The Tiger Claw (13 page)

The gendarme bent his black cap over her papers, studying them a long time. Had he scented her fear? What if the forged papers failed to pass inspection? An oblique glance told her Gilbert had stopped at the newspaper kiosk. The gendarme finally completed his perusal and passed her papers to the German, who gave them a cursory glance, yawned and motioned her through the turnstile.

Take a seat in the first compartment so you can jump out and run if need be
.

The compartment’s only occupant, a farmer in a jerkin, scarf knotted about his grey-stubbled neck, sat with legs crossed at the ankle, boots dribbling mud and clay onto the floor. He gazed at Noor from head to toe with frank curiosity—a young woman travelling alone, early in the morning. She clasped her hands in her lap.

He could stare as much as he liked. Anne-Marie Régnier was accustomed to making this journey every week. Aunt Lucille was very sick and would surely die if her loving niece failed to reach her today.

In a few moments a blank-faced Gilbert walked down the corridor past her compartment. The German soldier too mounted the train and leaned from the doorway. He gave a nod and it began chugging and clanging from the station. He passed down the corridor. Thin. Too young for a uniform. If all German soldiers looked like him, the war would be over soon. But of course they didn’t.

Noor settled back in her seat. She had read and heard so much in England about the German presence in France, but experiencing it was another matter.

He is the Boche; he is the enemy. Men like him guard Armand at Drancy
.

Rain slanted against the window, strengthened to fine rivulets. Clear tadpole shapes smeared a horizontal path across the glass, then dried and stilled as the sun rose. Outside, wind ruffled the tall grass by the tracks.

A newspaper,
Je Suis Partout
, lay discarded on the seat beside her. A few days old. How was the German-controlled press presenting France to the French?

The very first article she read touted the number of French prisoners of war who had joined the Pétain league—at least 80 percent, it said, in camps everywhere. A second described with breathless earnestness how many volunteers were heading to Germany, where work was plentiful. One unnamed writer preached the duty of all French women to have children. The editorial by one Robert Brasillach denounced writers for disputing the great boon of being occupied by the Germans, and issued fatwa after fatwa calling for their deaths. Along the way he mentioned that Jews who once thought themselves safe in the unoccupied zone were scattering in all directions “like poisoned rats.”

A wave of nausea swept over Noor. Brasillach’s hatred was more elegantly and eloquently expressed than any propaganda pamphlet issued by the German Propagandastaffl. However, Brasillach had accurately assessed the situation: Armand and Madame Lydia had been in the unoccupied zone in the far south when they were arrested.

The farmer was still staring. She lowered her head and read on.

An anonymous article inched its way into a long diatribe alleging that POWs in Germany were being treated like kings while British barbarians kept German POWs enchained hand and foot in defiance of every treaty and international law. The accompanying sketch even showed a poor wretch manacled, a chain running from cuff to cuff, leg-ironed, chains running between his ankles and another long chain connecting the two—worse than a creature in a zoo. An insult to anyone’s intelligence! She set the paper aside, almost tossing it.

The farmer stood up, reached for the paper and, without a word, proceeded to tear it into strips. He used each strip to wipe his muddy boots, then opened the door of the compartment and carefully placed the whole wet mass squarely in the centre of the corridor. It was difficult not to give him a conspiratorial look. The German soldier would have to exit along that corridor. The farmer took his seat again, a pleased look coming over his face.

The journey continued in companionable silence over the plain, past the cream-painted brick stations of Beillé, Connerré, La Ferté-Bernard, Nogent-le-Rotrou, La Loupe, Courville-sur-Eure. Here the train was shunted to a siding and a long wait sorely tested Noor’s already taut nerves. Then it set off again past the cathedral of Chartres, through Maintenon and Épernon, climbing a little to Versailles Chantiers, towards Paris.

