Night Soldiers (26 page)

In Catalonia, some way inland from the ancient spice city of Tarragona, in the valley of the Río Ebro, lay the village of San Ximene. In the late summer of 1938, a company of Nationalist infantry moved into the town and took it without a shot being fired. By then, the conquest of the province was no longer an issue, and nobody wanted to be the last to die. As the troops marched in, a little winded because the village stood high above the road, a few people lined the narrow lane, waved tiny Monarchist flags, and gave the cheer heard now all across the country.
“Han pasado,”
they called out.
“Han pasado!”
They
have
passed. Don Teodosio and Doña Flora and Miguelito the chauffeur were ceremoniously released from captivity. Both mayors, Avena from the PSUC and Quinto of the POUM, were ceremoniously shot. There wasn't much else to do, so the captain ordered his men forward. They had liberated San Ximene, and he felt they ought to go on, to Calaguer or Santoval, before nightfall. Marching out of the village in good order, they passed through an orchard of fig trees. A sergeant was sent to reconnoiter, but there was no fruit to be had. The sergeant was a country man, and told the captain that the trees had not been pruned. Branches had broken off under the weight of the fruit, disease had spread into the trunks from the open wood, and that was the end of the San Ximene figs.

“S
TEADY ON!
”

“Dear boy. Trod on your paw, have I?”

“Damn near.”

“I am sorry. Can't see a thing with the lights off. Candles are lovely in a ballroom, but they do keep one in shadow.”

“Bloody Frenchies. If it ain't a knife 'n' fork they can't work it.”

“Not the power, actually. One of Winnie's
effects
I think. Makes it funereal.”

“Mmm.”

“I'm Roger Fitzware.”

“Jimmy Grey. West Sussex Fitzwares, is it?”

“C'est moi.”

“Mmm. Been in Paris long?”

“Live here, actually, most of the time.”

“Do you. I'm just in from Cairo. Over at the Bristol.”

“How do you find it?”

“Service gone to hell, of course, and full of Americans.”

“In Cairo on business?”

“Little of everything, really.”

“Hot as ever?”

“Yes. Damned filthy too.”

“Dear old thing.”

“Not my sort of place, all those little brown men running about and stabbing each other.”

“Oh well. One puts up with the little brown men. For the sake of the little brown boys.”

“Mmm
. Wouldn't know about that.”

“Ah, here's the lovely Ginger.”

“Roddy Fitzware! You promised to call—Who's this?”

“Ginger Pudakis, meet Jimmy Grey.”

“Delighted. Mmm. Yes, well, think I see somebody I know. Good to have met you, Fitzware.”

“See you.”

“Roddy! You are exceptionally bad. You terrified that poor man.”

“Oh well, it
is
Paris, after all.”

“Not here, my lamb. Here is a little corner of a foreign field, and that fellow, if I'm not mistaken, is something or other to Viscount Grey.”

“The 1914 man? ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our time.' That the one?”

“Yes.”

“The lamps are certainly out here.”

“Where's Mützi?”

“Home. In a great snit.”

“Oh Roddy, you mustn't be cruel.”

“Me! Ginger dear, I've been an absolute bishop, really I have. But he snuck out while I was having me nap, taxied off to Gabouchard and bought himself the most impossible tie. Couldn't let him wear it, could I, not to Winnie and Dicky's. Had a sunset. Some dreadful peachy pinky sort of thing they sold him. Poor Mützi and his filthy
Boche
taste, he can't help himself at all. When I left he was playing Mendelssohn on the Victrola and mumbling about
Selbstmord
or some such thing. Ending it all.”

“Too sad. All for a tie.”

“Told him not to get blood on the drapes.”

“You're a horrid man, you really are.”

“C'est moi
. Care to step onto the balcony?”

“And what would you do on the balcony?”

“Think of something, dear girl.”

“You probably would.”

“Speaking of that, where's old Winnie and Dicky?”

“Grand entrance at midnight, one is told. From the ballroom elevator.”

“Too bad Mützi isn't here to see this, he quite loves the Teutonic style. Draped candles, urns with cypress, roses painted black. Nobody actually dead, is there?”

“Heavens no. On the stroke of midnight, Winnie Beale turns thirty-nine. It's a funeral for her youth.”

“Ah.”

“Really, one must love the Americans.”

“You married one, my dear, so you must. Whatever became of Mr. Pudakis?”

“In Chicago, as always. Where he does something with meat. Bloody old Europe didn't agree with poor Harry.”

