7 DAYS TO PRINT
JUST BEFORE DAWN
The Pyromaniac
WE WERE HOME, sitting around the FI basement, all of us except Marc Aubrion. “He should not be out by himself,” said René Noël. “Not after this.” Tarcovich and Grandjean brought him to the base shortly after sundown. I’m not sure where they found him. All our regulars—the few folks who had remained to work at the typewriters and machines—they had gone home for the evening, so we left Aubrion alone upstairs, sitting among the remains of their work. Aubrion finally came to the basement when the sun rose, casting the sky in a fever blush. He didn’t say anything. He just threw away an apple core he’d found under someone’s chair.
* * *
Lada Tarcovich lay with her head in Andree’s lap, and I sat next to them, listening to the basement’s moans. That pipe in the wall rattled, louder than usual, sending obscene echoes out into the streets. Every once in a while, the pipe sent us the voices of those on the floor above, our colleagues muttering their way to work. I heard another sound, faint but higher than the others: Marc Aubrion was humming. He sometimes hummed—and I use the word hum rather liberally, for friends of mine have tortured cats with less jarring results—when he was preoccupied or upset, a habit I’m not sure he ever realized he had.
“I know we are all rather shaken,” said René Noël. The sentence ended in a faint question mark, as though he were asking our permission to be rather shaken, too. Aubrion sat by Noël’s feet, twirling a bit of chalk, and I stood up and hovered near them both, just to be close. “But in this line of work, losses are inevitable. Would Theo want us to dwell on his capture?”
“Since we’re being pragmatic,” said Victor, “I will pose a question. What if he talks?”
Lada snorted. “He hardly talked to us. Do you really think he’ll talk to the Nazis?”
“The Nazis have techniques that you and I—”
“Couldn’t possibly imagine? Mullier will not talk,” said Lada, and Andree squeezed her hand. “That much should be obvious, to any of us.”
“I agree,” said Noël.
“What I don’t understand,” said Lada, “is that we were promised immunity. Wolff was to protect us, was he not?”
Victor shook his head, his hands kneading each other in his lap. “Our immunity is to be granted after we complete the project. That was the agreement.”
Aubrion jumped to his feet. “We can’t leave him there.”
“Oh, God,” said Tarcovich, her eyes like stars. “Marc, my love.”
“Marc, don’t,” said Noël.
But Victor took the bait: “What do you propose?”
Aubrion pounded a desk. If it had been anyone other than Aubrion, the gesture would have seemed performative. “We have resources, don’t we? Money? Some guns? We can get more if we need them. René, you must know what we have.”
“Marc, I—”
“It doesn’t have to be much of a plan, just something. But we can’t leave him there. Mullier is—”
“Mullier is dead,” said Victor, the way a baker might announce the day’s bread.
“Fuck you.” The muscles in Aubrion’s hands and neck stood rigid. I recoiled from him, this man I called my friend. But in my peripheral vision, I saw Tarcovich standing firm. She was the only one among us who knew him as well as I did, so her calm reassured me.
“Marc, you know it pains me as much as it does you,” said Victor.
“It doesn’t sound like it pains you at all.”
Andree sat up. “Have you ever seen the inside of a German prison, Monsieur Aubrion? Or the outside, for that matter? I am guessing he’s at Fort Breendonk. It is impenetrable. We could have an entire army at our disposal, and still our hands would be tied.”
“Our disposal?” said Aubrion, in ugly tones. “Is it we and our now, Judge Grandjean?”
It was Lada’s turn to sit up. “Stand down, Marc. She is with us.”
“She is not with us.” Victor made a chopping motion with his right hand, as though he were cutting Grandjean from the body of our operation. “Madame Grandjean, you know nothing of what we’re trying to accomplish here, am I correct?”
“Yes—that is, no—but I’m here to help Lada.”
“Then you are not with us. We cannot risk a security breach.”