A lump rose in Noor’s throat as the train chugged into the great hall of the Gare Montparnasse in Paris. Memories surged like desperate fish rising against the nets of time. Whenever she came to this station, she felt twelve years old again, saw herself with one hand in Mother’s, the other in Kabir’s, waving Abbajaan goodbye. Zaib must have been too young to be with them that day. Noor and Kabir thought it so very exciting that Abbajaan was leaving for Bordeaux, to board a steamer to Bombay, then a train north from Bombay to Baroda. How they had pestered Mother that they wanted to go too, especially to anywhere in India. No one knew Abbajaan was leaving forever.

But perhaps Mother had realized.

Noor felt her hand slip from her mother’s again, saw her rush to Abbajaan and clutch the sleeves of his black shervani as he walked down the platform. Before Noor, her mother wept and clasped her arms around Abbajaan’s neck, begging him not to leave her. He had reached up and removed her hands, lips moving in his long brown beard. Noor and Kabir could not hear, but Abbajaan must have reminded Mother of where she was, in public, in a train station. He must have reminded her she could join him at any time, and bring his children to live in India, that it was by her own choice she stayed behind. Noor and Kabir waved to Abbajaan as the train hissed farewell, then turned to comfort their mother.

Noor’s glance flicked left and right, looking for German uniforms moving towards the train. Everything just as she remembered it. Women with hat boxes beside them, men scanning newspapers, waiting for trains. A woman with feathers in her hat pressed her cheek against an old man’s lapel, goodbyes lingering in the tears on her lashes.

Noor’s shirt collar had dampened though the morning air was pleasantly cool.

Pretend you never left. Pretend no one would have any reason to look for you
.

A twelve-year-old girl and a sad-looking, gangly boy of about ten stood with arms looped about each other, unaccompanied, pale as Noor and Kabir must have looked the day Abbajaan left.

That day. Yes, Mother had known. Known Abbajaan wasn’t planning to return. She told them later that Abbajaan wanted all of them to move “home” to India. But Mother worried Abbajaan might be pressured into accepting more wives, and she didn’t want to live in seclusion under Dadijaan’s rule. When she opened the telegram announcing his death in India of pneumonia five months later, it was final, but over the years Noor realized that the moment of Mother’s abandonment took place here, at the Gare Montparnasse. Mother’s widowhood began the day Abbajaan left
for Baroda in 1926, leaving her alone in Paris to look after Noor and Kabir and little Zaib, alone to tell the world of his Sufi wisdom, while he returned to the source of his music.

Perhaps on this very platform.

And other memories. Leaving from this station in 1927 with Mother, Kabir and Zaib to pay their respects at Abbajaan’s tomb in India, and returning home to Paris two years later. And soon after, greeting Abbajaan’s half-brother, Uncle Tajuddin, when he arrived from Baroda in 1929 to live with them and manage the school of Sufism. Uncle Tajuddin, who ran their lives after that, changing everything for Noor and Zaib. And Mother.

The train’s bump and sway subsided. Noor stood in the carriage doorway and looked out over the crowd milling on the platform, trying to stop her pulse from racing.

Clothes were shabby, even drab—not very different from Londoners, who in the last few years had learned to “make do and mend.” How different were they from Parisians of three years ago? Probably very different. Everyone had been altered by war. But something in the way they carried themselves was familiar.

People seemed self-conscious, as if they were performing for an audience, eyes straight ahead. This wasn’t the normal sensual awareness of Parisians, but the self-censorious awareness she’d seen in Indians whenever an Englishman was present. The audience: black and feldgrey uniforms moving among the Parisians. Everywhere, French
milice
, German soldiers and military policemen, with their rifles, waited for trains, smoked, kept an eye on the citizenry.

Noor dipped into her handbag, unfolded the brown beret with an attached black hairnet for her ponytail, and withdrew a pair of black kid gloves. Then she joined the crowd on the platform.

Walk, don’t run. Down the platform. Look straight ahead, purposeful as everyone else
.

Gilbert had descended from the carriage behind hers and was making his way past her down the platform to a ticket counter. She followed, inquiring about the special line that ran between
the Gare Montparnasse and Auteuil. It was not in operation; she would have to take the métro.

As she moved away from the ticket counter, her eyes met Gilbert’s for but a second. A surreptitious wink and he was gone.

