Adolfo Kaminsky

by Sarah Kaminsky

As we haven’t seen each other for several years, we talk and talk, go on and on about stories from the past before coming back to the present and the problem that’s brought me there.

  No sooner have I mentioned the word FLN than Philippe gets up out of his chair, red with fury, shouting at me, “That’s a lousy thing to ask of me because you know very well that I can’t refuse.”

  “Yes, you can refuse. Say yes or no, and if it’s no, we’ll say no more about it,” I retort, once his angry shouts have died down.

  “After everything you’ve done for me? You saved my life. You saved my father, my mother and my sister. I can’t say no!”

  “Say yes, then.”

  “I warn you, Adolphe, once but not twice.”

  I still feel a bit worked up about this when, one hour later I push open the door of the Saint-Claude and plunge into the quiet hubbub of the café. Henri’s there already, leaning on the bar.

  “Let’s go in the back room, it’ll be quieter there,” he suggests, pointing to a table in a corner.

  We’re the only ones in the back room. Leaning on the table, Henri gets close to me and speaks in a very low voice: “I’ve been contacted by the Algerians.”

  “Oh, yes?” I say without batting an eyelid. There’s no way Henri can know I’m helping the FLN. Apart from Marie-Aline and a few others, no one’s aware of that.

  “They’re looking for a forger for their network.” I conceal my surprise.

  “You’re one of those who are revolted by torture, so I mentioned your name…” Henri goes on.

  “But I haven’t made any forged papers for years, as you very well know, Henri.”

  “I know that like me you think this war’s absurd. Think about it and tell me yes or no.”

  “Who are these Algerians who’ve contacted you?’

  “The MNA.”3

  Stirring my coffee, I look at Henri for a moment. The MNA, the first party supporting Algerian independence led by Messali Hadj, refuses to work together with the FLN. The two are in fact aging a bloody fratricidal war against each other.

  “They’ve got the men, the structures, it’s a very large network,” he adds.

  “Okay then, so what do they need exactly?”

  “They want a hundred French identity cards. They can pay. Ten million francs.4 So, is it yes or no?”

  “I need time to think it over,” I eventually reply.

  “OK, I’ll tell them. In a week, same time, same place.” Henri tears a page from his diary in two and gives me one half. “Someone will have the other half. He’s the one you’ll give your answer to.”

  I slip the torn piece of paper in my pocket, say goodbye to Henri, leave the café and plunge into the gray fog in the city. There’s nothing like a quick walk along the embankment for thinking something over. What exactly is all this about? If the MNA needs identity cards, why not make them for them? I’ve seen in the past that it’s possible to work for different groups at the same time, as long as they’re fighting for the same goal. During the Resistance I didn’t concern myself with whether the requests came from the FTP, the MOI or the MLN. Today I’m independent, therefore free… Nevertheless there are two serious questions that bother me, the first being the armed struggle between the MNA and the FLN. The second is the money. Ten million for a hundred cards—it isn’t the amount that shocks me. You need finance to be able to produce forgeries; they cost a lot in time, equipment and materials. But being offered a specific sum in advance takes me directly to the question of the ethics. I’ll have to speak to Jeanson about it before coming to a decision, and it so happens that I’ll be seeing him tomorrow at Marcelline’s to give him an update on the requests in progress.

  One week later Philippe calls me: “Adolphe, come over, I have to talk to you,” he demands imperiously.

  I immediately dash over to his apartment, concerned that something serious might have happened between the Algerian and him. A disagreement, an argument or worse… Philippe opens the door, exclaiming, “Oh, Adolphe! Your Algerian, he was a very cultured man. Basically, what he’s doing is resistance, as we were. If you have any more like that, you can send them to me.”

  I can’t help smiling at the idea of this amazing pair living under the same roof. They talked about classical music, literature and philosophy, then about their struggles and the racism of which both their nations are victims.

  Time moves on. I put my hand in my pocket to check that the torn diary page Henri gave me the previous week is still there, and I thank Philippe once again for his hospitality before setting off for the Saint-Claude to meet the representative of the MNA, who’ll be waiting for my reply to their request for a hundred French identity cards.

