The Tiger Claw

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  Black Bakelite circles were strewn around the room like platters; each gramophone record had been taken from its jacket. Even the curtains over the side windows overlooking brick walls had been torn down, their hems slit. A hard object had split the telephone receiver and its cradle in two. A decapitated lamp had rolled off the table in search of its shade. Babette, lower lip trembling, held up her china-faced doll—face smashed, eyes rolled back in its head, ribbons of rose-patterned silk hanging from its waist.

  A frisson of fear rippled through Noor, despite the summer heat, at the thought of what could have happened had the wedding party returned earlier.

  Speculating about Gestapo motivations led rapidly nowhere, but Renée headed in that direction. Monique had wanted white silk for a wedding dress, which had caused Émile to meet parachutists at Rosny, which had attracted the Gestapo.

  “Non, non, non!” Émile said.

  “Then they must have been looking for Anne-Marie’s transmitter,” reasoned Renée. “When they didn’t find it, they became enraged and destroyed everything.”

  Highly improbable as there was no receiver, English or German, that could detect the presence of a transmitter without it sending, and Noor’s transmitter had never been activated at Renée’s home. But it was no time to correct Renée, not when she was so upset.

  “Vite! Vite!” Madame Meignot stomped her foot in the kitchen.

  Émile snatched up a cardboard suitcase and dashed back down into the cellar. Monique and Renée began filling another: a photograph album, a jewellery case, a wallet, Renée’s ledger book and ration coupons, a few clothes, tins of food.

  “Hurry up! Change!” Monique threw Odile a powder-blue dress and tossed a pair of black slacks, a maroon blouse and a beret at Noor.

  “I can’t decide what to take!” Renée’s cheeks were glistening. “We go too fast, too fast—I’ll leave something important behind.”

  Noor fumbled with the side zipper of her slacks and her blouse buttons, but changed in record time.

  “You look like a man,” Odile said with a nervous giggle, turning her back towards Noor.

  “And you look ten years older,” Noor whispered, zipping her up.

  A severe-looking Renée met Noor in the drawing room—all the pins, fruit and flowers out of her hair. Monique had changed into a black dress and flat ballerina shoes.

  Noor followed down the spiral staircase as everyone joined Émile in the cellar. Émile’s upper lip was rash red, his moustache gone; he did look different. He was closing the suitcase full of wires, welding torches, trigger devices, rubber stamps and forged papers. He cranked the mural down. Madame Meignot was already waiting. The passage door squealed shut behind them.

  “Monique, Renée, Babette and I will leave immediately by train for Le Mans.” The lantern illuminated Émile’s worried face. “We’ll be safe there for a few days.”

  “Do we need new identity papers?” asked Monique.

  Émile hesitated, then said, “We have blank ones if necessary, but I don’t want to rouse suspicion. We’re on our honeymoon—c’est vrai?”

  Monique managed a wan smile.

  “Now leave singly, and meet at the Gare Montparnasse,” said Émile.

  “Vite! Vite!”

  The lantern swung and bobbed away down the passage in Madame Meignot’s hand, but Émile stayed the little group for more instructions. “Odile, you return to Grignon immediately and tell Monsieur Hoogstraten what happened here. Tell him to move every bomb, gun and bullet from Grignon—I don’t know where, just somewhere else. And warn Professor Balachowsky.”

  “Didn’t the Professor take his students touring for new insect species?” asked Monique.

  “Yes,” said Odile. “Waste of petrol—he could have brought his students here and they would have found a new Boche species of insect right here in Paris.”

  “Shhhh! Make contact with his wife, then. Warn her.”

  Odile was nodding like a marionette.

  “Warn Gilbert,” continued Émile.

  Warn Gilbert? Of what he knew already? He must have led the Gestapo to search Renée’s home. Intuition? No, logic. Should she warn Émile?

  “Viennot must be told—maybe he can find out what made them search here.”

  But maybe it was Viennot who had led the Gestapo to Renée’s home. Noor wasn’t as comfortable with the idea of Viennot’s Gestapo contacts as Émile seemed to be.

  Wait.

  “Monsieur Viennot has a telephone—I’ll call him,” said Odile.

