The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

“Spiegelman,” he stage-whispered.

  David Spiegelman whirled, his hand flying to the pistol in his pocket.

  “It’s only me.” Aubrion stepped out into the open, his hands raised. “Marc Aubrion.”

  “You followed me?”

  Aubrion stepped closer, tripping on a headstone. He could barely make out Spiegelman’s face. From that distance, the city lights were nothing more than smallish bright dots, a careless constellation.

  “I am not going to harm you, I promise,” said Aubrion. “I’ve just come to talk.”

  “Talk about what?”

  Marc Aubrion sighed, breathing in the ancient musk of the cemetery. He longed to be anywhere else. Though he did not know how to express it, Marc Aubrion felt an admiration—halfway to a kinship—for Spiegelman. Spiegelman had few instincts for comedy, and his penchant for good timing was accidental at best, but by God, the man could write. His work was a magic trick, without the pulleys and wires: real magic, the kind children unlearned as they aged. Aubrion felt pain—physical, immediate pain—at the thought of cutting off Spiegelman’s access to a stage upon which to work. Given the opportunity to tell Spiegelman what he felt, the writer Marc Aubrion summarized his feelings thus:

  “I don’t like this, Spiegelman.”

  “Don’t like what?” Spiegelman asked quietly, though Aubrion got the feeling he knew.

  “Being here.”

  “But why are you here?”

  “We are getting closer to our goal, and the risks are greater.” These words tasted like ash. Aubrion took a breath and forced them out of his chest. “We can’t have you around any longer, not given your ties to the Nazis.”

  Spiegelman’s body went still. “May I continue to contribute?”

  “I am sure Wolff will want you to assist with La Libre Belgique—”

  “But can I write for you, Monsieur Aubrion? For Faux Soir?”

  Aubrion paused. The voice that came out of him was not his own. “It wasn’t my decision. I’m sorry.”

  Spiegelman took hold of Aubrion’s arm with shocking strength. “Please, Aubrion. You know they are not just words, to me. It is not just work, to me. Don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I do, Spiegelman. I have my—” Aubrion gestured, helpless. “It’s just as I—” He shook his head. “You know I do.”

  “Then how could you do this?” The sentence took a different road halfway through. Spiegelman’s voice shattered. “If you know what it means, how could you do this to me?”

  He knew how he sounded, he knew he was pathetic, shrill, almost mad. For a heartbeat, Spiegelman could not let go of Aubrion’s arm. If he did, Aubrion would leave this graveyard to walk into his own; he would write things without Spiegelman beside him; the world would turn and Spiegelman and Aubrion would be left behind. But Spiegelman remembered Wolff’s promises. Exhaling, he allowed the dybbuk to shift inside him. Spiegelman released his grip.

  Aubrion said nothing, for he knew what this meant for Spiegelman. He feared no monsters, no demons, but obscurity—Marc Aubrion could not bear the thought of that. Obscurity was not ugly, like sorrow or pain; it was blank. It was a piece of paper that had been folded up and cast away before someone had written on it. Spiegelman had lived behind others’ voices and pens all his life, so he must have understood it; he must have longed to be seen, as Aubrion did. And if Aubrion denied him the Faux Soir caper, if he sent Spiegelman away, then David Spiegelman would disappear. But if Aubrion resisted Noël and the others, if he refused to send Spiegelman away, then Aubrion himself might be cast out. He could not allow that. This was too important, too thrilling an adventure, to surrender. And so Aubrion shook his head again, powerless to say what he felt.

  “I am sorry,” he whispered.

  Spiegelman’s voice had journeyed somewhere far, too far for him to follow. He walked through the cemetery with the heavy footfalls of a man who belonged there.

