The Tiger Claw

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  The Colonel said, “Major Boddington will provide you with funds sufficient for your personal expenses and for members of your network.”

  The Major was gazing at Glory Hill, one hand tapping against his thigh as if he had more important things on his mind.

  “Nick?”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her, sir,” said Major Boddington. He turned and gave Noor a looking over. “I’ll be out to see you as necessary. And may I say, my dear, you seem quite the perfect candidate for this important mission.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Pforzheim, Germany

  December 1943

  ABBAJAAN USED TO SAY every debt must be paid before one can set out on the path of realization, that obligations to every person must first be met. I felt his words in the bone the years in England, and reproached myself every waking moment for being unequal to the obligations of love. And so my zikr, when I was supposed to be in remembrance of Allah, was a remembrance of Armand.

  How should I describe my beloved—your father? He is more than the sum of his actions, his likes and dislikes; attributes give little of his essence. Taller than most Frenchmen, he has long arms and legs, supple fingers. His eyes—a soul-piercing blue. Hair lighter than mine, wavy brown. But describing his face tells nothing of his spark, his irrepressible humour or generous spirit. He delights in reading and chess, and is impelled to translate beauty and pain alike to boundless music. He always sees a larger world than the one we live in, and when I am with him, we are almost there.

  Music chose Armand early, and he is gifted before the piano, whereas I am most comfortable behind the veena. Your father is that graduate of the Conservatoire de Paris whose every composition has an underlying swagger, whereas I passed my music examinations at the École Normale each year because not passing would have disappointed my family. Like Stravinsky, like Abbajaan, Armand’s prelingual rhythms are Eastern. Notes in groups of five, seven, ten-eight time. And he’s a performer who brings life to each note. Once, he played a Brahms concerto and I felt he had reached through my ribs and taken my heart in his hands.

  Alone here in my cell I wonder why he never said I wasn’t worth the waiting, the furtive meetings, the many lies. Many girls in Paris were less difficult to bed or marry than your mother, girls who might have converted to Judaism had he asked it, who would be better wives and mothers than I. Yet Armand—who could say when embarking on a new composition, “An artist can’t wait for someone to give him permission, he must just take it”—spent years waiting with me for Uncle or Kabir to give his permission for us to marry. Love is inexplicable, but he did say once that, when he was with me, he felt close to something sacred.

  The last time I saw your father, ma petite, was on May 2nd, 1940, two days before his thirtieth birthday. It was the last day of his leave, before he returned to the front.

  Everyone knew German boots were marching towards us. Once Hitler had taken Austria, invaded Czechoslovakia and betrayed France by signing a pact with that other shaitan, Stalin, Armand’s mobilization number was posted. By May 1940 he’d been with the 3rd Light Mechanized Division nine months, and was home on his second ten-day leave.

  On that May day before he returned to war, we met in the Bois de Boulogne under the locust trees. He had made arrangements, he said, to evacuate his mother, your grandmother Lydia, if the Germans came too close to Paris. Madame Lydia was born Catholic in Russia but converted to Judaism when she married your grandfather. People who were Jewish had more reason to fear the German invasion than anyone else—and they still do.

  “Just a precaution, Noor. The Germans aren’t very well equipped, I’m told. They won’t get all the way to Paris.”

  My uncle Tajuddin and Kabir were debating evacuation for our family each day, as both held British passports. I told Armand I would remain in Paris waiting for him at Afzal Manzil even if my family left.

  He would not hear of it. A shadow played over his face. “I never thought I’d say this, but I agree with your brother,” he said. “We cannot be together without marrying—your reputation must be considered. And Noor, this is no time to marry a Jew. There can no longer be any promises between us. You are—you must be—free. Free to marry someone else.”

  He felt that what he was would harm me, that I would be safer without him. But he couldn’t foresee the consequences of our separation. There were bombs in London too.

  No one is safe from powerful men anywhere.

  I said, “I will remain with you, I must be with you now,” but he insisted.