“Calm yourself.” René Noël put a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Judge Grandjean, we appreciate what you’ve done to aid the FI. You are welcome here as our guest. But at the moment, there are matters we need to discuss—”
“Say no more.” Andree smiled at Lada, then kissed her on the mouth. They lingered, reaching for each other’s warmth, for Lada did not want Andree to go. Then Andree squeezed Lada’s hands, a silent promise she would return. “Gentlemen, if you need me, Lada knows where to find me.” With a nod, the judge took her leave of us.
Noël spoke, bringing us back to life. “All right, then. Let’s take stock of the situation. How much did we make from the fund-raiser?”
“About forty-nine thousand,” said Victor.
“Forty-nine thousand francs?” sputtered Aubrion. “The old francs? That’s remarkable.”
Noël ticked off this first item on his fingers, then turned to write 1) fund-raiser success on a chalkboard. Though our director sounded calm, Tarcovich noticed he kept wiping his palms on his apron. “Second, we need to begin taking distribution a bit more seriously. How are we going to get Faux Soir onto the streets? How are we going to disrupt the normal distribution channels for Le Soir?”
Victor stepped in front of René Noël. “If Le Soir makes it onto the streets on the morning of the eleventh, before people have a chance to buy Faux Soir, it will all have been for nothing.”
“I never knew a Catholic to be so dramatic,” said Tarcovich.
“I’m not dramatic, I’m pragmatic.”
Tarcovich snorted. “Anyone who thinks the two are mutually exclusive has never been in front of a Nazi death squad.”
“He is right, though,” said Noël. “We can’t ignore the logistics any longer. Any thoughts?”
“Gamin is in the process of procuring bombs for one of our distractions,” said Aubrion.
I felt a rush of panic at not having accomplished this task.
“Of course, but we’ll need to be prepared—” Noël glanced down at me, lowering his voice “—in case something happens.”
“Nothing will happen,” said Aubrion.
“Monsieur Noël?”
We looked up at this unfamiliar voice calling down into the basement. One of our typesetters, a stout man whose name Tarcovich could never remember, but who reminded her of a bricklayer she once knew, came downstairs. He waved for René Noël’s attention.
“What is it, Hans?” said Noël.
Hans said something that I missed completely.
“He’s here?” said Tarcovich.
“Yes, madame,” said the fellow.
“Who is here?” asked Aubrion.
Noël sighed, wiping his hands on his apron. “Spiegelman. David Spiegelman is here. I’ll escort him in.”
The Gastromancer
Their eyes followed him into the basement, until Spiegelman’s legs nearly buckled under the weight of their attention. They were all standing around as though he’d never left them: Victor pale and sweating, oversized in his chair, Tarcovich and René Noël, and Aubrion—blessed, foolish Aubrion—his hair standing on end, grinning at Spiegelman like he’d just stumbled upon a secret passageway that they alone knew about.
“You might find this question tedious,” said René Noël, “but why should we trust you?”
Spiegelman replied, “I saw them escorting Theo Mullier into the Nazi headquarters. The Germans are transferring him from Enghien to Antwerp, to Fort Breendonk.”
“Fuck,” said Marc Aubrion.
�
��Christ Almighty.” Victor made the sign of the cross.
“Just as Andree guessed,” whispered Tarcovich.
Even I had heard stories of the place. At the time, I had thought they were greatly exaggerated—tales of prisoners who were thrown into pits with half-starved animals, or who were forced to stand naked in moats of icy mud until they froze—but I later learned the stories were true. We spend our entire childhoods waiting for monsters, but when they find us at last, we are incredulous, unbelieving that such horror exists. Fort Breendonk did not seem real, and yet it was.
Tarcovich folded her arms across her chest. “Listen. Let’s say we trust you. I do trust you, only because I do not think you’re stupid enough to come here without a very, very good reason. Even if we trust you—”
“I’ve come here because I want to help you rescue Mullier,” said Spiegelman, and his face twisted into something Aubrion could never have described, not with all the words he kept inside him. “I understand that I pose a risk to your operation—but think of what I offer. I have connections to the Germans, resources that we can use to save him. Please, give me that chance.”
