Adolfo Kaminsky

by Sarah Kaminsky

  At the back there’s another door leading to the large print room. In pride of place, under a large plate-glass window right in the middle of the room, is my big litho press, a genuine museum piece that I’d kept in separate pieces for years. On a table against one of the walls is the lithographic stone, on which the inks are spread and, along the whole wall all the inking rollers in a rack. More work surfaces, zinc plates and instruments for cutting them and mounting them on the stone, guillotines, a home-made laminator to reduce the thickness of the paper, shelves on the walls for the inks and the colors.

  Beyond that is a door leading to a big attic. On the right, our stocks. On the left, the vast photographic studio that also serves as a bedroom and sitting room.

  By another door you can continue around. It takes you to the dining room, then back to the waiting room and the entrance corridor. My lair. My laboratory.

  Life sometimes springs some strange surprises on us. You remember Goumard, the photoengraver who was in the Resistance but hated foreigners? Well, it was partly thanks to him that I obtained those premises. When I joined the Jeanson network my first priority was to set up a proper laboratory. At home, in my tiny two-room apartment turned into a studio after I’d given over the bedroom to stock all my material, it was impossible to do good work.

  So I went out looking for a place where I could. And, as usual, I hadn’t a penny. Francis had suggested paying me a salary because he suspected he’d be needing me full time and also so that I could meet any technical expenses, but I refused, and that for two reasons. Firstly because it was difficult to determine in advance the cost of running a laboratory, given that I didn’t yet know how frequent the requests would be, but also, and above all, because in accepting payment I would have the feeling I’d become a mercenary. More than anything else, I was determined to preserve my independence. If the network should move in a direction I didn’t approve of, for example by organizing terrorist attacks on civilians, I would be free to leave.

  But freedom has its price. I had to give up my job and go back to working for myself, create a photography firm to reconcile my two activities, legal and illegal.

  Quite by chance, I had business in the district around the Stock Exchange and happened to see a little notice taped to a wall announcing a lease being put up for auction. When I went to see the premises, they were a complete ruin. The former tenant, a press agency, had gone bankrupt. It was horribly dirty, the wall eaten away by splashes of fixative; everything was rotten. No one wanted it. But I did. I fell for it right away. For a start, the rent was ridiculously low, and it was a joint tenancy. The premises consisted of half of the top floor of the building, and I immediately saw that the other half was unoccupied and that there were two different staircases to get up there. Very practical to avoid meeting people or, should it be necessary, making a discreet exit.

  I went to see Monsieur Petit, the lawyer, a stiff, authoritarian person, well past sixty. I explained that I wanted the premises and that I hoped he would reserve it for me, giving me time to set up my firm so I could sign the lease.

  “How much time?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. As I’m a foreigner the first thing I have to do is to find a managing director.”

  When he heard the word ‘foreigner’, M. Petit frowned as if I’d just said something obscene.

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Argentina.”

  “And what kind of firm are you going to set up?”

  “Technical and color photography. Photoengraving as well.”

  He was suddenly overcome by a memory that didn’t seem too unpleasant. “I know a bit about photoengraving,” he said. “I had a friend, now unfortunately deceased, who was a photoengraver. But he was one of the best. He taught at École Estienne.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Henri Goumard.”

  “I knew him as well. He taught me.”

  From then on M. Petit took a liking to me. Since I’d been a pupil of his dear departed friend, he decided to take matters in hand himself and to help me. He gave me the keys right away so that I could start renovating the place. As far as the firm was concerned, he suggested that his son, a gentleman of around forty who worked with him while reading Minute,1 should officially be the managing director, at least on paper. The FLN forger having as managing director a man who sympathized with the extreme right—I couldn’t have dreamed of better cover.

  Francis and Daniel had been astounded when they went through the laboratory and asked thousands of questions. It’s true that there was something impressive about it. I’d just explained to them how, using a stereotype block, you can do photolithography and shown them how to get a reaction from the ink after mixing in some color. But what fascinated them most of all was my archive box containing all the ID cards and stamps going back to the Second World War and the collective visas for the Haganah.

  “You claim that there’s nothing that’s impossible to forge, don’t you?” Francis asked, examining a visa for Brazil with a magnifying glass.

  “That’s right. Anything that’s been conceived and made by one man can naturally be reproduced by another.”

  “We have an urgent request for two Swiss passports for the day after tomorrow.”

  The famous Swiss passports. Since I’d been making forged documents again, I hadn’t come across any major difficulties besides the time limits stipulated, which had initially been difficult to stick to, though having to start right from the beginning again had been a long and tedious task. French identity cards, driver’s licenses, passports were not at all like what they’d been up to 1950, which meant that I had no valid model, plates or stamps. But the Swiss passport was a veritable technical challenge, and I wasn’t sure I could meet it. The texture of the cover, ultra-light boards that were both rigid and very supple with relief watermarks, was unlike that of any other passport in the world. No one had ever been able to reproduce it, and I had just two days to find a solution!

