The Tiger Claw (49 page)

Paris, France
Sunday, July 4, 1943

L
EAFY BRANCHES OBSCURED
the curlicued iron gates of shabby houses lining the rue de Jolivet. The tiny brass nameplate still read
Dunet
. Feverish and wool-headed, Noor took the stone-flagged path and knocked at the arched wooden door she remembered only too well.

What had possessed her to return, like a criminal to the scene of a crime? She was making an exception to
SOE
rules, but Montparnasse was a long distance from Suresnes and other areas where she might be recognized.

Some events in one’s life stay forever
.

And she had a problem again, a problem that needed a practical though illegal solution.

The woman framed in the doorway had faded a little in nine years. The mane of coarse hair falling to her elbows was greyer and sparser, but her face was the same, harsh with disappointments. Madame Dunet was a
sage-femme
, a midwife. Once a nurse at the American Hospital, she was competent as a physician.

Noor gave her name as Anne-Marie Régnier, and beyond noting that Mademoiselle Régnier was
sans rendezvous
—without appointment—no flicker of recognition came to the midwife’s eyes.

“Sunday is a busy day,” said Madame Dunet.

She was with a patient; Noor would have to wait.

A few copies of
Pariser Zeitung
in the dreary waiting room; Noor hadn’t known Madame Dunet spoke German. Four-year-old copies of the
Herald Tribune and Vogue
. No picture of Pétain on the wall. That only meant Madame Dunet was not a Pétainist; it didn’t mean she was a Gaullist or would sympathize with Allied secret agents.

Madame Dunet ushered a pale, middle-aged woman to the door and returned.

“Don’t ask me for a medical certificate for someone in a camp—I can’t give it to you. And if you’re Jewish, you can go to the Hôpital Rothschild. When was your last period?”

Madame Dunet showed Noor into her kitchen.

The same table at its centre.

“
Tiens
, now I remember you, girl! You asked if I could make the bleeding start again. You came with your sister—she wanted to be a doctor, oui? I remember her, because I too once wanted to be a doctor …” Madame threw back her hair and gave a rueful laugh. “And because you wore a long dress—a ball gown, maybe? Indian.”

That summer evening in 1934, Noor had worn a sari. Not because going to Madame Dunet’s was any celebration, but because Uncle Tajuddin, as soon as he discovered Noor’s love for Armand, decreed both his nieces must wear only saris and ghaghras. He didn’t order complete
burqa
as he didn’t want them mistaken for Arab girls, but a few months of Indian traditional garb, he said, would repel the desires of men like Armand.

“Maybe to hide it?” Madame Dunet demonstrated with her hands clasped low around an imaginary belly.

No, Noor’s stomach had been flat as ever that day. Although, if Uncle had kept her in her room much longer, she might have begun to show.

“You are still in France, girl?”

So Madame Dunet had no idea she had left France, ever been in London. Convenient; no explanations necessary.

Noor gave a heavy-lidded nod. “Oui, madame.”

“Have you come on behalf of your sister this time? Maybe a friend? Ah, the German soldiers are handsome, non?
Eh bien, ma fille—vous avez encore un petit problème?
Are you in trouble again?”

In trouble
. A fist clenched about Noor’s womb again at the words.

“Non, non,” she assured the midwife. “I came to you because I knew you would be discreet. It’s dangerous to be a foreigner in Paris these days. You were always more concerned about helping your friends than with the law.” She sneezed.

Madame Dunet inclined her grey head with a knowing wink. “
Mais, bien sûr
, girl. I am discreet—you remember.”

As if she could ever forget.

A fabric screen stood at one end of the kitchen, a screen like the one that separated praying women from men at La Mosquée. Madame Dunet motioned Noor behind it and pushed a garlic-smelling apron after her.

“Can a medical certificate help someone escape a camp?” Noor asked. Every button seemed to have grown larger than its hole.

“Sometimes. Britishers and Americans in Vittel and Besançon camps have successfully used them, but it only gets POWs and Jews into more trouble.” Madame Dunet continued talking. “Bombs and air raids—I barely slept last night. The Allies should invade, have their battles and let us all go back to normal. The cosmopolitans who used to come here when their daughters were in trouble have deserted Paris. But you are still here, girl …”

Madame Dunet’s kitchen table was cold beneath her thighs, the way it was on a night nine years before. The midwife made Noor breathe deeply, tapped her breastbone with two fingers, listened to her lungs, her cough, nodded when she said she was spitting up blood.

