The Blood of Lorraine (26 page)

Martin rubbed his hands on his legs. He could hardly sit still. Holy or crazy, this Jacob might be the link between the two worlds of the Israelites. He leaned toward Shlomo. “Ask why he is called the Wanderer, and why he isn’t here.”

Suddenly the jabbering stopped and all five men across the table looked askance at Martin. Was it the urgency in Martin’s voice that had alerted them and sapped all the joy out of their disputations? Yet Martin persisted. He was a judge. He had a right to know. “Ask them,” he repeated.

But a judge of France was a frightening specter to these men and just as foreign to them as they were to him. Martin realized from their silence that he should have stuck to his plan of letting Jacquette ask the questions in his friendly and matter-of-fact way. They were not about to say anything to get one of their own in trouble with the law.

Caught between their “Eminences” and his friends, Shlomo repeated the question about the Wanderer, and suddenly, rather than offering any real response, the eldest of men let out a low cry and a string of lamentations.

Martin shifted uneasily in his seat, as he noticed tears spring from eyes so old and blurred he could hardly distinguish their color. Shlomo listened and prepared to translate.

“He is saying,” Shlomo began, “why do we ask about Jacob only. We have all been condemned to wander. Why must we wander? Where is our homeland?”

Suddenly one of the younger men got up from the other end of the table, went over to the old man, and held him, repeating over and over again, “
nu, nu, nu
.”

“Shlomo?” Martin inquired. The scene was getting out of hand.

The dwarf stretched back from the table, with a sadness in his eye that Martin would not have expected from the trickster. He kept staring at the whitebeard and the younger man.

“They are father and son,” Shlomo reported. “They had to leave their town because someone set fire to their shop. Abraham did not want to leave. He misses his
rebbe
, his rabbi, who guided their life in everything. Everything. It is not like the laws here. We do not have our own judge, we have you.”

There was no hint of accusation in Shlomo’s words, only resignation.

“
Dos iz a fremder platz, dos iz a fremder platz
,” the old man moaned, before wiping his nose on his sleeve. Suddenly the old man broke from his son’s embrace. “
Jacob iz frum, frum
,” he insisted to his friends.

Martin reached out and tugged at Shlomo’s sleeve. “Tell me what he is saying.”

The dwarf shrugged and sighed, looking down at the floor between his two short, swinging legs. “He says he’s unhappy here, he can’t be comfortable here. It’s not like it was in his village where everyone obeyed the laws, our laws, together. That’s why he says Jacob is holy,
frum
, because Jacob wants everyone to remember, to obey.” Shlomo heaved his body in the bench, as if reminding himself that he must continue to be ingratiating to his important guests. “Please, Monsieur le juge, you can be sure most of us like your laws, we like coming to a place where we can have the full dignity of our manhood and not worry about the Czar’s army. He’s just lonely and old.”

Abraham was sobbing, clinging to his son. Martin heard the word rebbe again, and suddenly his heart went out to the old Jew. In Martin’s short lifetime he had gone from one corner of France to another, to escape his past and to build a future. Even knowing the language, believing in the laws, having a status and a place, Martin had been utterly lonely in Provence. But this Abraham was a stranger in a strange land with a strange tongue and too old to want to change. He had lost everything. Martin watched as the tears abated and the whitebeard leaned against his son’s chest. Abraham sighed and stared at the table. Was he embarrassed by his outburst or simply too sorrowful to face his companions? Martin almost wanted to reach out and touch the father’s withered hand to say he understood. But he knew that his gesture would not be welcome. Martin stood up. It was time to leave. He signaled to Jacquette, who was observing the father and son. Then Martin thanked the men for talking to him.

Jacquette nodded as he too rose and tipped his cap to the immigrants. It was over. They had no hope of gaining any more information.

“Wait, wait. Let me walk out with you.” The dwarf used his arms to help him pivot around the bench and hop to the floor. He had not lost his desire to make Jacquette his meal ticket. He had more to say.

