CHAPTER 27
Paris, France
Friday, July 16, 1943
NOOR REASSURED THE PROPRIETOR of Chez Clément that she wouldn’t be dining alone, and was shown to a small round table in the corner beside an engraved glass window. Back to the wall, face in shadow, with a view of the Germans and French dining beneath the chandeliers, and of the tin-surfaced bar past the WC—just the seat she’d have chosen herself.
A dozen days since she escaped being shot down with the others in the Lysander and today was the first time since her encounter with Madame Dunet that she had emerged from Madame Aigrain’s apartment. An anonymous message left at Flavien’s directed Noor to meet “Monsieur N.” here at 13:30 hours.
Green velvet half-curtains on the brass rail beside her smelled of tobacco and smouldered candles. Outside, Parisiennes with luxuriant headdresses sported baskets and bags for foraging. Each looking far more chic than Noor, whose green skirt was now feeling more like a uniform. She raised her copy of Paris Soir, and from time to time, looked over it at people entering and leaving. They couldn’t see her whole face—effective purdah.
She had pictured herself in the seedy elegance of this restaurant often—not incognito, but with Armand. Celebrating the début of his sonata, an award, or yet another invitation to conduct or teach. Armand leaning across this peach tablecloth, tapering fingers lovingly slipping a ring on hers.
But without Armand, Chez Clément held little charm.
“If it is not my portion to meet thee in this my life … let me not forget a moment …”
Quell those lines.
Still no news from Claude. He had promised to telephone; she must not lose hope.
The black market plat du jour featured spaetzle, sauerkraut and pork in every guise—bratwurst, schinkenwurst, liverwurst, knockwurst, blood sausage. Amazing aromas of chicken, beef bourguignon, onions and cheese drifted from the kitchen. Major Boddington would pay for food and wine, but Noor wasn’t hungry. Despite Madame Dunet’s medicines she still felt weak. And “the curse” was upon her again.
Yolande called it the curse, when they were toughening up in England. What mission had Yolande volunteered for, and where was she transmitting from now? She could be with a different cell only a few kilometres from here and Noor wouldn’t know. What of Edmond, who landed with Noor?
The windfall of a good meal and a long hot soak at a bathhouse would, she was sure, restore her body to normal. Her spirit—that was another matter.
A brief article in Paris Soir said that at Houdan, on Bastille Day, “terrorists” had captured the Monument of the Dead. Professor Balachowsky’s bold scheme had been successful. His last words repeated in her mind: “We’ll come through this.” Insh’allah, the Professor was still alive.
An editorial shrilled with indignation: the peaceful suburbs of Paris had been savaged by Allied air raids. On Bastille Day, it said—an outrage. It didn’t mention that German orders had restricted Bastille Day celebrations to a few firecrackers. No mention, either, that Ramzaan had ended, and that Algerians, Tunisians and other Muslims of Paris celebrated Id at La Mosquée. Since it wasn’t a Christian celebration, Id was of no interest to Paris Soir.
Id. She had so ached to be home for it. With Mother. With Kabir. Even though, if Madame Dunet’s story was true, they were now proven hypocrites.
Family love—that myth she had maintained and bowed to for years, believing in their concern for her. Now she had no family but Armand and others who fought tyranny, fellow resistants.
But today was Friday, when juma prayers were usually followed by Dadijaan’s delicious dhokla and kachoris.
And it was half an hour past the appointed time for lunch with “Monsieur N.”
Major Boddington must have been arrested. Gilbert must have betrayed him too.
One last glance over the curtain rail and she reached for her handbag, stood up.
A pincer gripped her elbow. A man with a steel-grey raincoat over one arm loomed over her. “Mademoiselle Régnier! How is your dear mother?”
Brown hair now black, his attire bland. But that flat face and spectacles were Major Boddington’s. How had she missed seeing him enter?
He slung his coat over the back of the chair opposite Noor, and forgot his cover only to shake hands instead of kissing her on both cheeks. A carafe of muddy-looking wine and two close-to-clean wineglasses arrived. A clink of his glass against hers, and the Major got down to brass tacks.
“Had a spot of trouble lately, haven’t we, then?”
“A spot of trouble” for certain torture, instant executions or deportations of hundreds of agents? Major Boddington sounded like those in London who still referred to a massacre of unarmed Indian civilians as an “error in judgement.”
But the Major had braved a covert mission to France to meet her, and no doubt other endangered agents. Capturing him would be a coup celebrated in Berlin, and he undoubtedly knew it.
“I’ve arranged a new safe house for you.” Suavely accented French issued from the side of his mouth. “Secure place. You even have your own telephone. Seventeenth arrondissement—my agents must have a few perquisites, I always say. Memorize this number.” He dictated like a ventriloquist. “Sablons 80.04. I haven’t given it to anyone else. And the address: 3 boulevard Richard Wallace.”
Noor warmed towards Major Boddington. Officious but well-meaning; perhaps he just didn’t know how to express his concern. And she did need a different safe house. She couldn’t transmit from the pocket-sized room and hated to burden generous old Madame Aigrain much further. Major Boddington was being considerate, making the arrangements.
“Rent’s paid for four months. Here’s the key.”
He passed it to her under cover of the tablecloth. Noor slipped it into her handbag.
“You need more francs and ration tickets,” said the Major. “Make them last awhile.”
Beneath the table, a fat envelope nudged into her lap. A weight she hadn’t realized was bearing down inside her lifted; she wouldn’t have to ask anyone for money.
