The Paris Architect: A Novel (27 page)

42

“Goddamn it, I’m telling you there’s someone in there.”

“But, Colonel, we’ve searched the house from top to bottom, every corner, under every piece of furniture,” said Captain Bruckner.

“Idiot. The Jews are somewhere in the structure of the house, behind a wall or under the floorboards,” screamed Schlegal, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. “Use your imagination, man.”

“Don’t worry, sir. We’ll find them,” said Bruckner, saying what Schlegal wanted to hear.

The captain ran back into the cottage screaming at the top of his lungs. Schlegal always enjoyed watching Bruckner and his men jump at his orders. Fear can make a man do incredible things. They weren’t just scared of him, though—they all thought he was unhinged, which was better. Bruckner would be especially compliant for fear of losing the two-week leave in Munich for which he’d waited so long. Schlegal decided to torture him a bit with a threat to cancel the trip. Bruckner came back out of the house to reassure the colonel that he was kicking the men in the ass to search again. Schlegal abruptly stopped his pacing and faced Bruckner nose to nose.

“Captain, send for sledgehammers and some pry bars. Have your men go around to the shed in the rear of the house and bring any tools they find. Then have them go inside and tap on the walls. Anything that sounds hollow, they are to open up the walls. And tear apart any stairs. Get to it, mister, or you won’t be seeing the Marienplatz anytime soon. That
is
in Munich, isn’t it?”

As Bruckner sprinted away screaming orders, Schlegal went back to his staff car. Leaning against the hood, he lit a cigarette and stared at the house. He scanned its exterior to seek out any possible hiding places. Whoever did the stairs in Adele’s house must be quite clever. The secret spaces would be almost impossible to find. The designer probably took great pride in being able to outfox the Gestapo. The ingenuity of the stairs told him that he was up against a formidable foe, one who would not make any careless mistakes. The thought of other Jews safe in this fellow’s secret hiding places sent Schlegal’s blood pressure skyrocketing. Ever since the discovery of the stairs, that possibility had tormented him. It got so bad that he couldn’t screw Adele in that bedroom anymore.

With his hands clasped behind his back, Schlegal strolled into the house. The soldiers started tapping on the walls. With twenty men tapping away, it sounded like a flock of crazed woodpeckers. Some began pounding at the plaster, breaking through wood lath to find empty wall cavities. Dust and plaster flew in all directions. Two soldiers tore away a wall behind the stairs on the first floor. Another soldier found a ladder and was tearing away a ceiling in the parlor. A sergeant pulled the mahogany wainscoting from the reception hall walls. A lieutenant had taken a hammer to a wall in the dining room and exposed some brick and pounded away at it until Bruckner screamed at him, telling him no one was behind there. Schlegal walked through the first floor, inspecting the demolition effort. He strode from room to room.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, my little Jews. I know you’re in here,” yelled Schlegal in a singsong tone.

“If you come out now, things will be much easier on you.” Schlegal knew this was untrue, but he often promised leniency to his victims for their cooperation. He was never lenient, but it always surprised him to find out how many believed him.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he continued to yell above the din. He actually found himself enjoying this whole operation. There was a growing sense of excitement about finding the Jews, just like he had as a child playing hide-and-seek. Schlegal expected any moment to open up a wall and find them. He imagined they would giggle and shriek with delight as his cousins in Mannheim had always done when discovered. Those memories put a smile on his lips. He loved visiting his cousins in the summer and during the Christmas holiday. It was endless fun and good food.

“Keep at it, men. The one who finds them gets a case—not a bottle, but a whole case—of champagne,” Schlegal shouted out in delight. The pace of the tapping and demolition increased twofold, and Schlegal doubled over with laughter.

“Bruckner, if
you
find them, you get
three
weeks’ leave.” At that promise, the captain took hammer in hand and proceeded to tear apart the wall at the rear of a closet, getting white plaster dust all over his uniform. A truck pulled up in front of the house, and a dozen soldiers with sledgehammers and pry bars poured out of the back and into the house. Bruckner told them what to do, and the noise in the house became deafening.

