The Tiger Claw (20 page)

Yes, she understood.

“
À la prochaine
, Madeleine.” And he cycled away.

So many cautions! Necessary, but each administered a dose of contagious fear.

Noor wandered into the stable. Several empty stalls. Horses requisitioned by the Germans, Monsieur Hoogstraten had said. A few muzzles poked from the stalls as she walked past, and a roan with a white diamond on his forehead gave her shoulder a wet nibble. Too old for horsemeat, and he wouldn’t have much speed before a cart. Cheek against his mane, Noor took in the scent of hay, horses and manure.

Armand, how I wish I could transmit a message to you as I just did to London. Tapping it out, knowing you are there to receive. A short message. How to encode it? To whom would I entrust it? What should I say? Perhaps: “I am near; have hope, my love. We will be together again.” But anyone could say that. Some pattern you will recognize like a radio operator’s fist, a message you would know could come only from me
.

Beneath the slanting eaves on the top floor of the château, Noor faced the casement, clad in a borrowed frothy pink nightgown. The dark hand of blackout had spread through the village of
Grignon and lay across the woods surrounding the director’s château. Grasshoppers, like small violins, began the staccato rhythm of mating calls.

“I used to go to the cinema to learn English. I will speak English with you. You like the cinema?” Odile’s chatter in English mixed with French followed Noor in a steady stream. “Gilbert said
Gone with the Wind
was in the theatres in London—he told me the whole story. In French the book is called
Autant en emporte le vent
. It is a good translation. After I read it, I made a dress from my bath curtains, just like Scarlett. Then the BBC said Ashley Wilkes was shot down by the Germans—that is so sad, no? Gilbert says he was on a spy mission—ha, how does he know? But you can tell me, what is the
goût du jour
these days?”

Noor turned back to Odile, who had arranged her limbs in a languid pose, like Ingres’s
Odalisque
, on one of the two beds. Odile burbled on, not waiting for an answer.

“Here we have mostly German films.
Ils m’ennuient!
And the Germans bore me too. You know the first time I saw the Germans? It wasn’t from this front window but from that side window, the oval one. I looked out one morning and there were two planes chasing one another in the blue sky, a French and a German one. And
mon Dieu!
our horses were grazing below in the fields as if nothing was happening. Of course, I didn’t actually
see
a German in the plane, so I should say I saw my first German many days later—on a motorcycle in Grignon.”

Noor listened with interest as she took her freshly washed blouse and lingerie out of a basin and hung them behind the chamber door to dry. She only needed to prompt Odile with a nod, at most a word or two.

“But when I saw the planes, immediately I thought of Papa. You know why that was strange? Because he was at Verdun that very instant, and later I learned that I thought of him at the very moment of his capture.” A second’s pause emphasized so amazing a coincidence.

“He was captured at Verdun?”

“Yes. Maman fainted when we heard the news. But I got on a vélo and cycled to Verdun to find him.”

“Cycled from here to Verdun?”

“Yes, three days, sleeping by the road. I had to find out if my papa was alive or not, you see. And when I got there, I found him in the prison camp, and he was so surprised to see me, he forgot to be angry.”

“Did they let you see him? Did they let you bring him home?”

“
Mais non
, he wouldn’t leave his men. But he gave me a letter for Maman, and all his men gave me letters for their wives and fiancées and mothers, and so many other men wrote to their families. I put all their letters up here in my dress—I had no breasts then.”

Odile didn’t have any breasts to speak of three years later, either, but Noor let this pass.

“Like this, I carried all their letters past the guards, smiling sweetly at them.” She hitched up her dress at the waist so the top ballooned over her belt and she gave Noor an exaggerated smile, batting her eyelashes in demonstration, then lay down again on the duvet.

“That’s how I carried them home. It took me months to send them, because of course all mail was censored by the Boche. When my father was released, he vowed: no matter how many years it takes, nor how many pay the price, we cannot allow France to be occupied by the Germans like a country of savages in Asia or Africa.”

After only three years of Occupation Odile’s passion was like Mr. Gandhi’s when he spoke of the hundred-year British occupation of India.

“So ever since, I’m a courier for Papa, after school. I bring Archambault’s messages, and probably I will bring yours too. Papa says I have a good memory—I only write down very long ones.”

