Grandjean stood to one side of the cell, beckoning Tarcovich toward the entrance. Her every movement was strictly economical. “Are you going to ask to approach the bench again?” The judge’s eyes brightened.
“Very amusing.” Tarcovich felt her attention slipping, landing somewhere in this woman’s curls. She knew she must be imagining it, the slight twist of Grandjean’s lips, teasing her—flirting with her? Knowing the truth was impossible, even dangerous. Tarcovich had lost count of the miscalculations she’d made over the years, women whose friendliness she had mistaken for something else, and then angry suitors, strange run-ins with police.
“The FI is a blunt instrument, Lada,” Grandjean said. “You drive cars into poultry markets. I prefer to work with a bit more finesse.” The judge smiled. She had a small gap between her front teeth. “The way you and the FI do things is a crime, but I’m not going to be the one to punish you.”
“How comforting. You should read bedtime stories to children for a living.”
And then, like the last trick in a magic show, Grandjean’s smile disappeared. “I would if there were any bedtime stories left to read. Now, please leave. Your superiors will want to know that it didn’t work.”
* * *
“It didn’t work.” We looked up, startled to see Tarcovich back at the FI base so soon. Sinking into a chair, she pulled off her scarf and tossed it onto a nearby typewriter. I’d been helping René Noël fix one of the printing presses in the basement of the FI headquarters, and at his nod, I fetched Tarcovich a glass of brandy. “We will have to try something else.”
“So we’re to understand,” said Mullier, his voice low and dangerous, “that she let you out with no questions at all?” The last part of his sentence dissolved into an exhalation.
“I don’t know. What do you want from me, Mullier? I did not ask, but she obviously had her people check up on me.” Tarcovich drained her glass. She put it down, rubbed her swollen eyes. I could see, and everyone else could see, that Tarcovich was exhausted. “I know it’s hard for you, but be smart. This is a woman with countless resources. If she had any reason to suspect I might be with the Germans, I would be decomposing right now.”
“Damn.” Aubrion got up from his perch at the table, picking up a broken piece of chalk. He rolled it around, a misshapen tooth in his hand. Though it was early in the evening, and I could still hear people typing and yelling to each other upstairs, we were worn out, wound up. The tension made me shift in my seat. Aubrion said, “Did you find anything on her, Victor?”
“Grandjean? Nothing.” Victor flipped through his notebook like a magician showing his hand of cards after a trick that didn’t work. Above us, a lightbulb flickered and went out.
“I thought we replaced that,” said Aubrion.
“With what budget?” Noël retorted.
Victor wiped his glasses on his coat. “We will have to start exploring other avenues to raise money. That is my recommendation. Whatever Grandjean is engaged in, she’s doing a masterful job keeping it secret—or she’s not actually engaged in anything. I had a colleague before the war who studied the contexts in which people feel compelled to keep secrets. There’s a paper on it, if any of you’d like to read it.”
“I’m sure we’re all clamoring for a copy,” said Tarcovich.
I sat up straight, a rare occurrence for me. “Um, monsieur?”
Everyone looked at me. I blushed at the attention. I was conscious of their irritation at having been interrupted—except for Aubrion, of course, who addressed me the way he would’ve addressed anyone.
“Yes, Gamin?” he said.
“Are you talking about Judge Andree Grandjean?”
Aubrion’s brow furrowed. “We are. Why?”
“Well, monsieur, I was just thinking—you were talking about the stuff she’s doing, you see, and vulner—vulnerability—”
Aubrion pointed at me with his chalk. “Do you know something?”
“It’s just—there’s some talk—she’s been helping the odd ones get out of Belgium.”
“The odd ones?”
My blush deepened. “You know.” I glanced at Tarcovich, regretting it immediately.
Aubrion put down his chalk and climbed back onto the table. He sat back, looked up in thought, then started to laugh the way he did when he had an idea. The laugh possessed him, taking over his body like a fever. “Oh, God. The fates are so kind.”
“I am lost,” said Mullier.
“Elaborate?” said Victor.
“She helps the queers,” I whispered.
“We can hear, you know,” Tarcovich said dryly.
“Do you happen to know whether she is one herself?” asked Aubrion.
“A queer? Everyone assumes so, monsieur.”
With my words, I had a child’s sense that I had done something wrong, and this was jarring, for I had not felt like a child in some time. An apology formed on my lips, never quite materializing. A crushing desire to expose my secret filled me up until I was bursting with it.
“It’s so perfect.” Standing up, Aubrion went to write something on the blackboard, then seemed to realize he didn’t know what to write. “Isn’t it? It is so perfect.”
“Some of us do not understand why it’s so perfect, Marc,” said Noël.
“It means Lada can try again.”
“Well, I think I am going to retire for the night.” Tarcovich stood up, off-balance. She looked around with prisoner eyes as though she needed to get outside, desperate to go somewhere that wasn’t here. “Good night, all.”
“Lada—”
“Yes, Marc?”
“I just—”
“Do not start any sentences with ‘I just’ right now,” said Tarcovich, furious with sorrow, folded up between her duty and her desires, a flower pressed into a book but left there too long. “I can assure you they aren’t appropriate. I’m finished.”
