The Keeper of the Walls (68 page)

But when he pulled back the drapery to see her crossing the street, her shoulders were hunched and she was holding a handkerchief to shield her face. His own grief a strangling knot, Mark MacDonald shut his eyes and pounded a fist into the palm of his other hand.

They hadn't said good-bye, on purpose.

R
aïssa Markovna Sudarskaya
lived in a mansard room under the eaves, on the Rue des Sablons near the suburb of Neuilly. The entire floor of her apartment house, once an enormous attic, had been divided into twenty-two tiny rooms now occupied by maids and students. In a corner stood her Bunsen burner, and an old sink, its enamel badly chipped and its iron pipe a glaring ugliness that could not be hidden.

She led a quiet, undisturbed existence, living on her earnings as a piano teacher. By ten o'clock she was always asleep, especially now, when Jews were not allowed outside after eight o'clock. Her single luxury was the beautiful ebony piano that occupied half her room. Now that Claire lived in the Boulevard Exelmans, she sometimes visited her there, and, once in a while, Lily stopped off to see her. Otherwise, her social life was a blank. She was even afraid to go to the temple on the Rue de la Victoire, because of the Germans, who were surely keeping it under surveillance.

She was old, almost seventy. Her brilliant life as a student at the Moscow Conservatory seemed like a hazy dream to her now, and she, the talented student, a fairy-tale princess as unlike herself as the crone is unlike the virgin. But still, her life continued.

It was May 1942. Raïssa Markovna had washed her small plate and braided her sparse, yellow-white hair, and gone to bed. Outside, a downpour of rain clattered against her window and the pavement, lulling her to sleep. The alarm was set for seven thirty, for that gave her just enough time to prepare herself for her first lesson at nine o'clock, in Saint-Cloud.

Sudarskaya was a light sleeper. During the Bolshevik Revolution, she'd learned to awaken at the smallest sound, in case the Reds arrived and an immediate escape was necessary. So, when she heard the raised voices at her door, in what seemed to be the middle of the night, she sat up at once, her heart flying into her throat. The alarm clock read five in the morning.

Her janitor, whom she had known for over twenty years, was saying, loudly: “I repeat, she isn't here!” Sudarskaya pulled the sheet and blanket over her head, her breath suddenly short.

A metallic male voice answered: “Turn the knob.” Sudarskaya had never felt such terror in all her life; if the Bolsheviks had brought fear to all White Russians, the Nazis were worse. For the Reds could have done no worse than to kill her, while the Nazis were known to send you to places like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, names that were starting to mean a fate
worse
than death: slow torture, or ... She couldn't think, wouldn't think, as she saw the doorknob being moved.

But of course it didn't give. She'd turned the key herself, before going to bed. But the German voice persisted: “Surely there's a passkey, or a master. Go and get it. The corporal will accompany you, and I shall wait here.”

Raïssa Markovna lay, petrified, under the covers. For one flash of a moment, she considered tiptoeing to put the key back into the lock, and thus block the mechanism on the other side. But this would have alerted the officer on guard to her definite presence in the room. Then, they'd have kicked the door in.

A Jewish man she knew from synagogue had been taken to Drancy, the collection camp from which sealed trains departed every few days, for parts unknown, except for their dreaded names: Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, Auschwitz, Dachau. What did those names mean? And was it true that lampshades were being fashioned out of the skins of dead Jews there? This nice Jewish man had been seized from his house, in the early dawn . . . just like this, a few days ago.

The little piano teacher was well over the “legal” age of fifteen to fifty-five, for deporting Jews in France. But then again, the Germans were well known for their disregard of all but their lust to kill Jews. Now heavy steps were resounding down the corridor, and she heard the janitor say, feebly: “I found the passkey.”

She thought that for sure, her final hour had come. There could be no escape. She heard the metal key being inserted into her lock, and shut her eyes tightly. But the door did not give way.

“See for yourself, officer,” the janitor said. “This is supposed to open any door on this floor. But it's not working. And, I told you, Madame Sudarskaya left a few days ago.”

