Chapter 3: LeBeau

I cannot get to sleep tonight. Most nights, it is no problem. Mornings in Stalag 13 always come early, and our true bed time at night usually comes long after lights out. With so little time to sleep, I am usually out like a light, as André would say.

But tonight is not one of those nights. We had a surprise late roll call, and the cold air has woken me up too much. I lie on my left side for a while, using my arm as my pillow, then turn on my right side. Still awake, after a while I switch back to my back, looking up at the rafters, barely visible in the dim light from the stove.

I have a routine that calms me most nights like this. I think through my restaurant, for after the war. Sometimes I run through locations in Paris, wandering down streets in memory: the Latin Quarter? The edge of Pigalle perhaps, or more directly in Montmartre?

Some nights I debate names. Something referring to food? Plat du Jour? Non, too plain. Or something a little symbolic? À Gogo perhaps, or Au Courant, or Savoir-Faire. Panache? Or Œuvre. . . ? Or something to celebrate the war's end: Renaissance? Bon Vivant? Or something romantic . . . Billet-doux, or Mosaïque. Sometimes I let myself wonder wistfully if Marya would join me. I would call the restaurant Le Papillon et La Rose—myself as the butterfly and her as the rose, I thought at first, but she . . . she is the one who flits from one place and one heart to another, not I.

Other times I sort through colors for paint and curtains. Perhaps yellow with blue accents, as my grand-maman had in her dining room: that would be cheerful and inviting and suggest a country inn. Or maybe something warm and rich, gold with red. . . .

With any color scheme I set the tables in my mind with white damask tablecloths and serviettes . . . although perhaps the napkins should pick up the accent colors rather than being plain white? Blue or red against the white tablecloth background would look well. I debate silverware and dishes, contemplating patterns and shapes. Anything would be better than the bare table boards and tin bowls and plates we use daily here.

One idea that never changes is that the waiters will each have a silver-plated ramasse-miette, polished to a shine, to scrape the crumbs from the tables after each course. I remember my own, a gift from my father when I became a waiter, my first promotion in the restaurant I trained at. I recall the dignity I felt when he gave it to me and the pride in me that I saw in his eyes. I told myself at the time that I would keep it forever. But I did not then foresee the war.

I wonder what has become of it.

I wrench my mind from the memory, turning my mind to my restaurant kitchen. Furnishing that in my imagination always has the greatest appeal. I am so tired of cooking with cheap enameled tin saucepans and making coffee in a dented enameled tin pot. Poor Newkirk always complains that his tea water tastes of coffee—even though the coffee beans I have to put in our coffee are few and far between. But I have no other kettle, ever since le colonel and Kinch commandeered the electric coffee pot to hide the speaker for the mic that we have hidden in the Kommandant's office. So now we cannot use it for coffee, and I must make the tin coffeepot serve for both coffee and tea. I constantly feel the pinch of not having the right type of pot for the dish I am preparing. Last week I had to cook asparagus for the Kommandant, with no proper asparagus steamer of course, and it took great ingenuity to cook the stalks properly without overcooking the heads. Colonel Hogan complimented my canapes that evening, but the asparagus worried me far more.

I will have a full set of cookware in my restaurant kitchen! Lovingly, I count through them. For the oven: braziers and roasters, cake pans and casseroles. Several well-seasoned cast iron frying pans for the stove, of course, a few of them enameled. I run through sauté pans, saucepans, stew pans, stock pots: all of them copper well lined with steel, shined brightly each day, hanging from hooks over the preparation tables to be grabbed with ease when needed.

I turn on my stomach, feeling more relaxed. Sleep is not far. I hear a distinctive snort across the room and open my eyes slightly. Looking past the stove, the battered tin coffeepot sitting on its top, I see Newkirk in the dim light, lying in his upper bunk, also on his stomach. He is the one out like a light tonight. My lips curve slightly as for a moment I watch him sleep.

My smile fades. When the war is over, Pierre will go home to London; I to Paris. But we will see each other; we have sworn it. We will not be so far apart that visits between old war comrades will be impossible. And I shall keep in my kitchen a bright copper kettle, just for him, to heat water to make my friend his "cuppa" tea when he comes to see me.