Part Five: Outright War — Chapter 2 - The Barman of the Ritz

MARCH 5, 1943

Like Napoleon’s Grande Armée before them, the Wehrmacht have become mired in the bitter cold and the snow. At the battle of Stalingrad, German arrogance was dealt a blow that has echoed all the way to the Ritz. Tensions have been rising and, with them, violence. When he comes down to the bar, Stülpnagel the Younger is the most affable of customers, yet he has no choice but to carry out Hitler’s orders. All the Jews who were rounded up in Paris in July have been deported to Poland. On the orders of prime minister Pierre Laval, this included children. Because the bastard didn’t want to separate the little ones from their mothers. Yeah, right. The hypocrite. In the Ritz bar, everyone knows the fate reserved for these people, but no one dares mention it. What does Stülpnagel really think about it? Frank can sense his reluctance, but the general does not talk about his feelings. Walls have ears, especially at the Ritz, and the slightest sign of weakness is immediately punished.

Children! Children rounded up like animals and wrenched from their homes. I am surrounded by murderers and every day I have to serve them drinks.

Hitler needs fresh blood on the Eastern Front. Over the past month, the Reich has been sending a steady stream of officers from Paris to the Soviet front. Yesterday, Marie Sénéchal’s “little captain” packed his bags and headed for Kharkov, where German troops are launching a counteroffensive. The heartbroken chambermaid stood on the Rue Chambon crying her eyes out, alternately bringing a white handkerchief and a pomander to her nose. Her Karl clearly left her well provisioned with Guerlain perfumes.

Lines of people snake endlessly along the pavement past empty shop windows. There is no butter now, no cheese, no eggs. Mothers bring stools because they have to wait so long for a measly hunk of bread or a thin slice of bacon. The theaters and the café-concerts are still packed. Every night at the Casino de Paris, Mistinguett sings her pre-war hit “I’m Looking for a Millionaire.” Now, midway through the song, she croons into the microphone that she is also looking for a leg of lamb, and gives her address in the ninth arrondissement. The audience howls with laughs, but Sacha Guitry told Frank last night that some of her admirers have had meat delivered to her on the sly.

Jean-Jacques and Pauline are still living in the Birenbaums’ flat above Frank’s. Pauline, who is pretty and well-mannered, has got a job as a sales assistant at Vuitton. It is more difficult to find a place for his son, but Frank is keeping an eye out.

The balance of power is shifting in the bar, too. Georges is much less enamored of Pierre Laval and Maréchal Pétain since the introduction of the Compulsory Work Program. And while Luciano has learned to mask his emotions while working behind the bar, his seething anger has not dissipated.

The Petit Bar is in full swing. It is an hour until closing and Frank is tired and longing for his bed, to give himself over to oblivion.

“Bitch,” spits Luciano.

“Luciano!” Frank has never heard the boy use bad language before. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Marie Sénéchal. I hate her!”

“Keep it down, please,” Frank snaps. “What’s this about Marie?”

“I just ran into her outside the lockers. She was crying, saying that everything was the fault of the kikes and the commies and they need to be exterminated. All she cares about is getting back into bed with her Nazi. I know she’s been sleeping with Stülpnagel’s aide-de-camp; I saw them at the Trocadéro on New Year’s Day. That’s why she’s spent all morning sniveling. I told her she was nothing but a Nazi whore.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did.”

“You’re a complete idiot!” says Frank in a tone that makes Luciano flinch. “Don’t draw attention to yourself, and don’t wind people up—we can’t afford that luxury. Do you understand?”

Luciano sniffles like a stubborn child.

“Tomorrow, you’ll go and apologize to her. Just do what I tell you and keep your mouth shut. Control yourself, damn it, that’s the rule. Now get to work.”

How could he be so stupid as to insult Marie! What if she tries to take revenge?

Frank knows Luciano will quickly come to his senses. He is angry about the world around him. In the kitchens he hangs around with older boys and sometimes tries to act the tough guy, but he has a good heart.

Luciano is standing by the door, sulking. Suddenly, his face lights up.

“Monsieur! Captain Jünger is here.”

It is almost six months since Ernst Jünger was posted to Russia, and Frank was beginning to wonder whether the writer hadn’t died at the front, his corpse frozen on the icy steppes.

“Guten Abend, Herr Meier!”

“Good evening, Herr Jünger. Welcome home.”

Jünger looks radiant. He has the twinkling eye and the beaming smile of the survivor.

“Thank you so much for the bottle of Calvados you sent me, Frank. It was such a thoughtful thing.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Thanks to you, I managed to impress the gallery of generals on the Eastern Front. From time to time, I would serve them a little glass after dinner. And believe me, a thimbleful of the Ritz is very precious when you’re camped outside Voroshilovsk.”

“What was it like there?” Frank says as he deftly uncorks a bottle of Perrier-Jouët.

Jünger heaves a long sigh.

“We were on the verge of being wiped out. The soldiers had been sapped of their strength, their bodies had no reserves left. A little graze from a bullet could mean death.”

“Was it worse than Verdun and the Somme?”

“Much worse, Private Meier. These days, war is waged by engineers who regard human beings as little more than vermin. We have sunk to the level of insects. Herr Meier, human life is worthless.”

For a moment there is a deafening silence.

“What about the Ritz, Frank, what’s new on the home front?”

“The last few months have been fairly quiet. Except for the arrest of Charles Bedaux.”

Jünger’s eyes light up.

“Bedaux has been arrested?”

“Oh, yes,” Frank says, pleased by the impact of his news. “He had been posted to Algeria where the Vichy government wanted him to construct an oil pipeline, but then the British and the Americans landed in North Africa and Bedaux was caught like a rat in a trap. The funniest part is that, because he has an American passport, he is being charged with high treason. It smells like trouble.”

“A particularly ironic twist of fate. I suppose we can only pity poor Monsieur Bedaux. All that effort to serve in the Vichy government, only to get taken prisoner at the first opportunity…”

Frank likes the way Jünger looks at the world. Almost enough to like Jünger himself. But as he looks past the general, out over the privileged throngs of the Third Reich who have replaced his regulars, he feels his stomach twist. Despite these moments of camaraderie, despite the apparent ease he assumes behind the bar… he is still a cornered animal.