The Tiger Claw

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  Shiny black automobile doors opened before the club and slammed squarely, amid the saluting of chauffeurs. Monsieur Hoogstraten and Archambault left, sandwiched in a group of tipsy Luftwaffe officers. Viennot muttered au revoir and slipped into the night. Gilbert said he was going home to sleep a few hours before the landing.

  Noor walked a few streets away and waited on the corner.

  A warm, clear night—an invitation to bombers. Stray dogs had collected around rubbish heaps to gnaw at gristle and bone. A low laugh from a brothel window above her countered the stillness of the street. Light slanting from a chink between drapes illuminated a handbill from a long-ago Communist call to strike: Venez faire de jolies grèves avec nous! Beside it, bold black letters on a gargantuan yellow poster said BEKANNTMACHTUNG in German and AVIS in French. She read the French proclaiming that fathers of all “bandits, saboteurs and troublemakers,” their male antecedents and descendants, cousins over the age of eighteen and anyone guilty of assisting them would be shot. Women relatives of the same degree would be condemned to forced labour, and children under the age of seventeen would be taken and put in homes.

  Horrible. When did this begin? The date below the signature of someone designated Leader of the SS and the Police in France said almost a year ago. And below that signature some intrepid resistant had lettered a V for victory and drawn the Gaullist Cross of Lorraine.

  Heartening, even inspiring.

  A light tap on her shoulder. Noor spun around; she hadn’t heard anyone coming.

  “Shhhhh!”

  Émile. Only Émile.

  She slipped her hand through his crooked elbow and he escorted her to the métro—a most respectable couple going home after a summer evening of jazz.

  CHAPTER 15

  Paris, France

  Sunday, June 20, 1943

  A PENETRATING WHINE built to a moan then whipped itself to a centrifugal wail. People halted on the rue Erlanger as the code heralding danger swooped among them, splintering the flow of time. Dogs growled then yapped, snapped and broke into furious barking. Then everyone was shouting and moving again, at double speed.

  Noor had stopped halfway up the stone path to Renée’s home. She was behind Émile as he snatched the key from the flowerpot and shouldered in.

  “Thank God you’ve come!” came Monique’s voice.

  Renée was in her dressing gown in the kitchen, moving with practised swiftness, stuffing tins, candles and blankets into a basket. Émile darted into the bedroom, came out carrying a sleep-tousled Babette against his shoulder, and a torch.

  “It’s only a test, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Tests are on Thursdays,” said Monique, her clogs clattering after him. “Today is Sunday.”

  Suresnes, all over again. June 3, 1940. Noor had crouched for hours with her family deep in Afzal Manzil’s wineless cellar among sacks of lentils and ceramic jars of Indian pickles imported from Bombay.

  Get down to Renée’s cellar.

  In the kitchen, Renée had opened a linen chest against the wall and removed the tablecloths and serviettes. She leaned into the chest and in a second removed a false plywood bottom. Noor helped unwind a rope tied in a figure eight around a hook. With the restraining rope untied, the chest pulled away from the wall effortlessly, revealing an iron ring in the floorboards. Monique grasped the ring and heaved. A section of the floor came up in her hand. Below, a rusty corkscrew of a staircase bore down into darkness.

  Émile put Babette down. The siren wail faded as Noor followed his bobbing light down the spiral. It was the Blitz again, the air raids on London again. Mother and Zaib ahead, and Noor holding fast to Dadijaan’s hand, shouting instructions in Urdu for her—all descending underground at Euston Square station.

  But now she was hiding from Allied, not German, bombs.

  Above Noor, Renée and Monique pulled and strained till the trap door scraped closed.

  A loop of rope dangling from the roof guided the way down. Noor reached for it.

  “Don’t!” Renée shouted, descending quickly.

  Noor recoiled.

  “That pulls the chest back against the wall.”

  “Renée, she didn’t know!” said Monique. Pulled tight and looped about a hook in the cellar, the rope locked the chest in the kitchen back in place. Pulled from above, knotted in the false bottom of the chest, it would do the same.

  “Welcome to our Scarlet Pimpernel room,” said Émile, his torch guiding Noor past the foot of the stairs to a bench.