  Without wasting a minute, I shut myself away in the lab and, as usual, tried everything, with different combinations of paper, cellulose, glue. Unfortunately the first tests were very disappointing. I could get either the suppleness or the rigidity, but never both at the same time. I had to keep going back to the beginning again, persevere, try new proportions…

  One day and one night had gone, and I still didn’t have the least idea how to do it. I walked up and down the laboratory, fighting against sleep. It wasn’t the time for weakness. But my weariness was suddenly followed by a violent headache, a sensation like a needle stabbing me just behind the eyes, a sharp pain that took my breath away. Impossible to fight against it. I immediately stretched out on the wooden bench, waiting for it to pass. And in closing my eyes, I let go and allowed myself to be literally carried away by sleep. Believe it or not, my mind went on working while I was asleep. In my dream I continued my experiments with other types of paper, adding cellulose in tiny quantities, and, perhaps because of the headache and the fact that I hadn’t had time to take an aspirin, by some devious piece of serendipity I remembered that gauze dressings contained a lot of pure cellulose. I dreamed that I cut up pieces and incorporated them in some pulp I’d made myself from different types of paper chosen for their resemblance to the model before dissolving them in a basic solution. Once the paper had dried I examined the result. Unbelievable!

  I immediately woke with a start. I was aching all over from having slept on the wood, but my headache was gone. How long had I been dozing? It was already dark outside. All I had left was the night and the morning. I dashed into the bathroom, opened the big medicine cupboard and rummaged around inside. Gauze dressings… Was it possible? If it was, there was perhaps still hope, however minimal, that the passports would be ready in time.

  I proceeded in exactly the same way as in my dream, chopped up the gauze into small pieces and incorporated it into the pulp after having dissolved it. After letting it emulsify for half an hour or so, I obta
ined a pulp that matched up to my expectations and put the sheets in the drying cupboard. The drying process was interminable, and I spent the hours pacing up and down. As dawn was breaking I still had to laminate the layers to get a regular thickness that was the same as in the model, and finally I could compare them.

  My sheets had exactly the same texture to the eye, the consistency was identical in all respects to the touch and even under the microscope it was impossible to pick out the least fault, the least trace that it had been forged. All that was left now was to color, print, and cut them, then insert the pages of the passport. And tomorrow, I thought with a smile, I’ll go to the pharmacy to buy lots and lots of gauze…

  1. An extremely right-wing weekly magazine. [MM]

  10

  IN THE MILD ATMOSPHERE and the evening light falling through the large skylight, I turn the heavy crank handle of the press while Marie-Aline collects the printed sheets as they come out. Suddenly the silence is broken by the baby’s cries.

  “She’s woken up, we’ll take a break,” Marie-Aline sighs as she goes to get her daughter.

  Now I’m making lots of Swiss passports. Their reputation as impossible to forge ensures that many risky operations go well. It was many years later that I learned that in reality Francis and Daniel had lied when they came to ask for the first Swiss passports: they didn’t need any at all. They were both intrigued by the fact that at every request, even the most complicated ones, even with the shortest deadline, I would take the model without a word and produce the goods on time. They wanted to set me an impossible task to hear me say, if only once, “I can’t do it.” Sure that I would fail, they were going to tell me the truth then. When I took them the two passports, they felt stupid and accepted them without daring to say anything. And quite right too. I only learned the truth of the story several decades later. A stupid joke, yes, but one that ultimately saved me a lot of time because the Swiss passport was precious, and the organization very soon really needed them.

  Marie-Aline suddenly reappears, a feeding bottle in one hand, a diaper in the other and little Nathalie, still crying, clutching her around the neck.

  “I’m going to have to feed her. And give her her bath, too, before the babysitter arrives.” Marie-Aline burst into my life like a flower in spring. One day we didn’t know each other at all; the next we were living together as if it had always been like that. One evening in the Old Navy a woman friend had said to me, “Tell me, Adolphe, you wouldn’t have some work for a pal of mine who needs a bit of cash?” I’d just signed the lease for the lab in Rue des Jeûneurs, and it was black with grime. All I could suggest was a few francs for giving me a hand with the housework. The next day a slip of a woman of around twenty-five appeared at the door pushing her blond locks, which were falling over her big blue eyes, behind her ears.

  “I’m called Marie-Aline, I’ve come to do the housework.”

  She was bubbly, amusing and never at a loss for words. She came to work and never left. A few days later I learned that she was a single mother and needed the money to pay the nurse who was looking after her daughter until she could take her back. I made a cot that I put beside our bed in the photographic studio, and we went to fetch Nathalie. What with setting up my photography firm and the clandestine printing press, that made quite a lot of things to deal with at the same time. Although she was very committed politically and very strongly supported the Algerian struggle, Marie-Aline was still unaware of my double activity. How could I conceal it when we lived, slept, ate and worked in the same place? I had to tell her. Initially she was scared stiff, imagining the police turning up at any time of the day or night to arrest us. Then she overcame her fears and decided to help me, between feeding times.