  9 DAYS TO PRINT

  MORNING

  The Pyromaniac

  SINCE THE DAY PRIOR, I had been fighting an ugly pain rolling through my stomach. This was nothing extraordinary, mind you. We were eating secondhand food, left to fester on dirty countertops or picked clean by ungodly fingers. Hardly a week passed without someone complaining of a bad stomach. A month into my service with the FI, one of our linotypists died after eating a bit of rancid meat; the man had escaped execution, had managed to run away from a firing squad, but was done in by a herring. We had accepted food poisoning into our ranks like a clumsy yet deadly rifleman.

  But by nightfall, the pain was no longer just an irritation: it had grown into a beast I could not ignore. The beast kept me awake most of the night, tearing at my insides until my skin burned white-hot with its bile. I lifted up my shirt to look at my stomach, certain I would see something moving beneath the skin. Twice, I got up to wake Aubrion or Noël, who were both asleep upstairs—but I could not bring myself to disturb them over something as banal as this, not when they needed so badly to rest. I reminded myself, perhaps halfheartedly, that I was a soldier of the resistance, that I would not be felled by spoiled cabbage.

  I lay there with my eyes fixed on the basement window. I remember it was snowing that night. I could see the stars, and then the gentle wash of blue that wiped them away. I think I must have dozed. When I awoke, a bird was singing its morning eulogy for October. I stood up to use the washroom.

  It’s hardly necessary for me to describe what I saw there. There isn’t a woman alive who does not know how this story ends. I had a few older friends back in Toulouse—girls who laughed heartily and played marbles with me, whose faces I had forgotten already—so I should have known not to fear this thing, what I later knew as my period. But I was so far removed from the trappings of an ordinary girl’s life that it never occurred to me. I thought only that I was dying.

  I stumbled out of the washroom. My vision pulsed with each beat of my heart. Lada Tarcovich had arrived since I roused myself from my cot; I don’t know how long I must have been in the washroom. She sat reading a newspaper, sipping her coffee.

  “I was wondering who’d been in there all bloody day,” she said, eyes on her paper. “I tried the door ages ago.”

  When I didn’t respond, Tarcovich glanced up. I can’t imagine how I looked at that moment. My only clue is that Lada Tarcovich, who had seen and done things unimaginable for most, dropped her coffee mug.

  I opened my mouth to say something, though I haven’t the foggiest idea what that could be. Fortunately for all involved, Tarcovich never gave me the chance. She picked up her mug, folded her paper, and got to her feet.

  “Not a word,” she said. “Anything that comes out of you—well, anything more, I suppose—will only make it worse. Here, take this.” Tarcovich pulled something out of her purse. It looked like a thick washcloth with fabric strings. “Go back into the washroom. You will know what to do with it.”

  In some divine act of mercy, she was right. When I was done, Tarcovich beckoned for me to follow her upstairs. My shellshocked legs carried me out of the basement and onto the streets. Tarcovich hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of her whorehouse. We rode in silence. I don’t believe I speculated on the purpose of our journey. Every part of my brain was devoted to a strange, all-consuming mix of gratitude and terror.

  When we arrived, Tarcovich marched me upstairs to her private room. I’d heard much about it from Aubrion—the stolen treasures, riches from across the world—so I could not stop myself from gawking at it, not even then. Tarcovich put a halt to that by ordering me into a stiff wooden chair. I sat. She did not.

  Tarcovich planted her fists on her hips. “Well?”

  I’d lost all powers of speech and thought. I could only parrot her: “Well?”

  “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Thank
you?”

  “That’s a fine start,” she said, laughing.

  Finally, I sputtered, “You know about me. You’ve known about me.”

  “Of course I have. What do you take me for?”

  “But the others—they don’t—they never—”

  “They’re men. You can hardly expect them to notice things.”

  “But madame, you’ve known this whole time?”

  Tarcovich shrugged. “For a long while now, yes.”

  I stared down at my shoes, blinking away tears. I do not know why I cried. Perhaps it was the thief’s release at finally being caught, the odd relief of the handcuffs. Or maybe I was grateful to be seen for what I was—what I am—after burying the truth under so many layers of character and time. Do not mistake me: I loved my identity as Aubrion’s errand boy, a soldier of the resistance. It was not a role I played, or a story I made up; that was a piece of my soul. But even a half-truth is a lie, in the end. God help me, I was a terrible liar.

