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The stillness of the early afternoon air was something that always struck Shosanna.
She had been living in Paris for four years now, and that specific silence had penetrated her very bones.
The city lacked all the sounds of the countryside where she had lived with her family: in her farm, animals, grass, and trees were never silent.
That contrast reminded her of what she had lost and what she had miraculously built all alone after the day everything she had ever cared about was torn away from her forever.
When Shosanna left Le Gamaar to clear out the leftovers from her earlier lunch—boiled potatoes with beans on the side, and some fresh apricots with that disgusting, bitter chicory coffee—, heat hit her face and bare arms under her yellow short-sleeved blouse.
She was immediately enveloped in a gust of summer air that almost took her breath away; a stark difference from the nights, where she was forced to wrap herself up tightly in her jacket to avoid shaking like a leaf on the ladder, removing all the letters from the marquee.
Paris was a volatile city like her, and perhaps that was why Shosanna felt she had found her place there, at times.
Certainly, they both had something in common in this regard.
Once she'd left and dropped the leftovers in the dumpster, Shosanna turned to wave from afar to Claudine, the owner of the bistro located directly across from Le Gamaar.
In the neighborhood, everyone had known each other for years. She, however, avoided becoming too familiar with others, limiting herself to friendly nods and exchanging occasional small talk on peaceful days.
But for Shosanna, there had been no more peaceful days since Fredrick Zoller had forcefully entered her life one cold night a few weeks earlier.
From a simple conversation about cinema, an unmanageable situation had arisen. That same situation, tho, had also provided her with the final opportunity for revenge on Germany and the entire world.
Incredibly, in a coincidence that seemed almost bizzarre, just as Shosanna was thinking of him, her gaze wandered to the tables of Claudine's bistro, set outside in the shade... and who else but Fredrick was right there?
He was sitting sipping something, his back straight as a twig, wearing that green Werhmacht uniform that made Shosanna want to scream every time she saw it.
God, she couldn't wait to obliterate every single German uniform with her own purifying fire. Her own revenge would be as sweet as the purest sugar melting on her tongue.
Just the day before, he'd dragged her to that delirious lunch, and then, that same evening, after the Lucky Kids private screening at Le Gamaar, it had become certain that she'd be the one to host the premiere of that disgusting propaganda film, starring the very boy she were currently watching from a distance.
My God, the whole of Paris was plastered with Nation's Pride posters on every single wall... Shosanna still didn't know how it was possible she hadn't recognized him for three weeks straight before he'd introduced himself to her and told her who he was.
Well, her brain wasn't registering anything German-related—and rightfully so, by the way.
But now Fredrick Zoller had given her the chance to stage the biggest showdown of Shosanna's life, and she'd have a full fourteen days to perfect every single detail of her plan.
Shosanna, with Marcel's indispensable help, would pull it off.
She had no choice.
She was sure she would succeed, no matter the cost.
Her humanity and her soul were now dead along with her family... so she would be willing to sacrifice herself to the utmost and never look back.
She didn't care a damn about the people sitting in the velvet seats of Le Gamaar on the night of the premiere—they were all Nazi swine, collaborators, enemies, usurpers of France. Their end was written into their very destiny, and Shosanna wouldn't have minded sending them to it with her own hands.
She cared even less about herself, if possible.
No last desperate desire for life had stirred in her heart when she'd spoken of her plans to Marcel; no other goal had dawned on her than to imprison Goebbels, Landa, and anyone else who had the misfortune to join them on that night in a cinema engulfed in flames that would rise to the Parisian dark sky.
That was Shosanna's only purpose, not caring about Nazi suitors who greeted her from their seat at the bistro and they were calling her by a name she had never belonged to her.
"Emmanuelle!" Fredrick exclaimed, and Shosanna, approaching him with a grumpy expression surely etched on her features, noticed his face light up as if a veritable goddess had materialized before his eyes.
The resolve to be willing to harm him on the night of the premiere—because Shosanna wouldn't let even God himself stop her from carrying out her perfect, death-soaked scheme—solidified in her, even if she wasn't sure if she could follow through with it.
