CHAPTER 17
En route to Drancy, France
Monday, June 21, 1943
RUSTED GIRDERS, smoking chimneys and cavernous warehouses replaced the cream and grey buildings of Paris rushing past Noor’s carriage window. Beneath nearly closed eyelids she studied her early morning travel companions: the worried-looking woman who’d asked if this was “the potato or the bean train;” the two younger women who’d responded in unison “the bean train;” the old man at her left with his empty macramé bag—probably on his way to forage for food; the German soldier about Noor’s own age who gave up his seat for the old lady in mended espadrilles; the white-lipped little boy on her right who hadn’t taken his eyes off the soldier since the journey began.
And if the little boy’s mother didn’t stop staring at Noor’s bag, the soldier might notice. Was it too large, too expensive-looking? Perhaps too full?
Carry an empty basket next time.
This time, when the train stopped at Le Bourget–Drancy station, Noor knew her way to the centre-ville. But she had no plan. Gauzy blue skies veiled inspiration; she was a cavity of indecision. Inspiration, Abbajaan said, comes to those who prepare themselves. But how to prepare herself?
Get information. Use the tradecraft of secret agents.
Watchtowers of the internment camp loomed ahead.
Don’t attract attention. Take the back streets.
But there was the tabac door, held invitingly open to cool the little shop. She stopped and asked the owner for Claude to take her to the boarding house again.
“Mademoiselle, a customer who returns is impossible to refuse.” He went to the back and shouted for Claude. “It’s the mademoiselle you said had such pretty eyes.”
Claude’s face popped around the door, flushed pink to the roots of his brown, curly hair. Noor gave him a bewitching smile, accelerating his tint to scarlet.
She hopped sidesaddle on Claude’s luggage carrier, bag on her lap, and steadied herself with one hand about his waist. Claude began pedalling down the avenue.
Even his neck had turned beet red.
Don’t laugh.
“How is your Tante Lucille?” asked Claude.
“Oh, the same, thank you. Kind when she has good days, unkind when she is in pain.”
Claude was approaching the turreted watchtower. Claude had passed the watchtower.
Just another part of the landscape.
“Does your aunt take medicines for the pain? Laudanum, perhaps?”
“She should, but who can find laudanum these days,” said Noor.
Past several lorries parked at the entrance gate like dogs sniffing for bones.
“Everything can be found, for a price.”
His tone was meaningful. A new avenue opened before Noor.
Allah! Sometimes all one has to do is be present and not give up.
Careful. A hunter who traps a tigress tricks her with a branch-covered pit.
“Was that your papa?” she asked.
“No, he is not my papa. My papa is still in Germany.”
“In a camp like this?”
“Mais, non! Not like this! A Stalag, widening roads, building irrigation canals in Germany. Drancy is for Jews.”
How different were conditions for French soldiers who were now in POW internment camps and for Jews in internment camps? How should Claude know?
“And you are—how old?” He was tall but malnourished. Perhaps fifteen?
“Seventeen, mademoiselle.”
Seventeen—only a few short months from being called up for the Relève and sent to make weapons for the Germans. Unless he was fortunate enough to be employed in an essential industry in France.
“You look older, Monsieur Claude,” lied Noor.
His chest puffed at her compliment.
“Where is your mother?”
“Here, in Drancy,” he said. “I carry messages from the tabac when I’m not working at the automobile garage—I’m apprenticed to the mechanic there.”
Young Claude wasn’t black marketeering for a fat pocketbook but to survive. Still, he could be working for the Germans. He could be trying to trap her, trap her into divulging her own interests.
Keep your inquiries general.
High walls passed the bicycle. And passed and passed. How very many people there must be like Noor, whose loved ones had disappeared into that camp.
Lorries, pedestrians, very empty shops on the other side. But perhaps she could find work close to Armand.
“There must be so many jobs that need to be done at the camp,” she said.
“I’ve asked,” said Claude. “But the prisoners are forced to do everything.”
“And what about deliveries? Couldn’t you help deliver food, clothing—letters?”
Claude grunted. “These days? Every camp gendarme who comes to our repair shop is trembling for his job. One of them told us a new director has been appointed. A German this time—SS.”
“Why? Don’t the Germans believe we can guard our own people?”
Sound casual! Sound indifferent!
Unwittingly she had used the first person plural nous. Using nous when her family’s inclusion in France was tenuous at best had always felt inappropriate. But it came naturally with her outrage at the treatment of people with whom she’d shared her childhood.
“Oh, we guard them well,” said Claude. “But we aren’t deporting the Jews to Germany fast enough. The gendarme said the new Kommandant has vowed to change that.”
“How long are prisoners kept here before their deportation to Germany?”
There—she’d asked it. A simple question, dropped easily into the conversation.
Claude shrugged. “It depends. Maybe a few weeks, a few months. The gendarme said the Kommandant was appointed because there have been no shipments from Drancy to Germany since March. The French director intended to, but they’d no coal allotment for prison transports. He said the new Kommandant was enraged that not a single convoy has left Drancy in three months.”
Allah! If no one was sent to Germany since March, there was a chance that her Armand and Madame Lydia were still at Drancy. Armand’s postcard was dated April. Hope brightened the sooty façades of passing houses and shops.
But hadn’t Monique said fifteen thousand Jews had been rounded up in one week? Where were the Germans housing them? Suddenly the long walls of Drancy appeared far too short, the whole camp shrank in her mind.
Hold fast to hope.
“So, Monsieur Claude, tell me … what other things can be had for a price?” she murmured to Claude’s back.
“That depends, mademoiselle”—the whir of wheels punctuated his voice—“on what your aunt Lucille requires.”
“I will ask her,” said Noor. “You can call me Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie Régnier.”