  Noticing my tears, Tarcovich knelt by the chair. “Come now,” she whispered. Her hand was on the small of my back. “Worse things have happened, I promise you that. And I won’t give you away, not if you don’t want me to.”

  “I know you won’t,” I managed to say.

  “Then is it really as bad as all that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me say this,” she whispered, “from one con artist to another—it was a damn good ruse. Not many others would have noticed, not even other women.”

  “Thank you, madame.” There was nothing false about my gratitude.

  “What’s the matter, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s all right.” She pulled me into her arms. “You don’t have to know.”

  There is a wretched brand of crying that I hope you’ll never endure, when you weep so hard and so long that your body turns on you. Fed up with your own nonsense, you fall into a sort of sleep. That is what became of me. I wept until there was nothing left in my body, using up every bit of feeling I owned until I was a raw, withered husk. Then I dozed in Lada’s stolen chair. When I came to, she was sitting on the floor beside me.

  I remember that I kept still and looked at her without speaking, grateful that there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. This was me and Lada Tarcovich, this woman who’d slept in my home, who’d fought beside me, who knew me for who I was. I wanted to trap this moment with her in a firefly jar. I said to myself that I would preserve this quiet no-man’s-land with Lada, that I would keep the memory for all my days—and I have. Only when I was confident that the memory was burned in me did I speak.

  “Will it happen every day now?” I asked her. “For the rest of my life?”

  Tarcovich smiled. “Don’t you think I’d be even more disagreeable than I am already? No, we are cursed only once a month.”

  “For how long each time?”

  “Perhaps a week, perhaps less. You’ll find out soon enough, won’t you?”

  “Is there any way to make it stop?”

  “It stops on its own, when you’re old.”

  “And, if you please, madame, where do you get...something like that, what you gave me, when there’s a war on? I’ve never seen one anywhere, not even Thomas’s shop on Third.”

  “From America, of course.”

  “America?”

  “That was actually how I got my start—it was books and sanitary belts.” She paused before going on. “When we first started batting around the word Nazi, in the beginning, I knew bad business was on the way. Marc thought they were too stupid—unoriginal, he said—to last long. But I told him otherwise. That’s their strength, I told him. The Nazis are unoriginal enough to last forever. In any case, I smuggled books and sanitary belts into Belgium. Grew quite the stockpile, actually. When a shiny black boot comes to town, it always steps on words and women first.” Tarcovich paused, no longer looking at me. “I planned to sell them. But I kept some, and I gave the rest away.”

  Without knowing what I was doing, I let my head fall on Tarcovich’s shoulder. She did not seem to mind. We were both women, I understood, who had been compelled to make decisions and sacrifices we otherwise might not have. The intimacy of our shared circumstances was not lost on me, even then.

  “How did you know, madame?” I said, after a time.

  “You’re too smart to be a lad.” She tweaked my nose. “What’s your real name, then?”

  I thought about it, distressed nearly to tears, but it proved impossible to remember in the abstract. I had to conjure up my mother’s voice, pulling it from my sleeve in a noxious sleight-of-hand, Helene, pick up these marbles, I nearly slipped and fell to my bloody death!

  Tarcovich misread my pause: “You don’t have to say, if you don’t want to tell me.”

  “Helene,” Gamin said—for it was not Helene who said it, not the Helene who had been named by my parents. The name Helene stood over me, gawky and too close. I felt nothing for it, not hatred, not love.

  “Like Helen of Troy,” said Tarcovich.

  “The face that launched a thousand ships,” I said, something my father said.

  “You poor thing.” I looked at her, shocked at the sorrow in her eyes. “Except you’ll lead them all in the end, you’ll see. That is the difference. Troy will not fall this time, not if I have anything to do with it.”

  “Yes, madame,” I said, for I knew not what else to say.

