The Tiger Claw (66 page)

“It shall be provided,
mein liebchen
, it shall be provided. You shall write stories for my sons. And I will come to get them every month. See? I allow you everything in my power. In a few months, when the Jews and Americans are defeated, I promise we will be together.”

My heart is sandbagged against you; I promise we will not
.

When he was gone, Noor lay down on her filthy mattress. In waking dream she swam up Vogel’s bloodstream, all the way to his heart, yet had no trouble breathing. A corroding substance flowed from her at will, and at last that heart was dehusked and laid bare. Cold, cold, cold in Vogel’s heart, almost as cold as this cell, denser than night. Up she swam, looking for—what? A hidden chamber. There—what was inside?

A hunched shape, a small, woebegone face. A little boy sat in the bloodless chamber at the core of Vogel’s heart. Little boy with a grotesque, too-large head, with great big hands and feet bulging from tiny limbs. Little boy who cried, sans intermission, covering his face with those huge hands. Genitals small and
soft, penis receding, he cried from fear of the world, fear of anyone unlike himself, cried from terror because he would eventually die.

Almost, she felt sorry for him. But the wound from her dislocated shoulder had awakened, throbbing. Noor wakened too.

December moved in, taking up residence with Noor in her cell, and freezing the radiator.

Cold coiled in the bowl of her pelvis, turning shiver to quake as she lay beneath her blanket on the cot. Above, snow drifted against glass and bars. Shreds of thoughts, speculations, obsessions … some glue still held her fragments together.

The flap door clanged down.

“Herr Vogel …”

The rest, in rapid German, was senseless.

Silly hope reared inside; she reined it in.

The guard placed something on the thick, jutting tray, something invisible in the dingy half-light. Soup, probably. She didn’t care.

She heard a clunk and a small swish.

Yes, she did care.

Noor rolled onto her stomach, chained wrists before her, supported her weight on her elbows and knelt. Then shifted to extend the chain running between her wrists and ankles far enough for her to be seated. The clanking weight of the leg irons pulled her bare feet to the floor.

She slipped into prison clogs, shuffled across the cement floor.

A pad of onionskin. A scrawl that filled the whole first page. It said in French,
For Princess Noor—write children’s stories only. Signed, Ernst V
.

She had asked Vogel for paper, pen and ink, but had never expected to receive them. “Everything in my power,” Vogel had said.

She tucked the pad under her arm, then tested the pen nib against her thumb. She reached for the glass jar. Dark blue ink. She opened it, inhaled its metallic fragrance.

She carried the writing materials back to her cot. She lay down, eyes open to the gloom, gritting her teeth to stop their chattering. Mosquito thoughts buzzed.

Do it. Shouldn’t. Do it. Shouldn’t. Do it
.

Use initials, think the names, use false names, code names
.

She caterpillar-crawled to the edge, turned on her side to block the vision of any guard and examined the leg of the cot. A pipe welded to the metal frame. Hollow pipe with a steel cover.

If I can hide some of my writing, I will write what I want
.

She pressed a chain-link against the steel cover. Was it welded? Cold-numbed fingers exploring. No, not welded. Screwed on tightly.

Push, push with the edge of her manacles. Then with a chain-link. She wrapped her chain around the cover like a vise. It didn’t move. She pushed and turned in the dimness for hours, till she was wiping sweat from her eyes. She froze whenever she heard—or thought she heard—a movement at the peephole.

Deep breath. Attack the hollow leg again.

Night blackened the cell. Baying and barking outside, beyond the stone walls of the prison. Twice, the rush of a train passing very close. Noor grimaced and grunted on.

Finally, the steel cover moved a millimetre along its treads. By dawn, it loosened. She lay back, exhausted. Then, with her back to the door, she rolled up half the onionskin, poked it down the pipe-leg and, with an effort, screwed the cover on again.

Above her, the window brightened.

The guard was at the door. She unchained the manacles so Noor could use the toilet. Did not glance at the bed. Did not shout.

The flap door dropped for Noor’s morning bowl, sawdust bread. A single bulb lit the cell.

Begin, “Once upon a time there was a war … ?” No. She would write
une histoire
, not the kind her captor had in mind, for someone who might read her words in a time to come:

I am still here
.

I write, not because this story is more important than all others, but because I have so great a need to understand it. What I say is my truth and lies together, amalgam of memory and explication. I write in English, mostly, English being the one language left in the ring. Other languages often express my feelings better—French, Urdu, Hindustani. And perhaps in these languages I could have told and read you stories better than this, your mother’s story. But all my languages have been tainted by what we’ve said and done to one another in these years of war
.

When the flap door dropped that evening, Noor dragged her chains to it and placed two sheets on the open tray. On one she had written the Sufi tale about the attraction of a moth to a flame, on another the one about the young man who came knocking at his teacher’s door and when his teacher asked, “Who is there?” cried, “It is I,” and was told, “Come back when you are nobody.”

She could see the guard glance at the English writing then thrust the sheets in her pocket without examination. The pad of onionskin lay upon the cot behind Noor, but the guard didn’t enter to count its remaining pages.

