“SO ONE DAY HERSHEL THE SCHNORRER WOKE UP FEELING SICKLY,” said Moshe, as we were driving back to the hotel. “He decided he should go to the doctor, and asked his rabbi who was the best doctor in the region. The rabbi recommended someone, but warned Hershel that this doctor was the most expensive physician for miles around. But Hershel went to him anyway, and when the doctor had examined Hershel and given him a costly drug, he presented Hershel with the bill, and Hershel said, ‘I’m sorry, I have no money.’ The doctor was shocked and said, ‘I am well known as the most expensive physician in all the region. If you have no money, why did you come to me?’ And Hershel said, ‘When it comes to my good health, nothing is too expensive.’”
“I’m going to have to write these down,” I said.
“Yes. For your memoirs. Where are we going?”
“You’re the rabbi. You tell me.”
“I meant right now, not metaphysically.”
“Well, then, the hotel. I have time for a shower and brush-up, but I’ll be meeting King again at Charlie’s at seven. Out of curiosity, what’s your duty with me? Any specific orders?” I pretty much knew the answer, but I was interested in what he knew about the assignment.
“Nothing specific, no. I’m to stay with you and drive you wherever you want to go for as long as you’re here—which suggests to me that you are not here permanently.”
“Who is?”
“Another metaphysical joke. Very good.”
“Okay. So for the time being, you’re working for me?”
“Yes, sir. As the Andrews trio so nicely put it, I’ll be with you till apple blossom time.”
“Well done, but it’s the Andrews Sisters, and the line is ‘I’ll be with you in apple blossom time.’ A small difference, but important.”
“Thank you for the correction, Lieutenant. As a Talmudic scholar, I am a connoisseur of fine distinctions of language. Although I should say a former Talmudic scholar.”
It was funny that Moshe should mention that song. It reminded me of one of the sailors on my ship. For some reason he couldn’t stand the Andrews Sisters. He was on the fantail of the ship when the bomb hit, so we never found a trace of him. He wasn’t the only one. I was going to miss him and all the rest of the men we lost that day. They were good guys. Every damned one of them. We all were.
Charlie’s was packed again that evening. Cuddles guided Dave King and me to the same table we had had the night before. The band was playing “Love for Sale,” but Amanda, aka Yvonne Dubonnet, had not appeared yet. I hadn’t heard from her, but that was not surprising.
There was the usual racket of noise in the café, the usual fog of tobacco smoke, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary until about eight o’clock when two men, who were central-casting Gestapo agents, came walking in on either side of a blonde Valkyrie—a stunning statuesque woman wearing a black dress shimmering with sequins. She had long blonde hair and perfect Teutonic features, including a look of contempt for all things not her.
King watched her and grinned.
“This should be good.”
“Who’s that?”
“A visitor from another world. She forgot her spear and helmet, but otherwise she seems ready for action. She’s a Mata Hari who comes down here now and then to put the Vichy boys through their paces. Name’s Greta Wagner. Or so she says. I hope it’s true. It’s too good a joke not to be.”
Cuddles guided the trio to a table not far from where we were sitting. They sat down and ordered champagne. The two men with Greta tried to look as though they were at ease and used to being with someone like her, but they couldn’t pull it off. She may not have been their boss, but it certainly seemed that way. They looked around with exaggerated hauteur which showed very clearly that they were nervous about something. She on the other hand was not nervous about anything and gave the impression that she never had been and never would be. She pulled out a cigarette and, yes, inserted it into a twelve-inch gold-and-onyx holder. Her two assistants competed to see who could be the first to offer a light.
“I’ll tell you a funny story about her,” said King. “Last month she was in here on a night like this. The place was just as crowded and even a little more raucous. She and her two minders sat about where they are sitting now. They were drinking steadily and they got louder and louder and started singing dreadful German drinking songs, until finally people started shouting for them to shut up, but they wouldn’t. Finally this Wagner woman stood up on a chair and in elegant although slightly slurred French, shouted, ‘All you French pansies are a bunch of pathetic poufs! If you had anything between your legs you wouldn’t have folded up like a Murphy bed! Ha, ha. And you dare to tell me to shut up. Scheisse to you!” And more along the same lines, and then she gave the crowd two fingers, which as you know is the European equivalent of the bird.
“Finally one of the Legionnaires in the room worked his way through the crowd, grabbed her by the front of her dress, dragged her off the chair, and popped her with a very fine right cross. She went down like she’d been filleted. Then the Legionnaire stood there daring her two henchmen to do something, but they didn’t. They just picked her up and carried her out. She had a beautiful shiner for a week afterwards.”
