“I can smell his pipe.”
Grandmère pointed the fountain pen at Daisy’s nose. “You notice everything, don’t you? Even as a child.”
“Well?”
“Yes, he was here. What can I say? I enjoy poetry. About this Von Sternburg, however. You’re certain he wasn’t invited?”
“Quite certain. Pierre was—Pierre was nervous about it. Happy, but nervous. Von Sternburg wasn’t expected.”
“Then why did he come, I wonder?”
Daisy looked down at her left hand, which rested on a sofa cushion, while her right hand held the snifter of cognac. She stroked the fabric once or twice and noticed how pale her hand looked, how bony and frail, the gold ring hanging between the knuckles. She said softly, “I met him earlier in the day, in the hotel lobby.”
“This hotel lobby? The Ritz?”
“Yes. When I came to see you yesterday afternoon. He—he approached me and asked to see my papers.”
Up went Grandmère’s eyebrows again. “Did he? Now that’s interesting. And it was after this little meeting that he invited himself to your dinner party?”
“If you care to put it like that.”
“Von Sternburg.” Grandmère frowned. “Von Sternburg. It does have a familiar ring. I’m quite certain . . . Max von Sternburg . . . a long time ago . . .”
“Perhaps he was one of your lovers,” Daisy said crisply.
“Perhaps,” said Grandmère, just as crisp, “but I don’t think so. I generally remember the names of my lovers, even if I can’t quite picture their faces. Never mind. He’s interested in you, that’s the point. You must let me know immediately if he pays you another visit.”
“Mon Dieu, Grandmère! I’m not going to—you can’t possibly expect me to—”
“You will do what you must, my dear,” said Grandmère. “That’s all any of us can do.”
“I’m a married woman. I have a husband.”
“A husband? My dear Daisy. We speak of Pierre.”
Daisy emptied her glass between her lips. “Yes?”
“Personally, I should drink poison if I were condemned to an entire lifetime of sexual relations with nobody but Pierre Villon. But perhaps you have a stronger constitution.”
“Grandmère!”
“Or else a far greater faith in some eternal reward.” Grandmère waved her hand upward to the trompe l’oeil ceiling, where a pair of leering cherubs lounged against a blue sky fleeced with clouds.
Daisy slammed her glass on the sofa table and jumped to her feet. “I am not you, Grandmère! I’m not my mother! As I have told you a thousand times! I cannot replace the child you lost. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I am just me. I’m Daisy, for better or worse.”
Her grandmother folded her arms and stared up at Daisy from a pair of narrowed eyes. Daisy knew her cheeks were hot, that her eyes blazed, and she didn’t care. This fury, where had it come from? She’d been simmering with it all morning. She’d been simmering ever since—oh, let’s be honest, Daisy, at least be honest inside your own head—ever since Pierre had prodded her awake in the coal-flavored dawn and pulled down her drawers, without any preamble, without even the pretense of a kiss or two, a caress, and stuck his thing inside her, morning-stiff. Because he had drunk so much wine last night, his breath was foul, and Daisy had turned her cheek and tried to breathe in the scent of the pillow instead. The sound of his grunting, the smack of his belly on hers, the creak of the bedframe repelled her so much, she squeezed her eyes shut, and because it was dawn, because she was still half-asleep and living inside some dream or another, God forgive her, God forgive her, she thought of somebody else. Without trying, without summoning him at all, she imagined thick brown hair and clever blue eyes, she imagined lanky shoulders and a smiling mouth, and as she burrowed her nose in the pillow to escape Pierre’s ecstatic puffing, she didn’t smell linen or sweat or laundry soap. She smelled—almost as if it existed—the sultry echo of tobacco smoke, drawn through a pipe. God forgive her.
And now she stood before Grandmère and the guilt flushed in her cheeks and her eyes, and this grandmother of hers, what did she do? She folded her arms and gazed at Daisy and smiled. Not the joyful kind of smile. The smile of a mother cat witnessing her kitten catch its first mouse.
“Now, that’s more like it,” Grandmère said.
Daisy turned and stalked to the window. Outside, a pair of women strolled wearily along rue Cambon, glancing through the windows as if their hearts weren’t in it. They passed a German soldier, who turned to stare after them, and Daisy wondered what he was thinking. Whether he stared because they were pretty and French, or because he suspected them of something, some infraction of the rules.
Behind her, Grandmère’s footsteps made soft noises on the rug. Daisy smelled the familiar perfume, the blend of roses and skin that was her grandmother. She heard her grandmother’s low voice over her shoulder.
“Daisy, listen to me. I received some interesting news this morning.”
“From Monsieur Legrand, perhaps?”
“It seems,” Grandmère said, ignoring the question, “that Berlin wants to remove Monsieur Vallet as head of Jewish Affairs in occupied France and replace him with someone else.”
“With whom?”
“It’s not clear. But I assure you, Daisy, the Germans don’t mean to replace him with someone more lenient.”
Daisy turned her head from the window. Grandmère stood a meter or so away, watching Daisy carefully. “Lenient?” she said. “Monsieur Vallet is hardly lenient.”
“No, he is not. But apparently that’s not enough. Apparently they’re planning something bigger, some great crackdown. They want every Jew out of Paris, every Jew out of France.”
“But where? Where will they keep them all?”
“Them?” said Grandmère. “You mean me, Daisy. Us.”
“Stop. We’re not . . . I mean, you are, we are, technically, but not . . . not . . . nobody knows—”
“They will know. That’s what this is all about, don’t you see? To discover who’s Jewish, to find out who has even a pint or two of Jewish blood and eliminate him.”
“Not eliminate, surely. The camps . . . they go to camps—”
“And what do you think happens in these camps, hmm? What do you think has happened to my dear friend Madame de Rothschild at Ravensbrück? Do you think they’ve been serving her coffee in a silver pot?”
“Of course not.”
“I used to think I could keep us safe. I used to think our rank, at least, would hold them back, so that I could help those who aren’t so fortunate. But poor Elisabeth . . . and she’s a Rothschild. A Rothschild! And she wasn’t even born a Jew, she married into the family, she’s estranged from Philippe. So you see, nobody is safe. We are all rats in a cage, waiting our turn to die.”
Daisy said nothing. She turned back to the window and ran her finger along the crease where the frame met the cool glass. Grandmère’s hand reached out to cover hers.
“Come with me,” said Grandmère.