Chapter Twelve

I WRAPPED THE PAINTING in brown paper and brought it to Fleury’s gallery. He had told me to come by at four o’clock, and kept me waiting while he closed the doors downstairs. I unwrapped the Cranach and placed it on an easel. I sat down to wait on Fleury’s leather couch. It felt cold and rubbery. My earlier confidence had begun to fail me in the formality of these surroundings. My lips and my knuckles dried out with worry. I jerked the knot of my tie back and forth. Then I got up and covered the painting with a brown cloth that I’d found slung over the easel. I was too nervous to look at it.

I heard him climb the stairs, slow and light-footed. His steps made a swishing sound like someone sanding a piece of wood. He appeared in the doorway, wearing a blue suit, with a red silk cravat bunched at his throat. “Ah,” he said, looking at the brown cloth. “You’ve gone for the dramatic moment.”

“The what?” I asked.

“It’s what we call ‘the dramatic moment’ when you cover a painting and unveil it before the buyer’s eyes. It only works with a certain kind of client. You have to know which ones.”

I tugged off the brown cloth.

Fleury’s eyes narrowed. He was quiet for a moment. Then he mumbled, “This is some kind of sorcery.”

“Will it do?” I asked.

“It will,” he said. “It will do very nicely.”

I couldn’t help smiling.

Fleury walked right past me and up to the canvas. He pulled a kind of monocle from his shirt pocket and peered at the painting through the lens. “Layering,” he said. “Good. Patina. Good. Frame. Period. Wormholes. Nice touch. The right amount of dirt. Craquelure. Yes, good.” Then he came very close to the painting and breathed in through his hawk’s beak nose, which made a tiny, whistling sound. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, that’s just right.” He walked around behind it. “Leonid,” he said. His head popped up. “Did you do this?”

“It was there when we began. We can lose it if you want.”

“No need,” he said cheerfully, and disappeared back behind the painting.

I felt the muscles of my shoulders and at the base of my skull unclenching with relief. I went back to the couch and sat down.

“All right!” announced Fleury. He walked up to me, waggling the monocle absentmindedly in one hand. “You look like you could use a holiday.”

“I expect I could,” I replied.

“Unfortunately you can’t have one just yet, because now that you’ve given me this painting, I want you to steal it back.”

I waited for an explanation.

“I want you to take it to Behr and tell him you’ve recovered the painting from a private collection. That’s the word I want you to use. ‘Recovered.’ He won’t ask too many questions. He’ll think you’ve stolen it and have chosen to cut me out of the deal. Tell him I wasn’t paying you enough. Tell him we had an argument and that you decided to go into business for yourself. Tell him you don’t want money. You want to trade this for some modernist works, which you then intend to sell out of the country. If he asks, you can tell him you have a buyer in Switzerland.”

“And why am I doing this?” I asked.

“Because if Behr thinks he can get a better deal from you, he’ll take it. Besides, the more disorganized we seem to be, the more he’ll feel like he’s in charge.”

“You’ve done this before,” I said.

“I’ve done just about everything,” replied Fleury. He handed me a list of paintings. On it were two Picassos, one a charcoal of the head of a man with a pipe, the other a pen and ink wash of a couple at a bar. There was a Matisse entitled La Danse, a découpage done in ink and watercolor. A Redon charcoal of a skull on brown paper. A Monet pastel of the cliffs at Etretat. “I happen to know that these paintings have been acquired by Abetz.”

“Are you the only dealer Abetz is working with?” I asked.

He laughed. “A good number of dealers in Paris are squabbling over those great Jewish collections. Some are making deals with the Germans to let them know where the hidden paintings can be found. The Parisian art world is too small for keeping secrets and some dealers are too greedy to let a bargain pass them by. If this war lasts ten years, there’ll be another fifty years of people denying what they’ve done.”

*   *   *

I MET PANKRATOV AT the Dimitri and told him what Fleury had said.

Pankratov showed no emotion. He sat with arms folded, Café National steaming in front of him. When I finished talking, Pankratov rubbed his hands across his face and sighed. “That bastard,” he said.

“Why’s he a bastard?” I asked. “It sounds like a fairly good plan.”

“What he’s doing,” explained Pankratov, “is covering himself in case something goes wrong. If the Germans don’t believe it’s genuine, Fleury can say he never saw the painting up close. He can say, quite rightly, that he wasn’t the one who sold it. He can load all the blame on you.”

“You don’t know that,” I said. I didn’t want to believe it.

“Valya came to see me today,” he said. “Valya and Dietrich. They came to where I live.”

