The Tiger Claw (31 page)

The soldier’s action did not match Monsieur Durand’s experience of Germans.

But strange things do happen when we ask Allah to help us be healed or complete. He reveals himself in signs and symbols, opening doors before us; then it’s up to us to walk through. Is it not completely strange that though the war still rages, I have returned to France? That though Armand is not free, I am closer to him? Allah
,
you meant for me to be here, in this room, this very day, to hear that a convoy is being sent to Germany tomorrow
.

Guide me further
.

“I must go, I can’t be late for work,” said Claude. “I’ll be at the garage if you need me.”

“Merci, Monsieur Claude,” said Noor. She turned back to Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand.

“And if he gave you the list, what then?” Gabrielle was wreaking her anger against the Germans on poor Monsieur Durand. “Can we take it to Vichy and say, please, Premier Laval, don’t deliver our little children into the hands of the Germans?”

Noor asked, “How do they select people for the convoys?”

Monsieur Durand raised heavy-lidded eyes. “The lawyer working on my relatives’ case says the Germans have changed all the categories since they took over the camp. Now not only foreign-born, stateless and immigrant
Juifs
but any Israelites—French citizens!—can be sent east. A circumstance of war, it’s called.”

Perhaps she too could engage a lawyer, to fight for Armand’s release? But no lawyer could plead for release by the next morning. But if Armand remained at Drancy after tomorrow’s convoy, a lawyer might help.

But how? Noor had only two more weeks in France. Not enough. And to seek a member of the court might endanger other members of the
PROSPER
network. Besides, French society had changed so much in three years, she was no longer sure of anyone’s political leanings.

“Don’t waste money hiring a
bavard
.” Monsieur Durand had almost read her thoughts. “The Maréchal’s actions can only be challenged in special courts. My advocate can’t protest Vichy’s laws, only argue them—try to reduce the pillage. He’s a liberal with a turn of phrase much admired by his old school friends, but completely useless. The Nazis and Vichy cannot be fought with rhetoric.”

“Which relatives is he defending?” Gabrielle asked. “And please don’t tell me about your sick aunt again!”

“My parents, my wife, my children. My brother and his family … Fourteen people.”

Gabrielle threw up her hands. “
Mon Dieu!
How can this be?”

“I was away on a selling trip, and when I came home they had all been arrested and our apartment was taken over by the German soldiers. They showed me billeting chits. I showed them my Great War medal, and as professional courtesy they refrained from inviting the Gestapo to arrest me.”

“I can’t believe it!” said Noor.

“I too could not believe it, refused to believe it,” said Monsieur Durand. “I went completely out of my mind with fear that I had lost my mind. What crime had my relatives committed? But let me tell you, Vichy and the Nazis can do anything they want. Do you know, I went to my bank to withdraw money and stay in a hotel, but they said the account containing all my savings was blocked. I went to my manager for assistance and he said, under some new law, all my commissions—about one thousand francs—had been deposited to my bank account, though it was blocked.”

“Your manager should have refused to deposit it,” said Gabrielle.

“Ha! He’d be at Fresnes prison right now. There was also a new Vichy decree, he said, that required him to deduct an annual tax of 120 francs from every Jewish employee, to meet the Jewish obligation to pay Vichy’s new ‘fine.’”

A jizya tax on unbelievers. How utterly medieval
.

“He did allow me to stay at his home for a few days, so I didn’t have to sleep on the streets. I went to every police station and the Hôtel de Ville.”

“They could have arrested you too!” said Gabrielle.

Monsieur Durand shrugged. “Yes, but I had to inquire.”

“But why was your family arrested?” said Noor.

Monsieur Durand gave a great sigh that told Noor he could not explain why, so he was answering the how. How it happened to his family. That was dispiriting enough, without searching for reasons for German and Vichy anti-Semitism.

“I traced my family here. I had a few shares in companies, but the bank dutifully blocked my safety deposit as well. I gave my manager my key and he went to the bank, told them he was joint owner and an Aryan—this way he brought me my share certificates. I sold the few shares of companies that hadn’t yet been ‘Aryanized’ and came here. I cannot leave.”

Gabrielle rested her elbows on the table, knit her fingers beneath her chin. “The gendarmes who come to the Vidrequin were saying the new camp Kommandant interrogated every prisoner last week. He must have been preparing for this convoy. They hold back those they need—doctors, cooks.”