  The bell rings. I pick up the last sheet from the press and carefully put it away in the drawer. I lock the doors of the print room, the store, the main lab and the room with the machines, before opening the door for the baby-sitter. Aurélie, a young Eurasian girl of fifteen or sixteen with a gentle, sad look comes into the corridor and timidly introduces herself. It’s a friend who suggested her because since the baby arrived we haven’t been going out very much. While Marie-Aline is telling her where everything is and I’m having one last check that there’s nothing compromising in sight, the telephone rings. “Adolphe, there’s something I have to talk to you about. Are you free tomorrow?” It’s Henri, a photographer friend, on the line.

  “Yes.”

  “See you at the Saint-Claude at five.”

  As soon as we arrive at the Old Navy, the owner calls out to me, “Mail for you.”

  The envelope has the American flag painted over it, and it’s addressed to ‘M. le Patron de l’Old Navy, Boulevard Saint-Germain, France’. On an A3 sheet, folded over eight times, Sarah Elizabeth has written just one sentence: “Tell Adolphe America’s waiting for him.” I’d finally got around to telling her I wouldn’t be coming, suggesting she come back to live in Paris. But she hadn’t understood. How could she, since I couldn’t reveal to her the torments that kept me in France? In her reply she’d demanded explanations and, unable to give her any, with a bitter feeling I’d broken off communication.

  “Hey, just look at you!” Marie-Aline exclaimed, all smiles and tugging at my sleeve. “Claude wants to see you, come on, come on.”

  Claude Ravard, sitting at a table right at the back of the café, waves me over. I weave my way through the crowd of customers, shaking a few hands and pecking a few cheeks as I go. Claude has an odd expression on his face; he looks upset.

  “You don’t seem like yourself today.”

  “I have a problem to sort out by tomorrow, perhaps you can help me,” he said, swirling the ice cubes around in his glass.

  “Go ahead and tell me.”

  “I’ve been asked to take in a wanted Algerian. A big shot. The problem is, I’ve already got one in my pad. I’ve got until tomorrow to find a new hideout.”

  I was the one who’d introduced Claude to the network. Lodgings were one of our priorities because wanted Algerians were systematically rounded up if they stayed in a hotel. Nor could they eat in restaurants or take the risk of going around on foot. Jacques Charby, an actor who was very committed to the cause, had set up a very efficient network of lodgings by prospecting among his friends, people from the theater. The one problem was that different Algerians couldn’t keep on going to the same apartment one after the other, so we were constantly looking for new places for them to stay. One day Francis and Daniel asked me about lodgings that could be arranged outside Jacques Charby’s list, and I’d immediately thought of Claude. A union official with the Air France branch of the CGT1 he was more than willing, on condition he was left out of the network. As a member of the Communist Party he had to keep his activity secret if he didn’t want to risk being excluded from the party, as all those who had publicly stood up for Algerian independence had been.

  “It appears that it’s not just anybody,” Claude went on, emptying his glass. “A very senior official, he needs somewhere that’s really secure, somewhere no one will think of going to look for him.”

  “I may have an idea. If you like, I’ll deal with it.”

  When we get back, everything’s quiet in the house. Marie-Aline and I go in, treading softly. The light from the few street lamps shines through the windows. Nathalie’s sound asleep in her cot. Aurélie the babysitter is also dozing, on the wooden bench. With an amused glance at me, Marie-Aline shrugs her shoulders, then takes a blanket from the cupboard and tucks it around the girl.

  The next day I go out early in the morning. I have a full day ahead. I have to solve Claude’s lodging problem, then, at five as arranged, I’ll go to the Saint-Claude to see Henri, my photographer friend who’d called me the previous day. But before all of that I have another matter to sort out. More money problems I have to deal with. I’ve just paid the rent for the laboratory. I have absolutely nothing left, and I’ve run out of inks, chemicals and paper.

  At the
state pawnbroker’s the assistant welcomes me. Not many of my friends are aware of this, but I’m well known here, at the ‘hockshop’. For a Rolleiflex they offer me hardly one tenth of its value. I leave one there, plus a 24 × 36 Exakta that I’ll come back to reclaim as soon as I can pay the interest. For a while I’d managed to coordinate my double activity, but it didn’t last. At first I divided my time fifty-fifty; the orders for photographs, invoiced, allowed me to do those for the FLN documents free of charge.

  Now I’m working almost a hundred percent for the FLN, my coffers are empty, and I’m running up debts.

  Because of this detour I had to make, it’s already midday when I arrive at an old friend’s. Philippe gives me a warm welcome in his immense, very middle-class apartment in the 16th arrondissement.2 When Claude asked me to find a secure place where no one would think of looking for an Algerian, it was Philippe who immediately occurred to me. To have a senior official of the FLN who’s on the run lodging with a Jew who’s in favor of Algeria remaining French is a bit daring, don’t you think? But it’s impossible to imagine a better hideout. A former member of the Resistance and of the MJS, after the war Philippe went to live in Algeria with a branch of his family, Jews who had lived in the country for several generations. The events there had finally impelled him to return to Paris; since then, he had been proclaiming his support for French Algeria loud and clear. No, really, no one would think of looking for the FLN in his apartment.