The Tiger Claw

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  “I must see you at our wedding,” said Monique, almost in tears.

  Babette kissed Noor formally, then threw her arms around her.

  Renée’s rouged cheek was cool against Noor’s. “A bientôt,” Renée murmured, as if she would have preferred to say adieu.

  Pforzheim, Germany

  January 17, 1944

  A few minutes ago I woke up fighting. The dungeon has not even the straw mattress from my cell, and I had dozed off on the damp stone floor; by now I can sleep with insects crawling over me. This was no nightmare. My chains whipped my shins as I kicked and flailed against a clawing thing. A rat gibbered and squeaked when my clog hit its hide. The sight of Monsieur Durand’s rabbits at Drancy still haunts me; starving rats in my cell and my heart races like a Spitfire engine.

  In the absence of light I no longer read the world, scan its symbols and hidden meanings. I squeeze my eyes shut then open them to know if the blackness lies within my eyelids or is the inside of my cell. Invisible colours surround me, all absorbed into black.

  I can no longer trace the anatomy of letters. I am bereft of pictographs, icons and signs. With no paper, no pen, I commit words and phrases intended for you to memory. For you, ma petite, my unborn audience of one, I rearrange and revise words in my mind. Perhaps I will never see paper or pen again. If so, this is the letter you will never read, letter from my spirit to yours.

  I feel my way across the cold floor to the door, lie down and press my nose to the line of light at its base, suck in a small current of fresh air. I hear moaning and find it comes from me.

  Sometimes I talk to Armand too, but to imagine my beloved for an instant in circumstances like mine, or worse, is to near the dread abyss of insanity; my thoughts flee from the brink. That any of my friends in the Resistance might be in dungeons like this is horror enough.

  Let me remember something beautiful—the sustained strength of breath in a khayal, Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun. I try to whistle a Chevalier song, then a Piaf lament, but their words elude me. I play a sonata on the damp, slimy wall, but that reminds me too much of Armand. Then comes defiance. I sing out the Marseillaise, then “Quand Madelon.” But this too reminds me of Armand, and my voice breaks down. I recover after a while, sit up in a corner and sing “We’re Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Seigfried Line” till my throat is sore.

  Light blazes from the open door. I squint. A shadow looms across the walls. My gaoler’s face comes close, face like a Frankish battle-axe. Wordlessly her hand draws back.

  A sharp crack to my face and I am silenced.

  Much later she brings a cup of water, cool and pure as if drawn from the well of Zamzam, and a cup of cold mangel-wurzel soup.

  I try to meet her eyes, imagine her smiling, breast-feeding a child. No image comes.

  She turns away. The metallic slam of the door reverberates behind her.

  The dark is the danger zone where distinctions fade to black and nothing has a name. Here day and night, logic and clairvoyance, reason and madness, objectivity and subjectivity, dream and reality, positive and negative energies are one. Here past and future become present, become visible.

  My leg cramps, I vomit a thin stream of burning stomach juices, vomit out of sheer rage.

  Rage at Vogel for reducing me from the sublime importance of action in service of love and ideals to the scatological—that bucket of feces in the corner whose vile odour keeps me light-headed and nauseated. A few short months ago I had what every woman needs—dignity, vanity, modesty. I want them again, to look and feel and be my best for Armand. I want Armand back. I want the prospect of our life together again.

  Pacing, pacing, on legs jellied in fear of the return of the rats, I measure this dungeon cell. It’s the same size as the room Émile arranged for me at Madame Aigrain’s the night Prosper was captured. Eight paces long, four paces wide. I know these dimensions well; I spent many hours there, in hiding.

  Leaving Renée’s home the night we heard Prosper and Archambault had been captured, I took a circuitous route to avoid a checkpoint and a Mercedes parked before an épicerie. The concierge took a key from the pigeonholes behind her desk and led me up two flights of stairs to meet a wisp of a woman with a very large face.

  Madame Aigrain—oh, c’est incroyable! Madame Aigrain was the improbable made probable: Tante Lucille come to life. She was old, sickly, and moved with a cane. She had a history of malingering illnesses. She was born in Bordeaux, had lost a son in the Great War. Yes, at Meaux. An old harp stood in the corner of her drawing room, and later I found that her callused finger pads gave it a harsh, edgy tone; each piece sounded like a chorus of insects.