So, the next day, Noor wrote another paragraph, and another:

With that first creation of Allah—the pen that Vogel has allowed me—poised over the ink pot, then over the page, I wonder what to call you. Little spirit never whispered into this world—une fée. In Urdu I would call you ruh. Feminine. Ma petite ruh. We all begin feminine in Al-ghayab, the invisible, before we enter our nameless bodies
.

I imagine you, ma petite, nine years old, looking much like me and as much like Armand, expectant and still trusting. Encourage my telling as any audience encourages a teller of tales, though I may tell what you may not condone, what you may not believe, or what you cannot bear to know. I write so you can see me, so Armand will appear again by the telling
.

PART SEVEN

CHAPTER 38

Pforzheim, Germany
August 14, 1944

V
OGEL GAVE ORDERS
for me to resume weekly exercise, but today was the first time I was granted it. The guard took me past other women’s cells into the courtyard. There, she took the chains from my feet and, truncheon in hand, led me around the compound. Fresh air on my face! Though I stumbled, I could have thrown my arms about her
.

I thought I had learned what prison means, but today I learned I had no idea what prison means, no idea at all
.

The walls and barred windows hulking over the courtyard looked alien, though they have housed my body since last November. A hand waved from a window a few cells from mine, a white handkerchief from another. Women I may have glimpsed in passing but never spoken to, never met—how kind! How very kind!

I squinted, looking for any movement at my cell window. The guard has never matched her count of pages given to me with the pages I give to Vogel, but she could, or Vogel could. What better time to search my cell?

Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to be returned to my cell. I, who a moment earlier wanted to be outside forever, now wished for nothing but the sight of these walls
.

When I shuffled back, the guard didn’t push me in and walk away—but came into the cell. To my amazement, she removed the shackles from my hands as well. She left me the knitting needle and more tickets to string, and then was gone
.

I held my hands out before me, tested each digit, massaged my wrists. I feel sure I was unshackled by order of the prison governor. He said he’d never kept a woman enchained as I was, not even a murderer. I don’t know if my unshackling is a respite for a few hours or whether I dare hope for a more kindly regime
.

I waited at least an hour before opening my khazana, my treasure chest in the leg of my cot. The sheets were still there. I write so small, using initials for code names; they reveal a tenth of my thoughts, but enough
.

Ma petite, I must not write any more
.

Yet how can I keep these pages? Keep them for you?

The pipes that bring me news in Morse run between two brick walls. Hands free, I worked all night, all night in the white-hot haste of desperation. By morning I had scooped a hole in one corner with the knitting needle. A hole no larger than the circle between thumb and forefinger, but enough to poke my papers one at a time between the cell walls. When I get some soup, I’ll make a paste of all the plaster chips I’ve saved and it will camouflage the hole. The Germans will have to tear down the walls before they find them
.

We are still together, ma petite. I continue speaking to your spirit as I did in the dungeon, only in my mind
.

My manacles and leg irons were replaced this morning. I was unenchained only for a single night. And in the afternoon the governor himself brought my paper and ink. He stood looking at me a long time in silence. I cannot imagine how I looked to him
.

“I telephoned Herr Vogel in Paris,” he said eventually, struggling to find the right words in French. “I asked if I could remove your chains after so many months. I told him I never kept women in
chains. Sometimes in the dungeon, but not in chains. But Herr Vogel said there is a punishment order in your file. For attempting to escape, ja?” He shook his head regretfully. “He said already he has made too many exceptions in your case.” Here he gestured at the pen and paper. “Remember, children’s stories only,” he said—and gave a little bow
.

Even the Nazis cannot fully eradicate compassion and kindness
.

I disobey him and write to you once more, against all resolutions, against all caution. I want you to know somehow—I don’t know how or when—all I have said, all I have thought, all these months
.

Talking to you distracts me from my daily fears, but leads me back to open questions. I want to know, I need to know: who told Cartaud and Vogel they would find a radio and an operator at the boulevard Richard Wallace apartment?

Was it my phone call to Odile? To trace it, the Gestapo had to know “Sablons 80.04” before I arrived for my transmission. The switchboard operator could have had it on a list of numbers under surveillance. How did they get it?

Major Boddington? Perhaps, when he told me in July that he had not given anyone my number, he meant “no one so far.” He could have given Gilbert my telephone number afterwards. I can’t believe he would tell it to Gilbert after I had refused to work with that salaud, but maybe he did
.

The Gestapo could have triangulated on my transmission from detection vans, but how had they known the area a van should roam that day? Chance? I made my decision the night before and told no one, not Odile, not Josianne, that I would not be transmitting as usual from Suresnes
.

Odile knew the address at boulevard Richard Wallace, but she would never have given me away—intentionally. But oh, she is such a little chatterbox. To whom might she have spoken? Viennot? Viennot knew my transmission times, but none of my addresses. Émile? Monique? Renée? They didn’t know the new apartment either
.

I have no proof, only suspicions. Polygamous conjectures that lead to more confusion
.

Did Armand feel as I did when he was arrested? I felt panic, like a cornered animal; anger, like a wounded tigress.