Part Seven: Winds of Change — Chapter 2 - The Barman of the Ritz

AUGUST 2, 1944

There were two customers yesterday. Four the day before. All German officers who have come only to drown their sorrows. But Frank can hardly complain: every time someone walks through the door, he’s terrified it will be the SS coming to drag him away.

“Talking to yourself, Frank?”

“Sacha! Well, I never! I’m delighted to see you.” There is Guitry, slouching in the doorway with his typical insouciance.

“Are you open, my friend?”

“Officially, no.”

“May I…?”

“Of course. But lock the door behind you, please.”

The playwright makes his way over, leaning on the bar as he surveys the shelves of Frank’s ever dwindling inventory.

“Could you mix me up an Americano? It seems only appropriate.”

Guitry will have that same dry wit until he’s in his grave.

“There are dark times ahead, believe me, Frank. I had to walk all the way here from Odéon, can you imagine? The Place de la Concorde is surrounded by barbed wire, so I had to come through the Tuileries gardens. Have you seen what the Nazis have done? They’ve put sculptures around the walls to try to stop the Allies bombing them. The streets are completely deserted, and the time for settling scores is fast approaching.”

“There you go,” Frank says, setting a glass on the bar. “I hope you’ll forgive me, but there’s no slice of orange. America has not arrived just yet.”

Guitry flashes him a smile and sips his Americano with relish.

“I can’t even walk my dog anymore,” he says. “Do you know why? The German authorities are commandeering all dogs in Paris taller than eighteen inches.”

“What for?”

“Rumor has it they’re going to strap explosives to them and train them to crawl under the American tanks. Poor mutts. Even the animals have been caught up in this horrible war.”

Frank can still remember the terrified whinnying of wounded horses mingling with the groans of dying soldiers on the battlefield. The grisly choir of the wartime damned.

“It was the same during the Great War; the animals at Verdun suffered as much as we did,” he says. “They never asked to be there. Then again, neither did we. I still have fond memories of our horses…”

“I completely understand,” says Guitry. “I’m keeping my beautiful spaniel inside in the warmth.”

“Watch out for your concierge. Paris is crawling with informants.”

The playwright laughs.

“I have no fears on that count. My concierge is much more outraged by the roundup of pups than she was by the roundup of Jews.”

Frank cannot repress a contemptuous sneer. A year or two ago, he would have kept himself in check. But now, he finds himself unable to contain his emotions.

“I find humanity profoundly depressing,” says Guitry, impulsively picking up the newspaper on the bar. Le Matin is now reduced to a single double-sided page. There, after the lists of bombing raids, of arrests made by the collaborating French police and assassinations by “terrorists from the Resistance,” the classified ads are filled with business opportunities. On the bottom right of the page is an advertisement for the Libération, “the great political and literary weekly.”

“Censorship seems to be a little more lax,” he says tersely. “The truth is that Pétain should have gone to North Africa as soon as the Germans invaded the Free Zone. Once they broke the terms of the armistice, he could have left France, chosen to take a different path, joined forces with de Gaulle. But he didn’t. His decision to stay in Vichy with Laval was motivated by his vanity and his love of power. What a fool!”

Guitry was right. In November 1942, when the Allies landed in North Africa, the Nazis invaded the Free Zone, resulting in the division of France into two German-controlled territories, marking the end of the Vichy Army and Pétain’s loyalty to France.

Frank feels a twinge of pride that he and Guitry can speak so openly. Tonight, at last, he is going to abandon his neutrality as a barman.

“In the beginning, I believed in him, Sacha,” he confesses. “I thought Pétain would do a better job than any of the goons loyal to the previous prime ministers. Better than Reynaud or Daladier…”

“We all believed in him, Frank. We were deluding ourselves. We misunderstood the tide of history. Let us just hope the price we pay is not too high.”

“Do you think we’re in a difficult position?” Frank says.

Guitry shrugs.

“I don’t know about you. For me, things are a little different. I have a friend who says the purge is already being organized, and my name has frequently cropped up as a collaborator, or as a traitor to the motherland. There are calls for me to be executed…”

What can anyone possibly accuse Guitry of? Frank wonders. Doing his job? Believing in the maréchal?

Rubbing shoulders with the Nazis at the Ritz? Like me…

Is that enough to make us traitors?