  “Je t’aime, je t’adore.” He said those words as a reminder of all the love he had for me. He did say them. He held my hands to his heart, raised my lips to his, and we parted.

  Oh Armand, forgive me for saying adieu. How bitterly I rue the word!

  The next time Madame Lydia heard from Armand was on June 2, 1940—a telegram from Dunkirk urging her, urging all of us, to evacuate. The Germans had overrun most of northern France. It was a miracle Armand was alive to send that telegram and that it arrived at all; in two weeks France had lost ninety-two thousand men. All I cared was that it said Armand was awaiting evacuation along with his regiment from the dunes of Dunkirk to England.

  The Germans began bombarding Suresnes and the periphery of Paris the next day. In the morning there was no answer from Madame Lydia’s telephone. By noon Kabir had packed our Amilcar for Bordeaux, and Uncle had gone in a car full of other Indians heading to Marseilles.

  I thought Armand and I might, insh’allah, meet again in England, but when we got to London, I learned his unit had regrouped and returned to France.

  And as soon as Maréchal Pétain formed his Vichy government to sign the armistice with Germany, the news turned worse: anti-Semitic edicts, confiscation of Jewish property. I didn’t know if Armand was a German POW, or was in hiding, until a postcard from Cannes. For months preprinted postcards were the only communication the Vichy government would allow.

  When I was training at Wanborough and saw bombers flying towards the Channel, I worried my Armand was in their path. Three long years without even our secret meetings, and only two postcards to Miss Noor Khan care of the Sufi Music Centre, London, and I had learned of myself that Armand was as water to the root of a plant, as necessary as sun for growth. There have been loves like ours over the centuries: Nizami sang of Laila and Majnu, the bards of Abelard and Héloïse. But our love was ours and, to me, unique.

  Mother counselled never to love someone of another religion, someone different. She said nothing but confusion and pain come of mixing blood and religions, that she had often regretted taking the steamer out of Boston Harbor to follow Abbajaan.

  But I did what my mother did before me, then deserted my love when he most needed me.

  Abbajaan said we are being judged, all the time, by our Divine Selves. My Divine Self had judged me and already found me inadequate.

  CHAPTER 5

  London, England

  Monday, June 14, 1943

  UMBRELLA AND FANY CAP tucked beneath her arm, breathless from running up Clarges Street, Noor surveyed expanses of cream-clothed tables at Pinetto’s. Too late to hope Miss Atkins wouldn’t notice her being “on Indian time.”

  Miss Atkins was at a table in the far corner, sitting tall as if at her Baker Street desk. A cardboard-looking piece of whatever was passing for food today lay untouched on the plate before her. An overflowing ashtray and a mimeographed copy of Tidbits, the internal dispatch of the SOE, sat beside the silver cutlery.

  Noor slipped into the vacant seat, smoothing her skirt over her knees. In England, being late was construed as disrespectful, much more than in France.

  “Sorry, marm.” She launched into explanation: the tube had come to a halt at an air-raid warning.

  “You’re here now.”

  Miss Atkins let a man limping on his cane pass out of earshot. A waiter hovered. Miss Atkins ordered for Noor.

  “Well, Nora, still sure you’re up to it?”

  “Indee
d, marm.”

  “I should tell you we have received some rather alarming reports.”

  “Alarming, marm?”

  “In fact, two reports from your accompanying officers. Seems they don’t believe you’re quite the right material.”

  A flush warmed Noor’s face. Being “the right material” could mean anything from the schools she’d attended to the shoes she wore. Miss Atkins seemed to be searching for flaws.

  “May I ask why, marm?”

  “Nothing specific, just that they feel you don’t react quite as expected.”

  Days she’d spent on the range flashed to mind, hours before the looking glass—turn, draw, shoot. “I have very swift reactions.”

  But Miss Atkins didn’t mean physical reactions. Couldn’t any woman, Indian or French, experience the need to act, act against tyranny and injustice against all people, not just Europeans, not only Gentiles? Was she to sing “Rule Britannia” and wave the Union Jack? Rave that she had experienced a call of duty to the SOE or England? Even without a siren call, it didn’t mean she wasn’t the right material.

