Nightingale (19 page)

Chapter 26

There was no electricity, but, looking at Falk in the warm golden light, Yves almost preferred it this way. It did add a minor headache to his everyday life—first electricity was becoming unreliable, now candles were much harder to come by, and batteries were near impossible to get—but it was hard to care right now. They’d made love in the candlelight, marveled at each other’s beauty, gazed into each other’s eyes that were shining not just with reflection, but soul. Being with Falk hurt somewhere in Yves’s heart, hurt him sweetly like a perfect note soaring and filling a room. And yet, he wouldn’t give that pain away for anything in the world.

“You know.” Falk turned onto his side to face him, resting his head on his elbow. “I can’t escape you anymore.”

Yves sat up. “Escape me?”

“You’re everywhere. I used to be able to just go back to my post and not remember you. It didn’t always work; I still . . . you were still there, but not all the time.” Falk gave a lopsided, self-deprecating smile. “Now you’re all over the city. Posters. Postcards. On the radio. People talk about you.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Falk didn’t respond, merely tapped Yves’s leg, motioning for him to lie back down again. Yves did, though cautiously. Where was this conversation going? If Falk was planning to break up with him, why did he choose right after sex?

“You know, when we met. I had just arrived in Paris. I’d never seen a place like it. I don’t think any place like this exists anywhere. And once . . . it’s all done, there won’t be any places like it left.”

Yves shuddered at the thought.

Falk drew him into his arms. “I never knew a city could be so free.”

The Paris Falk knew was a colder, much darker version of the City of Light than Yves knew. If Falk was enthralled by Paris under curfew, with its blackouts, scarcity, and palpable fear—what would he have made of Paris three years ago? “Free in what way?”

“Like this.” Falk kissed him. It was a chaste kiss, without demands, but full of expression. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Yves’s heart ached for him, but all he did was fold his arms around Falk. “I hope to show you the rest of it. Everything you haven’t seen—there are things you can’t imagine. You haven’t seen the rest of France.”

“No.”

“You should. It’s not all Paris.” He wondered idly how Madeleine would see Falk, and that, too, seemed such a quaint notion—to introduce his German lover to his mother who, by all accounts, had also loved by her own rules. On that level, she’d understand.

But everything depended on how the year would play out. According to all the rumors, the Allies were planning to land. Every day that passed without the big news, people were becoming more anxious, and many found the waiting quite unbearable. And what would happen if the Allies did land? Hitler and his generals had performed many miracles before—dark, horrible ones, but miracles nonetheless. And maybe the Americans would be too caught up in the war in the Pacific to provide anything more than materiel.

“Do you believe you will win?”

Falk blinked in surprise. “We have to. We can’t let Europe fall to Stalin.”

“Yes, the idea is terrifying.” Regardless of what Améry and Édith were hoping for. France had been torn apart by internal conflict before the war. At least the Nazis now were a common enemy. But replace one occupation with another—that didn’t bear thinking about. Maurice wasn’t worried. All soldiers wanted entertainment, officers especially. And they sought it in places like the Palace, lining everybody’s pockets, just like the fascists had done. Nothing truly changed. Humans were humans and would always be.

“But what you said.” Falk rested his forehead against Yves’s, whispering, as if worried they’d be overheard. “That you can help me.”

Yves’s breath caught and he tightened his embrace. “Maybe. I hope I can.”

“I need to know—that you can love a coward.” Falk swallowed hard. “Can you?”

It would have seemed like a childish concern, but Falk clearly meant it. The few words carried so much meaning that Yves wondered just how many hours Falk had spent beating himself up over even wanting to consider desertion. “I’m a coward, Falk. I can’t fight, I don’t want to fight, and I’ve never shot anybody. I spent my life being afraid—of singing, of having talent, of not having talent, of being found out as a fraud, of my own emotions, of letting anybody into my life. You’re not a coward. I recognize cowardice. I see it every morning in the mirror.”

