Part Two: Strategic Warfare — Chapter 1 - The Barman of the Ritz

PART TWO: STRATEGIC WARFARE

AUGUST 16, 1940

Marie-Louise Ritz has come back from Lucerne. She is said to be in fine fettle—which inevitably heralds the worst. Last night, as he lay awake, Frank Meier counted the seasons: it has been four years since he last saw the Widow.

Every night now the bar is thronged with German officers, although Frank is surprised that he has not laid eyes on Colonel Speidel for ten days. They are accompanied by women in tawdry finery, harlots who, in the past, would never have been allowed in his bar. Georges is obsequiously fawning over their new clientele, while Frank is struggling to adapt. They paint on identical smiles and strenuously avoid any thorny subjects. Sometimes Frank feels as though he is an actor on stage: his body is there, but his mind is elsewhere. He introduces cocktails to some of the senior officers he respects—usually the more reserved. He takes a perverse pleasure in serving the others a Bordeaux from 1933: the year the Führer came to power and the worst vintage of the decade; although he has raised the price, his stock will soon be depleted.

Tonight, as Frank serves in the Petit Bar, most of his regulars are on the other side of the Galerie des Merveilles, in the Salon Vendôme, where Otto Abetz, Nazi Germany’s ambassador to the new Vichy France regime, is giving a gala dinner in honor of the new Franco-German alliance. Luciano has been requisitioned for the occasion. Frank pops in to take a look: a genuine banquet, with all the pomp and ceremony. To start, pan-fried scallops with saffron cream and poached quail eggs with caviar—Frank filched a couple from the kitchen, delicious—followed by Edward VII lamb noisettes with artichoke purée and glazed baby turnips, served with a 1900 Château Ausone and, to finish, a Calvados craquant accompanied by a fine champagne granita, with a glass of Louis Roederer Cristal.

Reputation must be maintained at all costs, and, in organizing tonight’s banquet, Marie-Louise Ritz has marked her return in style.

Among the Germans, Frank recognizes a few faces. Speidel did not come by the bar, but he is here, deep in conversation with Lieutenant-Colonel Soehring. Representing the French, Pierre Laval, prime minister in the new Vichy government. Frank likes Laval. He speaks frankly, he’s direct, and he’s a pacifist. Sitting at their table are Admiral Darlan in civilian attire, Jean Borotra, known as one of the “four musketeers” of French tennis, and lawyer Fernand de Brinon. Maréchal Pétain’s contingent look ready for battle. They are unruffled, almost swaggering.

Luciano appears with a bottle of Bordeaux in his hand, ready to serve France’s new masters. Laval gives him a kind word, and the men clink glasses—after all, this is all that the country wants: peace and basta così.

Back behind his bar, Frank leafs through the newspapers. “We are living through extraordinary times; we no longer know what we are,” reads an editorial in Le Matin, as if to say that the present situation is not as bleak as many feared. Frank cannot disagree.

Let us bravely get back to work. Is there really anything else to do?

“What the devil does Madame Auzello think she is playing at?”

Frank is roused from his thoughts by the dry, nervous voice of Monsieur Süss. It has been some weeks since the Auzellos returned to the Ritz. Claude came down to shake hands with all the staff, chivalrous and paternal despite his demotion. Blanche has yet to appear. Wild rumors have started to circulate. The most preposterous Frank has heard is that Blanche has left Claude and gone to New York. This is just the sort of story Süss would love, but a true barman does not spread gossip. Frank’s private verdict? Morphine.

“Madame Auzello may be suffering from a migraine,” he says. “It would not be the first time she has had to take to her bed for days at a time.”

Monsieur Süss curls his lip. He does not believe a word. Nervously, he steeples his fingers. He and the Widow Ritz are united by a single obsession: any form of outburst from Blanche is to be avoided at all costs. But how can they control her if they cannot even see her?

“I know that a bottle of Perrier-Jouët was sent up to the Auzellos’ apartments last night,” says Süss. “The next time they order something to drink, I would like you to deal with it personally. Understood?”

“Perfectly,” says Frank. “Count on me.”

Süss drains his whisky glass and hurries away.

His mind racing, Frank closes up the bar. The old Widow and her two Swiss guards can go hang. There is no way he is going up to the Auzellos’ apartments. He will not go to Blanche first. If she wishes to see him, she can come down. And if it is morphine she’s looking for, she knows where to find it. Just as she did that day last June.