  I felt almost guilty for my preknowledge of her.

  It was so disconcerting to meet a person I had created from a name given by Miss Atkins. I kept comparing, comparing, the way Mother had compared me always to her idea of a perfect daughter, the way Uncle had compared me always to his idea of a perfect niece.

  I had no right to compare Madame to any pre-existing template. She was herself, she was unique and, above all, she was kind.

  Awkwardly I asked her prénom and was relieved to find it was not Lucille, but Solange. And that she collected Lalique perfume bottles, not bone china figurines; and she didn’t mind, indeed positively enjoyed, a new face in her home.

  Madame Aigrain lived alone but for her Siamese cat. She managed a perfumier—which explained her strange smell; she resorted to eau de cologne to mask the scarcity of soap. Her daughter was the couturier who had sewn Monique’s wedding dress, and we became friends when I said her daughter had what every seamstress boasts: “les doigts d’or”—fingers of gold.

  The thimble-size room where Émile had already deposited my valise was windowless and airless, no more than a cupboard. The transmitter I’d brought in that valise was useless here. A folding cot, a coarse carpet, a folding chair, a bookshelf. Madame Aigrain brought a pitcher of water and a basin, and set them on the bookshelf above leather-bound volumes of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, pages still uncut. Some comfort; at least Madame Aigrain was storing, if not reading, the works of banned Jewish writers.

  A second shelf held a row of well-thumbed Simenon detective novels—Simenon, author of the Jewish Peril articles, whose name I’d heard on the blacklists aired by both the BBC and Honneur et Patrie, the clandestine Resistance radio station.

  On the third shelf lay a French–English dictionary and a set of Dickens novels in English.

  In English?

  Tucked under the carpet I found a map of France. I held it up to the light and found pinpricked holes at Marseilles, Barcelona, Lisbon. They confirmed my guess: Allied airmen shot down over France must have hidden in this room before me. Madame Aigrain was helping smuggle those downed airmen back to England.

  With Madame Aigrain, I was as safe as I could be; my confidence bounded back.

  I sat on the crocheted coverlet and looked at my watch—19:00 hours as the French say, or seven P.M. as the English say. Two hours till my rendezvous with Émile at the Cimetière de Montmartre.

  How quickly things had changed. Chance rather than choice had staked its claim again to direct my life, just when I was becoming an asset to the network, ready to relieve Archambault. I was now the only radio operator left to the Resistance in the north; the Germans had captured all the others, and their transmitters as well. With Archambault arrested, other Resistance cells would need a radio operator to contact London.

  Suspended from a nail hammered into the fleur-de-lys pattern of the wallpaper, a chain held a lattice-framed blond Hazrat Issa, rays emanating from his dark heart. “Heureux ceux qui aiment Dieu,” said the Jewish prophet Jesus—“Happy are those who love God.”

  But do you mean the tri-form God of Christ, Yahweh, our Allah, Brahma–Vishnu–Shiva, or the Universal God that Abbajaan believed in, or a self-styled God named Hitler? Always the question, non, Jesu?

  Jesus was smiling. And he was silent.

 
; The rat came back and I killed the gibbering thing. From my fear and loathing I killed, following its sounds and beating at it in the dark with my chain till its squeals went silent and at last it was still.

  Killing made me feel better, but it didn’t take away my terrors.

  I could confess and be pardoned of so many things if I were Catholic. But I have no Jesus who, like a switchboard operator directing calls, comes between me and the creative spirit of the universe. I am personally and irrevocably responsible for my actions. If I deserve hell, so be it.

  Not that I can’t respect Christians. I think Abbajaan would say: if one man, Hitler, can ruin the whole world, why is it inconceivable that one man or woman can save it?

  The guard drops the flap door and I place the rat’s body on it. She recoils with what sounds like swearing.

  Now I wait and wait for soup.