Falk moved away just enough so they could look at each other, meet the other’s gaze. “You saved my life.”

“That, too, was cowardice. I was afraid of what the Germans would do to us.” Yves shook his head. “If you died.”

Falk seemed to think about it for a long while. “Not everybody is a warrior.”

And back to knights and their ladies and Viking warriors and other heroes. Falk truly believed in heroism and wanted to emulate it, regardless of the price. “If I had to choose between a noble warrior who dies defending me, and a lover who runs away to live with me, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment about who I’ll choose.”

Falk stared at him, didn’t speak, seemed to barely breathe. It took Yves several seconds before he realized Falk was waiting for the answer.

“I’d take you alive. No doubt.”

Falk closed his eyes and inched closer. “Then let’s do that.”

They lay there in the quiet of their own breaths and thoughts, hope existing as a fragile feeling between their bodies, something born from that tight embrace and protected by it.

* * *

Améry nodded to his two comrades, and they withdrew toward the door. The bar was only lit with candles, and it could have been cozy if not for the dancing shadows of the tables and chairs and men flickering over the rough walls. Yves struggled to concentrate on Améry—he kept glancing away when another shadow moved in his peripheral vision. The whole bar seemed to be full of fleeting, malicious apparitions.

Yves shook his head. He was too aware that Gestapo might be watching this place, although they had, after all, let Améry go. And yet, von Grimmstein might interpret his presence here as an attempt to defy him. One of the demons in this place was no doubt von Grimmstein.

“So how do you know you can trust him?” Améry sat down at the table. They’d exchanged only a few words about the matter on the street, and Yves had spoken only in the most general of terms, indicating that a friend needed help.

“How does he know he can trust you?”

Améry shrugged. “Trust is very hard to come by these days.” He eyed Yves curiously. “Is he trying to escape from labor service?”

“No. No, it’s not that. He’s not French.”

“Jewish?”

“No.” Yves drew a deep breath. “He’s planning to desert.”

“He’s German?” Améry pushed away from the table, seemingly ready to walk Yves back out the door.

Yves nodded. “Yes. He’s German.”

“And who tells us he isn’t a Gestapo plant?”

“He has his secrets. Among which is a French lover, and he’d like to stay with her.” He was staying close enough to the truth that the lie came out fluently. It had to be simple and convincing.

“I see. And how did you get involved?”

“He’s a fan and took me out for dinner. We had drinks, and he indicated he . . . was skeptical about a German victory.”

Améry scoffed. “With the Allies gaining ground,
he’s not wrong.” He leaned forward. “Does he want to leave France or hide somewhere in the countryside?”

“He’s considering waiting things out in Portugal, maybe continuing on to Algiers.” They had, in the end, decided to hide Falk somewhere not even Gestapo could find him. Sending him off to live with Madeleine in the countryside would be too dangerous, especially if they tracked him down all the way to Yves. Yves didn’t expect to be able to deny everything under torture. There was no point in risking both their lives. And what madness that these thoughts that would normally only make sense in a crime novel made sense here and now in Paris, among respectable people.

“Do you have photos?”

“I can get some.”

“It won’t be cheap.”

“That’s all right. He’s expecting that.” The amount of money that
Little Kisses
had earned dazed Yves—and he didn’t exactly live extravagantly. Many of his meals were paid for by fans, or Maurice invited him. He had few other vices—although Falk likely counted as one of them. He’d happily spend the money on Falk’s escape.

Améry bit his lip, frowned, seemed to consider it. It seemed almost as if he was trying to come up with more reasons against helping with the escape. “All right. I’ll send a message via Édith when we’re ready to go. He can’t take along anything that leads back to us, or you.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“Only one suitcase. The lighter he travels the better.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll send word down the line. But first I need to arrange the papers. Bring me photos as soon as you have them. And don’t mention my name or how we’re connected, just in case he does get picked up.”

