The Tiger Claw

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  Hold fast to hope.

  “So, Monsieur Claude, tell me … what other things can be had for a price?” she murmured to Claude’s back.

  “That depends, mademoiselle”—the whir of wheels punctuated his voice—“on what your aunt Lucille requires.”

  “I will ask her,” said Noor. “You can call me Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie Régnier.”

  The bicycle bumped along past the last watchtower and its machine-gun silhouette, and this time Noor looked back as it swung and became sure it wasn’t aiming at her. Wasn’t aiming at her at all. Claude turned at the chestnut tree waving its leaves against a warm, cloudless sky. When he stopped in the lane, Noor slipped off the carrier and opened her bag for a tip. He shook his head.

  “Non, mademoiselle—I will take you again, for your pretty eyes. You can ask for me at the tabac or the garage on the other side of the camp. I deliver bread here in the mornings, too.”

  “Merci, Claude,” said Noor warmly. “I will ask Tante Lucille what she needs.” With Dadijaan in mind she added for greater effect, “You know old ladies—today it is one thing, tomorrow another.”

  Claude ran a few paces on his wood-soled shoes and vaulted onto his bike. He looked over his shoulder, beamed and waved when he caught her eye.

  Inside, Noor greeted Madame Gagné.

  “Oh, have you come, then? Too late—breakfast is over. You can have the last of the oatmeal.”

  Late despite her best intentions; the meal would have been welcome. Still, she had learned something. Noor ate the weak oatmeal and climbed to her attic room, a little wiser, much more hopeful than before.

  Flashes of light resolved into patterns:

  … dot-dot-dash … dash-dot-dash … dash-dash-dot …

  Inside Madame Gagné’s creaking house, Noor rose from the chair she had pulled to the window and raised her binoculars. Chestnut leaves, metallic in the moonlight, filtered a welcome breeze through the window. Mice or rats skittered beneath the floorboards.

  Noor had watched the camp since mid-morning to acquaint herself with its routine. At noon, prisoners were herded into the central courtyard for a bowl of what she supposed was soup. An hour and a half later, prisoners were marched out, presumably to work again, leaving little activity in the courtyard. At 18:35 hours they returned to the courtyard for roll call and soup distribution, and at 20:00 hours a blast from a factory horn must have meant something to inmates. At 22:00 hours lights went out in the complex and, suddenly, perimeter lights above the barbed wire fence flashed on. Then searchlights in the central courtyard raised moonish faces to the night.

  Again: dot-dot-dash … dash-dot-dash … dash-dash-dot.

  Sudden, fleeting as intuition—the prisoners were using battery-powered torches to send Morse code messages from the camp.

  Noor snatched up pen and paper and began to record the letters she was reading from the flashing lights. Who was the sender? who the intended receiver? She’d decipher it later. Receiving was the least and the best she could do. It would be beyond all possible coincidences if Allah were to allow Armand to be sending in Morse as she was watching. Like herself, Armand could have learned Morse in the last three years, but she didn’t think he would. Anyway, she’d record and, if possible, send the messages from these unknown captives to their destination.

  É—C—O—U—T … Wait, what was that sound? Aeroplanes buzzed in the distance. Sirens wailed and anti-aircraft guns in the camp’s central courtyard thundered into the night. The still-life painting on the wall behind Noor quivered, drifted askew, then crashed behind the headboard. The walls were vibrating, shivering down to their timbers.

  But the lights—the perimeter lights. They still blazed. Turn them off! Plunge the camp in total blackout! Instead, every light remained on, as if intended to guide the bombs.

  Noor trembled for Armand as the bombers screamed and roared overhead. A camp this size, lit up as it was, would be a highly visible landmark from the air. Was it a target?

  The bombers ploughed through the exploding sky in tight formation.

  Madame Gagné was shouting from the landing, a clattering filled the stairwell. Noor should run downstairs, take shelter in the cellar. But she couldn’t tear her eyes from the camp windows where the torches had been flashing.

  Kabir, if you’re above us in that bomber and you destroy this camp, I’ll never forgive you. Never.