“What did they want?” I asked.

“Dietrich wants us to work for him, too,” said Pankratov. “She says he can convince us, whatever that means.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that Valya is with that Nazi?” I asked.

Pankratov was picking at his teeth with his thumbnail, staring off down the street. “Valya’s never had beautiful clothes,” he said. “Never been to black tie parties. No one ever bought her pearl necklaces. This is a fairy tale for her. Why should she worry about the suffering of others when no one seems to care about what she’s lived through?” He paused then, perhaps to let me agree.

But I had no answer for him.

*   *   *

THE NEXT DAY, FOLLOWING Fleury’s instructions, I went to see Leutnant Behr.

He sat in his windowless, underground office. The clicking hammer of typewriters sounded from other rooms. “Where’s Fleury?” he asked.

“Not here,” I said. I told Behr the story. “It will work out better for all of us.”

Behr sat back. “What makes you think I won’t just call up Fleury right now and get you arrested?”

I shrugged. “You wouldn’t get the painting.”

He laughed a thin, wheezy laugh. “We’d get it. Believe me.”

“All right, then,” I told him, “for argument’s sake, let’s say you did get it. But that’s all you’d get, instead of a chance at some paintings which you could buy more cheaply from me than from Fleury.”

Behr was scratching the back of his neck. “What am I supposed to tell him?” Behr was hooked. Fleury had read him correctly.

“Don’t tell him anything,” I said.

Behr stood and began to pace back and forth behind his desk. “You said I could get this Cranach more cheaply from you than from Fleury.”

I nodded.

“How do I know that?” asked Behr.

“Simple. Ask him what he wants for it.”

Behr had begun to nod his head in rhythm with my words. “Have you got the painting?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“It’s in a safe place.” I pulled out the list Fleury had given me. “These are the paintings I would like in exchange.”

Behr snatched the list and read it. “What makes you think we have these?”

I didn’t answer him.

“How the hell did you know?” he asked.

“Call Fleury,” I said, “and ask what he wants for the Cranach.”

“All right,” Behr mumbled. “I’ll call him. Come back tomorrow. Nine A.M.” With great care, he folded the piece of paper, lining up the corners and sliding his thumbnail down the middle to make the crease. He seemed to have forgotten I was there.

I slipped out of Behr’s office and up the concrete stairway to the street, breathing the cool air outside.

*   *   *

THE NEXT DAY I was back at Behr’s office.

“The ambassador agrees,” he said. “We’ll meet you at midday today.”

I told him the address of Pankratov’s atelier.

“You will have brought the painting,” he told me.

I nodded and left.

They were on time.

I was alone in the atelier. Fleury had wanted it that way. I sat on Valya’s chair, gripping the seat as if the legs had rockets tied to them and I was about to be blasted into the sky. I hoped to hell Pankratov had fixed that board the way I asked him to. From the drunken window of the atelier, I watched an unmarked limousine and a small delivery van pull up outside the building. The paintings, covered in paper, were unloaded by two men in blue boilersuits.

Then came footsteps up the stairs.

The first person through the door was Ambassador Abetz. He had on a black coat with a velvet collar and carried his gloves in one hand. All he said by way of greeting was “I don’t have much time.” He walked over to the easel, which was covered with a clean tablecloth.

“For a man like Abetz,” Fleury had instructed me, “you will definitely need the dramatic moment.”

After Abetz came Behr. He looked up at the rafters, as if searching for snipers.

I went over to the easel and drew back the cloth. My life is in the balance, I thought to myself. The words repeated in my head like some insane chorus. Life in the balance. In the balance. Balance.

Abetz rolled his gloves into a bundle and put them in the pocket of his coat. Then he moved up to the painting, his feet seeming to glide across the floor. He lifted the panel off the easel and walked over to the window with it. He tilted it in the light and turned it over. Next, he brought his face close to it, just as Fleury had done, and breathed in the smell of the wood. Moisture on Abetz’s forehead glimmered under the weak ceiling lights of the atelier, whose bulbs hung like drops of liquid just about to fall from the white and rust-bubbled shades.

“Has Dietrich been in touch with you again?” asked Abetz casually, not taking his eyes off the painting.

“He’s been in touch,” I replied.

“He likes to think of himself as a generous man.”

I shrugged. “He is pretty generous.”

