was married, off-limits. He had wondered what it would be like with her, then let it go. But when she’d told him she was free, when she’d flirted with him … She had, hadn’t she? He hoped so because now he really wanted her, he wanted to fuck her – it was the same heat he’d felt as a schoolboy. What was it that reached him? What? She was no pinup girl, more the opposite: the minister’s prim daughter, the well-curved spinster beneath the spinster skirt. In fact, Renate Steiner wasn’t anything like that, she was a sophisticated, intellectual woman. That was her inner self, no secrets there, but her
outer
self, her face with its pointy nose and pale forehead, her concealed shape,
was
that of the fantasy spinster. And Stahl, after weeks of Parisian glamour, after the erotic tricks of Kiki de Saint-Ange, discovered that, at least for the moment, he was again
sixteen
, and hot for one of the plainer girls in the school. Would she do it with him? In the back seat of the taxi it was already
tomorrow night
and his imagination undressed her: she would touch not one button, one popper, one waistband of her clothing.

There was a crowd of people in the street as they drove up the Champs-Elysées and the driver had to slow down and work his way through them. A few held signs,
NEVER AGAIN
and
SAVE THE PEACE
, and Stahl realized it was 11 November, Armistice Day, celebrating the end of ‘the war to end all wars’. There’d no doubt been a military parade, an official parade, earlier in the day; this was just a crowd of people – workers, students, middle-class Parisians – who’d made a few signs. The driver asked Stahl what he thought about the march and Stahl said, ‘Who doesn’t want peace?’ The driver turned halfway round and said, ‘Amen to that, monsieur.’ But to Stahl it was a dream, a hope. He’d seen Germany, and he knew there would be war.