The Tiger Claw

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  So, said Cartaud, he needed the room Noor had occupied for six weeks in the avenue Foch. Herr Vogel had found a prison that had a cell for her. Cartaud would move her tonight.

  “You’ll be a Special Prisoner,” he said, as if offering her a special treat. He made it sound as if she had a choice, but she didn’t. Not with three men exuding power, sweat and obvious relish, who cuffed her flailing hands before her.

  “No fighting, now!” said Cartaud. “I’ll shoot you right here and tell Herr Kieffer you tried to escape.”

  I should have bitten your hand much harder.

  Her neck jerked. A bandage wedging her upper lip against her teeth, its snaffle forcing an unnatural grin, stanching her furious questions, threats and invective; both nostrils blocked. She worked facial muscles, jaw and tongue till the bandage slipped a few millimetres, granting air to straining lungs.

  Welcome scent of new air: the door to her room had opened. Noor took a deep nasal breath, to scream. But the scream gagged in her larynx, going up up up, reverberating into her skull.

  The thugs held her between them. German orders and jawohls flew over her head. Down, gun-prodded down, step by step. Eyes on the carpeted spiral. Five storeys she couldn’t remember climbing.

  Into the vestibule, out into chilly November sunshine. She was being shoved down the short driveway towards a black staff car waiting in the contre-allée. If she let her body go limp as she had with Gilbert, they’d have to drag her through the iron gates.

  Those filthy hands would roam all over her again.

  No. Struggle harder.

  “You want me to tell Herr Kieffer how dangerous you are? He’ll keep you in chains.”

  Five fingers and a giant palm on the crown of her head, pushing down. A blow, knocking her sideways into the back seat. Leather scraping her cheek, shoulder scraping leather.

  Aim for Cartaud’s groin.

  She kicked out. Pain shot up her jarred ankle. Cartaud gasped like a pricked balloon. Behind him, a man laughed. The door slammed closed.

  The door at her head opened. Glimpse of a husky SS man. He grabbed her.

  Choking, choking.

  She was folded into sitting position easily as a doll, nothing she could do. The SS man got in beside her, the trace of a smile on his face. Outside the window, Cartaud was still doubled over.

  The SS man’s side arm gleamed in its holster, just to frighten her; she refused to be frightened. With her hands shackled, escaping was a rope trick she couldn’t do.

  The car swung away down the avenue Foch.

  Villages of cream stone and red tile, points of steeples rising in their midst. Plough-combed fields and periodic glimpses of the Marne flowing away to join the Seine. Solid stations resisting the motion of scurrying trains, woods swamped in water, nests clumped like lookout posts at the tips of branches, piles of firewood, the chug-a-chug of wheels on the track and the occasional toot of an engine. Wagons on sidings. A station—Chalons-sur-Marne.

  How easily they had transferred her from the Gestapo staff car to this train compartment. Like a sack of grain. No chance to escape, and though her gag was removed, her feet were now shackled as tightly as her hands. Two SS guards, one short and pig-faced, the other tall with a sad-dog face, glowered at her from their seat opposite.

  She turned to the window, pretended she didn’t notice them.

  A fountain spouted from stone, sheds of grain, sweet-faced cows at pasture, power lines uncut by saboteurs, covered wagons of the SNCF, shuttered windows of a boulangerie, bales of hay, milk-chocolate earth, a bridge, sun slanting through the green lace of trees, weathercocks on steeples.

  Paris was left behind. Where was she going? East, since the sun was setting behind the train.

  Undulating hills, a canal. Bar-le-Duc station.

  A train swung by on the adjoining track, bound Parisward. Mountains in the distance offered sanctuary to Maquis bands. If only she could run away, join them.

  Under a bridge now, then into a valley. A few bicycles moving on a thin thread of road. A hamlet, a square steeple, a road curving beneath the track, a rise of hill, puffy trees obscuring hard blue sky. In a hollow between hills, signs pointed to destinations—too far away to read.

  Sunrays slanted further now, mirroring the still surface of a pond, teasing shadows from a line of trees. Patchy shapes of Holsteins should have been visible against the darkening earth, but animals were long slaughtered to supply the army.