The seventeen-year-old slip of a girl had been risking her life almost daily for three years on every road, at every Gestapo checkpoint.

“
Tiens
, if I call you and say ‘Keep in touch’ like an American in the cinema, it means you must check for a message behind the milk bottles at Flavien’s pawnshop in the Troisième arrondissement. And you can leave messages there for me.”

“With pleasure, Mademoiselle Odile,” said Noor gravely.

Odile paused only to draw a map in her copybook and mark the location of the letter drop, then her questions plunged off course. “You think Monsieur Gilbert is handsome?”

Noor hadn’t thought about it. “Mmmm, not really. He looks a little like Maurice Chevalier.”

“Oh, he has eyes for you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I think so. When he told the story of Lindbergh and how he wanted to be a pilot after that, he was watching to see if he was impressing you. But one can see you are not easily impressed.”

This could be true. Students at Afzal Manzil, the Sufi school, were prominent in their fields; discussions of philosophy, history, music, art and literature were common. Even in London, everyone she knew had impressive achievements, not only Gilbert.

“He doesn’t know me,” said Noor. “Besides, I am engaged.”

“Oho, you are engaged! Who is he? What is he like? Where is he?”

Noor sidestepped the entire flood with a spur-of-the-moment fabrication. “He’s a navy officer in London.”

“You have a photo?”

“No, Anne-Marie Régnier cannot carry photos of English navy officers.”

“Oh, of course. But that is so bad! It’s so difficult, no, not even to have one photo?”

“Yes, very difficult.”

Noor had carried a photo of Armand for a long time, until Uncle Tajuddin took it away from her in 1934. In 1939 it was replaced by another she had treasured, of Armand in his uniform during the Drôle de Guerre. It was left behind in her bedside drawer in England. But she needed no photograph to recall
Armand’s thick-lashed eyes, or the expressive tenderness of his octave-and-a-half-span hands.

To Odile she said, “You like Gilbert?”

“No, I detest him. I don’t know why, I just detest him. Always asking questions about everyone. He’s not well educated—his father is a postal clerk and his mother a housekeeper. You know his flat in Paris? Just now his wife had it renovated. I said to Papa, where did she get the money for new curtains?”

“What did your papa say?”

“Oh, Papa trusts him because London trusts him. And we have need of his
prouesse
, you know, his
spécialité
. In spring, when Prosper brought him here to meet us, it was once a week, then twice a week, now three times a week. He organizes landings, and boasts he has never once had an arrest at a drop zone. So many flights—Prosper says he thinks the invasion is coming very soon, maybe this summer.”

“Prosper said that?”

“Yes, I heard him tell Papa—don’t tell him I told you. Oh, but you must know anyway …”

Noor tried to look as if she did.

“You go to meet Prosper tomorrow, yes? He’s a great man. Gentle and strong at once. And he doesn’t trust Gilbert either.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Prosper returned last night by parachute and Gilbert, the great Gilbert, knew nothing about it!
Rien du tout!
“ She was obviously delighted by Gilbert’s discomfiture. “Prosper arranged his flight with another organizer, ‘Marc.’ And he dropped in a field Monsieur Gilbert did not arrange.” Her tone turned mocking. “
Eh bien
, I think maybe Gilbert’s feelings were hurt, the poor man.”

“It’s late,” said Noor. “Do you think Archambault and Marius came for the canisters?”

“I went to the stables to meet them after dinner,” said Odile. “Actually, to meet one of the students.”

Odile’s rapid stream snagged, and the moment of silence drew Noor’s attention as no words could have.

“Which student?” In a gentle voice.

“The most handsome, of course. Louis de Grémont is his name.”

“
De
Grémont?” Noor emphasized the aristocratic appellation to tease Odile into confiding more details.

“Yes, de Grémont.” A pause, then Odile said, “I had to tell him I can’t marry him till Vichy falls. He said that could be years and years from now!” She sighed, looked away as if embarrassed. “But I had to tell him—I heard his family’s factories are supplying the Germans every day.”

“Maybe they have to,” said Noor, intending comfort.

