April in Paris

by Michael Wallner

  “Do you think I would have gone to Turachevsky’s if I had known about the attack?” I replied. “Besides, I was wounded in the explosion, too.”

  The second lieutenant’s face turned stony. “Three senior SS officers were killed, along with seven civilians. Two officers are in critical condition in the hospital, with life-threatening mutilations! Corporal Roth, however, survives with a scratch on his eye! What extraordinary luck the fellow has!” He leaned over the desk. “You knew about the attack! You helped plan it and carry it out! Admit it!”

  The SS corporals moved closer.

  “I warned Captain Leibold in time for him to—”

  I had put my foot in it. How could I have warned Leibold about something I’d supposedly known nothing about? I sensed that the men behind me would begin at any moment. At the same time, I understood that I couldn’t tell the lieutenant anything, even if I wanted to. I knew nothing of Chantal’s whereabouts or the location of her group. It became chillingly clear that there was no way I could avert what was coming to me. Images from the procedures flooded my mind. The water torture, during the course of which some people literally drowned. The broken limbs. The sleep deprivation, which turned even powerful men, men with all their wits about them, into stammering, self-soiling wrecks who entered a state of interminably prolonged semiconsciousness in which they would reveal everything so that they might finally be allowed to sleep.

  I was drained and desolated by fear. As they grabbed me and pulled me up, I tried to control my nausea. All the same, I retched, vomiting on a corporal’s stomach. He cursed. The first blows landed on me at the same moment.

  24

  I awoke in a condition whose sole characteristic was fear of further beatings. The notion that torture victims grow accustomed to unvarying methods turned out to be hogwash; pain wasn’t trainable. Every turn on my plank bed caused suffering the likes of which had been unimaginable to me until now. I tried to avoid the slightest movement, but lying still was equally painful. I located the places where the throbbing radiated from and palpated clusters of large lumps. I could scarcely find my nose; my injured eye was swollen shut. If I tried to open my mouth, pain shot through my face. My jaw must be broken, I thought. I had seen detainees dragged out of the interrogation room in this condition: The lower part of their faces hung bizarrely to one side; their jawbones and lips no longer obeyed them. I tried to picture my face and fell into a feverish sleep.

  Fresh pains awakened me; the doctor was in my cell. I couldn’t see what he did. He reset; he bandaged. I screamed, but it wasn’t my voice. He murmured something about pulling myself together, then finished his work and left the room. Later, much later, I found porridge and water next to my bed. I drank some water; it ran out of the corners of my mouth and dripped onto the floor. I didn’t touch the porridge. When steps approached, I pricked up my ears in dread; when they passed by, I sank back down, relieved. Between periods of unconsciousness, I heard a distant tapping. Did Henri want to talk to me? I didn’t have the strength to answer and couldn’t concentrate enough to understand the alphabet.

  For two days, maybe longer, they left me in peace. Although I never touched the porridge, I didn’t feel hungry. One night, I threw up the water I’d drunk. I waited for Henri’s tapping. I shoved my jacket under my shoulder so that my head was lying against the wall and listened for many hours, tangled in the images my thoughts evoked.

  My stern mother came to me; she seemed older than she was in reality. My brother described how he’d been put on the fast track to complete his medical studies; there was an urgent need for physicians. He was accompanied by all the teachers he and I had shared, all wearing beards. One of them showed the company the golden clasp that had been bestowed upon him by His Majesty.

  “My father has a soft spot for the emperor,” Chantal said.

  She was sitting on the bucket in the corner, wearing the dress I loved most of all. The red dots covered her naked legs to the knees. She pulled the fabric taut between her thighs. How narrow her waist was. The dress was cut low and tight across her breasts.

  “Which emperor?” I tried to sit up.

  “Napoléon.” She reached the bed in two swinging strides and sat down on the cool spot next to my knees.

