Chapter 55

The sky was blush with morning when the jeep rolled to a stop before a dome-shaped building crowned in thick gray rubber.

Harlan and Lizard were dragged by their collars from the jeep, thrown to the ground, kicked, ordered back on their feet, and then shoved through the guarded entryway into the building.

The American musicians stumbled down the corridor, past vacant concession stands pushed up against walls with posters depicting smiling, cherry-cheeked men, women, and children engaged in ice-skating, roller-skating, and cycling.

At the dome’s brightly lit epicenter, Harlan and Lizard were muscled down the steps and abandoned in the rink which was crowded with more than a hundred people. They stood, shoulders touching, gazing at the mass of anguished and confused faces.

“Içi, içi!”

Harlan and Lizard turned toward the beckoning voice.

“Içi, içi,” the short black man cried again, frantically waving both of his hands.

They started toward him, stepping carefully along the zigzag paths made by the rows upon rows of sleeping pallets covering the floor.

The man urged them on, his eyes fluttering nervously from Harlan and Lizard to the armed guards who watched from the rows of red stadium seats. When they reached him, the man pointed at two vacant pallets. “Asseyez-vous.”

Harlan sat down, but Lizard remained standing, his head tilted, staring at the massive swastikas that dangled from the arched metal support beams.

The man hunched down beside Harlan.“Je m’appelle Meher Feki.”

Harlan nodded.

“Votre nom?”

“Harlan.”

Meher nodded. “Harlan,” he repeated, and then looked at Lizard. “Son nom?”

“His name is Lizard,” Harlan said.

“Li-zard?” Meher murmured, before jabbering on in French, exceeding Harlan’s rudimentary comprehension of the language.

Harlan raised a halting hand. “I’m American. I speak English.”

“Ah!” Meher said. “Me, I too speak English.” He went on to explain that he’d been born in Tunisia but had been living in France for twenty-eight years, employed as a chauffeur for a wealthy Swiss family in Belleville. “Two days ago, the German soldiers stop the car, order me out. I come out. I ask them what is the problem. They no give an answer. They hit me in the head until I fall to the ground, where they kick and kick.”

Meher pointed to the knots on his head and raised his shirt, exposing his bruised rib cage. “My madam, she is screaming. Tears on her face. Her husband pull her back, cover her mouth with his hands. Don’t try to save me.” As he relived the scene, Meher’s eyes turned damp. “They bring me here. I don’t know what I have done. What crime I have committed. I ask and ask, and they say nothing, just beat me.”

Once again, Meher pointed to the knots on his head. “I have a wife, two kids. Where they think I am? They must think I am dead.”