Part One: The Siege — Chapter 6 - The Barman of the Ritz

JULY 12, 1940

Frank wakes with a start, shivering, the bedsheets soaked. It is three o’clock in the morning.

Nearly a month now since the Germans arrived, and what have I done? I spend my time kissing Speidel’s ass in the hope of I don’t know what. I’ve become everything I wanted to avoid. Good evening, gentlemen! Rum Fizz, Colonel?

Smiling at the Germans is eating me alive.

But yesterday, full constitutive powers were accorded to Philippe Pétain.

The corrupt Republic is over. The maréchal is in charge, at last!

Last night, Pétain gave a speech on the radio. His voice quavered a little, but he spoke clearly.

From the first words, Frank was reunited with the maréchal he knew from the front lines during the Great War:

“France, alone in the face of its destiny, will rediscover its courage by preserving its faith in the future.”

Frank first met Pétain when the maréchal was only a general. It was April 1915, on the Western Front. The Austrian had chosen to fight for France, his adoptive homeland; France was under attack; he rallied to the call—you either have a sense of honor or you don’t.

Under the command of Pétain, a war leader unlike any other, they had fought the Huns in the hills of Arras, at Vimy Ridge. Artillery, shelling, a blitzkrieg, the right time, the right place: on May 9, the Moroccan Division broke through the German lines—the French Army had waited for a breakthrough for months! But reinforcements were slow in coming, and to forge on without them would have been suicide. Pétain halted the offensive, and the war dragged on.

“Our mission is to restore to France the strength that it has lost.”

The maréchal’s voice on the radio now brings memories flooding back. March 1916, Verdun, Georges, and the others, and then Craonne, the carnage.

“Let’s give ourselves to France! She has always led her people to greatness.”

Frank tosses and turns in bed, thinking about the new permanent resident soon to arrive at the Ritz. Hermann Göring—Frank first heard the name a lifetime ago, when Göring was commander of the German fighter pilots during the Great War. Since then, Göring has come to be admired and feared. As one of the Führer’s closest allies, he was entrusted with the creation of the Gestapo. Now, he has been appointed Reichsmarschall, commanding all the officers in Germany’s armed forces. And very soon he will be living in the Imperial Suite of the Ritz.

Göring planned to settle at the hotel after a few minor modifications—including the installation of a huge bathtub in his room. Frank had launched a little investigation but did not have to dig too deep. Late one night, an officer of the Luftwaffe drunk on brandy told him that the “Iron Man” needed to take long baths “for health reasons.” He did not want to say more, but the barman understood. Blanche Auzello also took long baths to soothe her morphine addiction. Where is she now? During the day, Frank can lie to himself, but at night there’s nowhere to hide. Blanche is constantly with him. A fantasy. Unattainable. Where is she in all this mess?

The Swedish church, a few steps from his apartment, is already tolling 5 a.m.

Diary of Frank Meier

The first time I laid eyes on Blanche was in the Ritz’s Galerie des Merveilles, one day in 1925. She was like an apparition, as beautiful and haughty as I was plain and ordinary. As flamboyant as I was discreet. But deep down, it seemed to me, she was just as vulnerable. Claude, the hotel manager, had shown me a photograph of his wife, but no picture could have done justice to her elegance: shoulders back, head high, legs as long as a summer’s evening. Her hair like jet, skin like snow, full lips, and a playfulness that offset her brooding gaze. To me, she was a princess in exile.

Blanche and Claude Auzello met at the Claridge in 1922, when he was deputy manager and she a young American actress with a few silent films to her credit, dreaming of a career in the cinema. Before long, the East Coast beauty and the dashing young man from the south of France became engaged, a union that would put an end to her ambition.

Some months later, Claude Auzello was hired as deputy manager of the Ritz. He told me later that it was a role he had long dreamed of—who in the hotel business did not dream of working at the Ritz? But he had his sights set even higher, on the prized manager position.

