from the Maginot Line; she’d been scared to death that he would be killed, and she would be left all alone. But her joy had quickly dissipated. Because Lucien’s practice had dried up, they’d had to dip into her trust fund to survive. This she bitterly resented, and she let her husband know her feelings on that matter almost daily. Celeste felt a husband should support his wife, war or no war. Lucien was enraged by her attitude, because he’d been a good provider until the surrender. Ashamed that she had to support them, he too became angry and resentful.
And now he had a new commission, and she still couldn’t be happy.
“Would you rather that Manet and other Frenchmen have their businesses stolen away by the Germans?”
“That would be the honorable thing, if you ask me,” Celeste snapped back. “To produce one single bolt for those bastards is pure treason. You’ll see, when this is over, they’ll be cutting the throats of all the collaborationists.”
For the last two years in Paris, calling someone a collaborator was the worst insult you could hurl. Worse than saying their mother was a whore or they were a bastard. It was a serious charge that could mean death if the Resistance took it seriously. Men had been found outside Paris shot in the head. But the very worst kind of collaboration was a French woman sleeping with a German. They were called the horizontal collaborationists.
As Lucien was about to begin his rebuttal, the lights flickered then went out, engulfing the apartment in total darkness. He didn’t bother to go to the window to see if the lights were off in other buildings. Each month, the electrical service in Paris had grown more uncertain, sometimes blacking out the city for hours. Without a word of complaint, Celeste brought out three candlesticks from the cupboard to the right of the sink, lit them, and went back to skinning the rabbit. The yellowish candlelight cast a spooky quivering shadow of Celeste on the kitchen walls.
“Did you ever think that those factories might help France after the war?” asked Lucien.
“Next, you’ll be giving me that collaborationist rot—‘Let’s show we’re good losers, get back to work as usual, and work together with the Boche.’ Anyway, now that the Americans are in this mess, you’ll soon be seeing bombers by the hundreds over France. Your masterpiece will be in ashes.”
Lucien chomped down on a piece of very stale bread. He would be designing buildings for France that would be used after Germany’s defeat, which at the moment seemed far-fetched. But he honestly believed it would happen. The main thing was to manage to stay alive to see it.
“I’m seeing Manet this week about the project,” he said.
Celeste turned slowly to face Lucien, a bloody knife in her hands. An evil smile came over her face.
“I bet you’d ask me to sleep with a client for a commission, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d never do such a thing!” he shouted. “What a horrible thing to say.”
“But you’ll design for the Germans.”
“This is war, and I’ll do anything to keep us alive.”
“What about keeping your honor?”
Celeste threw the knife into the sink and walked out of the kitchen as the lights flickered back on.
***
Celeste went into the bedroom and sat in a big overstuffed armchair by the window. It was her favorite place in the apartment. She liked to read there or, in the afternoon, watch the children play in the courtyard below. The chair was soft and comfortable, unlike the furniture in the living room, which was of the modernist style Lucien loved so much. She found the “clean, simple modern lines” of the chairs and sofa uncomfortable and cold. It was Lucien who chose the furniture. A price a woman paid when she married an architect, she learned. Celeste had gone along with his selections because she’d loved him and she trusted his architect’s taste in things even though her tastes were far more traditional.