call.
To La Paz, Bolivia.
A manservant answered the phone.
Rinemann inquired if Senor Eliazer was up at his usual hour. If Senor Eliazer was available to come to the telephone.
Yes, it was very, very important. Yes, he would wait
.
The next voice Colonel Rinemann heard was that of Senor Eliazer. Senor Eliazer—who had once been known by another, much more famous and powerful-sounding name.
In a hushed voice, Hermann Rinemann began to describe in great detail what he was watching on the
Today
show’s eight-o’clock news.
The raids
.
The warning
.
Dachau Zwei
.
CHAPTER 13
Henri Bendel’s, New York City.
Her thick black hair blazing like the mane of a Thoroughbred, Alix Rothschild struck a New York
Vogue
pose beneath the rich brown-and-cream canopy of Henri Bendel’s on West Fifty-seventh Street.
Behind Alix, in Bendel’s glossy window, the arms and legs of several mannequins were strewn on top of broken lightbulbs and colorful bazaar streamers. In a second window, there was a much-tastier display from Bailey-Heubner, one of the boutiques on the ground floor inside the building.
When Alix had been ten, she remembered, her Uncle Benny had bought her a white beaver topper from this very same, wonderfully screwy, department store.
Now Alix was shivering in a summery Halston gown. She was also falsely representing a cloying new women’s fragrance called Tricot—(the French word for knitted sweater, she hoped someone at the Madison Avenue perfume factory realized).
For three magazine ads and two television commercials, Alix Rothschild would receive $250,000 to promote Tricot, a scent very much like Rive Gauche, Charlie, Wind Song, Cachet, Babe. A touch less alcohol; a smidgen more jasmine. And Alix Rothschild!
All around the dark-haired actress there were flashing Mylar reflectors on aluminum tripods.
No more than an arm’s length away was an expensive troupe of makeup, fashion, and hairstylists.
Dabbing, blotting, curling. Crimping, glossing, spraying, powdering
.
Making certain that Alix Rothschild looked perfect.
Which Alix did.
An art director, photographer, assistant director, and account executive told her so. The crowd gathered around Alix showed it with their approving smiles and wide eyes. Even Bendel’s ancient doorman, Buster, looked mildly animated, or at least, amused.
“Gorgeous, darling.” “Perf, Alix.” “Sexy kitten now.”
Alix heard the shop talk among the reflectors.
“Varushka got herself preggers in New Hampshire. Yes, she did, too. I heard it from Kimberly over at Elite.”
Alix’s mind, meanwhile, was drifting.
Whenever the crowds and bright klieg lights suggested to Alix that she was someone special—her own tremendous guilt, her terrible visions, came rushing in to countermand the pleasant experience.
This time it was worse than it had ever been
, Alix realized.
Instead of chic, expensive perfumes, she could smell putrefying corpses.
Instead of the wealthy Fifth Avenue crowd, she saw a line of stick-limbed, bent-over prisoners in striped prison garb, with big yellow stars branded on their backs and chests.
Thirty-five years before, Alix Rothschild’s mother had died horribly on one of those terrifying lines. At Dachau
Konzentrationslager
. Her father had died in Buchenwald. Alix was one of nearly a million concentration camp survivors in the United States.
Lately, she’d become obsessed.
Ever since the Nazi raid in Westchester. Ever since the threat of some kind of uprising by the Reich, Alix had been able to think of nothing else.
On May 7, 1945, church bells, fire alarms, and air-raid sirens had tolled and pealed all through ravaged Western Europe, inside Russia, all the way to America
.
The terrible war in Europe was finally over.
Winston Churchill had said: “This moment is a signal for the greatest outburst of joy in the history of mankind.”
What Alix Rothschild remembered was a long, grim line of German civilians. The American Army had forced
To La Paz, Bolivia.
A manservant answered the phone.
Rinemann inquired if Senor Eliazer was up at his usual hour. If Senor Eliazer was available to come to the telephone.
