Tours of the Black Clock

74

1940. COME HERE. THERE are still a hundred things for me to do to you. Paris has fallen, I was there once. I met a friend from there, or was it there he was going when we said goodbye? What was his name? We shook hands on the platform at a station: No way they’re going to take over Paris, I said; and then he was gone. In the window above Dog Storm Street a procession of planes sails black like the years before my birth. I hear you panting beneath me. Your hair’s tousled in the wind through the window. This is Paris, Geli. There’s smoke from Montmartre and bright wet lipstick on the Vendome column.

Holtz is troubled. I’m watched by Germans all the time, I try to shake them when I leave the flat to return to my family. Perhaps he worries I’ll vanish again, perhaps it’s something else. Lately he comes to my room and sits in the dark for hours rambling about something he calls Barbarossa; it takes you and me away from each other. I see you tapping your foot impatiently waiting for him to leave, I watch you touching yourself and tasting it. Holtz won’t tell me about it at first. “One of the client’s lifelong dreams,” he only hints grandly. Some piece of distinctly audacious treachery, I guess.

“But. …” Holtz says.

But?

Lighting cigarettes all night, putting them out. Rising from his chair, pacing the room, sitting again. “The client’s distracted,” Holtz says. Distracted? I laugh. Holtz hates it when I laugh. You’re distracting him, Geli. From one of his lifelong dreams. “Banning,” he says, and in this moment I know something’s wrong, “Banning.” I stop laughing and listen to him. “You have to understand what I’m trying to tell you,” he continues, “it’s deadly. The affair’s become political. He doesn’t concentrate the way he used to. Barbarossa’s critical to the war, its timing is absolutely pinpoint.” He’s pacing again. “If it doesn’t take place in the spring, if it’s delayed too long, then we must wait another spring. Worse if he decides not to wait at all, and presses forward too late. …” He stops, turning to me. “They removed her nine years ago when she became a problem for him. They’ll remove her again.”

Remove her? I blink at him in the dark. “What does it mean,” I say, “they’ll remove her?”

“It means,” he says, leaning across our bed, “they’ll remove me. It means they’ll remove you.”

“Then fire me,” I laugh. “Or rather, I’ll fire you.”

Holtz gestures in the night. “But you see,” he starts again, “you see, there are those,” and immediately I know he’s included with them, “there are those who think Barbarossa’s a potential disaster. A potential catastrophe. Who would like to see him forget about it altogether, before he pushes history farther than it can be pushed.” And now he’s rambling again, talking to himself or someone else. “Napoleon tried to push history that far, and history pushed back.” Holtz is a nervous wreck. “For some of us,” he says, “she’s the woman who will save the country. She’s the woman who will save him from himself.”

“I’ll think of something especially good for tomorrow night,” I offer.

He narrows his eyes. He’d advise or threaten me at this moment if he could think of anything that would do either one. I thought he’d never leave, you say when he’s gone.

Courtney, freckletot. Even you could not redeem this.