“What do you have in mind?” said Aubrion.
“I am going to put a stop to this before it goes too far,” said René Noël. “Be sensible, you lot. Aubrion, we need to be working on distribution and content. Victor, we must be ready for tomorrow, and after tomorrow, we must be ready for the next day. We have a week to accomplish our goals, seven bloody days. If we had twice that time, we’d still need a miracle. As it stands, all we have is our focus and God’s hand, but if we lose focus...” Noël paused, suddenly out of breath. He rubbed at his beard, inky fingernails scraping his hollow cheeks. Behind his eyeglasses, our director’s eyes sparkled. He made several attempts to speak again before he managed: “I felt for Mullier the same as any of you did.” Noël’s voice weighed more than any of us could carry. “I still do—of course I still do.”
“So we are to do nothing,” said Aubrion; the word nothing entered Spiegelman’s chest and lodged there, bland and indifferent.
“We cannot afford to lose momentum when we are so close,” said Noël. “His life and ours will have meant nothing if we are diverted.”
“I am sorry to have disrupted your work.” Spiegelman picked up a sheet of paper and folded it, pressing his nails into the creases. Nothing was still living inside of him, crafting a home near the dybbuk’s, spreading its talons beneath his skin. He wanted desperately to keep talking, though he did not know what to say—but as long as he spoke, he did not have to return to the German base, to Wolff, to his desk and his liar’s pen. As long as he spoke, Spiegelman could remain among the books and the posters and the beauty. “I needed to come here,” he said, truthfully. “I had to offer my services to you one more time. I could not have lived with myself otherwise.”
7 DAYS TO PRINT
AFTERNOON
The Pyromaniac
I WAS WALKING back to the Front de l’Indépendance headquarters after stealing a bit of lunch when I spied Marc Aubrion in one of his usual spots. I watched him from a distance.
“Excuse me, monsieur?” Aubrion was saying, tapping a man’s shoulder. The fellow, who’d been leaning against the wall of a church, turned around, aghast at having been touched. But then his spectacles turned on Aubrion’s disguise, his tailored suit and trousers, and he nodded in greeting. “May I trouble you a moment?”
The man said, “Of course.”
“Where can a fellow buy a copy of Le Soir these days? I have been abroad, and I’m afraid I’ve lost track of the kiosks.”
“Down the street, make a left, then another left.” The man squirmed as he spoke. A banker, Aubrion guessed. He was not accustomed to being so useful. Aubrion noted the banker’s perspiring neck, his unimpressive hairline. A banker with an overweight wife and four children. Possibly Flemish.
“Thank you, monsieur.” Aubrion tipped his fedora. “Good day.”
Shortly, Aubrion had a copy of the paper tucked under his arm. He found a spot under a tree and unfolded it. November 5, —43, it informed him. Aubrion skimmed the headlines, avoiding the walls of text beneath as if they were seats on a grimy train. In moments, Aubrion learned of a Decisive German Victory! but also that the Reich Calls on Heroic Citizens to Ration Meat Wisely, that there would be an Opera in Brussels that evening, and that Monsieur Edward Danners 1886-1943 died the previous day after a career as a butcher. Le Soir was a boring but capable host, never giving away too much, never leaving its patrons with any excuse not to return.
Aubrion folded the paper, settling in under the tree. Coal from the factories down the road, which the Germans were running at twice their normal capacities, had blanketed the tree in ash. Aubrion ran his hand across the trunk. His fingers smelled of fire. I watched him rubbing his fingers together, perhaps imagining he’d touched the back of some ancient beast and come away stained by its scales. Wind shook the ash free of the leaves above, depositing the gray flakes onto the face of Le Soir. Aubrion leaned against the tree trunk, thinking.
I approached, waving vigorously to get his attention.
“Ah, Gamin!” he said, finally. Aubrion patted the ground next to him. “Come, sit by me. I am very busy.”
“Doing what, monsieur?” I sat, raising a cloud of ash as I sat.