“Hello! Something's up, the music's gone queer.”

“It's the funeral march. Is it? Yes, I think it is. Sounds a bit odd from a jazz band.”

“Speaking of odd,
regardez
the elevator.”

“Good God. Now that is courage.”

“Ain't it though? Throw yourself a birthday bash and make an entrance entirely bare-arsed.
Bravo Winnie! Hurrah!”

“Well, not entirely bare-arsed. The hat is from Schiaparelli, my sweet, the pearls are Bulgari, and the little catch-me/fuck-me shoes are made by a little man in the Rue des Moulins.”

“Still, rather a decent set of flanks …”

“Now Roddy, don't be boring.”

“Tell me, dear girl, who's that hard-looking gent presiding over the salmon?”

“Him? You know him. It's Mario Thoeni, the tenor, though one wouldn't exactly say hard-looking …”

“Gawd not him. The
waiter.”

“Oh who knows. Some dreadful Slav from Heininger. Winnie finds him decorative.”

“She's right, you know. He's quite thoroughly decorative.”

“Roddy Fitzware, you're not to poach!”

“Dear girl, wouldn't think of it.”

All his life he had handled tools, but this one had its own special set of perfections. It was made of silver, with a pleasing weight that sealed it to the hand, a broad filigree surface ending in a rounded point and a subtle edge of just the proper sharpness. He pressed it down through the pink flesh of the salmon—choosing a natural striation for the cut—deftly balanced the portion atop the server, then slid it neatly onto the maize-colored plate. With ceremony, he laid the server on a silver dish and took up a small ladle. He swirled it twice through the thick
sauce diplomat
—as though to banish some godlike impurity—then, from the left, drizzled a thin river to the salmon slice, paused to anoint the top with a decorative pool, as in a garden, then ran the river to a perfect delta on the other side of the plate, stopping just short of the thick gold banding. With a tiny silver trident, he fashioned a triangle of capers on the dryland north of the river, then, the dénouement, placed two black truffle “rocks” at the edge of the garden pool. White-gloved hand turned beneath the plate so that the intrusive thumb barely rode the edge, he proffered the masterwork, eyes down, speaking the words
“Merci, madame”
in a soft undertone.

That afternoon, carrying silver trays of hors d'oeuvres covered with brown paper upstairs to the kitchen that served the ballroom, he had observed the Beales' chef preparing the
sauce diplomat
. Fish stock, cream—too thick to pour, it had to be spooned from the bottle—lobster butter, brandy and cayenne. Now, in a crystal bowl by his right hand, the sauce's combined scents drifted up and tormented him. Normally, when he worked at the Brasserie Heininger, he could manage a discreet sample somewhere between kitchen and dining room, but here one was in the public eye.

For a moment, there was no one to serve—a group of rosy-cheeked men favored the roast—and he gazed out into the crowd with the particular dead-eyed, unseeing servant's stare he'd been taught, suggesting that only the ritual of the salmon could bring him to life. Yet he did see.

A clever play. Written out moment to moment by the guests themselves as they moved about the polished black linoleum in candlelight. Each one, he thought, achieved a sort of glossy sainthood in a special and individual way. Yes, there were trembling hands and bulging eyes and mighty bosoms and shiny pates. No different than Vidin, really. Yet here, by way of some magical process these people had thought up, the common pranks life played upon the body mattered less. The old ladies had big rings and naughty eyes. The fat men were highly polished and told jokes. The chinless girls laughed and shook their little breasts. The wispy young men with wispy mustaches leaned over cleverly and seemed watchful and intelligent. Thank God, he thought, for Omaraeff. Who had brought him to such spectacles.

He served a plumpish, fair-haired man who seemed lost and friendless and on his way to being very drunk in a very depressing way. Then a tall dowager with heavily rouged cheeks who glared down at him with apparent anger. That he would dare to serve her? Perhaps. These were, for the most part, English people, a tribe that swathed its rituals in mystery and seemed perpetually annoyed at the world, offended, perhaps, at humanity's never-ending attempts to discover what they wanted.

He did not care. He had only salmon to offer, and
sauce diplomat
. The American woman, Winnie Beale, floated through the room, principally nude and entirely without shame. Clothed only in social position. Which, curiously, sufficed. He had served her table at Heininger several nights in a row—during the opera season, late suppers at Heininger were virtually compulsory—and Omaraeff had informed him that he was now to work at private parties in the Beale mansion on the Rue de Varenne.