“Not as much as I give our young gentlemen, but then, you aren’t paying for two at meals, are you?” He smiled away.
She’d sound rude and ungrateful if she pointed out his illogic. It didn’t matter. Now she could reimburse Madame Aigrain. And she’d be most frugal after that.
“And this time they’re real francs, so do be prudent. Oh, and I left some messages in an envelope with the concierge. Do send them on as soon as your transmitter is operating.”
The maître d’ passed, conducting a couple through the conversational hubbub to a table in the opposite corner.
Noor raised her voice a little for their benefit. “How is your family?”
The couple looked threadbare and gaunt. The woman held the man’s hand tight.
“Well as can be expected.” He lowered his voice. “Keeping Mr. Hitler on his toes.” Major Boddington sounded like a news-wire telegram. “Je Suis Partout and Paris Soir aren’t giving the facts here. In a snit about the Paris air raid—typically self-centred. Not a single mention of our bombers raiding Cologne again.”
“Any news of my family, sir?”
“All’s well. Miss Atkins said to tell you some amazing news: your brother’s got himself promoted to flight lieutenant. My, that means he’s captain of his ship, you know.”
Amazing only because the Major never expected it. Kabir’s record would have brought him a promotion months ago but for his Indian blood.
“I’m so very sorry about the Lizzie, sir. Did anyone survive?”
“Survive what?” Major Boddington gave her an inquiring glance.
“The crash, I mean.”
A momentary silence, and then the Major said, “Oh, they didn’t crash, no, no. Good man, that pilot. Cut his engines, dived like a Spitfire. Evaded two Messerschmitts. Got home safe, and the two Dutchmen are, I’m sure, properly grateful.”
“I’m much relieved to hear that, sir.” She was relieved the Lysander had escaped the predators, but delighted to find Gilbert’s plan had failed.
The Major’s eyes narrowed behind his spectacles. “Now. You seem to have been up to a little mischief, my girl? Heard you balked at the fence, came right up to the Lizzie, refused to go home? Fall for a handsome young frog, then?”
Major Boddington assigned a narrow range of talents to Noor; reasoning was not one of them.
“No, sir,” said Noor carefully. She would pass over explanations of motives and state what she required at once. “I need to be with people I can trust. I will no longer work with Gilbert. I mean, I do not wish to work with Gilbert.”
“You are exhausted, old girl.”
She wanted to shout, “Don’t ever call me ‘old girl’”—it sadly reminded her of Prosper. But the Major was her superior officer, so she kept quiet.
“You’ve been awfully brave.” The Major was all tender commiseration. “And quite alone. We kept you in play far too long. And then your refusal to return, becoming hysterical—I must say, I was surprised.”
He was waiting. He hadn’t addressed what she’d said about Gilbert, but had adroitly turned the conversation. Clearly, an explanation was required.
“You might have refused to take any aeroplane arranged by Gilbert too, sir, if you found out he had read your letters. While we were waiting for the Lizzie, he began alluding to the contents. And he didn’t accidentally read them, he deliberately opened them!”
“You don’t say!” Major Boddington clasped the edge of the table and leaned forward. “So that’s what caused this little rumpus. Dear girl, you’re quite right to be upset—caddish thing to do. Reading a lady’s mail. Quite unforgivable.”
“A serious infraction, sir,” said Noor. “Against the rules.”
“Ah yes, the rules. Come, come, love, Gilbert isn’t the only one not playing strictly by the Marquis of Queensbury. If you want to stay within the rules, I dare say you should be fighting in uniform rather than—uh—what we’re up to.”
“Why did he read my letters?” Noor kept her voice low.
“My dear girl”—Major Boddington gave her a head-to-waist glance—“have a look in a mirror. You just don’t realize, do you? Believe me, it’s more than curiosity about your je ne sais quoi, your enigmatic Indian eyes. It’s the exotic element, that’s it. Gilbert’s a good sort, but you know the French—Gallic urges. Introduced him around at my club and the rascal was winking at the barmaids the next minute.”
“Sir, what you’re saying is, boys will be boys?”
Major Boddington looked mystified by Noor’s indignation. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact—what other explanation can there be?”
“If he read my letters, he must have read the letters of hundreds of agents,” Noor whispered furiously. “And agent after agent has been arrested, and you don’t believe Gilbert has something to do with it? Who led the Gestapo to Prosper’s new apartment? And to Archambault? How did they find out where Renée Garry’s safe house was? How did they find out about Grignon? And since then—” She pulled Émile’s list from her pocket and smoothed it, keeping it below the tablecloth. “Phono gave me this list of agents on July 3. These are just the ones he has confirmed, but hundreds have been arrested. I don’t know how many more of us have been taken away to the avenue Foch since he wrote the last name.”
She glanced around, then down before slipping the paper into the major’s hand.
Oh, merde! Edmond. The last code name Phono wrote on the list is Edmond. Merde!
Major Boddington scanned the names. His jaw tightened for a moment. Then he put it away and looked up. “My dear, it’s unfortunate. Quite awful. You’re not under the mistaken impression that we’re unaware of the tragedy? Miss Atkins and I have been up night after night writing to the family of each captured agent, letting them know how concerned we are. Indeed, we’re all praying for their safe return.”
“I’m sure you are, sir. But today my name should be on a list of lost agents. Gilbert expected the Lysander to be shot down by the Germans—we’re just very lucky it got home.”