Diary of Frank Meier

For months after her victory over the Widow in June 1936, Blanche kept to herself, and I didn’t see her. The following spring, she gradually began to visit the bar again and finally found a place for herself in the Club des Élégants, which met every Thursday night. Oh, how she could bewitch men, Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald in particular. Even the playwright Sacha Guitry has warmed to her.

Behind the bar, I served, I encouraged, I invented.

Like Arletty, Blanche always called me “mon chéri,” with that slight New York twang. An innocent flirtation, I assumed. She would show up, sometimes on the arm of the most vulgar guest, sometimes alone, and as she downed cocktail after cocktail, her eyes would lose their shimmer. I should have realized that she was in the grip of a deep sadness. She badly missed Lily Kharmayeff, who had left eight months earlier to join the Spanish republicans fighting Franco. Lily was living a life of adventure, while here, trapped in the splendors of the Ritz, Blanche had to learn to kill time. She no longer found any meaning in her life, did nothing, and drank too much. She spent her days reading. Proust’s novels seemed to speak to her. She learned the end of Swann in Love by heart and brooded over the fact that it is possible to waste years loving someone you do not really like and who, deep down, is deeply unsuitable.

I didn’t realize that things were so bad.

And then came June 8, 1939. It had been a quiet night, not unusual early in the week. There was no one left at the bar but Blanche, sitting at the piano. She was playing a frantic version of one of Satie’s “Gymnopédies,” like a gymnast on a highwire. I offered to make her some jasmine tea. She opted instead for her beloved Bijou and begged me to join her in a drink. How could I say no? I made a Bijou for her and a Boulevardier with a generous shot of bourbon for myself, a souvenir of my youth in Manhattan. Blanche perched on the high stool at the bar, swathed in a form-fitting sky-blue silk dress. Never had I found her so beautiful.

“The twentieth century is starting to bore me,” she said, lifting the glass to her lips.

Then she leaned over the counter, grabbed me gently by the collar, closed her eyes and pulled me towards her. Her lips brushed against mine and lingered for an instant.

She laid her hand on mine. Already, she was on her feet. It was late, she needed to go to bed, and hoped she might get some sleep. Perhaps I could help her. From the look in her eye I understood it was more than a hand up the stairs or a cup of soothing tea she was asking for.

I should have realized the price of that kiss straightaway. Pandora had just placed her box before me; all I had to do was not open it. But the temptation was too strong. I told her that I could not do anything for her that night, but I would find her a fix the next day. Why the devil did I give in so easily? It was not as though I had not seen dozens of men, in New York and Paris, throw their lives away in pursuit of an embrace that would never come. A wise man knows such things; a veteran barman should know them better than anyone. And yet, at the age of fifty-five, I walked into the trap. I couldn’t help it. I was crazy. It was not merely Blanche’s ethereal beauty that drew me to her like a needle drawn to a magnet. We were both wanderers, we shared a sense of exile—we were at ease everywhere, yet never at home. Blanche’s beauty, her quick wit, and her indomitable spirit masked a sadness and a grief I was only too familiar with myself. I was afraid that if I refused her anything, she might suddenly vanish and I would once again be left alone, without a companion to share in the bittersweet experience of leaving home for a better life. Gone would be this intimate, implicit understanding of one another. And besides, while she didn’t know I was a little Jewish boy from the East, I felt our shared secret connected us. A figment of my imagination, probably.

And so, I became the exclusive supplier of morphine to the woman who now haunted my every thought. But the drug was expensive. By the end of July, I had begun skimming money from the cash register and massaging the takings.

I was a barman turned thief.

In a bitter irony, it was the war that saved me. On September 3, 1939, Claude Auzello was called up and given a post as a training officer in a barracks somewhere in the hills behind Nice. Blanche had no choice but to go with him. It was foolish, I know, but I felt a pang of heartache. Before she left, she asked me to get one last stock of morphine that would last her a few weeks. It cost me every centime I had, but ever since I had helped her with her forged documents I could never refuse her a thing. And then, in June, the German Occupation upended everything. In the chaos that followed, no one noticed that I had been skimming money from the takings. But the bitter taste of having been led astray lingered in my mouth. In order to impress Blanche, I had become what I most despised: a liar, a thief, a man with no values.

I saw her one last time in the Galerie des Merveilles just before she left the Ritz. In her eyes I could see she hated me for having witnessed her disgrace. I wish it could have been otherwise. I wish I could have been the man to comfort her, but Blanche never wanted my pity. Even that one kiss now feels like a lie. Which is why, while everyone in the hotel is asking what Blanche Auzello is doing in her suite, I am troubled by a very different question: do I really want to see her again?