  Trees lay felled against each other, branches snapped, a crater before them. Lérouville station. A cemetery, scruffy shapes of woodpiles. A château brooded on a craggy hill overlooking the river. Who lived there—did they agree or disagree with Hitler and Vichy?

  Sunlight moved away now, birds flew homeward, horses nuzzled one another in a paddock. A railway crossing, then the spread-eagled red roof of another railway station.

  A canal flowed alongside the train. If she could work herself out of her bonds, maybe she could leap from the train and roll down the bank into the canal …

  The windows filled with the echoing darkness of a tunnel. The light returned. The canal had veered away.

  The train slowed but did not stop at Foug station.

  Rust-orange mounds of scrap metal. A store of sandbags stamped with something illegible at this distance.

  The train sloped in the direction of its turn, straightened. Toul Poste 1.

  Double steeples rose from the grimy, rundown town into twilight. Storm clouds gathered over hostelries and turreted mansions. Noor squinted to read Pig-face’s watch upside down.

  Dwellings dotted across a hill. “Nancy,” said Sad-dog to Pig-face.

  Try not to need. Remember the taste of water. Turn off need, try not to need.

  How, how to get out of the compartment? German soldiers everywhere.

  Sad-dog stepped into the corridor. Pig-face stretched his legs out before him, stared at her with expressionless eyes.

  A fricative whistle; the train began to chuff forward again. Desperation spread like an ink blot within Noor. Everywhere, windows were blackening for the night, shutters closing.

  The train hooted past a petrol refinery.

  Sad-dog returned with two enamel cups of soup, one for Pig-face, one for her. He didn’t release her wrists. Mild taste of potatoes, brackish and lukewarm.

  Drink it slowly. Look outside. Drink slowly.

  The slope of rooftops changed, houses broadened at their base.

  Nervous fluid rushing in her ears. This must be Germany.

  And the landscape revised itself, colouring the sunlight red, heightening shadows, torturing shapes into metal objects and monsters, turning the flit of birds to ferreting movements.

  Vineyards, sheep, railyards, empty stables. Horses, carts, night blue spreading. Footpaths wending their way into fields. Dark everywhere, not even a peep of light.

  Low blue station light. Strasbourg.

  Kehl. A Wehrmacht officer with a burn-disfigured pink face passed the compartment, gripping a valise with a bandaged hand.

  23: 00 hours on Pig-face’s watch.

  Karlsruhe.

  23: 30 hours.

  A tambourine moon shivered in an unseen hand above a tiny station.

  Pforzheim.

  The tall guard rose to his feet and jerked the chain between Noor’s wrists.

  “Raus!”

  One strong push opened the door, another sent Noor stumbling into an oblong cell. Iron bars sliced pale moonlight pouring through the high window.

  She had entered this cell before, without manacles or leg irons. The walls of whitewashed plaster weren’t familiar, nor the straw mattress on the metal frame cot. Nor the toilet, the only item out of the direct line of vision from the peephole. This dead air was familiar, its changelessness. The feeling of being hostage.

  The month she spent confined for the sin of loving Armand, confined weeping in her room.

  Limbs flailed in every direction. Two prison guards shouldered their way in an
d stood watching her, expressionless. Her hands were manacled, a chain running from cuff to cuff; she was leg-ironed, chains running between her ankles; and another long chain connected the two—worse than a creature in a zoo.

  Anger flared to a scream that hadn’t crossed her lips for pain, hadn’t surfaced in torture, a shriek that mustered all her strength then exploded all around her.

  A blow to her head brought darkness.

  CHAPTER 37

  Pforzheim, Germany

  December 1943

  A THIN MIST chilled Noor’s cell. She used a knitting needle the guard had given her for stringing tickets, to carve hash marks into her cell wall, one for each day. The seventh, slashing across the rest, was Friday.

  But she might have made two hash marks one day. Or she might have forgotten to make a hash mark.