“Very lucky, indeed. The pilot was cool as a cucumber. You say Gilbert expected it to be shot down?”
“I believe so, sir.”
“How do you know?”
“He showed no alarm, surprise, or fear when German night fighters suddenly appeared.”
“He was on the ground, they were in the air—what did you want him to do? Turn into Superman? Your kind might wail and dance over calamity in India, Madeleine, but it’s just not done here.”
A waiter, Chaplinesque in a too-large suit and bulbous shoes, hovered and recommended. Major Boddington ordered Poulet à la King for two in passable but accented French.
“You could be mistaken for an RAF crew member, sir. Perhaps I should have ordered.”
“Allow a lady to order? Nonsense. He understood me perfectly. Now, where was I? Yes—my, my, what a lot of questions! One gets quite feverish from thinking sometimes, and it can make one think one has all the answers, and worse, that all questions have the same answer.” Major Boddington loosened his collar a little. “Each could have different answers,” he continued in a fatherly tone. “And a single outcome can have multiple causes.”
This seemed enlightened; she was willing to listen.
He set his glass down, looked directly into her eyes. “First, Prosper. Quite possibly the Nazis didn’t know he had anything to do with us. I warned him to stay away from Communists, but he took a flat in a Communist neighbourhood. The Germans are executing Communists in droves—by the thousands. And when they got him, it must have been obvious, after a while, that he’s one of us. Slight Cornwall accent, I do believe.”
“But how did the Germans know when he would return from Trie-Château?”
“Have you been to Trie-Château recently? No, I thought not. There is only one train left, one train a day. Not too difficult.”
“How did they know he was going there?”
“By following him, naturally. Thinking he was a Communist, you see.”
“And Archambault?”
“We’re convinced Prosper held out for at least twenty-four hours, then talked. No one can predict how an agent will react to torture.”
Prosper tortured—please no, Allah!
But it did seem plausible.
“As for how they learned where Renée Garry’s safe house was? I took an evening amble down the rue Erlanger and, I must say, that’s an old cottage, an eyesore stuck between those lovely new buildings. Any neighbour looking down from the apartment buildings on either side might have taken note of the unusual number of strangers entering and leaving. The Gestapo could have received a denunciation from any opportunist.”
This too seemed plausible. Monique had remarked on the hundreds of denunciations received at the Hôtel de Ville each day.
“And the Grignon roundup?”
Major Boddington sighed. “I’m sure Miss Atkins told you why we needed you to take over from Archambault. We needed a fresh radio operator, fresh codes, more secure transmitters. Archambault’s had been in play for a dangerously long time. Old science—it was inevitable.”
Miss Atkins discussed this with Noor. So had Archambault.
“Why not just arrest Archambault? Why a roundup?”
“We think when the Gestapo couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of the signals, they decided to solve the matter with a roundup, a roundup that would frighten any students thinking of joining the Resistance. I have visited Mesdames Hoogstraten and Balachowsky, and the gardener showed me the greenhouse and shed. The metal roof of that greenhouse must have foiled German interceptor vans for quite some time, but time ran out.”
“And this list? Nineteen arrests after the roundup at Grignon.”
“We received messages from Archambault’s transmitter for several days after Archambault was arrested. It could be Archambault being forced to send or someone using his code books. So it’s quite possible those nineteen were arrested if Archambault carelessly allowed his code and message books to be found with his transmitter.”
The wrong person is being accused of carelessness.
“Sir, you know Archambault had—all of us have—double security checks to authenticate his transmissions. There’s a bluff check and a true check. If either is missing after each line, it means the transmitter is in enemy hands. And even if both checks are missed because we’re in haste, the operators in London know our fists.”
The Major’s expression was inscrutable.
Noor plunged on. “Phono and I radioed The Firm to notify you the day after Prosper and Archambault were captured. That should have told you transmissions from his radios could not be trusted. Two weeks ago I sent a message immediately, reporting the Grignon roundup and probable capture of his radio set and one of mine. Do you mean you have still been responding to messages from Archambault’s set?”
“The messages were nothing out of the ordinary.”
“The ordinary means requests for arms and money. We could have been responding to transmissions from the Germans asking for arms and money?” Noor was aghast.
“I suppose we may have. I brought a few canisters of explosives with me when I landed last week.”
“But why?”
“‘Yours not to question why,’ my dear,” the Major misquoted.
‘Theirs but to do and die.’ Noor couldn’t help thinking of the nineteen code names on her list.
“But we do have matters under control. The Hun doesn’t know we know they have our transmitters, which is quite all right. All I want you to understand is, we need Gilbert—we need landing fields.”
Major Boddington’s half-revelations had the ring of raving lunacy. Noor wasn’t calmed by his assurance that the SOE was in control of events, and of Gilbert. Wasn’t calmed at all. The Major was suspiciously cheerful. But then, he hadn’t fled Gilbert, dashed through a forest while escaping in the middle of the night, felt the terror of presenting false papers at checkpoints or gone underground for twelve days.
A bone china plate appeared before Noor. A chicken breast in a pool of sauce, like a ship run aground. Wet ashes, that’s what each bite tasted like.
She glanced around at the other diners. The couple at the table in the opposite corner sat with a single omelette between them. They raised their glasses to one another and the woman leaned forward and cut it in two. They began to share, holding hands across the table.
Prosper, Archambault, Professor Balachowsky, twenty-five students, the eighteen poor souls on her list—nineteen with Edmond: they’d all be tortured, then taken to Mont Valérien and shot.