After they had closed the heavy curtain behind them, Shlomo whispered what he knew, or what he was willing to tell, about Jacob. Apparently he lived like a hermit in the countryside and was called the Wanderer because he had traversed the continent many times, more times than even Shlomo himself.

“Is he holy or insane?” Jacquette asked as he pushed his fingers into his leather gloves.

“I think both, perhaps, maybe. I am not a doctor or a holy man. You might think of him as like me, a bit—” the dwarf hesitated while searching for the right word—“a bit of an eccentric.” The shrug, the evasions were back. So was the yellow-toothed grin. “Where he is crazy, I think, is when he tries to convince everyone that they should obey the old laws. We no longer live in the village. We are here in your beautiful city.”

Martin shot Jacquette a skeptical glance. Shlomo, the pleaser, was again saying what he thought they wanted to hear.

Jacquette preferred to play along. He patted Shlomo on his shoulder and said that they would talk next week. He had many more questions and—the inspector moved his head toward the curtained door—this was not the place to ask them.

Shlomo clapped his hands together, warming them, and nodded. “And now we must all go,” he announced as he pointed to the waning sun in the dusky sky. “Shabbas comes quickly on a winter’s day.”

Yes, night was coming, and the weekend. Martin owed it to Clarie to be on his way. As soon as they were out of hearing, he apologized to Jacquette for having made a mess of their “conversation.”

“Don’t worry, sir. As soon as Shlomo mentioned ‘Ehud the Anarchist,’ I realized I might be more interested in who wasn’t there than in who was. After all, we don’t have enough men to follow everyone. But an anarchist and an industrialist?” Jacquette made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Sounds like a lethal combination to me.”

Martin grunted agreement as they quickened their pace through the garbage-strewn streets. He, too, was interested in who had not been in the café. Interested in an “eccentric” who somehow had bridged the gap between the rich and poor.

Saturday, December 8

M
ARTIN WOKE UP IN A
cold sweat, clinging to the side of the bed. He gulped for air as he tried to recapture the dream. He was back in Aix, in the cavernous basement of the jail where they did autopsies. The mounds of a body were under a sheet. The corn-yellow hair of his oldest friend, Jean-Jacques Merckx, stuck out at the top. Two unidentified hands pulled back the white shroud, revealing a precise, pointed black beard, and a knife in the corpse’s chest. Martin protested. Merckx was clean-shaven. He had been shot four times, not stabbed. Suddenly Martin was overcome with joy. This was not Merckx. Maybe he wasn’t dead. Maybe he had made it to Switzerland after all. Martin looked again at the pale body on the table. And saw that it was Singer.

No! Martin reached his arm across the bed to touch Clarie, not wanting to wake her, only to feel her warmth. But her place was empty.

Martin gasped as he sat up. Clarie! Did she get up in the night and walk the floors as he did? Had he not heard her, when he should have gone out to her, taken care of her? He swung his feet over to the side of the bed. His mouth was dry all the way to the back of his throat. He needed water. Just as his feet hit the floor, Clarie walked in.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Martin was stunned. Clarie was fully dressed. Was he still in the dream?

“I’m going to Mass with Madeleine, I need to put up my hair. I can’t go to the cathedral with a hanging braid.”

Martin was so groggy and parched that he barely managed to choke out a response. “My God, is this Sunday already?” Had he slept an entire forty-eight hours?

Without waiting for an answer, Martin staggered out through the dining room to the kitchen. He shook his head hard, as he poured himself a glass of water. He gulped it down, closed his eyes and swallowed. He felt the cold floor under his bare feet. He saw that the cupboards, the sink, and the stove were exactly where they should be. He was awake. He must talk to Clarie.

He returned to the bedroom and watched as she sat in front of the mirror and wound the braid in a ring in back of her head. She didn’t ask for help in putting up her hair, as she sometimes did. She was intent on her task, hardly noticing his reflection.

When she was done, she turned to him. “It’s not Sunday, dear Martin. You didn’t sleep that long.”