  Strange how Vogel simply appeared in her cell—like other ghosts and memories that gusted in with first snow. He lifted his shirt to show her the bullet wound inflicted by the Canadian in his left side, as if looking for comfort. He said he had to see her.

  “I saved your life by reserving this cell. Instead of sending you to a camp, you know,” said Vogel. “And your shackles, mademoiselle—they’re your own fault. Cartaud told me how he caught you escaping through the skylight. Said he wrestled you down among the chimney pots. Gott! How I wish I’d been there to see it.”

  Her word against Cartaud’s.

  Silence. The only suitable response.

  Vogel was looking as pleased as a sultan with a harem of one. A non-Aryan harem of one. There must be some huge fissure within him, some very basic need, carnal and beyond, for him to come here at all. Why had he? And what could she gain from his visit?

  His hand moved towards her like a serpent arcing on its tail, then hesitated, fell. Serpent hand, serpent guardian, serpent who must be propitiated, satiated with milk, stroked and delighted. Had he come looking for a thank-you note? She wasn’t thankful.

  Writing things down should make men like Vogel nervous.

  Play a little of the part he wants you to play. Play along just enough to be spared, Scheherazade.

  Noor’s shackles clanked as she leaned close to him for a moment. “Such ennui to be here, Herr Vogel. Especially for me. My world is so different! Durbars, tiger hunts, elephant parades, jewels, servants.” She stopped as if struck by a thought. “Oh, the fables I could tell!” She looked up at him, gave an exaggerated sigh with a catch in it. “If I could write, it would pass the time.”

  “Fables?” Vogel cocked his head. “You write stories, ja?”

  “If I had paper, pen and ink,” she said, “Yes, I could write beautiful stories.”

  “It shall be provided, mein liebchen, it shall be provided. You shall write stories for my sons. And I will come to get them every month. See? I allow you everything in my power. In a few months, when the Jews and Americans are defeated, I promise we will be together.”

  My heart is sandbagged against you; I promise we will not.

  When he was gone, Noor lay down on her filthy mattress. In waking dream she swam up Vogel’s bloodstream, all the way to his heart, yet had no trouble breathing. A corroding substance flowed from her at will, and at last that heart was dehusked and laid bare. Cold, cold, cold in Vogel’s heart, almost as cold as this cell, denser than night. Up she swam, looking for—what? A hidden chamber. There—what was inside?

  A hunched shape, a small, woebegone face. A little boy sat in the bloodless chamber at the core of Vogel’s heart. Little boy with a grotesque, too-large head, with great big hands and feet bulging from tiny limbs. Little boy who cried, sans intermission, covering his face with those huge hands. Genitals small and soft, penis receding, he cried from fear of the world, fear of anyone unlike himself, cried from terror because he would eventually die.

  Almost, she felt sorry for him. But the wound from her dislocated shoulder had awakened, throbbing. Noor wakened too.

  December moved in, taking up residence with Noor in her cell, and freezing the radiator.

  Cold coiled in the bowl of her pelvis, turning shiver to quake as she lay beneath her blanket on the cot. Above, snow drifted against glass and bars. Shreds of thoughts, speculations, obsessions … some glue still held her fragments together.

  The flap door clanged down.

  “Herr Vogel …”

  The rest, in rapid German, was senseless.

  Silly hope reared inside; she reined it in.

  The guard placed something on the thick, jutting tray, something invisible in the dingy half-light. Soup, probably. She didn’t care.

  She heard a clunk and a small swish.

  Yes, she did care.

  Noor rolled onto her stomach, chained wrists before her, supported her weight on her elbows and knelt. Then shifted to extend the chain running between her wrists and ankles far enough for her to be seated. The clanking weight of the leg irons pulled her bare feet to the floor.

  She slipped into prison clogs, shuffled across the cement floor.

  A pad of onionskin. A scrawl that filled the whole first page. It said in French, For Princess Noor—write children’s stories only. Signed, Ernst V.

  She had asked Vogel for paper, pen and ink, but had never expected to receive them. “Everything in my power,” Vogel had said.

  She tucked the pad under her arm, then tested the pen nib against her thumb. She reached for the glass jar. Dark blue ink. She opened it, inhaled its metallic fragrance.