“We’re going to find you, my little Jewish mice. Or should I say rats?” shouted Schlegal.

Three hours later, not a Jew had been found, and Schlegal’s good cheer had turned to pure rage. Every square centimeter of wall had been examined and sounded. Walls in every room were torn open. Almost all the ceilings had come down. The stairs had been torn apart, step by step. Floorboards were pulled up, exposing dusty bug-ridden spaces between the main timber beams. Kitchen cabinets had been ripped apart. The inside of the great oven had been thoroughly searched. Even the chimneys atop the house were knocked down in case the Jews were hiding in the flues. Bruckner had postponed facing Schlegal for the last hour, but he finally mustered up the courage to do it. It was quite apparent that the colonel, who was standing in the kitchen, was in a foul mood.

“It’s going to be a long time before you see Munich again, mister.”

“Colonel, they’re not here. Unless they magically shrunk down to the size of insects and crawled away, they escaped before we came.”

“Bullshit,” said Schlegal. He hurled a piece of wood paneling across the room. He kicked a chunk of plaster with his black boot, covering it in a fine white powder. He walked over to the window and gazed out onto the lush green garden.

“I’m telling you, they’re still here.”

“I’m sorry; I can’t find them, Colonel.”

Schlegal turned to face Bruckner. He patted his shoulder in a fatherly way and smiled.

“Then burn the house down. The Jews will be forced out because of the smoke—or burn to death in their hiding space. When we pick through the debris, we’ll find them. Burnt to a crisp.”

The captain wasn’t about to protest. It was a quick and easy way to end this mess and get back to Paris where a warm bed and a French prostitute named Jane awaited him. They should have done that in the first place. Soldiers raced to the trucks to get the cans of petrol. In minutes the interior of the entire house was drenched. With Schlegal watching, Bruckner nodded to a soldier standing at the front door, who struck a wooden match and tossed it in the reception hall. An inferno raged through the house in just seconds. Dusk was approaching, and the flames shooting through the roof made an impressive sight against the darkening sky. The soldiers, worn out from the useless demolition, were tired to the bone, and Bruckner allowed them to lounge on the grass or inside the trucks and just watch the blaze. The flames cast an eerie orange light on their faces. Schlegal was expecting at any minute to hear screams of agony, but there was just the crackling of the flames. The blaze wouldn’t die out until morning, so Schlegal ordered the men back to Paris.

***

The Germans had surprised Juliette Trenet; she’d been napping when they’d pulled up to the house. Disoriented, Juliette had had a hard time remembering where her bag was, but she’d found it under the huge butcher block table in the center of the kitchen. She had just managed to pull the drain pan and grate in place when they’d broken down the locked front door with what sounded like a battering ram. Even with the metal pan full of water above her head, she could still hear the soldiers filling up the house, smashing things left and right, ripping into the walls and ceilings looking for her. She was amazed that all this effort was on account of her. Maybe they were looking for someone else. The Germans came down into the kitchen and flipped over the huge table; it shook the earth when it hit the stone floor, making Juliette shake with fright. Hearing the sound of boots pounding on the stone floor just centimeters away from her was unbearable; she wanted to scream out and had to jam her fist in her mouth. The recess under the drain was wide enough with a few centimeters to spare on either side of her arms, which hugged her body. But it was only a meter and a half deep so Juliette had to crouch on a pillow. Her fear became so great that she closed her eyes and grasped her legs, curling up in a fetal position, her body trembling uncontrollably.

It was the shock of all this happening to her so suddenly that was so wrenching. She’d been enjoying her stay in the comfortable house; it had almost been like a continuous weekend holiday, a million times better than living in an empty lions’ den. She couldn’t believe her luck in finding such a place. Now she was about to die. The noise and commotion didn’t let up, and the soldiers kept stepping right over the drain. Juliette began to unravel. She started to weep. With herculean effort, she had to fight the powerful urge to stand straight up and ram her head against the underside of the drain pan, making it fly up in the air so she’d rise suddenly above the floor, surprising the hell out of the soldiers. Juliette would yell, “Here I am, you Nazi shits. Kill me and get it over with.”