The bicycle bumped along past the last watchtower and its machine-gun silhouette, and this time Noor looked back as it swung and became sure it wasn’t aiming at her. Wasn’t aiming at her at all. Claude turned at the chestnut tree waving its leaves against a warm, cloudless sky. When he stopped in the lane, Noor slipped off the carrier and opened her bag for a tip. He shook his head.
“Non, mademoiselle—I will take you again, for your pretty eyes. You can ask for me at the tabac or the garage on the other side of the camp. I deliver bread here in the mornings, too.”
“Merci, Claude,” said Noor warmly. “I will ask Tante Lucille what she needs.” With Dadijaan in mind she added for greater effect, “You know old ladies—today it is one thing, tomorrow another.”
Claude ran a few paces on his wood-soled shoes and vaulted onto his bike. He looked over his shoulder, beamed and waved when he caught her eye.
Inside, Noor greeted Madame Gagné.
“Oh, have you come, then? Too late—breakfast is over. You can have the last of the oatmeal.”
Late despite her best intentions; the meal would have been welcome. Still, she had learned something. Noor ate the weak oatmeal and climbed to her attic room, a little wiser, much more hopeful than before.
Flashes of light resolved into patterns:
… dot-dot-dash … dash-dot-dash … dash-dash-dot …
Inside Madame Gagné’s creaking house, Noor rose from the chair she had pulled to the window and raised her binoculars. Chestnut leaves, metallic in the moonlight, filtered a welcome breeze through the window. Mice or rats skittered beneath the floorboards.
Noor had watched the camp since mid-morning to acquaint herself with its routine. At noon, prisoners were herded into the central courtyard for a bowl of what she supposed was soup. An hour and a half later, prisoners were marched out, presumably to work again, leaving little activity in the courtyard. At 18:35 hours they returned to the courtyard for roll call and soup distribution, and at 20:00 hours a blast from a factory horn must have meant something to inmates. At 22:00 hours lights went out in the complex and, suddenly, perimeter lights above the barbed wire fence flashed on. Then searchlights in the central courtyard raised moonish faces to the night.
Again: dot-dot-dash … dash-dot-dash … dash-dash-dot.
Sudden, fleeting as intuition—the prisoners were using battery-powered torches to send Morse code messages from the camp.
Noor snatched up pen and paper and began to record the letters she was reading from the flashing lights. Who was the sender? who the intended receiver? She’d decipher it later. Receiving was the least and the best she could do. It would be beyond all possible coincidences if Allah were to allow Armand to be sending in Morse as she was watching. Like herself, Armand could have learned Morse in the last three years, but she didn’t think he would. Anyway, she’d record and, if possible, send the messages from these unknown captives to their destination.
É—C—O—U—T … Wait, what was that sound? Aeroplanes buzzed in the distance. Sirens wailed and anti-aircraft guns in the camp’s central courtyard thundered into the night. The still-life painting on the wall behind Noor quivered, drifted askew, then crashed behind the headboard. The walls were vibrating, shivering down to their timbers.
But the lights—the perimeter lights. They still blazed. Turn them off! Plunge the camp in total blackout! Instead, every light remained on, as if intended to guide the bombs.
Noor trembled for Armand as the bombers screamed and roared overhead. A camp this size, lit up as it was, would be a highly visible landmark from the air. Was it a target?
The bombers ploughed through the exploding sky in tight formation.
Madame Gagné was shouting from the landing, a clattering filled the stairwell. Noor should run downstairs, take shelter in the cellar. But she couldn’t tear her eyes from the camp windows where the torches had been flashing.
Kabir, if you’re above us in that bomber and you destroy this camp, I’ll never forgive you. Never.
But then, if the camp were bombed, it might be possible in the ensuing chaos for Armand and Madame Lydia to escape. If the camp were destroyed, it would make it difficult if not impossible for the Germans and Vichy to incarcerate Jews and send them to Germany, or at least make it difficult for a long time. And meanwhile, if they had fewer Jews to slave in their armaments industries and help repair their bombed cities, perhaps they would lose the war.
Kabir, if you’re above us in that bomber and you don’t destroy this camp, I’ll never forgive you. Never.
But the booming of guns and ack-ack quieted, and the flock of unseen arrowheads flew away to top priority targets in Germany. Noor sat waiting, watching beneath night-sifted starlight, but the torches did not flash again.
“Tickets, tickets, s’il vous plaît!”
Madame Gagné was moving around her dining table, collecting rainbow-coloured ration coupons for meals served to the boarding house residents, when Noor came downstairs the next morning. Tickets for the bread ration, twenty-four hours old in accordance with German decree, bread she said cost her three hundred francs today. Tickets for the margarine, but not the saccharine jam.
The dining room lay at the heart of the house, adjoining the kitchen. Through an archway lay a cavernous drawing room where blackout curtains surrounded slip-covered furniture. Beyond it, a panelled corridor led to the front door.
Noor placed her bag next to a chair, murmured good morning and sat down beside a buxom woman in an apron. The waitress Gabrielle commanded the rapt attention of four others—two men, two women—as she described how to make an eggless omelette.
“Have you tasted one?” asked a grey-haired gentleman.
Animal smell. Monsieur Durand, the salesman who kept rabbits as pets in his room. Benares silk tie. A better-cut suit than these surroundings warranted. But those Degas eyes and unstarched shirt collar spoke of bachelorhood or a recent fall in circumstances.
“Non, non, but can’t you imagine it?”
Each resident savoured his or her version of the imaginary omelette.
“Eggless omelettes! If there are no eggs, it’s not an omelette. What did I tell you, Mademoiselle Régnier? Don’t believe anything Mademoiselle Gabrielle says.”
But Gabrielle’s description must have called to the right elements in her audience’s experience, for the omelette was no less wondrous to them for being eggless and tasteless. At Madame Gagné’s comment Gabrielle shrugged muscular shoulders, from which, despite her name, no angel wings extended.