“Then why—”

She swung back to the mirror to scrutinize her face and pin back a few strands of stray black hair. “It’s the Feast of the Immaculate Conception,” she murmured. “A Feast of the Virgin. Madeleine tells me that the Virgin who appeared at Lourdes
was
the very vision of the Immaculate Conception. That proves it’s true. That Mary was conceived without sin. That miracles do happen. My mother loved the Virgin at Lourdes.”

Her voice was as toneless as if she was giving a lesson in simple logic. But none of this was logical. Her mother, the immaculate conception, miracles. This wasn’t Clarie.

Now she was staring in the mirror, watching him, waiting for his reaction.

“You’re sure you’re ready for this?”

“Do you mean because little Henri-Joseph was baptized there?”

Her voice was so soft, so distant, it was as if he was hearing her through an echo chamber.

“Yes.” Although he hadn’t really thought of that.

“Madeleine says the Virgin will protect me. That she comes in many ways to many people if they pray hard enough, and eventually I will find the Virgin, who will protect and forgive me.” Her lower lip began to tremble.

Martin ignored the irrationality of these propositions. He heard only the cruelty. He put his hands on Clarie’s shoulder and kissed her cheek. “Clarie, my Clarie, why would you need forgiveness?”

She moved her head away from him as she whispered, “I don’t know.”

Martin got down on one knee. “Clarie, look at me. Please. There is nothing to forgive. Our little boy died. It’s a terrible tragedy. We didn’t deserve it.”

She gently removed his hand from her waist and stood up, looking down on him. “I can imagine many things that need to be forgiven. Not going to church for years on end. Not taking seriously God’s laws. Teaching girls a Protestant philosophy in a Catholic country.”

This was Madeleine, fanaticism, speaking, not his Clarie, who had never expressed anything but respect and admiration for her teachers at Sèvres, no matter what their beliefs. If she went on this way, she might start complaining about the “godless Republic,” the Republic to which both of them had devoted their talents.

Martin got up from his foolish position and sat down on the bed, staring at the blue woven carpet. Except for the squeezing pain in his stomach, every part of him had grown numb. He did not want to argue with Clarie, he wanted to talk to her. To tell her about his dreams and fears. It was selfish, he knew. But he could not help remembering. Sitting on a bench near the Hôtel de Ville in Aix, telling her about Merckx, crying, feeling her reach for him, pull him to her, embracing him, holding him, understanding. Because she had lost her mother. Because he had lost his father. She was the only one who knew his deepest, most dangerous secret. That he had broken the law by letting his friend desert the army. More, she was the only one who knew the depths of his remorse and his pledge never to be half-hearted again when someone he was close to needed him.

But now he didn’t know how to help Clarie. Perhaps it would be best to let her find her own way for a while. In the meantime, Martin had to do everything he could to protect his friend, to make sure that they would never find Singer with a knife sticking out of his chest.

“What are you thinking about?” Clarie had on her coat and was standing over him.

“Us, the baby.” It was a lie. But he thought that was what she wanted to hear.

“Not about your work?”

Was there resentment in her voice? If so, Martin thought with a sigh, he deserved it for being away so much. “That, too. I didn’t tell you. Another man was killed last week. A relative of David Singer.”

“Was he old?” She was putting on her gloves, one finger at a time, right in front of his face.

“In his sixties, I suppose.”

“Oh,” she said. “I must hurry.”

He watched as her skirts disappeared through the bedroom door. Was Daniel Erlanger too old to command her sympathy? Or too distant? Too Jewish? Where had his generous-spirited Clarie gone? He had never dreamed that she would so casually dismiss the death of a kind, old man.

He was still in a nightmare.

Monday, December 10

T
HE SNOW BEGAN VERY EARLY
Monday morning. By dawn, the skies had thrown a diaphanous veil over Nancy. By the time Martin left for the Palais, the streets were covered with a slippery silver carpet. Hours later, snowflakes floated down as big as feathers. They kept falling, layer upon layer, muting the sounds of the city and clogging its roadways. It was as if the world had stopped.