  “Perhaps the problem is their expectations,” she said.

  A quizzical look came over Miss Atkins’s face. She leaned forward. “Perhaps. They do say you were most keen to take a French assignment, which makes them wonder—why? Why not Holland or Belgium, where no one would recognize you?”

  “I speak no Dutch or Flemish. I’ve always wanted to learn Dutch, but somehow—”

  “There is also the little matter of your War Office interview.”

  Noor kept her face neutral.

  Seven months ago, after the first interview at Baker Street, came a second before a board of bulbous-nosed, bewhiskered gentlemen—a retired Indian inspector general, a district collector and two deputy commissioners. What did she think about Indian independence? asked one. A vague question to which she answered that it was unconscionable that Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Nehru and thousands of others were wasting away in gaol, held without trial for months now. The eldest gentleman asked if she believed Indians should be armed. Yes, said Noor, for their own defence against the Germans and Japanese. If allowed arms, she said, India wouldn’t have to pay the British government tons of rice and millions in sterling for its protection. India had numerous brave men and women who could defend its borders.

  “They didn’t like what I said.”

  “You must have sounded like a red-hot radical,” said Miss Atkins. “As if you agree with those who say East Indians could govern themselves.”

  In fact, Noor’s reprieve from the depths of their disapproval had come with the next question. Asked what she thought of Messali Hadj, the radical Muslim agitating for Algerian independence from France, she expressed admiration for any man who would spurn an offer of release from Vichy and remain in a French gaol—an attitude more in keeping with those of men who despised Pétain’s Vichy government. She was warmly congratulated and passed.

  A question mark seemed to hover over Miss Atkins’s head.

  “Everyone is capable of self-governance,” said Noor. “Even Indians.”

  “Indians? Oh, don’t be silly, Nora. They’re not yet ready for freedom or democracy—haven’t a clue. Really, do try being a little more politic. It surprises me the board approved you. But I’ve long resigned myself to working with flawed material.” Her tone was turning ever more mocking. “Anyway, all your little outburst did was confirm Mr. Churchill’s convictions: the naked fakir and that Nehru chap should remain in jail. Now, if you’re going to take this assignment and survive, you must learn to lie, dear, lie convincingly about many things.”

  Noor could lie as convincingly as any other agent—why ever not? By the time she left France, she was skilled in the administration of a multitude of selves, not only her nafs, the base self that must be overcome. She could lie to her self as well as anyone else; had she not hidden her self from herself these many years? Thinking up excuses to circumvent Uncle Tajuddin’s restrictions, hiding, meeting Armand in secret because she didn’t want to disappoint or hurt her family. Once she imagined herself as she “should be,” the right responses flowed.

  “About your true identity, for instance,” Miss Atkins added.

  She was already lying about her true identity by calling herself Nora Baker instead of Noor Khan. She wasn’t the only Indian ever to take a Western name. Still, it was a cowardly accommodation to England—and a lie.

  As for cover stories, she’d be a veritable Scheherazade. How many consoling fairy tales she had created for Kabir and Zaib to explain Abbajaan’s absence. Buddhist tales she translated had even been published as a book. She retold Sufi teaching tales, wrote her own short stories, managed the children’s hour on Radio Paris. She could unfetter her imagination at will.

  Miss Atkins continued, “Diplomacy, war and interviews require a modicum of, shall we say, prevarication.” She paused to light a Players. “But I think you Indians have a native capacity for prevarication, so we shan’t have to worry about that.”

  Noor felt herself flush. Fortunately, she was spared having to respond to these remarks by the arrival of a plate bordered in indigo blue. She had what Yolande termed “the curse,” so she would eat, though it was Ramzaan. Besides, training exercises gave her a hearty appetite. Dadijaan, whose network of expatriate Indians extended into every nook of London, said, when serving small, tasteless rations after sundown, that so many in India were starving to support this war, everyone in England should be grateful for any food at all. But if the shrivelled island coated with cream sauce on the plate before her was pork, it would, taken with Miss Atkins’s remarks, surely turn her stomach. Well, at least it wasn’t soup.

