The Tiger Claw (24 page)

She was so close, so close. Yet too far to recognize one man among the rest.

“The children—wearing the yellow star.”

“Of course they wear it.” Madame Gagné coughed at her elbow. Her long ears had picked up Noor’s involuntary whisper. “Jews who get caught not wearing the star are imprisoned and sent east to Germany.” She looked pointedly at Noor.

Best to ignore the comment as if it was no concern of hers.

Noor studied the chestnut tree growing before the house. It offered a convenient branch that almost touched the window, a branch on which to string an aerial.

The sheets were clean, even if the duvet smelled of spilled wine and clandestine ardour. With some pride Madame showed Noor the timer light switch that would give a maximum of fifteen minutes of light, if there was electricity. Then she led Noor down the corridor to the lavatory.

“On this floor you share with Monsieur Durand, but often he is gone. He says he travels through France selling X-ray machines—but I think he only sells rabbits, that’s what I think. I tell him what I told you: Jews caught not wearing the yellow star could be denounced. But he pretends he is hard of hearing.”

Returning down the corridor, Madame Gagné pointed to another room. “This one is Gabrielle’s room—she’s a waitress at the Café Vidrequin—don’t believe anything she says.”

Rabbits are sweet and harmless. And anyone named for Angel Gibreel deserves a listening before judgement or dismissal
.

“The bathroom is downstairs on the first floor.”

Noor took the long iron key from Madame Gagné and counted out the rent in counterfeit francs. She must make contact with Armand. Insh’allah, she would think of something.

“I will stay three weeks,” she said. “By then I’m sure Tante Lucille will be better.”

Madame Gagné sniffed.

Noor sifted through the friable soil in the flowerpot, found the key and let herself in.

“
Je suis seule ce soir avec mes rêves
…”

Léo Marjane’s mournful voice spun from the grooves of the record and flared from the gilded horn of the gramophone, amplifying the emptiness of Renée’s drawing room.

“Renée?”

“
J’ai perdu l’espoir de ton retour …
”

A match scraped. Shadows danced a gavotte around a candle. Renée, in a chenille rose-vine print robe, reclined on a chaise longue, a framed photograph and a hanky on her lap. An abandoned game of solitaire was spread across the card table.

“Anne-Marie, Émile telephoned to say you would be coming tonight. Oh—hours ago!”

Renée sounded less peremptory tonight, or Noor had caught her at a vulnerable moment.

“Oh, Renée, am I late again?” Noor presented her with a posy of drooping forget-me-nots carried all the way from Madame Gagné’s garden.

“Very pretty, Anne-Marie.” Renée took a leather-bound ledger from the desk and pressed some flowers between its pages. “You really shouldn’t wander about alone. Only prostitutes walk the streets so late. You almost missed the curfew.”

“I’m sorry,” said Noor. “Is Babette asleep?”

“My friend Madame Aigrain is looking after her tonight,” said Renée. “Just nearby.”

She arranged the rest of the flowers in a fluted vase, then brought Noor a bowl of carrot soup, a chunk of rye bread and a tiny slice of Camembert.

“Beautiful china,” remarked Noor of the blue-flowered soup bowl and plates. It was impossible to compliment Renée on the soup.

“My grandmother’s Gien.” Renée joined Noor at the table.

“A lovely memento,” said Noor, her hand rising involuntarily to the tiger claw beneath her blouse. Dadijaan’s wizened brown face came to mind.

“Huh. I was not indulged,” said Renée, “but my grandmother did leave me this house as my dowry—and I promised her I will never sell it.” She gave a great sigh. “It’s going to fall apart around me.”

Noor said, “My grandmother always indulges me. I wish every little girl had one like her.”

“My mother pampers Babette,” said Renée. “Too much—it’s not good for the child. She must learn she can’t have everything because she wants it.” Her eyes gazed far away. Then a smile lit her face for a moment. “Guy—my husband—spoiled me. He did everything for me, everything I have now to learn and do myself.”

“But now you are less dependent, non?”

Renée gave a sharp, sardonic laugh, lit a cigarette. “It’s natural to be dependent. All these responsibilities—they are for men.”