“Nothing in particular.”
“I see.”
“I came here to escape my thoughts of Mullier and Faux Soir.”
“But you’re reading Le Soir, monsieur.”
“I did not say I succeeded.” Aubrion smiled at me. The ash had turned his hair a powdery gray. I cannot think back on this day without despising myself. I was a fool for not relishing the sight of my friend with gray hair, a sight I would never see again. “I am not a stupid fellow.” Aubrion rubbed at his cheek absently. “I know the potential costs—” he stumbled over the words, which were not his own “—of breaking Theo out of Fort Breendonk. We could—” Aubrion caught sight of something behind me. “Do you see that woman with her children, over there?” I tried to follow his gaze. A woman with thick braids led her three children past a fish market. “I see her every day. Where do you think she goes?”
“To market, monsieur?”
“Every day?”
“Her children might eat a lot.”
“And she always wears the same dress. Is it the same dress, do you think? Or did she buy four of the same dress?”
“I can’t say, monsieur.”
Aubrion grew quiet as the woman faded from view. An ellipsis took form between us. Then he said: “You know, Gamin, we could lose a great deal.”
“If your plan with Faux Soir doesn’t go well?” I was proud I knew to say well instead of good.
“Have you ever really sat down and read one of these?” Aubrion made an obscene gesture with his thumb and forefinger, then flicked his copy of Le Soir. It scooted over a few inches, indignant at this treatment. “It’s horrible. I don’t know how any of these people put their names on it. I’d rather lick mud off of Wolff’s boot. I could not even make it through an entire paper without almost falling asleep. It’s embarrassing.”
“It is terrible, monsieur, I must—”
“They deserve better than this.”
“Who, monsieur?”
He would not reply. Each word sounded so unlike the others, as though a different musical note accompanied his every thought. Aubrion balled his hands into fists. “But I risk depriving them, if things do not go as planned.”
Here, Aubrion folded up Le Soir and held it under his nose as though he were a sommelier inspecting a bitter wine. I waited to see whether he would speak again. He did not. I took advantage of Aubrion’s infrequent moments of silent contemplation to persuade him to play little games with me. When he remained quiet, I jumped up.
“What’s the matter, Gamin?” he said.
; Blocking the sun with my hand, I pretended to scan the horizon. “I spy a ship.”
Aubrion got into character immediately. He was always a one-eyed pirate in our games, with foul breath and a nasty grin. Squinting one eye, Aubrion began to fold Le Soir into a sword. “Aye, a ship!” he cried. “Bearin’ black sails?”
“Aye aye!”
“Run out the guns, First Mate.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“Bring us hard to starboard.”
“We have them in range of the long nines.”
“Steady, man. You are to fire when ready.” With a look of comic horror, Aubrion froze. “Hang on a tick. We have black sails. We’re pirates! You’re about to fire on our own ship, First Mate, don’t do it, don’t—”
Our laughing bodies tumbled and crashed under the tree, where the world was made of ash and seawater.
I used to play games of make-believe with my older sister, who indulged my elaborate quests for hours. Indeed, our games were so long and intricate that I remember them more vividly than my childhood home, or my parents’ faces; our made-up experiences are inseparable from my real ones. For all his love of disguises, dear Aubrion was never able to carry on that long. And perhaps it was partially my fault, for it is harder to disappear into a game when reality breathes ever nearer. Still, we always laughed at the end.
Aubrion was talking about Faux Soir again. I had lost track of the conversation. When that happened, I always resorted to the same question. “What are you going to do, monsieur?”
“Everything, Gamin. Everything.”
* * *
Although I longed to sit with Aubrion a while longer, I had a mission to complete. On the eleventh of November, a fleet of vans bearing the insipid but considerable weight of Le Soir would leave the print factories on their usual route—unless, of course, I put a stop to that. Though I did not necessarily need to destroy the vans, that seemed the easiest way to ensure they would be out of commission long enough for us to distribute Faux Soir. There was no harm in being thorough.
The Ventriloquists Page 28