The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  I must conclude this letter, Commander Harris, by affirming my gratitude for your works and my knowledge of the comfort your men provide the English people.

  WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

  “How is this?” asked Spiegelman.

  Aubrion’s cheeks flushed as he read. “This is splendid,” he whispered.

  “Is there anything I should add?” asked Spiegelman. “Anything I should take out? I was uncertain about the wording of that last paragraph.”

  “At the closing of the letter, when he concludes with his name—it should be entirely in capital letters. He always ends his correspondences that way.” Aubrion failed to stifle a laugh. “Self-important bastard.”

  The Jester

  When Spiegelman and Aubrion returned to the FI base, Spiegelman greeted Noël by offering him four napkins. Quite alarmed, Noël brushed off his chest and shoulders.

  “What is it?” said Noël. “Is something on me?”

  “No, no, René, those are from Churchill,” replied Aubrion.

  Noël recoiled. “Spiegelman, I did not take you for a fan of Churchill. How the devil did you get ahold of his napkins?”

  “Oh,” said Spiegelman, “I think you misunderstand. This was all I had for paper. We were at a coffeehouse, and I wanted to get started on the Bomber Harris project.”

  “You’ve started already?” Noël looked over the napkins, smiling a little. “‘We should allow President Roosevelt’s men and the Americans to enjoy what promises to be a great and gallant victory above the cathedrals of Belgium.’”

  “God, it’ll infuriate him,” said Aubrion. “Have you seen photographs of this fellow? The man’s like a walrus stuffed in a suit, the sort of man who becomes furious at things.”

  “I can confirm that,” said Wellens. “In the four meetings I had with him when I was a businessman, I saw him blow his top during each and every one.”

  Spiegelman hardly heard the last of Wellens’s sentence. He was fixated, instead, on how Wellens had referred to his career in the past tense. It was odd: though Spiegelman had long since traded his pragmatic loyalty to the Reich for his foolish loyalty to Aubrion, to the resistance and to Faux Soir, this was the first time he truly acknowledged that his career, too, was over. Gone was the literary ventriloquist who’d pledged his services to Nazi Germany. David Spiegelman would be a footnote in this war, if he was anything at all. He thought he should feel something at this realization, but he did not. If Spiegelman peered inside himself long enough, he might find, in the dredges of his heart, something akin to relief—but that was all. In salvation, there was no triumph: only exhaustion.

  Tarcovich came downstairs, pausing when she reached the bottom step. “Spiegelman?” she said, with a curious squint. “Why do those napkins have Churchill’s handwriting on them?”

  He and Aubrion quickly explained. When they were done, Tarcovich held up a hand. “I have a question. Are we trying to cause a tiny little air raid, or the Third Great War?”

  “I’m afraid we’re not close enough to causing either.” Aubrion put down the napkins. “This is brilliant work, but it is not enough to make a seasoned commander bomb a country.”

  “We need a feud,” said Tarcovich.

  “What’s that?” inquired Aubrion.

  “A feud could be dangerous”—this from Martin Victor, who was sitting backward in a chair, shivering as though he had the flu.

  Tarcovich shrugged. “If danger will keep Le Soir off the streets—”

  “But danger might keep everyone off the streets.”

  “A feud between whom?” said Aubrion.

  “Churchill and Roosevelt.” Spiegelman got up so quickly he became light-headed. He wrote BOMBER HARRIS on a chalkboard. The handwriting was half Winston Churchill’s and half his own. “Look here. Churchill is pressuring Bomber Harris not to strafe Belgium.” Spiegelman wrote CHURCHILL to the left of HARRIS, drawing an arrow between them. “Roosevelt is going on about what an enormous victory this is going to be for the Americans. Is that not his word of choice? ‘Enormous?’ Everything is enormous in this war.”

  “That is not true,” Tarcovich said with a smile.

  Aubrion snorted.

  “And so Harris is caught in the middle.” On the blackboard, ROOSEVELT took up residence to the right of CHURCHILL. Spiegelman drew an arrow connecting ROOSEVELT to HARRIS. “He feels pressure from both sides.”