Martin stood at the window, staring out, remembering. When he was a boy, a day like this had thrilled him. He’d wanted the world to stand still while he ran free, free from school and the Jesuits, free from his father’s clock shop and his mother’s worries, free to roam, to flap his wings and make his mark in the snow. He’d open his mouth as wide as he could and catch the floating flakes, savoring their delicate melting on his tongue. Martin turned away from the sight of the snow-covered Place de la Carrière. Children feel so powerful. They think they can swallow the world in a few gulps when, in truth, it is the world that will swallow them.

Martin slipped quietly back to his desk, past his clerk, who was busily transcribing the morning’s interview. Martin no longer wanted the world to stop. He needed to push it forward. If the world stood still now, he would feel hollow inside forever.

He closed his eyes and prodded.
One thing at a time. First the case, then Clarie
. She was finding her own solace. Her own way. Eventually they would find each other again.

He opened his eyes to the sound of his clerk’s scratching pen and his own fingers drumming on the desk. Martin needed to find some new way, some sure way of investigating this case. Not Didier’s or Singer’s or Jacquette’s. He was going in too many directions at once. He angrily pushed aside a folder filled with newspaper clippings. In the last three weeks he had become an expert on the hatred of the Jewish race. And where had that gotten him? This morning’s interrogation of a local reporter, who had written a particularly vituperative column on the coming Dreyfus trial, had ended with a fine speech on how judges thought they could quash the freedom of the press. No new names, no new leads. Only the problem of what to do with the maddening defrocked priest whose detainment might become public any minute.

“Charpentier, the fire!”

Yet as his clerk was about to get up to stoke the potbelly stove, Martin said, “No, let me do it. You keep writing.” Too many directions. Just then, another came knocking on the door.

“Charpentier!”

This time his clerk moved quickly, before Martin could change his mind and go to the door himself, an unseemly proposition for a juge d’instruction.

Martin was still poking at the coals, when Charpentier came scurrying back to him. “It’s Doctor Bernheim, sir,” he whispered. Charpentier’s eyes were arched so high they almost touched the descending waves of his auburn hair. The famous Hippolyte Bernheim!

Martin winced and groaned. How could he have forgotten? Frustrated to the core with the antics of Hémonet, he had sent Jacquette to Bernheim to explain the investigation and ask if a consultation might be useful. Martin hadn’t imagined that the great expert in psychotherapeutics would answer the call on a day like today.

Martin laid down the poker and buttoned his jacket. He motioned with his head to Charpentier to invite the doctor in. Martin was at his desk by the time the surprisingly diminutive Hippolyte Bernheim entered, shaking the glimmers of snow off his cloak and bowler, and stamping puddles from his boots. He did this with a mixture of embarrassment and delight. Like a child.

After Charpentier took his coat and hat, Bernheim extended his hand to Martin. “It’s about time we met. I like working on cases. Especially intriguing ones.” The hand was cold, even as the doctor exuded confidence and warmth.

“You’ve already met my greffier, Guy Charpentier.” Martin gestured behind him.

Bernheim nodded and sat down, rubbing his hands together. “I haven’t seen a day like this since I left Alsace. And you know how long ago that was.”

Martin did, of course. Over twenty years since the end of the war, when the University of Strasbourg had passed into German hands.

“In Paris we never had such snow. That’s where I went first after the treaty. But this,” Bernheim extended his arms, “this is glorious, like a holiday.”

“Yet you are here. I’m so pleased you could see me so soon.” This was more than politeness. Already Bernheim had brought a burst of new energy into Martin’s somber chambers. The doctor was a robust middle-aged man, with a thick, dark mustache that stood out against his pale, cold-reddened face like a permanent smile set upon his upper lip. He still had a fine head of hair, a mix of black and gray, parted down the middle, and a trim gray beard. The clothes, a high collar, cravat and frock coat, added to the air of celebrity. Here was the leading light of “the school of Nancy,” the great rival to Charcot’s Parisian school of psychology.

“Anything I can do to help. I read the papers, you know. This is a nasty business. I say this as an Israelite, but more importantly as a Frenchman and a republican.” Chin thrust forward, Bernheim said these last words as if he were about to raise a toast. He had opted to be in France, to add his achievements to his country’s scientific and intellectual glory. His enthusiasm was infectious.