But Shosanna would have to do it anyway.
In war, you didn't look the enemy in the face, even if he always spoke to you gallantly to get to know you better and invited you out to lunch.
Fredrick Zoller was just a German soldier, and that was the end of it for Shosanna.
"Good afternoon, Emmanuelle," he said, setting a now-empty glass on the wooden table where he was sitting. "I was just passing by, and thought I'd grab a cold drink while I waited for—"
The hard tone of Shosanna's voice cut him off, as she crossed her arms menacingly over her chest.
"Don't they need you for this premiere?" she asked, each word spoken sharply.
But Fredrick smiled at her as she stood beside him, as if her mere presence was essential to his breathing.
God, Shosanna hated all this. And she hated him in return, needless to say.
"Herr Doktor is doing this job admirably, along with Colonel Landa. I," he whispered, waving his hands in a dramatic gesture, like the one he'd made at the bar where they'd met after their first conversation at Le Gamaar, "am just the star of the film. And that gives me the chance to—"
Again, Shosanna broke into his monologue, trying to break it. "Annoy me like you always do lately?"
The thought came rushing out of her heart, even though she felt, deep down, it was almost an exaggeration.
As furious as she was with the entire world and on the verge of realizing a deadly plan already meticulously in place, Shosanna knew that Fredrick Zoller's intentions toward her were not malicious at all.
He was just a foolish little soldier, nothing more.
His honest, crystalline laugh rang in Shosanna's ears before he replied.
"No. The chance to stroll through the most beautiful city in the world, waiting to do the thing I love most in the world."
Shosanna's expression was nothing short of shocked, because Fredrick laughed even louder before standing up and pulling out a chair for her to sit at his table.
"Watching a movie... that's what I truly love most. I already told you that, when I talked you about my sisters and Munich."
The memory came back clear as day in Shosanna's mind. She pictured herself sitting there, holding her book about Simon Templar while Fredrick spoked to her about his family and Das Haus Kino.
Once seated again, directly across from Shosanna, Fredrick began talking to her again, giving her every ounce of attention.
She felt suffocated like never before, and she couldn't quite pinpoint why.
As if an army of ants had decided to dance across her entire body and steal the oxygen from her lungs just for fun.
"May I offer you something to drink? I just had a glass of delicious, fresh mint syrup with cold milk," he said, in his typical polite tone.
But, as usual, Shosanna decided to reply with sheer sarcasm.
"Oh no, isn't the new Teutonic movie star sipping champagne? Where are we going at this rate?"
Fredrick shook his head, his gelled hair stuck together and shining in the sun.
"I'm not particularly fond of alcohol... I only drink it when it's really unavoidable on special occasions," was his calm reply, but Shosanna already knew this little detail about him.
She would have denied it with every fiber of her own being, but she had realized it just the day before, when she had been the first to sip a glass of champagne at the table with Goebbels and Landa, and Fredrick had just a cup of tea in front of him.
And, truth be told, she'd particularly enjoyed the tart, fresh, and fruity taste of champagne—even though she'd never had such a refined drink in her life.
In all honesty, she would have killed to taste it again, or to eat that delicious dish with a lobster she'd had right under her nose just before going to Fredrick's table.
Fredrick cleared his own throat, and that brought her back to reality, effective immediately.
Shosanna always had to be wary of him, to see what situation she'd end up with just one sentence from his mouth.
"I have something for you, Mlle Mimeux," was all he said, and Shosanna felt flames of irritation swirl in her stomach again. The only thing this boy did for her was get her into more and more trouble... what would it be now, for heaven's sake? "May I give it to you now, please?"
Shosanna would never have wanted to accept anything from Fredrick, a proud soldier from the very nation that had destroyed her life beyond repair and who even knew the men directly responsible for this, but she already knew she had no choice but to give in and do it.
Fredrick Zoller was incredibly dangerous to her, with his gentle manner and his big, kind eyes.