“Dietrich is a man of limited means,” said Abetz. “He does not have the same resources at his disposal as a man in my position. If you happen to come across any more paintings, as I’m sure you will, and if Mr. Dietrich happens to find out about it, as I’m sure he will, then you must always make sure to wait for my offer.” Now he looked at me. “I can also be generous. And I don’t just mean the odd basket of goodies.” He turned back his attention to the painting. “It’s a portrait of the daughter of Martin Luther. It has on it the marking of the Italian collector Leonid. I haven’t seen it before.”

I went over to a shelf and pulled out a book of prints. “Here,” I said, opening the page to the place where a portrait of Magdalena Luther had been. A postcard of our painting had been made by Fleury, replacing the old print.

“Well,” said Abetz. “It’s certainly a Cranach.” He rose up on his toes and settled back again. “Everything appears to be in order. Some buyers require authenticators, you know. Dietrich, for example. You’ll notice that I don’t need one.”

I nodded.

“I can even tell you,” continued Abetz, “where it has been hanging, even if I do not know the exact location. It has spent some time in a church or more likely in the antechamber of a private chapel. I’m sure I can smell sandalwood. No detail is too small for me, you see. I am a connoisseur even of smoke!” Abetz turned to the men in boilersuits, who were waiting outside in the hall. “Bring them in. Take off the covers.”

The paintings were brought in and the paper wrappings removed. The room seemed to fill with light as the Picassos, the Matisse, Redon and Monet came into view.

I made a show of examining them one after the other. When I reached the last one, I looked up at Abetz and said, “Done.”

“Good!” Abetz clapped his hands together. “You can contact Leutnant Behr when another situation arises. And you may count on my discretion.” He wheeled about and started off down the stairs, followed by the men in boilersuits.

Then it was only Behr and me. “Are you happy?” I asked him.

“Abetz is happy. It’s all that matters. I wanted to thank you…” he began.

Abetz’s voice rose from far below, echoing up the flights of stairs. “For God’s sake, Behr! What’s keeping you?”

When they were gone, I went over to Pankratov’s chair and sat down, too nervous to think straight. I was still sitting there when Pankratov appeared in the doorway half an hour later.

“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing?” he asked indignantly.

“I’m sitting in your goddamned sacred chair is what I’m doing,” I replied.

Pankratov opened his mouth, left it hanging open for a moment as he hunted for something to say. Then he closed his mouth again, teeth clacking together.

“I could use a drink,” I said.

Pankratov nodded gravely. “Me too.” He looked at the paintings that Abetz had left. “Bastards,” he muttered.

We covered the paintings under a tarpaulin and went downstairs. As the two of us walked into the Dimitri, Ivan strode up to us and blocked our way. He looked very troubled. The tips of his fingers were shaking.

“What’s the matter?” asked Pankratov.

Ivan answered him in Russian.

Pankratov grew very pale. He faltered out a reply, then turned to me. “Let’s go,” he said.

I followed him out into the street.

Pankratov struggled to light a cigarette.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Ivan says we can’t go there anymore.”

“Why not?”

“People have noticed that we’re friendly with the Germans,” explained Pankratov. “Some of Ivan’s customers saw that limousine outside my atelier. They think we must be collaborating. Ivan says he can’t force us to leave and that he’ll serve us if we go in, but he wants us to know that we’ve been labeled as sympathizers.”

“This was bound to happen,” I said. “I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.”

Pankratov puffed viciously at his cigarette. Then suddenly he shouted, “God damn it!” He threw the cigarette down onto the sidewalk and stormed back into the Dimitri.

A few minutes later, Pankratov emerged with Ivan. Ivan was protesting, still in the process of removing his apron. Pankratov drowned out his complaints in a flurry of Russian.

Ivan looked at me. “Can you tell this madman that I have a café to run?”

“You have waiters,” said Pankratov.

“But they don’t know how to make a proper cup of coffee!”

“These days,” Pankratov told him, “neither do you.” He ushered Ivan across the road and into the atelier. “Upstairs!” he commanded. “Go on!”

Now I understood. “Are you sure about this?” I asked.

“Positive,” said Pankratov.

“What are you going to do?” asked Ivan.

“Just keep moving,” said Pankratov.

Inside the atelier, we sat Ivan down on the stage where Valya used to pose. Then we locked the door.

“Blindfold him,” ordered Pankratov.

“Sorry about this,” I told Ivan, as I tied a painter’s apron across his eyes.

“You’re all completely crazy,” he said. “And I’m crazy for sitting here and letting you do this to me. Are you collaborating or aren’t you? It’s a simple question. Why can’t you give me a simple answer?”

Pankratov brought out the paintings from under the tarpaulin and set them up along the wall.

