Akin

by Emma Donoghue

  He tried to get at least halfway through his enormous palmier, as he had nothing to carry it in. But it was too much, the glorious butteriness of each flake.

  Noah slid the envelope out of his satchel and let himself leaf through the prints. He wondered whether the hidden story they hinted at just happened to unfold during the war, or had it sprung from the war’s dangers and allegiances? Getting out his own phone, he typed in “French war child” with one finger.

  Then wished he hadn’t. “Estimated 200,000 war children sired on French mothers by German soldiers.” That statistic grabbed Noah by the stomach. But just because two hundred thousand women had had war children didn’t mean Margot had: he clung to that. Besides, he had no reason to assume the dandy with the cane was a German soldier. He studied that photo again. In profile, the man had a very straight nose that could plausibly be interpreted as…

  Joan tutted in his head. Hitler didn’t look Aryan, did he?

  True. And no way to know if Margot’s lover had been a soldier, in any army. Yes, it would have been a plausible way for him to have injured his leg…but such an elegant suit. Then again, soldiers did wear civvies off duty. Officer material, Noah wondered? Nights at the Excelsior with his girlfriend, who’d conveniently sent her husband and son off to America? Had Margot, like so many other Frenchwomen, in fear or loathing or defiance, for fun or for food, taken up with one of the invaders?

  Funny how the word collaborator meant something so benign in Noah’s academic world: those who worked together on a paper or experiment. In wartime, the word lost all its overtones of collegiality. Collabos, that was the French slang version; after the war they’d strung up thousands from lampposts. Paramilitary Milice française fighters, informants, war profiteers, and what was that special idiom for women thought to have slept with Germans? Les tondues, that was it, the shaven-heads—hounded through town after town in a brutal parade of vengeance.

  Noah tried to remember if he’d ever seen any photos of Margot from the time she’d arrived in New York. Had her hair been long then, as in later years, twisted into a bun? Four-year-olds generally didn’t care what their mothers looked like, or remember later. Her bad eye, which she’d always blamed on an untreated infection, but could it have been the result of a beating? Also her knee. And oh Christ, could her punishers have raped her too? But surely Madame Dupont would have told the journalist about it later, if Madame Selvaggio had turned up after three days with a shorn scalp and multiple injuries?

  This was ludicrous. Just because his sister had been in possession of some old photos that included a man with a cane and a small boy… “OK, shall we move on?”

  “Where?” Michael asked.

  “Ah… we could walk back to our hotel, but a different way.”

  In his robot voice: “Exciting.”

  But first Noah remembered they should use the tearoom’s tiny toilet, which was accessed—this cheered Michael—by sliding open a section of the partition wall.

  They followed a long green park called the Paillon, new since Noah’s day. “I’m starving,” Michael said. “Can I get a hot dog?”

  “This is France. They eat proper sit-down meals. Where do you think we’ll find—”

  The boy did a ta-dah gesture at a van that bore a six-foot lurid image of a frankfurter labeled Le Giant Hot Dog New-Yorkais.

  “Can I just say, if you’d had some of your burger at lunch, you wouldn’t be so hungry.” Noah was getting out his wallet as he spoke.

  “I’ll get it my fucking self then.” The boy broke into a run.

  “Michael!” Noah strode after him.

  By the time he caught up, the boy was sitting at the picnic table beside the van, head on his arms. Crying?

  “Listen,” Noah began.

  Michael’s dry face snapped up. “Asshole wouldn’t take my money.”

  “Because you need euros here.” Noah held out a red ten-euro note.

  “It says New York Style on the sign!”

  Noah went up to the counter to order a hot dog and a bottle of water. The menu also included Le Hollywoodais, he noticed, and the pornographic-sounding Le Very Big.

  “Coke,” Michael ordered from behind him.

  “Water,” Noah said firmly.

  With gas?

  No. “De l’eau plate, Monsieur, s’il vous plaît.”

  Michael devoured the hot dog, which—thankfully—came with a New York–style bun.