The last time he'd wanted to give her something, he'd dragged her to a Nazi lunch to watch them gorge themselves on delicacies while the French people lived on food ration cards and starved, with the murderer of her entire family that subjected her to a merciless interrogation over a plate full of strudel and cream.
"Just enough time for a cigarette, then I have to get back to my cinema," Shosanna replied curtly, pulling her meager pack of Gitanes cigarettes, worth their weight in gold on the black market, and a box of matches from the pocket of her denim overalls.
"That'll be enough," Fredrick whispered, deep dimples of impatience forming around his thin mouth.
From a third chair at the same table where they were sitting, Fredrick's smooth hands—the same hands that had killed more than three hundred people in Sicily from the bell tower, a shocking detail that often came to Shosanna at the most unexpected moments—produced a small bouquet of white flowers and a tiny red cloth bag.
Evidently, the scarcity typical of occupied France had greatly reduced his great prospects for romantic gifts, but he had still managed to put something together for her.
Again, that feeling of discomfort took hold of Shosanna's throat, tightening it as if it were a fine silk scarf like those around the necks of the bourgeois women she saw strolling down the street or on the subway.
Though air was squeezing from her chest, Shosanna lit her own cigarette and began to inhale smoke, carefully examining Fredrick's gifts, placed right in front of her on the wooden table of Claudine's bistro.
They seemed more like bombs waiting to explode at any moment than anything else.
One wrong move, and everything would blow up.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with... all of this," Shosanna declared, between puffs of her cigarette, her gaze hard as stone. Actually, inside of herself she was experiencing a whole series of conflicting feelings that she didn't have the desire, or time, to analyze right now.
Fredrick's playful laughter filled the space between their bodies, dissipating into the still air of that hot Parisian afternoon.
"That's usually what you give when you want to court a girl... or at least that's what my sisters always told me to do in this kind of situation," Fredrick stated, his childish smile growing wider and wider.
There, Shosanna managed to pinpoint the primary feeling that was prevailing over all the others amidst the storm churning her insides.
From the outside, no one would never have been able to tell—because Shosanna had years of experience filtering every single emotional wave on her frozen face—, but, in truth, she was feeling deeply and genuinely embarrassed by everything that was currently happening to her.
No one had ever courted her in her life; not when she lived with her family, nor had it happened with Marcel. Their relationship had developed so quickly after their first meeting at Le Gamaar that they had skipped that silly phase of getting to know each other like that.
She never would have expected that the first person to give her such gifts would be a German soldier.
Shosanna truly didn't know what to do, because, as was often the case in those last, insane weeks, Fredrick Zoller was doing things to her that she couldn't understand or predict.
Then, finally, Shosanna's mouth managed to articulate some sounds.
"I can't accept anything from you, Fredrick," was her harsh reply, delivered with her usual inflexibility, tinged with anger and disbelief.
How dare that boy do such things to her? How dare he want to get so close to her, despite Shosanna having spent years trying to keep the entire world out, as far away as possible?
A sad smile played on Fredrick's lips, and a sharp edge of guilt crept into Shosanna's heart.
But it was short-lived: Shosanna expelled it without much difficulty, along with a puff of smoke from her cigarette, clutched between her fingers like a lifeline.
"It's because of the uniform I'm wearing, isn't it?" was Fredrick's blunt and melancholy question, and Shosanna could only shake her head in confirmation, huffing.
They had broached this topic of conversation before—it seemed pointless to her to once again express her profound discomfort at being familiar with an invading soldier, who never seemed to want to leave her alone.
Besides, the uniform Fredrick was wearing was the easiest explanation for a situation that would have been impossible to illustrate otherwise.
Shosanna couldn't possibly open up to him, tell him who she really was and all the terrible tribulations she'd faced in the last four years of her life. Ever since a burst of machine gun fire had snatched away her mom, dad, and Amos in a matter of seconds.
That horrible sound always resonated in her head, especially in the nightmares that still tore at her sleep on a weekly basis.
Fredrick Zoller wasn't really kind to her, Shosanna knew it very well. Everything about him was exploitative, his very feelings for her were fabricated.