“Well, if we can't open it, then we may as well be on our way,” the German voice remarked. “It hardly seems worthwhile to expend energy on someone who's skipped town. But we'll return tomorrow, to make sure you haven't lied to protect this old Jewess.”

When the steps had stopped reverberating in the hallway, and she was sure that they had gone, Sudarskaya bounded out of bed, grabbed the same dress she had laid out the night before, and, without bothering to find her shoes or to comb her hair, dashed out like a possessed spirit toward the service staircase.

On the third-floor landing, she found herself face-to-face with the janitor, a little old man from Brittany. “Madame Sudarskaya, you'd better leave at once,” he told her. “It was just your luck that we fumigated your floor last week. The chemical must have rusted the lock. Your small key could turn because its contours exactly fit those of the lock—but the larger passkey was stopped. Your life was saved by the cockroaches, so to speak.” She stared at him, gaping. “And . . . they're
gone?''
With a resigned shrug, the old man made an evasive sign. “But find somewhere else to sleep from now on. Somewhere where they won't be able to trace you. Go to a friend's house . . . anywhere. But not near Neuilly, if I were you.”

Sudarskaya nodded, mutely, and ran down the rest of the staircase. She wondered if the Jews had a special prayer for roaches, and didn't begin to relax until she was sitting comfortably in a taxi, on its way to Boulevard Exelmans.

“
B
ut there's
no extra room to let,” Madame Portier said, sighing. “And Madame Dalbret told me you had no money, to pay another person's rent. As it is, Madame, you and your daughter have raised few questions among the peaceful inhabitants of our small village. But another refugee, old and foreign, surely would.”

“What other choice do we have?” Lily asked. She clasped and unclasped her long, slender fingers. “Our friend has no one else in the world. We can't turn her away.”

“If it makes any difference,” Kira interrupted, “then we'll tell her she's not to leave the house. Like this, no one will even know she's here. She can sleep in the bed with Mama, and I'll take the lounge chair for myself.”

Madame Portier clicked her false teeth. “Well ... I wouldn't want anyone to think I was a
collabo.
I guess she can come. But you yourselves will have to speak to the priest, the baker, and the butcher. It'll be up to
them.”

On the threshold, she turned around, her small eyes like piercing rivets. “You're all Jews, aren't you?” she murmured, her face unreadable.

Lily and Kira stared at her, and for a moment, a taut silence almost crackled like an electric field. Then Kira stepped forward, her chin raised defiantly. “What's wrong with
that?”
she
demanded.

Madame Portier scratched a large mole. “I didn't say there was anything wrong,” she replied, and moved toward the door.

“Just make sure there's no spilled garbage, and that this old lady doesn't start a fire in the kitchen, as some old folks do, burning their cereal.” And she closed the door.

M
aryse Steiner had gone
each Wednesday to Compiègne, by train, bringing fruit and vegetables that she'd purchased on the black market, for Wolf. But the German guards refused to let her see the prisoner. There was a strict rule by which no one was permitted an interview with the inmates, and in spite of her charming smiles, and of the crisp bills that she unfailingly slipped to the security SS officer, she was repeatedly turned away.

Yet, undaunted, she would repeat her trip, leaving love letters from herself and Nanni for her husband. Once, in the fall of 1941, she had been allowed to glimpse Wolf from a distance, across glass paneling and barbed wire. She'd told the guard that her husband's mother had passed away, and that she wished to relay this news to him personally. For five hundred francs, a note had been taken to Wolf, and he was brought one hundred yards away.

She'd seen him, but wondered if he had seen her. He'd been between two guards, his shoulders hunched, his hair considerably thinned out, his face strangely jaundiced and bony. Always, Wolf had been slightly plump, with the face of a good child; and to see him now, looking far more than his forty-nine years, and weighing forty pounds less than when the Gestapo had taken him away, had shocked Maryse so profoundly that she'd fallen back on her wooden chair, unable to force a smile to her lips.

His mother had died, and the guards had not allowed him to ask about her, nor to seek comfort for the first time in six months simply by being able to hold his wife's hands in his own. And so Maryse had gone home, and hadn't seen him since. Now it was already August, and more than fifteen months had passed since his incarceration at the detention camp.