Informed him on other subjects as well. Told him, for instance, that Winifred Beale had in fact begun life as Ethel Glebb, daughter of a trolley motorman in a smoky Ohio town on a lake. Worked as a telephone operator. Contrived to meet, and ultimately marry, Dicky Beale of Syracuse, the heir to an immense fortune acquired by his grandfather through the manufacture of stovepipe.

Omaraeff knew everything.

Had thus prepared him for the inevitable grappling match, precisely foreseen and described. The summons to the house. The taxi ride across a rainy Paris afternoon with a tray of
langoustines
on his lap. The maid's direction to “bring them upstairs.” The small library that overlooked the Rodin gardens. The flowered cotton shift so accidentally open. The sly look, the giggle, the teasing wordplay of a young girl. The balletic sweep into his arms. The rolling around on the Oriental carpet. “Meet the attack,” Omaraeff had said, “respond to each sortie, but do not advance. Should she wish the cannon rolled out and fired, let her see to it, but do not permit yourself to be provoked. A single sign of passion on your part, dear Khristo, and you will work here no more.” Those instructions he had followed to the letter. She was, up close, frightfully plain. Her face apparently beaten into neutrality over the years, so oiled, patted, painted, baked, kneaded and creamed that it ultimately had neither expression nor feature. It had become a blank canvas, to be turned into whatever she wished. The act was not consummated. She let him up. Kissed him like a fond aunt. He became again the waiter, smoothed his hair, busied himself for a moment with the arrangement of
langoustines
on the tray, then returned to the restaurant by Métro, pocketing the cab fare.

Some of the guests were dancing. A clickety-clack step to the fast foxtrot produced by the band, four American Negroes who performed most nights at Le Hot Club. The leader, chopping rhythmically at the white piano with thick fingers, was called Toledo Red, his trademark, an unlit stub of cigar, clamped in his teeth as he played. The dancers leaned their upper bodies together, eyes vague, flopping about like unstrung puppets. Khristo watched for a time, seeming to look through them, in fact studying their dance in the smoked-glass mirrors that lined the walls. He noticed that the drapes—black for this occasion, normally violet—had fallen open at one of the tall windows, and he thought he could see snowflakes drifting slowly past the glass. It was the last week in March.

“Hallo there, Nick.”

He snapped to attention.
“Madame,”
he said, bowing slightly.

“A bit of salmon?”

“Bien sûr, madame.”

He took up the silver salmon knife. She was so pale and pretty, this one, like a movie star, a fragile flower in the last decline, dying in the final reel. She was often at his table at Heininger and, as the champagne bottles emptied—“More shampers, Nick!” they would call out—her cheeks blushed red and she became excited and clapped her hands and shrieked with delight at anything anybody said.

“Merci, madame.”

“Thanks ever so much.”

Nick.

At the internment camp near Perpignan, where the French had detained him while the socialist government chased its tail in circles over what was to be done about the Spanish war, Khristo had decided to become a Russian. He was alone at the camp; his three fellow fugitives had fled into the night, having decided that safety lay in ignorance of each other's intentions. Renata and Faye Berns had been released almost immediately. Andres had been held for a day, then produced a Greek passport from the lining of his jacket and was freed.

But Khristo was officially without documents—the Russian passport with the nom de guerre Markov was nothing but a danger to him and now lay beneath four inches of earth in a Spanish field—so was designated by French officials a Stateless Person. A Russian, he believed, could more easily lose himself in a city like Paris. A Bulgarian would stand out; the Parisian émigré community from that country was not large. But the plan did not work. The League of Nations official who finally processed him, in the last week of 1936, was a Czech, and Khristo dared not try to fool him. Thus he left the camp under his brother's name, Nikko, and the last name Petrov, common in Bulgaria. The English patrons of the restaurant had shortened Nikko to Nick.

The camp had been a vile place. The internees spent their days shuffling around the barbed-wire perimeter or playing cards—the deck made of torn strips of paper—for cigarettes. They huddled around stoves made of punched-out petrol tins and plotted endlessly in a stew of languages. After more than a month of it, Khristo had thought seriously of escaping. The Senegalese troops who guarded them sometimes did not bring water all day long and the inmates were tortured by thirst, pleading through the wire while the guards stared at them curiously. Sometimes a gate was left open—a clear invitation to escape. If one were caught, however, deportation back to Spain was automatic.