The Madagaskar Plan

by Guy Saville

  “I should add Samuel,” said Madeleine, baring her wrist. “In case something happens to you.”

  “And spoil those pretty white arms?” Abner softened his tone. “Nothing’s going to happen. We’ll be safe once we’re there.” The prospect buoyed his mood. “It’s not much farther.”

  They reached Antzu at midday, arriving at the southern gate.

  In the 1930s, Poland considered deporting its Jews to Madagascar and sent a delegation to scout for settlements. Antsohihy, as it was then known, was a small village accessible to the coast by the Analava River. Because it was bounded by swamps and its people suffered from endemic malaria, it was deemed uninhabitable for large numbers—a point noted by SS officials when they chose it as the administrative center of the Western Sector. Within a few years it had become a sprawling city of shacks. Here the Judenrat, the Jewish Council, liaised with Tana, issuing papers, carrying out its orders. Antzu’s citizens, with their relatively easy lives, had shunned the first rebellion; the council went further and demanded that the Vanilla Jews cease their self-defeating struggle.

  By way of reward, and with an eye to Washington, Heydrich allowed Antzu to remain the island’s only free city. Globus’s protests were overridden; after so much bloodshed, it played well with the Americans. There was an SS garrison just beyond the walls, and the regional governor maintained a house that overlooked the city, but Antzu was policed by the Jupo and during daylight hours Jews could live as they pleased. “It is a model,” Heydrich told a journalist from the New York Times, “a model of obedience and the freedoms therein for the rest of Madagaskar to aspire to.”

  A palisade had been erected around the city, not by the Nazis but by locals. Jews have existed for so long behind walls, Madeleine had heard it said, that we can’t live without them. Several Jupo, dressed in their uniform of beige rain capes and pith helmets, manned the gate. They were gossipy, agitated. Coconut shells burned around them to keep off the clouds of mosquitoes.

  A warden (as they liked to call themselves) came forward to see their papers while the others continued to whisper and shake their heads. He had the eyes of a man who was owed something. Abner handed over his documentation; Madeleine noticed that it was in someone else’s name.

  The warden gave the papers a cursory glance, keen to share bad news. “Have you heard? The Ark’s been burned down.”

  Abner was appalled. “When?”

  “Earlier this morning.” He gestured at the other police wardens. “We reckon it was those bastard Vanillas, trying to force our hand. Make us join their revolution. But the council is too wise for that.” He dropped his voice, wanting to show off a secret: “They’re in session as we speak. An emergency meeting to denounce the Vanillas before we all go up in smoke.”

  “They wouldn’t attack the Ark.”

  The warden eyed him mistrustfully. “How can you be sure?”

  “We know the rebellion is bound to fail,” replied Abner with bland conviction. “In the days after, the Ark will be our only safeguard.”

  The warden grunted and held his hand out to Madeleine. “Your papers.” He had long, filthy nails.

  “Silly girl,” Abner replied for her, “she left them at home. Her and her friend both. We can fetch them if you want.” He slipped some coins into the warden’s hand. “Or you can accompany us back to check.”

  The warden glanced at his palm, then at his colleagues to see if they had noticed. “Where do you live?”

  “Boriziny Strasse,” replied Madeleine.

  His attitude changed. “Next time, don’t forget,” he said and waved them through the gate.

  Abner waited till they were out of earshot, walking past drab buildings and walls patterned with algae. “Boriziny?” He sounded impressed. “Mutti wanted to live there—she applied for years. How did you do it?”

  “That’s where I was sent when I first arrived.”

  “No one lives in Boriziny without something exchanging hands. Maybe your husband paid for it.”

  “I doubt it.” The mention of him sent bleak emotions swilling through her. “Did you mean what you said,” she asked her brother, “about the rebellion failing?”

  “I said that to get us through the gate.” He sighed and for the first time appeared weary. He became reflective. “Maybe it’s true. I don’t know, Madeleine; I’m exhausted by it all. We need America to have any chance.”

  “How?”