  How does she justify her cruelty today? I read somewhere—was it in The Times?—that a third of Hitler’s SS men remain Christian. And the women? Christian too, I presume. But which God can it be—the Christian God or the Universal God of us all—who forgives them their cruelty because their Führer ordered it?

  That guard probably believes she is doing right. We all have to believe we’re doing right or we’d kill ourselves. But then, some people know when they are doing wrong, and even enjoy it.

  Gilbert.

  If Gilbert betrayed Prosper, I don’t believe any God will forgive him. Because if he did, it was not only a betrayal of Prosper. How many others did Gilbert betray by this one betrayal?

  Will Allah strike him down in retribution?

  But what if Abbajaan was wrong and there is no Allah? I’m sure my father never conceived of that possibility, but it was a question that worried Armand. He believes in any God or force that would send him music, with an apprehension that if he doesn’t, the music he composes could go elsewhere. I never doubt Allah exists and creates for us, but oh, ma petite, we who follow the Prophet’s teachings are so flawed. Someday your father and I will talk about this again. I wish I could talk with him now.

  I no longer believe as the Sufis that our suffering through this war is caused by ignorance. Ignorance is no plea when educated people—men and women alike—allow themselves to be swayed by Hitler to believe compassion is a weakness.

  I sound like Kabir. He had his doubts too. We discussed it endlessly.

  My doubts here are not about Allah. I wonder if I should have told Émile the very night we learned Prosper was arrested that I suspected Gilbert of betraying Prosper. But if I had and Émile had confronted Gilbert, Gilbert would have denied any betrayal and he would have accused me of betraying Prosper. Gilbert didn’t know that I knew he was the only other person who knew Prosper’s new address. I had to be sure before making such a grave accusation, for I had no desire to sign an innocent man’s death warrant. The Resistance shows no mercy for informers; they would surely kill him.

  So, while waiting at Madame Aigrain’s till it was time to meet Émile, I decided to say nothing at present, and do what I could to help Prosper and Archambault. I recalled the brown leather pouch I held in safekeeping for Prosper. Was there something in it that could help poor Prosper and Archambault? Perhaps something Émile, Monsieur Hoogstraten or the Professor could use? I took it from my handbag. It was flat, like a wallet. From it I pulled a tiny brown brocade purse like the one in which Dadijaan brought my tiger claw from India. I spilled the contents onto the coverlet.

  Five large baguette diamonds winked up at me. The most compact way to transport money to the Resistance. A small fortune that would doom any Frenchman searched by the Gestapo. It was best for all if they remained with me; I could declare they were my jewellery.

  Quickly, I returned the diamonds to the silk purse, put the purse back in the leather pouch, the pouch back in my handbag. The fewer who knew of their existence, the better.

  I poured water from the pitcher and washed. Then, covering my head with my scarf, I knelt to implore Allah’s strength for Prosper, for poor Archambault and for all who suffered in the cells of the Gestapo on the avenue Foch. I added a prayer for all the downed airmen, for Kabir not to be one of them, a prayer that they might find their way back to England.

  Have I been locked in this dungeon for three weeks or four? Perhaps more—I cannot tell. The sweep, whistle and slam of Allied bombs is almost inaudible down here.

  Allah, do not fight on the side of tyrants!

  Do I remember for the sake of shedding my past or to hold on to it? Do I truly remember my actions or do I tell only the stories I wish you to know of me? Only Allah knows. For myself, I set aside such questions, conjure up whole scenes from the past, and conserve my strength for some crucial moment I feel sure is coming.

  CHAPTER 20

  Paris, France

  Saturday, June 26, 1943

  SACRÉ COEUR LOOMED LARGE on the Butte Montmartre under a bitten moon, the neon signs and street lamps of Pigalle made extinct by war. A clock tower’s hand pointed three minutes past nine. Noor walked quickly from the métro near the Place de Clichy towards a bridge. Her transmitter suitcase pulled at her arm as she descended a stone staircase to the avenue Rachel.

  Beyond the large iron gates of the Cimetière de Montmartre, mausoleums crowded beside the path. Tall and narrow, like the checkpoints she’d encountered on the way.

