The Tiger Claw (43 page)

Did Gilbert betray me? Could Prosper have done so? Or was my betrayal planned by Major Boddington and his comrades? Someone else?

Trolley wheels on stone. My stomach churns in hope of food. A chink of light shines at eye level and someone shouts. A bowl of cabbage soup comes towards me at the end of a woman’s arm. I fall upon it like an Indian denied rice since ‘41. I try to imagine the SS woman’s eyes, her nose, what she believes she does and why
.

What choices did she make that caused our paths to cross? Without German, I cannot ask her, and she wouldn’t respond if I did
.

I begin a zikr, silent of necessity. The recollection of Allah from the heart, from the bottom of my heart. “Huwallah-ul-lazi la ilaha illa huw-ar-Rahman-ur-Rahim-ul-Malik-ul-Quddus-ul-Salam-ul-Mu’min-ul-Muhaimin-ul …” When I come to the eighth name, al-Muhaiminu, the Preserver, I can go no further. “Al-Muhaiminu, al-Muhaiminu, je me souviens de toi, je me souviens de toi.”

Ma petite, what if I am too late in begging Allah to be delivered from the troubles I’ve created? What if even Allah can’t rescue me?

CHAPTER 23

Le Mans, France
Saturday, July 3, 1943

W
AITING FOR
É
MILE
in the gilded chinoiserie of the foyer at the Hôtel du Dauphin in Le Mans, Noor daubed her streaming nose with a hanky. Miss Atkins should have warned how much waiting and worrying espionage entailed. Her note at Flavien’s requested this meeting—but had Émile received it? No confirmation before she left Paris.

A cough hacked from the base of her lungs. She was lightheaded, her muscles ached.

In the two days since the executions and arrests at Grignon, she had thought it only a summer cold, but these symptoms felt closer to influenza. Just influenza—not pneumonia, TB, cancer or typhoid. Influenza, the disease Abbajaan had suffered alone in India, that malady that progressed to pleurisy. He wasn’t the only Indian to succumb to the dread disease; twelve million Indians died of it in the epidemic years after the Great War. Had anyone from the Red Cross nursing school said Indians were more prone to it than others?

Whatever the Red Cross said, Abbajaan’s disease was the psychic cost of his assimilation, pleurisy rising from the slow suffocation of his spirit in France, and the loss of his music. Her own sickness was similar—the dis-ease of her soul over the probable
deaths of two SS men. This was no time to worry about it, but she couldn’t stop. How long should she fast in expiation of her shootings at Grignon, how long for her continuing unrepentance? She had done as she was trained, but no one had mentioned one could feel guilty even for not feeling guilty.

Would Armand ever accept her again, knowing she had killed? He had forgiven her once, years ago. Could he whose love always called to her best and highest self forgive her again?

Allah, I don’t care if Armand cannot forgive me, so long as he survives this time of terror, lives long and free
.

A tranquil breeze passed through the sunny lobby. Here she was, sitting alone waiting for a man in a hotel; Uncle Tajuddin would never approve. She took her new sunglasses from her handbag. Expensive, but an excellent disguise, offering an element of purdah; she could see without others knowing the direction of her gaze.

She’d be flying to England tonight. She’d find an army doctor immediately. There were miracle medicines available there that weren’t available in France—that new one, penicillin—she’d be cured.

Wait, wait—she hated waiting.

Gilbert was the one she should fear, the one everyone in the Resistance should fear. Where was Émile? Would he come or was it too dangerous to meet? Had he been arrested?

Eyes everywhere, even in the furniture.

A man signed the register at the desk and looked in Noor’s direction. Her tongue went numb till he picked up his suitcase and disappeared behind the brass scissor-grate of the lift.

She slid her sunglasses to the tip of her nose.

She hadn’t been dressed as now, in black slacks, a white cotton blouse and green cardigan, when she entered the front courtyard of the Hôtel du Dauphin off the avenue Thiers two hours earlier. This morning, when soldiers checked her papers at the station and she passed her valise and oilskin coat to the helpful bellman, she was “Madame,” looking like a schoolteacher on
vacation, complete with straw hat and sensible paisley skirt. A schoolteacher who glanced into every mirror and shop window as she passed.