Why was it important that the Germans not know that the English knew it was the Germans operating captured radios? It could only mean that London wanted the transmitters in place for the Germans to receive and trust information, or misinformation, when the English sent it.
The couple who had shared an omelette began to count out money and ration tickets. The woman searched through her purse a long time.
It didn’t take a genius to deduce what information Germany needed above all: information about the event that every resistant in England, France, America and Russia was so anxiously awaiting, the event for which canister upon canister of munitions and weapons was being dropped to resistants across occupied Europe, the event Germany had to avert and destroy, what Churchill had promised Stalin—the Allied invasion of the Continent. But why would the Germans be foolish enough to trust a single message received on any captured transmitter? Why did London think the Germans would trust messages they sent to those transmitters?
Too few tesserae to form any image of the unifying mosaic.
The couple was paying for the omelette. The woman’s eyes followed each coin as it dropped into the waiter’s pouch. They departed, and Noor continued probing.
“How could Archambault have prevented his code and message books from being taken with his transmitter? We leave our books hidden with the transmitter. Being caught with them at a checkpoint or in a search would be a disaster. And even if the transmitters were discovered, the Germans would need our encryption keys to decode the messages. They would need to know our code names and true names to know who was being discussed in the messages or to transmit and receive. And besides, they’d have to know our addresses so the Gestapo could arrest us. All this requires someone like Gilbert. Gilbert who meets us as we leave the plane, asks question after question and escorts us to our safe houses.”
“A most interesting speculation, Mademoiselle Régnier. Quite the roman à clef. You write fiction, am I right? Children’s fiction? Aired a story on the BBC, as I recall? I’m told you’re quite accomplished. But I assure you, HQ has done its own thorough background check on Gilbert, and we are quite satisfied.”
How the imperial “we” or Major Boddington could investigate Gilbert’s actions when the transmitter beneath Noor’s bed was the only remaining secure radio transmitting from northern France was the question. No messages concerning Gilbert had been received or sent by her. No, London hadn’t investigated Gilbert. At most, Major Boddington had asked an acquaintance at his club if Gilbert was a good egg.
Major Boddington waved his fork. “This poulet would cost a fortune in London. That’s if you could find one. Do you see, old girl? There are alternative explanations for every allegation you’ve pinned on poor Gilbert. Keep in mind that, thanks to the Luftwaffe, skilled pilots are scarce. Gilbert can assess a field in an instant, make sure there’s enough taxi length, persuade each farmer that he should allow a foreign power to land its planes on his property. We can’t sacrifice Gilbert on the hunch of a young miss.” He dabbed his mouth, but a few morsels had already dropped on his tie. “And may I remind,” he added, “it would do your brother’s career no good if you were to do something disruptive.”
Noor blinked, surprised. “Sir, there’s no need to threaten.”
“Not at all, my dear, not at all. Making a prediction, nothing more. We need you here—right skills, right time, right place and all that—but do me one favour, old girl: do curb your curiosity about the larger scheme of affairs. We absolutely must operate on a need-to-know basis.”
The word “dismissed” seemed to dangle somewhere overhead, for having disobeyed Major Boddington’s direct order to get aboard the plane. “Dismissed” was a good word, as was “discharged,” a great deal better than “deserted.” Life would be simpler; leave her here in Paris to begin a life of her own, forget the betrayals of her family, become mistress of herself. She’d return to Drancy, find work as a nurse, make Anne-Marie Régnier a permanent being. But Major Boddington didn’t seem inclined to dismiss her.
“Try the Black Forest cake,” he suggested. “Tell you what: I’ll suggest to HQ, just so you don’t become hysterical again, that you be set up with Marc. He’ll be your air movements officer when you return.”
Relief.
But Major Boddington hadn’t mentioned when she was to return.
It was all right, really. He would continue to send money to Mother, and he’d have to provide francs for her survival expenses during the remainder of her mission in France.
Should she mention the diamonds? Tell him Prosper didn’t have them when he was arrested, and that meant the Gestapo didn’t have them either? She had transferred the leather pouch to the lining of a new valise; the diamonds were safe at Madame Aigrain’s home. But something about the Major wasn’t right. The syrup-shine eyes behind his glasses as he perused the menu?
Major Boddington wished to operate on a need-to-know basis. He didn’t need to know, and she didn’t need to tell him.
“Oh, and Madeleine—you may as well know, to show our appreciation for his courage and loyalty to the Crown, I’ve recommended Gilbert for the DSO.”
The Distinguished Service Order? For Gilbert?!
His finality closed the subject.
“Please excuse me,” said Noor. She shoved her chair back and picked up her handbag.
With the door of the WC shut tight, she gripped the sink as if to pull it from the wall and gulped back sobs. Anger flashing—no, rage. A decorated Gilbert would be trusted with more agents. So many more would be captured, many more tortured. Their beloveds wouldn’t even receive censored postcards smuggled out of Drancy. Spies disappeared, spies were executed; all her warnings couldn’t prevent it.
There would be no change in policy towards a man Major Boddington had introduced at his club and recommended for a DSO. Certainly not on the basis of accusations by a radio operator, a mere girl with colonial antecedents.
When the pale oval in the mirror had composed itself to mask the disturbance within, Noor drew herself to her full height.
Return to the table. Smile and thank Major Boddington for lunch, the francs, the ration tickets, the new safe house. Think.
Even if Major Boddington didn’t intend to investigate Gilbert further before pinning a DSO on his chest, surely Colonel Buckmaster and Miss Atkins would.