Yves nodded again. Excitement surged inside him—half pleasure in the adventure, half anxiety of taking this terrible risk. Of sending his lover away into the unknown with strangers he barely trusted. Though Améry made a difference.

The poor devil who’d been dragged from the cellar where he’d been hiding out to be shot by his own comrades likely hadn’t had the same connections as Falk. Now, Améry was the only thing that stood between Falk and a similar fate.

Chapter 27

Some days, the war was much closer than Yves knew how to cope with. Every time the air sirens went off, he froze, and sometimes the attacks were over before people could find safety, as well-drilled as most people were by now. The rumble of the bombs never stopped being horrifying; possibly more awful was the thought that, once it was over, it hadn’t hit them. It hadn’t been here. It reminded Yves of the story that had terrified him as a boy: the one about Odysseus trapped in the cave of Polyphemus—with his Greeks hiding among the sheep to escape and the blinded Cyclops reaching for sheep and men at random. The BBC claimed that the bombs were aimed only at the Axis, but German propaganda aside, the bombs didn’t always hit whom they were aimed for.

One Sunday, bombs hit the racetrack at Longchamps, and there were stories of bloodied and maimed well-to-do Parisians staggering home through the streets without sense or reason to guide them, as other Parisians in their Sunday finery were out for a walk on this brilliant late spring day. Yves didn’t want to believe the rumors, despite having seen the dark wall of smoke hovering over the city. More than two hundred dead. And another attack the next day.

That evening, Yves spotted empty chairs in the audience and caught himself wondering whether the people who had booked them were even alive anymore, or whether they were the relatives or lovers of the injured or dead and had decided that frivolous entertainment wouldn’t be able to lift the pall that had settled over them and the city.

Yves stood there for a full minute, struggling. The Palace seemed to him like a cemetery, echoing with the screams of the wounded and dying. He barely found the breath or courage to sing.

What saved him was the fact that the others had shown up, were watching him, and the Palace was possibly the only promise of diversion. Clinging to joy, however superficial, in the face of shortages and death was their choice. And once he took that first breath, his voice took over, all the hours of practice, the many nights he’d done this and hoped to continue doing it.

Halfway through, one of the empty chairs filled—Heinrich joined some other German officers at their table.

Nevertheless, the mood was subdued, and it was clear that the audience was distracted. Yves returned for only one encore, and it was half-heartedly demanded, as if the haunting of the attack crept back in the moment Yves had stopped singing and bowed. Yves was glad for it. Tonight, any exuberance seemed ghoulish.

He was in the process of cleaning up and changing when the familiar knock sounded at the door.

“Enter.”

He turned away from the door as Heinrich entered, rubbing his face in case some of the makeup had persisted, and then straightened and turned. “Good evening. I’m glad you could make it.”

“I was held up longer than I’d expected.” Heinrich closed the door. “I was wondering if you would join me and a few friends at the Ritz tonight.”

Yves closed the fresh shirt. “What kind of friends? Just . . . so I’m prepared.”

“Two officers, both very cultured. One of them has just returned from Charkov. I promised to ply him with some of the best Paris has to offer.” Heinrich smiled. “The other is a writer who used to translate French books into German—largely the classics like Balzac.”

“How did you meet him?”

“We served together in the first war.” Heinrich shifted on his feet. “The other guests are a sculptor and a painter. I thought it might be inspiring to bring the arts together at a table for my friend.”

Yves combed his wet hair and peered at him from the side. Friend? Heinrich never struck him as sentimental. In all that time, he’d never mentioned his wife and family, and rarely ever talked about anybody else close to him.

“Well, if he’s your friend, I’m interested to meet him. Besides, I’m starving.”

Heinrich hesitated, and Yves winced at his choice of expression. Rations had been reduced again. “Are you all right?”

Yves waved the question off. “I just forgot to eat all day.”

He was about to reach for his coat when somebody knocked on the door and entered immediately, “Yves, I—”

Yves froze.

Heinrich turned around.

