The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  “You work for the Nazis, yes?”

  “It’s not.”

  “Do you, or do you not?”

  “I do, but it is not that—”

  “All the more reason for me not to listen to you.”

  “I had no choice but to do what I did! They killed everyone I knew. I’m a Jew and a homosexual.” Spiegelman’s heart fell a thousand meters to land somewhere forbidden, the nameless cell where he locked up and banished everything he wanted most. “Do you know what that means? A death sentence. They killed my family, my parents. I have one skill I’ve used all my life to get by. I am not proud of what I am or what I’ve done, but I am trying to work with what I have.”

  Aubrion took his feet off the table, ran a hand across his face. “All right.”

  “All right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean—”

  “Is this room bugged?”

  Spiegelman shook his head. “It’s one of two rooms in the base that aren’t.”

  “Tell me what you want from me, Spiegelman.”

  “I want to give you my skill.”

  “Linguistic ventriloquy.”

  “Yes.” Spiegelman shivered, though the room was warm. He felt racked with fever. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I’ve read some short pieces,” said Aubrion, and the passion with which he spoke was like standing naked in a storm. Spiegelman felt he must catch the rain in his hands or drown. “But I’ve never actually seen anyone do it.”

  “I can show you. Please, give me a chance to show you.”

  “Are you any good?”

  Spiegelman’s eyes were clear. “I am the best there is.”

  17 DAYS TO PRINT

  FIRST SIGN OF MORNING

  The Pyromaniac

  WE SAT AROUND a table in the basement of the FI headquarters, all six of us, plus René Noël, who sat at the edge of the circle and feigned skepticism. I knew, even then, that Noël thought it important to remain skeptical at every stage of Aubrion’s plans: not quite blunting Aubrion’s creativity, but not allowing it to leave the house unsupervised, either. Nevertheless, even the cautious Noël felt that something tremendous was happening here.

  Before our meeting, he’d asked the men and women of the FI who normally wrote in the basement to take their work upstairs; though everyone knew we were doing something dangerously mad, Noël did not want to trouble them with the details, nor to give them information they could reveal under interrogation. But I believe that was not his sole motivation: indeed, I think Noël felt a bit possessive of Faux Soir. He’d sent his daughters to America before the war; it was the way of things, you know, and he would never see how tall and bright they might become. This caper—this mad, mad plan—might prove his only chance to watch his child grow up. He might only have a day, just a minute’s pride before the German bullet, but that would be enough for René Noël.

  Noël was not alone in his excitement. The immensity of what we were about to do was an almost visceral presence in the room, sitting among us like a kingly companion. I leaned backward in my chair, watching the others, eating a pastry Aubrion had bought me: a peach tart, the likes of which I hadn’t tasted in over a year. Tarcovich was chain-smoking cheap cigarettes; Victor kept scribbling on the notepad in front of him; Mullier was eating an apple; Spiegelman was still, fighting to disappear. To the rest of us, David Spiegelman was somewhat of a curiosity: the twice-turned-traitor, the homosexual Jew, the man who spun magic with his pen. In a room of misfits, he was the oddest of the bunch. And even though he sat quiet and unmoving, he was as eager as any of us. We had done nothing, not a thing in our lives to rival what we were about to do here. I watched the others, and so did Aubrion, who was not sitting but pacing with a bit of chalk in his hand.

  “I am going to start with some bad news.” Aubrion rolled the chalk between his hands, dusting them in white. The room was darker than usual, one of the sparse lightbulbs that hung from the ceiling having burned out last evening. On the floor above us, the men and women of the resistance, journalists and propagandists, tapped at their typewriters. Their click-click-click-snaps bounced off the walls like chattering teeth. “The bad news is—”

  “Germany has invaded Belgium?” said Tarcovich.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Oh, so compared to what you’re about to tell us, that is the good news.” Tarcovich blew a smoke ring. “Comforting to know.”

  “Let him talk.” Mullier punctuated this grunt with an enormous bite of his apple.

  “The bad news,” Aubrion continued, “is that August Wolff could only commit to five thousand francs—”

  “Five thousand?” said Victor.

