CHAPTER 37

Pforzheim, Germany
December 1943

A THIN MIST chilled Noor’s cell. She used a knitting needle the guard had given her for stringing tickets, to carve hash marks into her cell wall, one for each day. The seventh, slashing across the rest, was Friday.

But she might have made two hash marks one day. Or she might have forgotten to make a hash mark.

Strange how Vogel simply appeared in her cell—like other ghosts and memories that gusted in with first snow. He lifted his shirt to show her the bullet wound inflicted by the Canadian in his left side, as if looking for comfort. He said he had to see her.

“I saved your life by reserving this cell. Instead of sending you to a camp, you know,” said Vogel. “And your shackles, mademoiselle—they’re your own fault. Cartaud told me how he caught you escaping through the skylight. Said he wrestled you down among the chimney pots. Gott! How I wish I’d been there to see it.”

Her word against Cartaud’s.

Silence. The only suitable response.

Vogel was looking as pleased as a sultan with a harem of one. A non-Aryan harem of one. There must be some huge fissure within him, some very basic need, carnal and beyond, for him to come here at all. Why had he? And what could she gain from his visit?

His hand moved towards her like a serpent arcing on its tail, then hesitated, fell. Serpent hand, serpent guardian, serpent who must be propitiated, satiated with milk, stroked and delighted. Had he come looking for a thank-you note? She wasn’t thankful.

Writing things down should make men like Vogel nervous.

Play a little of the part he wants you to play. Play along just enough to be spared, Scheherazade.

Noor’s shackles clanked as she leaned close to him for a moment. “Such ennui to be here, Herr Vogel. Especially for me. My world is so different! Durbars, tiger hunts, elephant parades, jewels, servants.” She stopped as if struck by a thought. “Oh, the fables I could tell!” She looked up at him, gave an exaggerated sigh with a catch in it. “If I could write, it would pass the time.”

“Fables?” Vogel cocked his head. “You write stories, ja?”

“If I had paper, pen and ink,” she said, “Yes, I could write beautiful stories.”

“It shall be provided, mein liebchen, it shall be provided. You shall write stories for my sons. And I will come to get them every month. See? I allow you everything in my power. In a few months, when the Jews and Americans are defeated, I promise we will be together.”

My heart is sandbagged against you; I promise we will not.

When he was gone, Noor lay down on her filthy mattress. In waking dream she swam up Vogel’s bloodstream, all the way to his heart, yet had no trouble breathing. A corroding substance flowed from her at will, and at last that heart was dehusked and laid bare. Cold, cold, cold in Vogel’s heart, almost as cold as this cell, denser than night. Up she swam, looking for—what? A hidden chamber. There—what was inside?

A hunched shape, a small, woebegone face. A little boy sat in the bloodless chamber at the core of Vogel’s heart. Little boy with a grotesque, too-large head, with great big hands and feet bulging from tiny limbs. Little boy who cried, sans intermission, covering his face with those huge hands. Genitals small and soft, penis receding, he cried from fear of the world, fear of anyone unlike himself, cried from terror because he would eventually die.

Almost, she felt sorry for him. But the wound from her dislocated shoulder had awakened, throbbing. Noor wakened too.

December moved in, taking up residence with Noor in her cell, and freezing the radiator.

Cold coiled in the bowl of her pelvis, turning shiver to quake as she lay beneath her blanket on the cot. Above, snow drifted against glass and bars. Shreds of thoughts, speculations, obsessions … some glue still held her fragments together.

The flap door clanged down.

“Herr Vogel …”

The rest, in rapid German, was senseless.

Silly hope reared inside; she reined it in.

The guard placed something on the thick, jutting tray, something invisible in the dingy half-light. Soup, probably. She didn’t care.

She heard a clunk and a small swish.

Yes, she did care.

Noor rolled onto her stomach, chained wrists before her, supported her weight on her elbows and knelt. Then shifted to extend the chain running between her wrists and ankles far enough for her to be seated. The clanking weight of the leg irons pulled her bare feet to the floor.

She slipped into prison clogs, shuffled across the cement floor.

A pad of onionskin. A scrawl that filled the whole first page. It said in French, For Princess Noor—write children’s stories only. Signed, Ernst V.

She had asked Vogel for paper, pen and ink, but had never expected to receive them. “Everything in my power,” Vogel had said.

She tucked the pad under her arm, then tested the pen nib against her thumb. She reached for the glass jar. Dark blue ink. She opened it, inhaled its metallic fragrance.

She carried the writing materials back to her cot. She lay down, eyes open to the gloom, gritting her teeth to stop their chattering. Mosquito thoughts buzzed.

Do it. Shouldn’t. Do it. Shouldn’t. Do it.

Use initials, think the names, use false names, code names.

She caterpillar-crawled to the edge, turned on her side to block the vision of any guard and examined the leg of the cot. A pipe welded to the metal frame. Hollow pipe with a steel cover.

If I can hide some of my writing, I will write what I want.

She pressed a chain-link against the steel cover. Was it welded? Cold-numbed fingers exploring. No, not welded. Screwed on tightly.

Push, push with the edge of her manacles. Then with a chain-link. She wrapped her chain around the cover like a vise. It didn’t move. She pushed and turned in the dimness for hours, till she was wiping sweat from her eyes. She froze whenever she heard—or thought she heard—a movement at the peephole.

Deep breath. Attack the hollow leg again.

Night blackened the cell. Baying and barking outside, beyond the stone walls of the prison. Twice, the rush of a train passing very close. Noor grimaced and grunted on.

Finally, the steel cover moved a millimetre along its treads. By dawn, it loosened. She lay back, exhausted. Then, with her back to the door, she rolled up half the onionskin, poked it down the pipe-leg and, with an effort, screwed the cover on again.

Above her, the window brightened.

The guard was at the door. She unchained the manacles so Noor could use the toilet. Did not glance at the bed. Did not shout.

The flap door dropped for Noor’s morning bowl, sawdust bread. A single bulb lit the cell.

Begin, “Once upon a time there was a war … ?” No. She would write une histoire, not the kind her captor had in mind, for someone who might read her words in a time to come:

I am still here.

I write, not because this story is more important than all others, but because I have so great a need to understand it. What I say is my truth and lies together, amalgam of memory and explication. I write in English, mostly, English being the one language left in the ring. Other languages often express my feelings better—French, Urdu, Hindustani. And perhaps in these languages I could have told and read you stories better than this, your mother’s story. But all my languages have been tainted by what we’ve said and done to one another in these years of war.

When the flap door dropped that evening, Noor dragged her chains to it and placed two sheets on the open tray. On one she had written the Sufi tale about the attraction of a moth to a flame, on another the one about the young man who came knocking at his teacher’s door and when his teacher asked, “Who is there?” cried, “It is I,” and was told, “Come back when you are nobody.”

She could see the guard glance at the English writing then thrust the sheets in her pocket without examination. The pad of onionskin lay upon the cot behind Noor, but the guard didn’t enter to count its remaining pages.

So, the next day, Noor wrote another paragraph, and another:

With that first creation of Allah—the pen that Vogel has allowed me—poised over the ink pot, then over the page, I wonder what to call you. Little spirit never whispered into this world—une fée. In Urdu I would call you ruh. Feminine. Ma petite ruh. We all begin feminine in Al-ghayab, the invisible, before we enter our nameless bodies.

I imagine you, ma petite, nine years old, looking much like me and as much like Armand, expectant and still trusting. Encourage my telling as any audience encourages a teller of tales, though I may tell what you may not condone, what you may not believe, or what you cannot bear to know. I write so you can see me, so Armand will appear again by the telling.