Gilbert’s duplicity would be discovered, his treachery exposed. Allah would see to it.
This game was being played with rules she could never have anticipated. She would adapt, move accordingly.
I have not had strength or will to write to you again till now, ma petite, though I have had pen and paper since February. From the tapping in pipes that pass between the walls, I learned it is the first day of June, and the autobahns are still choked with refugees from air raids on Munich.
I spent three weeks in the dungeon, fed soup once every three days and water each day. By the time I was carried back to my cell, I had lost most of my strength, but the words I’d scratched on the cell wall renewed my courage—“I resist, therefore I am.”
Vogel came to visit me. He was travelling back to Paris from Munich, having attended the tenth anniversary celebrations of the Nazi organization for Mothers and Children. He brought more paper, a new fountain pen and ink. He was shocked by my state, though it was caused by his orders. He ordered soap, a toothbrush, a larger ration of soup, toilet paper, even sanitary towels should I need them. And weekly changes of prison uniform, weekly exercise in the courtyard.
The governor of the prison approved. He came to inspect me with Vogel, and I heard him mutter in French, so he meant for me to know, that he’d never kept any woman in the dungeon before, never kept anyone enchained, not even a murderer.
The guard had to comply. I could see she didn’t want to.
And today another of Vogel’s monthly visits, more regular than the curse. He sat beside me on the cot, and I wondered how he could stand my odour. He put his arm across my shoulders. I wished my lice would crawl into his black uniform.
“Your new uniform looks very smart, Herr Vogel.”
I couldn’t say he looked smart, so I said the uniform looked smart. He looked pleased.
“I have been appointed an honorary member of the security police. I can arrest anyone for defeatism.”
“There is defeatism in Germany, Herr Vogel?” I said sweetly.
“Call me Ernst,” he replied automatically. “No, no defeatism, except from the weak—there are severe penalties for it.”
Vogel should try selling pork sausages to hadjis! Hitler can’t outlaw his people’s feelings. Even Vogel’s certainty wavers these days, or he wouldn’t keep me as a hostage to be traded for his safety if—when—the Allies are victorious.
“How is your wife, Herr Vogel?”
I emphasized the word “wife” slightly. He grew immediately morose.
“I found an apartment where she can live temporarily. The entire building crumbled. It was the only one left on Rosenstrasse after September’s bombing—and after this raid it fell as if something devoured it from inside. How some suffocated and others were crushed! We are still searching for bodies. I am lucky my children are alive. Schwein! Flying above, dropping bombs on civilians! The Führer should come and see us, see for himself what is happening.”
“You started it,” I wanted to say. I had been one of the civilians on whom the Germans dropped their bombs during the Battle of France. But I didn’t. The man who had sent me to the dungeon for a small remark seemed to be criticizing his führer for ignorance, though absolving Hitler of any responsibility for rapacious aggression.
Vogel can show anger about injustice to Germans; they alone upon the planet are “people.” Perhaps the bombs that destroyed his home were from your uncle’s Lancaster. I do not know, but the possibility made me culpable for his family’s homeless state. I am the eldest and always feel responsible for Kabir, for the actions he has committed and those he may have.
Vogel drew a picture of his wife and two children from his pocket. I have seen them before—his blonde wife who looks as beatific as a student “discovering” Sufism, his cherubic boys in short pants. Twins. Ten years old, as you might be today, ma petite. He said the one who looks like him is a naughty fellow, while the other is doing his part in the Hitler Youth.
“How can you tell them apart?” I asked.
“Sometimes it’s difficult even for me to know which is which,” he acknowledged. “I’m sending the younger one east to stay with a cousin, for the summer till we parade to Buckingham Palace. He’ll be safe there. They had a small raid last February, but that must have been a mistake—there’s nothing worth bombing in Dresden. The elder must stay to protect his mother from looters. They are everywhere now, many of them but a few years older than my son. Orphans of the war, most of them.”
He showed me a copy of Munich’s National Zeitung.
“We do not need more of Herr Goebbels’s fairy stories, Princess. Here the Führer himself says soon London will be ashes.”
“What will you do after that?” I asked, feigning concern for him, trying not to think of London in ashes.
“Return to Munich. The bank where I worked was owned by Jews, but now, Heil Hitler, it’s back in German hands. They will give me a new position when we win the war.” He had been listening to Nazi speeches again.
He said “Heil Hitler” the way I say “Peace be upon Him” for the Prophet, and to him there was nothing blasphemous about it. He believes Hitler is another messiah, whose only problem is the quality of his apostles. Fearing the dungeon again, I said nothing.
He said roughly, “Gilbert sends you his regards,” and waited, watching my face.
I wanted to scream “Gilbert is a salaud! Un vrai con! Une ordure!” but I couldn’t admit to knowing him. I turned a waxwork face to Vogel.
He slapped his gloves on his knee. “Read aloud, Princess.”
I began reading the stories I’d written on onionskin. Vogel closed his eyes and I felt the one-second lag as he translated from English to German. It was a retelling of el-Rifai’s “Wayward Princess,” in which a king imprisons his daughter in a small cell to prove his will and law sufficient for justice and happiness to prevail.
“Gutt, gutt.” Vogel swayed.
I wondered, as I told it, if his twins will ever understand the meaning of that tale.
Then I read a fable of my own, in which caged rabbits avenge themselves on rats, and another in which an Indian princess turns into a tigress and slays all the trappers who hunt her tiger for his claws.