“Thank you. Of course you don’t mind if Charpentier takes notes.”

Bernheim grinned even more broadly. He liked being recorded. And, of course, Martin knew, his clerk would certainly want to be a part of anything to do with one of Nancy’s most famous citizens.

“Well, then, let’s get down to business, shall we?” Martin said, attempting to mirror Bernheim’s easy professional confidence. “I have two types of questions for you. First, I’d like to ask you to see one of our suspects. And then—”

“Do you think he did it? Would you like me to try to get a confession while he is in an hypnotic state?” Bernheim’s dark eyebrows lifted as his face brightened up even more.

Martin’s mouth fell open. “Do you think you could do that?” A confession would get Didier and the press off his back. For the moment. But if it were false, it would only make things worse. And, more dangerous, it would leave the killer still out there.

Bernheim’s ebullience was not allayed by Martin’s alarmed question. “If you know my work, you know that most people can be ‘suggested’ into doing all kinds of things they would not normally do: for example, committing a crime or acting like an hysteric.”

“Even admit to something they did not do?”

“Yes! Or, telling a truth they dare not tell with their conscious mind. This is the very basis of my argument with Charcot, and why our methods are being debated across Europe right now. Charcot claims that only hysterics can be hypnotized. Then he takes these poor women, puts them under his spell and invites his colleagues and friends to the asylum at Salpêtrière to watch them. He even photographs them in that state.” Bernheim stuck out his lower lip with distaste. “I don’t like that. Anyone can be hypnotized, if they are willing. Suggestion and hypnotism should be used to cure people, not display them like animals in a zoo.”

Bernheim’s cures of mental and physical ills were so famous, some thought of him as a miracle worker. Martin began warily to shake his head. He needed assurance that the doctor did not intend to “perform a miracle” on his prisoner. “Of course, you would never
induce
a false confession.”

Bernheim crossed his legs as he sat back in his chair and gazed at Martin. “I can see I’ve perturbed you. Whether I could or not would depend on the willingness and character of the subject. But I’ll leave confessions up to you if you’d like. You just tell me what you believe about your suspects and what you want me to do.”

Martin had to smile in spite of himself. He should have known that his dismay would not get past a famous mind doctor.

“The suspect,” he explained, “is a priest, recently defrocked, and a drinker. I haven’t been able to find any connection between him and the victims, but I am not sure that anything he’s telling me is true. His behavior and speech are utterly erratic. But he may be acting a madman just to throw us off course. I need to know if he is really mad and how dangerous he might be.”

“Oh, yes, Hémonet,” Bernheim nodded. “Jacquette told me about him. But what about the tanner?”

“So you have been keeping up with the case.”

Bernheim shrugged. “Yes, and I am sure, as the two murders go unsolved, more and more people will be interested.”

This was not what Martin wanted to hear. He cleared this throat. “I released Pierre Thomas. I’m sure he’s innocent of everything but gullibility.”

“That can be dangerous too,” Bernheim interjected.

“Yes,” Martin agreed, bending his head forward, trying to keep his focus on what he needed from this important man. He had eliminated Thomas. He did not want to revisit that line of inquiry.

Bernheim seemed to sense his resistance. “Tell me more about your priest,” he said quietly. “What makes you think he might actually be unbalanced?”

“His ravings. His eyes, the way they seem to signal a mind going in and out, as if sometimes he’s not here. Sometimes he seems somewhere else entirely.” Martin struggled to explain. “Even though he knows that everything he says could be used against him, he can’t stop himself from raging against the Israelites. He may not be a murderer, but he certainly sounds murderous.”

“You don’t know how long he’s been this way, or if he was anywhere around the victims?”

“After we brought him in last Tuesday, I sent Jacquette out to interview the neighbors. Apparently when he became a priest they were all proud of him. Now they hold him in contempt because the bishop gave him the boot. Yet they swear he could not have committed any crime, because no one saw him leave the house. On the other hand,” Martin added, “as you know, villagers often stick together. They could be covering for him.”

“Of course,” Bernheim agreed. “What do his former parishioners say?”