“With the job?”
“With this part of the job. Find some other way to get your funds.”
Aubrion looked puzzled. “Are you upset?”
“Oh, Marc.” Tarcovich’s eyes had turned to glass, and she laughed. Shaking her head, she walked over to Aubrion and kissed his cheek. “I love you. I know you do not understand what you’re asking me to do, so I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. Please don’t make me regret that.”
“You have a chance to help us,” said Aubrion.
“Marc, let it go,” warned Noël.
“You do not understand!” The sentence started out innocently enough, but broke halfway through, splintering into a shriek. Tarcovich struggled to collect its ashes. “You can’t be arrested and executed for what you are, Marc.”
“Of course I can. They’d kill me for being part of the FI—”
“You weren’t born a part of the FI! I was born to be arrested and executed, don’t you see? They are putting the Jews on trains to death camps, for God’s sake, and even being a Jew is better than being what I am. At least the Jews have each other, a community, a people. They have someone to hold hands with as they’re led off to die. What do I have?”
“You—”
“If you wanted to go out and fuck someone tonight, Aubrion, if you felt like having someone’s skin against yours one more time before we’re all executed for this farce, you could do that. A Jew could do that. Gamin is a child and he could do that.” I blushed, praying to disappear. “But could I? Could I ever?”
Tarcovich stopped only because she ran out of breath. Gasping, breathless in the stale air and the click-click-click of fresh words, she crumpled in her chair.
I have stored this memory in my pocket for decades. The words that passed between Tarcovich and Aubrion have always stayed the same, but their meanings have sharpened as I have aged. To love is to brave something uncharted; I have never had such courage, so I canno
t comprehend how delicate it must be to love, or how beautiful, like watching the sun set fire to the stained-glass windows of an old church. And for Lada, it was different, because every act of love was a decision and a risk: whether to touch her lover’s hand in public, whether her whispers brought her too close to the woman’s ear, whether to allow herself those feelings in the first place. To make such decisions at all must have felt impossible, much less in the face of her own death. I’d never seen Lada Tarcovich cry; it was clear she didn’t want us to see her cry then. But we are no match for ourselves, I’ve learned, so she put her face in her hands, her shoulders trembling.
Our sudden quiet accentuated the noises of the room: the hum of the lightbulbs, the typewriters overhead, someone upstairs shouting about an idea they’d just had, a leaky pipe gurgling behind the stone walls. The resistance breathed around us.
When Aubrion broke the silence, it startled everyone. “You have a chance to turn this into something good.”
Tarcovich looked up, her face and eyes wretched with sorrow. “It is something good, to me.” She clutched her chest. “That’s what I am saying. You want me to use it as a deception, a weapon.”
“All right, all right.” René Noël stood between Aubrion and Tarcovich with his hands raised. “It is late. We’re all overwhelmed. Let’s adjourn this meeting and think things over for a while, eh? What do you say, Marc? Lada?” Marc nodded; Lada did not. “All right, then! Everyone out. Go on, go on.” Noël shooed us from the basement like a put-upon mother. “Let’s all get some sleep, shall we?”
We left the basement, all of us except Tarcovich. I remember so clearly that I was sad and afraid, though I could not articulate why; I could feel that the others were, too. So we let Noël herd us along, treating us like children. At that moment, I think, it was a welcome change.
14 DAYS TO PRINT
SHORTLY BEFORE DAWN
The Dybbuk
WOLFF SAW MOST clearly with the lights off. He lay flat on the wooden floor of his office with his head pillowed by a stack of books, letting the dark wash the sting of yesterday’s fire from his eyes. Smoke from the print factory still clung to his hair. His watch ticked. Breathing slowly, the Gruppenführer slid the watch from his arm, then rubbed his wrist like a prisoner freed from his manacles. His mouth tasted of ash; he would never be rid of it. Upon returning to the base, Wolff had drunk whiskey, sherry, water, beer, anything to cleanse the black chalk from his throat, filling himself until he was ill. But it lingered. Each time he inhaled, the taste of books accused him of murder.
The Gruppenführer welcomed the discomfort, breathing through the ache in his bones on the floor. It shielded him from his thoughts. To be thoughtless is to be caught off balance, he wrote in his memos that morning. But he wanted the world to tilt a little, to let him slide where he pleased. The neat rows of paperwork and black boots—the neat piles of jewelry after the executions—had begun to tire him.
Spiegelman, who never knocked, opened the door without preamble. He switched on a light. The Gruppenführer rolled over and shielded his eyes.
“You sent for me,” said Spiegelman. He paused, then said, “Are you quite all right?”
“I did. I am.” Still rubbing his eyes, Wolff stood on shaky legs and ambled over to his desk. He released his body into his chair. “I wanted to speak with you. Do you know the last recorded incident of a member of the Schutzstaffel lodging a complaint with the Party?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Do you know—”
“I believe that’s something you should ask Manning.”
The spots cleared from Wolff’s vision. Spiegelman was standing near the doorway, his arms close to his body, his back stiff. Wolff never liked how the man walked, his gait crooked with guilt. It made Wolff feel as though he too had sinned.
