“What’s this?” Sarah asked one of the coryphées in her deep, raspy voice, as she, too, rose on tiptoe to see.
“More decrees against the Jews,” the younger dancer replied.
In the two years since the Occupation, the Nazis had passed anti-Semitic legislation in France, the Statut des Juifs. Jews were now excluded from public life, dismissed from positions in the civil service and the military, and barred from jobs in industry, commerce, medicine, law, and teaching. They were even forbidden to use public telephones. Thousands of Jewish businesses had been seized throughout France; Jewish-owned art and property had been “repossessed.”
And in March, the Reich had also required all Jews in Occupied France, including more than eighty thousand Parisians, to register with the police. Sarah had heard rumors that the next order would have Jews identify themselves by wearing gold Stars of David emblazoned with the word Juif on their chests.
The dancer in front, a wiry étoile named Yvette Chauviré, large eyes accented by thick mascara, read the new regulation aloud: “Decree of June 1942, concerning measures against the Jews—”
“What do you make of it?” one of the other coryphées, Hélo?se Guillemard, whispered to Sarah.
In her role as Sabine Severin, dancer from Monte Carlo recently come to the Paris Opéra Ballet, Sarah couldn’t afford to raise any eyebrows. She shifted her weight to one side and lied, “It doesn’t affect me.”
“Well, I think there’s another roundup coming.” There had been two mass arrests of Jews already—men and foreigners. The prisoners had been taken to camps at Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret. Rumors had swirled since early in the spring that they were being sent to Poland.
“Chez nous en France, tout cela serait impossible,” Roland Petit, one of the company’s premier danseurs, declared. Here in France, that could never happen. He asked Jean Babilee, “Still, if another roundup is coming, what will you do?”
Babilee, another premier danseur, was Jewish—his given name was Jean Gutmann. Sarah had heard he’d left Paris in 1940 when the Wehrmacht had invaded but returned not long after, still dancing beautifully. His dark eyes flashed. “If it comes to that, I’ll run off to the mountains and join the Maquis!” Sarah knew of the Maquis. It was made up of bands of French Resistance fighters in the countryside, called Maquisards, both Jews and men who had escaped to avoid conscription into the Service du travail obligatoire—performing forced labor for Germany.
“Shhh!” warned a girl with a blond ponytail, frightened gaze darting up and down the corridor. “Someone will hear!”
“I don’t care,” retorted Babilee, his voice growing ever louder. “Let them hear. They can’t deny my talent. Besides, my family may be Jewish, but we’ve been here since the Revolution. All of my ancestors fought for France—against the Prussians and in the Great War. I’m a Jew of French ancestry and proud to be French. I believe in the glory of France and always will. I came back to Paris out of loyalty to my country—and I will stand by her.” He folded his arms across his muscular chest. “To the end.”
“You do have a rather large nose,” Roland Petit deadpanned.
“That’s because I have a large”—Babilee paused theatrically—“foot.” The assembled members of the company dissolved in laughter, dispersing and going their separate ways.
“It’s an elegant nose,” Hélo?se said, as the two women made their way down the hall to the corps’s dressing room. Sarah wondered if Hélo?se had a bit of a crush on Babilee. “It looks Basque, don’t you think? Besides, it doesn’t matter here.” She gestured to the studios. “Here we are dancers, all of us. Artists. Art is the only thing that matters to people like us. Are you any good? is the only question worth asking.”
Another dancer caught up to them—one of the quadrilles, one step down from the coryphées. Although her stage name was Daphné Gilbert, Sarah knew that her real name was Simone Dreyfus and that she, like Babilee, was Jewish. “France is the land of human rights,” Simone insisted. “Nothing can happen to us here.”
“I heard they’re taking down the names and addresses of the Jewish children, too,” Hélo?se confided. “My cousin’s boyfriend is a gendarme.”
Sarah hadn’t heard this rumor. “Children? Why?”
“Because they’re planning on rounding them up as well next time.”
“But they’re children!” Daphné protested. “That’s absurd! Thousands of Jews have taken refuge here. Do you know what they say in Poland? ‘France is the Jews’ salvation.’?”
Hélo?se moved her dance bag from one shoulder to the other. “I’m not so sure of that anymore. Maybe you should try America. I hear there’s ballet in New York City. That’s where George Balanchine went, after all.”
“America’s turning away the Jews. Calling us ‘undesirables.’?” Daphné managed a coquettish smile. “Of course, I, myself, am quite desirable, don’t you agree?” She ran her hands down the curves of her waist and hips. “Oh, here’s a joke I heard—why don’t the Germans like the Jews?”
Sarah and Hélo?se waited.
Daphné chortled. “They only like barb-Aryans!”
The three dancers entered the spartan dressing room all the lower-ranking girls in the company shared. Sarah set down her dance bag and opened it, pulling out a slip of an evening gown, intended for the opening-night party after the performance, and hanging it up. She also took out her silver sandals, a chiffon wrap, and a beaded clutch—complete with a compact, lipstick with a sleeping pill concealed in the base, and a camera hidden in a cigarette case that, with any luck, she’d be using later that night.
As Pétain looked down impassively from his official portrait and a wall clock with long black hands kept the time, the female dancers all changed quickly from their street clothes into tights, leotards, and practice tutus, tying the ribbons on their worn pointe shoes. This last rehearsal, on the stage, was to perfect the blocking of the prologue before the curtain rose on the premiere.
As Sarah changed, Hélo?se snuck a look at her figure. The tall brunette was usually slim, but, since she’d arrived in France, her body had become more rounded. “Ooh la la, your breasts, Sabine! They’re huge!”
Sarah looked down. Her breasts had always been small, too small in her opinion, but they’d grown, she had to admit. And felt tender. “I’m going to get my period,” she replied.
“Do you still get yours?” asked Daphné. “I didn’t think any of us did anymore, not with the rationing.”
As she had been instructed, Sarah left her black dance bag on the bench, and when another dancer, one she’d rarely seen, slipped hers beside it, Sarah picked that one up. The dance bags were identical. The other girl took Sarah’s. The exchange was performed as gracefully as any pas de deux. Sarah lifted the new bag and slung it over her delicate shoulder, the straps biting into her pale skin. Fait accompli, she wished she could say aloud.
—
In the wings, it was dark. Dust motes sparkled in the beams of blue and amber gelled lights. Dancers clustered about a freestanding barre, holding it lightly with one hand, bending forward then arching backward, doing demi-pliés and relevés to warm up. Others were stretched against pieces of the set or moved their weight from foot to foot, burning off excess nerves. A few girls sat on the wooden floor, sewing pink ribbons onto their slippers and darning the satin toe tips for extra traction. An African-looking man, a trombonist from New Orleans whom Sarah knew played jazz with Django Reinhardt at La Cigale, pushed a wide broom. He’d been allowed to keep his job as stage manager at the Opéra when Serge Lifar promised Goebbels and his men that no black man would ever be seen by the audience.