CITY OF LIGHTS
Chapter 4
Why? Why is he here? How?
She stands at the balcony with both palms pressed into the balustrade, trying to breathe.
Slowly the world steadies, and all that's left is the residual warmth of his body, enveloping her with its ghostly embrace. She closes her eyes and twists her face into the lapel of his jacket. He still wears it. That same old cologne.
Tears press behind her eyelids.
Her heart feels fit to burst.
Why he's here fades into some lonely, existential question that has no answer. All that matters is that he is here, the same man she'd last seen battling to survive the unforgiving terrain of Mesopotamia. He'd left her there. And she'd left him there, left him to find a better life than the one he could've had with her.
So much had changed since then. Another world had come to pass, one more full of horrors than she had ever previously imagined – and she had been through so much already. It paled in comparison to the horrors of war. Even the anguish of his loss had dulled beneath the blood, sweat and tears of the last eight years.
Or had it?
A moment, a glance across a crowded room to see him there. That was all it had taken, for the pain of that loss to come crashing back.
She steels herself, shrugs the jacket off her shoulders, clasps it between her fingers. Her breath shakes as she slips that finely-crafted mask back over her worn and battered soul.
When she steps back into the room, it is as if Marie Lavosier had never existed at all. Anna Darkhölme – beautiful Anna Darkhölme – takes the stage, as so many pretty, accomplished ladies she's played have done before.
She sees him, under the chandelier, chatting so nonchalantly, so easily, with a group of officers and their wives. Turning the attention of the women without even having to try. Ever the casual, accomplished flirt.
Again, her heart twists.
The jacket in her hand feels more like a curse than a gift now. Her fists tighten into the fabric. She needs it gone. This distraction has been too costly.
The butler is standing to attention by the oak double doors, and she goes to him, hands him the jacket and says quietly in practised French: "Please return this to Monsieur Marceaux, and send him my thanks for his kindness."
The words buzz in her ears even as she says them.
Was it a kindness, or a cruelty he'd paid her?
Whatever the case, she has to make sure it will be his last.
-oOo-
Anna's eyes fluttered open to her reflection, her fingers still poised to remove the bobby pin from her half-undone braid.
She took a breath, and then another, and slowly drew the long metal pin from her hair, watching the tresses uncoil slowly from behind her ear and down to her shoulder. She teased the still-tangled strands apart with her fingers, picked up the brush by her elbow, and drew it almost mechanically through the silver and cinnamon locks.
General Wagner, whose reflection was busily divesting itself of his jacket in the dresser mirror, would never have guessed from the serenity of her demeanour that her heart was beating so fast.
"You did not seem to enjoy Madame Collins' party this evening, Anna," he was saying. "Are you feeling unwell?"
She let out a low laugh.
"General, do I ever enjoy a party?"
"I know you have little tolerance for frivolity and vacuousness, my dear," he rejoined. "Yet I thought you uncommonly out of sorts tonight."
She glanced at him in the mirror, getting into his vest and his long johns, trying to assess whether he was probing, or merely speaking out of throwaway concern. It seemed like the latter, and so she said:
"Just a little headache, that's all. I'm still not quite used to this bracelet."
"Ah." He stopped mid-dressing, as if momentarily confused. "I forgot about the bracelet."
An unsettling silence followed, where she felt the stigma of her mutant identity crushingly evident.
Her long, thick hair combed out, she set aside the brush and opened up the pink guilloche jar of face cream.
"What do you think of Madame Collins?" he asked her presently.
She dabbed a spot of cream on her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, her chin, and thought about it.
"I think she is… very American," she said decidedly, to which he laughed.
"Ah, yes. That is undoubtedly so! But the Fuhrer seemed to enjoy the company of her and her husband, at least. Certainly, she knows how to entertain. But I suppose that is the way of most Americans."
He was not expecting her to respond, and she gave a little smile of acknowledgement as she smoothed the cream into her skin.