  The Dybbuk

  Many Nazi bases, the Enghien base included, contained libraries of books the Führer had deemed objectionable, so that Nazi officers could study them and learn the topography of the perverse mind. After much negotiation, Wolff had received permission for David Spiegelman to roam the library unsupervised. It was there Wolff found him, brushing his fingers across an unlabeled shelf.

  “Are you looking for something specific?” asked Wolff.

  Spiegelman reeled. “Gruppenführer,” he stammered. “Not really, if I’m honest. I needed a bit of peace, was all.” Wolff nodded, keeping his face neutral. “Gruppenführer, may I ask a question?”

  “By all means.”

  Though the library was empty, Spiegelman leaned in close. “Does the Reich—on the base—”

  “Please, speak freely.”

  “Could you put me in communication with a spiritual advisor, do you think?”

  Wolff frowned. He’d expected Spiegelman to ask whether he could leave the Reich, perhaps, or take a male lover, but this seemed out of character. “You mean a priest?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “A Catholic priest?”

  “Any manner of priest would be fine.”

  “Have you lost your faith?” The question, despite what Spiegelman might think, was not meant to probe his loyalties. Wolff was genuinely curious.

  To Wolff’s surprise, Spiegelman smiled. “I’m a Jew.”

  “Help me understand you.” Wolff massaged his aching temples. “Are you seeking some kind of guidance? Would you like to make a confession?”

  “I’m not sure.” Spiegelman glanced down, kneading his hands. In the otherworldly brightness of the library, his face was all pockets and shadows. He’d aged rapidly since Wolff met him—not in the way of young men who do things they’ve never experienced, but in the way of old men who are about to die. “I think so. Yes, I would.”

  “You should get some rest.” Wolff started out of the library, beckoning for Spiegelman to follow. With a lingering glance at the books, Spiegelman came along. The Gruppenführer feared for Spiegelman’s health; he’d never before spoken of confessions, or of religion. “I’m taking you off the La Libre Belgique project for a few days. Take that time to recuperate.”

  Spiegelman got in front of Wolff, holding out his palms to the Gruppenführer. “Please don’t. That would be hell for me.”


  “I’ve given you an order.”

  “I need the work, don’t you understand? My hands must be kept busy.”

  “Get ahold of yourself, man,” snapped Wolff.

  Muttering an apology, Spiegelman stepped out of the Gruppenführer’s way. He’d chewed his nails down to the skin. Wolff had only ever seen prisoners do that, prisoners and deserters and madmen. The Gruppenführer believed there to be a touch of madness in all homosexuals—something must have happened to them, after all, to produce such urges—but he’d hoped Spiegelman was different. A man of his talents should not spare a moment’s breath for madness. The Reich needed him too much.

  The Gruppenführer straightened his tunic, reassured by the weight of the patches denoting his rank. “I’ve given you an order, Herr Spiegelman. Get some rest. I will summon you in two days.”

  “Yes, Gruppenführer,” Spiegelman said.

  “And remain in your quarters. I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be in here.”

  “But I am permitted to—”

  “I have given you an order, Herr Spiegelman.”

  “Yes, Gruppenführer.”

  Wolff paused a moment, the way he’d seen torturers pause in the midst of a beating. “What was the order?” he said. “Repeat it, please.”

  Spiegelman monotoned like a reluctant pupil: “To remain in my quarters.”

  “And?”

  “And to rest.”

  “Very good, Herr Spiegelman.”

  Wolff left the library, closing the door on the smell of dust.

  9 DAYS TO PRINT

  LATE MORNING

  The Pyromaniac

  VICTOR, WHO LOOKED like he’d wrapped the wounds of his sleepless night in liquor and coffee, joined me and René Noël in the basement. Noël lay beneath a printing press so that only his ink-splattered legs were visible; the machine had swallowed up the rest of him. I crouched nearby, passing the director tools at his request.

  “How did he get the printing press down here in the first place?” Victor asked me.

  “Beats me, monsieur.”