Vogel listened, purblind to allegory, metaphor and symbol. He didn’t count the sheets before he took them.
What fable will he fashion about his actions in this war?
Locked in my cell, once again I cannot celebrate Id-ul-Fitr with my family. I thank Allah he told the Prophet there need be no fasting for the ill. For I am ill indeed.
I should be celebrating—the Allies have invaded at last. The news came hidden in a basket of laundered clothes brought to a prisoner by her daughter. Tapped in Morse, it crossed lead pipes between cells. Whispered down air vents, it must even have percolated to the poor woman now consigned to my dungeon cell. Emboldened, we shouted the news from one cell to the next. We sang, we hooted, we spat at the guards. My chains were of gossamer that day. The Germans feared we’d riot; the food trolleys didn’t come that day. By nightfall we sobered.
The English, English colonials and once-colonized Americans invaded on June 6, 1944. D-Day—our Dream Day. I don’t know where they landed, but it is not, as the Germans expected, at the Pas de Calais. Messages racing in the walls say the Germans were surprised, overwhelmed; we hear they are retreating. I think of Prosper, of Archambault, of all the agents who gave so much for this day. Of Émile, who begged me to tell Colonel Buckmaster and Churchill that the Allies would have to invade and fight on the ground, not from the air. Is this Allied landing the crucial moment I felt coming?
No, it is only the beginning of a new phase of war.
News comes so slowly here. Our Morse messages say the Japanese invaded India two months ago, in March, using an army of Indian resistants led by Subhas Chandra Bose. Once upon a time Bose came to Afzal Manzil, to raise money to fight the British from “rich émigrés outside India.” But Bose was an idol-worshipping Hindu, Uncle said, so Bose left him empty-handed.
Can we last till the Allies reach us? Where are the children of the mother who weeps for them each night? What will happen to the woman who worries for her old father, and the one who, like me, longs for her husband’s arms?
Ramzaan should be the month when forgiveness is implicit in embrace, the month of repair, when wayfarers return home for Id, when one’s load is shared with others by action or telling, and nightly the Tarawih prayer heightens the force between us and our creator. It should be a time when the weary stop to remember how it felt to be safe, when hope in humanity is replenished. At this time last year I took the Lizzie from Tangmere—so full of hope, I might have been flying a magic carpet.
By Id, that carpet had landed.
The third-storey apartment on the boulevard Richard Wallace was light and airy, with waxed parquet floors. A candlestick telephone stood on a marble demi-lune table in the vestibule, an empty sideboard graced the dining room, a chandelier denuded of its crystal swung in the grand salon. One chair and a Bokhara foot-carpet remained. Major Boddington had omitted to mention the apartment was otherwise unfurnished.
Thanks to Major Boddington, German officers and soldiers lived above me, below me, walked the corridor between my apartment and the lavatory. Yet he accused poor arrested Archambault of carelessness, Archambault who was probably being tortured by the Gestapo even while Major Boddington dined at Chez Clément. I remembered Archambault not as the man of quiet efficiency who trained me to transmit messages and watch for danger signals but as a solo voice in the choir when Mother took us to church in Suresnes.
A walnut tree grew past the window facing the Bois de Boulogne, its limb close enough to string an aerial. This apartment was no more than a transmission location and a letter drop.
Then I thought: perhaps it was part of London’s plan that I should be surrounded by Germans; no one would suspect me. I wanted to trust Major Boddington—he was my superior officer, he was privy to more than had been told me.
Today, I burn to know where I made my fatal mistake. The only person who knew the telephone number at the Richard Wallace apartment was Major Boddington, apologist for Gilbert. Could he have told Gilbert and Gilbert told the Gestapo, who then traced the telephone number?
When I ask Vogel, he says he’ll tell me the day, the very moment, I call him Ernst. So I may never know, unless the answer comes some other way.
Downstairs, the concierge said the building was commandeered to billet German soldiers, but my apartment became vacant when many of them left Paris to fight at Stalingrad. Later, it was deemed too small for an officer, too large for a soldier. The German who’d occupied it sold everything—paintings, sculpture, furniture—before leaving. To whom did the apartment and its contents belong before the Germans came, I asked. The concierge’s eyes slid away. “Je ne sais pas.”
How could she not know?
From the tale of Monsieur Durand at Drancy, I knew the apartment must have been owned by Jews before the war.
Where are they now?
Two days later, Madame Aigrain’s concierge called me to her telephone. Claude said Gabrielle had given him my telephone number.
And he said another convoy of buses left Drancy that morning, the morning of July 18. Nineteen hundred and forty-three years after the great Sufi master Jesu came to enlighten the world, organized Christian terrorists took more than a thousand people and loaded them on boxcars at Bobigny station because they were infidels.
Fear, my Abbajaan said, comes from oneself. If one expects harm, harm will come. He said you can bring about events not merely by wanting them but by fearing them. Had I brought about the very event I feared, by fearing it so deeply?
Claude couldn’t tell me if Armand was one of the passengers on the convoy. He couldn’t tell me if Armand was still at Drancy. He couldn’t tell me where the train was going.
He just didn’t know.
His tone was changing; the task he’d undertaken in a moment of sympathy was proving far beyond his powers. He had tried to impress me, but he was realizing how difficult it was, perhaps even impossible. The boy had wanted to be given the respect accorded to a man, had hoped to show a man’s achievements. And now he really didn’t care what happened to my “family friend”—he felt used. From my calls and inquiries he sensed, I’m sure, that this family friend was dearer to me than any in my family, and his enthusiasm seemed to ebb away.