  She carried the writing materials back to her cot. She lay down, eyes open to the gloom, gritting her teeth to stop their chattering. Mosquito thoughts buzzed.

  Do it. Shouldn’t. Do it. Shouldn’t. Do it.

  Use initials, think the names, use false names, code names.

  She caterpillar-crawled to the edge, turned on her side to block the vision of any guard and examined the leg of the cot. A pipe welded to the metal frame. Hollow pipe with a steel cover.

  If I can hide some of my writing, I will write what I want.

  She pressed a chain-link against the steel cover. Was it welded? Cold-numbed fingers exploring. No, not welded. Screwed on tightly.

  Push, push with the edge of her manacles. Then with a chain-link. She wrapped her chain around the cover like a vise. It didn’t move. She pushed and turned in the dimness for hours, till she was wiping sweat from her eyes. She froze whenever she heard—or thought she heard—a movement at the peephole.

  Deep breath. Attack the hollow leg again.

  Night blackened the cell. Baying and barking outside, beyond the stone walls of the prison. Twice, the rush of a train passing very close. Noor grimaced and grunted on.

  Finally, the steel cover moved a millimetre along its treads. By dawn, it loosened. She lay back, exhausted. Then, with her back to the door, she rolled up half the onionskin, poked it down the pipe-leg and, with an effort, screwed the cover on again.

  Above her, the window brightened.

  The guard was at the door. She unchained the manacles so Noor could use the toilet. Did not glance at the bed. Did not shout.

  The flap door dropped for Noor’s morning bowl, sawdust bread. A single bulb lit the cell.

  Begin, “Once upon a time there was a war … ?” No. She would write une histoire, not the kind her captor had in mind, for someone who might read her words in a time to come:

  I am still here.

  I write, not because this story is more important than all others, but because I have so great a need to understand it. What I say is my truth and lies together, amalgam of memory and explication. I write in English, mostly, English being the one language left in the ring. Other languages often express my feelings better—French, Urdu, Hindustani. And perhaps in these languages I could have told and read you stories better than this, your mother’s story. But all my languages have been tainted by what we’ve said and done to one another in these years of war.

  When the flap door dropped that evening, Noor dragged her chains to it and placed two sheets
on the open tray. On one she had written the Sufi tale about the attraction of a moth to a flame, on another the one about the young man who came knocking at his teacher’s door and when his teacher asked, “Who is there?” cried, “It is I,” and was told, “Come back when you are nobody.”

  She could see the guard glance at the English writing then thrust the sheets in her pocket without examination. The pad of onionskin lay upon the cot behind Noor, but the guard didn’t enter to count its remaining pages.

  So, the next day, Noor wrote another paragraph, and another:

  With that first creation of Allah—the pen that Vogel has allowed me—poised over the ink pot, then over the page, I wonder what to call you. Little spirit never whispered into this world—une fée. In Urdu I would call you ruh. Feminine. Ma petite ruh. We all begin feminine in Al-ghayab, the invisible, before we enter our nameless bodies.

  I imagine you, ma petite, nine years old, looking much like me and as much like Armand, expectant and still trusting. Encourage my telling as any audience encourages a teller of tales, though I may tell what you may not condone, what you may not believe, or what you cannot bear to know. I write so you can see me, so Armand will appear again by the telling.

  PART SEVEN

  CHAPTER 38

  Pforzheim, Germany

  August 14, 1944

  VOGEL GAVE ORDERS for me to resume weekly exercise, but today was the first time I was granted it. The guard took me past other women’s cells into the courtyard. There, she took the chains from my feet and, truncheon in hand, led me around the compound. Fresh air on my face! Though I stumbled, I could have thrown my arms about her.

  I thought I had learned what prison means, but today I learned I had no idea what prison means, no idea at all.

  The walls and barred windows hulking over the courtyard looked alien, though they have housed my body since last November. A hand waved from a window a few cells from mine, a white handkerchief from another. Women I may have glimpsed in passing but never spoken to, never met—how kind! How very kind!