  “From a call box,” Monique reminded.

  “And leave him a message at Flavien’s,” said Émile.

  “Anne-Marie,” said Émile to Noor, “Gilbert has urgent messages to be sent to London tomorrow. I said I would be meeting you today and would ask you to transmit for him from Grignon tomorrow. So, meet him at the institute at 10:00 hours. But tell him this will be the last time—it’s too risky now. If the Gestapo came here, they may know about Grignon. Remove Archambault’s transmitter and your own. Take them with you after your transmission.”

  Noor followed as the little group, stumbling, suitcases bumping against passage walls, retraced their steps all the way to the brasserie cellar. Here, Madame Meignot embraced Renée and Monique quickly and patted Babette on the head. She waved to Émile and Noor in silence.

  The pre-arranged sequence of knocks on the door to the courtyard brought the owner. He did not ask where they had been or if their mission was successful.

  “Follow me. A man who finished his lunch has not moved from behind his newspaper. I can’t believe anyone finds the newspaper interesting these days.”

  Émile, Renée with Babette, Monique, Odile and Noor headed for a side door in the courtyard. The owner motioned each person through, singly, carefully.

  In her turn Noor peeked through the side door into a carriage lane. To her left, a parked vélo-taxi like the bicycle rickshaws in India. Brightly coloured, though. A horse hitched to a cart, feeding from its nosebag, swivelled his eyes at her. To her right, a few bicyclists and some children running away, chasing a bicycle wheel. She slipped into the sun-washed lane, feeling more agile in her newly acquired slacks and blouse.

  A woman darted out behind the horse. Noor shrank back against the wall. The woman collected the horse’s dung in a dustpan, like fuel-gathering women in India. Noor waited till the woman took her pan back inside.

  Noor drew in a lungful of fresh air, looped the handle of her handbag over her arm and set off on a circuit that would eventually take her to Madame Aigrain’s, back into hiding.

  CHAPTER 22

  Grignon, France

  Tuesday, July 1, 1943

  A TRENET SONG blared from a megaphone as Noor cycled past the toylike train station of Grignon and the swastika-draped mairie building and rode into the village square.

  Two weeks before Bastille Day, the town was celebrating the feast of Saint Martin under a sunny sky embellished with a few puffs of teased wool. And under the eagle eyes of Marktpolizei circulating and watching the crowd. In one corner of the square, balls clicked in games of boules. In another, painted horses whirled children about a carousel. Puppet knights slew infidels on the Guignol stage; a little girl tugged at her mother’s sleeve, begging to join the watching crowd. A young man snapped his suspenders, flexing his biceps for the oblique glance of a passing shopgirl. Stilt dancers whirled like dervishes. A rag man cried, “Chiffons! Chiffons!” extolling the merits of his well-used wares. Girls and women carried baskets, buying and selling unrationed apples, turnips and Jerusalem artichokes at trestle tables, talking, listening, walking, their elders resting in the shade of willow trees. Boys in short pants dodged their mothers.

  On any other day Noor would have stopped before the glove puppets or bought an apple for Babette. But after her narrow escape with the Garrys the day before, it seemed a dread flood was rising to drown everyone. The tightness in her chest said England, the SOE, friends she’d trained with, agents she had come
to know in the PROSPER network, relatives of whom she was always aware—everyone she knew seemed more remote than India.

  Monique’s borrowed slacks and blouse were more comfortable for cycling than any skirt.

  If only there were some way to know that Monique herself, Émile, Renée and Babette had reached Le Mans safely.

  And if she could have received one, just one, word of news from Drancy, just one word that Armand had received her tiger claw and message; but there was none. If it was selfish to think of Armand when Prosper’s arrest had endangered more than fifteen hundred resistants across northern France … so be it. Each of the fifteen hundred resistants in Prosper’s network had a raison d’être. Armand was hers.

  Crossing the square would attract the attention of the Marktpolizei, so she detoured through a web of streets and alleys that predated Cartesian geometry; and each turn delayed her further. At last she was out of Grignon, pedalling down the bumpy country road towards the Institut National Agronomique, standing as she pedalled as if straining to remain above water.