  “It was my great dream. We spent months, thinking up a plan to draw in the U.S.”

  “Maybe it’ll be different with Taft.”

  “The best we managed was to fight hard, fight everywhere. If the Nazis slaughter enough of us, the Americans will have no choice.”

  “That’ll be a comfort,” said Jacoba, “when we’re dead.”

  They trudged into the city, the streets more deserted than Madeleine remembered. Abner stayed in front, encouraging the two women to go faster. Her brother’s constant chiding and the arduousness of the journey had brought Madeleine closer to Jacoba. She reached out for her hand; the older woman had shown an unexpected stoicism. Now that Jacoba was inside the walls of Antzu, amid “civilized people,” she seemed more secure.

  The mist became heady with sewage and paint fumes and, wafting through it, another scent, warm and comforting. Fresh bread, thought Madeleine, her belly clenching. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten any; in the abattoir, the diet consisted solely of rice. Images filled her mind: crusty white loaves dusted with flour, rye bread, croissants, the challah her mother used to make, with its elaborate braids of dough. Soon they reached streets she recognized; ahead was a general store where she had bought bread before.

  “Have you got any more yellow?” she asked Abner. The official currency for Jews was the gelbmark, commonly called “gelb”: yellow.

  “I spent the last of it to get you through the gates.”

  “You must have something.” As a boy, he’d hoarded his pocket money. “I’m starving.”

  “Me, too,” said Jacoba, sniffing the air.

  “We have to hurry. With the Ark burned down, it’s even more important I get to the council.” He rubbed his molars through his cheek. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

  “It is, but…” Madeleine halted outside the shop. “My blood’s like water. I can’t take another pace.”

  Abner irritably searched his pockets and tossed her some change. There were no gelbmark notes, only coins made from zinc in denominations of ten, five, two, and one (known as a “rupee”), plus halves and quarters. The entire currency had been minted in the 1940s, with no additions since, the money supply maintained by restrictions on how much individuals could own and the shrinking population.

  As Madeleine and Jacoba entered the shop, the smell of the place—grimy spices, last season’s rice—almost made Madeleine faint with hunger. It was dingy, the meager stock of food stored in jars and containers behind the counter to stop thieves.

  “Have you got any bread?” asked Madeleine.

  “Not today,” replied the woman at the till, pointing to an empty rack. The bottom shelf was covered by a thick rectangle of uncut honey cake.

  “What about that?”

  “Y’don’t want any. They’re Bienenstiche. Bee stings.”

  “How much?”

  “Delivered this morning and not a single one sold. Quite right, too.” The woman was from London, with a guttural East End accent.

  “Why?”

  “Came from the Nazis. A gift to every shop in town, so we can celebrate their Führer Day.”

  “If there’s no bread, I’ll have three pieces.”

  “You mustn’t! They set fire to the Ark this morning. It’s y’duty not to eat it.”

  “Three big pieces.”

  “Y’sick, girl. And now those Vanillas will use it as an excuse to spread their trouble. I tell ya, we’ll end up in the reservations.”

  Jacoba tugged at her arm to leave. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

/>   Madeleine was undecided, then slid her coins across the counter. “I’ll have as many as I can buy.”

  * * *

  Back on the street, Abner was cleaning his glasses. He looked out of place. Elderly couples passed him, infants and young mothers, but no men of fighting age. To subdue any chance of rebellion, the Jewish Council had decreed that males between the ages of fifteen and sixty were not allowed to reside within the city unless they were married with children or devoutly religious. Abner harried Jacoba and Madeleine through the mist, all three cramming their faces with cake. Madeleine swallowed in half-chewed gulps, the honey burning her throat.

  They reached the Spanish quarter: a warren of sun-starved lanes that led to the docks and river. Untouched by Globus’s Operation Babel, Antzu remained divided by national identity. Every building was hidden behind bamboo scaffolding. On the highest levels, old men with tins and brushes watched them pass.

  “What is this?” asked Madeleine.