“Influenza,” she confirmed. “Maybe pneumonia.”

“My father died of influenza,” Noor blurted.

“He was a guru from India, yes? Your sister told me. Medicine is so backward in India—he probably had astrologers for doctors. Susceptibility runs in the blood.”

When Abbajaan caught influenza in 1926, it was an equal scourge in France, one that couldn’t be healed simply by faith healers. But the midwife was unlikely to comprehend any similarity between Indian astrologers and the
guérisseurs
.

Madame Dunet gave Noor a dose of belladonna and a vial of smuggled American Prontosil to be taken morning and evening. She directed Noor to gargle with bicarbonate of soda and drink an infusion of linden flowers.

“I gave you tisane of linden after your operation. It was effective, non?”

“Oui, madame,” said Noor, though nothing Madame Dunet had given her nine years ago had helped mitigate the shame draining her heart, weakening every limb.

What was torn from me that day was only flesh, less than love. No child asks to be born or to die; ours was no exception
.

Madame Dunet was speaking again, lecturing. She should listen politely.

“ … Mid-wives who help women deliver fine offspring understand the science of heredity. The arranged marriages of our ancestors produced a strong French race. But nowadays people do not acknowledge the value of blood.”

Heredity was the highest value of the Germans and Vichy. How could Madame Dunet still feel it was unavowed in the public mind?

“Madame Dunet, I thought you were a romantic,” said Noor with an effort.

“Romance? Romance led us to defeat by the Germans. Romance led to decadence, softness. We French alone among all of European colonists committed miscegenation with our colonials, tainted our blood with the black man’s and the Arab. Nothing like this would be possible in America, girl. When your mother married an Indian guru, in all of Europe the only country that would countenance their household was France.”

Her tone held shame rather than pride. Noor had never told Madame Dunet anything about Mother or her antecedents, nor had Madame Dunet and Mother ever met. Had Zaib told her? Before, afterwards, while waiting?

Anyway, it wasn’t true, for there were many other countries to which Abbajaan and Mother could have gone, but they didn’t. Where to begin correcting Madame?

Yet Madame Dunet didn’t appear a Pétainist, or a collaborator. Maybe she was simply someone categorical, accustomed to her categories.

She had come to Madame Dunet to be treated for influenza, not to be reminded of that painful day in 1934. It was highly indiscreet to mention a “stomach operation,” a crime for which mid-wives could be sent to the guillotine; Madame Dunet could still be arrested. The Vichy slogan
Travail, famille, patrie
glorifying work, family and country meant her operations were less acceptable than ever before.

“So when your mother came to see me, it was clear I had to help you.”

Noor had never told Mother about her “situation.” Surely there was some mistake.

“Mother came to you? Met you—here? Non, non. You mistake me for someone else, Madame.”

Mother, if she had known, would have begged Uncle’s permission for Noor and Armand to marry. And Noor didn’t want Mother begging Uncle for anything on her behalf.

“My sister made all the arrangements.”

Madame Dunet threw back her grey mane and laughed. “Your mother. A shrewd lady. Oh, she knew you’d never come if you knew
she
wanted you to do it, so she said she would give your sister the money. She said you’d never ask where it came from.”

Oh, Zaib! Though sworn to secrecy, Zaib had told Mother. Anger swept Noor. Anger at a previous version of herself—such ignorance!—such stupidity!

Madame Dunet was right, never once had Noor asked Zaib to explain how she collected the five thousand francs. And Mother, who always held the family purse strings, knew her eldest well. Knew Noor loathed discussing money, how she trusted Allah would bring it forth when necessary, never asked where money came from nor cared much where it went. How could she have been so juvenile, so very naive?

Madame Dunet’s hair splayed across her back as she hunched over the kitchen sink to wash her hands. The last time Noor saw her turn to that sink …

“I—I had no other way,” stammered Noor. She was back in that time of terror and clandestine inquiry.

She should not have come here today.