"But I am sure you found most of the people there tiresome, my dear," he was continuing. "Most of us old and decrepit! And the music quaint and old-fashioned… There was of course Lotte, young Gruber's wife; and that young man, Madame Collins' protégé…"
"Monsieur Marceaux," she spoke, after a short moment, aware that even remembering his name might catch her out.
"Marceaux! Yes, that's it." The words flowed naturally, easily – hardly disingenuous, at least to her ears. "Although he appears to be a vacuous young man. I doubt he would have much of intelligence to say to you, my dear."
Her ears were ringing. She set the jar of face cream neatly back into its niche next to the perfume, said in a low, flat voice:
"I'm sure he is not Madame Collins' 'protégé' for his wit, General."
He laughed, and she heard him pull back the bedcovers.
"No," he agreed. "I am sure he is not."
She rose from the dresser, and when she turned he was already under the covers, staring up the ceiling, a crease in his brow.
"I feel very old tonight, Anna," he stated in a thin voice. "Parties and socialising always make me feel so."
There was something so pitiful about this once-great man – this man who had been a hero of the Great War, who had risen to power with the Fuhrer, who had been broken so completely by the loss of a loved one.
"Does your leg trouble you, General?" she was moved to ask him. "Shall I fetch the ointment?"
"No… no." He shook his head tiredly. "No, dear Anna. But – stay with me awhile. I feel very alone tonight."
She understood the sentiment all too well.
She turned back to the dresser and opened up her purse, slipping out the little Derringer she always kept there. Then, she crossed over to the other side of the bed and slipped off her peignoir, drawing back the duvet and secreting the gun under her pillow. Slowly she got into bed, and switched off the lamp.
Together they lay side by side in the darkness, and there was nothing but the sound of a spluttering car passing by.
"I feel safer when you are here, Anna," Wagner said in a voice like a child.
"I know, General," she whispered back.
She closed her eyes, and remembered the scent of him on the jacket he had wrapped around her. She remembered, too, the press of his hands on her body, the shape of his fingers on her long silk nightgown, the way he'd fisted the fabric slowly up her thighs, her hips.
She recalled all these things; and after a little while, though she had not intended to do so, she slept.
-oOo-
Le Chat Noir was a chic little café situated in a tiny little backstreet in the heart of Paris, chic enough to have become popular with the Bohemian set, yet rustic enough to sport a mainly local clientele during unfashionable hours.
It was the perfect backdrop for an unlikely meeting of mismatched individuals – the pretty, young typist for a local solicitor, for instance, and a middle-aged taxi driver; an expat American socialite, and an elderly retiree who spent most of his time growing marrows. There were a dozen or so others gathered besides, ranging from school teacher to physician, and not a one (save for Madame Collins herself) knew the surname of the other – such information was always kept close to the chest. One of their number was the Cajun mutant named Remy LeBeau.
Together the small group sat in one of the Chat Noir's backrooms, which had been kindly put at their disposal by the proprietor, a portly, bearded, bear of a man christened Henri. Beer and pastries had been laid out on the table that this unlikely gaggle of people were now gathered round. The Resistance had no obvious face except for that of the everyman – whoever shared its ideals was free to join.
And sometimes, Remy thought, you didn't have any damn ideals at all. You'd just found yourself here because you'd been coerced, and you had nothing better to do at the time, other than make off with your haul and throw it all over a cliff.
He wasn't thinking about his haul now. He was thinking about something else.
He's back at the party, the chill of the winter air still on his skin, milling with a group of officers, who are trying to explain the various rank insignias to Monsieur Lautret. Lautret, a friend of Millicent's late husband, is a stuffy old gentlemen who is hard of hearing, and still insists on wearing a lorgnette. The conversation is banal, tedious; and halfway through he notices the redhead turning away slightly from the arm of her officer husband towards him.
"You have been to Germany before, Monsieur…?" she asks him in Alsace-accented French, and he replies:
"Marceaux. And yes, I passed through only a few summers ago. Berlin, and Munich."