  But then, if the camp were bombed, it might be possible in the ensuing chaos for Armand and Madame Lydia to escape. If the camp were destroyed, it would make it difficult if not impossible for the Germans and Vichy to incarcerate Jews and send them to Germany, or at least make it difficult for a long time. And meanwhile, if they had fewer Jews to slave in their armaments industries and help repair their bombed cities, perhaps they would lose the war.

  Kabir, if you’re above us in that bomber and you don’t destroy this camp, I’ll never forgive you. Never.

  But the booming of guns and ack-ack quieted, and the flock of unseen arrowheads flew away to top priority targets in Germany. Noor sat waiting, watching beneath night-sifted starlight, but the torches did not flash again.

  Drancy, France

  Tuesday, June 22, 1943

  “Tickets, tickets, s’il vous plaît!”

  Madame Gagné was moving around her dining table, collecting rainbow-coloured ration coupons for meals served to the boarding house residents, when Noor came downstairs the next morning. Tickets for the bread ration, twenty-four hours old in accordance with German decree, bread she said cost her three hundred francs today. Tickets for the margarine, but not the saccharine jam.

  The dining room lay at the heart of the house, adjoining the kitchen. Through an archway lay a cavernous drawing room where blackout curtains surrounded slip-covered furniture. Beyond it, a panelled corridor led to the front door.

  Noor placed her bag next to a chair, murmured good morning and sat down beside a buxom woman in an apron. The waitress Gabrielle commanded the rapt attention of four others—two men, two women—as she described how to make an eggless omelette.

  “Have you tasted one?” asked a grey-haired gentleman.

  Animal smell. Monsieur Durand, the salesman who kept rabbits as pets in his room. Benares silk tie. A better-cut suit than these surroundings warranted. But those Degas eyes and unstarched shirt collar spoke of bachelorhood or a recent fall in circumstances.

  “Non, non, but can’t you imagine it?”

  Each resident savoured his or her version of the imaginary omelette.

  “Eggless omelettes! If there are no eggs, it’s not an omelette. What did I tell you, Mademoiselle Régnier? Don’t believe anything Mademoiselle Gabrielle says.”

  But Gabrielle’s description must have called to the right elements in her audience’s experience, for the omelette was no less wondrous to them for being eggless and tasteless. At Madame Gagné’s comment Gabrielle shrugged muscular shoulders, from which, despite her name, no angel wings extended.

  Having pronounced judgement on their culinary fantasies, and with the coupons dutifully submitted by Noor, Madame Gagné disappeared into the kitchen. Beyond the cast iron stove Noor spied Claude lounging in the open doorway facing the garden. He noticed her at once, straightened, smiled and blushed. Such amusing admiration; he was so much younger. Noor couldn’t help giving him a coquettish glance over the rim of her coffee cup.

  “You’re across the corridor from me, non?” said Gabrielle. “Did you not feel the house shake when the guns fired last night?”

  Noor nodded.

  “I knocked on your door as we ran downstairs to the cellar, and there was no answer. You sleep too soundly—or you’re very brave. Or very foolish.”

  “Thank you for knocking,” said Noor. “It was almost over by the time I woke up.”

  She helped herself to a pat of margarine. A few seats away, a woman resident’s eyes followed the pale smear through the air till Noor’s knife touched her plate.

  Noor continued, “They l
eft the lights of the camp on. People in that camp could have been bombed!” Outrage in her voice.

  Restrain yourself.

  Monsieur Durand wiped his lips. “Of course they could. The Germans wouldn’t care.”

  “Oh, they would,” said a bald man at the other end of the table. “They need our imprisoned friends for German factories.” And he left the table, stopping to take his hat and portfolio from the hat stand in the hall.

  Gabrielle tossed her head. Golden locks brought her closer to her angelic name than her sharp tone. “We all know why he’s here. He’s a missionnaire.” She leaned back, fingering the gold cross at her neck. Her expression said she’d just revealed a great secret.

  “A missionary?” The bald man had neither cleric’s collar nor priestly demeanour.

  “Yes. He’s allowed to leave the camp for a few days at a time, to find and collect families of prisoners. Women and children—I ask you, what work can children do in German factories? Then, when the families have been, as they say, ‘reunited,’ they are all sent to Germany together.”