  “Papa’s not a monarchist. He’s just fond of ceremony.” She leaned over my hip and rested her elbow on it. “Before the war, he was against anything he thought sounded like a coup d’état. He cursed the front populaire—he said their ideas would drive Germany to ruin.” Cautiously, I laid my hand on Chantal’s thigh. “I still had short hair back then,” she said, smiling. “Papa and Bertrand often used to sit together in the storeroom.”

  “The white-haired man who reads the newspaper?”

  She nodded. “While they were in the back, Gustave and I would be out in the shop, reading. Sometimes my father came in, ostensibly to make sure we weren’t getting up to any funny business with the books. What he was actually doing was taking out another bottle of red. Bertrand was an ardent leftist, a member of the front populaire. He had a hiding place under the hair-washing basin where he kept a revolver, a small-caliber pistol, and a Mauser. He told Papa, ‘When the time comes for us to go out into the streets, I won’t be late.’”

  My fingers registered the warmth emanating from Chantal, the barely perceptible movements of her thigh as she spoke. I would have liked to put my hand between her legs.

  “Papa said, ‘The people demonstrating in front of the Bastille should go for a walk with their families instead. That’s a better way to spend a Sunday.’” She laughed out loud at the memory. “Once I eavesdropped on an argument between Bertrand and my father. Papa got so furious, he imagined himself at the head of a machine-gun detachment, rounding up the ringleaders of the revolution. He unmasked them as foreigners and Jews. Bertrand was highly insulted at being lumped together with Jews and left our shop.”

  One tap. A pause, then three. Two more, then three more. Pause. While I was still thinking about the letters c and h, Chantal stood up. Henri continued. I lost the thread. I heard an l, maybe a p, but I couldn’t find the connection. I hoped he’d start over when he saw I wasn’t answering. Chantal had disappeared into the corner between the window and the heating pipe. With an effort, I rolled over onto my side, took off my ID tags, and tried to tap out the word slowly. Was I using the code correctly? Henri started tapping in great haste; it seemed to be of the utmost importance. As much as I tried, and as hard as I pressed my ear against the wall, I couldn’t understand him. Eventually, I gave up and sank back down, and the tapping faded away. I fell asleep; I woke up. The corner by the window lay in complete darkness.

  The next morning, my cell door opened differently from the way it usually did. The guard didn’t come shuffling in to put porridge and water next to my bed. From the corridor, I heard the sound of heels clicking together. The stillness of men standing at attention.

  Pulled and thin, as though reflected in a distorting mirror, Captain Leibold entered my cell. It took me several seconds to realize that he wasn’t part of a dream. Although his back was bandaged, he was wearing the black uniform. His jacket was draped across his shoulders; his cap concealed his head wounds. As I scrutinized him in those seconds, a transformation came over me. Leibold’s come to my rescue, I thought. Only Leibold can help me. He’s here to release me from my fate. The door closed behind him.

  He stood there, pressing his lips together. “You could have gotten away unhurt,” he said softly. Then he came a step closer and hesitated. His expression was sorrowful. I thought about what I must look like. The young man with whom Leibold had so liked to stand beside the window—his own people had smashed my face. I tried to say something but succeeded only in breathing loudly.

  “Why did you stay?” He bent over me. “You could have been gone long before the bomb went off.”

  “I—didn’t—know—about—it,” I murmured, and gazed at h
im, unsure whether he’d understood me.

  “One second sooner, and it would have blown you to pieces, too.” He shook his head pensively. “The people upstairs are agreed that you’re a traitor. Do you know that?”

  Nodding caused me pain. “I’m not a traitor,” I managed to say. New pain in my lumpy nose; something wet on my cheeks.

  “I don’t know why you’re keeping it up,” he said. “You know the procedure.”

  I swallowed and remained silent.

  “It won’t do you any good. Tell us what we must know. After that, things will go better for you. I give you my word.” I’d never seen his eyes so full of warmth.

  “But you’re going to shoot me in any case,” I whispered.