Gabrielle hasn’t mentioned musicians
.

“There’s a railroad worker who stays a little later after lunch than others,” Gabrielle was saying. “I think he has special rank or privileges. I could ask him if the Germans have ordered any third-class coaches to wait at Bobigny station. But what will that do? Oh, my little ones!”

All pretenses about sick aunts were gone.

“You have children in the camp?” Noor exclaimed.

“Not my own—my sister’s. She was sent to Germany and the children are still here, still in the camp. Their father is a Polish Jew, but the children are both born in France, so they were left with a UGIF social worker. And then—
tenez, regardez!
”

She pulled a postcard from her pocket, one familiar in size and colour. Noor had left one just like it in her locker at Wanborough Manor, a card stamped
Camp d’internement de Drancy
. Noor took it from Gabrielle and read it aloud. “‘Madame la Concierge, I am writing to you because I have no one left. Papa has been deported, Maman has been deported. Please can you write to my Tante Gabrielle and tell her I am looking after my little sister but she is always hungry.’”

Gabrielle’s head slumped to her forearms. “He’s only seven years old,” she sobbed.

Noor’s sympathy was beyond words. Her own cheeks were wet. Her own half-Jewish child might have written such a letter;
any one of the famine-orphaned children of Calcutta could also have written such a letter, if they knew how to write and had concierges to write to. She stroked Gabrielle’s arm gently.

“It’s bad enough my sister and brother-in-law are gone—I don’t know where. The children are my responsibility—I don’t know why the camp authorities won’t release them to me. I went to see the director a few weeks ago—it was a Frenchman at that time. No, he said, it would be ‘bad for discipline’ if he were to release them, and that they would be better off in the camp than with an unmarried woman. So I got work here and I send them parcels on Tuesdays. When I was registering for ration coupons at the mairie, I told them I was here to care for my Tante Marie.”

“But if Monsieur le Missionnaire or someone else reports you to the Germans—wouldn’t you join the children in the camp?”

“Oh, Monsieur le Missionnaire reports as few people as he can—certainly not the people who give him tobacco ration coupons.”

“How do you get tobacco coupons?” asked Noor. Her own ration book didn’t have tobacco coupons—women weren’t issued tobacco rations.

“From the café—sometimes the Germans leave them as tips. I told Monsieur le Missionnaire that my parcels to the children often contain cigarettes. He understood what I meant. You can get or barter about 200 to 500 francs for a pack of cigarettes in the camp. And on the day of a convoy, 150 francs for one single cigarette! I don’t know how the prisoners pay, since each person can’t have more than 50 francs.”

“I give him rabbits,” said Monsieur Durand. “He needs them to bribe his guards sometimes. I think he’s a good man—we attended the same yeshiva as children. Twice since February he’s taken letters in for me because I can’t write a return address, but since the new Kommandant came, it’s too dangerous. He said the penalty for any correspondence with the exterior that does not pass through the camp post is twenty-five strokes of a
baton. Any communication with a Resistance group could get him hanged … And you?”

In the charged atmosphere of self-disclosure, the question from Monsieur Durand was inevitable.

“My husband.”

Noor surprised herself with the word. She had forsaken “fiancé” and called Armand “husband” aloud, claimed him before strangers. But it was safe to say “my husband” before these two; these strangers would understand. And the moment the words were spoken, they felt true. So many years together. And if he was her husband, she was his wife.

I need at least to tell my husband I am near, that I love him always and forever
.

An hour past breakfast, Noor and her new acquaintances sat around the dining table talking, debating, falling silent when Madame Gagné came in to clear away plates and cups. The conversation continued in low voices. Noor was intensely aware of each minute ticking past as they pooled and evaluated resources and options.

Noor could contribute money. It was counterfeit, but there was no reason to tell Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand that. And it was to be used to help the French as she thought fit.

“Money my dear sick Tante Lucille gave me,” she said in a question-repelling voice that brought a rare smile to Monsieur Durand’s eyes.

He wanted to bribe the bald man. Gabrielle said she could bribe a gendarme who came into the café. Perhaps Noor could bribe Claude.

“Yes, I can see he likes you,” said Gabrielle.