  “A feud between Churchill and Roosevelt?” said Victor. “I do not see it.”

  Spiegelman said, “That is because there is no feud between Churchill and Roosevelt—but Harris manufactures one in his head.”

  “We manufacture one in his head,” marveled Aubrion.

  “It is that feud that is dangerous.” Spiegelman gestured with the chalk for emphasis. “And it is that feud that causes Harris to bomb Belgium.”

  “Monsieur Spiegelman,” said Noël, whose eyes had not left the board, “our resources are at your disposal.” The director glanced around the room. “By the way, where is Gamin?”

  “Still out gathering bomb-making supplies,” said Aubrion.

  Noël looked up, as if he could see the paling sky through the ceiling. “The patrols...”

  “Don’t start in earnest for another hour,” said Aubrion. “He will be fine, I’m sure.”

  “Monsieur Noël?” An aide had come down the stairs, a younger woman they’d hired last month. She had a timid, forgettable face. “A visitor is here for Madame Tarcovich. She knew the password.”

  “How did she know the password?” said Victor. “That is top secret information.”

  “Who is it?” asked Lada.

  “She says her name is Grandjean, madame, and that it’s urgent. Something to do with ‘your girls,’ she said. If you would like, I can take a note—”

  Tarcovich ran past the aide, up the stairs, and into the evening-clad streets.

  5 DAYS TO PRINT

  NIGHTFALL

  The Pyromaniac

  WHEN THE SKY purpled and the sun went down, I left the blue-doored building. About a hundred paces from the construction site, I became aware of an odd sound: a high bleat that reminded me of the sheep my uncle kept before the Nazis came. I shook my head, wondering if it was my imagination. But the sound persisted, growing louder as I drew nearer.

  The workers had left for the day, so the construction site lay in eerie solitude. It had stopped raining, stopped snowing. The night dried its eyes on the stars. Every so often, the wind picked up in just the right way and whistled through a metal pipe, tunelessly, the way Aubrion did, the way my father used to do, Beethoven fluttering like a newlywed’s heart as my mother and I gasped with laughter. I darted under a wooden beam, searching for Nicolas and Leon.

  To my left, I heard something snap, and the bleating started up again. I lit one of my matches. And there, crouched in the dark, was Nicolas, holding up his hand against the light. He cried out when he saw me, scurrying back into the shadows.

  “Nicolas,” I hissed. “What is the matter with you?”

  “Leave me be. I done nothing, nothing.”

  “Nicolas, it’s me.”

  “Leave me be.”

  “Did you get the charcoal?” I crept near him, trying to move slowly so I would not scare him. But he kept retreating into the dark, beyond the reaches of my match’s light. “Where’s Leon?”

  I stepped on something. I remember thinking that I should not look down, that I should leave whatever it was to lie there untouched. But, fighting to keep the match still, I looked down to see what I’d stepped on. Beneath the thin sole of my boot were the remains of Leon’s hat, crusted in red and brown.

  I’d never held such a fine cap. An animal piece of me wanted to brush off the blood and muck and try it on. Indeed, my hands went to my head as though they’d conspired against my dignity—but then I saw Nicolas�
�s eyes in the dark, and I flung the cap away. My duty here was clear: I was to calm him, assure him. I was a man of the FI; Nicolas was my wounded soldier. And though he was not quite my friend, familiarity and time had given us a closeness that I did not share with many others. I did not want him to hurt. I tried to fashion my words into sentences, reaching for bits of René Noël, fragments of Martin Victor. “Please,” I whispered. “Please, please, please, please—” I am not certain what I was pleading for, but Nicolas seemed to understand, for he did not inch away from me. Moving slowly, the way I used to move around wounded animals on my uncle’s farm, I crouched near him.

  Nicolas’s eyes swiveled in his head, their whites enormous. “I’m so sorry, Gamin, I—”

  I searched the ground by Nicolas’s shivering body. “Do you have the charcoal?” Completing the mission: this was the first order of business for a soldier of the FI. We had manuals on this topic; I’d never read them, but I’d seen them.

