The Tiger Claw (32 page)

Armand believed Noor to be in London. But he would recognize her writing.

Allah, guide me to the answer soon
.

She glanced at her wristwatch. “It is now 11:00 hours. Everyone returns to the camp for roll call in the evening at 18:35 hours. Monsieur le Missionnaire has to be back then too, since he isn’t staying here tonight.”

Gabrielle went upstairs to prepare her parcel for the children; she had to be at the Café Vidrequin to serve lunch but would return after that. Noor took directions to the garage from Monsieur Durand before he went upstairs to feed his rabbits, “In case I have to say
adieu
to one of my gentle friends tonight. Now hurry back!” He raised the tips of her fingers to his papery lips.

Noor let herself out through the kitchen. “I’m going to visit Tante Lucille,” she said to Madame Gagné over her shoulder.

“You want me to find Monsieur le Missionnaire?”

Claude looked as if he had been about to embrace Noor as an old friend but then, embarrassed, barely shook the tips of her fingers.

“Monsieur Durand asked if you could find him.”

“Yes, but why did he send you?” He turned her hand over as if to verify he hadn’t sullied her with grease. His hair smelled of pomade,
gazogène
and diesel.

“Oh, I was coming this way. Going to see my aunt, you know.” Noor’s attempt to smile turned into a desperate grimace.

Claude wiped the dipstick he had used to check the oil in the open mandible of a black Citroën. Cars at various stages of cannibalization were overcrowded into the garage. Spare tools lay scattered on the dirt surface. Light poured through clerestory windows, dispelling the dimness at intervals.

“He said it’s very urgent.”

“Mademoiselle, if you think it’s urgent, then it is urgent for me.
Venez
…”

Noor let her hand nestle in the crook of his arm. Claude led her to a bench, wiped it carefully before allowing her to sit down. Someone shouted at him from the rear. He shouted in return but made no move to leave.

“Monsieur Durand asks for Monsieur le Missionnaire? Monsieur Durand should know that he should do nothing to attract Monsieur le Missionnaire’s attention in any way. And you too.”

His tone wavered halfway between brother and lover, like a puppy that paws and bites before it learns the power of embrace. Like Kabir. But oh, for Armand’s sake, let him understand!

“Claude,” she said, “about the news you gave us this morning? I think your German wanted to tell us more, but he couldn’t.”

“He’s not my German.”

Noor’s shrug conveyed a mote of scepticism. “Good. Well … Monsieur Durand thought that with so many prisoners leaving the camp tomorrow, what that German wanted to tell us was that there could be jobs there soon. So—Gabrielle would like to know if they need help with the officers’ laundry. But she must ask soon, before the jobs are filled by new prisoners. That is why I need you to find Monsieur le Missionnaire quickly.”

Noor could see Claude didn’t believe the story, plausible as it was. But she wasn’t going to tell him any other. Where was
the implicit understanding and trust she had felt in him from the moment she first rode on his luggage carrier?

Besides, she was ready with a one-hundred franc note to press in his hand.

He unfolded the note, looked at it, folded it up again and returned it. “Mademoiselle, I don’t know if I can find him. He could be gone to Paris, he could be anywhere. But I will go cycling for one hour. If I find him in the village somewhere, I will invite him to meet Monsieur Durand
chez
Madame Gagné. But after an hour …” He glanced over his shoulder in the direction where the shout had originated. “More than an hour and I could get a beating. I’m just an apprentice here.”

Noor leaned over and kissed Claude on the cheek. She fluttered her lashes ever so slightly. “
Merci, mon gallant chevalier
.”

Claude blushed.

As Noor left the garage, she was tempted, very tempted, to pick up a pair of pliers, a spanner or a wrench and slip it into her bag. But Gabrielle had warned: no weapons. Endangering the children or Monsieur le Missionnaire was not permissible.

Leave this theft undone
.

But what of Armand, of Gabrielle’s little niece and nephew, of Monsieur Durand’s fourteen relatives who might be on the list? She turned back.

Claude’s back was to her. Leaning into the car, he looked as if he were struggling in the open jaws of a great black whale.

Pliers were tools, not weapons. Noor snatched the pliers.

Just in case
.