The lunch menu in the hotel read
Soupe aux légumes
. Soup. Day in and day out in London, Paris and now here. Enough of soup.

She left her coat and valise in the care of the bellman, and avoided a checkpoint by wandering back streets behind the Notre Dame de la Couture church. Through the place de la République she went, down to the river.

In a quayside café open to the breeze off the Sarthe, she ordered an omelette, even buttered bread, saving the cheese sandwich packed by Madame Aigrain for dinner. No reason to save her counterfeit francs; she was leaving.

A carved doll with a dress of yellowed lace for Babette. Four inches high, it couldn’t compare to the beautiful china doll the Gestapo had smashed, but it was pretty. A shocking amount, but no matter—she paid in false coin.

Gifts caused embarrassment, Mother said, placed a burden on recipients to reciprocate. But Noor enjoyed giving.

Monique had mentioned wanting the pattern for Noor’s reversible forest-green skirt, so the skirt was left for Madame Aigrain’s daughter to copy. Noor would use it again, insh’allah, on her next assignment in France. But a promise of the skirt pattern as present for Monique wouldn’t suffice. Noor couldn’t meet her empty-handed. Or Renée, or Émile.

A peach for each.

Tart green apples and a couple of Anjou pears for Mother, Dadijaan, Zaib in London—and Kabir, though she didn’t know where he was stationed at the moment. A glimpse of fresh fruit would raise their spirits.

Returning to the hotel, Noor retrieved her valise from the bellman and, in the ladies’ lounge, quickly exchanged her straw hat and paisley skirt for the black slacks, cardigan and sunglasses, tying her hair in two ponytails. She returned to the bellman’s desk with
her coat and the handbag containing the gifts over her arm, as if going for a long walk.

He addressed her as “Mademoiselle” this time, as he took her valise for storage.

Amusing.

Please, Émile, please walk through that door
.

An Abwehr officer passed through the lobby.

Émile must have been arrested. She was sure of it.

She was poised at the very edge of her chair, handle of her handbag in hand, when Émile came into sight at the door. He sauntered as if looking for but not finding someone else, and as he passed, whispered an all-clear. His moustache hadn’t grown back to its slender line in the three days since his flight from Paris. His hair seemed to have receded further; he looked older.

She took a deep breath, held it as long as she could and exhaled. Then a second breath. With the third exhale she calmly adjusted her sunglasses, picked up her handbag and coat, and followed him from the hotel.

Down the avenue Thiers to the checkpoint. Noor allowed a man with a wheelbarrow full of bricks and a woman shouldering a dachshund to queue between them. Émile passed through and continued walking down the avenue.

The little dog licked at the woman’s earrings, and the soldier reached out to stroke its ears. The woman jerked the dog away.

“He bites B—” The word bitten off unspoken was “Boche.”

The young German’s face hardened beneath his helmet. “Next!”

The now grim soldier examined Noor’s
ausweiss
, verifying its expiration date. Sweat varnished his hairless upper lip. Her own had beaded from the heat, yet she shivered and shivered. He would notice. In a moment he would notice.

“Danke!”
He returned her papers and motioned her through.

Émile wasn’t leading her to his home? Of course he wasn’t—too dangerous. Moss-green elbow patches flashed like semaphores down cobbled streets, into a park neatly structured as a Mughal garden.

Her head was swimming. Noor sniffed.

Émile dropped back.
“Salut
, Anne-Marie! I didn’t recognize you at first. I like your hairstyle, but you are quite pale.”

Renée, Monique and Babette sat on a blanket spread under a canopy of cherry trees, a picnic hamper open before them. At the sight of Noor, Renée set her book aside, and Monique her sewing. Babette jumped up and ran to Noor.

Noor kissed the air wide of the little girl’s cheeks; if she had influenza, she didn’t want Babette to catch it. Babette grasped Noor’s hand, laughing, eyes sparkling as she discovered the doll.