  “Just watch out, the MNA’s in cahoots with the cops,” Francis said to me after making some inquiries.

  I sit down away from the other customers, at the same table where I sat with Henri in a corner of the back room, away from eavesdroppers. A man of around forty, looking like John Q. Public, comes over and sits down at the table. He takes his half diary page out of his pocket and hands it to me. I give him mine. He has sad, protruding eyes, a heavy, round face that doesn’t match his small hands, which are spidery, as if they didn’t belong to him. A policeman? Perhaps. Perhaps not. We wait a while before speaking. He looks at me, I look at him. Finally I’m the one who breaks the silence: “Listen, I’ve given your proposition a long, hard thought, and I’m not going to undertake the work.”

  He frowns and for a moment a look of disappointment crosses his face. I put on an embarrassed expression before I continue, pretending to be sincerely sorry.

  “You know my history. You know what I did during the Resistance, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will also know that I’m Jewish… It’s not that I’m racist… But after all they are Arabs…”

  The man nods. Apparently he can understand me.

  1. The Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labor) is a French trade union. [MM]

  2. A district of Paris socially similar to New York’s Upper East Side. [MM]

  3. Mouvement national algérien (Algerian National Movement). [MM]

  4. Old francs. The ‘new franc’ was introduced in 1960, and had the face value of one hundredth of the old franc, but people continued to talk in old francs for many years after. The offer would actually have been for 100,000 (new) francs. [MM]

  11

  JUNE 1961. When I was going home a few days ago I saw a man who seemed to be waiting outside the building. I felt his look and dress were characteristic of a policeman. The way he was waiting was too natural. His gray raincoat, his sharp, sly look, like a fox. I made an about-turn before he spotted me. I went for a walk. I went to have a coffee. When I came back, he was still there. I immediately left again. The film of Françoise Sagan’s novel Aimez-vous Brahms? with Ingrid Bergman, Yves Montand and Anthony Perkins was on at the Grand Rex. I disappeared into the queue and into the dark auditorium, finally going back home much later. That time the man wasn’t there anymore. Paranoia? I doubt it. After the wave of arrests the previous year, no detail is to be taken lightly. Almost all the agents of the Jeanson network are behind bars. As for the others, they managed to disappear while there was still time. Jeanson himself, his right-hand man Daniel and a few others whose cover had really been blown, fled using forged documents. They went to the Belgian support network of the FLN and continued their activities from outside France. Since then, the French network has been operating under the aegis of Henri Curiel’s organization, but last October Curiel was also captured by the police and thus finally met the hundreds of FLN militants languishing in Fresnes Prison.

  There aren’t many of us still operating in the old organization. If I escaped being arrested, it wasn’t by a miracle. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to get it accepted that people couldn’t just turn up at the laboratory. I insisted I only have one contact, although that wasn’t aways respected, and I made every effort to
keep out of the life of the network. But this time I smell trouble. Sometimes you have to anticipate disasters; if I stay here the noose will eventually tighten around my neck. The man at the bottom of the building isn’t the only sign. It’s quite possible that the surveillance has gotten as far as me, for during the trial I couldn’t avoid Roland Dumas—who was defending the French accused—coming to see me repeatedly, nor Francis Jeanson who would also come, in disguise, when he was a wanted man. And that’s not counting the fact that all the media fuss over the trial, the manifesto of the 121 and the arrest of Georges Arnaud, imprisoned for having done an exclusive interview with Francis Jeanson while he was on the run, had caused a lot of commotion and rallied numerous people to our cause. New members had been recruited, young ones to take the place of the former agents, and not all of them, put forward by sponsors, had had the time to be trained in the nuts and bolts of a clandestine existence. Information had been exchanged on the phone, precautionary measures and codes hadn’t been observed.