  A quarter past ten—Gilbert, wait for me!

  Sparrow hawks chattered—kyow-kyow—from fir branches. Wagtails tchiked, flicked their white tails and fluttered away as she rode by vineyards. Her blouse clung to her back, her hands slipped on the handlebars. She stopped, took her beret from her handbag and tucked her ponytail into it. A welcome breeze cooled her neck.

  Rolling fields bordered the roadsides for a mile or so, giving way to the gloom and woody scent of oak from a game forest. The stone wall and porticos of the institute came in sight.

  Behind her, a shiny black shape roared and reared up. Noor swerved sharply as a Citroën swooped within an inch of her left knee. But her hands refused to surrender the handlebars, and down she went in a great jangle of metal to bone-jarring gravel.

  Elbow-searing, hand-grazing gravel. Glimpse of a milice kepi on the driver’s head.

  A pale face with round spectacles turned towards her. It flicked past as the Citroën swished away, leaving her bruised and winded with the bicycle coiled above her.

  Noor scrambled to her feet, dusting off hands and slacks, searching for her beret, tucking her ponytail under again.

  What satisfaction did they gain by frightening French people for sport?

  But annoyance gave way to dismay as she saw the Citroën turn at the stone porticos and enter the institute.

  Allah, don’t let this happen!

  No need to look for any covert signals. The Gestapo had come to Grignon.

  If she hadn’t been late, if she’d been minutes earlier, as Gilbert ordered, she would have been caught in the act of transmitting!

  Noor pulled her bicycle erect, ready to mount. Émile had told Odile last night to warn the Hoogstratens, Professor Balachowsky and Viennot. And Gilbert—assuming there was any need to warn Gilbert. Following Émile’s instructions, Marius and the students must have hidden or moved every bomb, gun and bullet by now.

  Archambault had told her to stay away, to use a public phone to warn others, and hide.

  Out of the question. She needed details of what had happened or was happening at the institute to determine the damage and transmit the information to London. She had seen only one Citroën, but there could be more Gestapo coming, or Gestapo men already at the institute. She had to risk that.

  She tried to advance her bicycle, but the front wheel was bent, so bent it mimicked a melted Dali clock. No time to straighten it.

  She shook dust and pebbles from her clothes.

  Steal through the woods, come around behind the greenhouse and the administration buildings. She’d seen the Hoogstratens’ cat walking the wall of the dry moat; the institute’s stone wall didn’t continue all the way around. Insh’allah, she could find her way.

  No time to lose.

  Noor lifted the front of the bicycle, with the basket and her handbag, balanced the weight on the back wheel and rolled it into the woods. A few metres from the edge she glanced back, searching for landmarks to orient herself. Then she retrieved her black kid gloves and binoculars and, from the concealed compartment of the bag, the loaded pistol.

  She slipped the binoculars into her pocket and drew her gloves over scratched palms. The bicycle would be safe on its side beneath the toothed leaves and spiky yellow flowers of a mignonette bush. Noor piled ferns and underbrush, hiding it from sight. Then, inserting the pistol in her waistband, she set off stealthily through the woods.

  Twenty minutes later, as Noor crept between trees under leaf-filigreed light, a man’s voice boomed through the woods.

  “Attention! Attention! Every student and professor of the Institut National Agronomique,” it said in imperative tones, “must report immediately to the courtyard before the Grand Château.”

  Noor drew closer. The megaphone repeated its directions louder.

  At the edge of the woods, trees gave way to the grounds of the institute. Noor tensed into a squat behind large, hairy burdock leaves. Where the drive from the entrance of the institute flattened to join the courtyard, three private omnibuses stood side by side, doors open.

  Professor Balachowsky’s expedition.

  With the torso of an oak tree at her back, Noor raised her binoculars. The courtyard before the Grand Château swarmed with swastika arm bands, Gestapo police—the dreaded SD—and the black jackets and kepis of Vichy’s milice. She focused on a ring of rifles surrounding a bewildered, heat-wilted group of about two hundred young men and women dressed in the familiar blouse coats of the institute.