Lose any Gestapo agent who may have followed
from Le Mans.

She went to the WC and stayed there about half an hour for safety, then exited past a ring of anti-aircraft guns. The sky had lightened to pale June blue.

Paris looked familiar as when she and Armand met in cafés and talked for hours. Familiar, yet strange; she was alone.

She joined a tide of pedestrians on the boulevard Raspail, up to the boulevard des Invalides. The Musée de Rodin advertised its opening hours.

If she met any of these people, would she remember their faces? Too many.

Avoid looking anyone in the eye
.

Walk normally. Notice everything
.

For instance, how, past the esplanade des Invalides, the afternoon sun was glancing off panes painted navy blue, that no chink of light attract the attention of Allied bombers.

Don’t notice the hollow-eyed look those dark panes give the pale stone buildings
.

She crossed the Pont Alexandre III. The usual
bateaux-mouches slipped slowly beneath the bridge
.

Ignore the swastika flags and banners adorning the Grand Palais. Ignore uniforms, and all the broad-shouldered, tall men
.

Why had the Germans removed sandbags and scaffolding Noor remembered from 1940? But then, why should they care if French monuments were destroyed by Allied bombs?

Don’t notice that American and British flags are absent from their embassies
.

Noor doubled back to the boulevard Champs-Elysées and detoured through streets taking their names from generals, battles, revolutionaries who fought for freedom, stood for individualism and liberty.

Chairs stacked behind glass doors began to appear on
terrasse
cafés. Sun strengthened, turning sheer to shimmer. Readers lingered in minuscule bookstores, grey-haired men played pétanque. But everywhere, finger-posts pointed in German, and the rumble of traffic she remembered so well was stilled. Even the confused buzz of outdoor conversations seemed muted.

Late in the afternoon, a very footsore Noor hesitated outside a
pâtisserie
. Slices of National Loaf in London were a poor substitute for the round, fire-tinged loaves in Paris’s
boulangeries
, and she was tempted to buy a
café filtre
and a brioche as she had before morning lectures at the Sorbonne. But did ration coupons need to be presented at a café or only at a grocer? A detail that her instructors had forgotten to include in her syllabus.

Hungry as she was, she could not buy food. But she went in, to rest her feet.

Allay any suspicions. Order a glass of Vichy water; they can’t request ration coupons for Vichy water
.

It looked like any other water, tasted like any other. The spa water wasn’t responsible for the actions of Petain’s government encamped there. No ration coupons were requested.

If any German was following, he must have given up by now. Didn’t the Gestapo have more important things to do than follow a young woman from Le Mans all day? They should.

Head for the safe house
.

Down a narrow wooden escalator into the
pissotière
smell of the métro. Noor showed her papers again at the checkpoint, and presented a ticket from the booklet provided by Miss Atkins. A train bound for the Étoile stood at the platform, the doors of its last carriage closing.

Squeeze in. Hurry!

She seized a hand-strap to brace herself. The métro began to worm its way into the tunnels. A burst of yellow caught her eye, then another and another. Her gaze leaped from star to yellow star patched to men’s and women’s clothing. Every one read
Juif
. The
étoile jaune!
She had been told Jews had to travel in the last carriage
of the métro, knew about the yellow stars they were required by law to wear, but in her hurry she had forgotten. And only seeing the star actually being worn by people brought belief. The train picked up speed, and some glanced at her own lapel with its missing yellow star.

Oh, Armand, are you too wearing one of these?

The pungence of her fellow travellers’ desperation rose around her as the métro flowed through the dark under Paris. She was kin to these helpless people; had her marriage to Armand been solemnized, she might now be wearing the star with them.

Brakes squealed. Noor alighted at the next station with a stab of guilt for not riding further with the star-branded group. But she could not attract attention from officials.

Wait on the platform. Find a bench till the next train arrives. Look inconspicuous. Watch for anyone in the crowd, French or German, who might be watching you
.

Two uneasy hours waiting for another train. This time she was careful to board a middle carriage on the métro bound for the Porte Maillot.

Sit beside the old woman with the shopping bag over her arm
.