He doesn't dare tell her what he'd been doing there; but she seems happy to prattle on about her youth spent in Berlin, and he learns that her name is Frau Gruber. Officer Gruber, it turns out, is a suitably inattentive husband, clearly more interested in his occupation than his wife. This is a cue for Remy to begin the careful art of wheedling information out of his prey, just as he knows he is expected to. He has never been bad about asking the right questions before, but it must've been the right day to start, because during a pause in the conversation he asks:
"Fraulein Darkhölme… is she a relative of Obergruppenführer Wagner?"
He inwardly winces at the choice of question, but Frau Gruber is all too happy to gossip, scoffing animatedly:
"Oh! Of course not! I think we can all comprehend what relation she is to the Obergruppenführer!" She snorts disdainfully and sips at her wine.
He laughs, although his mood is suddenly ice cold.
"Quite an odd couple," he notes casually, as if to himself. "He hardly seems the type to be a lover, and she—"
"Oh, I am sure she enjoys his protection," Frau Gruber remarks derisively. "There are rumours I've heard… of what she truly is…"
His eyes narrow. He senses what she means to say. That Fraulein Darkhölme is a dirty, filthy mutant.
He immediately loses his taste for the conversation, but thankfully Officer Gruber has begun to take notice of his wife's chatter, and admonishes her in a hiss, saying:
"Lotte, have you forgotten yourself?! We do not talk of such things in company!"
"My apologies," Frau Gruber mutters, her tone clearly forced; and the conversation is promptly diverted onto other, less scintillating topics.
A few minutes later, he feels Millicent's butler gently touch his elbow, and when he turns, he sees the man holding his jacket out to him.
"Mademoiselle Darkhölme bids me thank you for your kindness," he murmurs formally, before putting the jacket into Remy's hands and retreating calmly away.
Remy looks across the room and sees her, back on Wagner's arm. This time, she doesn't give him a sideways glance.
He slips the jacket back on and returns to the conversation.
For the rest of the party all he can smell is her perfume all around him.
The last of their branch members having filtered in, the door to the backroom is swiftly locked and bolted. Cigarettes are lit; no one avails themselves of the refreshments provided just yet. There is a buzz in the air, the promise of months of planning finally coming to fruition at last.
"Well," Millicent was saying in her well-practiced French, drawing off her sunglasses and setting them aside. "Things are finally moving apace, it seems. Emile," she addressed a broad-shouldered, blond-haired young man about Remy's age. "Your report?"
"The tracks leading to the Verrière Forest are active again, Madame Collins," he replied. "Several freight trains, heading towards the new compound they've been building."
"Munitions?" Millicent asked.
"No." Benoit shook his big, round head. "Theoren managed to get a look inside one of them. Mostly lab equipment, but also machinery, and other tools. No munitions."
Remy paused mid-smoke. Lab equipment?
"It sounds as if," Millicent wondered out loud, "they've finished building a new laboratory. Not a factory for this 'super weapon' all our intelligence has been speaking of."
There was a short silence.
"Unless," Remy finally broke in, leaning back in his seat and blowing smoke nonchalantly, "they're testin' this super weapon on real, live subjects."
There was another silence. Everyone had heard stories of the labour camps that had been set up in Germany and the annexed territories.
"Such a thing is inhumane," Emile rejoined, frowning.
"Undoubtedly," Remy agreed, amused, as ever, by the young physician's scruples. "But I seen what dese Nazis can do. Ain't gotta a lotta love for life, unless it's the right kinda life, o' course."
He said nothing more, knowing as he did – intimately – that mutant life was not high on the Nazi priority list. Unless it had its uses, which he'd also found out, to his benefit.
The subject was uncomfortable enough for Millicent to swiftly move on.
"Remy," she said, turning to him. "You searched the coats of all the guests at the party last night, I trust?"
"Of course."