Ivan sat patiently, hands resting on his knees.

“Ivan!” said Pankratov.

“Yes?”

“Welcome to your first art show.”

*   *   *

PANKRATOV EXPLAINED EVERYTHING.

Ivan looked at each of us in turn, his eyes fix-focused with surprise. “Tcha,” he kept saying and shaking his head. “Tcha.”

I wasn’t worried about Ivan. I understood why Pankratov had to tell him. They came from a world that no longer existed and all they had of their past and the codes by which they had lived was each other. It was more than Pankratov could bear to think that Ivan considered him a traitor.

Pankratov told Ivan the story of each painting and talked about the lives of the artists who had made them.

“I have never seen such…” said Ivan. Then, a moment later, “I have often wondered…” He began several sentences and did not finish them, his thoughts extinguished by new ideas that jumped into his mind.

After the tour, Pankratov told Ivan that we would steer clear of the Dimitri from now on. Fleury, too. “We don’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” Ivan told us. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t want you to do anything,” said Pankratov. “I only wanted you to know the truth.”

*   *   *

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I bumped into Fleury on my way into the apartment building. He had spent the day at his gallery and I was out at the warehouse.

We stopped in the doorway of Madame La Roche’s building and looked across the street at the Dimitri. Its awning shone brightly in the sun. Out on the pavement, three German soldiers sat at the table, counting out little zinc coins from their change purses while Ivan stood by with a long-suffering face.

Fleury and I exchanged gloomy looks.

When Ivan saw us, he began to wave. “Hello, David! Hello, Guillaume!” He gathered the Germans’ change and emptied it into the pocket of his apron. Then he plodded toward us with the slow gait of someone who could never run fast. The money jangled in his apron.

“What is it, Ivan?” asked Fleury.

“Come to the café,” he said, smiling and wheezing.

“Ivan,” I said softly, “you don’t want us in there.”

“Yes. I do. I’ve been thinking it over. I’m either going to close down or I’m just going to serve whoever wants to be served. It’s got to be one or the other. So come to the café. Come now.”

I glanced at Fleury.

“Don’t look at him,” said Ivan. “Look at me! And what do you see?”

“A sweaty Imperial Russian.”

“Yes, well, besides that. Do I look afraid? Do I look like I’m in any doubt?” He set his hands against our backs and shoved us toward the Dimitri.

I tried not to meet anyone’s stare as we walked in. The place was full. It was past quitting time and this was the first wave of café people, both French and German, settling their bones after the working day.

Ivan gave us a table near to the bar. If somebody wanted to give us grief, they would have to do it with Ivan standing there.

I felt sick with worry.

Fleury fumbled with his chair, smiling nervously as he glanced around the room.

While Ivan went to fetch us drinks, I sat with my hands on the cold tabletop, while sweat ran from my armpits and down over my ribs.

Fleury pulled out his Craven A tin. His hand began to shake. He dropped the tin on the floor. It clattered open and three hand-rolled cigarettes fell out. Fleury scrambled to gather them up, while people glanced over to see what the fuss was about. By the time he had sat up again, his cheeks were red and his glasses hung lopsided on his face.

Ivan set two heavy white cups down in front of us. They were filled with an oily black liquid, which rocked against their sides. Bubbles of fat showed pearly at the surface. “I’m sorry about this,” he said. “It’s bouillon. All we have today. I promise, you do get used to it.”

I was just raising the cup to my lips when I caught the eye of a man sitting diagonally across from us.

He was one of the old Legion types, red-faced and square-headed and tough. He looked out of place in his brown civilian clothes. They were all mud brown, all different shades, as if he had tried to make a uniform of his street clothes, even though he was no longer a soldier. He sat with his hands under the table, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, watching us with narrowed eyes.

“Here we go,” I muttered.

“What?” asked Fleury. “What is it?” He turned sharply in his chair to see who was staring at us.

The man did not avert his gaze. He seemed to be staring straight through us. Then suddenly he shouted, “Konovalchik!” summoning Ivan. The cigarette wagged in his mouth.

“What is it, Monsieur Le Goff?” Ivan did not raise his head. He was drying glasses with a white towel behind the bar.

“I thought you weren’t going to allow collaborators into the bar!”

That got everyone’s attention. The conversation ebbed, rose hesitantly and then stopped altogether.

I heard Ivan sigh and then swallow. He raised his head, to meet the mudman’s gaze. “Collaborators?” he asked.

Le Goff jerked his head in our direction. “Those two. Those friends of the Boches.”

