The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  Holding his stomach, Spiegelman dragged himself back to his quarters. The walk made him feel a tad better, so he was just well enough to truly internalize how unwell he was. After a few tense breaths, he took a pen to his latest draft of Churchill.

  MY DEAR COMMANDER HARRIS,

  Every moment since the first day of this Great War, I have seen heroic deeds done by heroic men, martyrs who do not dare shrink from that which frightens them. But I have too seen, every day, and will see every day hence, deeds just as great, at times greater, performed by men who do not carry banners, who instead sit behind those who lead and give their duties every bit of might the Lord gave them. You are such a man, Commander Harris. Your quiet strength and resolve shall prove an extraordinary lesson for all who hear of it. Even now, among the esteemed heads of Whitehall, I am engaged in an endeavor to produce a new propaganda poster with your likeness upon it and the words “All things come to those who wait!”

  WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

  Spiegelman could scarcely imagine how enraged Bomber Harris would be upon learning his identity had been reduced to “the man who waited.” This would gall him beyond anything even the Germans could do. Spiegelman pocketed the letter and headed back to the communications room.

  The Nazi headquarters, normally the organizational equivalent of a clerk with well-parted hair and a polite cough, were in disarray. Word of Himmler’s impending inspection had spread, and regardless of whether it was true, the consequences were visible. Spiegelman, for one, doubted it was true. Over the years, Himmler, Goebbels and Hitler had taken to whispering news of “surprise” inspections or “loyalty checks” into their ranks. The Germans rarely had the time or resources to inspect things as often as they wanted, but these whispers had a way of revealing the disloyal anyway. Those who panicked were singled out for interrogation. And those who fled were hunted down and shot. Spiegelman dodged a frantic clerk who carried an armful of clipboards. “Pardon me,” the clerk said, forgetting to switch from Flemish to German.

  Spiegelman had timed his entry well. The communications officers had left for their midday break. Though at least one of them was supposed to remain behind at all times, the Nazi headquarters in Enghien did not receive many important communiques, so they rarely abided by that protocol. Spiegelman slipped into the office and closed the door behind him. He spent a few minutes locating the codebook, which someone had moved to behind a row of books, on a bottom shelf. “Got you,” he muttered, opening it to the relevant page. Spiegelman flipped through the book, rubbing at his aching stomach. His hands shook as he translated his letter into the dots and lines of the telex tape. It was slow work, for he did not have code memorized, and had to rely on the ragged codebook. Heart pounding, Spiegelman keyed in the last of the letter and sent it off.

  Something clicked: the door. Though the room was small, the click sounded far away, like a shout trailing after a man who’d fallen from a cliff.

  And then there was a rush of air as someone opened it—someone opened the door—they opened it to find David Spiegelman at the telex, where David Spiegelman was not supposed to be. Spiegelman’s heart stopped. He did not turn around, not immediately, because he knew what would happen if he turned around, and he was not yet ready. Aubrion still needed him; his brother and grandmother were not ready for him.

  “Herr Spiegelman.”

  David Spiegelman turned around. For the second time in his life, August Wolff was pointing a gun at him.

  The Jester

  Fifty thousand newspapers, Aubrion soon realized, took up a great deal of space: to be exact, a dozen of Wellens’s delivery vans, one extra van he had to borrow from his brother, the entire factory floor, and three enormous metal containers (each around nine feet high and six feet deep). Ferdinand Wellens’s men loaded copies of Faux Soir into the delivery vans and then dumped the rest into the containers, where they would remain until the second and third rounds of distribution. Aubrion supervised—not that they needed his supervision, but Aubrion had nothing else to do, and he wanted to send off Faux Soir. He sat on the ground, drawing stick figures in Joseph Beckers’s book of Le Soir distribution points.

  Noël appeared and stood in front of Aubrion until the latter acknowledged him.

  “Hello, René,” said Aubrion.

  Noël pointed at the workmen. “You could help them, you know.”