  The cellar had the usual complement of crates and barrels neatly stacked in a far corner. The torch illuminated the square nub of a boarded-up well at its centre; the house predated Baron Haussmann and his sewer engineers. Past the well, through a narrow archway, stood two long tables. One was laden with wires, steel parts and small packets marked TNT. The scent of pigment dye, embossing ink and solvent hovered over the second.

  Noor drew closer.

  Stacks of identification booklets, blank ration tickets and rubber stamps of all kinds. So here was Émile and Monique’s workshop.

  “The house was rebuilt a few times since the aristos hid here to escape La Guillotine. They took a passage”—he pointed to a door recessed into the wall—“all the way from here to the Seine. It was sealed off when the apartments were built on either side.”

  Monique brought Babette her doll.

  “So we may not have an escape route, but we do have camouflage. Monique and I made this together.”

  A match flared in Monique’s hand. A candle appeared on a ledge set in the stone wall, beside the puddled wax of many others.

  Émile moved to the wall and turned a crank. A pulley mechanism began a metallic creaking and rumbling. Something began to slide slowly from the ceiling—a canvas screen, painted to match the stone wall. Noor stepped back, and Émile bent before it cleared waist level. Once in place, the cellar was almost halved in size and the workshop was completely concealed behind the mural. In the dark, if you didn’t touch the screen, it looked just like a wall.

  “Monique painted it,” Émile said, waving the torch. “A true artist.”

  Monique’s temple rested for a second on his shoulder. “Save the battery,” she said.

  Émile clicked the torch off. A distant rumble and boom sounded above. Then another. The stone walls seemed to vibrate.

  “Sales Anglais!“ Renée hissed into the dark.

  “It’s not the British, Renée, it’s the Americans,” said Émile.

  “Whoever it is, wish them well, Renée.” Monique’s voice was steady. “Think of every bomb bringing us a little closer to freedom.”

  “I wish I could believe that.” Renée’s voice sounded over the rumbling overhead. “Three years. How long can we go on living like this? We could all be killed, but I think it’s worse to be wounded. You know the concierge next door? Her sister’s leg was crushed in a bombing.”

  “Madame Meignot?” said Monique. “Poor thing! Her own knees are shaky from years of polishing floors. Pétain may have surrendered to Hitler, but she says she hasn’t.”

  Noor shook her head, tried a yawn. Her eardrums strained as if a thousand kilos of steel pressed upon the small room. The cellar was close—too close—to the surface. They could be buried alive. But what choice was there? The métro was too far away.

  Struggle not to think of what must be going on somewhere outside. Calls of “Aidez-moi! M’aidez!” The sputter and rage of fires, the crying of children. Running stretcher-bearers, nurses, doctors, bobbing gas lanterns, the desperate clang of shovels and pickaxes. Don’t think of bombs falling on Drancy. Or bombs falling where the land has no bricks and mortar for armour. Don’t think of London, Dunkirk and Coventry, and so many other cities bombed by German planes …

  Renée had her arm around Babette, a wide-awake Babette quivering from either fear or excitement.

  “Those bombers,” said Renée. “Dropping bombs on us as they did to our fleet at Mers el-Kébir.”

  Fig
ht had drained from her face. Noor stopped herself from a cutting retort; it would be cruel to defend Kabir and the British forces in the face of such mortal fear.

  “Renée, that was the English navy, not the RAF,” said Émile.

  “The British scuttled our whole fleet, didn’t they?”

  “If they hadn’t, Pétain would have placed every warship at the service of the Germans,” Émile replied. He sounded unusually impatient; he must have explained this to Renée before.

  “Don’t worry,” said Monique. “Sometimes the Boche sound the sirens to make Parisians believe we are in danger from the Allies.”

  Whistles, booms and the sounds of ack-ack guns above contradicted Monique’s optimism. In all its years the house had probably never encountered such vibration and pressure. If it collapsed, they would all be sealed inside. If this were London, Home Guard personnel and bomb-diffusion experts would be dispatched to dig them out—but who was assigned this job in Paris? German soldiers? The milice?

  “The trains. I know it—the British are bombing the trains. And almost every train is filled with Frenchmen going to work in Germany!”