  She tasted it—fish of some kind.

  It wasn’t—it really wasn’t—that she didn’t like pork because it was taboo. Abbajaan hadn’t exactly forbidden it; he advised his followers to elevate themselves by refraining from eating the base animal. She had scientific reasons, like avoiding trichinosis—not that there was much danger of trichinosis in London.

  Miss Atkins continued, “We will overlook such insubordination. Your services are required.”

  The imperious “we” was not lost on Noor.

  “And you’ve scored well in wireless operations.” Miss Atkins flashed a rare smile. “I don’t believe the board’s opinion counts much in such matters. I’m confident your mother’s blood will prevail. But it should be mentioned—some have their doubts.”

  Miss Atkins’s caste system was blood-based enough to have been designed by Brahmins. A late-night story Yolande once told in a Nissen hut said Miss Atkins’s father wasn’t English either, he was Romanian; that, like Noor, Miss Atkins had taken her mother’s English name. But Noor wasn’t as determined as Miss Atkins to disavow the blood-echoes of Abbajaan’s origins.

  Change the subject.

  “Do tell me more about the assignment, marm.”

  Miss Atkins inhaled, then puffed smoke from the side of her mouth. Her gaze locked on Noor’s. “For some time now—since February, actually—an SOE agent we call “Prosper” has been operating throughout northern France, posing as a seller of agricultural implements. The usual sort of thing—arranging for arms deliveries to the Resistance, selecting locomotives to be sabotaged, trains to be derailed, aircraft or petrol tanks to be blown up. With excellent results, I might add: every time the Germans turn around, one of Prosper’s cells has blown up a bridge or disabled an engine turntable or signal box.”

  Miss Atkins stubbed her cigarette out, but the ashes still smouldered. “He’s built up a highly skilled network by drawing Frenchmen from many trades and professions. We trust they’ll rise up and fight as soon as Mr. Churchill gives the word.” She sounded a bit dubious about trusting the French. “You will be working with a select few. An engineer, code name “Phono;” “Archambault,” a wireless operator assigned to Prosper’s network; “Gilbert,” who selects and secures the fields where agents and arms are dropped; a French businessman, a professor
and a don—director, as the French say. You will be introduced—secure introductions are absolutely indispensable—as Anne-Marie Régnier, a nursemaid from Bordeaux.”

  Miss Atkins lit up again. Eye-stinging clouds accumulated about Noor’s head.

  “I will provide you with the necessary carte d’identité, ration coupons, a textile card and a certificate of Aryan descent. Your personal effects, wireless and code book will be sent once we receive word that you have made contact with Phono. As soon as Archambault has you adequately trained, you will replace him and he will return for training on the Mark II. Conditions have forced Archambault to transmit too often, and at times for too long. We fear it is only a matter of time before the Gestapo locates his transmitters. They’re OSS-issue SSTR-1s. You will replace his transmitters with Mark IIs, and learn quickly.”

  “When do I leave, marm?”

  “At the next full moon—that’s tomorrow if the night is clear. Come to Orchard Court in Portman Square after tea, alone. Memorize this address. Tell no one where you are going. We will reach you if your flight is cancelled”—she consulted a card from her pocket—“on Taviton Street?”

  “Yes, I’ll be with my mother.”

  “‘No one’ includes family. They are not to know where you are being sent or when you leave. Your pay will be accumulated for your return or paid in the usual weekly dollops. Perhaps you’d like it paid to your mother?”

  Noor dipped her head in a quick nod.

  Money talk. Like dirty laundry. Sewage. Allah would provide. She didn’t mind bargaining when necessary like any frugal Indian or Parisienne, but …

  “We need your services—we don’t expect you to starve.”