  “So could you.”

  “But I am not the one watching them sweat and toil over our paper.”

  “And I am the one watching them, which means I’m one step closer to helping them than you are.”

  Noël sighed. His clothes, Aubrion noted, were spattered in grease.

  “What have you been fixing?” asked Aubrion.

  “Oh.” Noël wiped, futilely, at his shirt. “One of the linotype machines broke last night. I thought I’d lend a hand, since we were the cause of it.”

  “René Noël. A good Samaritan to the very last. Does that ever strike you as odd? That we refer to people that way, as good Samaritans? It implies that all the others—every single other Samaritan who ever lived a day on Earth—are bad. That’s not very Christian-like, now, is it?”

  “Since when do you care about being Christian-like?” Noël asked, in the tone of a man who did not wish to know, but who was about to find out anyway.

  “This is precisely why I do not. Where is Martin? I’m certain he has an opinion.”

  “I think the poor fellow had an episode. He’s been sparse.”

  “I beg your pardon for interrupting what sounds like a vitally important conversation,” said Tarcovich, who was somehow impeccably made-up, “but I think I’m going to leave. If I don’t, I think I’m going to run mad.”

  Noël nodded. “I understand. The waiting is terrible.”

  “Where will you go?” asked Aubrion.

  “You’ll remain in Enghien?” said Noël.

  “No point in leaving.”

  “Do you have family here? I can’t recall.”

  Tarcovich looked down, uncharacteristically shy. “I am trying to say goodbye to them right now, in fact. Be a good man and don’t ruin it, René.”

  Aubrion got up, suddenly desperate for Lada to stay. “Surely you know people who—”

  “I made my choice, Marc.” Tarcovich’s smile fluttered like moth wings. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “Where will you go?” repeated Noël.

  “I used to frequent an old coffeehouse, years before the war. It’s a cheap place, but the food is good, and the barman runs the tap every hour of the day. Apparently there’s a lad with a newsstand right across from it—and I see no reason why I shouldn’t have a front row seat.”

  HITTING THE STANDS

  AFTERNOON

  The Pyromaniac

  AROUND TWO HOURS into my wait, I heard a shout from the streets. I remember that it startled me, and I suppose I must have dozed off. But I thought nothing of it, really, until someone echoed the shout. Both voices were hoarse from cigarettes and coal, but shrill with youth. I peered over the side of the ice cream cart.

  A crowd of boys was approaching. They were lads I knew, Michael and Thomas and Jean, and Nicolas, twisting Leon’s cap in his hand. Some carried sticks, others had crowbars, a few had stones, and Thomas had a pistol. Jean locked eyes with me.

  “There!” he said. “She’s over there! I seen her.”

  Saw, I wanted to correct him—my last rational thought before I started to panic. I am embarrassed to say so now, but the possibility that these boys might try to avenge Leon had never occurred to me. I huddled beneath the remains of the ice cream cart. My options were few. The boys clearly intended to do me harm, and if they got too close to the cart, I could make a scene, perhaps rouse the concerns of passersby. But the truth was—and is—that people don’t care about lads with torn trousers and cut-up knees. They would likely ignore my cries. Th
e other option was that I could run, and I might get away, but it wouldn’t be like outrunning Germans. These boys fought and stole. They were alive because they could run faster and longer than anyone else. I’d run, and I would not get very far. After surveying these unattractive possibilities, I leapt over the cart and sprinted toward the factories.

  “After her!” someone said.

  I don’t know why I did not hear it before, but I heard it now: her. I had only a second to wonder how the devil they found out, risking a glance behind me. The kids drew nearer with every step. Jean and Thomas were in the lead. Was Thomas’s pistol loaded? That seemed impossible. He couldn’t have afforded bullets. But he wouldn’t have brought an unloaded pistol, now, would he? I pushed myself faster, scarcely breathing.