  “Damn,” muttered Tarcovich.

  “—so we will have to procure most of the supplies ourselves.”

  Spiegelman’s voice was soft. We looked at him, and he shrank under our scrutiny. Aubrion had warned us that Spiegelman would be there, promising we could trust him. Secrets were the only reliable currency, in those days, and Spiegelman had filled Aubrion’s pockets with a great many. But we were still measuring him, still on our guard. I think Spiegelman detected our unease, for he kept his eyes down.

  “The good news,” said Aubrion, “is that we will have to procure most of the supplies ourselves. If Wolff is buying us fewer things, we’re giving him fewer opportunities to keep track of how much material we’re using or to breathe down our necks.” He tossed the chalk into his other hand. “August Wolff,” he said, mimicking the voice of the Radio Bruxelles announcer. “Doesn’t he sound like a villain of something?”

  “He is a villain of something,” Tarcovich said flatly.

  “So!” Aubrion made a note on a chalkboard. “To start, we’ll need forty-five thousand francs, two hundred thousand sheets of paper, two hundred barrels of ink, and a print factory. Any ideas?”

  “To start,” said Tarcovich, shaking her head.

  “I used to work for a man,” said Mullier. “Name of Wellens.”

  “Ferdinand Wellens?” said Victor.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who is he?” asked Aubrion.

  Victor pulled off his glasses and answered for Mullier. “He owns several of the larger presses in Belgium, and one in France, too, I believe. He’s a businessman, mostly.”

  “Not a good one.” Mullier scratched his chin, calculating. I wondered—as did Aubrion, I’m sure—whether Mullier had sabotaged the man’s reputation. “But he might know how to get paper and ink.”

  Aubrion wrote his name on the blackboard. “We have seventeen days, Theo. We need to do better than ‘might.’ Is he sympathetic to the cause?”

  “He’s not against it.”

  The professor explained that Wellens was Catholic. “There is a warrant for his arrest which has never been filed. We can use this vulnerability as leverage, if the need arises.”

  “And this is someone you know?” Aubrion asked Mullier. “Who knows you?”

  “We...know each other,” said Mullier vaguely, and what should have been the simplest of sentences was somehow the most mysterious thing I had ever heard him say.

  “Contact him and let me know what he says, will you?” Aubrion said.

  Mullier nodded and took another bite of his apple. A chunk landed in his beard. I formed a compelling theory on why Mullier had never married.

  “Anyone else?” asked Aubrion.

  “I have an idea about where you can get the funds,” said Spiegelman.

  The others looked at him with some suspicion. I’ll admit that I did the same.

  “Where’s that?” said Aubrion.

  “There’s a judge by the name of Andree Grandjean. She’s known as a puppeteer, someone who knows which strings to pull. She’s raised thousands of francs for orphans, refugees, the like. I’ve heard rumors that she has no love for the Nazis.
”

  “What evidence do we have?”

  “She hasn’t taken a political prisoner since 1940. She sends them all to a courthouse in northern Brussels.”

  “Good enough.” Aubrion pointed at Victor with his chalk. “Do you know anything about her, Martin?”

  “Why would he know?” asked Mullier.

  Tarcovich laughed. “We’ve found the only person on the continent who hasn’t read Victor’s file. His whole business is to know things.”

  “Andree Grandjean sounds vaguely familiar, Marc,” said Victor. “I can write a report.”

  “Yes, do some digging.” Aubrion wrote her name on the board. “See if you can find anything. If she hates the Nazis, she has reasons, and if she has reasons, she has secrets.”

  “Indubitably,” said Victor. Martin Victor was the sort of person who said “indubitably.”

  “In the meantime, Madame Tarcovich...”

  Tarcovich lit a cigarette. “Can I help you?”

  “I want you to pay a visit to Madame Grandjean and see what you can do with her.”

  “I’m sure I can do a lot with her.”

  “She might listen to a woman,” said Aubrion.

  “But what am I to say to her?”

  “Give her a brief sketch of what we’re doing and see if she’s interested. She’s a judge, isn’t she?”

  “That is correct,” said Spiegelman.