  “Why does he return to the camp?” asked Noor. “Can’t he refuse to gather up families?”

  “Oh, don’t blame him! He said once that if he failed to return to the camp when he was expected, the Germans would shoot someone in his stead and send a new missionary out the very next morning. But I tell everyone new: if you have anyone in the camp, don’t breathe one word before him.”

  Deny you have someone in the camp.

  “Oh, I’m here to visit my aunt—Tante Lucille,” said Noor. “She’s very sick.”

  “This is amazing,” said Gabrielle. “So am I! Monsieur Durand here was just asking me about my aunt’s health.”

  A wry smile came over Monsieur Durand’s face. “And my aunt’s name is Madame Frédérique Durand. She is very sick too. Sicker than your Tante Marie, Gabrielle.”

  The three looked at each other in a silence that restrained volumes of questions, not the least of which was the obvious one: where were these three sick aunts at this moment? No wonder Madame Gagné had smirked in disbelief when Noor told her about Tante Lucille.

  The two women next to Gabrielle finished eating, stood up and nodded farewells. Their wedge sandals clumped through the kitchen where Madame Gagné was counting out ration tickets for Claude.

  Three of us with sick aunts, at the same table.

  This was no coincidence but a joint failure of imagination that might have been comical if it wasn’t so dangerous.

  Around the dining table, intuitive evaluations continued. Monsieur Durand’s salted brows were drawn together in a frown. If he was Jewish, as Madame Gagné had implied, that probably said Noor and Gabrielle were not Jewish enough to trust. The pressure of Gabrielle’s gaze intensified. She was evaluating Noor’s features; perhaps Noor and Monsieur Durand were not Christian enough or not French enough for further confidences from her.

  They aren’t Muslim or Indian, but we certainly think alike. We who have invented similar lies may have similar reasons, similar concerns.

  She kept her face unguarded and open. A subtle change came to Gabrielle’s eyes.

  Perhaps loving a single Jewish man deeply, without reserve, moulded Noor’s eyes, nose or mouth in some friendly way others in Armand’s community could sense; or perhaps shared fears, anger and loss could instantly create the first person plural nous without shared memories, for Monsieur Durand rose abruptly and with a slight bow began measuring out Noor’s bread, cutting it evenly and finely till her fair share lay before her.

  There was a sudden dyspeptic buzz.

  A doorbell. At the front door.

  Gabrielle looked startled, Monsieur Durand fearful.

  Noor tensed in reflection of their attitudes. Her hands suddenly felt damp. She wiped them on her serviette and glanced at the kitchen door. In an instant she could be through it and into the garden.

  She listened with the others. Madame Gagné went to the door and opened it.

  “Papieren?!” came a German voice.

  Papers? At this hour? Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand exchanged glances of panic.

  But the Gestapo isn’t here for them. They must have come to arrest me, the foreign agent, the spy. Run now?

  Gabrielle was sitting very straight. Monsieur Durand shot his cuffs, popped the last of his bread into his mouth and waited, cheeks bulging.

  Noor could do that too, appear normal.

  A German soldier’s large frame filled the dining-room doorway, Madame Gagné behind him.

  What did “normal” look like? It didn’t look like Noor. She leaned forward. She would just reach under the table slowly, as if reaching for her handbag to take out her papers. Her muscles flexed, ready to flee.

  But the soldier took a cursory look around the dining room and said in guttural French, “Everything looks in order.” He turned to Madame Gagné. “Is Claude here?”

  Madame Gagné called and the boy entered the dining room, wide eyes already protesting innocence.

  “You work at the garage, ja?”

  Claude nodded, cheeks flushing red.

  “There’s a noise in my gearbox. Come outside and check my clutch.”

  Claude followed the soldier through the front door, and everyone at the table seemed to breathe again. Madame Gagné returned to tend her cauldron on the stove. Gabrielle jumped up from the table and disappeared between the ghostly furniture shapes in the drawing room. She opened the painted window a few inches and peered out onto the street.

  “That soldier comes into the Café Vidrequin,” she said. “Always has two beers—I serve him. He must have recognized me, that’s why he didn’t check our papers. No, wait—he’s talking to Claude.”

  “Why here?” said Monsieur Durand. “He could have gone to the garage.”