And Falk stopped in his tracks.

Yves forced himself to take his coat off its hook, winning just a moment to compose himself. “Ah,
Monsieur
Harfner. I didn’t see you in the audience.”

Falk and Heinrich measured each other, Falk just glancing at Yves then lifting his chin. “I beg forgiveness,
Herr Oberst
. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“That is quite all right. You are familiar with
Monsieur
Lacroix?”

“He’s a fan. I have more than one.” Yves slipped into his coat, trying to not look too closely at either of them.

“
Jawohl, Herr Oberst
.” Falk slipped into German. He didn’t salute. As far as Yves knew, SS didn’t owe obedience to officers of the regular army, but regardless of the technicality, Falk surely seemed well-behaved and respectful.

“
Oh, Sie sind ein Kunstliebhaber
?” Are you an art lover? Yves felt his face go cold. A trap? Or maybe a moment of well-tempered sarcasm? Did Heinrich suspect something?

“
Nur Musik
.” Falk shrugged.

“Yeah, it’s not quite marching band music.” Now Heinrich was clearly being sarcastic. “Well,
Rottenführer
Harfner
,
Monsieur
Lacroix and myself have a table at the Ritz. You’d be welcome to join us.” A hint of arrogance? Falk on his salary couldn’t afford the kind of places an oberst could frequent.

Falk shook his head. “I don’t wish to interfere,
Herr Oberst
. Besides, I would be missed.” He managed a tone that insinuated he’d be missed by a girl and he was protective of her dignity.

Heinrich didn’t exactly relax but managed to un-stiffen a little. “Then have a good evening.”

“Thank you,
Herr Oberst
.
Heil Hitler
.” Falk gave the sharp, raised-arm salute, turned around, and left.

Yves busied himself with buttoning his coat. What to say that wouldn’t sound suspicious or like he was trying to divert Heinrich’s attention? He weighed a couple dismissals, maybe mock Falk’s rudeness or his awkward French, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“He seemed quite familiar with you?”

“Oh. That’s . . .” Yves tried to think of a way out, then settled on part of the truth. “I met him last year. He had run into trouble near the Chez Martine, where I used to sing. Some local discontents. Ever since then, he’s lingered in the background, claiming I’d saved his life.”

Heinrich opened the door for him. “Saved his life? Why have you never told me you’re a hero? You’ll have to tell me all about it.”

* * *

The evening had been pleasant, as Heinrich had promised. Once or twice, the conversation had turned toward what the Germans called “total war,” as declared by the Nazi elite. Yves understood it was a response to the Allies agreeing that only “unconditional surrender” would do, and Heinrich’s friend shook his head sadly, saying those weren’t the terms of civilized warfare.

Yves had managed to not react, not make a sound at the outrageous concept. Shooting hostages and deporting Jews didn’t strike him as markers of civilized warfare, but Heinrich and company apparently thought in such terms and didn’t see the irony of it. But every time the conversation returned to the war, Heinrich would nudge it back to the topics of art and culture, where Yves felt a lot more secure.

Still, he was glad when the evening was over. Heinrich sent him home with his driver, saying he looked tired and deserved his rest, and that he and his friends would likely stay up, empty a bottle or two of French wine, and reminisce about the good old days.

On the way through the dark streets of Paris, Yves finally had enough time to worry about why exactly Falk had rushed in. He normally knew to be more careful than that.

After he’d thanked the driver, he got out of the car, and his senses sharpened with the memory of danger when he approached the dark entrance of the house. One day, he’d stop being uneasy when he got home, but his nerves were already jittery.

When he opened the door, the golden reflection of candlelight greeted him. Yves inhaled, taking what felt like his first deep breath since stepping off the stage.

Falk sat at his desk, writing. As Yves entered, he stopped, looking up. With his shirt half undone, sleeves rolled up, and dark trousers, he looked like a young worker.

“I’m so sorry.” Yves dropped his coat on one of the chairs and walked to Falk, who stood and, without hesitation, embraced him. “How long have you been waiting?”

