She tapped her cigarette in the little silver ashtray set between them. Could she trust this man? If she gave his name, would that put Edouard in even more danger?
She unbuttoned her jacket as if to get more comfortable, revealing a peek at the short jacket’s soft yellow silk lining and a view of the belt cinching her waist.
“It is not as you imagine,” she said. “He is a friend.”
He waited, watching, unconvinced.
“My friend is a father,” Nanée continued. “His daughter’s mother died some years ago. Now the daughter is in ill health. Truly, she needs her father. It’s a difficult enough time for a child even when she is well.”
Varian’s plan, but on Nanée’s own schedule. She had every intention of walking out of this camp with Edouard Moss at her side.
“It is a difficult time for all of France, of course,” Robert said.
She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, making sure the silk stockings rustled softly, almost inaudibly, as thigh touched thigh under the conservative pin-striped skirt.
He looked away, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “If I had his name, I might consider his file,” he conceded.
The server returned with a bottle of Rémy Martin and two glasses.
Robert told him, “I’ll need you to bring me the file for . . .”
He looked to Nanée. The server looked with him.
Nanée hesitated, but what choice did she have but to plunge forward at this point? “Edouard Moss,” she said quietly.
The commandant told the man he might leave the bottle on the table and dismissed him without thanks. He poured first his own glass, then one for her, the cognac sharp-smelling as it splashed into the crystal.
They drank and chatted about how very French it was to be short of everything and yet still have plenty of wine and cognac. She was beginning to imagine something dreadful—that the guard was punishing Edouard for her inquiry, or that Edouard wasn’t there, that like Hasenclever or Benjamin, he might have given up hope and taken his own life—when finally the server returned with the file and a plate of madeleines.
Nanée waited for the server to leave, for the commandant to focus his attention again on her, then broke off a piece of madeleine and set it on her tongue.
His Adam’s apple again bobbed in his neck.
The thing was gritty and sour in her mouth, like every bite of the dinner she’d managed to choke down. She reached for her cognac.
He invited her to join him on the sofa, where it would, he assured her, be easier for them to look at this file together. He moved himself, taking his glass and the file, leaving her little choice but to follow.
He opened the file and read quickly. He looked back up and considered Nanée. “And you are asking only for him to be allowed to come to . . . Where did you say this daughter is?” His voice pitched slightly higher now, excited. “It is possible I might arrange for guards to bring him for a brief visit if the girl is in Marseille with you.”
Nanée took another cigarette and leaned forward for him to light it. She waited, not even imagining giggling this time.
She undid the top button of her crepe de chine blouse, as if to suggest how very warm it was in the generously heated room.
“You seem an honorable man, Robert,” she said. “Are you an honorable man? One who keeps his promises?”
Sunday, November 3, 1940
CAMP DES MILLES
It was dark out, past midnight, but still a low murmur came from beyond the window. Nanée stood watching the men in the moonlight, waiting in line for the latrines. She pulled her suit coat closer around her, trying to imagine herself elsewhere as the commandant snored, asleep on the couch. What came to mind was that party at her apartment in Paris, Edouard Moss explaining why women in Surrealist art were so often naked and dismembered—because men were interested in exploring, without moral judgment, obsession, anxiety, fetish.
Without moral judgment, she told herself. With a life at stake. She believed this. She did.
But it had gone all wrong. They had been sitting on the sofa with Edouard’s file and a camp release on the coffee table. Two chaste kisses, nothing more. She had put the pen in his hand. He seemed so pleased to be doing her this favor.
He set the pen back down beside the unsigned release then, and touched a finger to her shoulder, as if for one last kiss. He trailed it down a pinstripe toward her breast. She demurred.
He put his hand on the back of her neck and intertwined his fingers in her hair. He wanted another kiss, fine. One more kiss.