I stopped looking at Le Goff and started looking at the Germans. They said nothing. Only watched. They seemed to have drawn closer together, as if waiting for some sign of agreement between them, before they threw the old man through the window.

“We’re all collaborators,” said Ivan. He said it so that everyone could hear.

“I’m no goddamned collaborator!” boomed Le Goff.

“You drink my coffee,” said Ivan.

“So?”

“Where do you think I get it? From a company that has a permit to sell coffee from the German authorities in Paris.”

“Well, no more coffee for me!” Le Goff looked around, the cigarette burning close to his lips, although he didn’t seem to notice.

“And bread? And milk? And the hot water in your house and the food you buy at the market? Everything you do and buy and the cigarette in that grubby mouth of yours is with the permission of the German government. France is a defeated nation. We are occupied. And you sitting there ranting about two people who are just getting on with their lives is”—he seemed to stumble with his words—“is not”—in his frustration, Ivan banged his fist down on the copper counter so hard it left a dent—“is not welcome here!”

Nobody moved or spoke. The silence lasted forever.

Slowly, Le Goff raised his arms from under the table, but where his hands should have been were shiny metal clips, with which he took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it in the ashtray. “Mot de Cambronne,” he croaked out.

The whole room seemed to sigh.

Just then, no one had much to say about Ivan’s speech, but over the next couple of weeks, the Dimitri became the most popular bar in the neighborhood. Soldiers and people who hated the soldiers and women with babies and more Legion men than before came. Le Goff still showed up and minded his own business, never looking our way, as if we were a moving blind spot in his eye. Even a few German officers, Knight’s crosses at their throats and the badges of close combat on their chests, poked their heads in to see what was so special about this place.

I became what I had once taken for granted, but never would again—a regular at the Café Dimitri.

*   *   *

I HADN’T SEEN FLEURY for three days. I assumed he was busy at the gallery. I was just starting to wonder what had happened to him when Madame La Roche appeared at my door, telling me he had been home these last two nights. Then I knew something was wrong.

I went straight over to his gallery. It was a Saturday morning. As I rounded the corner of the Rue des Archives, I saw immediately that the place was closed. The windows had steel curtains pulled down in front of them. The accordion gate was drawn across the door and padlocked.

I wondered if he had run away. I didn’t know whether to feel bad for thinking it, or foolish for not having thought of it sooner. I walked up to the gate and took hold of the padlock. It was heavy bronze with a metal slide that covered the keyhole. I turned the lock over and saw, hammered deep into the orangy-green bronze, a circle in which were the letters RZM. Next to it, more deeply impressed, were SS lightning bolts.

The mug of tea I’d had before I left home now spilled into the back of my throat. I turned around and stared into the street. It was empty. Sunlight reflected off closed windows as if they were blinking at me.

I ran to the German Embassy. I didn’t think I was in any danger from them. If they had wanted to pick me up, they would have done it by now. I ran down the concrete steps to Behr’s office and found him sitting at his typewriter, pecking the keys with his index fingers. “I just stopped by Fleury’s gallery,” I gasped out. “It was all closed up.”

“Yes,” he answered. “I thought you’d know about that by now.”

“Know what?” I asked.

“He’s been taken away.”

“Taken where?”

“Off to Drancy,” said Behr.

“What’s Drancy?” I asked.

“It’s a railway junction on the outskirts of Paris. Where they take all the Jews before shipping them out of the country.” Behr eyed me. “I thought you’d be pleased about this.”

“Why the hell would I be pleased? And what makes you think he’s Jewish?”

“I thought you wanted Fleury out of the way, so we could deal directly with you. When I mentioned it to Abetz, he said he thought it might be a good idea. He was pleased with the Cranach you brought him. He wanted to find a way to get rid of Fleury. So he asked me if the name ‘Fleury’ had something to do with flowers. I mean, I didn’t know what he was talking about at first. But then Abetz said that the German for flower is Blume and that Blum is a Jewish name, and fleur is French for flower, so Fleury was probably Jewish. Then he asked me if I thought that was correct. I had no idea, so I didn’t say anything either way. The next thing I know, I get a call from Abetz to have the SS pick up Fleury at his gallery. I have no idea whether Fleury is Jewish or not, but if it’s Abetz’s word against Fleury’s, the SS aren’t going to care what Fleury has to say for himself.”

“Get him back,” I blurted out. “I said some of the paintings, not all of them! If you want to see any more stuff, get him back now!”

“But Abetz was doing you a favor—” he began.