  Nicolas was rocking back and forth. “I couldn’t go back for him.”

  “Do the Nazis have him?”

  He looked past me, into the ruined body of the construction site.

  “Nicolas,” I said, “this is important. If the Nazis have him, they can get him to talk.”

  The boy licked his lips, opening and closing his hands as if trying to hold on to his words. After a minute or two, Nicolas made this revelation: “I don’t think he’s alive any longer.”

  I grabbed him, his arm a frigid pole in my hand, and hauled him to his feet. “Come now. We’re going.”

  “No, leave me be—”

  “We’re going, Nicolas.”

  “Where?”

  “Someplace safe.”

  He said he did not believe me and, in all honesty, I did not believe me, either. I hauled him and our bag of supplies across the construction site, carrying him over planks and beams and discarded, broken tools. We slid down a muddy hill, at which point Nicolas decided he was capable of walking on his own, and trailed behind me, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Twice, I questioned him about what went on back there. Nicolas never answered me, not really. I think I remember hearing him murmur something about “those big men,” but that could be the editorializing of time.

  I felt that he must hate me. Didn’t all soldiers hate their commanders, though? I thought Aubrion had told me as much. After some time, I tried to apologize to Nicolas; for what, I do not know. But then I realized that I was doing all the talking, so I stopped. And so we passed the hours of our journey back to downtown Enghien.

  About a kilometer from the construction site, two roads crossed suddenly and continued into town. I shushed Nicolas and he stopped sniffling. We were passing into territory rigorously guarded by the Germans. Every time we stopped to catch our breath, I could hear the whispers of their boots, or catch the smell of their cigarette smoke on the wind. By the grace of God, I recalled the location of the blue-doored building. Nicolas and I sheltered here, in this room, that night.

  By the wavering light of a cracked lantern, Nicolas paced the photographer’s ruins, making restless footprints on the faces. I used a stick to draw shapes on the floor. I tried on narratives and excuses like used clothing, reminding myself that Leon was an orphan, that he fell in the name of duty, that this war probably would have taken him even if I hadn’t come along with my mission, that he would have suffered more if he’d stayed alive. But I could not keep it up for long. While Nicolas napped, I shed tears for Leon, for the boy with the fine cap. I wept because he was my soldier and he died, because I felt relieved that it was Leon and not Aubrion or Tarcovich or anyone else, because I felt guilty. I wept for the pleasure of weeping.

  When Nicolas stirred, I pulled myself together and handed him a book of matches. “The mission isn’t over just because it hurts,” I told him. “We have a job to do.”

  The Smuggler

  Andree was looking away when Lada found her: standing by the door to the FI base, a trickle of snowflakes going into hiding among her curls. Her silhouette was achingly familiar against the dim. The stars were few; Lada didn’t know the mechanics of it, but something about the lights from the howitzers and fighter planes blotted them out. Victor had told her about it in tedious detail. The stars could not outshine the deep, unsettling glow of battle. War had taken everything but the snow.

  Though she could not see Andree’s face, Lada could not rid herself of the feeling that she had, in that instant, lost her, too, that Andree had looked off into the world and would never look at back at her again. Lada Tarcovich reached out and touched Andree’s wrist, lightly enough to be mistaken for a breeze. Andree turned, her eyes grieving.

  “Lada...” the judge said. She managed, somehow, to enunciate the ellipsis. “The book you put on my shelf. You wrote the password in it.”

  “What were you doing going through my books?”

  “What were you doing leaving passwords about?”

  “I always write in my books.”

  Grandjean smiled. “As do I.”

  “I have a copy of The Hobbit. You can hardly read it for all the writing.”

  “It is the same for me and Tolstoy.”

  Lada nodded, though she was desperate to know what game this was. “Andree, you did not come to the FI base to talk about Tolstoy. What is this business about my girls?”

  “They were caught, somewhere out in the country. Two of them.” Grandjean sounded as though she was talking in her sleep. “With falsified documents.”