  “A woman judge. That means she’s ambitious. Frame it as a fun challenge. You know how it goes.”

  “A fun challenge,” Lada said, flatly.

  Aubrion grew defensive. “Lada, we are planning to light the brightest fire Belgium has ever seen—”

  “Yes. And then to snuff it out immediately.”

  “Excellent! You’ve come across a fantastic way not to pitch it to her. Offer her money, recognition, anything. I have faith in you.” Aubrion rocked back and forth on his heels. “What am I missing, what am I missing?—Oh, yes. Distribution points. Victor, do you have any ideas on how to get a list of all the distribution points in the country?”

  “You mean newsstands?” said Victor.

  “I mean newsstands, kiosks, stores, shops, carts. Anywhere that anyone can buy a paper. I need to know who’s getting what, and how they’re doing it.”

  “That information is tightly regulated by the Germans.”

  “I know it is.”

  Victor tapped a finger against the table. “A black-market auction is happening next week. It’s invitation only, the best stuff in Belgium, things we couldn’t even imagine. If such a list exists, we might be able to purchase it there.”

  “No Nazi presence?” asked Tarcovich.

  “There might be a few German officials, but no one will be checking identification papers. I attended a similar auction a few months ago. It wasn’t as secure as you might think.”

  “Spiegelman!” said Aubrion. In his enthusiasm, he dropped his chalk, which broke into three pieces. “We need an invitation to the auction.”

  “Done,” replied Spiegelman, eager to solidify his commitment.

  Aubrion turned to me, smiling. “I have a task for you, as well, Gamin.”

  My heart gave a cry of excitement. “What is it, monsieur?” In truth, I had not expected him to include me. I’d been flattered that Noël had not kicked me out, and astonished that I hadn’t been dismissed when the meeting began. But participation had seemed unlikely.

  “At the end of all this,” said Aubrion, “when everything has been put in motion, we’re going to need a fire.” I stood tall and brave in the company of my heroes. “A big one.”

  17 DAYS TO PRINT

  AFTERNOON

  The Saboteur

  “MONSIEUR MULLIER!” SAID WELLENS, embracing Theo. Theo Mullier accepted the gesture the way a child accepts an oversized sweater at Christmas. Still grinning, Wellens turned his attention to Aubrion. “And who is this fellow?”

  “I am Marc Aubrion.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir, pleased to meet you.”

  The three were in Wellens’s office, at the largest print factory in the country. Earlier that day, Aubrion had volunteered to accompany Mullier to Wellens’s factory “to be of help wherever needed”; the truth of it was that Aubrion, a shameless voyeur, could not pass up a chance to see these two men attempt to hold a conversation. Wellens smiled at Theo Mullier as though he were seeing someone else entirely, not this gaunt, unsettling specter. Mullier, who was not one for smiling, watched Ferdinand Wellens with clinical suspicion. It unnerved Aubrion, the way Mullier’s eyes moved in his impassive face, as though his skin were molded from some immovable clay and only his eyes were human.

  Wellens shouted to be heard over the mechanical groans of the presses outside his office door. “It’s been years, hasn’t it, Mullier?” Wellens clasped Theo’s hand. “So many years.”

  “It has,” said Mullier.

  With a start, Wellens stepped back, blinking at Mullier and Aubrion from behind his large, round eyeglasses. “Remind me, how many years has it been? And, come to think of it, how do I know you in the first place?”

  As Aubrion later discovered, Theo Mullier had not been entirely truthful when he’d mentioned that he once “worked” for Ferdinand Wellens—poor Wellens, who was desperate even for business with the FI. They knew each other because Mullier had sabotaged Wellens’s reputation.

  We have intelligence reports, an FI agent wrote to Mullier at the start of the war, suggesting that a man by the name of Ferdinand Wellens is doing business with the Nazis. Your task is to make him unattractive to these clients.