I grabbed the phone receiver off its cradle and stuck it in Behr’s face. “Call Drancy,” I said. “Get him off the train.”

Behr seemed frozen at first, as if the request was so strange that he could not comprehend it. Then slowly he took hold of the receiver. “I want you to know I’m only doing this because Abetz says I have to keep you happy.”

“Hallo?” someone was saying at the other end. “Hallo?”

“Drancy,” said Behr. He rolled the “r” in his throat and pronounced it “Drantsy.” “Bahnhof Drantsy,” he said. He spoke for a while in German, sitting back in his chair, the receiver tucked under his chin. He wrote something on his blotter with a freshly sharpened pencil. “Dreitzehn Uhr. Verstanden. Danke.” Then he hung up. He looked at his watch. “The transport leaves in one hour.”

I lunged for the door.

“Wait!” Behr called after me. “You can’t just walk up and take him off the train. He’s a prisoner, for God’s sake. The SS have him now. You can’t get anywhere with them.”

“Well, what can I do?” I asked. “Please, you’ve got to do something to help.”

“I suppose I could type something up,” said Behr hesitantly. “But look, you’ve only got an hour. Less than that now. You can’t get out to Drancy in an hour.”

“Get me a car,” I said. I was standing by the door. I had to stop myself from running out of the building and trying to sprint all the way to Drancy. It would have done no good, but I couldn’t stand there doing nothing for much longer.

“I couldn’t get you a car,” replied Behr, “even if I wanted to. I haven’t got the authority.”

“Type up a note,” I told him. “Please.”

Behr turned slowly toward the machine. “Abetz is not going to like this.” He cranked out the document he had been typing. He pulled a fresh sheet from a drawer and rolled it in. Then he sat back and scratched at his chin. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“Say anything!” I shouted. “Just do it now.”

In the rooms down the hall, the typing stopped. Then, after a moment, it started up again.

Clumsily, Behr began tapping out a document. He mumbled out the words as he typed them. “There,” he said. “That should do it.”

I reached over and tore it out of the machine. I held it up. “But this isn’t on embassy stationery,” I said. “I could have done this at home. How are they supposed to know it’s official when I show it to them?”

“That part I can fix.” Behr reached out for the paper. He picked up a heavy stamp from the desk, banged it on an ink pad, and brought it crashing down on the bottom of the page. When he lifted the stamp, I saw a slightly smudged eagle and swastika with some German writing underneath. “These days,” said Behr, “Jesus Christ himself couldn’t get anywhere without papers.”

I took the paper and dashed up the steps to the corner. I went into a café and phoned Dietrich, using the number on the card he had sent with his invitation to the embassy party. I got transferred three times and finally Dietrich was on the other end. I explained to him what had happened.

“And you want me to get him off the transport?” asked Dietrich.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ll have to pull some strings,” he said.

“Can you do it?” I asked.

“Yes, I think so,” he said.

I saw a streetcar coming. It flashed blue sparks along its overhead rails.

“I have to go,” I told him and hung up.

The streetcar was heading north, which the conductor said was in the right direction for Drancy, so I got on it. At the Gare du Nord, I changed to a bus. It was crowded and I had to stand, holding on to a bar above my head. It was raining outside. When the bus stopped to let people on and off, the smell of the damp came into the bus. The windows fogged up. The windshield wipers clunked back and forth in front of the driver.

I looked at my watch every minute and was making myself crazy so I took it off and put it in my pocket.

At last, I came within sight of the great corrugated iron rooftops of the Drancy marshaling yards. Rails ran alongside the road, twisting over each other and curving away toward the station.

At the next stop, I jumped off the bus.

I could see the station in the distance, past a huge expanse of tracks and then the long concrete platform with a green-painted roof, slick and glowing in the rain. There was a locomotive pulled up at the platform, with three cars behind it. Separating the road from the tracks was a high fence with barbed wire at the top.

I started climbing the fence. I wasn’t thinking. I just climbed. I reached the barbed wire and clambered over the top of it, tearing my jacket, and dropped to the gravel on the other side.

I ran toward the stationhouse. Rain was coming down hard. I slipped on the oily wooden spacers that separated the tracks. The tops of the rails were shiny from use. I was already out of breath and soaked.

The train began to pull out of the station, engine chugging, steam rising from its smokestack. I pulled Behr’s piece of paper out of my pocket and started waving it over my head. I kept running in the direction of the platform.

Someone was moving toward me from the stationhouse. He waved his arm. He had a submachine gun slung over his shoulder. Through my sweat and the rain, I could make out shin-length black boots and a helmet.