  “Renée, I said it’s not the British, it’s the Americans. From the direction, they must be bombing the Renault works or the diesel engine factory.”

  Émile was just trying to comfort Renée; he couldn’t possibly tell which direction the bombs were aimed. But Noor’s heart had begun to race faster. Renée’s fear gave rise to her own …

  What if my Armand is no longer at Drancy? What if he is one of those Frenchmen sent to Germany?

  She had never considered this. Why had she not considered this?

  Mais non, non! Allah is not so cruel. Armand must, he must still be held at Drancy.

  The crash and thunder of falling debris shook Noor, even in the cellar. Somewhere outside, people were dying. Would it be better to die outside than be killed in this hole? She was a qualified nurse, she might be able to help. Should she go to their assistance?

  “How can you call yourself patriots when Frenchmen are being killed?” Renée’s voice ricocheted off stone.

  “Renée, those who die are martyrs,” said Émile. “But even if it takes a century, the Boche are doomed because the Occupation is wrong. Any occupation, vous savez? Immorale! Listen: we have survived the most terrible of years, building small networks while we squabbled. But all of us—even the Communists, the trade union federations—are now united. The whole Resistance is united. You’ll see—we’ll knock the Germans back across the Rhine.”

  Émile sounded as if he had met Max, General de Gaulle’s liaison to the Resistance in France, who had clandestinely travelled all through France earlier in the year, uniting the Free French; who Miss Atkins said might even become president of France if Mr. Churchill and Mr. Roosevelt decreed, and if there was a France left to be governed.

  Renée pulled her dressing gown close about her thin shoulders and kept talking. “Perfide Albion! They make you promises to respect France if you support them, they tell you, ‘Come, rise up against the Germans!’ and then they will sit back and watch the repression. And if they rout the Germans, they will simply occupy France in place of the Germans and fold our empire into theirs.”

  Renée’s reading of the British had some truth. They had fomented rebellion in Indian territories they sought to conquer, then betrayed those rebels who relied on their promises. Control of a threatened state’s foreign policy in return for guarantees of independence—then they reneged on the independence part, as the Germans were doing in France. But usually Britain reserved such subterfuge for areas east of Suez, and for brown people like Tipu Sultan. They wouldn’t do such things to fellow Europeans.

  “If that should happen, I promise on the graves of our parents, dear sister, we will begin a new resistance against the English,” said Émile.

  Renée threw up her hands. “Mon Dieu, can you not see, Émile—while you hope and work for an invasion, fat Mr. Churchill devours roast duck every night. And we live on potatoes.”

  Noor interposed, “Madame, in London the posters say Better potluck today with Churchill than humble pie under Hitler tomorrow. Mr. Churchill has only one goal: to defeat Hitler.”

  Renée turned on her. “Mademoiselle—I too wish for the defeat of Herr Hitler, but I am no dreamer, and it does not mean I wish for the victory of the English, the Americans and some general who flees to England while his men are sent to prisons in Germany. And it is they who are, this moment, bombing France and Germany—” Her voice broke. “Bombing my Guy in Germany.”

  Was there some third path Renée could see between Allied victory and Hitler’s defeat? Not for France, with its vanquished army. And meanwhile?

  Renée said to Émile, “I have a child and no husband. Please, I do not want to lose you too. No one in our family has ever been a saboteur.”

  Can Renée believe collaboration, Vichy style, is acceptable? No—this safe house shelters me and other British agents, and harbours the work Émile and Monique do in this very cellar.

  “I shall be the first, then,” said Émile, unrepentant.

  Renée shook her head and wiped her eyes.

  “If I had a sweet child like Babette,” said Noor, “I might also prefer safety to freedom. But I didn’t come here to surrender to Fascist ways. You know why I’m here—it’s all illegal, like Émile’s work. But since free people do not recognize the laws of despots … tant pis!”

  “So many laws—one cannot obey all of them.” Monique’s coaxing tone held a smile.

  “You mock me?” said Renée. “We could at least try to obey.”

  “But remember, Renée, since I was a little boy I have been chronically unable to obey,” Émile said in a jesting tone. “And now that I’m a vicious criminal, it’s even more difficult!”

