She was outvoted. A siren it was to be.
They went on from there to reimagine the suits. In place of the spade, they considered a key of knowledge, then settled on the lock itself, the keyhole, the space that appeared empty but in fact held the hidden mechanics the key must turn. In place of the heart, the blood-red wheel of revolution.
“This begins to sound like a Communist game,” Varian objected.
“You may call it ‘the blood of change’ in the United States,” André assured him. “If you can get us there, we bequeath you renaming rights on the wheel.”
Black stars for dreams—which seemed nonsensical to Nanée. “Stars aren’t black; the sky that holds them is. And black would be for nightmares.”
“Speaking of nightmares,” Victor Serge said, “is it true Walter Benjamin’s death was suicide?”
Benjamin had gone over the Spanish border in late September via a new route that had worked just days before for Lion Feuchtwanger. Despite admonitions to travel lightly so as not to attract attention, he’d insisted on carrying a suitcase full of manuscripts for the ten-hour mountain trek. He’d gotten out, but when he presented himself at the Spanish border post, they would no longer accept entry of stateless persons. He was taken under guard to a hotel near the Portbou police station, to be sent back to France. He died in that hotel room. A cerebral apoplexy, the attending doctor determined, but Benjamin had carried with him a quantity of morphine sufficient to take his own life. There was no safety for a refugee until he arrived on his final shore.
“We need a name for this game,” Nanée said to change the subject.
“There will be more of that, suicides,” Serge said, “with this new Kundt Commission going around. A fine little group of your fiercest Gestapo collecting for deportation to Germany anyone in Rivesaltes or Gurs or Camp des Milles who might have said an unkind word about the führer.”
“We need one more suit,” Nanée said, trying to push back the image of Edouard hanging himself by a noose made of his shirtsleeves from a rafter in some filthy room in some filthy camp. “For our game,” she said.
André said, “Something to replace the diamond. Red.”
“The hot flame of love?” Jacqueline suggested with a flirtatious glance to her husband. “We can call the game Le Jeu de l’Amour.”
The Game of Love.
But André wanted to honor this moment, this place, this time.
“Le Jeu du Air-Bel?” Danny suggested. “Le Jeu des Nazis?”
“No saints, no sinners in this game,” André declared. “No judgment.”
“Le Jeu sans Compter?” T proposed.
Compter: to count, but also to reckon. A double entendre. André always did like wordplay.
“You are an optimist, T,” Jacqueline said. “But I suggest we don’t jinx ourselves by suggesting we won’t meet our reckoning here in Marseille.”
“Marseille,” André said. “That’s it. Let’s call it simply Le Jeu de Marseille.”
Every day in Marseille was a risk, Nanée thought. Every minute in Marseille was a moment in which a life might be lost. She ought to have gone that afternoon to Camp des Milles. She ought to have set off the moment the idea for getting Edouard out had come to her. It had to be done in the evening, anyway. She might be doing it now, instead of playing games under the nightmare stars of Marseille.
Saturday, November 2, 1940
VILLA AIR-BEL
Nanée put on the blue pinstripe Robert Piguet she’d worn when she first met Varian, that to her said Evanston. “Convincing,” T called it, and although Nanée replied fliply, “Convincing of what?” she knew the answer: that she was a woman of substance, used to being listened to and taken seriously. And yet the suit wasn’t as boring as all that, either. Paired with a black belt and black gloves, it did draw a man’s eye. She pulled on her gray trench coat. She would like to wear a hat, but a woman in a hat drew notice, and with no safe conduct pass nor a way to get one without explaining where she meant to go, she needed to move quietly until she was meeting the commandant at Camp des Milles.
Varian wanted her to go and return in a single day, to plead a story about Edouard’s daughter and ask that he be allowed to come to Marseille to sort out the paperwork for a visa. Vichy would very occasionally allow this, albeit traveling with a guard, which would take time to arrange. Nanée had balked, reluctant to risk calling attention to Edouard unless she could expect him to walk out of the camp with her, lest her visit leave him more vulnerable to the Gestapo’s Kundt Commission.
“I’m a terrible liar,” she’d objected.
“We know what an excellent liar you are,” Varian replied, “yet when you deny it, it seems true even to me.”
She added a diamond brooch and diamond cluster ring, gloves, and a dab of Chanel N°5 at her throat, trying not to think about the fact that it was the eve of the anniversary of her father’s death. She packed a change of underthings and a blouse and trousers. The pants would be frowned at, but she’d be on her way back and she carried her American passport and to hell with them all.
“But you’ll be back tonight,” T said when she saw the overnight case.
“Yes, that’s the plan.”
She was scared, no doubt about it. There was no guarantee her own plan would work any better than Varian’s. But she’d left a life of guarantees in Evanston, and it was too late to be wanting them back.
“THERE IS AN earlier train. You don’t wish to go earlier?” the ticket seller asked.
Nanée was buying a ticket to Arles to avoid suspicion, as there was no reason for her to travel to the little village of Les Milles other than to visit the internment camp. For her plan—not Danny’s and Varian’s, but hers—she needed to arrive at the camp in the early evening, and it would be easier to pass the time in Marseille than in tiny Les Milles, where she might draw attention.
“A ticket for the later train,” she told the clerk. “Two tickets for the return.”