“I apologize,” he said, “but I have no better dining facilities here to offer a lady.”
She smiled her forgiveness and followed him.
Saturday, November 2, 1940
CAMP DES MILLES
Nanée and the commandant sat at a small table in the sitting room of a sort of apartment, not across from each other but rather more intimately cornered; if she wasn’t careful to lean her folded legs away from him, they would touch his. She was carefully not careful as she removed first one black glove, then the other. She folded her hands, the diamond cluster ring facing him.
“This is so nice of you, to feed a weary traveler, Monsieur—”
“Robert,” he insisted.
She looked demurely away lest he see the disgust in her eyes. What kind of Frenchman ran a camp like this? It would be revolting enough if he were German, to oversee men made to live so wretchedly. He was a Frenchman who ought to have fought to the death to save his country. Instead, he let prisoners starve while one of his men served him herb-roasted chicken, new potatoes, and delicate green beans on china, on a table set with real silver and a vase holding the last of the season’s roses.
“Robert,” she repeated, the name softer in French than in English. Robe Heir. Bobby. Imagining the sad, pathetic little boy he must have been, playing dress-up in an old robe that had been his grandfather’s. Or his grandmother’s. Yes, a sad little robe heir in his grandmother’s ratty old robe.
He began to pour from a bottle of a local red.
She reached over and touched her hand to his, took the wine and poured first for him, then for herself, and set the bottle beside her own plate, in her control. She put the crystal to her lips, meeting his gaze over the glass and appearing to take a sip while merely wetting her lips with the wine.
Yes, this was going according to plan. But how well did he hold his liquor? Could she get him drunk enough that he might give her Edouard’s residency permit and a camp release in exchange for nothing at all? Men were such absolute fools sometimes. Could she keep him drinking through some small affections until he fell drunkenly asleep, with no memory of the night beyond his own imagining of what they might have done?
They chatted easily. Or rather Nanée asked questions and let him talk about himself, which in all of society seemed to qualify for terrific conversation. Was there a man in this world whose favorite topic wasn’t himself? The more the pathetic rooster puffed himself up, the more disgusted she became, but she was careful to appear attentive, to laugh lightly at jokes that were not the least bit funny and, as often as she could bear it, carefully allow her legs just the briefest bump against his.
A second bottle of wine was brought. She poured for the commandant and topped off her own glass. He handled his liquor unfortunately well.
“I have a friend here, Robert,” she said. Robe Heir.
“Do you? But let’s not talk of such things over dinner.”
A stove was lit against the evening chill. Nanée glanced out the window; was smoke rising from chimneys elsewhere, to warm the prisoners? All that she could see was countryside; in these upper-story rooms, you had to stand at the window even to see the camp’s encircling barbed-wire fence. But she didn’t have to turn toward the window overlooking the yard and the factory to know that the only warmth for those imprisoned here would be the closeness of filthy bodies packed into inadequate space, in the company of fleas and lice, bedbugs, dysentery, and men dying in the night.
The server returned. He eyed her plate. Yes, she was finished, it was delicious, she said, wondering if the young man would eat the rest.
“You’d care for cognac?” Robert asked. “Dessert or cheese?”
The server was sent for cognac first, then to see what sweets might be available.
“Now, mademoiselle, perhaps you could tell me what I can do for you,” Robert said as he offered her a cigarette.
She took it, forcing herself to touch his hand and lean close so he could smell her perfume before it was overwhelmed by tobacco. A small part of her wanted to giggle, as she might have if she were watching this moment played out on a movie screen. But that was just nerves. Nerves and disgust.
“I have a friend here,” she said again.
Robert lit her cigarette. Robe Heir. “Do you? But I’m sure you know I cannot release a man simply because his pretty friend asks me to.”
Nanée met his gaze as she took a first draw and gracefully exhaled.
Finally he said, “Perhaps you’ll start by telling me your friend’s name?”