  Babette put her arms about his neck. “C’est vrai, Oncle Émile?”

  “Huh!” said Renée. “Don’t let your uncle fill you with his ideas.”

  Babette withdrew.

  The candle guttered in its own smoke. A second flame rose from Émile’s cupped hand.

  “Oh! What have I in my pocket for Babette?” he said. “Tiens!”

  Babette’s laughter warmed the cellar. Tension melted.

  “Chocolate? Say ‘Merci, mon oncle.’ Share it with everyone,” chided Renée. “One piece for each of us.”

  Noor’s body shouldn’t betray her by enjoying chocolate when Armand could not share it. Under cover of the dark she slipped it back into Babette’s hand.

  Monique said, “I’ll save mine for Odile. She loves chocolate.”

  Voices rose and fell around Noor, arguing the merits of dark chocolate over light, Swiss over Belgian. The best chocolate éclair she had ever tasted, said Monique, was from Madame Millet’s pâtisserie.

  “What’s a chocolate éclair?” Babette interjected.

  Startled silence all around. It was a question any child in India might ask.

  Monique explained. Then, to Babette’s giggling delight, she told a tale of a mousse au chocolat so light, it slid from its mould and floated right up into your mouth. Émile added one of a chocolate fondue from Fouquet’s so creamy that each strawberry dived in of its own volition. Noor told Babette the adventures of a little poached pear in chocolate syrup searching for his love, a pear in vanilla syrup.

  “Très bizarre!“ came Renée’s brittle voice. “Don’t fill the child’s head with such lies. She’ll think everything she swallows has feelings like us.”

  Émile’s cheek shone gold with sweat. Noor touched her collar—too tight. And damp. Dust trickled down over her head—another explosion.

  Now Émile reminded Renée of the chocolate gâteau she had made for Guy, when Guy came to court her. No cake she had made since equalled it. Warmed by his compliment, Renée promised to make such a cake as soon as chocolate returned to the shops, or for Émile’s wedding if that came first.

  “I am a realist, my dear sister—our wedding will come first. Mon
ique, tell me, is your wedding dress ready yet?”

  Monique hesitated, then said, “Non, chéri. There is no material to be found for a wedding dress. But it’s no problem, I have some very nice dresses.”

  “Oh, no, no. Tell the couturier she will have fabric. Tomorrow parachutes are landing at Rosny.”

  The all-clear signal sounded before dawn. Émile led the way up the spiral stairs.

  Noor ventured out with Émile and Monique. Babette squeezed past, evading Renée’s restraining hand, running to the rue Erlanger. People from the apartment buildings were gathering there, looking up, looking south. Orange and red sparks flickered like fireflies in their eyes—reflected, Noor saw once she was standing beside them, from fires gorging themselves on Paris.

  A hot prong of smoke drove into Noor’s lungs. A man beside her shook his fist at the sky. Behind her, a woman’s moan rose to a cry, fell away to sobbing. Ambulance bells—far away, getting farther away.

  The crying of babies and coughing of children in the crowd now rose above the distant crackle and hiss. Renée pulled Émile back indoors. Noor glanced at Monique, who shrugged her helplessness and went in as well. Noor followed, shutting the front door.

  The chest was pushed back against the wall, its rope-lock pulled tight and knotted, the linen rearranged to hide its false bottom. Renée flounced to the card table to continue her game of solitaire; sleep, she said, was beyond her now. Monique and Noor helped Babette to bed. Then Monique curled up on the chaise longue under a blanket to snatch three hours of sleep before work. Émile was soon snoring in Guy’s bedroom.

  Noor stretched across the spare bed in Babette’s room, but a gramophone needle seemed to snag on a groove in her mind, repeating Renée’s words over and over.

  Renée was at odds with herself, her hospitality at odds with her words. She said she desired Hitler’s defeat, yet she was angered by Allied actions that could lead to eventual victory and a free France. But didn’t Mother often say, after Abbajaan’s departure, to appraise a person’s actions, always, not words. Renée had opened her home to Noor and other agents. Such hospitality to strangers was part of life in places like India but not usually exhibited by Europeans.