Because he knew Emmanuelle Mimeux, a young Parisian girl who owned a cinema. He didn't know Shosanna Dreyfus, a Jewish girl from Nantes who grew up on a farm.
He liked a person who, in fact, didn't exist at all the way he believed.
And, above all... Shosanna didn't like him. At all.
Such an abomination would never have happened inside her.
Fredrick Zoller was and always would be nothing for her.
Just a useless, foolish boy who had proved to be the best possible instrument for the revenge Shosanna had unknowingly harbored within herself for years.
"Then I'll propose a little game, if you like," Fredrick suggested, and Shosanna, for a fleeting moment, was almost fascinated by his obvious stubbornness toward her.
A young man who had managed to survive a desperate situation like the one he'd described to her couldn't take no for an answer.
His determination had gotten him through, and it was clear he clung to it in every aspect of his life.
"Let's see if you would accept my little gifts for you this way," Fredrick said, indicating with his hands his bouquet of flowers—wild white daisies, Shosanna noticed absently—and the small, mysterious red package.
At that point, Shosanna's curiosity got the better of her rationality, and she took another puff on her cigarette and stared at him with resolution.
"I am all ears," was her direct response.
At this point, she wanted to see how far Fredrick Zoller would go to persuade her of such absurdity.
Shosanna would have expected anything from him at that moment except for him to rise from his chair, unbutton the uniform jacket he always wore, and place it on the back of another at their table.
Then Fredrick sat back down, unbuttoning it a little around his neck and rolling up the sleeves of his own pristine white shirt, his forearms exposed.
With his trousers hidden from her view, seen him this way, Shosanna could almost fool herself into thinking he wasn't a German soldier.
As if Fredrick were a normal, ordinary boy. Like her.
But, as Shosanna knew full well, neither of them were normal or ordinary.
And they never would be.
"Off with my uniform, that's it... better, right?" he asked, but Shosanna felt as if an invisible hand had landed on her ribcage, crushing it with the weight of a tank.
She couldn't say a word at that scene, completely in disbelief.
"I'll take your silence as a positive thing for me," Fredrick chuckled before turning serious and looking her straight in the eyes. As if he could lose himself forever in the green of Shosanna's irises.
And, again, that thought tugged at the painful, angry strings inside her.
"Now let's both forget we're in Paris... this very table you and I are sitting at right now is becoming something else."
Shosanna's eyes narrowed as she watched Fredrick, but she decided to continue smoking her cigarette and see how far that pathetic little soldier would go for her.
"It's becoming a new place all our own, one that doesn't exist on any map in the world. Here, I'm no longer German, and... well, you're not French," and this elicited a stifled chuckle of disbelief from Shosanna.
She was a proud French Jew, and she would never give up a part of her personal identity, under any circumstances.
"There are no peace or war where you and I are sitting now. There's just a boy who wants to give a girl a few gifts and maybe talk about movies with her a little more, just like he did the first night he had the courage to approach her... do you think that's possible?"
Fredrick's question was accompanied by a smile so bright that Shosanna thought it was almost childish in its joy.
But, as usual, her reason kicked in, and Shosanna tried to understand how a young man who had taken the lives of so many in war could be so sweet and thoughtful toward her.
Because he doesn't know who you really are, was the answer Shosanna's mind immediately provided.
But the thing was, Shosanna had never done anything to deserve Fredrick's attention. She was the kind of person who pushed others away, always keeping them at a distance, terrified of being discovered and killed for it.
Then, out of nowhere, the last person in the entire universe who should have ever noticed her did it, and she found herself in a world of trouble.
In her entire life, Shosanna had never needed anyone, nor of having to embroider a new reality she could be accepted into.
She had another identity, true, but inside, many things hadn't changed.
Shosanna Dreyfus was as vindictive, passionate, and courageous as she had always been before becoming Emmanuelle Mimeux.
It was everything else around her that had changed, because Germany had taken everything from her simply because she was born Jewish.
How could she ever forget this, even for a moment? How could she ever pretend she wasn't sitting at that table with a German soldier?