But bribe any of them for what purpose? A gendarme might take a message into the camp, at most. Bribing the missionary with rabbits had kept Monsieur Durand out of Drancy; bribing him with money might get them a list of evacuees. The man was Jewish, after all, Monsieur Durand reminded them, and a veteran
of the Great War. Perhaps he couldn’t remove anyone from the list—certainly not fourteen people named Durand—but he might find out if a prisoner was or was not on the list for tomorrow’s convoy. And then?

“That
missionnaire
,” said Gabrielle. “I’ve been giving him cigarettes for months now, the least he can do is tell me where is the train going. I have to find my niece and nephew when the war dies down. You know how big is Germany? And what if they really do what people say, and send them along with all the other Jews to Madagascar. How will I go to Madagascar?”

Noor said, “We’ll go together.”

She was more confident she could take a steamer to Madagascar—halfway to India, after all—than that she could stop a convoy Hitler had ordered to roll out of Drancy tomorrow morning. Hadn’t Mother done so in 1913? Yes, Miss Aura Baker had stolen away with one suitcase and a hat box and, against Uncle Robert’s wishes, taken a steamer out of Boston Harbor. If Mother could cross an ocean to follow her heart, so could Noor. The difference was that Abbajaan was giving veen a concerts in London; he hadn’t been locked up by Hitler in a camp in France.

There was not a moment to waste and here they were, still discussing what to do! Noor pressed cold fingers against her overheated forehead.

“We need to know where the train is going, which city or camp,” said Monsieur Durand.

He offered, with no enthusiasm but by virtue of being the man in the group, to talk to Monsieur le Missionnaire—if the bald man returned to Madame Gagné’s for lunch or dinner. But there was no assurance Monsieur le Missionnaire would return at all. Perhaps he was back in the camp. Madame Gagné said he wouldn’t be returning that night.

Someone would have to find him now and invite him to return to Madame Gagné’s for a rendezvous with Monsieur Durand. Noor suggested they telephone the garage and ask
Claude to courier the message to Monsieur le Missionnaire, offer Claude a reward to find the bald man quickly.

“Yes, but never trust a telephone for such delicate matters,” said Monsieur Durand. “Persuasion is best done in person. The switchboard operator would wonder why we want to meet a man known to be from the camp, and she’d alert the Germans. Especially if you mention a reward. You will have to go there yourself.”

Noor agreed.

Suddenly Gabrielle let out a wail. “How will I recognize the children if they are taken away to Germany and I don’t see them for a few months? A year or two—or many years? What if they grow up and I can’t recognize them?”

“Give them something,” suggested Noor. “Something of your own that says you love them always and will be waiting for them.”

“Something that will help them find me—a letter? Can we ask Monsieur le Missionnaire to smuggle it in so I can say what is in my heart?”

“Non, non,” said Monsieur Durand in high irritation. “I told you, twenty-five strokes of a baton. In the centre courtyard before everyone. Letters must go through the camp post. Monsieur le Missionnaire can help us once it is inside the camp.”

Gabrielle’s opinion of the camp administrators was indelicate but to the point. “I won’t send it through Monsieur le Missionnaire, then. I’ll hide it in my parcel that passes through the camp post checkpoint. I’ll take it there today as I do every week. But you must tell him to explain to the children that they must keep my letter with them till they return from Germany. Tell them forever, till I find them again. Oh, what should I write?”

“May I send some little thing to my husband in your parcel?” asked Noor.

“
Mais, bien sûr
, if Monsieur Durand can persuade Monsieur le Missionnaire to take it from the parcel and deliver it. We can’t endanger the children by asking them to find your husband, you understand. But no weapons—the Germans take revenge for
concealing weapons. They’d send my little ones away immediately and hang Monsieur le Missionnaire for delivering such things.”

Everything now depended on arranging the conversation between Monsieur Durand and Monsieur le Missionnaire. Today, immediately.

What should she send Armand? The advice she’d given Gabrielle felt like advice she should take herself: an object that would say she loved him dearly and would be waiting for him. But unlike Gabrielle, Noor could not send a long letter with the parcel; she wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near France. Signing it
Noor
or
Nora
, or supplying an address, would endanger her mission. Armand didn’t know an Anne-Marie Régnier.
Madeleine
or, better still,
Madelon
might remind him of their evening of love at Mont Valérien. But—it might not.