Patrick Modiano - The Occupation Trilogy - La Place de l'Étoile – The Night Watch – Ring Roads

The young woman looks at me with astonished eyes. I remember something Lévy-Vendôme said: force an entry into other people’s lives. I take a seat at her table. She gives a faint smile of a melancholy I find ravishing. I immediately decide to trust her. And besides, she is dark. Blond hair, pink complexions, porcelain eyes get on my nerves. Everything that radiates health and happiness turns my stomach. Racist after my fashion. Such prejudices are forgivable in a young consumptive Jew.

‘Are you coming?’ she says.

There is such gentleness in her voice that I resolve to write a beautiful novel and dedicate it to her: ‘ Schlemilovitch in the Land of Women .’ In it, I will show how a little Jew seeks refuge among women in moments of distress. Without women, the world would be unbearable. Men are too serious. Too absorbed in their elegant abstractions, their vocations: politics, art, the textile business. They have to respect you before they will help you. Incapable of an unselfish action. Sensible. Dismal. Miserly. Pretentious. Men would leave me to starve to death.

We leave the Dorotheergasse. After this point, my memories are hazy. We walk back along the Graben and turn left. We go into a café much larger than the first. I drink, I eat, I recover my health while Hilda — that is her name — gazes at me fondly. Around us, every table is occupied by several woman. Whores. Hilda is a whore. In the person of Raphäel Schlemilovitch, she has just found her pimp. In future, I will call her Marizibill: when Apollinaire wrote about the ‘Jewish pimp, red-haired and ruddy-faced’ he was thinking of me. I own this place: the waiter who brings me my alcools looks like Lévy-Vendôme. German soldiers come to my establishment to console themselves before setting off for the Eastern Front. Heydrich himself sometimes visits. He has a soft spot for Tania, Loïtia and Hilda, my prettiest whores. He feels no revulsion when he straddles Tania, the Jewess. Besides, Heydrich himself is a Mischling . Given his lieutenant’s zeal, Hitler turned a blind eye. I have similarly been spared, Raphäel Schlemilovitch, the biggest pimp of the Third Reich. My girls have been my shield. Thanks to them I will not know Auschwitz. If, by chance, the Gauleiter of Vienna should change his mind about me, in a day Tania, Loïtia and Hilda could collect the money for my ransom. I imagine five hundred thousand Reichsmarks would suffice, given that a Jew is not worth the rope required to hang him. The Gestapo will look the other way and let me disappear to South America. No point dwelling on such things: thanks to Tania, Loïtia and Hilda I have considerable influence over Heydrich. From him, they can get a document countersigned by Himmler certifying that I am an honorary citizen of the Third Reich. The Indispensable Jew. When you have women to protect you, everything falls into place. Since 1935, I have been the lover of Eva Braun. Chancellor Hitler was always leaving her alone at the Berchtesgaden. I immediately begin to think how I might turn this situation to my advantage.

I am skulking around the Berghof when I meet Eva for the first time. The instant attraction is mutual. Hitler comes to Obersalzberg once a month. We get along very well. He gracefully accepts my role as escort to Eva. Such things seem to him so futile. . In the evenings, he tells us about his plans. We listen, like two children. He has given me the honorary title of SS Brigadenführer. I should dig out the photo on which Eva wrote ‘Für mein kleiner Jude, mein gelibter Schlemilovitch — Seine Eva.’

Hilda gently lays a hand on my shoulder. It is late, the customers have left the café. The waiter is reading Der Stern by the bar. Hilda gets up and slips a coin into the jukebox. Instantly, the voice of Zarah Leander lulls me like a gentle, husky river. She sings ‘Ich stehe im Regen’ — ‘I am standing in the rain’. She sings ‘Mit roten Rosen fängt die Liebe meistens an’ — ‘Love always begins with red roses’. It often ends with Gillette Extra-Blue razor blades. The waiter asks us to leave the café. We walk along a desolate avenue. Where am I? Vienna? Geneva? Paris? And this woman clutching my arm, is she Tania, Loïtia, Hilda, Eva Braun? Later, we find ourselves standing in the middle of an esplanade in front of an illuminated basilica. The Sacré-Cœur? I slump onto the seat of a hydraulic lift. A door is opened. A vast white-walled bedroom. A four-poster bed. I fall asleep.

The following day, I got to know Hilda, my new friend. Despite her dark hair and her delicate face, she was a little Aryan girl, half-German, half-Austrian. From her wallet, she took several photographs of her father and her mother. Both dead. The former in Berlin during the bombings, the latter disembowelled by Cossacks. I was sorry I had never known Herr Murzzuschlag, a stiff SS officer and perhaps my future father-in-law. I was much taken by their wedding photograph: Murzzuschlag and his young bride in Bruxelles, intriguing passers-by with his immaculate uniform and the contemptuous jut of his chin. This was not just anybody: a friend of Rudolph Hess and Goebbels, on first name terms with Himmler. Hitler himself, when awarding him the Cross of Merit, said ‘Skorzeny and Murzzuschlag never let me down.’

Why had I not met Hilda in the thirties? Frau Murzzuschlag makes kneidel for me, her husband fondly pats my cheeks and says:

‘You’re a Jew? We’ll sort that out, my boy! Marry my daughter! I’ll take care of the rest! Der treue Heinrich 3will understand.’

I thank him, but I do not need his help: lover of Eva Braun, confidant of Hitler, I have long been the official Jew of the Third Reich. To the end, I spend my weekends in Obersalzberg and the Nazi bigwigs show me the utmost respect.

Hilda’s bedroom was on the top floor of a grand old townhouse on Backerstraße. The room was remarkable for its spaciousness, its high ceilings, a four poster bed, a picture window. In the middle, a cage with a Jewish nightingale. In one corner, a wooden horse. Here and there, a number of kaleidoscopes. Each stamped ‘Schlemilovitch Ltd., New York’.

‘Probably a Jew,’ Hilda confided, ‘but he makes beautiful kaleidoscopes. I adore kaleidoscopes. Look in this one, Raphäel! A human face made up of a thousand brilliant facets constantly shifting. .’

I want to confess to her that my father was responsible for these miniature works of art, but she constantly kvetches to me about the Jews. They demand compensation on the pretext that their families were exterminated in the camps, they are bleeding Germany white. They drove around in Mercedes drinking champagne while the poor Germans were working to rebuild their country and living hand-to-mouth. Oh, the bastards! First they corrupted Germany, now they were pimping it.

The Jews had won the war, had killed her father, raped her mother, her position was unshakeable. Better to wait a few days before showing her my family tree. Until then, I would be the epitome of Gallic charm: the Grey Musketeers, the insolence, the elegance, the made in Paris spirit. Had not Hilda complimented me on the mellifluent way I spoke French?

‘Never,’ she would say, ‘never have I heard a Frenchman speak his mother tongue as beautifully as you.’

‘I’m from Touraine,’ I explained. ‘We pride ourselves on speaking the purest French. My name is Raphäel de Château-Chinon, but don’t tell anyone. I swallowed my passport so I could remain incognito. One more thing: as a good Frenchman, I find Austrian food DIS-GUS-TING! When I think of the canards à l’orange , the nuits-saint-georges, the sauternes and the poularde de Bresse ! Hilda, I will take you to France, knock some of the rough edges off you. Vive la France , Hilda! You people are savages!’