His grin was self-congratulatory, in a way he didn't feel.
"And did you find anything?"
"Not at all." He leaned forward to tap ash into the ashtray at his elbow. "Wouldn't expect to find nothin', and all. But it was worth a try, at least."
He dips his fingers into the pockets of her fur coat, both surprised and not so surprised to find hardly anything there.
He knows the coat's hers, because he knows the smell of her. He'd spent months working it out of his memory, and here it is again. Taunting him.
He has no reason to still be searching her coat; he knows he'll find nothing. But the longing to reconnect is still strong… stronger, now that he's stood beside her, spoken to her. Now that all those hidden memories have been unlocked.
In a hidden breast pocket he finds a lighter. It's the only possession she has. He takes it out and turns it between his fingers. It's a trench lighter, from the Great War, handcrafted from a single spent bullet case. On it is scratched a name. Kurt. X.
A lover, a kiss, resting over her heart.
There's a sour taste in his mouth.
He can't bear to name it jealousy.
He slips the lighter back where he found it, his heart in his throat.
Remy let the conversation wash over him, as numb to its contents as he realised he'd been to the last eight years of his life. He was only brought back to it by the mentioning of her, Jeanne's voice saying:
"My preference would be to kill the lot of them. But since everyone here seems to insist on gathering information, let Remy seduce the general's mistress. He's good at that sort of thing."
She shot him a sly smile, her foot teasingly jostling his under the table. Irrationally, he wanted to shout at her, to shake her off; but Emile sniffed, tutted, saying:
"Surely there are better ways to gain information than seducing an old man's whore."
Whore. He'd thought the same thing about her once, told it to himself over and over for months afterwards, trying to convince himself it was what she was. Had he convinced himself then? Was he still convinced now? Did it matter what she was at all?
Millicent was chuckling.
"Naturally, there are better ways. But I'm not averse to trying any and all, to get what we want." She turned back to Remy. "If, of course, you're willing, my dear?"
There was a playful lilt to the civility, Madame Collins knowing him as she did – a conman and a cad, one who could never resist callously consuming the hearts of pretty, young women. How little she knew, on this occasion!
"Of course," he answered, casually blowing aside smoke.
The scent of her has awakened memories he's buried deep, yet now can't shake off.
The landscape of her body on his fingers, in his arms, the sweep of her long, silken hair against his chest, the taste of her sweat and the pattern her fingernails score into his shoulder blades.
The undulating tide of their bodies, the sound of her voice as she moans out his name.
All of it, bundled into some dark, dark corner and forcibly forgotten, thrown far away.
All bursting out now in an orgasm so blindingly intense he's left reeling for a few mindless, ear-ringing seconds afterwards.
He pulls away from Jeanne, and though his legs are like jello he gets to his feet, snatches up the cigarettes on the nightstand, and goes to the window, needing fresh air, needing a smoke.
"Mon Dieu," Jeanne pants behind him. "You're like a wild animal tonight, Remy."
He can't speak. He throws open the window, the night air prickling his skin, crawling over his senses, deadening the glorious afterglow of his climax. He lights up. Each breath is skipping in his chest; his mind is a confused jumble of thoughts, feelings. He's angry, resentful. A dangerous, violent lust is broiling away inside him, only partially quelled by the ugly release of his orgasm. And underneath that… something darker, warmer still. Bubbling away, biding its time.
He swallows, takes in a drag with a shaking hand. The winter air is frigid, but it can't dispel this. The fire under his skin, in his belly, deeper still.
"Remy," Jeanne says behind him. "You okay?"
He glances back at her briefly, still splayed out on the bed, the breaths heaving through her naked body, her gaze questioning.
He looks away again because somehow all he sees is her.
"M'fine," he says, and takes another drag. He tries not to look at the jacket, slung over the back of an armchair, still drenched in the magnolia scent of her.
"M'fine," he murmurs, closing his eyes.
And still all he sees is her.
-oOo-