A smoke ring escaped her mouth perfectly before she answered Fredrick, sneering.
"Has anyone ever told you you're irritatingly persistent?" was her honest question to him, with a slight hint of laughter at the end.
Fredrick Zoller was truly the most obstinate person she'd ever met in both of her lives, she had to give him that.
"And has anyone ever told you you're incredibly stubborn?" Fredrick replied, without even waiting a heartbeat to think about it.
A sweet look settled on his face, and Shosanna just wanted to get up from that chair, lock herself in Le Gamaar, and never see him again.
"That's the thing I like most about you, you know?" Fredrick admitted, and Shosanna felt an uncontrollable blush spread across her cheeks.
A piercing sensation tingled the back of her neck, despite that hot afternoon in Paris.
Shosanna was forced to look away from Fredrick, placing her nearly finished cigarette on the edge of the ashtray in front of her and caressing her arms.
"Please don’t say things like that... you’re making me uncomfortable."
And that was Shosanna’s first moment of truth since she’d started talking to Fredrick that afternoon.
"I’m sorry," Fredrick began, before picking up his empty, mint-stained glass and playing with it a bit between his fingers. "My sisters raised me to always be honest, when the situation allows. And besides, I remind you that we’re still sitting in our special place that doesn’t exist on any map... the rules of the world outside of it don’t apply here."
Those words, despite everything, entered Shosanna's brain like hot lead bullets.
And, for a brief moment, she wished things were really as Fredrick had just told her.
That the terrible reality she lived in was just a nightmare she would wake up from.
That she would be able to exist freely without having to constantly hide who she was, fearing she'd be torn to pieces for it.
That she would have the chance to simply talk to a boy who'd approached her to talk about movies, without having to constantly think about his nationality, her religion, the crazy world they both lived in.
But that thought vanished in Shosanna like rain blown away by the wind when her hands almost involuntarily reached the petals of the white daisies right in front of her.
They reminded her so much of her farm, the Nantes countryside in spring... everything that had been torn from her and she only longed to be reunited with. As soon as possible.
Shosanna's fingertips touched those flowers as if they were made of pure crystal, longing to taste them thoroughly, but holding herself back.
Those flowers were Fredrick's, and no, she just couldn't take them for that.
Marcel's face suddenly appeared before Shosanna, as did the full realization of their deadly plan, now arranged since the previous day; her heart transformed into a colossal boulder, pressing down on her stomach and throat as if it weighed as much as the entire universe.
To distract herself, Shosanna turned her gaze to the small red bag next to those beautiful flowers.
"What’s in there?" she asked Fredrick curtly before exhaling the last puff of smoke from her cigarette and finally stubbing it out in the ashtray.
"Chocolates. I hope they’re not completely melting in this heat," Fredrick laughed, unaware of Shosanna’s internal jolt at that revelation.
In wartime, anything sweet and sugary was considered a veritable chimera.
Shosanna had never tasted chocolate in her entire life, despite hearing Marcel tell her how divinely delicious it was, and she never thought she'd ever be given the chance.
"We soldiers are given small portions of chocolate, but I assure you, this isn't German chocolate. The original packaging would have made you too uncomfortable, so I managed to get some from another source and have it packaged prettier," Fredrick confessed, and Shosanna believed him.
He always tried so hard to please her; that was a given.
Following an illogical impulse, Shosanna's fingers reached for the chocolate Fredrick wanted to give her.
But then, mid-movement, she stopped and placed her hands back in her lap.
My God, her instinct was screaming at her to grab that gift and eat all that delicious chocolate in one bite. For once, to do something she wanted beyond the confines of the rigid control Shosanna had confined herself to for years, as if she were an animal in a pen.
But she couldn't do it.
Shosanna truly couldn't give in, not even in the face of such temptation.
Fredrick's gaze softened toward her, and she felt that feeling of annoyance take over every part of her, as if Shosanna knew no other way to react to him than with this forced response.
"Look, you can have the chocolate; it's yours just like the flowers. Remember? We're in our territory; no one here will judge you for what you want to take with you."