Having pronounced judgement on their culinary fantasies, and with the coupons dutifully submitted by Noor, Madame Gagné disappeared into the kitchen. Beyond the cast iron stove Noor spied Claude lounging in the open doorway facing the garden. He noticed her at once, straightened, smiled and blushed. Such amusing admiration; he was so much younger. Noor couldn’t help giving him a coquettish glance over the rim of her coffee cup.
“You’re across the corridor from me, non?” said Gabrielle. “Did you not feel the house shake when the guns fired last night?”
“I knocked on your door as we ran downstairs to the cellar, and there was no answer. You sleep too soundly—or you’re very brave. Or very foolish.”
“Thank you for knocking,” said Noor. “It was almost over by the time I woke up.”
She helped herself to a pat of margarine. A few seats away, a woman resident’s eyes followed the pale smear through the air till Noor’s knife touched her plate.
Noor continued, “They left the lights of the camp on. People in that camp could have been bombed!” Outrage in her voice.
Restrain yourself.
Monsieur Durand wiped his lips. “Of course they could. The Germans wouldn’t care.”
“Oh, they would,” said a bald man at the other end of the table. “They need our imprisoned friends for German factories.” And he left the table, stopping to take his hat and portfolio from the hat stand in the hall.
Gabrielle tossed her head. Golden locks brought her closer to her angelic name than her sharp tone. “We all know why he’s here. He’s a missionnaire.” She leaned back, fingering the gold cross at her neck. Her expression said she’d just revealed a great secret.
“A missionary?” The bald man had neither cleric’s collar nor priestly demeanour.
“Yes. He’s allowed to leave the camp for a few days at a time, to find and collect families of prisoners. Women and children—I ask you, what work can children do in German factories? Then, when the families have been, as they say, ‘reunited,’ they are all sent to Germany together.”
“Why does he return to the camp?” asked Noor. “Can’t he refuse to gather up families?”
“Oh, don’t blame him! He said once that if he failed to return to the camp when he was expected, the Germans would shoot someone in his stead and send a new missionary out the very next morning. But I tell everyone new: if you have anyone in the camp, don’t breathe one word before him.”
Deny you have someone in the camp.
“Oh, I’m here to visit my aunt—Tante Lucille,” said Noor. “She’s very sick.”
“This is amazing,” said Gabrielle. “So am I! Monsieur Durand here was just asking me about my aunt’s health.”
A wry smile came over Monsieur Durand’s face. “And my aunt’s name is Madame Frédérique Durand. She is very sick too. Sicker than your Tante Marie, Gabrielle.”
The three looked at each other in a silence that restrained volumes of questions, not the least of which was the obvious one: where were these three sick aunts at this moment? No wonder Madame Gagné had smirked in disbelief when Noor told her about Tante Lucille.
The two women next to Gabrielle finished eating, stood up and nodded farewells. Their wedge sandals clumped through the kitchen where Madame Gagné was counting out ration tickets for Claude.
Three of us with sick aunts, at the same table.
This was no coincidence but a joint failure of imagination that might have been comical if it wasn’t so dangerous.
Around the dining table, intuitive evaluations continued. Monsieur Durand’s salted brows were drawn together in a frown. If he was Jewish, as Madame Gagné had implied, that probably said Noor and Gabrielle were not Jewish enough to trust. The pressure of Gabrielle’s gaze intensified. She was evaluating Noor’s features; perhaps Noor and Monsieur Durand were not Christian enough or not French enough for further confidences from her.
They aren’t Muslim or Indian, but we certainly think alike. We who have invented similar lies may have similar reasons, similar concerns.
She kept her face unguarded and open. A subtle change came to Gabrielle’s eyes.
Perhaps loving a single Jewish man deeply, without reserve, moulded Noor’s eyes, nose or mouth in some friendly way others in Armand’s community could sense; or perhaps shared fears, anger and loss could instantly create the first person plural nous without shared memories, for Monsieur Durand rose abruptly and with a slight bow began measuring out Noor’s bread, cutting it evenly and finely till her fair share lay before her.
There was a sudden dyspeptic buzz.
A doorbell. At the front door.
Gabrielle looked startled, Monsieur Durand fearful.
Noor tensed in reflection of their attitudes. Her hands suddenly felt damp. She wiped them on her serviette and glanced at the kitchen door. In an instant she could be through it and into the garden.
She listened with the others. Madame Gagné went to the door and opened it.
“Papieren?!” came a German voice.
Papers? At this hour? Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand exchanged glances of panic.
But the Gestapo isn’t here for them. They must have come to arrest me, the foreign agent, the spy. Run now?
Gabrielle was sitting very straight. Monsieur Durand shot his cuffs, popped the last of his bread into his mouth and waited, cheeks bulging.
Noor could do that too, appear normal.
A German soldier’s large frame filled the dining-room doorway, Madame Gagné behind him.
What did “normal” look like? It didn’t look like Noor. She leaned forward. She would just reach under the table slowly, as if reaching for her handbag to take out her papers. Her muscles flexed, ready to flee.
But the soldier took a cursory look around the dining room and said in guttural French, “Everything looks in order.” He turned to Madame Gagné. “Is Claude here?”
Madame Gagné called and the boy entered the dining room, wide eyes already protesting innocence.
“You work at the garage, ja?”
Claude nodded, cheeks flushing red.
“There’s a noise in my gearbox. Come outside and check my clutch.”
Claude followed the soldier through the front door, and everyone at the table seemed to breathe again. Madame Gagné returned to tend her cauldron on the stove. Gabrielle jumped up from the table and disappeared between the ghostly furniture shapes in the drawing room. She opened the painted window a few inches and peered out onto the street.
“That soldier comes into the Café Vidrequin,” she said. “Always has two beers—I serve him. He must have recognized me, that’s why he didn’t check our papers. No, wait—he’s talking to Claude.”
“Why here?” said Monsieur Durand. “He could have gone to the garage.”
“It’s too early—the garage isn’t open yet.”
“He could have waited half an hour. I don’t like it.”