I ran toward him, waving the paper and shouting for him to stop the train.

The wagon’s wheels clunked from one set of track to another as it headed out.

The soldier unshouldered his gun. He was shouting. Keeping the gun at waist height, he leveled it at me and kept walking.

I’d never had a gun pointed at me before. I could see the black eye of the end of the barrel. I flinched, and a second later, I tripped over a rail and fell hard on the track spacers. Over my own breathing, I could hear the soldier but had no idea what he was saying.

I lay there gasping, facedown, holding up the piece of paper, which sagged over my fingers. I could smell the creosote that coated the spacers. The rust on the rails smeared against my clothes. Smears of blood and oil mixed with the torn-up skin of my palms.

The soldier’s boots crunched over the gravel, coming closer. He stopped right in front of me. “Betreten verboten,” he said. That was what he had been shouting the whole time.

I raised my head and saw the leather of his boots and the bumps of hobnails on the soles. I held up the soggy piece of paper.

He crouched down slowly. The black submachine gun rested on his knees. It had a long, straight magazine and a folding stock. He took the paper from my hand, unfolded it and read it. The gray-green steel of his helmet hid his eyes. I looked at the rough wool of his uniform and the pebbly finish on his uniform buttons. Only now did I feel pain in my knees from where I had fallen against a rail.

“Transport vier,” he said. Then he spoke to me in French. “Transport number four left yesterday,” he said.

Exhausted, I let my head fall forward. “I thought it was leaving today.”

“Transport five left today. About an hour ago. Whoever wrote this got the number wrong.”

“What was that train at the station?”

“A work crew. Going out to fix the rails. That’s all. Just a work crew.”

I rose up to my knees, then sat back on my haunches.

The soldier tilted his helmet back on his head. He had a thin face and pale blue eyes. His uniform was a little too big for him and he carried the Schmeisser like someone not used to carrying a gun.

We sat there on our haunches in the middle of all those rails in the pouring rain.

I had a strange feeling of standing far above myself. I was looking down from a great height at the maze of rails and the rain and the overflowing gutters of the station platform roof. I saw the two small figures that were me and the soldier. Then, just as suddenly, I was back inside myself again and looking through my tired, sweat-salted eyes.

He handed me back the piece of paper.

I balled it up in my fist and squeezed until drops of black-tinted water from the ink dripped out onto the tracks.

We got to our feet.

“You have to go,” he said. “It is forbidden.” Then he turned and walked away unhurriedly, lugging the burden of his gun, his long legs stepping carefully over the polished tracks.

I got back to the fence, climbed up over the barbed wire and dropped down to the street, jarring my knees. I stood waiting for the bus, with no idea when it would come again. My thoughts swung between anger and fear with the movement of a pendulum. The rain came down in sheets. There was no place to hide from it. No point in even trying.

*   *   *

BY THE TIME I reached my apartment, I felt sure I would never see Fleury again. I was exhausted, but knew I had to get out to the warehouse and tell Pankratov what had happened. I changed into some dry clothes and put my soaked wool coat back on, since it was the only coat I had.

I opened the door and was shocked to find Fleury standing there right in front of me. His clothes were dirty and torn and his hair was a mess. His shoes were gone and his socks were wet from walking through the rain. He smelled of sweat and piss. “Can I come in?” he asked.

He sat at my kitchen table and wept while he told what had happened.

Two plainclothes SS men had come for him at his gallery. They would not explain why they were arresting him, or even if this was an arrest. He was driven straight to Mont Valérien and put in a large cell with about fifty other people. There were men and women mixed together. There was not enough room for everyone to lie down so people took turns. There was a bucket in the corner, which had overflowed long before Fleury arrived. He was able to piece together that some of the prisoners were Jews, others former members of the Communist Party and people with records of petty crime. The first night, half the people in the room had their names called out and left. The only people remaining were Jews. Fleury told me he wasn’t Jewish, and neither was he a member of any political party, but he could think of any number of petty crimes of which he had been accused and never convicted. He didn’t know whether to stay where he was or summon a guard and explain the mistake. He decided to wait.

The next night, without having been fed, Fleury and the remaining people in the room were hustled down into the courtyard and searchlights were shone in their faces as their names were read off and they were piled into trucks. It was then that he had approached a guard, who told him to shut up and pushed him on toward the truck.

They were taken to Drancy and put straight into red military wagons which had barbed wire over the air vents. The cars were already overcrowded when they arrived. Fleury and the Mont Valérien Jews were crammed in with the rest. He said he had expected the train to start moving immediately, but instead they were left there all night.

