like hovering bees, and then she saw them, two aeroplanes in formation like eagles. She didn’t know if they were monoplanes or biplanes; she knew nothing about aviation, just the meaningless technical words she committed to memory when German officers droned over dessert. But these aeroplanes were beautiful, and she let out a gasp. Lili muttered obscenities that sounded like prayers, and Violette turned to stone.
“You know,” Eve heard herself saying tautly, “I don’t even know how aeroplanes bomb targets. Do they just throw the explosives over the side?”
This time Lili said, “Shut up.”
The train surged along. The aeroplanes streaked through the blue sky. Please. They were all thinking it. Please, make the hit. Let it all be over now, on this summer day with the smell of warm grass and the sound of birds.
They were too far away to see any explosives drop, or the rounds, or whatever they were. They would only see the explosion, the fire, the smoke. The aeroplanes droned like lazy birds over the train. Now, Eve thought.
But there was no explosion.
No smoke. No fire. No crashing derailment sending the train careening from its tracks.
The kaiser chugged placidly on toward Lille.
“They failed,” Eve said numbly. “They f-failed.”
Violette spoke in empty rage. “Or the explosives were faulty.”
Make another pass, Eve howled inside. Try again! But the aeroplanes disappeared, not proud eagles but failed, draggle-tailed sparrows. Why?
Who cared why? The kaiser lived. He would tour the front; get a view of his soldiers in the trenches; perhaps pass through Lille and nod approvingly at the clocks turned to Berlin time, the boulevards renamed with hammered German signs. Unless he came to eat at Le Lethe and gave Eve the opportunity to bury a steak knife in the back of his neck or season his chocolate mousse with rat poison, he would return to Germany alive and well, riding the machine of war as easily as he rode his untouched train through the countryside.
“It’s just as well.” Violette rose, sounding as though her throat were full of gravel. “The kaiser’s death at Lille would focus all the German attention here. We’d likely all get caught.”
“And it’s n-not as though the war would have just ended,” Eve heard herself saying emptily. “It wouldn’t have changed m-m-m-m—” She couldn’t make the word come and didn’t care enough to force it. She just trailed off, rising and brushing off her skirt with mechanical motions.
Lili hadn’t moved. She stared at the distant train, and her face was ancient.
“Those goddamned—” Lili shook her head. “Oh, you bastards.”
“Ma p’tite, please. Get up.”
Lili rose. She looked down for a moment, kicking the grass, and when she raised her chin she was smiling. Grimly, thinly, but smiling. “I don’t know about you, mes anges, but I feel like getting drunk tonight.”
But Eve wouldn’t be there sharing whatever rotgut brandy or whiskey Lili could get her hands on. I have René tonight, she thought. And tomorrow night. And soon, if he takes me to Limoges, I will have him for two whole days and nights.
All the nights had a rhythm. The bath. The quiet ten minutes or so afterward, silk robe whispering against damp skin, sipping at a very large glass of elderflower liqueur. As Eve drank, René would put on a record and tell her, maybe, about the Débussy piece they were listening to, and how Impressionism was expressed orchestrally, and who were the other Impressionists of art and literature as well as music. That was the easy part. All Eve had to do was listen admiringly.
Then the moment came when René took the glass from her hand and drew her to the bedroom next door. Then it all became difficult.
His kisses were long and slow, and he left his eyes open. His eyes remained open throughout everything, unblinking, measuring, watching for the smallest gasp or hitch in breath. He unwrapped Eve from the rose red silk at leisure, spread her unhurriedly on his pristine sheets, discarded his own robe, and then he stretched over her and took his time.
How very, very much Eve wished he would take his pleasure quickly and roll off. That would have been so easy.
“I’ve never trained a virgin before,” he had remarked the first time. “Normally I value expertise over innocence. We shall have to see how fast you learn. I don’t expect I will please you the first few times—that’s the way for women, rather unfairly, I have always thought.”