Part Three: The Growing Conflict — Chapter 4 - The Barman of the Ritz

MAY 24, 1941

I am an exile twice over. Exiled from my native country. Exiled from my social class. This is what Frank wishes he could have confessed to Speidel tonight, but as a bartender, he is an ear, not a voice, and the colonel was more interested in talking about himself. Since his move to the Royal Monceau Hotel, Speidel’s visits to the bar are more infrequent, but when he does come, they invariably have an almost friendly conversation. The colonel has just come from an extravagant dinner at La Tour d’Argent with the celebrated German writer Ernst Jünger and is now sipping a pear brandy to dissolve his chateaubriand. It is late, the two men are alone, and the colonel is a little tipsy.

Just drunk enough to pour his heart out.

The colonel begins by delightedly telling Frank he has begun attending a salon hosted by Florence Gould, a curvaceous French American in her forties, a strong-minded woman with a passion for literature. She and her husband, a railway magnate, are well known at the Ritz. But her husband has been in poor health and is currently convalescing on the Riviera, while his wife has decided to stay in Paris at the Bristol Hotel.

“You have to understand, it is so much more than a society salon,” says Speidel, seeing Frank’s dubious expression. “It’s the center of culture for Franco-German intellectuals.”

At these salons, held over lunch on Thursdays, guests enjoy Roscoff lobster or skate with beurre noire, washed down with a vintage Pol Roger. The crème de la crème of Paris society can be found there: great writers like Léautaud, Jouhandeau, Giraudoux, and Céline, artists like Marie Laurencin, and even Captain Ernst Jünger, whom people say is Madame Gould’s lover. Conversations range from the beauty of the great gardens of Europe to Russian literature, from the temples of Angkor Wat to even the fear of death…

“You see—people discuss anything and everything,” Speidel says enthusiastically.

Frank nods, although he is not particularly impressed. It sounds very much like the now defunct Thursday Club that used to meet in his bar. And he can hardly tell Speidel that the most knowledgeable people, those who held everyone spellbound at those elegant soirées, are no longer welcome at the Ritz, or indeed at Madame Gould’s salons—he is thinking of Alfred Döblin, Heinrich Mann, and Walter Benjamin, three German writers and outspoken opponents of the Nazi regime, who were forced to flee.

While Frank is trawling through his memories, Speidel finishes his brandy and changes the subject. Tonight, he is eager to talk about Ernst Jünger and to boast about what he considers a personal triumph: he has managed to convince General von Stülpnagel to recruit the German writer. Jünger has been charged with not only monitoring German soldiers’ correspondence, but also with launching an investigation into the state of relations between the Wehrmacht officers and the Nazi authorities in Paris.

“A hero of the First World War, whose novels resonate far beyond the borders of Germany!” Speidel boasts.

Jünger is only a captain, but he makes an impression on those he encounters, as Frank learned when Stülpnagel brought him to the bar the week before. Jünger is charismatic. He wears his uniform with a rare elegance, his knowledge is encyclopedic, his smile enigmatic, and his presence is one of swaggering ease. He showed up carrying a first edition treatise on insects in Western Europe—a gift for Stülpnagel. “An occupied city, Herr General, is teeming with insects.” A visibly disappointed Stülpnagel nevertheless promised to give it his full attention and admitted that it would make a nice change from the crime novels now much in vogue in the Reich. Frank suppressed a smile: like Stülpnagel, he reads German crime novels, and they share a fondness for C. V. Rock’s Meurtre à cinq sous, which explores the dark underbelly of Berlin. “I can’t imagine how your little Treatise got past the Nazi censors,” said Stülpnagel, and he and Jünger burst out laughing.

Cultural life in Paris has greatly improved. The theaters are full to capacity, Sacha Guitry is provoking the censors, Léo Marjane is singing “Je suis seule ce soir” to the wives of prisoners of war. Even fashion is no longer taboo. Spurred on by his second pear brandy, Speidel struggles to conceal his childlike excitement at the fact that the Widow has invited him to accompany her to the autumn collection of Lucien Lelong, in collaboration with two fledgling designers, Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain. Frank is amused that Speidel can remember the names of the young French couturiers. “It’s mostly for my wife,” the colonel says defensively. What he is looking forward to is the dinner after the fashion show. He has been told that Arletty will be there. Speidel is fascinated by actresses—and by celebrities in general.

After a third brandy—this one on the house—the colonel divulges the machinations of Coco Chanel to regain complete ownership of Parfums Chanel. She’s written a letter to Xavier Vallat, the Commissioner-General for Jewish Affairs, and persuaded her lover, Baron von Dincklage, to arrange a meeting with Speidel.

Speidel listened politely to the baron’s explanation.

“Mademoiselle Chanel believes that she has been taken advantage of by her Jewish partners, the Wertheimer brothers, now living in exile in America. The brothers still control ninety percent of the shares in the company set up by the three of them in the 1920s.”

After the meeting, Speidel simply closed the file—he takes little interest in business matters, and he does not share the Nazi leaders’ obsession with Jews. But he kept a copy of the letter. And hundreds like them.

“I have to say I am amazed by how eager French people are to inform on each other,” he says. “We receive fifteen hundred letters a day. ‘My boss is Jewish, my neighbor is Jewish, my father-in-law sells butter on the black market.’ It beggars belief. But I will admit that it makes our job a lot easier.”

Frank can easily imagine these poison-pen letters written under the cloak of civic responsibility. Is it possible that someone will one day send a letter denouncing Luciano, or Blanche, or even him? Of course it is.