“You can push the French, but only so far.”
“Only so far as Casablanca. Ha!”
“So what’s her job here?”
“Who knows? She goes everywhere, and when the German generals or politicians come to town, she’s their escort. So I guess her job is mostly horizontal. But she’s well connected, no pun intended.”
There had been a slight lull in the noise of the crowd as the three Germans entered, but now it resumed and the band started playing a song I didn’t recognize as the lights were dimmed. And then Amanda stepped into the spotlight. I was glad to see her, glad she was still in town. She looked over at me and winked.
“I have a new song for you tonight,” she said to the crowd, in her practiced smoky voice, as the band continued the first few bars of introduction. “It’s about a soldier who meets his lover every evening. She waits for him each night under a lamppost. I see that our three friends from Germany have just joined us. I’m sure they will recognize it. It is very popular where they come from—and with their army. It’s called ‘Lili Marlene.’”
Then as the band moved into the main body of the song, she started to sing.
Vor der Kaserne,
Vor dem grossen Tor
Steht ’ne Laterne
Und steht sie noch davor
Dort wollen wir uns wiederseh’n
bei der Laterne wollen wir steh’n.
And to my utter surprise Amanda’s voice was, if not beautiful, then beautifully suited to this sentimental song that would go on to be popular, absurdly, with all the armies of the Western war. Marlene Dietrich would sing it, Edith Piaf would sing it, Vera Lynn would sing it. Armies on both sides would sing along. It was so thoroughly sentimental, such a complete weeper, that no one listening to it that night, or, I suppose, any other night during this wretched war, could hold back at least a little tightening of the throat. Future generations would probably scorn, but only because they would not have been there. But we were.
As Amanda sang the German lyrics, the crowd in Charlie’s gradually became silent and listened, for she was singing the story of the universal soldier who missed his girl and who wondered if he would ever see her again—whether he would ever return, and, if he did, whether she would still be there. If there was anything the human race had in common, it was that everyone had had that feeling, or one very like it, at some point in their lives. Or at the very least, they could understand it. Of course it was wartime and that brought the feeling closer to the surface, and made the dangers and likelihood of a sad ending that much more likely. And when Amanda came to the last verse, she changed to English . . .
If harm should come to me,
who will stand at the lamppost with you, Lili Marlene, with you, Lili Marlene?
From the quiet place out of the earthly ground,
I am lifted as in a dream to your loving lips.
When the evening mist swirls in, I will be standing at the lamplight,
as before, Lili Marlene,
as before, Lili Marlene.
On the page the words may look a little soppy or pathetic, but when married to the music they became something else again. And it occurred to me that a song was itself a different form—not just words set to music or music sprinkled with words, but a combination that made it into something else. As the phrase goes, something more than the sum of its parts. I would have to ask my friend Hobey, the writer, what he thought about that. He liked to use music references in his stories, so he might agree. Not that anyone read his stories anymore.
When Amanda finished, for a moment there was only silence in Charlie’s. Then the applause broke out and shouts of Encore! and whistles, but Amanda was alive to the old showbiz saying of leaving them wanting more, and she merely bowed regally and stepped out of the spotlight and down from the stage and came over and sat down with me and King. For one of the few times since I’d known her she seemed totally without artifice, as though the song had touched her, too, the way that it had touched everyone, or almost everyone, in Charlie’s. The only other times I had seen her that way, we were in bed together without our clothes. This was almost as good.
“That was lovely, Amanda,” I said, sincerely.
“Yes,” said King. “Worthy of a Parisian cabaret. More than that, really.”
“Thank you, darlings. Are you surprised?”
“A bit.”
“Good. Now, darling David, would you mind if I whispered something of a private nature in Riley’s ear?”
“No, of course not. I am a gentleman above all.”
“I know.” She leaned close to me and said, “I have to get out of this town, and I need your help.”
“What?”
“It’s that woman. That Nazi bitch, Wagner. I can’t say anything more about it here. I’ll come to your room tonight. Okay? I was going to anyway, you know.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you, darling. I have to go now. I will wait for you at the hotel. In your room.”
“How will you get in?
She rolled her eyes and smiled, as if to say, “Surely you jest.”
“Don’t leave here for a while,” she said. “People will catch on, if you do.”
Then she left, with people still applauding her.
“What was that about?” said King.
“She’s in some kind of trouble.”
“Oh. That’s hardly surprising. I’m sure you’ll keep in mind what I said about her.”
“Up to a point.”
“Eh?”
“Just kidding.”