Whenever Uncle began another lecture about the “natural” dependence of girls, Noor and Zaib retorted that their father trusted women initiates in Holland, Belgium and America to carry his teachings forward, and he always said women’s dependence had no basis in either nature or the Qur’an. But it would annoy Renée to disagree.

“If you had a child and an old house to look after, you might understand,” said Renée. “Today I had to move that heavy chest in the kitchen and carry a sack of wood chips down to the cellar by myself. I planted carrots, cabbage and turnips in the kitchen
garden—now I have to harvest them. Like a peasant, myself!”

The carrot soup was bitter. Only hunger and politeness allowed Noor to swallow it.

Work wasn’t a burden; it was an opportunity to contribute to and participate in the world. Attitudes like Renée’s were preached to Noor’s cousin-sisters growing up in zenanas in India. How could Noor commiserate with Renée’s helplessness?

“I always wanted many children,” Renée went on. “But look—I’m thirty-nine. If my husband doesn’t return soon, I will be left with but a single child.”

Worse could happen to a woman than having only one child, and if Renée had travelled beyond Europe, she might readily imagine it.

But then, I didn’t begin resisting dependence till I understood that being protected required me to forfeit a piece of my soul. Renée must not have realized that—yet
.

The day she earned her Red Cross nursing certificate, Uncle had been furious! One would think she had joined a brothel instead of learned basic first aid. He roared that she would bring down her family in the eyes of the world, that a daughter of his
khaandaan
, the feudal House of Khans, should never be educated past her baccalaureate, should never work outside the home. His rage was so much grander than any potential earnings; her little certificate had threatened Uncle’s fragile core. But Uncle knew, as she did, that with that certificate Noor would never be completely dependent on him or Kabir.

“I said you must have left at least three children behind in London if you are twenty-nine, but Monique said you are not married.”

“My fiancé is in London,” said Noor, for consistency with the story she’d told Monique.

“He gave you permission to work, then? Permission to leave the country?”

Noor kept her face pleasant but gave no answer. French law might still require women to obtain a man’s permission to work, travel
and marry, but not so in England. So Noor hadn’t asked anyone.

“Your parents allowed you?” Renée suggested.

“My father is no longer alive,” Noor replied.

“That is a pity,” said Renée. “My father disappeared fighting the Germans. We were told he was buried alive while digging a tunnel near Vauquois. Émile was quite small, I was thirteen.”

“I too was thirteen when my father died.” To satisfy Renée’s sense of propriety she added, “My mother gave permission.” Knowing all the while that Mother knew nothing of her present whereabouts.

“You have sisters and brothers?”

“One of each.”

“Your brother, he is in the army?”

“No.”

“The air force?”

Noor didn’t hesitate. “No, he’s a teacher.”

“And your sister?”

Renée seemed warmer tonight. Playing the enigmatic spy would only rekindle distrust.

“She’s studying to be a doctor.”

“A doctor!” said Renée. “I pity her husband and children—she has a suffragette mentality.”

Be quiet. Be quiet
.

Playing the veena, singing, horseback riding and writing stories for children, Noor had expressed herself far beyond the houseful-of-children terminus to which Uncle’s marriage plans led; and insh’allah, Zaib would go further along that path, if Noor and Kabir could find the money for it. War brought opportunities as well as hardship, opportunities Uncle could never imagine. Zaib had Mother’s drive: she wouldn’t waste a single one.

Uncle would have approved of Renée as fit to befriend his nieces—one reason Noor would never have invited Renée to Afzal Manzil for his approval.

Perhaps Renée was simply bewildered and annoyed by choices and decisions. But no, it was more than that. Renée stubbed out
her cigarette and lit another, saying, “I have no one but Émile. And with Guy captive in Germany, I am afraid for him. For every act of sabotage, the Germans execute ten Frenchmen. The guns are never silent at Mont Valérien.”

“Mont Valérien?” Noor felt Armand’s coat beneath her shoulders again, remembered their special spot under the tall chestnuts, the night of their clandestine marriage.

“The Germans shoot Communists and resistants there.”

What desecration of a beautiful, sacred spot! Even without her memories of Armand, Mont Valérien was sacred to the memory of the soldiers buried there.

“I lived near Mont Valérien.”

“Everything has changed.” Anger born of crumbled expectations filled Renée’s voice. “We are hostages abandoned by our men. They could have fought harder. Now the Germans will be here forever.”