  Mullier was just as good at making others seem unattractive as he was at appearing unattractive himself. For two weeks, he followed Wellens wherever the man went, taking note of whom he saw, what he did, what he ate, where he slept. Mullier was thorough, obsessive, keeping track of how long it took Wellens to bathe, counting how many steps he paced. He watched Wellens botch two deals with potential customers because Wellens couldn’t remember who wanted the pornographic leaflets and who wanted the candy bar ads; he watched Wellens close a third deal because the customer felt so sorry for Wellens that he couldn’t help but do business with the man. I can see why the Nazis like him, Mullier wrote to Noël. He’s an idiot.

  But he was an idiot with a chronic problem: Catholicism. Ferdinand Wellens was profoundly religious. He went to church every Wednesday and Sunday. It was the only thing Wellens did well, sneaking out of his apartment to escape the Nazis’ notice and returning before anyone realized he’d been gone. Of course, the Nazis didn’t forbid Catholicism, not exactly, but they frowned on it, particularly among their more public devotees. Wellens was just public enough for it to matter.

  So, three weeks after the FI’s assignment, Mullier followed Wellens to church. When all the congregants had gone inside, Mullier hobbled around to the back, where Wellens and the priest always exited after mass. He took a bucket of soapy water from where he’d hidden it in a patch of shrubbery. Careful that no one saw what he was up to, Mullier poured the bucket across the church steps. Then, he waited.

  The priest walked out first, as he always did. He turned around, said something to Wellens, laughed, hiked up his priestly robes, and performed a maneuver Mullier had not seen outside the Royal Brussels Ballet. Wellens watched, eyes widening behind his round spectacles, as the priest slipped, his leg rising so that his foot was above his head. With a shout, Wellens reached for the priest, grabbing his hand just as the man began to fall.

  Armed with a camera, Mullier sprang from the bushes. By that time, the priest’s foot had been returned to its proper place on the ground. A viewer who was aware of the backstory would have seen the photograph for what it was: a panicked congregant preventing a man of the cloth from meeting an undignified end on a set of steps. But without backstory, the photograph looked entirely different: i
t seemed to show a tender moment between Wellens and the priest, the former having reached out to grab the hand of the latter, perhaps in a moment of religious fervor. Mullier snapped the photograph and ran, leaving the two, blinking and nonplussed, on the steps of the church.

  The next day, the photograph was mailed in a perfumed envelope to the Nazi High Command. The Nazis stopped doing business with Wellens hours later. Wellens was spared a bullet by a German bureaucrat who was raised Catholic, who thus “forgot” to file Wellens’s warrant. The photograph, for its part, still hangs on the wall of the FI headquarters.

  Aubrion cleared his throat. “Um, Monsieur Wellens—”

  “Wellens, the Front de l’Indépendance wants to do business with you,” Mullier interrupted. “We are in the middle of a propaganda campaign against the Nazis.”

  “Oh, a campaign.” Lines wrinkled Wellens’s high forehead, like em-dashes on old paper. “That is exciting. What kind of campaign is it?”

  His wary gaze never straying from Wellens’s face, Mullier sat at the businessman’s desk. Wellens had, as I mentioned, worked for the Nazis. That did not bother Aubrion much, for many people accepted German coin for their labors; even the Belgian government itself collaborated, you will recall. But Mullier, who was not so forgiving, suspected more nefarious motives.

  The office was not furnished for three, so Aubrion had to stand near the door. It was there he watched Ferdinand Wellens, this odd, tectonic figure of a man, the sort of character Aubrion couldn’t write about for fear of no one believing he existed.

  “We are printing an anti-Nazi newspaper,” Mullier said to Wellens.

  “Interesting.” Wellens pronounced each syllable individually, pausing before the next, as though the word were a sentence. “How many copies?”

  “Fifty thousand,” said Mullier.

  Wellens whistled.

  Aubrion added, “We have need of supplies.”

  “Let me think.” Wellens rubbed his forehead. He was dressed in a gray suit and black coat, even though the factory was warm with the breath of the presses. His clothes were a size too large for him, and his shoes scuffed the floor as he paced. He paces three steps in front of him, turns, and paces four steps the other way, Mullier had reported to the FI, years before. And it was still true. Theo Mullier cataloged everything about his potential targets; a hairline fracture could become a chasm in the right hands. “You will need around two hundred thousand sheets of paper,” said Wellens, “and two hundred barrels of ink?”