  “S’il vous plaît means please,” Noah mentioned, “and for thanks you say merci.”

  Michael added more ketchup.

  Noah nudged the water bottle toward him.

  Michael ignored it.

  Once the hot dog had been consumed, Noah said, “Have some water.”

  “Don’t like water.”

  “Is this some kind of thirst strike? Look, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll buy you soda with one meal every day we’re here, so long as you drink water the rest of the time.”

  A long, tactical pause. Then, “’Kay.”

  On the next stretch of the park, Michael went up close to examine one of those gigantic, sword-armed plants, like a cross between a dinosaur and an octopus.

  Noah tried to remember the name for it: agave? Bristling cacti sent up long columns with bursts of yellow and orange tubes at the top. Mouse-eared ones were topped with pink ovals, each with their own needles. Red succulent blooms.

  Michael moved to stroke a little tuft.

  “Don’t—”

  But he spoke too late; the boy was glaring at his fingertip. “Fucking thing’s left like a million spikes in me.”

  Noah sighed. “Don’t rub, you’ll only irritate the skin more. We’ll have to tweeze them out.” One of his more adventurous freshman students had gotten a rash from a prickly pear that had lasted six months, he remembered.

  “Then do it!”

  “My tweezers are back at the hotel.”

  As they walked, Michael kept examining his finger, and Noah kept reminding him to leave it alone.

  The streets around the train station rumbled with the low-level friction of suitcases on wheels. Noah could feel things getting busier as the first weekend of Carnival approached. Tourists lurched along under top-heavy backpacks (six times the size of Michael’s). One tiny man had both a pack and a roller case.

  There was their hotel at last. But Michael still lagged on the far side of the road, behind a parked car, looking down. “Noah?” he called. “What’s this?”

  He wondered if it was another champion dog turd.

  “Something about… Auschwitz.” Michael tripped over the pronunciation.

  Another commemorative plaque, then. Noah crossed back over and steeled himself to scan the white letters chiseled in black marble: Les victimes avaient été internées dans l’Hôtel… What the hell?

  “It means our hotel, right? The Excelsior?”

  Noah couldn’t answer the boy; couldn’t speak. Between September 1943 and August 1944, he was reading, the Nazis had requisitioned the Hotel Excelsior for its convenient proximity to Nice’s central train station, and had held more than three thousand Jews here before sending them off to Drancy, the transit point for Auschwitz.

  He goggled at the pretty balconies across the street. Usually a plaque was attached to the building or spot where something had happened, but in this case he could see why the owners would have wanted it on the other side of the road, preferring to emphasize the hotel’s older heritage as a coaching inn. Noah was busy trying not to picture the charming lobby as it had been in 1944, crammed with huddled adults, big-eyed children waiting in every bedroom. “We’ve, ah, somehow ended up staying in the Nazi HQ.”

  “Wow.”

  “Not wow. They locked up three thousand people here for being Jewish, then sent them off to be murdered in the camps.” Would Rosa approve of him telling the boy this? Noah didn’t care; it had to be told.

  Chastened, the boy scanned the hotel’s gracious lines. “How come your mom had a picture of this p
lace?”

  Something in Noah’s belly torqued. “I don’t know.” It could be just a coincidence. Presumably people came to the bar here for cocktails long before the Nazis took over the building.

  But why the photograph, then? Joan asked.

  “Can we go to that?”

  Michael was pointing at a garish advertisement for an old-style circus. (Vrais tigres de Sibérie, with a picture of a glowering tiger.) “No.” He corrected himself: “I mean not right now.”

  “When, then?”

  “Another day, when I’m over my jet lag.” Noah was repulsed at the thought of walking through the doors of the Excelsior, but that’s where their baggage was, and they had nowhere else to stay. Besides— “Your finger. Let’s get those prickles out before they fester.”

  Upstairs in the bathroom, Michael writhed away from the tweezers.