  Slam, bang, click. She closed and locked all the doors that must remain closed for efficiency—doors to imagination, worry, fear. But no door could be slammed on memory.

  If there had been a cemetery like this one for Muslims in 1926, Abbajaan wouldn’t have been buried so far away, and she, Kabir and Zaib might have tended his grave. But at the time, Christians didn’t allow Muslims to be buried beside their kin.

  When this war was over, she’d go to India with Armand. Introduce them.

  The avenue des Polonais was a short climb up the hill past a bed of tulips, their purple brilliance dimmed to lavender by the moonlight.

  Here the rich and famous slept together. Abbajaan lay alone in his marble dargah in a high-walled compound. By the time thirteen-year-old Noor went to India with Mother, Kabir and Zaib to bow her head at his tomb, Abbajaan had been buried three months. And no matter how much Noor had wept for that tomb to be opened so she could see Abbajaan’s body, she was hushed, soothed—and denied.

  The fragrance of woodsmoke wafted by. She was a dark wraith slipping between mausoleums, invisible to any German.

  Don’t think of Germans, think of something else.

  To thirteen-year-old Noor, Abbajaan had joined the farishtas, become an angel. Later—all paths to Allah being valid—Hinduism, idol worship and all, brought the comfort of a temporary belief in reincarnation. But as for the Hindu custom of cremation, the very idea wrung Noor’s stomach like a sponge.

  A half-uncle had once willed that he be cremated instead of buried like other Muslims, setting off a huge family conclave that eventually overturned the dead man’s will. The cremation of one man in the family could mark all of them as subject to Hindu law in the eyes of the British Raj, and while the Khan men didn’t mind honouring the dead man’s request, every woman in the Khan family was adamantly against losing her Qur’an-guaranteed right to inherit a fourth of her husband’s estate. They said respecting all religions was one thing, but practising all their contradictory customs and rituals at once was impossible.

  A breeze, cooling after the hot day and the stuffiness of Madame Aigrain’s apartment, soughed and sighed amid the branches of old trees. Noor crept behind a stone bench and peered into the dark.

  Mother brought Noor and Kabir here one wintry day when Abbajaan was giving a veena recital with his brothers at an Oriental revue in Montmartre. Mother turned up her collar and tugged at her single-breasted coat to double-breast it. Here, on this stone bench, she sent Noor with Kabir to search out the graves of famous composers Abbajaan said were Sufis who didn’t know they were Sufis.

  Kabir found the grave of Hecto
r Berlioz; Noor found Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone. She came back to tell Mother and found her with a handkerchief to her eyes. But Mother got up gamely and soon found Jacques Offenbach, the comic opera genius. Too bad Uncle wasn’t there to be scandalized; the idea of respecting the grave of the creator of the cancan!

  But it was soon after those tears that Abbajaan began teaching Sufism and his music began its diminuendo.

  Past the stone bench now, stone sepulchres looming on either side of the street. The iron grille gate of the Famille Ginot hung open as Émile had promised.

  Checking to see no one was following, Noor slipped in, the door creaking closed behind her. Inside, an exquisitely carved statue of Mary leaned over two ragged cushioned kneeling pews. She hefted her suitcase up on the altar, flipped it open, drew aside the chemise she’d thrown over her transmitter, removed a torch, her code book and message book. She was about to thumb the switch on the torch when a phantom loomed from the shadows.

  Noor froze. Her heart hadn’t drummed like this in training or even when working at Grignon with Archambault.

  Only Phono!

  In silence, he helped her string the aerial through the broken stained glass window behind the Virgin. The tomb, barely three feet wide, wasn’t built for two agents formulating telegraphic sentences. Émile held a torch steady as Noor coded and pencilled the resulting message into the squares of her message book. The page began to look like a fragment of Suleyman’s magical shirt.

  A few minutes later the Morse sequence bearing the terrible news propelled itself into the moonlit night. Then the final signoff, Madeleine.

  “Madeleine,” directed Émile, “go into hiding for some days. I will tell Monsieur Hoogstraten, Gilbert and Viennot we have warned London. London will stop sending arms and agents.”

  “You will continue without London’s help? How?”