  What I remember about this experience, most viscerally, is the stillness. The world had frozen. No one saw us. Shopkeepers went about their business, mothers quieted their infants, beggars held out their hands, dead-eyed refugees huddled in doorways. I was running through an abandoned photograph on the floor of the blue-doored building.

  Then, of course, the boys caught up to me. Not thinking, I ran into the parking lot of the Le Soir factories. It was still early, so the workers hadn’t begun loading the paper into the vans. Barbed wire fences surrounded the lot, and I did not have the time to climb them; they probably would have cut up my legs and hands anyway. As Thomas and the others advanced on me, I backed up against one of the fences. Even now, I can feel the teeth of the barbed wire and smell the rust.

  When Nicolas and I were in the blue-doored building, I realized—why was I remembering it now?—I got up to relieve myself. I thought Nicolas was asleep. He must not have been. And now these boys knew they had been taking orders from a girl. I am sure I do not have to tell you that in the minds of men, there is no deception more perverse.

  “Hey, lads,” I said, forcing a smile, “what’s all this about?”

  “We know what you done, Gamin.” Thomas hefted his pistol. “What you are, too. No sense hiding it.”

  “Please, Gamin.” Nicolas stepped forward, his eyes haunted. “I tried to tell ’em not to, but they had their minds set on it.”

  “Not to do what?” I stuffed my shaking hands into my pockets, partially so the boys could not see how scared I was, partially to see whether I had anything at my disposal. I cursed myself for abandoning my glass knife in the blue-doored photography lab. For once, my mischievous pockets were empty, save a few stray matches.

  “We heard what happened to Leon,” said Jean, slapping a crowbar against his palm. “You let him die. You liar, you let him die.”

  “I was not even there when he died. You want to know what happened to Leon? Ask Nicolas. It was him who was there, not me.”

  Nicolas shrank away from the eyes of his friends. “It was him who gave the orders—her, I mean! She tricked us all, said it would be easy. That’s what Leon told me, too. But then I saw things, while we was together, she and me, and it’s not like what she said at all—”

  “Shut up, Nicolas,” I said.

  “You been hiding something, haven’t you?” said Thomas, not quite a man, but leering like one.

  “What are you going to do, Tom?” My ears pounded in time with my heart. “You’re going to shoot me?”

  “I might.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then we’ll see.”

  “You’ll see nothing. The Germans hear a pistol, and they come running.”

  “I might not, if you show us what you been hiding.”

  I would realize, much later, what I should have said, what René Noël or Marc Aubrion would have said. “You’re smarter than that, Tom. Come, let’s work something out together. I have stuff you want. Let’s cut a deal.” That would have been Noël. Or: “We’ve known each other since the start of all this mess. I’ll buy you a drink, and we’ll talk about a job we can all do, something to make it up to you.” That would have been Aubrion. But I was not thinking. A desperation had turned my bones to ash: I had to make off with the bombs now, or all was lost. I started to move toward the dumpster.

  “Oh, come off it.” Nicolas was weeping. “We know there aren’t no bullets in that gun.”

  “Leon was my best mate,” said Michael.

  “We liked Leon just fine,” said Nicolas, “but Gamin can’t do nothing to bring him back.”

  I sidled closer to the dumpster. The boys did not notice. I was less than a meter from it.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Thomas raised his pistol as though he were about to strike Nicolas. “I never took you for a coward.”

  “One of us already got hurt! I don’t see why another one of us has to.”

  “Because she’s the cause of it.” Michael jabbed a thumb in my direction.

  Moving swiftly—like an animal, like my parents running from the trampling hordes in Toulouse—I scaled a pile of barrels near the dumpster. When I reached the topmost barrel, I leapt into the dumpster itself. I fell, suffocating in the stench. Outside, the boys were shouting. I found the sack of bombs, tossed it over my shoulder, and climbed out of the dumpster.