  “Caught by whom?”—but it was a ridiculous question, Lada knew.

  “A German patrol.”

  “Christ.”

  “What were they doing out there?”

  “Trying to see their parents. Their mother has taken ill.” Lada turned, her fists connecting with a wall. She heard the hollow tremble of plywood but felt nothing. “Fucking Christ. What am I to do?”

  “It was in my district.”

  Lada turned, waiting for Andree to clarify. But the judge would say no more.

  “What do you mean?” asked Tarcovich.

  “The arrest, Lada. It happened in my district.”

  Grandjean was telling her something important, Lada knew, for Lada could see her lips moving, and she wanted to kiss them, because that would be easier than understanding their movements and sounds. The sharp little fragments of whatever Grandjean was saying—they kept falling through Lada’s hands, cutting her palms.

  “That means,” Tarcovich realized, “they will be tried at your court.”

  “Yes.” The word barely escaped Andree Grandjean’s lips.

  “But this is wonderful news.” Lada seized Andree’s shoulders. “They are as good as freed, aren’t they? When is their trial? I’ll wait at the courthouse to bring them home.”

  “Lada, I can’t let them free.”

  Lada let go of Andree. “Why? You are their judge, aren’t you?”

  “If I let them go, the Germans will know something is amiss.”

  “But you’ve let dozens of political prisoners—”

  “I never let them go free.” Andree’s eyes were as wide as the earth. “I had them transferred to different courts, in different districts, so I would not have to be the one who sent them to the noose. But they all hanged anyway.”

  The snow and the look in Andree’s eyes had turned Lada’s blood to ice. “Andree—”

  “Lada, think. If I let them go free, the Gestapo will have me investigated, possibly arrested. Another judge tried that last month in Antwerp. They sent him to Fort Breendonk.”

  “So let them go, and then join me underground.”

  Andree’s eyes returned to the stars. She would not speak for ages. In that time, Lada began, quietly, to weep. It was a wretched thing, what Lada said to this woman she loved: if Andree joined her underground, she would share Lada’s fate. As Lada cried, A
ndree said: “I can get them a lesser sentence—”

  “A lesser sentence.” Tarcovich laughed without smiling. “Tell me, Andree. What do you consider a lesser sentence?”

  “Perhaps two years—”

  “Two years? Two hours is time enough for a girl to be raped and beaten in prison.”

  “Lada, those girls—those young women—they have to...”

  “You’re sentencing them to prison, and you do not even know their names?”

  “I hear many cases, sometimes five or six a day. Many of them are prostitutes.” Andree shook her head, a twitchy, unfamiliar motion. Her curls were wild and rebellious in the snow. “Do you understand what you are asking of me? If I let them go free, I sentence myself to die. Is that what you want? Are their lives worth more than mine?”

  “Is your life worth more than theirs?” said Tarcovich.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. Andree...” Tarcovich held out her hands: praying, begging. “My God, my God, how did this happen?” She did not know what this was, and yet this felt like everything. Lada loved her, this impossible woman who drew sharp lines around everything, who spoke of her duties and morals as though they were all so clear. But Lada could not understand the choice Andree was making right now, the choices they were making together. When people wrote about the war, they painted it in black and white; it was something Tarcovich and Aubrion discussed often. But the colors ran together every day, and each one was harder to see than the last.

  Grandjean was looking away again. “If I save these girls and fall to a German bullet, then what good am I to the resistance?”

  “The resistance. Listen to yourself. If you don’t know their names, then what good are you to the resistance?”

  Tarcovich laughed, a wretched laugh. It was funny; it was absurd; this woman who spoke so loftily of her ideals meant to resist the Germans on their terms, not her own. She may as well have put on a zwanze performance with Marc Aubrion, for all the good it would do. And this was the thing that divided them, this is what tore them asunder—one of Aubrion’s favorite phrases, borrowed from many an unwilling church sermon—Grandjean refused to leave the Nazis’ world behind to make her own. Her story and their story were still intertwined. Tarcovich saw it now, clearer and more persistent than the remaining stars.