Odile shook her head sadly. “I could accept that. But I went to their home once and saw a portrait of Pétain on their mantelpiece.
C’est insupportable!
No, no, no.”

“But Louis is not a Pétainiste, himself, if he is helping us.”

“Non, but … it is too difficult.”

Noor sat down on her bed, next to Odile. After a moment Odile’s thoughts found a new outlet.

“What is your real name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I know it already. I heard you whisper it to Archambault. It’s Noor Khan, correct?”

“So you know. Why do you ask?”

Odile abandoned one strategy midstream and took up another. “Will you go with us to church on Sunday?” The idle-sounding question seemed to have slipped out. It lay on the duvet between them, awaiting Noor’s response.

“Certainly, if I am not required to transmit that day.”

Noor had often attended mass with Mother and fellow students at the lycée, abstaining only from communion. Jesus Christ was a venerable prophet in the line preceding Muhammad, peace be upon them, just not the final one. Besides, as she and Armand often discussed, at church, mosque or temple one was praying to the same force: the spirit of creation.

“Oh, I am glad,” said Odile. “I was so afraid you would say no.”

“And if I said no?”

“Why, that would mean you’re a Jew.”

This was no time to try educating Odile; better to take her ignorance of the existence of religions other than the Judeo-Christian in stride. All his years in France, Abbajaan believed he could interest Europeans in his version of Sufism, a Sufism that included all faiths. He’d enlarged his ideas with French ones, but there was never any reciprocity.

“And then?” Noor prompted.

“It would be so dangerous for us,” explained Odile. “London has sent us three Jews already, and Papa was so angry, he said they must be assigned to a separate network.”

“Why was Monsieur Hoogstraten angry?”

“He said London was being careless. They do not understand that a Jew can jeopardize everything—we could all be arrested.”

Noor seized the opportunity to probe further, and Odile confirmed the situation Émile Garry had described to Noor the night before.

“Can one visit a Jew in a prison camp, as you visited your papa at Verdun?”

“Oh,
mais non
, Anne-Marie! They find out who is writing to them or sending them parcels, they arrest them. Even the Red Cross cannot visit the Jews in camps, because they are not POWs. They are locked up by Pétain like criminals—and the Red Cross doesn’t visit criminals in prisons.”

Yet some intrepid social worker
had
managed to enter Drancy. Some Red Cross volunteer had taken Armand’s censored postcard out of Drancy.

Bless that stranger
.

“Have any Jews been released, as your father was?”

“Non, non. Jews are not prisoners of war—who knows what they are. All Jews are being sent east to work now, even the children.”

“Even children? Why? What work can children do?”

A moue of ignorance. “Children, old people, all being—how
you say?—‘evacuated.’ Resettled. My Latin professor is glad—Premier Laval says for every three Jews sent to Germany, Hitler will release one French POW, and my Latin professor’s son is captive in Germany.”

“But Israelites are French—French-born Jews.”

“Non, but Jews are all not-French. Monsieur Laval revoked the citizenship of all Israelites naturalized after 1927. Now they are just Jews again.
Émigrés
.”

“
Mon Dieu!
“ said Noor, heart plunging. Wasn’t nationality a basic right? How could it be taken away? She didn’t know if Armand’s father had been naturalized, whether Madame Lydia had ever become a French citizen. Questions she should have asked Armand, but she had never thought she would need to know. “But if their citizenship is revoked and they become foreigners, the Red Cross should be allowed to inspect their camps, no?”

Odile shook her head as if in wonder at Noor’s naïveté. She crouched by her bed and pulled. A wireless came into sight.

“I’ll try to get Honneur et Patrie or Radio London,” she said. “Better than listening to Radio Vichy’s propaganda.”

The dial turned slowly. The needle passed hisses and whistles till a cocksure voice announced each item of war news that Churchill wanted Hitler to know, then cricket news for the rest of the listeners.

They heard, “
Ici Londres. Les Français parlent aux Français
,” and the personal announcements began: “The rabbit will nurse the pig …” “Tonight the suspenders will find their buttons …” Each surreal, nonsense-sounding phrase conveying vital information to resistants, triggering sabotage operations or a landing reception, confirming departures and arrivals of resistants, arms and intelligence dispatches.