There was a short pause, then Gabrielle said, “I think Claude has repaired his motor car.”
Claude came back.
“Did you repair his motor car?” asked Monsieur Durand.
“There was nothing wrong with it,” said Claude.
“Nothing wrong? These Germans are idiots.” Monsieur Durand was nearly laughing with relief.
“Yes, well …” Claude hesitated. Then it came out in a rush: “He said he needed me to inspect his motor car for tomorrow—a convoy leaves in the morning for Germany. He has to drive the SS officers to Bobigny station.”
All the air seemed sucked out of the room.
“I—I think he wanted me to tell someone, maybe everyone. But I don’t know who needs to know. Besides, what can anyone do?”
Gabrielle sank into her chair with her face in her hands. The cross at her throat must be for costume, because her pallor said she knew someone in the camp. Could she be Jewish? Did she have a Jewish husband? A Jewish lover?
Don’t show you have any reason to care.
Monsieur Durand blew his nose thoughtfully. “Have you met this German before?”
“No, never,” said Claude. “But he’s a Bavarian. Catholic—I see him in church.”
Monsieur Durand gave a derisive grunt.
“Well, he isn’t likely to attend a synagogue, you know!” said Claude.
So Monsieur Durand was Jewish, as Madame Gagné had suspected. And Claude knew it. Monsieur Durand’s eyebrows rose, and Claude retreated in deference to Monsieur Durand’s years. But then Claude shifted from one foot to the other and blurted, “The list of selected prisoners has been posted.”
“Did your German say how they had been selected? Did he give you the list?” asked Monsieur Durand.
“He’s not ‘my German.’ Anyway, he said nothing. And of course he didn’t give me a list.”
“You think he carries a photograph of such a list in his pocket just so he can tell you who is on it?” said Gabrielle, with a return of spirit that called to Noor’s own.
Monsieur Durand shrugged. “If he was really trying to help, he would have brought us the list. What is the use of telling us there will be a convoy tomorrow? What can we do about it? And a German who can behave with humanity—it is impossible.”
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.
Armand believed Noor to be in London. But he would recognize her writing.
Allah, guide me to the answer soon.
She glanced at her wristwatch. “It is now 11:00 hours. Everyone returns to the camp for roll call in the evening at 18:35 hours. Monsieur le Missionnaire has to be back then too, since he isn’t staying here tonight.”
Gabrielle went upstairs to prepare her parcel for the children; she had to be at the Café Vidrequin to serve lunch but would return after that. Noor took directions to the garage from Monsieur Durand before he went upstairs to feed his rabbits, “In case I have to say adieu to one of my gentle friends tonight. Now hurry back!” He raised the tips of her fingers to his papery lips.
Noor let herself out through the kitchen. “I’m going to visit Tante Lucille,” she said to Madame Gagné over her shoulder.
“You want me to find Monsieur le Missionnaire?”
Claude looked as if he had been about to embrace Noor as an old friend but then, embarrassed, barely shook the tips of her fingers.
“Monsieur Durand asked if you could find him.”
“Yes, but why did he send you?” He turned her hand over as if to verify he hadn’t sullied her with grease. His hair smelled of pomade, gazogène and diesel.
“Oh, I was coming this way. Going to see my aunt, you know.” Noor’s attempt to smile turned into a desperate grimace.
Claude wiped the dipstick he had used to check the oil in the open mandible of a black Citroën. Cars at various stages of cannibalization were overcrowded into the garage. Spare tools lay scattered on the dirt surface. Light poured through clerestory windows, dispelling the dimness at intervals.
“He said it’s very urgent.”
“Mademoiselle, if you think it’s urgent, then it is urgent for me. Venez …”
Noor let her hand nestle in the crook of his arm. Claude led her to a bench, wiped it carefully before allowing her to sit down. Someone shouted at him from the rear. He shouted in return but made no move to leave.
“Monsieur Durand asks for Monsieur le Missionnaire? Monsieur Durand should know that he should do nothing to attract Monsieur le Missionnaire’s attention in any way. And you too.”
His tone wavered halfway between brother and lover, like a puppy that paws and bites before it learns the power of embrace. Like Kabir. But oh, for Armand’s sake, let him understand!
“Claude,” she said, “about the news you gave us this morning? I think your German wanted to tell us more, but he couldn’t.”
“He’s not my German.”
Noor’s shrug conveyed a mote of scepticism. “Good. Well … Monsieur Durand thought that with so many prisoners leaving the camp tomorrow, what that German wanted to tell us was that there could be jobs there soon. So—Gabrielle would like to know if they need help with the officers’ laundry. But she must ask soon, before the jobs are filled by new prisoners. That is why I need you to find Monsieur le Missionnaire quickly.”
Noor could see Claude didn’t believe the story, plausible as it was. But she wasn’t going to tell him any other. Where was the implicit understanding and trust she had felt in him from the moment she first rode on his luggage carrier?
Besides, she was ready with a one-hundred franc note to press in his hand.
He unfolded the note, looked at it, folded it up again and returned it. “Mademoiselle, I don’t know if I can find him. He could be gone to Paris, he could be anywhere. But I will go cycling for one hour. If I find him in the village somewhere, I will invite him to meet Monsieur Durand chez Madame Gagné. But after an hour …” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction where the shout had originated. “More than an hour and I could get a beating. I’m just an apprentice here.”
Noor leaned over and kissed Claude on the cheek. She fluttered her lashes ever so slightly. “Merci, mon gallant chevalier.”
Claude blushed.
As Noor left the garage, she was tempted, very tempted, to pick up a pair of pliers, a spanner or a wrench and slip it into her bag. But Gabrielle had warned: no weapons. Endangering the children or Monsieur le Missionnaire was not permissible.
Leave this theft undone.
But what of Armand, of Gabrielle’s little niece and nephew, of Monsieur Durand’s fourteen relatives who might be on the list? She turned back.