  “Hold still, I have to pull them all out. It shouldn’t hurt.” If this didn’t work, Noah would have to buy some glue. He toiled on, squinting at the boy’s fingertip, securing the minute barbs one by one.

  “Done?”

  “I think so.” Noah released him.

  “Goddamn plant.”

  “Evolution protects those who protect themselves. You’ll know better next time.”

  “Not gonna be a next time.”

  Did Michael mean he wouldn’t be stroking that kind of vegetation again? Or that he was planning never to leave New York for the rest of his life?

  Nine o’clock already.

  Michael’s journal entry was like some handmade parody of a children’s book, illustrated with stick figures:

  Today with my Super Great Uncle I did some real educashional stuff like seen a beach with no sand and giant dog turds and walked about a million miles.

  The next page showed a Michael with hashtags for eyes and lightning coming out of his ears, attached to the wall by the cord of his phone. Warning: Europeen Power Zaps Like Double!!!

  “Your teacher’s going to think I let you get electrocuted, and I’m unfit to be looking after you.”

  “Nobody’s going to read this shit.”

  Well, by the time someone did, it was likely not to be Noah’s problem because Aunt Grace would be in charge. He handed back the notebook and got to his feet. “Dinner.”

  Turning down the first alley, they passed a beggar who looked like a bit part out of Les Misérables: draped in plaid blankets, with an old black coat and a flat-topped, vaguely military cap.

  Michael kept glancing around.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  Under the next lamp, Noah told him, “It seems perfectly safe here.”

  “Like you’d know.”

  Fair enough: Michael probably had more in the way of street smarts. And more reason to be wary of the kind of things that could happen the minute you stepped out your door. Noah turned into the next restaurant that still had its lights on.

  Michael’s nuggets poulet avec frites came fast, and he downed them even faster. The kid had figured out that the menu enfant always came with a choice of drink, so he was on his second Coke of the day. “That’s breaking our deal already,” Noah pointed out.

  He shook his head. “You said you’d only buy me one a day. This one is free.”

  When Noah’s plateau de fruits de mer arrived—with its giant prawns, sea snails, crayfish with long whiskers and bulging black eyes—Michael gaped.

  The idea of the platter had appealed to Noah’s nostalgia, but his appetite quailed at the size. Mostly shell, he assured himself, sipping his glass of rosé. “Want a picture?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Noah had meant a view of the plate from above, but Michael seized the biggest crayfish with squeamish relish and held it close to his cheek, pulling a face as he snapped a selfie with the other hand.

  “Shall I take one of you, for a better angle?”

  “I’m good,” Michael told him.

  “You can’t have got much of the crayfish in the frame.”

  “It’s a selfie, dude.”

  Every genre of photography had its own conventions, Noah supposed. “I’ve never taken one, myself.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Whereas your photos—it’s going to look like you went around France on your own.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Great-Uncle, sir. Should I be Instagramming your baldy head?”

  Noah chuckled at the thought. He used an empty pair of shells as tongs to retrieve the mussels’ little meats. “Want to try?”

  “’Kay.” Michael picked up a shell and nipped at the tablecloth with it.

  “I meant try a mussel.”

  “Nah. They smell like pussy.”

  Noah considered several possible answers: That’s incorrect, or That’s misogynist, or You’re the most consistently crass person I’ve ever had the misfortune to vacation with. Instead what came out of his mouth was, “Like you’d know.”

  Michael snorted so hard, Coke ran out his nose.

  Noah grinned. When this kid’s hard shell inched open… “You look like your dad,” he found himself saying.

  Michael stared. “No I don’t.”

  “Just a bit, when you’re laughing.” Not Vic’s beauty, but his impudence.

  A long pause.

  Noah wished he hadn’t killed the moment.

  “Vic was cool,” the boy said at last.

  “Yeah?”

  “He took us out to Mickey D’s.”

  Noah didn’t know where that was. “Did you see much of him, after your mother”—don’t fudge it—“went to prison?”