I had used Claude—but for a good reason. Allah give me tauba, a good reason.
I sank to my knees in the foyer. The concierge made me sit down, dabbed water on my face.
Could Allah have brought me all this way only to send Armand away to Germany? Was there nothing more I could do?
One long year later, here in my cell, I continue to believe, believe stubbornly in the impossible … I refuse to believe Armand is in a place like this …
Armand, where are you now? Are you hungry, like me? Maybe you have found new friends, a new love because I said adieu. Maybe you have forgotten your Noor.
Still, be protected, surrounded, nourished by my love.
The guard served me oversalted soup and now ignores my cries for water. She’s trying to break my will, will that grows more bloody-minded by the day.
My shackles have rubbed deep pink rings about my wrists and ankles. The ceiling leaks. I feel my hair growing, growing, my nails growing long and brittle.
Water. My tongue is a Persian slipper in my mouth, and she doesn’t bring water.
I shout for water, a scrubbing cloth, soap, a tweezer, fishnet stockings, lipstick and perfume. I laugh, laugh like an idiot.
Now I write to keep myself from crying, begging.
I am descended from the Tiger of Mysore. Tigers do not beg.
Move into memory—where was I at this time last year?
Last year, both July 4 and Id came and went and I could not celebrate them with Dadijaan, Mother and Zaib, nor congratulate Kabir on his promotion. There was no news of my beloved; he and your grand-mère Lydia had disappeared. Almost every member of the network I had come to assist was in the clutches of the Gestapo at the avenue Foch, or imprisoned elsewhere. Major Boddington reassured about Gilbert, but I still felt like an actor who had rehearsed for the wrong play.
Weakened from the influenza, I had the curse. I cramped and bled as copiously as when Madame Dunet sucked your unensouled flesh from my womb. I was miserably angry at Madame Dunet’s revelations. How could I have been so foolish as not to see Mother’s hand holding sixteen-year-old Zaib’s, giving the money for my operation? I had not dreamed Madame Dunet’s bigotry might coincide with my family’s intentions. I was but a holder for my family’s expectations.
What would I say when I met Mother and Kabir again, now my trust was shattered? Would I embrace them, kissing the air wide of ears that once heard my endearments? Perhaps I’d shake hands; both had shown themselves to be strangers to me. So just who were they when they weren’t playing their roles? They meant well, I’m sure, but by what right had they chosen for me?
Everything was mixed up, everything going wrong.
I had volunteered for a supporting role. Suddenly I had become primary, even essential. What did I say to Miss Atkins? “Everyone is capable of self-governance.” If that was really my credo, why was I now so terrified of operating alone, without someone to guide me, counsel me, lead me? All my life, elders and superiors had told me how to live, who and what to like, what to do, how to do it. And even if I didn’t obey every injunction, my rebellions were small, mostly verbal. Always, I had seen myself as I “should be” not who I was.
Could anything Uncle taught guide me, anything help me to survive now? He had never foreseen his niece landing in occupied France, working for the British, tapping Morse messages to London about the plans and effects of battles.
What and who should I be now?
My first day in Paris, I thought I could “make my own instructions and follow them.” How simple it seemed then to give myself advice. No one had taken innocent people away on buses, no one in my network had been arrested, no one had torn apart Renée’s home, people had not been rounded up and—possibly—executed before my eyes, I had not wounded or killed any SS men, aeroplanes had landed and taken off again without being shot at. And through it all, I never believed my own mother or Kabir could betray me, choose for me, to serve their own purposes.
After all that, what instructions could I make for myself?
Who should I become now?
The unmitigated present, with all its possibility of meeting the Archangel of Death at any moment and living in separation from my love forever, was far from my idealistic ideas of “doing my bit” for the pursuit of justice, with a preordained “happily ever after.” I had longed to hold Armand again, talk to him, tell him I love him, and instead I was all intention with no hope of success, all resolve without execution.
What use was anything I had done? I didn’t even know if Armand still cared for me. How foolish to believe he would recall my tiger claw, or that my note would convey meaning, should he receive it. My beloved deserved that I write him a book, not just a few words.
Allah was asking too much of me. Much too much.
I could not help it; I lay alone in Madame Aigrain’s room without Armand to hold me and I became a child again, weeping, weeping all night. I wanted the mother who would brave the world for me and Zaib when we were small, the one who hadn’t cared if she and Abbajaan lived on bread and water, the one who read me fairy tales she’d read as a child. I wanted the loving, generous-spirited brother I once had, the Kabir I once knew. I wanted Dadijaan’s teaching tales, her fighting spirit. Even Zaib—anyone of my own.
I cried a pool of tears. They let me cling to my troubles for a while.
Then at dawn each motion of my Fajar prayers reminded me to praise and thank Allah I was alive, healthy again, having recovered from the influenza that had claimed Abbajaan. I was not in want, not fighting in the jungles of Burma or crossing an African desert. Though I had been forced to flee my home I was not forced into hiding as Armand, Monsieur Durand, Émile, Monique, Renée and little Babette had been.
I was not being starved in India, I was not deported.