In the morning, the door was opened and his name was called out. He was driven back to Mont Valérien and returned to the room, which by now had a new set of people waiting inside.

He was called out of the room six hours later and found Dietrich’s driver, a man named Grimm, waiting for him down in the courtyard. Fleury was driven back to the Rue Descalzi and arrived home only a few minutes after I did.

I boiled some water and cooked a turnip I had been saving for a meal. I mashed it up and then used the water to make a drink. Fleury ate some and I ate what he left.

I told Fleury about Abetz’s decision to have him arrested and about my call to Dietrich.

“It’s my own fault,” he said. “I underestimated them. And I think, now that I’ve been to Mont Valérien, that we have all underestimated them.” Then he just sat there at the table, eventually falling asleep with his head on his folded arms.

I put a blanket over him and went to bed. When I woke up, just before dawn, he was gone, back to his own place, and the blanket was neatly folded on the chair.

*   *   *

TOMBEAU CALLED FOR ME the next day. I met him on a walkway by the Seine, where old men in berets fished for carp with long bamboo poles.

Tombeau walked with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, wooden-soled shoes knocking the stones. Already the heels were worn down.

I told him about what had happened to Fleury.

“Is he going to crack up on us?” asked Tombeau.

“Is that all you care about?” I fired back.

“It’s important,” said Tombeau.

“If he hasn’t cracked by now,” I said, trying to remain calm, “I don’t suppose he will.”

“He’d better not,” replied Tombeau. “There’s too much riding on this now.”

A breeze blew down the Seine, rattling the branches of the trees.

I stopped walking. Words had been taking shape inside my head ever since I saw Fleury standing at my door, terrified and filthy. The anger and the outrage which had eluded me before was here now, sifting like grit through my blood. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said.

Tombeau stood back, as if to size me up for a fight. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Give me a gun. Teach me how to blow up a bridge. Let me do something that helps. Painting is not enough.”

“How about I just throw you in prison?” asked Tombeau.

“You don’t have a prison to throw me in anymore,” I told him. “Let me fight.”

“What do you know about fighting?” he barked. “Not a damned thing.”

“Just tell me what to do. I can’t sit around and watch this kind of thing happen.”

“You aren’t just sitting around,” said Tombeau. He took off his cap and scratched his head and set his cap back on his head. “You are fighting,” he said quietly. He raised his head and fixed me with his gray-green eyes. For the first time, he did not look angry. He seemed confused, as if unsure how to behave when deprived of his rage. “If you want to know the truth, I envy you,” he told me. “I know how you feel now, but I also know how you’ll feel after you’ve stuck a knife through some spotty-faced teenage soldier. Any killing we do now is purely symbolic. It shows the Germans that we haven’t given up. But you, with your paintings. You can make a difference.” He breathed out slowly. “My job is only to hate. To hate more and hate longer and to kill because of hating. But your job means being hated by the same people whose culture you are fighting to save. When this is all over, if you survive it, you’ll have done more good than I could ever do.” Then Tombeau was gone, vanished in the side streets of the city.

*   *   *

WHEN I TOLD FLEURY about my conversation with Tombeau, he exploded.

Fleury grabbed my arm. “Have you gone insane?”

We were standing in the lobby of the apartment building, waiting for the elevator to come down.

I shook loose from him. “What are you talking about? And for Christ’s sake, lower your voice.”

“You listen to me,” said Fleury, his voice as loud as ever. “If you just want to throw your life away because you’re too furious to think straight, then go ahead. Go down to the Hôtel de Ville and knife one of the German guards. But you can damn well do it by yourself. After what I’ve seen, I intend to survive, however bad it gets. And if you had any brains, you would, too.”

The elevator cage arrived, clanking into place.

“It’s precisely because of what you saw that you should stop just thinking about yourself,” I told him.

Fleury slid back the door to the cage and stepped inside. When he turned around, his face was twisted with anger. “I’m going to live through this, no matter what it takes.” He slammed the cage door shut and jabbed his thumb over and over at the button for his floor.

“If it takes you going behind my back again…” I told him, but never had the chance to finish, because the elevator dragged him upward out of sight.

*   *   *

I COULD NO LONGER stand the half-measures of trust by which our acquaintance was defined. Too much was at stake. From now on, he was going to have to show that he had changed, not only to Pankratov and me but to himself as well, I thought. There was nothing for him to do now but wait for a chance to present itself. Until then, there would always be this strange uncertainty between us.