“Since when I came.” Falk pressed him closer, then let go. “You all right?”

“Now I am.” Yves rested his head against Falk’s shoulder. He reached for the piece of paper Falk had been writing. It looked like a letter, addressed to him. Falk turned his head and plucked it out of Yves’s hand. “I’ll tell you. I thought you weren’t coming home tonight.”

Yves shook his head. “I’m sorry about the oberst.” And how to explain the situation delicately?

Falk lifted a hand. “He’s an oberst.”

“Yes, but I don’t care about the rank. Do you understand?”

Falk pressed his lips together.

“No, it’s not about that. I got myself into a . . . a situation. He’s a friend, I think. A powerful friend.” And how to explain this? He knew that they had to be discreet—even with each other—a lot more than most people were. Of course they weren’t the first homosexual lovers across enemy lines—just Yves had always imposed extra layers of secrecy onto his personal life, partly because of the oberst, partly because of Édith, and not least of all because he didn’t feel it was anybody’s business to know what he was doing with whom. In an age where the famous traded all the details in return for attention, this gave him a sense of control, however spurious it might be.

“I tried to protect you.” Yves reached for Falk, and Falk took his hand in his. “Von Starck is a very good observer. I didn’t want him to know about us.”

“Do you love him?”

“As a friend. Just a friend.” Yves pressed Falk’s hand and looked at the sheet of paper. “Were you breaking up with me?”

Falk blinked, looked at the letter, and back at Yves. “No. I got my . . .” He frowned, searched for the word. “I’ll join a different unit. I’m leaving.”

“What?”

“I have orders.”

“Where to?”

Falk shrugged. “Likely Russia. It’s not going so well there.”

Yves nearly protested without thinking, then realized Falk likely didn’t know just how much Yves knew. Rumors were exceedingly grim. And even if those were exaggerated, enough of a picture remained that nobody could wish that assignment on anyone right now. “I’ll go see Améry. Maybe he already has the documents. You could leave first thing tomorrow.” Yves grabbed his coat.

“I’ll come too.”

“No. You stay here. I won’t be long.”

Falk looked dubious, but Yves stepped quickly closer and kissed him. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back soon.” He took his keys, slid them into his pocket, and left.

Once outside, it struck Yves just how quiet and dark Paris was these days. Of course the street lamps were painted blue to dampen the light and make it harder for enemy bombers—although the last attacks had shown just how absurd that notion was. But even so, with the shortage of electricity and the curfew, the houses were dark and quiet, striking him now like sentinels more than places where people lived.

As he rushed through the dark streets, the houses around him felt like tombs for their owners, and yet, there were small signs of life: rabbit and pigeon cages on balconies, flowers in flower pots, clean streets, well-kept hedges.

No sound, though. After curfew, there was no laughter or singing in the streets. No cars. Even the formerly busy roads had almost no traffic during the day, and now, after curfew, no vélos, no horse-powered taxis, and not even the cars of the Germans or the Parisian powerful who’d negotiated both fuel coupons and permission to drive. It was a haunted silence, breathless and troubled.

Yves heard the sound of nailed boots on the cobbled streets. He dove into a doorway and held his breath while the steps came closer. German patrols consisted of five men, and that seemed to be the case here, too. He pushed into the corner of the entrance and listened, expecting the steps to slow. Opposite on the house wall, somebody had written “1918” and “Stalingrad”—seemingly unaware that a past victory didn’t mean there would be a future one, and just as unaware that the Germans hadn’t been beaten by the French in Russia. It smelled too much like threatening a bully with a volatile older brother who, once summoned, might turn out to be a worse bully.

The patrol passed.

Yves waited until the only sound he heard was his thumping heart, then continued.

There was no sign of life outside the cellar bar. Apparently it wasn’t an all-night establishment, but maybe there was still somebody inside. He knocked on the door and then the windows. No answer.