The Paris Architect: A Novel

Schlegal rubbed his body against Adele’s as he passed through the doorway. He threw his cap on the bed and took off his black tunic. When he turned around, he was extremely pleased to find Adele completely naked. She was quite proud that he’d once told her that no woman he’d ever known could undress so fast. He took off his uniform and gave her a long, slow kiss. Adele put her arms around Schlegal’s neck, hoisting her legs around his waist. He held her aloft while walking around the bedroom, kissing her passionately.

When he got to a flight of carpeted stairs that led to a small study, Schlegal lowered Adele against them and entered her. She had always enjoyed unusual sites for making love—a tour boat on the Seine, the top of Notre Dame—so she was very aroused at being taken on the stairs. Schlegal was also quite aroused and furiously pounded Adele. His feet were firmly planted on the floor to give him extra leverage. But something was wrong that he couldn’t quite figure out. To Adele’s great disappointment, Schlegal stopped in mid-thrust and looked down at the stairs.

“Did you feel these stairs move beneath us?” he said. “The staircase was moving in unison with us, going up and then down ever so slightly.”

“No, my sweet; my mind was elsewhere. And I wish it were still elsewhere.”

Schlegal gave Adele a powerful thrust. “The stairs are moving,” he said. He pulled out of Adele, leaving her sprawled on the stairs.

“So what, for god’s sake; get back in here!” shouted Adele.

“Get off the stairs,” he barked, and Adele raised herself up and stood next to him.

Schlegal reached down, grabbed the edge of the bottom step, and pulled up on it. With great effort, he raised the entire staircase in one piece, revealing a mattress underneath it.

“What the hell is this?” cried Adele. “Why would anyone put a mattress under a stair like this?”

Schlegal moved the heavy staircase up and down.

“It’s hinged at the top, and there’s a bolt on the inside of the bottom step,” he said.

A smile came over Schlegal’s face, and he dropped the stair with a heavy thud. He began to laugh uncontrollably.

“This is most clever,” he said. “It was the hiding place for the Jews we were looking for. No wonder we couldn’t find the bastards. They were here all the time. And we thought they’d escaped out the back!”

“Then why are you so happy about all this?” asked Adele, who was beginning to shiver.

“I admire such ingenuity. I bet my men walked over them two or three times during the search.” Schlegal sat down on the stairs.

“Did the Frenchman think of this?”

“A member of the aristocracy is too stupid to come up with something like this. It had to be someone clever and smart.”

“My friend Lucien, he’s an architect. Maybe he could sniff around. He can make some inquiries. Lucien knows tons of people in the building trades.”

“Your modernist architect lover?”

“Former lover. The one who’s doing many important buildings for the Reich.”

Adele sat beside Schlegal and wrapped her arms around him and began nibbling his ear, but he pushed her away.

“The question is…is this a unique situation…or are there more of these secret hiding places? All those other apartments and buildings I’ve searched—were there Jews hiding right under my nose?”

Adele sighed. She walked over to the bed, pulled off the bedspread, and wrapped it around herself. She reached down, took a cigarette out of his tunic pocket, and lit it.

“Jews have lots of money, and they can bribe anyone. Everyone has their price, even if it means risking death, so there have to be more of these things all over Paris. You’ve made it impossible for the Jews to escape France, so they must be in hiding. I bet you they were right under your nose while you tore those places apart,” Adele said with a laugh.

Adele was now lying on the bed with the bedspread over her. She saw her last comment had hit a nerve. Schlegal was now putting on his shirt, clearly angry and embarrassed, and she watched him with great amusement. He’d been bested by Jews, a subhuman species in his eyes, and his Aryan pride was wounded. At least, they were the only ones who knew of his humiliation. He was about to button his white shirt when she threw off the covers and parted her legs.