But then she felt a small movement within her, then another. Juliette ran her hand all over her bare belly. What the hell was she thinking of?
There’s a scientist inside me
, thought Juliette,
who’ll need my help and guidance
. Her joy in giving the kid its first microscope. Seeing her child graduate with honors. And forty-some years from now, she could be in Stockholm to see Marie or Pierre win a Nobel Prize. There were so many good things to come. She smiled and decided that she’d be damned if she’d give herself and her child up to these bastards. Juliette had no intention of dying.

Then Juliette realized that all the noise around her had suddenly ceased. She raised her head and stared at the bottom of the drain pan as if she could see through it into the kitchen. The silence continued for fifteen minutes, and it seemed the Germans had given up. She’d still wait an hour before getting out of the hiding place as Manet had told her. Then in an instant, her nose detected the ever-so-faint smell of smoke. Quickly, the smell became stronger. Immediately, she contorted her body to go head first into the tunnel opening at the bottom of the hiding place. Only a half meter square, Juliette and her rucksack barely fit in it. Trying to keep her belly off the damp dirt floor, she squirmed and clawed in total darkness like a crazed mole through the twenty meters of tunnel. An incredible energy propelled her through the tunnel like a shot. The black earth caked her clothes and hands. She worried that any second the tunnel would cave in on her, burying her alive; she’d be just minutes from safety when everything came down on her. But as she crawled along, she saw that it was a well-built passage with planks supporting its sides and ceiling. She smiled when she literally saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but as she got closer, she wondered if the Germans were waiting for her. Would the hail of bullets kill her outright, or would she suffer a slow, agonizing death?

***

In the morning, smoke still rose from the ruins as Schlegal’s men poked through the debris. When Schlegal arrived two hours later, Bruckner reported that no bodies had been discovered. Schlegal immediately ordered the men away and walked through the wreckage by himself. He half expected to find a charred body but found nothing. Where the kitchen had once stood, he lit a cigarette. He blew the match out and tossed it into what looked like a floor drain. Schlegal realized there was something odd about the drain. Under the grating was a very shallow, empty metal pan. He tossed his cigarette away, knelt down, and pulled off the grating, which was fastened to the pan. There was a dark empty space below. He threw aside the grating, took off his cap, and stuck his head into the hole. He struck a match and held it down the hole. He saw a tunnel. He pulled himself up, smiling. The pan must have been filled with water all the time the soldiers were searching the house. They’d never bothered with it because it looked like an ordinary old floor drain. The water had evaporated during the fire, exposing the pan. Schlegal suspected the tunnel extended far into the garden, its terminus hidden by the dense covering of flowers. The Jew had escaped while they were in the house.

Schlegal lit a cigarette and walked slowly back to his car.

“This is one very smart bastard,” he said with a smile.

***

Three kilometers away on a high ridge, Juliette could see the wisp of gray smoke still rising slowly above the forest. There had been no one waiting for her at the end of the tunnel, and in the twilight, she had run through the dense forest, tripping and falling on her face dozens of times. She’d looked back to see an orange and yellow pillar of fire lighting up the forest for hundreds of meters around. Exhausted, she’d squeezed under a fallen tree trunk to rest when she was far enough from the house to feel safe. Juliette had laid her head down on the cool green moss under the rotting trunk and slept right through the night.

Manet had instructed Juliette on a backup plan if she was discovered, and now she must follow it to the letter. She picked up her rucksack, looked down at her belly, and gave it a pat, then walked slowly away. Juliette wasn’t at all frightened. She knew they were going to live.

43

“So who’s this special guy? It’s not like you to be carrying on during the day.”

Adele shifted uneasily in her black iron café chair. Bette was amused that the question annoyed her boss and waited patiently for a well-thought-out lie. It was always fascinating to watch someone lie, to conjure up a story in a matter of seconds. Some were experts at it. Like Etienne, her lover last year; he could whip out a convincing lie in a fraction of a second. She actually had great admiration for accomplished liars.

Adele took a sip of wine and patted her lips with a napkin. It was a neat way of stalling for time until she had her story straight.