  “It’s too early—the garage isn’t open yet.”

  “He could have waited half an hour. I don’t like it.”

  There was a short pause, then Gabrielle said, “I think Claude has repaired his motor car.”

  Claude came back.

  “Did you repair his motor car?” asked Monsieur Durand.

  “There was nothing wrong with it,” said Claude.

  “Nothing wrong? These Germans are idiots.” Monsieur Durand was nearly laughing with relief.

  “Yes, well …” Claude hesitated. Then it came out in a rush: “He said he needed me to inspect his motor car for tomorrow—a convoy leaves in the morning for Germany. He has to drive the SS officers to Bobigny station.”

  All the air seemed sucked out of the room.

  “I—I think he wanted me to tell someone, maybe everyone. But I don’t know who needs to know. Besides, what can anyone do?”

  Gabrielle sank into her chair with her face in her hands. The cross at her throat must be for costume, because her pallor said she knew someone in the camp. Could she be Jewish? Did she have a Jewish husband? A Jewish lover?

  Don’t show you have any reason to care.

  Monsieur Durand blew his nose thoughtfully. “Have you met this German before?”

  “No, never,” said Claude. “But he’s a Bavarian. Catholic—I see him in church.”

  Monsieur Durand gave a derisive grunt.

  “Well, he isn’t likely to attend a synagogue, you know!” said Claude.

  So Monsieur Durand was Jewish, as Madame Gagné had suspected. And Claude knew it. Monsieur Durand’s eyebrows rose, and Claude retreated in deference to Monsieur Durand’s years. But then Claude shifted from one foot to the other and blurted, “The list of selected prisoners has been posted.”

  “Did your German say how they had been selected? Did he give you the list?” asked Monsieur Durand.

  “He’s not ‘my German.’ Anyway, he said nothing. And of course he didn’t give me a list.”

  “You think he carries a photograph of such a list in his pocket just so he can tell you who is on it?” said Gabrielle, with a return of spirit that called to Noor’s own.

 
; Monsieur Durand shrugged. “If he was really trying to help, he would have brought us the list. What is the use of telling us there will be a convoy tomorrow? What can we do about it? And a German who can behave with humanity—it is impossible.”

  The soldier’s action did not match Monsieur Durand’s experience of Germans.

  But strange things do happen when we ask Allah to help us be healed or complete. He reveals himself in signs and symbols, opening doors before us; then it’s up to us to walk through. Is it not completely strange that though the war still rages, I have returned to France? That though Armand is not free, I am closer to him? Allah, you meant for me to be here, in this room, this very day, to hear that a convoy is being sent to Germany tomorrow.

  Guide me further.

  “I must go, I can’t be late for work,” said Claude. “I’ll be at the garage if you need me.”

  “Merci, Monsieur Claude,” said Noor. She turned back to Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand.

  “And if he gave you the list, what then?” Gabrielle was wreaking her anger against the Germans on poor Monsieur Durand. “Can we take it to Vichy and say, please, Premier Laval, don’t deliver our little children into the hands of the Germans?”

  Noor asked, “How do they select people for the convoys?”

  Monsieur Durand raised heavy-lidded eyes. “The lawyer working on my relatives’ case says the Germans have changed all the categories since they took over the camp. Now not only foreign-born, stateless and immigrant Juifs but any Israelites—French citizens!—can be sent east. A circumstance of war, it’s called.”

  Perhaps she too could engage a lawyer, to fight for Armand’s release? But no lawyer could plead for release by the next morning. But if Armand remained at Drancy after tomorrow’s convoy, a lawyer might help.

  But how? Noor had only two more weeks in France. Not enough. And to seek a member of the court might endanger other members of the PROSPER network. Besides, French society had changed so much in three years, she was no longer sure of anyone’s political leanings.

  “Don’t waste money hiring a bavard.” Monsieur Durand had almost read her thoughts. “The Maréchal’s actions can only be challenged in special courts. My advocate can’t protest Vichy’s laws, only argue them—try to reduce the pillage. He’s a liberal with a turn of phrase much admired by his old school friends, but completely useless. The Nazis and Vichy cannot be fought with rhetoric.”