  They went quiet when they saw me, perhaps wondering what on earth I’d fetched from the trash. I meant to use their confusion to my advantage, to make a run for it while they were still puzzling over what I had. And I tried, I swear to you, I tried. The blood pounded in my body as I started to run. But they ran after me, and my foot caught on something in the pavement, and I fell, I fell, dropping the sack as I tumbled to my knees.

  The pain disappeared somewhere inside my body. I could hear the lads behind me, putting their hands on the bombs that Nicolas and I had made, the bombs that Leon died for, the bombs for Aubrion and Faux Soir. My fear slowed the world to an underwater pace. These boys were not fools. They knew what they had, what I’d had. A few matches had fallen from my pockets. I lifted my head to see Thomas striking a match, lighting the mouth of the pipe bomb, curling his arm like a javelin-thrower. I watched the gentle arc of the bomb as he threw it. The red in my eyes grew to multitudes.

  The Jester

  The vans drove away from Wellens’s factory in single file, all thirteen of them, painted green like our military vans but stouter in the middle. They followed each other out of the parking lot and into the streets, parting a quarter mile away: to follow the road to Brussels, or to Flanders, or a hundred other places Joseph Beckers had listed in his book. Aubrion took in these facts clinically, like he was making a list based on secondhand information, not observing this event as it happened. When the vans were no longer in sight, he took a small, chipped bottle of something, maybe whiskey, from his pocket. Most people would have said a prayer, maybe, but Marc Aubrion didn’t know any prayers. He was raised Catholic, meaning his parents walked him to a schoolhouse every Sunday where he snuck out a window to play marbles with the other boys. “For Theo Mullier,” he whispered. And besides, Mullier (an atheist since he was a lad) would not have appreciated a Catholic prayer. Aubrion, who was pressed for time and out of options, recited one of the only lines of literature he’d committed to memory. It seemed appropriate. “Mourir doit sacrément être une belle aventure.” Aubrion poured a drop of whiskey into the earth, and then sat on the ground and wept.

  After a time, Noël, who had disappeared so Aubrion could sort through himself in peace, ran up to him. Even Aubrion, never a subtle figure, could see panic in the director’s eyes.

  “René?” Aubrion stood up, a tad dizzy. “What’s gone on?”

  “There’s been a problem,” he said.

  “René, you’re mad. I just saw the vans drive off.”

  “I didn’t say there was a problem with the vans.”

  “You are not making any sense.”

  “I received word from one of our agents.” René held on to Aubrion’s shoulder, for support, it seemed. “Gamin set off the bombs.” />
  Aubrion’s body grew cold. “It’s too early. We told him not to do it until three thirty.”

  “Something must have happened.”

  “Christ, we have to go—”

  “We can’t, Marc. You know that as well as I.”

  Aubrion jerked away from Noël. “We can’t simply sit by while Gamin is in danger.”

  “There is no indication Gamin was harmed, at least according to our agent. And he did manage to cripple at least four of the delivery vans.”

  “Out of how many?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “That is good, isn’t it? Le Soir will not reach some of the newsstands at all.”

  “Not for a while, no.”

  “And the Germans will investigate,” said Aubrion. “They will probably put a halt to all newspaper deliveries until they’ve cleared the area. That will delay everything, won’t it?”

  “Only a little. Here is the real problem—because of Gamin’s timing, some newsstands will receive both Faux Soir and Le Soir, perhaps in rapid succession.” Noël sighed, rubbing his eyes. “It’s not good, Marc. It is not good at all. People will be spooked.”

  “They’ll think it’s some kind of damned loyalty test.”

  “Or they will know it is the FI. Whatever they believe, it will keep them from buying our paper—either of the papers, actually.”

  “What about the RAF?” said Aubrion, his voice wavering.

  Noël’s eyes softened. “They aren’t coming, Marc.”

  Aubrion looked up at the pallid sky, white like arsenic skin. “Well,” he said after a pause. “I suppose it was a long shot anyway.”

  Ferdinand Wellens interrupted them with a wave. He strutted across the parking lot, grinning through his beard. “How goes it, gentlemen?” he said.