Claude’s back was to her. Leaning into the car, he looked as if he were struggling in the open jaws of a great black whale.
Pliers were tools, not weapons. Noor snatched the pliers.
Just in case.
It was past noon when Noor returned to the boarding house and climbed to her room beneath the eaves. In the skulking heat her blouse was sticking to burning, moist skin. Time was flying away.
Monsieur Durand poked his head from the room across the hall. “Has Claude gone to find Monsieur le Missionnaire?”
“Yes,” said Noor. “We must hope he can.”
“Gabrielle said she’ll return after lunch,” he reminded her. “She left you her parcel.”
Monsieur Durand brought in a parcel the size of a newborn. He placed it on the desk near the window and stood looking at the camp for a minute, lips moving in soundless prayer. Noor busied herself with the parcel till he nodded and left the room.
A note from Gabrielle: Add your message—the sardines. Also a sheet of brown paper and a ball of twine.
The sardine tin must be fake. SOE had sent so many spy devices into Europe. The false bottom slid away, revealing a small compartment.
What gift should she, could she, send?
I need to tell Armand I am here, that I love him always.
Too many messages to fit in that tiny compartment. She was sorry for the seven years of waiting, for the intolerance of her family, she had never stopped loving him, she was as Rumi’s separated reed without him, he must know they still had a task they could only effect together: the return of a child’s soul in a better time to come.
But anonymity was safety—critical for so many. For Armand and for her mission. The sender must disappear into the message.
Allah, guide me.
The parcel must be ready by the time Gabrielle returned. Yet the message Noor had come so far to deliver must be the perfect representation of her love, their love; some shape so powerful it would swallow the need for words. It should say, “I am near you. Have hope, my love. We will be together again.”
Anyone could say that. Her message must have some pattern distinctive as a radio operator’s fist to be a message that Armand would know could come only from Noor. It must speak of the coexistence of beauty with the beast, and the hope of transmuting suffering to beauty. She must send Armand some very small thing that could carry the weight of this desperate love and hope that had her standing by the bed, looking into the half-composed package with brimming eyes.
The day she returned to Paris, as the tram shuddered onto the boulevard de Boulogne and passed the very spot where she had said adieu to Armand—the adieu that should have been au revoir—she had yearned for some small thing that belonged to him, something she could have held at that moment; something eloquent with memories of shared experiences, intimate times. Was Armand feeling the same at this moment? Could she give him a part of herself?
She peeked into the parcel again. Where had Gabrielle found wool to knit a scarf? Where had she found a second, real tin of sardines, one of condensed milk, even a jar of honey and another of jam? She must have been saving them for the children for quite a while. Each container compressed nourishment, and included so much more—assurance, hope, love, and Gabrielle’s sadness and anger that she could not protect these little ones.
The attic room grew warmer from the fever of Noor’s thoughts. She unbuttoned the top of her blouse.
Of course, of course.
What else was there? She had brought nothing of the past, Armand’s and her past, to France but this.
She unfastened the thin gold chain, held the crescent shape of her tiger claw up to the afternoon light.
Some foreknowledge must have counselled her to keep the pendant upon Anne-Marie Régnier’s person while divesting herself of every vestige, symbol and relic of Noor Khan. Armand knew its value—not only how precious it was to Noor, linking her always to India, her grandmother, Dadijaan, and the generations of women in her family who had worn it, but he would also know she gave him something to barter or sell, should his life depend on it.
For luck and courage.
Translucent yellow, smooth except for minute cracks, the power of the inarticulate but deadly beast restrained by its golden frame. Ancient relic of the pride, it flashed and shimmered, illuminating the dingy attic. She enfolded it in her hand.
Let the ferocious energy of this beast cross the barrier of its extinction.
She found a piece of white tissue paper in the desk drawer. She smoothed it carefully and wrote Je t’aime toujours. Beneath that she wrote Adieu, then crossed out the word and wrote beneath it, Au revoir.
She took a step back from her words, nodding as if Armand were present. That would reveal herself to him while still retaining a measure of purdah from the eyes of strangers.
Insh’allah, our past and future can be rewritten by these few words.
Then Noor wrapped the tiger claw and gold chain in the tissue. She wrote Armand Rivkin and Madame Lydia Rivkin in small, precise letters on the tissue, wedged the packet into the tin and slid the false lid over it. She shook the tin to be sure it wouldn’t rattle, then placed it back in Gabrielle’s package.
Every woman who ever wore that pendant would have done the same.
She wrapped the knitted scarf around the lot, then wrapped it in the brown paper left by Gabrielle. She entwined the whole package till it bulged like a four-chambered thing.
She knocked on Gabrielle’s door, but she had not yet returned. So Noor took the parcel back to her own room, pulled her chair up to the window and raised her binoculars. She would need a telescope to find Armand in those cheerless soup distribution lines.
But she knew his face in memory. In memory, felt the curve of his chin graze her cheek.
Noor paced her attic room and the landing outside like a caged tigress. Monsieur le Missionnaire had returned. Monsieur Durand invited him courteously to come and see his rabbits. They had been in Monsieur Durand’s room a long time. With the door closed.
Poor Monsieur le Missionnaire. What an existence! What choice did that poor man have but to betray his friends?
The missionary emerged from Monsieur Durand’s room, ducked his bald head and sidled downstairs. In a trice Noor was at Monsieur Durand’s door.
“Will he do it? Can he bring us the list?”
“He promised to try. Come in. Sit down.”
Since there was but one chair, Noor sat on the bed. Monsieur Durand’s room had a window but no view of the camp.
“I told him Gabrielle’s letter to the children is wrapped in plastic at the bottom of the jam jar. He will explain to the children, as often as necessary. And he’ll look for your packet in the sardine can and take it to your husband.”
“He took the money?” Noor had given Monsieur Durand three hundred francs.