“One of Jacquette’s men went back to his parish last week after we took Hémonet in. Those who would talk only said that his sermons against the Jews were getting more violent, but otherwise….” Martin shrugged.

“Otherwise he was normal?”

“I think so.”

“But, of course, that is not ‘normal.’ Jacquette told me about the book. This hatred he holds against the Israelites is a sickness, a disease. It has nothing to do with the rational mind. The so-called truths such people proclaim are delusions. They make the Jew the bogeyman for everything that is wrong with the world.”

The bonhomie had drained from Bernheim’s face, reminding Martin that the doctor was, indeed, an Israelite. Martin had not meant to imply that Hémonet’s hatreds were “normal.”

“However,” Bernheim said, as if to allay Martin’s discomfort, “this kind of delusion has become so widespread, it might appear to be in the realm of normality. With the Dreyfus trial coming up,” he sighed, “I expect worse. In fact,” the doctor leaned forward eagerly, “I’ve seen far worse, in a case that might be of interest to you.”

Good God, not another one
, Martin thought, as a sudden spurt of anxiety heated his neck and face. “Go on, please,” he said, dropping each word with purposeful evenness, as he tried to appear pleasantly engaged in what Bernheim had to tell him.

“Well,” Bernheim sat back and smiled, “just last year, I saw a soldier, a young corporal with an old noble name, but no money, and filled with overblown ambition. Yet he could no longer even lift his rifle to aim and shoot. Every time he was ordered to do so, his arm became as stiff as a tree trunk, and his fingers cramped like withering branches.” Bernheim held up his hand, crooked forward, to demonstrate. “As you can imagine, to bring such a case to my attention would have been an embarrassment for most of our army men. But his commander was an enlightened fellow, who had some affection for the lad and had heard about my so-called cures. So he forced him to come see me. That young man was hostile, I can tell you! So I called upon my old colleague, Dr. Liébeault, to take a look at him. Ambroise has the manner of a kindly country doctor, which he was, but the mind of a brilliant diagnostician, which of course he is, for he is the very creator of our psychotherapeutics through hypnotism. In any case, as soon as he got the boy to cooperate and go into a ‘sleep,’ that young officer began to spout all kinds of anti-Israelite nonsense. It turns out he could not shoot at a target because he had been ordered to do so by a Jew, the very lieutenant who brought him to me.” Bernheim chuckled. “You can imagine what he thought about being sent to someone named Bernheim. The Israelite conspiracy! Now, there’s a case for you.”

Was it? Was it a case for Martin? He had to clench his teeth together in order not to groan.
The army
. He grimaced before asking, “Is this young corporal here, now, in Nancy?”

“I should think not. Given that he had developed a severe hysteria with full psychosomatic symptoms, Liébeault and I recommended that the lad either submit to our treatments or be sent home for a long rest.”

Martin suppressed a sigh of relief. “And the lieutenant, the boy’s superior? Do you remember his name? Is he still around?”

“I never saw him again. I’d have to find his name in my notes.”

“Please do. We’ll look into it.” Martin wrote down “Jacquette. Jewish officer?” If some discontented soldier had seen the Israelite lieutenant with Ullmann and Erlanger, would he have assumed there was a “conspiracy”? Martin’s mind was racing so fast, it tripped over itself. He winced at the possibility that
he
was beginning to think like an anti-Israelite. Why did he assume that a Jewish officer from another region knew the victims? He etched nervous circles around Jacquette’s name, and wrote “a connection?”

He had to ask the next, logical question. “Do you think that there are other men in the garrison prone to this kind of hysteria?”

“Well,” Bernheim pursed lips together, considering, “certainly not to the extent of displaying such dramatic physical symptoms. But I am sure there is seething resentment, especially now, with the Dreyfus accusation fueling the flames. When someone thinks he has a right to a certain status, a certain command, a certain
superiority
, and all of a sudden he is passed by in favor of someone he thinks is unworthy, unlike him and everything he’s known, well, then, he feels he’s lost something. It’s been taken away from him. That causes resentment.”