Soapy water slithered like mucous between the midwife’s hands. “Nonsense, mademoiselle. I tell all my Medeas there are alternatives. I told your mother what else could be done.”

That’s what Madame Dunet thought of Noor? No matter that it was her hands that performed the operation, Madame Dunet judged Noor a Medea. For Madame Dunet she was no longer Noor, with her own motives, constraints and love, but sorceress Medea. Armand was no longer Armand, who had affirmed her possession of her own body and stood by Noor whatever her decision, but a Jason abandoning his unborn child. But there had been no revenge or anger in Noor as in Medea, only sorrow.

What alternatives did Madame Dunet mean?

“She could have sent you to a convent. The nuns often raise ‘foundlings.’”

Noor’s head bowed into her open hands. No one had offered her such an alternative. Certainly Madame Dunet had not, nor had Mother.

“M-mother? She knew this?” Nine years ago Mother must have thought her not old enough, not intelligent enough, not worldly enough. Nine years ago Noor was not a person, just a problem.

“Of course. I discussed it with Madame Khan.”

Why would Mother have forgone such an alternative? Could she not have provided money for the nuns instead of money for Madame Dunet’s stomach operation?

“And Monsieur Khan.”

Noor looked up. Her tongue almost refused to obey. “With Uncle? You met my uncle?”

“I don’t know any uncle, non, non.”

Uncle would have shown Noor to the door immediately, had he known. Mercifully, Noor’s shame must have been kept from him.

“You met my brother then?”

“Oui, oui. A young man, very handsome. Your brother Monsieur Khan.”

“And what did my brother say?” She hoped to hear that Kabir had argued with Mother, argued to allow Noor to marry Armand immediately.

But Madame Dunet said, “Your brother was adamant—he didn’t want any niece or nephew of his baptized.”

Words like blows.

“But our mother was raised a Christian!” She was reeling; how little had she known Kabir.

“Oh, I was there when your brother reminded Madame Khan she was now a Muslim, even if his father had permitted her to go to church.”

Permitted? A thunderclap in her heart as anger and sorrow came together. How could Kabir say that? Abbajaan always encouraged Mother—and everyone else—to go to any house of worship that inspired awe. If she couldn’t comprehend the motives of a person with whom she shared two parents, was it possible to understand any other being?

We are all doomed to be exotic, each to one another
.

Madame Dunet wiped her hands and made a sucking sound against her teeth. Then, as if revealing the intricate arrangements of a great practical joke, she said, “Your mother and I understood one another. She understands blood too, you
know? I told her, not one more Jew should be allowed to enter the world.”

No anger any more; nausea washed through Noor. Mother was not present to be confronted with Madame’s revelation, Mother who always criticized Europeans and Indians for emphasizing bloodlines. Madame Dunet could not have stated such bigotry nine years ago as openly as today. As with Renée, Vichy had loosened the midwife’s tongue by sanctioning and blessing such statements. Her words were supplied by editorials in Je Suis Partout, maybe they had even altered the midwife’s memory of her own actions. She had arrived at a surreal defence of at least one of her operations, one of the few defences that would be acceptable to Vichy. How many more would she explain the same way?

And Madame Dunet was implicating her in a vile hatred of Jews, a hatred she presumed Noor and Mother shared with her.

Why did Madame Dunet need to tell Noor this, so many years later? Knowledge worming its way beneath Noor’s skin. Madame wanted her to acknowledge that if she had a half-Jewish child or had simply been married to a Jew, she could be deemed a Jew under current Vichy laws, laws more stringent and anti-Semitic than the Germans required. Wanted her to understand that the gates of Drancy and Compiègne and Pithiviers would stand waiting to devour her today had Madame not saved her.

No feeling of gratitude stirred in Noor. At this moment she wanted above all only to be with Armand, in his arms—man and woman in a phalanx of two.

Madame Dunet’s lips moved in a silent, carnivalesque movie. The dreary kitchen was dissolving into pointillist frames.

Was she Medea, or was she Noor? Was she but the effect of her family and its decisions for her, or was she Noor? She had not challenged their desires years ago. She had taken the safest route—name the crime, for crime it was then and now: to have Armand’s child aborted before it could come into the world. And Madame Dunet was correct, without her ministrations Noor might have been interned today, with Armand.