“Oh, yes.” Monsieur Durand’s eyes brightened for an instant. “And the pliers—thank you, mademoiselle.”
He opened the rabbits’ wooden cage and drew out the piebald one—scrawny by contrast with rabbits in England, but among the three, the rabbit with most flesh on him. Monsieur Durand stroked his black ears and sighed. He put the rabbit back in the cage and fastened the door.
“Where did he say the train was taking them?”
“‘East.’ That’s all he knows. There are rumours about ‘relocation in Poland’ and other rumours that the destination is Metz.”
“Why Metz?”
“It used to be in France, but it’s in Germany now.” His response fell far short of her question.
“Do you think he’ll report us to the Germans?”
“Not yet.” Monsieur Durand nodded towards the piebald rabbit. “I promised him I’d give him that one when he brings me the list.”
Pain crossed his face fleetingly.
“Monsieur le Missionnaire doesn’t think the list is final yet—avenue Foch prisoners are added last. I told him we don’t need names of the Gestapo’s prisoners, we just want the names of people to be sent from Drancy.” He paused, then said in a musing tone, “He told me he doesn’t eat the rabbits I give him. He sells them to a black market restaurant so he can buy baptismal certificates.”
“Baptismal certificates?”
A knock at the door—Gabrielle. Punctual and full of questions. Monsieur Durand explained in a low voice.
What could his reference to baptismal certificates mean? If Armand pretended to be Christian, could it prevent the Germans from sending him to Germany? Once, long ago, Noor had asked timorously, intensely aware that it went against every tenet of Sufism ever propounded by Abbajaan’s school, if Armand might convert to Islam to please Uncle Tajuddin. Armand replied in an instant, “We profess what we know. I couldn’t be a converso. My mother converted to Judaism, but she has never felt it in every bone as my father did. She tries at Purim, at Rosh Hashanah, at Yom Kippur, but she didn’t grow up with it.”
Like Mother, joining in rituals while privately dismissing many tenets of Islam as superstition. Dadijaan had sniffed out Mother from their very first meeting—she could tell Mother had never truly converted, that her Christian notions had simply acquired a new label.
Some Jews were denying their faith, Armand had told her, because they found it inconvenient—but if he left his faith, it wouldn’t be to acquire another equally inconvenient one but because he’d lost faith that any Messiah could save the world. She couldn’t expect someone who had answered the question of conversion to Islam in such terms to now consider Christianity. Besides, neither he nor Madame Lydia had ever suggested Noor convert to Judaism. Like Abbajaan, their definition of secularism was the Gandhian one, which included rather than excluded all religions, saw all religions as worthy of respect.
Still, she repeated her question about baptismal certificates.
“You should tell Monsieur le Missionnaire not to bother,” said Gabrielle. “I pawned my gold cross to buy baptismal certificates for the children two weeks ago, but when I realized all they have to do is check if my little nephew is circumcised and the certificate will be useless, I went and got my cross back.”
The same was true for Armand. He and Kabir had this in common, besides their similar avoidance of pork. The baptismal certificate was futile but attractive, a logical answer to an illogical situation.
“He said each baptismal certificate is worth its weight in gold, but it’s a good thing you got your cross back,” said Monsieur Durand. “When the guards see you wearing it, they don’t search your packages as much when you leave them at the camp post, oui?”
“Non, non, they search. But I hope it makes them treat my little darlings better. Oh, I didn’t mean …”
“Better than Jews, yes.”
“Anne-Marie, stop chewing your hair, you’re making me even more nervous!” Gabrielle deflected Monsieur Durand’s attention to Noor.
Startled, Noor looked at the end of her ponytail and realized she had indeed been chewing it. Her wristwatch said it was almost 18:00 hours.
“Can we do nothing more?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Gabrielle. “But I’m going now to deliver the parcel. If I see something or think of something …”
Noor and Monsieur Durand sat at Noor’s window, watching the camp, waiting.
Monsieur le Missionnaire did not return with the list that evening. Noor brought in chairs for Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand and sat watching the camp with them. As darkness fell, the perimeter lights flashed on, their beams shooting into the night sky.
Gabrielle cut Monsieur Durand’s tobacco ration cigarettes in half and re-rolled them. She smoked carefully, holding the smoke as long as she could, smoked them down as close as she could without burning her fingers. Noor found herself doing the same.
In a low voice Gabrielle told them her entire life story, showing no interest, thankfully, in Noor’s. Monsieur Durand held his cigarette between thumb and forefinger the way Indians smoked bidi-cigarettes to appease their hunger. By dawn Noor’s eyes and lungs were leaden, her attic room hazy grey as the dawn sky. Behind the lavatory door at the end of the corridor she turned the spigot and let her tears flow with the water.
What could they, what could she, do by watching the camp? Absolutely nothing. Then why did she, Monsieur Durand and Gabrielle watch all night? They needed to believe they were doing something. Perhaps they were there to comfort each other, especially Monsieur Durand; to have fourteen relatives in that camp was beyond understanding. What could Monsieur Durand’s father possibly do in a German factory at age eighty-one?
Crying was useless too. Noor dried her eyes and turned back.
The door to Monsieur Durand’s room was open, and both he and Gabrielle were crouched in the corner, looking into the wooden rabbit hutch.
There was nothing but straw in the cage. The rabbits were gone.
“But the cage is still locked,” said Gabrielle.
“Look in the lavatory—” Monsieur Durand’s voice was breaking.
“But the cage was locked,” repeated Gabrielle.
“Maybe they got into your room,” said Monsieur Durand to Noor.
“But I tell you, the cage door is not open.”
Repetition finally penetrated Monsieur Durand’s misery. He sat down heavily on the edge of his bed and said in a bewildered tone, “What do you mean, the cage is not open?” He made kissing sounds in the direction of the cage, but nothing moved.
Gabrielle sank to her knees, opened the cage door and reached in. She rummaged in the straw for a second, then let out a shriek. She drew back, wide-eyed, revulsion distorting her nose.