Wolff gestured at the chair across from him. “Please, have a seat.”
“I’d prefer to stand.”
“Very well.” He held out his hands. “How long since the last complaint? Surely you can guess.”
“I don’t know. Four months ago? Six?”
“It was three years ago. Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Hausser was leading one of the, ah, the death squads.” The name always seemed unnecessarily vulgar to Wolff. “He complained that his soldiers were committing suicide after being ordered to fire on Jewish women and children. Do you know what he was told? To outlaw suicide.”
Spiegelman flinched. “Do you have an assignment for me, Gruppenführer?”
“It is not that people don’t have complaints, you see. Just that we do not complain.”
“Gruppenführer, I do not think it’s appropriate for me to—”
“Please do not talk.” Wolff was surprised at the desperation in his voice. “Listen to me.”
“Fine,” Spiegelman said cautiously. Keeping his eyes on Wolff, he sat down.
A headache was blossoming behind Wolff’s eyes. The Gruppenführer wanted nothing more than to switch off the lights again. His own words felt slippery, greased with hidden meanings he could not detect.
“Not many people know what Heinrich Himmler studied as a young man at the Technische Hochschule,” he said. “I can’t quite remember whether it’s classified information, but I believe it is. Himmler studied agronomy.”
“Plants?”
“Yes.”
“He is nothing but a glorified farmer?” Horror spread across Spiegelman’s face. “I beg your pardon, I did not—”
Wolff didn’t address the slight. “While it is true that he studied plants, what is more important is how he did so. Himmler was interested in how we might use biology and physiology to breed superior crops. He became obsessed with the idea of engineering perfection. We destroy what we consider imperfect. It is true for people, and for print factories.”
“That’s what this is about?” Spiegelman leaned forward, his lips white. Wolff noticed a carnation in his breast pocket. He wondered where a man might buy a carnation during wartime. “You plan to lodge a complaint with Himmler about your orders to destroy rebel print factories?”
“Is that so unthinkable to you?”
“Of the two things you just mentioned, print factories are what you’ve decided to complain about?”
“Arguably, we can’t repurpose people—not most people—but we can repurpose—”
“Gruppenführer, I cannot listen to this.” Spiegelman was trembling. “Do you hear what you’re saying to me? Have you forgotten who and what I am?”
“Never. Not for an instant.”
“Then why did you bring me here? To torture me with this discussion?”
“Why do you think I’ve chosen to confide in you? You have no voice, Spiegelman.” The words were not meant to be unkind; Wolff spoke matter-of-factly. “Regardless of what you could say, no one would believe you. You would be executed for my treason.”
“Are you committing treason?”
Manning put his head in the room. Wolff’s heart jumped, for there was no doubt Manning had heard part of the conversation. The officer next door to Wolff had been carried away last night, stoic and righteous to the last, and it was always men like Manning who made the call, bureaucrats with trimmed nails.
“Gruppenführer,” Manning said, “with respect, Reichsführer Himmler is waiting.”
“We will continue this conversation at a later date,” Wolff said to Spiegelman. His face wrinkled into a bitter smile, a sheet of paper that had been marred and scratched before its time. “Reichsführer Himmler is waiting.”
The Gastromancer
When David Spiegelman first heard about Heinrich Himmler as a young boy, he laughed in his brother’s face. “Even if he were real,” Spiegelman said, “which he’s not, because people like that don’t exist outside of your comic books—”
“I don’t read those comic books anymore. And Grandmother told
me about him.” Abraham curled in on himself as he said this bit, hesitant to cite an authority like Grandmother.
“Grandmother doesn’t know everything,” said David Spiegelman.
“She knows most things.”
“Even if Heimler were real—”
“Himmler.”
“—how could he hope to exterminate an entire race? You can’t fear that, Abraham. It’s like fearing a Martian invasion. You’re good at mathematics.” David Spiegelman had mussed his brother’s hair, a tad too roughly. “So, tell me. What are the odds?”
It was this conversation that convinced David Spiegelman, a devout unbeliever, that hell must exist. He’d been dragged in to meet Himmler three times since he’d been pressed into service for Wolff, and each time, he remembered. Even if he were real, his younger self sang, which he’s not, which he’s not, which he’s not. And then, his brother’s voice, high and delicate: Grandmother told me about him.
“Did Himmler say why he wanted me to come?” Spiegelman whispered to Wolff, who walked with him, behind Herr Manning.
“No. Simply that he wanted you to be present, as well.”
Spiegelman slowed his pace to walk behind August Wolff. Regardless of how far apart they stood, Spiegelman always felt as though Wolff were too close to him, that he was constantly thrashing against the current of Wolff’s presence. “The dybbuk lives just beneath your skin,” his grandmother had said, “thinking your thoughts, dreaming your dreams.”
Manning led Wolff and Spiegelman into a prim conference room. Spiegelman always expected so much more black and red than there was, but Himmler made up his surroundings to look like a corporate office. Indeed, an observer might have referred to the conference room as businesslike or even boring but never sinister: just a long table, straight-backed chairs, a moat of filing cabinets. Aides carried clipboards and paperwork here and there.
The Ventriloquists Page 11