  Parked at right angles to the buses, blocking the exit, were two German lorries on the drive. Two lorries holding about twelve SS men each: some could be searching classrooms or posted on exit roads leading to the fields. Noor adjusted her focus, swept the woods behind her, but saw no uniforms.

  She let out her breath—even that seemed unnaturally loud—and sank down further behind the bush, inched into a cross-legged position as if seating herself before a veena.

  Control your thoughts. Calm. Calm.

  An open Mercedes with a swastika pennant on its front fender stood before the carved double doors of the Grand Château. Behind it was the Citroën that had knocked her off the road—and there was the milice kepi of its chauffeur. Below it, a sandy brown moustache and beard moved into the circle of her lenses.

  A breeze ruffled the flower beds and lush green lawn between the Grand Château and the director’s château on the hill. Odile’s room in the director’s château was out of Noor’s line of vision. Insh’allah, the intrepid young courier was safely at her lycée at this moment.

  The chef’s tall white hat and the maid’s frilly apron stood out in the crowd of students. Professor Balachowsky? Not in view. But there was a large hat and veil, then a chartreuse chiffon dress and pearls—that would be Madame Hoogstraten. Too far away to see her face.

  But she could see Director Hoogstraten’s face. He was standing very erect before the wrath of a man tightly buttoned into the full regalia of an SS Oberstürmbannführer. Looking force-fed as a foie gras goose, the Gestapo captain shouted into his megaphone in German, in language obviously deafening but incomprehensible to Monsieur Hoogstraten. And to most in his audience.

  The pale-faced man with the round spectacles approached Monsieur Hoogstraten and the Oberstürmbannführer. Taking over the megaphone, he stood a little behind the Gestapo captain and added French shouts after each shout in German: “We have been too patient with you. It is enough.”

  Monsieur Hoogstraten looked mystified but unapologetic.

  “You are the director of this institute. You will be held responsible.”

  An SS man stepped forward, holding a stack of books to his chest. The SS captain read aloud, “Du contrat social.”

  The leather-bound book flew from his hand like a white-winged bird and thudded onto the sandy courtyard.

  “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality in Mankind.”

  The volume skittered across the gr
ound and stopped at Monsieur Hoogstraten’s feet.

  “Trotsky! Freud! Thomas Mann!”

  Books—precious books, rare books—flew through the air.

  “André Maurois. Henri Bordeaux.”

  More books flew, slapped and smacked to hard ground. Noor squeezed her eyes shut, seeing other books, books that, when she was sixteen, flew from her bedroom window on the third floor of Afzal Manzil the day Uncle Tajuddin decided all books by writers unknown to him were to be banned, destroyed or thrown out.

  “Banned books! Jewish authors!” said the megaphone.

  Books about other religions, even ones bought by Abbajaan, were the first to land in the garden below, over Mother’s cries of outrage. Then Uncle enlisted Kabir to take down paintings from every wall of Afzal Manzil and stack them in dustbins. Soon these were joined by a tubby little Ganesh statue, memento of an elephant ride with her cousins in India. Noor felt Mother’s arm around her shoulders again, saw Mother’s clenched fists unclenching. Saw herself standing with her arm around Zaib.

  Noor forced herself to look as the megaphone voice persisted. “In defiance of explicit instructions from the Ministry of Information, you have not removed these works from the institute library. This is why, Monsieur Hoogstraten, we no longer believe you know nothing about English arms and ammunition on your premises.”

  The pale-faced man rested the megaphone on his shoulder after translating, and Monsieur Hoogstraten’s voice could be heard quite clearly. “We have been co-operative, Herr Kieffer,” he was saying. “We have invited you to search every classroom and sleeping chamber for yourself. Four hours and your men found nothing. Perhaps you have been misinformed.”

  Herr Kieffer shot back via the interpreter, “The SS is never misinformed. We have always very good information.”

  Good information from Gilbert or had the SS tortured it out of poor Prosper and Archambault?

  An SS man ran up to the SS captain, stopped, gave the Nazi salute, said something in German. Herr Kieffer turned back to Monsieur Hoogstraten and shouted louder. The interpreter relayed the message in turn, shouting in French.