Yes, it was very, very important. Yes, he would wait
.
The next voice Colonel Rinemann heard was that of Senor Eliazer. Senor Eliazer—who had once been known by another, much more famous and powerful-sounding name.
In a hushed voice, Hermann Rinemann began to describe in great detail what he was watching on the
Today
show’s eight-o’clock news.
The raids
.
The warning
.
Dachau Zwei
.
CHAPTER 13
Henri Bendel’s, New York City.
Her thick black hair blazing like the mane of a Thoroughbred, Alix Rothschild struck a New York
Vogue
pose beneath the rich brown-and-cream canopy of Henri Bendel’s on West Fifty-seventh Street.
Behind Alix, in Bendel’s glossy window, the arms and legs of several mannequins were strewn on top of broken lightbulbs and colorful bazaar streamers. In a second window, there was a much-tastier display from Bailey-Heubner, one of the boutiques on the ground floor inside the building.
When Alix had been ten, she remembered, her Uncle Benny had bought her a white beaver topper from this very same, wonderfully screwy, department store.
Now Alix was shivering in a summery Halston gown. She was also falsely representing a cloying new women’s fragrance called Tricot—(the French word for knitted sweater, she hoped someone at the Madison Avenue perfume factory realized).
For three magazine ads and two television commercials, Alix Rothschild would receive $250,000 to promote Tricot, a scent very much like Rive Gauche, Charlie, Wind Song, Cachet, Babe. A touch less alcohol; a smidgen more jasmine. And Alix Rothschild!
All around the dark-haired actress there were flashing Mylar reflectors on aluminum tripods.
No more than an arm’s length away was an expensive troupe of makeup, fashion, and hairstylists.
Dabbing, blotting, curling. Crimping, glossing, spraying, powdering
.
Making certain that Alix Rothschild looked perfect.
Which Alix did.
An art director, photographer, assistant director, and account executive told her so. The crowd gathered around Alix showed it with their approving smiles and wide eyes. Even Bendel’s ancient doorman, Buster, looked mildly animated, or at least, amused.
“Gorgeous, darling.” “Perf, Alix.” “Sexy kitten now.”
Alix heard the shop talk among the reflectors.
“Varushka got herself preggers in New Hampshire. Yes, she did, too. I heard it from Kimberly over at Elite.”
Alix’s mind, meanwhile, was drifting.
Whenever the crowds and bright klieg lights suggested to Alix that she was someone special—her own tremendous guilt, her terrible visions, came rushing in to countermand the pleasant experience.
This time it was worse than it had ever been
, Alix realized.
Instead of chic, expensive perfumes, she could smell putrefying corpses.
Instead of the wealthy Fifth Avenue crowd, she saw a line of stick-limbed, bent-over prisoners in striped prison garb, with big yellow stars branded on their backs and chests.
Thirty-five years before, Alix Rothschild’s mother had died horribly on one of those terrifying lines. At Dachau
Konzentrationslager
. Her father had died in Buchenwald. Alix was one of nearly a million concentration camp survivors in the United States.
Lately, she’d become obsessed.
Ever since the Nazi raid in Westchester. Ever since the threat of some kind of uprising by the Reich, Alix had been able to think of nothing else.
On May 7, 1945, church bells, fire alarms, and air-raid sirens had tolled and pealed all through ravaged Western Europe, inside Russia, all the way to America
.
The terrible war in Europe was finally over.
Winston Churchill had said: “This moment is a signal for the greatest outburst of joy in the history of mankind.”
What Alix Rothschild remembered was a long, grim line of German civilians. The American Army had forced
Similar Books
Lark Ascending
Meagan Spooner
The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café
Jenny Oliver
Stretching Anatomy-2nd Edition
Arnold Nelson, Jouko Kokkonen
Moonbog
Rick Hautala
Windigo Island
William Kent Krueger
Daniel Isn't Talking
Marti Leimbach
Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail
Bobbie Ann Mason
Jesse's Soul (2)
Amy Gregory