  “You’d know if you lived here from the start,” replied Abner with a hint of accusation. “It’s an annual ritual: painting week.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Wood weathers badly here. It needs preserving, but the Nazis control the paint. They say the chemicals in it can be used to make explosives, so they only give it the week of Führertag. To keep us out of mischief.”

  From the Spanish quarter, past a single block that accommodated Liechtenstein’s Jews, and finally to the Altreich district, the oldest part of the city, where Germans and Austrians had made their homes.

  Boriziny Strasse had been the main thoroughfare before the Jews arrived, a long snaking road, wide enough for a motorcar, that stretched from one end of town to the other. The pioneers had developed it, building better houses than anything that followed: they were raised on stilts against the rain, had roofs of corrugated tin and small gardens. There was even a rudimentary sewage system. At the northern end, under the shade of papaya trees, was a cluster of chalets from the French colonial period. This was where the Jewish Council and senior Jupo had their homes. The road had once been paved, but a decade of tropical storms had reduced it to a patchwork of cobbles and puddles. No one knew who Boriziny was or why a street had been named after him.

  Madeleine’s mind was drifting, melancholic. She struggled to recollect what it was like to walk along here with the bulging weight of the twins. Had she made a mistake by returning? Her children seemed farther away now than they had the day before. She tried to cheer herself up, remembering the waddle she’d developed in the final weeks of her pregnancy. It would have made Burton smile.

  “What number?” asked Abner.

  Madeleine started. “Eleven thirty-eight.”

  “Everyone wants to live here, Leni. You should be prepared: your house will probably be taken.”

  “What about my things?” She thought of the suitcase she’d arrived with and the few items she had bought and bartered; she’d collected a stash of powdered milk.

  “Gone.”

  She didn’t care. At that moment all she wanted to do was lie down.

  “You can live with me,” said Jacoba. “It’s nothing as good as this, just one of the tenements, but I’m sure my room will still be there.”

  Abner slapped a mosquito feasting on his arm. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Mist hung over the roofs. From somewhere came the voice of a soprano working through her scales. A few ragtag kids kicked around a ball, while women washed clothes or sat staring into space. Madeleine recalled the streets of Hampstead clearly, and the various houses where she had worked as a maid after arriving in London; the Vienna of her childhood remained vivid. But none of this was familiar.

  The sound of the opera singer grew closer. She was one of Madeleine’s neighbors: resentful that “an English” had been allocated a house along the street, more so because she was carrying a baby. With so few men in the city, and birth control encouraged by the SS, pregnancies were unusual. The singer was practicing on her porch but fell silent as they approached.

  Abner climbed the front steps of number 1138 and knocked on the door. It was a cinder-block hut, weathered and brown, rust from the roof running down the walls. There was no reply. “Do you have the key?”

  “I lost it.”

  Her brother examined the frame. “It’s not that strong. I should be able to break it.”

  “No, wait,” said Madeleine.

  She joined him and removed the knife from under her trousers. It had rubbed against her thigh as they walked to Antzu till the skin was tender; every time it made her wince, she pictured Cranley. She eased the knife between the frame and the lock, twisting it until the latch gave. Inside, everything was how she had left it ten weeks earlier. Abner went to enter, but she barred him and turned to Jacoba.

  “Will you come in? Rest?”

  “I want to see my daughter first.”

  Since they’d met at the slurry lake, Madeleine had spent every day with Jacoba. Squeamish, snobby, accepting Jacoba; Jacoba, who had encouraged her through the previous night despite her own exhaustion, who’d let her cling to the hope of escaping the island even though she believed it impossible. The thought of being parted was more wrenching than Madeleine had imagined. She embraced the older woman. There was something so normal about the gesture—like two friends parting after lunch and a matinee or an afternoon’s shopping, far from their sour clothes and the muddy streets of Antzu—that Madeleine felt tears rising. Jacoba gave her a final peck on the cheek and whispered, “I wish I could make it better.” Then she slouched down Boriziny, taking one of the side streets in the direction of the river.

  “I don’t trust her,” said Abner, entering the house.

  “She looked after me.”