In 1924 Claude sent me a message that he would like to meet. On a bitterly cold day in March we met at the Café de la Paix, where, over a bowl of Viandox, Auzello told me that his fiancée, Blanche, had been born a Rubenstein, daughter of a German-Jewish couple who emigrated to New York in the late 1880s. I immediately felt a kinship, but I didn’t say a word. Auzello was scared this might affect his career at the Ritz. He had heard rumors that Marie-Louise, the widow of César Ritz, who had taken the reins since her husband’s death, was wary of Jews.

Although I had never met Blanche, I had contacts that I thought might be able to help my new boss. There was one man in particular who sprang to mind. A former client at my bar, an official at the American embassy, who had a sizable unpaid tab, so he owed me a favor or two. In the end it was quite easy to erase Blanche’s Ashkenazi ancestry. She told the police that she had lost her passport and was issued with new identity papers, certified by my client from the embassy, with a new maiden name that no one in Paris could verify. Within a few weeks, Blanche Rubenstein from New York became Blanche Ross from Cleveland, Ohio. I, of course, was happy with a ten percent finder’s fee—the same percentage I charged for the illicit bets I took behind the bar—and the path was clear for Claude to marry Blanche, now a perfect little Christian girl from the Midwest, without jeopardizing his prospects of becoming manager of the Ritz, which he did a couple of years later.

My earliest exchanges with Blanche Auzello were little more than polite chats in the corridors of the hotel. I knew of her Jewish origins and she must have surely been aware of my role in obtaining her new papers. Then, one evening shortly before Christmas 1922, she walked into my bar, newly opened that year opposite its venerable cousin, the Café Parisien. The Petit Bar was conceived of as a space for women so that they too could drink in public, unprecedented in European high society. While Claude loved the idea, Marie-Louise Ritz did not, but it was eventually decided that there would be a one-month trial, under strict supervision. Within a fortnight, the success of the bar was obvious: the ladies of Paris could not get enough of my cocktails. And the reputation of the Ritz soared! Yes, we were trailblazers, but the money flowed in too, all but making up for the losses the Ritz had sustained during the recent financial crisis. Marie-Louise grudgingly consented to allow the Petit Bar to remain open indefinitely, but any mixing of the sexes was strictly prohibited.

My friend Georges Scheuer joined me behind the bar. We were the only two men allowed among the rich socialites.

Then, one night, Blanche Auzello strode in, and with great elegance perched on a high stool as if she were a regular. She was wearing a floral dress of Siamese silk with a blue felt bonnet, far too flimsy given that winter was around the corner, but that was Blanche. With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, she ordered a Bijou “while I wait for my friend. She’s running a little late.” I was astonished and impressed. The Bijou brought together the colors of three precious jewels: gin for diamonds, vermouth for rubies, and chartreuse for emeralds. But where on earth had Blanche heard of this old-fashioned cocktail? No one at the Ritz ever ordered a Bijou these days, though I had served hundreds in the bar at Hoffman House.

Blanche Auzello drank three of them in the space of two hours. Her friend never appeared.

And so a pattern of sorts evolved; when I was not mixing cocktails, Blanche and I would talk about our days in New York. She told me about late afternoons spent at the Plaza speakeasy with her friend Pearl White, a silent movie star. She told me that their favorite pastime was flirting with the young Wall Street brokers who would invite them to their lavish Long Island houses for the weekend.

Blanche radiated a joie de vivre beneath her poise, so much so that I wished I were twenty years younger so I could go back to New York with her. Did she sense my yearning? She ordered a fourth cocktail. As though to seal a pact. In a barely audible murmur, she said: “I cannot thank you enough for what you did, Frank. Without you, Claude would probably never have become manager,” before confessing to me that she would be incapable of finding Cleveland on a map. We laughed and laughed. But then, in another whisper, she admitted she found it strange to have to hide part of herself from others.

Of course, she had no idea that I myself was Jewish. And I came close to admitting it, I must say. But the one thing I will never forget about that night was my burning desire to kiss her.