It was past noon when Noor returned to the boarding house and climbed to her room beneath the eaves. In the skulking heat her blouse was sticking to burning, moist skin. Time was flying away.

Monsieur Durand poked his head from the room across the hall. “Has Claude gone to find Monsieur le Missionnaire?”

“Yes,” said Noor. “We must hope he can.”

“Gabrielle said she’ll return after lunch,” he reminded her. “She left you her parcel.”

Monsieur Durand brought in a parcel the size of a newborn. He placed it on the desk near the window and stood looking at the camp for a minute, lips moving in soundless prayer. Noor busied herself with the parcel till he nodded and left the room.

A note from Gabrielle:
Add your message—the sardines
. Also a sheet of brown paper and a ball of twine.

The sardine tin must be fake.
SOE
had sent so many spy devices into Europe. The false bottom slid away, revealing a small compartment.

What gift should she, could she, send?

I need to tell Armand I am here, that I love him always
.

Too many messages to fit in that tiny compartment. She was sorry for the seven years of waiting, for the intolerance of her family, she had never stopped loving him, she was as Rumi’s separated reed without him, he must know they still had a task they could only effect together: the return of a child’s soul in a better time to come.

But anonymity was safety—critical for so many. For Armand and for her mission. The sender must disappear into the message.

Allah, guide me
.

The parcel must be ready by the time Gabrielle returned. Yet the message Noor had come so far to deliver must be the perfect representation of her love, their love; some shape so powerful it would swallow the need for words. It should say, “I am near you. Have hope, my love. We will be together again.”

Anyone could say that. Her message must have some pattern distinctive as a radio operator’s fist to be a message that Armand would know could come only from Noor. It must speak of the coexistence of beauty with the beast, and the hope of transmuting suffering to beauty. She must send Armand some very small thing that could carry the weight of this desperate love and hope that had her standing by the bed, looking into the half-composed package with brimming eyes.

The day she returned to Paris, as the tram shuddered onto the boulevard de Boulogne and passed the very spot where she had said
adieu
to Armand—the
adieu
that should have been au
revoir
—she had yearned for some small thing that belonged to him, something she could have held at that moment; something eloquent with memories of shared experiences, intimate times. Was Armand feeling the same at this moment? Could she give him a part of herself?

She peeked into the parcel again. Where had Gabrielle found wool to knit a scarf? Where had she found a second, real tin of sardines, one of condensed milk, even a jar of honey and another of jam? She must have been saving them for the children for quite a while. Each container compressed nourishment, and included so much more—assurance, hope, love, and Gabrielle’s sadness and anger that she could not protect these little ones.

The attic room grew warmer from the fever of Noor’s thoughts. She unbuttoned the top of her blouse.

Of course, of course
.

What else was there? She had brought nothing of the past, Armand’s and her past, to France but this.

She unfastened the thin gold chain, held the crescent shape of her tiger claw up to the afternoon light.

Some foreknowledge must have counselled her to keep the pendant upon Anne-Marie Régnier’s person while divesting herself of every vestige, symbol and relic of Noor Khan. Armand knew its value—not only how precious it was to Noor, linking her always to India, her grandmother, Dadijaan, and the generations of women in her family who had worn it, but he would also know she gave him something to barter or sell, should his life depend on it.

For luck and courage
.

Translucent yellow, smooth except for minute cracks, the power of the inarticulate but deadly beast restrained by its golden frame. Ancient relic of the pride, it flashed and shimmered, illuminating the dingy attic. She enfolded it in her hand.

Let the ferocious energy of this beast cross the barrier of its extinction
.

She found a piece of white tissue paper in the desk drawer. She smoothed it carefully and wrote
Je t’aime toujours
. Beneath that she wrote
Adieu
, then crossed out the word and wrote beneath it,
Au revoir
.

She took a step back from her words, nodding as if Armand were present. That would reveal herself to him while still retaining a measure of purdah from the eyes of strangers.

Insh’allah, our past and future can be rewritten by these few words
.

Then Noor wrapped the tiger claw and gold chain in the tissue. She wrote
Armand Rivkin and Madame Lydia Rivkin
in small, precise letters on the tissue, wedged the packet into the tin and slid the false lid over it. She shook the tin to be sure it wouldn’t rattle, then placed it back in Gabrielle’s package.