When Maryse arrived that Wednesday, with her basket of goods, the SS officer informed her that Dr. Steiner would be leaving, along with all the other foreign attorneys, for a camp in Poland. “Resettlement,” he called it; she knew it to be
deportation.
She felt glued to the ground, unable to move. “They'll be leaving the fifteenth of this month, at seven in the morning,” he told her. “If you wish to see him, come with the other wives to the Compiègne station.”

“Will they let us talk to our husbands?”

“I doubt it. But at least you'll see him.”

Maryse fumbled in her purse, her fingers icy as she slipped the twenty-franc note into the officer's uniform pocket. “I just wish to know one thing,” she pleaded, her voice vibrant with despair. “Is my husband well?”

The German touched his mustache, rubbed his chin. “Your husband is the psychiatrist, isn't he? From Vienna?”

“That's right.” She supposed that among the hundreds of prisoners, few were doctors as well as lawyers.

“He's been ill. He's had an ulcer, and some form of colitis. But be there on the fifteenth, if you want to see for yourself.”

Maryse returned in tears, unable to function. Claire put her to bed and pressed cold, wet washcloths to her forehead, holding her like a daughter. Maryse had never been alone. All her childhood, her parents had surrounded her with warmth, love, and support. Then it had been Wolf's turn. And these past fifteen months, waiting for him to finally be released, had eroded her core of resistance, which had never been strong, like Lily's or Claire's. And now she'd learned that she'd been living for a dream that was the opposite of reality: Wolf, instead of coming home, whole and complete, was about to be deported, his digestive system already destroyed.

On the night of the fourteenth, Lily came to Paris and spent the night in Claire's guest room, in Maryse's bed, hugging her as the tears emptied silently out of her friend. And Lily thought with gratitude that Mark had left France safe and sound, and that Misha was in New York, with their son. She was alone with Kira, but none of the men she had loved was in the hands of the Nazis. She hugged Maryse, feeling a twin fear for the man she had depended on and loved, and whom she now felt helpless to rescue.

At five the next morning, they arose, dressed, and fed a quick breakfast to Nanni. At twelve years of age, she had become a handsome girl with a quick mind and was a comforting, steady presence for her mother. She was old enough, Lily had felt—making all the decisions for a distraught Maryse—to see her father off, for God only knew how long.

At the train station in Compiègne, at six thirty, several hundred women and children were parked behind a grillwork from which the platform of the special German train could be observed. Lily, taller than most, determinedly edged her way through the crowd, to find them a place toward the front, from which the diminutive Maryse would be visible. She pushed her friend in front of her, holding on to Nanni's hand as she forged them a path.

At the grillwork, she turned to Maryse. “No tears,” she declared. “He has to
see
that you're strong, for him. You must stand on your tiptoes, and smile, and wave. It's the only farewell he's going to get.”

Maryse nodded, almost catatonic. Lily pressed against the fence, straining to see. But it was not until a quarter to seven that noises were heard, and that SS officers marshaled forward these attorneys who had been imprisoned fifteen months. Most of them were thin, pale, and tripped as they were pushed onto the platform by their guards. “My God,” Maryse whispered.

The other women were calling out names, and husbands were turning to catch a final glimpse of a beloved face. The sudden note of hope on these resigned features sent a thrill of compassion through Lily. These men, herded like sheep, deprived of their humanity, would remember a smile and a shouted farewell all during their voyage.

“Aunt Lily,” Nanni said quietly. A skeleton of a man, his head completely bald, was being shoved forward by a bayonet, held in the arms of a rigid SS lieutenant. Lily's instinctive intake of breath was filled with horror, and she had a moment of difficulty before being able to grasp Maryse's shoulders. “Now, Mari,” she whispered.

Tears, though forbidden, were streaming from Maryse's eyes. Lily pushed her against the grillwork, and yelled out: “Wolf!
Wolf! Look
at us, for God's sake!”

Nanni, sobbing, was screaming too: “Papa! Papa!”