  “Do you ever think why? She’s not family.” Abner peered around the dingy interior. There was a small window with a fine mesh to keep out the mosquitoes, but only the houses of the Jewish Council had windows with panes; glass was a rare commodity. His eyes came to rest on the crate Madeleine had planned to use as a cradle.

  “I’m going to the council,” he said, “to pass on our news about the reservations. There’s also a transmitter there—I need to speak to Ben-Ze’ev, tell him about the Ark.”

  “What about Mandritsara?”

  “They burned our records, Madeleine. No one will care about your children now.”

  “You promised.”

  He offered a pathetic shrug.

  “I’ll go alone,” she said, too tired to be persuasive.

  Abner opened the door, letting in a waft of bread and sewage. “Then go. Back the way we came, left up the hill toward the governor’s house, then on to the main road.” He sounded more annoyed with each word. “From there it’s forty kilometers, except a lone woman will raise suspicions, especially on Führertag. So you’d better go cross-country.”

  Madeleine hung her head and noticed that one of her laces was caught in a knot.

  “You were slow from the train, Leni, white with hunger, and the terrain was easier than it will be between here and Mandritsara.”

  “Someone has to help me.”

  “Why? Thousands need help, millions—why are you so special?” He sighed, scratching a sore on his hairless head, and seemed to be calculating something. “Let me go to the council, speak to them on your behalf. But you have to promise to stay here.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  “This place is safest. Stay and get some rest.”

  He clomped down the steps, boots thick with mud, and walked off in the direction Jacoba had taken. Then stopped. “It’s a nice house, Leni. Better than anything we had here, or how Mutti and Leah live now.” He stared into the sky. “You should be grateful for what you’ve got.”

  Madeleine followed his gaze. She could see nothing through the mist but heard the approach of a helicopter. It clattered over the city and came in to land near the governor’s house. When she looked back to the street, Abner was gone.
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br />   CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Antzu

  20 April, 15:20

  MORE FUCKING HORSES, thought Hochburg as Kepplar opened the helicopter door. Tufts of straw whirled around them.

  The Flettner had landed in the stable block behind the governor’s villa. A groom in a khaki shirt appeared and led Hochburg and Kepplar into the house, taking them first through a tack room, then into a vestibule adorned with vases and paintings and silver ornaments. There was a sickly scent of frangipani and ylang-ylang.

  “To cover the stink of the city,” explained the groom.

  He passed them on to an adjutant, who escorted them up the stairs and knocked at a door. Hochburg pushed past him into a dining room: more tawdry opulence, more looted treasures, the air frosty. He had come across this before, Europeans who judged their status by the degree to which they could cool tropical air. Hochburg glanced at the lunch spread and felt nauseous. It was the new German way: excess, people stuffing their mouths till they couldn’t breathe; a poor example from the upper ranks that was filtering down to the masses. Soon everyone would want this lifestyle.

  The table was bowing, laid with the traditional Führertag meal of roast lamb with juniper sauce, ham wrapped in bread, potato salad, and red cabbage. There was a conurbation of wine bottles. For a decade, the authorities had encouraged citizens of the Reich to eat spicy nut loaf at this time of year, in keeping with Hitler’s dietary preferences; it had never been popular. Jewish maids flitted around the room serving an obese woman with blond ringlets and five pudgy kids in uniform. The family were all draped in fox furs against the chill; jewelry flashed on their fingers, none of it costume. At the head of the table, his face as fat as a teapot, was a Brigadeführer: the sector’s governor, Felix Quorp.

  “Herr Oberstgruppenführer,” said Quorp with lavish insincerity, “this is an honor. We have just drunk a toast to your forces in Kongo.”

  “I must speak with you in private,” said Hochburg.

  “Surely you can join us for a plate first?”

  “Immediately.”

  Quorp let out a jowly sigh and indicated the French windows. They opened onto a veranda that circled the upstairs of the house. Hochburg was glad to feel the humidity against his cheeks again. Beyond the walls of the villa, half-sunk in the mist, was a bricolage of rooftops.