Those words, spoken delicately by Fredrick, had the effect of making Shosanna's resentment boil over.
At that point, she no longer knew who or what it was directed at: him, herself, the war, Germany, the entire damned world she had the misfortune of being born into.
Because no, reality wasn't the magical place Fredrick had invented to somehow make her yield to him.
No amount of his pathetic attempts to make her comfortable with their state of things would have made her weak towards what existed within and outside of her.
Shosanna Dreyfus had been living in a France occupied by the German army for four years. She had lost everything she held most dear to Hitler and all the madmen who followed his delusional racist and anti-Semitic ideas.
Her sole goal had now become to cleanse the world of this immense tragedy and correct the course of history as much as possible.
In a short time, Le Gamaar would turn into a death trap; Shosanna would burn down, with Marcel's complicity, that very same cinema that was standing next to her and Fredrick at that moment.
And that same boy, so open and kind to her, who looked at her as if his dearest Emmanuelle were the very center of his world, would become ashes in the wind with her in the dark Parisian night.
Shosanna finally came to her senses at that thought, regaining control of herself and her emotions.
"I'm sorry, I can't accept your daisies or your chocolate," she announced, her voice as unyielding as hard steel. "I don't like flowers or sweets... the war has taken my sweet tooth from me."
The string of lies she was telling was disconcerting, to say the least, but Shosanna had no choice but to hide behind her high walls and remain there, safe until all of this had its final outcome.
Fredrick's heart broke as he listened to her; she could see it clearly on his saddened features.
That realization created a very strange sensation in the center of her sternum, but Shosanna was incredibly skilled at suppressing it with her usual mastery.
She had no choice but to behave exactly that way, and she never would have had any choice in doing so.
So Shosanna rose from her chair and bid Fredrick farewell with that gesture.
She took another cigarette from her pack and realized her wrists were trembling slightly... but it was just a silly coincidence.
Just as it was a coincidence that Shosanna wanted to flee to Le Gamaar with all her might, just to get away from Fredrick, his foolish kindness, his stupid feelings, his thoughful gifts, and everything else that surrounded them.
However, when Fredrick greeted her back, standing up as well, his tone was steady and not at all discouraged.
"My bad, I didn't know that," he began, that tireless smile always plastered across his lips as if nothing could erase it in the presence of his beloved Emmanuelle. Shosanna no longer knew whether to hate him or his beautiful smile. "It means that next time we sit down at our table here tomorrow, with its special powers, I'll have to be more creative with you. I already have a few new ideas that I think you might like."
Shosanna raised the cigarette to her mouth and let a little warm smoke enter her exhausted lungs.
Despite her action, a tiny smile formed against her will on her face.
"I'd like to see you try," she whispered, before turning her back on him and walking briskly back toward Le Gamaar, ready to welcome her as always.
Shosanna would beat herself up for her senseless encouragement of Fredrick for a long time to come.
It was foolhardy, to say the least, to have acted that way, as if some tiny part of her yearned to see him again and understand just how far he would go for her.
Which was impossible, because Fredrick meant nothing to her.
"I'll find a gift you'll finally accept without hesitation on my part, that's a promise," Fredrick swore, his voice clear and firm behind her. "See you at the last show tonight, Mlle Mimeux."
And so, as she drifted further and further away from him, as if Fredrick were turning into a distant, forgettable speck, Shosanna forced herself to remember that nothing between them could ever change.
In fact, nothing ever should.
The only gift she would ever need from Fredrick Zoller would be the revenge he had so perfectly and effortlessly managed to give her.
Shosanna continued to exhale smoke from the cigarette clutched between her fingers, hoping that with it, her irrational desire to sit back at that same table with Fredrick the next day might also dissolve, to return to the world he had created for her specifically to gain her approval.
Shosanna, perhaps, would have enjoyed it much more than she would ever have been willing to admit to herself, the fact that she could forget reality, even for just a brief moment, with him.
To pretend that everything around them didn't exist, in order to find some peace.
But Shosanna would only have that peace on the night of the premiere, when the darkness and a violent fire would erase everything, including herself.