The mood gets ugly when someone spits on the toe of my elegant black pump.
I grit my teeth and ignore it, knowing my leather-soled shoe is another reminder of the hated German occupiers and the pain and sacrifice forced upon Parisians. I’m well aware they don’t have enough to eat, they’re obligated to observe curfews, and they patch the soles of their shoes with varnished wood.
Unlike me.
I dine at the Hȏtel Ritz, move about the city freely, and sport haute couture high heels courtesy of the studio wardrobe department. New leather shoes are impossible to come by since the Germans requisitioned millions of pairs from the shops and boutiques to send to the Vaterland, a phrase I hear often from my handsome escort.
Captain Karl Lunzer. An SS officer from Berlin, decorated hero to hear him tell it, avid sportsman, and trusted aide to a top Nazi Wehrmacht commander stationed here in Paris. He wears his status well as an officer in a finely pressed, grey-green uniform along with a Luger pistol in his belt, and black leather gloves. A tall, lean man with his bright blond hair cut so short on the sides it bristles. He has a fetish for carrying a polo whip with a brown leather handle, which he is quick to use at the slightest provocation.
He’s glued to my side like a postage stamp I can’t get rid of. I pretend not to notice the spontaneous gesture of defiance on my poor shoe. Karl is not so forgiving.
‘Get back in the motorcar, Sylvie. It’s not safe for you here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Karl,’ I toss back at him, then grab a tied bunch of yellow daffodils from the leather seat of the luxury motorcar parked near the carriage gate. I keep my smile big but my voice low so only he can hear me. ‘These are my fans.’
‘I must insist, Liebling…’
I pat his arm and then wet my lips. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
It takes every ounce of self-restraint I have left to keep smiling, not lash out at my old neighbors for putting my mission in jeopardy. The bigger I smile, the more tension I feel, my body vibrating with a familiar anxiety, similar to what comes over me when someone forgets their lines and I have to improvise. And do it fast.
But this is no movie set.
The fools. Don’t they know the whole lot of them could be shot?
I quiet my breathing, sway my shoulders to catch Karl’s eye, knowing that although he exhibits meticulous manners around me, he’s an SS officer known for inflicting justice on anyone who challenges his authority. I cringe, remembering earlier today when we rushed out of Aux Deux Magots café after raising a toast to the premiere later of my new film, Le Masque de Velours de Versailles (The Velvet Mask of Versailles), his Nazi cohorts downing beer after beer. I couldn’t ignore the note slipped under my plate at the café demanding my immediate attention.
The flower of the day is yellow daffodils.
I froze. The color of danger.
A change of plans. I couldn’t let my fear show, alert Karl anything was amiss. The late afternoon sun cast the perfect light on my skin, my black Fedora cocked at a right angle as I smiled and asked the dashing lieutenant sitting across from me to film us with my home movie camera. A spontaneous whim on my part to allay suspicion from my actions and keep up my act in front of my German admirers.
That only attracted more attention.
I couldn’t escape the press eager to photograph France’s ‘beloved actress Sylvie Martone with her new Nazi friends’. As a newsman snapped a photo of us posing in front of the silver Mercedes, all I could think about was, Emil will love all this publicity.
Then we raced off, headed to the private screening, but not before the SS officer harassed a poor soul crossing the street who failed to get out of the way, forcing the staff car to hit the curb. Without a backward glance, Karl bolted out of the car and struck the man’s face with his whip, drawing blood. My adrenaline spiked, my sense of decency pushing me forward to help him, but the deprecating look on Karl’s face stopped me. I did nothing. And for that I’m ashamed.
When Karl got back into the motorcar, he chatted about his last post in Warsaw as if nothing had happened. How ugly the city is now, in ruins from the fighting, and how grateful he is Hitler spared Paris and she retained her beauty. Like you, Fräulein, he was quick to add, kissing my hand and glaring at my breasts straining through the silk. I answered him with a wide smile, playing my part as his companion.
I didn’t dare show any indication of the unpleasant sensation that hit me when he touched me. No wrinkling of my brow or teary eyes, only a forced smile. A difficult moment. He’d take any show of unpleasantness as a sign of my distaste for der Fuehrer, something I wasn’t careful enough in the past to disavow. It took me a while to convince the captain I find being in his presence most attractive. I can’t afford to let anything get in the way of that… even the natural changes my body is experiencing as a new life grows within me. A secret I must keep from Karl, my fans. I never expected this at thirty-three… quite an inappropriate time for it to happen to me, but I feel blessed.
I talked Karl into stopping at a flower market along the way so I could greet fans and boost awareness of my first film opening since the Occupation, then pass by my old apartment in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine before heading to Le Grand Rex. He seemed to genuinely enjoy mingling with the curious onlookers smiling and nodding at us. He took a daffodil from the bunch I bought and handed it to the elderly madame selling the blooms, telling her in decent French she reminded him of his grand-mère. I regarded him with a wistful sigh. For a moment, he seemed almost human. I soon wiped that attribute from his slate.
He is and always will be a Boche. A not-so-flattering term for the German occupiers.
Now, wary of jeopardizing my mission, my body shakes with uncertainty at how to deal with this spitting incident. My nerves are getting to me. My stomach plummets and I swallow down a bout of nausea. I have only myself to blame. I knew suggesting we come by here might put me in a heartbreaking dilemma.
I swallow hard, hoping Karl doesn’t grasp the intensity of my toothy smile. Even when I don’t feel it, I act the part, never forgetting how hard I worked to get here.
It’s important to me to show the people of Paris I’m still their Ninette. That doesn’t stop me from feeling like an imposter. Tears sting my eyes as I wonder what happened to the memorable character I created in silent film serials back in the late 1920s. I keep asking myself, how did I, Ninette, end up holding on to the arm of an SS officer? Nuzzling up to the Nazi swine like a she-hound in heat, the foul smell of his deeds rubbing off me and staining my soul?
These Parisians staring at me were once my neighbors when I was starting out in pictures. I lived here back then, at number 23, a three-story, white stone building with ivy climbing up the walls and a hand-carved blue door. They helped make me a star, drank rich espresso with me on cool mornings while they acted out their favorite scenes from my early films. Before I became box office gold, according to Emil, the director who discovered me as a teen.
Now they hate me.
Ten or fifteen hearty souls gather around me, staring, waiting for something dreadful to happen. I let my gaze wander over the motley group, knowing their foibles. Like the baker’s wife with the big laugh, or the wizened cabinet maker, or the aging soubrette. And the teenage girl with freckles and glasses, her mother using her broom to sweep her daughter inside whenever a lad smiled at her. All waiting for the deadly reprisal of the SS, the smirk, the arrogance, followed by a keen shot from a Luger or a public beating. I feel the intensity of their foreboding, believing someone will be singled out to pay for the rash deed of spitting on my shoe. No one runs. That would define them as the guilty one.
Instead they wait.
Their angst hangs heavy in the air as I step forward, my arms filled with daffodils tightly bound with coarse