Gabrielle was speechless. Noor had to see for herself.
A rabbit skin was almost plastered to the floor of the cage. The rabbit’s flesh had been sucked out of its body, leaving only the head and a scaffolding of bones under its skin. Blood, sinew, entrails—all drawn right out of the poor animal. Smell of decay already permeating straw.
Noor pushed more straw away. Another skin. Blood soaked the floor, bits of flesh.
And when she pushed the straw away for the third, she could see the marks, the gnawed hole in the floor of the cage where rats had attacked. The starving creatures had chewed through the floorboards.
Why had the three of them in the next room not heard the rats attacking the rabbits? Why had the rabbits not made some sound—cries, screams—whatever sounds of distress a rabbit can make? But they had, yes, they had. The cage was nicked and scraped by their desperate death throes. Would that they had had pliers to escape from their cage, but they had no such tools … And meanwhile she, Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand had been right there in the next room, eyes fixed on the camp, waiting for Monsieur le Missionnaire’s return.
Monsieur le Missionnaire! He would be expecting his rabbit, and there was now not a single rabbit left to give him: the rats had done the job neither he nor Monsieur Durand could bring themselves to do. Would Monsieur le Missionnaire give them the list now? Would he turn Monsieur Durand in to the Germans? No—he would see the distress in Monsieur Durand’s eyes. Monsieur Durand was sitting on his bed, tie undone, grey hair rising in tufts about roving fingers. Perhaps Monsieur le Missionnaire would accept more money and give them the list.
The drone of motors rose from the street below. Suddenly Noor abandoned the carcasses of the poor rabbits. She, Monsieur Durand and Gabrielle acted as one: they hurried to Noor’s room, crowded around the window again.
Buses were arriving at Drancy, the open gates of the internment camp sucking them in one after another like pastilles. More and more buses, like green locusts descending on the camp. Noor, now leaning from the attic window, could see that while they had been aghast at the fate of the rabbits, a roll call of prisoners had begun in the central courtyard. Women holding children in their arms, men shuffling forward, some leaning against each other for support, each clutching a suitcase or bag. She took out her binoculars, shared them with Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand in turn, but they couldn’t recognize a single face from this distance even if the light were brighter. Quink-coloured clouds hovered, threatening rain.
Noor ran downstairs with the others behind her, no longer caring if she was seen or by whom. Into the street she raced, past Madame Gagné standing on her front steps; into the street, just as a black Citroën with headlights on led the first bus from the gates. The roar of engines must have woken others in Drancy. Hundreds lined the avenue where the buses would pass on their way to Bobigny station. Some from curiosity. Some must be like herself—related to the inmates. Angry murmurs rose and fell, but there were no shouts of protest. It was an alliance of the helpless.
Noor’s fists and jaw clenched.
Allah, no, no! Not now, not when I am so close. Please, please, Allah, don’t take Armand away! Why did you bring me here only to send him away to Germany before my eyes?
Take someone else, Allah, not my Armand, not him, not him …
She was weeping, running after the first bus, sobbing, Gabrielle beside her. She’d seen a man at a window, a man who looked like Armand. No, there was Armand standing—no, there—crammed among the old men and boys.
No—there! There!
No—there!
Oh, where? Where?
“Armand, I’m here, look, look!”
Please, Allah, let me speak to him first. Let me tell him. Oh, tell him for me …
Then came the headlights of another crowded, lumbering bus and she began running beside it, looking, throat soon rasping, lungs gasping, legs beginning to drag. Gendarmes moved into the crowd with their batons. Gabrielle was howling.
Monsieur Durand was left far behind.
Was that Madame Lydia’s face? No, no.
White birds fluttered in the smeared windows—hands, large and small, waving.
A third bus thundered by, listing with the weight of its passengers, and she was running, running, but couldn’t keep up. Gabrielle was left behind.
Another bus, and another.
Suddenly there were more birds, grey birds, flying from the windows of the buses. Square birds that fluttered to the sidewalks, then skittered and blew like dry leaves.
Legs heavy as if wading through water. A biting pain entered her side, she stumbled, had to slow … walk … double over … stop.
Vision was liquid, spilling over. She looked up, fighting for breath, fists still clenched over emptiness. The sky was an inverted bowl moving impotently above. Houses and shops were shuttered all around. How could it be that the din and cries of prisoners leaving Drancy at this hour had disturbed no one along this road? Had the convoys become so familiar a sight?
On the pavement before her lay one of the grey birds. It was a letter. She picked it up as if it were injured.
Addressed in pencil, but not to her.
She had run all the way to the tabac. Closed this early in the morning. There was an old half-barrel to rest against till panic subsided and reason returned.
She hadn’t seen Armand. She hadn’t seen Madame Lydia.
She examined the address on the letter and put it in her pocket. She would post it, as a kind stranger had done for Armand—for her.
Noor walked back—a long way back—soft-boned, insides jangling.
Monsieur Durand was standing among the dwindled crowd by the camp gates. He stood empty-handed, looking very old. Gabrielle’s head leaned on his arm, she patted his hand. No letters in sight; they must have been scooped up and pocketed quickly.
“God will look after them,” Monsieur Durand said to Noor.
A blade pierced her side again.
“He saw his father, his wife … everybody,” whispered Gabrielle. “I didn’t see the children, thank God.”
The three began walking back to the boarding house.
“We did see Monsieur le Missionnaire,” she said to Noor. “He was on the last bus, poor man.”
“He’s a good man. God will look after him,” said Monsieur Durand. “And your husband, Mademoiselle Régnier?”
“I didn’t see my husband.”
Alhamdulillah.
Self-loathing welled and Noor’s eyes dampened. How could she rejoice for Armand even as other prisoners were being sent to Germany? But then—had she missed Armand? Perhaps he had been on the far side of a bus.