Every woman who ever wore that pendant would have done the same.

She wrapped the knitted scarf around the lot, then wrapped it in the brown paper left by Gabrielle. She entwined the whole package till it bulged like a four-chambered thing.

She knocked on Gabrielle’s door, but she had not yet returned. So Noor took the parcel back to her own room, pulled her chair up to the window and raised her binoculars. She would need a telescope to find Armand in those cheerless soup distribution lines.

But she knew his face in memory. In memory, felt the curve of his chin graze her cheek.

Noor paced her attic room and the landing outside like a caged tigress. Monsieur le Missionnaire had returned. Monsieur Durand invited him courteously to come and see his rabbits. They had been in Monsieur Durand’s room a long time. With the door closed.

Poor Monsieur le Missionnaire. What an existence! What choice did that poor man have but to betray his friends?

The missionary emerged from Monsieur Durand’s room, ducked his bald head and sidled downstairs. In a trice Noor was at Monsieur Durand’s door.

“Will he do it? Can he bring us the list?”

“He promised to try. Come in. Sit down.”

Since there was but one chair, Noor sat on the bed. Monsieur Durand’s room had a window but no view of the camp.

“I told him Gabrielle’s letter to the children is wrapped in plastic at the bottom of the jam jar. He will explain to the children, as often as necessary. And he’ll look for your packet in the sardine can and take it to your husband.”

“He took the money?” Noor had given Monsieur Durand three hundred francs.

“Oh, yes.” Monsieur Durand’s eyes brightened for an instant. “And the pliers—thank you, mademoiselle.”

He opened the rabbits’ wooden cage and drew out the piebald one—scrawny by contrast with rabbits in England, but among the three, the rabbit with most flesh on him. Monsieur Durand stroked his black ears and sighed. He put the rabbit back in the cage and fastened the door.

“Where did he say the train was taking them?”

“‘East.’ That’s all he knows. There are rumours about ‘relocation in Poland’ and other rumours that the destination is Metz.”

“Why Metz?”

“It used to be in France, but it’s in Germany now.” His response fell far short of her question.

“Do you think he’ll report us to the Germans?”

“Not yet.” Monsieur Durand nodded towards the piebald rabbit. “I promised him I’d give him that one when he brings me the list.”

Pain crossed his face fleetingly.

“Monsieur le Missionnaire doesn’t think the list is final yet—avenue Foch prisoners are added last. I told him we don’t need names of the Gestapo’s prisoners, we just want the names of people to be sent from Drancy.” He paused, then said in a
musing tone, “He told me he doesn’t eat the rabbits I give him. He sells them to a black market restaurant so he can buy baptismal certificates.”

“Baptismal certificates?”

A knock at the door—Gabrielle. Punctual and full of questions. Monsieur Durand explained in a low voice.

What could his reference to baptismal certificates mean? If Armand pretended to be Christian, could it prevent the Germans from sending him to Germany? Once, long ago, Noor had asked timorously, intensely aware that it went against every tenet of Sufism ever propounded by Abbajaan’s school, if Armand might convert to Islam to please Uncle Tajuddin. Armand replied in an instant, “We profess what we know. I couldn’t be a converso. My mother converted to Judaism, but she has never felt it in every bone as my father did. She tries at Purim, at Rosh Hashanah, at Yom Kippur, but she didn’t grow up with it.”

Like Mother, joining in rituals while privately dismissing many tenets of Islam as superstition. Dadijaan had sniffed out Mother from their very first meeting—she could tell Mother had never truly converted, that her Christian notions had simply acquired a new label.

Some Jews were denying their faith, Armand had told her, because they found it inconvenient—but if he left his faith, it wouldn’t be to acquire another equally inconvenient one but because he’d lost faith that any Messiah could save the world. She couldn’t expect someone who had answered the question of conversion to Islam in such terms to now consider Christianity. Besides, neither he nor Madame Lydia had ever suggested Noor convert to Judaism. Like Abbajaan, their definition of secularism was the Gandhian one, which included rather than excluded all religions, saw all religions as worthy of respect.