Monique moved the hamper, making room for Noor and Émile. Exclaiming over the peaches, she lifted out sandwiches, even wine.

Renée commanded and Babette skipped away, taking her new doll to a grotto in the far corner of the park. She began bathing it in the stream spouting from a gargoyle mouth.

“What happened?” said Émile. “Why are you here?”

Noor whispered details, recounting events since the Garrys fled Paris: the sudden arrival of the Gestapo at Grignon, the executions, the bravery of Monsieur Hoogstraten.

“This is terrible,” said Renée in a fear-constricted whisper. “Even worse than before—we can never return home.”

No mention of the arrests of Monsieur Hoogstraten and Professor Balachowsky. But it was possible Renée didn’t know them.

Émile was close to both men, of course. His eyes dulled with pain-filled shadows.

“Quel bordel!”
he said.

It certainly was a mess.

Should she mention the exchange of shots? She was trying to snare butterfly thoughts—so little time—it was best Émile know.

Renée looked shocked. “You shot two Germans?”

Noor should have taken Émile aside to tell him. Too late.

“I did as I was trained,” she replied. “But I am most grieved since. The men may be wounded, not dead.”

“I would have done the same,” said Émile. “You are a true patriot.”

“
Sales Boche!
“ said Monique. “I hope they are dead—I wish you’d killed more.”

Renée looked from one to the other. “What children you are! The Englishwoman has confessed to murder, and you applaud? You want to be her accomplices! I want to return to my home, not join her in a Gestapo cell!”

Noor was wretched enough without Renée calling her a murderer. If she could change what had happened at Grignon, she would. But she couldn’t. And she wasn’t answerable to Renée or the Germans for her deeds.

“No one is going to prison,” said Émile. “In Paris, Fresnes is full to capacity with resistants. As are all the prisons in France, Renée—they won’t have any place to imprison us!”

It was a valiant effort to make light of things, but Renée brushed it off. “
Mais vraiment
, Émile, we too are implicated. We can never return home now.”

Monique tossed her chestnut curls. “Anne-Marie didn’t begin this, Renée. We’ve all been implicated for three years. None of us are innocent. We don’t tell you everything, but Émile and I are not machines that, when the Gestapo or Vichy throw a lever, change purpose and motion. Émile, you remember I said to you, I said: ‘If we don’t refuse, what will our children learn but Nazi brutality?’”

She took up her sewing and pulled her needle through a pleat—she was smocking a baby’s gown.

“Anne-Marie did what had to be done,” said Émile. “
C’est tout!
”

His voice challenged his sister. He held Renée’s gaze till she looked away. Monique continued sewing. It was up to Noor to break the silence.

She blew her nose. “Any news from Guy?” she asked Renée.

“Still in the Stalag.” Renée seemed a bit mollified by the question. “I don’t understand it. Other soldiers have been exchanged
for workers and Jews, and have returned—why not Guy? The exchange program is working, but not fast enough. Many are hiding from the
STO
in the hills, not far from this very park.”

“Patriots,” said Émile.

“Outlaws,” said Renée. “Playing soldier games in the Maquis, to avoid work. Young people don’t know the meaning of work.”

How many years had Renée worked? When Noor was thirty-nine, she wouldn’t feel old enough to say “young people” as if they were a new species of insect.

“Those young men are trying to stay alive, Renée,” said Monique. “Trying to fight with few weapons and fewer provisions.”

“We’d be completely disarmed if we followed every law the Germans pass,” said Émile.

“Have you written to the Kommandant of the Stalag?” asked Noor, remembering that Gabrielle was able to meet with the Kommandant at Drancy.

“
Naturellement!
He wrote back—a very courteous, correct letter. He said it takes three French volunteer workers to release a French prisoner of war, but the ministry here says it takes six. Others say it only takes one Jew. I haven’t written to Guy or sent him a single parcel since we arrived in Le Mans. How am I to tell him we can’t go home because the Gestapo is waiting outside our door? And if I write to him now, I’ll lead the Gestapo here, to Émile’s home.”