To dispel the uneasy atmosphere that has fallen over the bar, Colonel Speidel studies the photographs hanging on the wall. He stops in front of a portrait of Scott Fitzgerald and asks the name of this man with the intense stare. Frank hesitates. If he says it is a picture of an American writer, will Speidel order him to take it down?

In the end, he settles on a version of the truth: “An old regular here at the bar. He died of a heart attack last December.”

When, finally, he is alone, Frank finds himself struggling with the terrible melancholy he has managed to keep at bay since Göring arrived at the hotel.

“You have spent twenty years trying to overcome the grief of exile by inventing cocktails worthy of Vienna in all her glory,” Scott Fitzgerald once told him.

Fitzgerald is dead. My friend, my favorite gin drinker. He died far away from the Ritz, in an America that seems so distant, like a continent adrift, where war does not exist.

His passing marked the death of elegant parties and happier times.

Tears well in his eyes. Frank dreams of a Paris where the Nazis have been driven out, where Hemingway could come back to the Ritz to find it just as it was. Mr. Hemingway, another American, Georges’s idol. The barman experiences a sudden jolt, one of those curious moments when the future seems clear only for it to become obscure as soon as he tries to bring it into focus. Fitzgerald would have found the words to guide him. But those words died with the old world.

May your ineffable spirit rest in peace, old friend.

And Frank raises his glass.

Diary of Frank Meier

On nights such as these, memories of the sparkling soirées of the past are my only solace. My friends Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway lived in a pretty little neighborhood popular with Americans in search of French authenticity. It was easy to see why; they were in awe of the avenues and buildings that were older than the country they came from. Even I, having lived in the city for decades, was regularly filled with wonder at the elegant beauty of our surroundings.

Fitzgerald once told me: “Americans in Paris are the best thing America has ever done.” It would become his catchphrase as he fell deeper and deeper in love with the city.

It was May 1928, and Scott and Zelda had just moved into their new apartment. Happiness seemed to spill out into the streets, and with it a devil-may-care attitude. They had arranged a housewarming and invited me to demonstrate my talents for their guests. I could never refuse them anything. I arrived a little before six o’clock with all my bartending equipment. Fitzgerald opened the door wearing a dressing gown over a white shirt, black tie, and tweed jacket. He ushered me into the living room, where he was writing a letter. He sat down at his desk, a piece of oak furniture adorned with gilded bronze ornaments with an ink-stained leather desk pad, made by Henry Van de Velde. It suited him perfectly. The great writer at his desk, a little like me behind my bar. He handed me a copy of Le Matin and, while I waited, I sat on a threadbare club chair and leafed through the paper. I can clearly remember that there was a long article about the German elections. Although the Republican bloc won by a landslide, the Nazi Party managed to take twelve seats. It was the first time that Hitler had succeeded in getting deputies elected to the Reichstag. That’s why I remember it. I said something about it to Fitzgerald and he laughed. He thought Hitler was a preposterous buffoon and was firmly convinced that the brutality of the Nazis would always inspire a profound disgust in the conservative bourgeoisie: “Germany, Frank, is a highly civilized country…”

A civility that undoubtedly echoed during that spring housewarming party on the Rue de Vaugirard. Zelda had laid out small Cuban mahogany tables adorned with white roses and forget-me-nots. The Baccarat crystal champagne flutes were cut with modern geometric designs, and the crystal cocktail glasses were rimmed with gold leaf. The art nouveau porcelain plates were painted with floral creations in shades of blue. With its subdued lighting, whorls of cigarette smoke, and the sound of jazz music playing in the background, the apartment offered a glimpse of New York in the heart of Paris. Posted at the bar with my bottles, my cocktail shaker, and my fresh fruit, I was in my element. The Fitzgeralds were transforming money into magic.

Zelda wore a silver lamé gown. The great actress Mistinguett wore a tunic of green crêpe trimmed with white pearls and feathers. Sara Murphy arrived in a white gown embroidered with multicolored silk. Josephine Baker opted for a ravishing black fringed dress embroidered in coral with an ermine collar, while Kiki de Montparnasse danced the Charleston in a flapper dress shimmering with sequins and fringes. For their part, the gentlemen all wore pale suits and affected a manly swagger. The throng of men included Hemingway, Gerald Murphy, Cocteau, Picasso, Matisse, Man Ray, and Brâncuşi.

Hemingway insisted that I experiment with all manner of concoctions—he wanted to invent a cocktail called Le Vaugirard as a souvenir of the party. All the guests seemed polished, without being remotely snobbish. They were amused by everything, even Frances Scott Fitzgerald, at the tender age of seven or eight, knocking back a gin fizz she mistook for lemonade. The little girl was drunk, but I was the only one who felt embarrassed for her. The hosts laughed to see their daughter staggering around the vast living room.

Towards midnight, Zelda decided she would jump from the balcony the same way she used to dive from seaside clifftops on drunken evenings on the Riviera, and it took all Hemingway’s considerable influence to dissuade her. Scott, who was drunk by then and captivated by the charms of a young dancer who had modeled for the artist Jules Pascin, scarcely noticed. A furious Zelda then insisted on taking the assembled company to the Dingo Bar on the Rue Delambre, in Montparnasse, leaving me alone with Scott, who wanted a nightcap. Sprawled on a sofa, he told me how, on sleepless nights, he loved to invent other lives for himself, imagining himself as a famous football player or a dashing captain of the cavalry. It is a game I have played myself. Scott was very like me, which is why I loved him so much. We both spent our lives making up stories in the dead of night to shake off the pain of disillusionment. Before I could even pour his dry Martini, he had fallen asleep, heavily intoxicated. I tidied up the living room as assiduously as if it had been my bar and carried Scott to bed. Then I headed home on foot, into the tender night.