“Oh, no, Renée! It is not the fault of French soldiers. Listen, everyone says the Russians won at Stalingrad. That should give us hope. Even Napoleon couldn’t conquer Russia, yet that insane Hitler believes he can! And so many like Émile are working to free France. The Allies have landed in Africa. The war cannot last forever.”

“Allies in North Africa—huh!
Comme tu es naïve!
They’ve cut off supplies from our colonies. Today I paid eighteen francs on the black market for dates—a few months ago they cost four. I can’t even find figs to fill our stomachs! You’re too young to understand, Anne-Marie. Jews and immigrants led France into this war, and now the Germans imprison us all.”

Change the subject
.

“What work did your husband do?”

“Before the war? Guy was an engineer, like Émile. For years I told him he should get a government position, but he said private companies paid more. Maybe more when times are good, but when he became a POW, they stopped sending his salary. Now if he had been a civil servant as I begged him, the government would have paid it to me. You know how much is my allowance?
One hundred and forty francs per week and just half of Guy’s army pay
. Can any woman survive on that and buy milk for a child? Each parcel I send Guy costs me 250 francs—and does the government give me extra rations or textile points for him? No. Guy was saving to buy me a car, but now I’ve spent almost all our savings. I sold my mother’s Daumier at an art auction for only sixty thousand francs—and this too is all gone. I might have to sell this house. In the Stalag, the Germans don’t even give Guy clothes—I had to send him shoes in the last parcel. Oh, that was the worst! I told the social worker I know of wives who get much more. It’s a disgrace.” Renée held out her hands, palms upwards. “Are these the hands of an engineer’s wife?”

Noor gave a sympathetic murmur as she rose from the table.

Prices and scarcities had dominated every discussion in London over the past three years too. But it did seem Renée wasn’t being paid by the
SOE
. Miss Atkins hadn’t instructed Noor to offer Renée payment for her hospitality, or said how much. Should she offer Renée money? Did she have enough
SOE
funds to do it? There’d be someone, insh’allah, to whom she could apply if funds ran low.

But Renée might be insulted by an offer of money. And Noor hated discussions of money; it received far too much importance.

“I won’t be staying very long,” she said, intending comfort.

In the bedroom, Noor carefully removed the grenades from her handbag, returned to Renée, and gave her Émile’s directions to hide them till Sunday and his message of love for Babette.

The guard plays with me—she cheats me of bread some days, brings it late on others. There is no complaint department. I announce to myself I am a dervish living on bread and water. That doesn’t stop me from remembering the taste of cardamon chai, a morsel of sweet jalebi, the scent of beef bourguignon—anything
other than soup
.

I drag my chains around my sealed cell in a stumbling approximation of exercise. I touch the walls—they feel warmer than me. I listen for patterns of explosions, patterns in the pulsing rush of nearby trains. I search for meaning in the scuttling of insects
.

But I come back always to my paper, pen and ink. Why, and for whom, do I write? I fool myself, I pass the time. I add nothing to the world, I give no one pleasure or pain. Why render the past for you, spirit I never knew, may never see? But what else can I do? Sit here and look at the scratches on the plaster, worrying that I may meet the fate of those who’ve suffered in this cell before me?

A true Sufi would embrace this chance for solitude, meditation, silence. A true Sufi would use this time, focus on her beloved and the Divine Beloved, and pray for the annihilation of Self
.

Abbajaan taught that separation from the Beloved, from Allah, is the greatest sorrow, that pain of which Rumi and other Sufi poets wrote. In my separation from Armand, I fathom an element of their anguish, for in the vast landscape of past emotions no pain is quite like this. The yearning for the beloved, human or transcendent, is its own pain and its own joy, varying in intensity, constant in its presence
.

That night, in the small bedroom at Renée’s, I searched my heart for sympathy with Renée for her similar separation from Guy, but her feelings were mixed with an anger I could not comprehend, an anger dwelling just beneath her suffering, waiting for direction. I had seen such anger mixed with sorrow and helplessness before, in Mother, your grandmother, left alone in Paris like Renée, without a husband and with children to feed. Mother blamed Abbajaan no less than Renée blamed Guy, first for leaving her, then for dying in India
.