The Paris Architect: A Novel

“Herr Colonel, I believe the Reich has some unfinished business here,” Adele said in a soft little girl’s voice.

Schlegal turned around to face her and laughed. He pulled off his shirt and dove onto the bed. They made love for hours, but through it all, Adele knew the Gestapo colonel’s mind was somewhere else.





27





Lucien had always hated Lieber for criticizing his work, but now he loathed the drunken German pig as he guided him through the dark empty streets. Drinking nonstop since 9:00 p.m., Lieber was completely plastered. The café had closed before midnight because of the curfew, so now, along with Herzog and Manet, he was trying to find Lieber another place to drink. Not another soul was on the streets. All the French had to be home and German enlisted men in their barracks, so now the streets belonged to German officers, who had no curfew. There was a complete silence in Paris that lasted from midnight to 6:00 a.m., broken only by the sound of the hobnailed boots of the German five-man patrols walking the streets or a single rifle shot or the spray of machine-gun fire in the distance. A car speeding by meant the Gestapo had picked up some unfortunate soul.

Normally, Lucien avoided Lieber at all costs, but tonight he’d been lassoed into a party by Herzog, who wouldn’t take no for an answer because he too had been forced against his will to come. They’d been accompanied by three very drunk young French prostitutes, each carrying a bottle of vintage wine. The girls were from a brothel reserved for German use only, one of seventeen in Paris. The Reich worried obsessively about sex between the French and their soldiers because of VD, so it restricted sex to these whores, who were kept clean as a whistle by constant medical checkups.

Lucien thought the three tarts were part of the wave of girls from the country who came to the city to escape the poverty brought on by the loss of their husbands and lovers. Céline, Jeanne, and Suzy (if those were their real names) all had a wholesome attractiveness quite different from the cheap, painted look of the usual Parisian streetwalker. He was impressed that they had cards that listed their services and prices in both French and German; their business cards were nicer than his. Their cackling and high-pitched laughter caused some residents on the street to switch on their lights and peer out from behind their curtains. Normally, the Germans were highly motorized, but tonight, for some reason, they were without a car, so the whole parade turned down rue de Rivoli. It was an unusually damp and cold night for September, and a light drizzle began.

“Damn it, Bernard, we have to get inside. The girls are freezing their tits off. And we can’t have that. Find me a place, now,” Lieber ordered. The girls shrieked in agreement, and one kissed Lieber’s cheek.

Lucien could see that Herzog, who clearly wanted to be home in bed, was desperate. “What street is this, Lucien?” he asked testily.

“Rue de Rivoli,” snapped Lucien, who, with Manet, was holding up Lieber’s drunken body.

“Manet, don’t you have an apartment on the rue du Renard?” asked Herzog. “That’s the next left, isn’t it?”

Manet suddenly dropped Lieber’s arm, and the German slumped to the pavement, Lucien barely holding him up. Manet looked up and down the street, thunderstruck, as if just realizing where he was. The entire party fell silent, waiting for his response.

Manet then smiled. “How do you happen to know that, Major? Have you been spying on me?” he asked.

“The Wehrmacht thoroughly checks the backgrounds of all its contractors,” blustered Lieber. “We have to be sure we’re not dealing with a Jew or a Communist. You’re not a Jew, are you?”

The girls shrieked with laughter at the question. Suzy planted a kiss on the cheek of the old man. “He doesn’t look Jewish to me, Maxie,” she said, stroking Manet’s nose.

“Well, do you or don’t you have an apartment on the rue du Renard?” demanded Lieber.