  “Sometimes. The first time he came around,” Michael muttered, “Grandma wouldn’t let him in.”

  Noah wasn’t surprised to hear that. How enraged Ella Davis must have been by this young man who’d grown up with all the advantages and thrown them away; who’d bulldozed her daughter’s life.

  “He kept saying how much he loved Mom, how he’d trade places with her in a second if he could.”

  Why hadn’t Victor admitted the whole stash was his, then, the night they were arrested? “He didn’t suggest you move in with him?”

  “He had to travel for his work.”

  Noah privately rolled his eyes at that—his shambolic nephew, like some careworn businessman on the road…

  “He said when Mom got out we’d live together, all three of us,” the boy said into his plate.

  Taking the long way back to the hotel, Noah appreciated the lights strung through the trees. But they made him think of the war, as everything did at the moment. “During the Occupation—when the German army took over from the Italians—you had to tape black over every window so American bombers wouldn’t spot any lights. And there was a curfew, which meant everybody had to stay indoors after dark.”

  “I know what a freaking curfew is.”

  “Of course you do.” Home by four thirty every day.

  They walked in silence for half a block.

  “Mom and Grandma were all about the curfew,” Michael said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You come straight home from school now”—in a gravelly old-lady voice—“and stay inside, live to be a man. Hanging around on the corner, you’re going to end up getting yourself shot like Cody.”

  Noah had never thought of rough neighborhoods quite that way before: like living under siege. “Is that how your uncle ended up in a wheelchair?”

  Michael nodded. “He ran a corner store. Thugs came in for this guy they had a beef with, and one of the bullets hit Cody.”

  “Oh my god.”

  As they walked the last few blocks to the Excelsior, Noah tried to see the city through this boy’s eyes. The ornateness, the prettiness, little oases of grass everywhere: did it strike Michael as enviable or just trivial? Windows full of shiny goods, families laughing on patios at ten o’clock at night. Nothing boarded up or burned out, rusted or crunching underfoot; no screeches of sirens.

  But all Michael commented on was h
ow close the cars were parked. “They’re like, touching,” he complained, squeezing between two fenders as he followed Noah across the street.

  “Well, Europe’s more densely populated than the States.”

  Michael stopped to take a selfie with a wooden cutout of a wine bottle taller than himself.

  The sight of the Excelsior made Noah sick. He should have already found them somewhere else to stay. Was it sheer laziness? No. Because of his mother’s photo of this hotel, something in Noah felt compelled to mount these stairs to the blue room.

  His eyes were sandy and his head was spinning. Only four in the afternoon, back in New York, but on the other hand he and Michael had barely slept on the plane. The ache in his hip was spreading right into his groin, down his thigh, even: too much walking. European pillows were all wrong: the small cylindrical bolster pressed painfully on his neck, and the big square pillow Noah could use only by sliding his body so far down that his feet were crushed by the footboard. He tried folding the square in half, but that felt like a spring that would hurl his head sideways.

  Michael was playing on his phone, his face grave with concentration.

  Exhausted, but oddly enough not sleepy yet, Noah checked his email in case there were any messages from Rosa (or Amber, in response to whatever snitching of his own Michael might have done). Instead he found one from Vivienne with a link to a little museum about Nice during World War Two that she’d come across, “to help work out whether your mother’s photos do date from then. I’ve been in touch—ask for a Monsieur Benoit, he’s there on Thursday and Friday afternoons.”

  She was an interfering nagger, but it was all kindly meant.

  Noah refolded the pillow. He couldn’t keep at bay his worries about the Excelsior’s black doors. Maybe Margot had just wanted a discreet, private reminder of the place she’d been happy with her lover. Her lover the Nazi, by any chance?

  Now that’s sexist, assuming she could only have come here for a man, Joan pointed out.

  Noah tried again. His mind was so muddled.

  Think like a scientist.

  If the little R.J. in the picture was Margot’s son, and born during the war, then his father might or might not have been a German.