I was not the only woman—or man—whose beloved had disappeared. When his master disappeared, Jalaluddin Rumi was transformed into love itself and, though far from the physical form of his beloved, became sure they were one single light. So too, I became stubbornly sure my love, my husband, was alive. And that he, who called me to my highest self yet loved me even after learning of your body’s destruction at my hand, who loved me dearly for almost nine years though we could not be married in the eyes of the world, still cared for me. That I was bleeding meant my body was sound, that Armand and I can re-create ourselves in you, despite Madame Dunet’s ministrations and intentions.
That morning I did a zikr of gratitude that I had not been arrested by the Gestapo, gave thanks that Allah had saved me from their clutches, saved me from execution, not once but three times. How dare I still fear death?
When Kabir and I were small and grieving for Abbajaan, Mother explained death in a comforting way. Endless sleep, that is death, she said.
Your father said once that the world will never finish arguing if there is an afterwards. To him, there is no such thing. He is no Café de Flore existentialist, but a seeker for the source of his creativity. He said it could be that we live and vanish like music into air. He loved the idea in the Zohar that one’s body is a kinnor, letting a divine melody vibrate through it till one day the melody comes to its end.
As for me, life is an obstacle course like the ones Josianne and I rode in the Bois, and death the final jump to which I am riding my body headlong against time, a dark wall hiding a great trench, and just when I say “Un, deux, allez-hop!” my horse will balk, pull up short, digging its front legs into friable soil. And I’ll go over the wall, into the trench, alone.
When I was afraid—of heights, of dogs, of any man who shouted at me—Abbajaan would remind me he had named me Noor, Light of the Soul. The light required to dispel the world’s fear. But I never aspired to dispel the world’s fear, I just needed to dispel my own. When that fear was gone, Armand said, I could compose my own life and live within its music.
My mind shifted like a restive horse. All night I moved and retreated from my options, like mercury. My neck and shoulder muscles were taut as veena strings.
By dawn in Madame Aigrain’s closet room I began to think more clearly. I realized something I must remember here in my cell today: as long as I live, I must use every advantage Allah has given me.
I could not yearn for the mother and brother I once had when the Noor they knew as daughter and sister was no more.
If every man or woman dies only at an appointed hour—then of what use is it to fear? The Sufis say we should “die before we die,” facing the world without renouncing it or declaring it all illusion, so that when the Archangel of Death comes, we will be ready and eager.
I reminded myself the greatest of Sufis, Al-Hallaj, suffered nine years of torture and trial, suffered his hands and feet to be cut off, and then was crucified. Execution at the hands of the Gestapo is not the worst that can happen.
What is worse is not resisting injustice. What is worse is denying that Allah created suffering that we may learn.
If I could not reach or help Armand directly, I could help the Allies overthrow the Germans who held him. If I could not prevent Gilbert’s betrayals, I could at least ensure that this agent wouldn’t be turned in.
My future was racing to meet the present, but now there was work to be done. Émile had said that a radio is a better weapon than any gun. I would use my radios. I was trained and eager. They would stave off helplessness.
Jacques Viennot was the only member of my cell still at large. I would offer him my services. I’d tell him I could operate radios for the Free French. Gilbert would expect me to contact other SOE cells, so the more I worked with the Free French, the better my chances of evading him. And Miss Atkins had told me, “We do co-operate with the Free French, when we have to.”
Even with these precautions, Gilbert might still find me. Might still turn me in. But I could pretend to be brave; how can anyone tell the difference?
Madame Aigrain’s home was just a cachette, not a true maison cachée—a real safe house from where I could transmit. I could transmit from the new safe house Major Boddington had rented, but I couldn’t sleep there. I could transmit from Madame Gagné’s boarding house in Drancy and sleep there; only Émile knew that location.
I’d have a better chance of evading Gilbert and the Gestapo if I transmitted from the boulevard Richard Wallace and Drancy but turned nomad, sleeping at a different location every night. I needed one more safe house not far from Madame Aigrain’s, somewhere I could receive, code and decode in safety, and sleep at night.
I had said to Major Boddington: “I need to work with people I can trust.” If he could not recommend any beyond Gilbert, I would have to find my own friends. I would step off the stage and write my own script, find fellow actors, direct our own play.
No matter what Miss Atkins had told me in London, no matter what the SOE handbook said, I could see only one choice: to find people I could trust, I must break cover.
I would return to Suresnes and contact someone with whom I shared my earliest memories—Josianne.
With Josianne, I never had to explain origins or allegiances. Josianne understood the premises of Sufism though she was Catholic. She had learned of Islam, having travelled in Algeria as a child. She understood and respected that I tried never to disappoint my family. She never thought of us as “different” and “exotic;” we were a part of her childhood. Though she had never travelled to India, and probably never will now, she took epicurean delight in Dadijaan’s sweet daals and kachoris. A beneficiary of colonization—but then, so were most of the French bourgeoisie—at least Josianne always acknowledged it.
I felt sure of Josianne’s sentiments, but Josianne could have married and moved away in three years. If she still lived with her mother, Madame Prénat, in Suresnes, I would need to gauge where Madame’s political sensibilities might lie. I knew Madame almost as many years as my mother—but that, I now felt, meant little. A friendship from another time, an era of plenty, with no war, no real dangers to test Madame’s principles. But she was proud. She wouldn’t have become resigned to the Occupation. She wouldn’t be afraid to offer her home. But what if she had placed her trust in Pétain and truly believed his surrender had averted France’s complete destruction? Then I wouldn’t ask for shelter. I’d say I was back to check on Afzal Manzil, and in private, ask Josianne to help me find another safe house.
With this plan, I would return—return to where I began.