  Following the visit of the suspicious man in the gray raincoat, I immediately sounded the alert. The decision of the leadership in Brussels was unanimous and categorical: the risk of the laboratory being discovered must be avoided at all cost. The next day, I leave Paris in total secrecy. This time I have to go underground, and that means the end of my independence. The laboratory of forged documents is going to be moved to Brussels, from now on I’m going to be paid a regular ‘allowance’, as are other members of the network, and the organization will take care of all the production expenses. For the last few days, organizing my escape has been like a marathon. A thousand things to think about, to arrange. First of all to solve the ‘Spanish problem’. José, Carlos and Juan, three anti-Franco Spanish republicans whom I’ve been helping for several years now alongside my other work, have just come for each to collect a ‘box’ containing rubber stamps, inks, a metal with a very low melting point to make relief stamps and a few tools that ought to let them continue without me during my absence.

  I also had a large stock of blank documents to make before I left in order to deal with emergencies while I’m reinstalling an operational laboratory in Belgium. The press had been rolling without interruption for a week.

  The preparations for my departure were almost finished. I was getting ready to go out to see my two children, Serge and Marthe, aged ten and eleven, who lived with their mother, when Jeannette, my liaison agent, came rushing into the laboratory, desperate for a key to open a Zenith lock. I gave her a dozen keys explaining, however, that the Zenith was a security lock and none of them was going to work. She wouldn’t listen and, after having made me promise to wait for her, dashed off as quickly as she came.

  One hour later Jeannette was back. As I’d predicted, the keys hadn’t worked. She sank into one of the big armchairs in the waiting room, her head in her hands, and gave a long sigh.

  “You’re not going to tell me what’s happened?”

  “You have to help me, Joseph. One of the heads of an FLN section has just been arrested along with his partner, a Frenchwoman who’s a CGT union official, in their apartment in Paris. Fortunately the cops didn’t find anything at their place. But she has another apartment, in her own name, and that’s where they keep the section’s archives. If the cops discover the address, they’ll have the names of hundreds of FLN militants who’re in danger of being sent to prison, or being shot by the OAS if the police reveal their names. The keys don’t work, and we can’t break the door down without someone noticing. I just don’t know what to do now.”

  It was the first time I’d seen Jeannette in such a panic. She was a young woman of twenty-four, a graduate of the IDHEC1 working as an editor for the film review Positif, who’d become my liaison agent over a year ago when all my former contacts from the older generation had had to go into exile. I’d immediately seen that Jeannette was the kind of woman who wasn’t fazed by anything. Her fears? She’d suppressed them since the day when, snuggled up in her mother’s arms in a group following a guide who was leading them across the border, she’d crossed the demarcation line between the Occupied Zone and the Free Zone. A German soldier had appeared and led all the families away—apart from her and her mother, who in desperation had plunged into the bushes. The memory of that experience and of the stones people had thrown at her sister with insulting cries of ‘Yid!’ had left her keenly sensitive to the sting of racism and with an insatiable need to fight against injustice and the idea that commitment has to be total and absolute. She and I were birds of a feather.

  “Her name is Madame François and her door’s on the third floor, on the right,” Jeannette had murmured as she scribbled the address on a scrap of paper. Then, before dashing down the stairs on another mission, she’d whispered, “Thanks, Jo. I’ll repay you for this some day.”

  Since then, I’ve been practicing the use of the crow bar. I didn’t have too much difficulty forcing the door of the laboratory bathroom but I left great nasty marks on the wood. I’ll have to find a way of going about it more cleanly before I tackle the kitchen door. With a thin metal plate stuck between the crow bar and the door perhaps. I have a try and, with a violent shoulder-thrust, the door gives way without a scratch on it.