Banish the thought. Believe your eyes, only your eyes. You didn’t see him. So he’s not gone, he’s still alive, he’s still in the camp.
She joined Gabrielle in helping Monsieur Durand up the stairs. At their urging he lay down on the bed in Gabrielle’s room. Gabrielle kept up a steady stream of fantasy as comfort.
“Don’t worry. People in Germany live like kings—they take our wheat and coal there because they have to feed prisoners of war in the camps. Don’t worry, the Red Cross inspects German camps for foreigners—they can’t be all that bad.”
Noor contributed one too. “Remember the Geneva Convention. Please don’t worry …”
Gabrielle brought a bucket from Madame Gagné and water from the lavatory. Noor helped her clean, swab and scrub till all traces of the mauled rabbits were gone. Gabrielle took the skins away to sell, the cage to be repaired by Claude and the bones to bury in a flower bed. Then Noor led Monsieur Durand back to his room.
The problem struck her as she stood gazing at the camp again from her window. With Monsieur le Missionnaire gone, how could she know if Armand had received her tiger claw, or that he was still at Drancy?
Noor stood in the doorway of the garage, caught in the abrupt change of light from bright afternoon to murky interior. Smell of grease and acetylene welding. A light shaft from the clerestory window lit a table beside the automobiles. One of the two figures with lunch packets and bottles of cider open before them looked like Claude. The other was an older man in overalls.
“Salut, Monsieur Claude!”
The boy came towards her, a lopsided grin adorning his face. A muscular arm rubbed against her shoulder, leaving an odorous dampness. He stood a little closer than she liked, but she let him.
“I have one more favour I must request.” She spoke softly enough that he bent closer.
“Mademoiselle, what is it?”
Noor twiddled her watch about her wrist. It was too difficult to make up a tale after the events of that morning. She would begin from the truth and diverge a little for the sake of persuasion.
“Claude, Gabrielle delivered a parcel to the camp for her little niece and nephew—and I took the opportunity to send a small gift to a friend there.”
“Oho.” Claude stroked his beardless chin. “A friend?”
“Yes, a family friend.”
Another lie; her family had never considered Armand a friend. Perhaps Anne-Marie Régnier’s family considered him a friend.
“And so?”
“I must find out if he received my gift.”
Claude gave a low whistle. “C’est tout?!”
“Yes, that’s all.”
Claude’s guffaw began falsetto then cracked to bass register. “Ask Monsieur le Missionnaire.”
“Regrettably, he was sent on one of the buses this morning.”
“Mon Dieu!” Claude hunched his shoulders and stared at the ground. Then he said, “Mademoiselle, I can sell you Pall Mall, Brut champagne, Algerian wine, Scotch whisky, apples, quinces, truffles, tripe, even oysters—but only a Resistance group can get a message in and out of the camp.”
“You must know someone in the Resistance? Enfin, you look like a man who would be fighting in the Resistance—even the German officer suspected so.”
It was unmistakably a compliment; she hoped he would take it as one.
Claude stood a little taller but said, “Non, mademoiselle, my mother says if one is going to fight, one should be in French uniform, not creeping around doing sabotage in the night or hiding in the hills like the Maquis. And if I were caught, who would look after her?” But he did look disappointed to be left out of the adventures.
“Yes, your mother is right,” said Noor. “But this is not to help France or Germany. Nor is it anything illegal. It’s just to find out if a small packet was received. And it’s not as dangerous as selling whisky and tripe on the black market.”
Claude looked away, half his face in shadow. A shout came from within the garage; Claude’s break was almost up. Noor let a questioning silence lengthen.
Claude looked back at her. “You know, mademoiselle, it is a strange thing.”
“Yes?”
“Last week, the curé was so tired of hearing me confess my sins about the black market that he didn’t give me novenas as penance. He said I must do one deed that did not benefit myself, and remember the feeling. And when I asked which deed, he said it would present itself to me. He didn’t say it would be something so difficult.”
“I know it is difficult. But you will try?”
He jerked his head in assent.
Subhan-allah!
Noor touched Claude’s hand lightly, then pressed the hundred-franc note into his palm a second time. This time he put it in his pocket, mumbling about possibly having to pay someone.
Noor showed him a small card with Armand’s name. “Memorize this,” she said.
He nodded after a second. She put the card back in her pocket and gave him a look that said they shared a secret. A bell rang. Claude touched his beret and loped off into the gloom.
Metz, Madagascar! I must forget what I have learned since that day at Drancy about conditions in German concentration camps to remember how we felt then. As long as we—Monsieur Durand, Gabrielle and myself—continue to believe the Germans took the Durands and others to work in Germany, we can hope to reunite with them when the epidemic of destruction has passed.
But now, here in my prison cell, I am not so sure. They could be starving my beloved—how can I know? What work is a musician fit for but to create music?
And there are stories I cannot believe, frightening stories.
But I still believe there are deeds an educated populace cannot do, that literate people will not countenance. I think of French friends I grew up with—our neighbours, Josianne Prénat and her family—polyglot, self-critical. Josianne with her bantering sense of humour, helpful, willing to learn from the world, not only France. Can Germans be so different?
Europeans living in their not-Asian and not-African fortress are a people who had an “Enlightenment” and ever since call themselves “civilized.”
I must continue believing this.
I wrote to Zaib that night at Drancy. I know it was a Wednesday, and it was June 23, 1943:
Writing brings us closer, if only on the page. How much suffering has this world experienced—still experiences—one person’s suffering is nothing, and yet it is everything.
I may ask you, Zaib, what I may ask no one else, for you held me through the long night at Madame Dunet’s, when fear of shame overcame my courage. Little sister, you comforted me when Kabir refused to give permission, permission our Abbajaan would surely have granted. Yesterday I sent a message to A. Pray he forgives me. The German Raj and Vichy cannot outlast my hope, my love—still, say a du’a for me.
Avec love, avec pyar. Forget me not,
Noor