  After having forced two more doors for practice, I take a blank French ID card I have ready. I type in the details: Surname: François, First Name: Julien. That way I can pretend to be her brother. I trim my beard carefully, then go to the photographic studio to take a self-portrait that I develop in passport format. I stick in the revenue stamp, stamp the card then dilapidate and age it a bit so that it doesn’t look too new. It’s already nine o’clock, and the sun is just setting. What do I look like? A burglar? It’s better to go about it openly so as not to arouse suspicion. I’ll do it tomorrow morning, before taking the train to Brussels, especially since I’ve got my own things to stash away. I place all the compromising items from the lab—photoengraving plates, documents of all nations, revenue stamps, rubber stamps—in a large case and put that in the trunk of a car I’ve borrowed from a woman friend a few hours before. If the police arrest me in Madame François’ apartment, they won’t find anything at my place. It’s better if they assume they’re dealing with a bag-carrier rather than the FLN forger. I’ll park the Citroen not very far away, somewhere near Rue du Louvre, and tell my friend where it is. If she still hasn’t heard from me by the next evening, she’ll collect the contents of the case and give them to Marie-Aline, who’ll know what to do with them.

  In the morning I go down to the bistro at eight for my coffee. Leaning on the bar, I catch the conversation between the owner and a weary old alcoholic.

  “Have you seen that? They’ve pulled in another o’ those FLN bitches.”

  The owner waves his newspaper in the customer’s face, who nods apathetically. I ask if I can have a look. It’s on the front page of France Soir. A big photo of Madame François and her partner, one of the FLN officials for the Paris region. It’s already made the papers—I don’t have a minute to lose. I pay for my coffee and run up the stairs to the laboratory four at a time. Two minutes later I leave, wearing gloves, carrying a large suitcase and jump into the first taxi.

  When I get there, a small apartment block in a public housing project in Aubervilliers, it’s impossible to avoid the concierge’s desk. She is sure to have read the paper. It’s better to go and announce myself.

  “Good morning. I’m Julien François, the brother of Madame François on the third floor.”

  In order to win her trust, I show her my ID. Since she doesn’t react either way, I question her, just to see. Whether she decides to call the police or not, at least I’ll know where I stand and how much time I’ll have to get the job done.

  “You’ve heard about my sister?”

  She stares at me, curious. “No. Has something happened to her?”

  “Yes. Hasn’t anyone told you?”

  “As you can see, no one has. What is it?”

  “She’s bee
n hospitalized with paratyphoid fever. She’s asked me to get her a few things, and I haven’t got the keys. I wanted to tell you that I’m going to open the door and change the lock.”

  “Oh, right. Yes, go ahead. And how’s your mother?”

  “Oh, you know. Getting older.”

  I go up to the third floor and locate the door. It gives way as soon as I put pressure on the crow bar. I enter a dark room with the shutters closed. I press the light switch, but it doesn’t work. The indicator on the electricity meter is pointing to zero. Strange. It’s probably booby-trapped; I don’t touch it. Getting it going again might set off a warning system in the police station on the corner, and I’d find a reception committee at the entrance to the building. Anyway, I’ve brought a flashlight with me.

  First of all I replace the lock. Then I have a quick look around the apartment. The big kitchen cabinet Jeannette told me about is right in front of me. That’s where the archives are kept, but it won’t open; it’s locked.

  Once more I force the lock. I switch on my flashlight; there are heaps of files, stacked next to each other. I flick through one. Names of activists, their addresses, the amount of their dues. In another, reports on incidents and missions with the names of those involved at every level of the hierarchy. Then another… A list of the names of Algerians the FLN has ordered to join the harkis, the Algerian soldiers loyal to the French. A shiver runs down my spine. Documents, reports, accounts, correspondence, file after file, it’s the whole life of the section spread out before me. I have to be quick. If the police get their hands on this there’ll be a real massacre.

  I stuff all the documents into a suitcase any which way and get ready to leave, but suddenly I stop, as if paralyzed by a premonition. What if there’s other incriminating evidence in other places about the apartment?

  To be sure, I go through the whole apartment. I discover more files in a cupboard nearby. Then, in the toilet, several garbage bags with bundles of documents torn in four, therefore very easy to put back together. It’s a disaster. Impossible to take away all that quantity of paper in one shot. I have no choice—I’ll have to sort them out, only keeping the most important documents, those with names, photos, important details. I don’t touch the radio sets and the rifle I find in the cupboard. No time, no space. I double-lock the door when I leave and, carrying my heavy suitcase, go back down the stairs. At the bottom I meet the concierge again and slip her a bill. Not too much, not too little.