  “Yes.” He smiled. “We’re going to shoot you. But it’s over quickly.”

  “Why didn’t you send me to the front?”

  “No one decides what’s going to happen to him.” As though inadvertently, Leibold reached around behind him, where his bandages were. “You’re more important here. We have to know where this woman and her father are,” he added wearily.

  “When will you shoot me?” I trembled, propped up on my elbows.

  “When you don’t expect it.” He observed me sadly. “Don’t rejoice too soon.” He went to the door and rapped on it. “By the way, it’s the night before Christmas,” he said. “We’re having a social evening. Comrades getting together. Too bad you won’t be with us.”

  The guard stood at attention as Leibold walked past him. The hollow sound of the door closing. I tried to imagine how they were celebrating Christmas Eve outside.

  25

  The next day, I was taken back to the doctor. He examined my broken jawbone reluctantly. My jaw was forced open, and he installed a bit of wire to hold the break together. The doctor, who was a rather elderly fellow, tinkered around in my mouth with the indifference of a mechanic. The only part of his face that moved was his goatee, up and down, as he chewed on the stub of his extinguished cigarette. The SS privates held me fast. I figured that Leibold had arranged this operation. He was a man who appreciated proportions; perhaps my disfigured face had disturbed him. After the doctor was finished, he counted out ten pills into a little metal box. “For pain,” he growled resentfully, as if he couldn’t see why pain was something I should be spared.

  When I stood up from the doctor’s chair, my knees gave way. The soldiers hauled me out and led me to the head-cropping room two doors down. The French barber was even grumpier than the doctor. His impressive beard grew down from his chin and neck to where it encountered the hair rising up from his chest. I was ungently placed in the chair; the barber took hold of the monstrous machine, the cable swaying up and down before my eyes. The motor stuttered and rattled as it ran. The bearded barber started on my temples and worked up. My small head wounds, which had just begun to heal, split open. The Frenchman simply sawed right over them. I jerked and twisted away; one of the privates pushed my shoulders down again.

  “He’s putting on a show,” he said to his comrade.

  Clumps of hair flew to the floor right and left. I looked for a mirror. A mixture of curiosity and dread made me want to see the extent of the devastation. The only thing I saw on the wall was a single Christmas-tree branch with an ornament attached. When the rough work was done, the soldiers went out to the hall for a smoke. The barber inserted a finer blade into his clipper and started cleaning up the hair on the sides and back of my neck. He pulled my collar to one side with his free hand. Just as he did so, I felt his fingers shove a crinkling object into my shirt. It slid down my back and stopped, hanging between my shoulder blades. In a flash, my pain was forgotten and all my attention directed to the thing on my back. Since the barber was behind me, I couldn’t see his face, nor did I try to turn around. Soon he finished his work. While I was being led out, he cleaned the blades of his clipper. Not once did our eyes meet.

  Back in my cell, I waited ten minutes. Then I opened my jacket and my shirt and felt around my back; the object fell to the floor. It was a tightly rolled piece of paper. I unfolded it with flying fingers. Only three lines:

  We know where you are.

  Answer Henri.

  He can do something for you.

  The signature consisted of two letters: C.J.

  I sank down onto the bed. The strip of paper lay in my lap. I read the words again and again. After several minutes of amazement, I raised my head and looked over to the corner next to the window, where Chantal had recently disappeared. I hadn’t the slightest doubt that the initials C.J. stood for Chantal Joffo. At that moment, the wall of morose passivity I’d been erecting around myself for days collapsed. I sat on the straw mattress and cried. The wire in my jaw hurt; I opened my mouth and bawled.

  Even though I was dying to get into contact with Henri, I let hours plod by. I thought up questions I’d ask later, phrasing them as precisely as possible. Finally, I set up my plank-bed telegraph office. Since I had neither pencil nor paper, I pulled a rusty nail out of the wall in case I had to scratch something down. I tested the heel of my boot as a tapping instrument, didn’t like it, and rejected the drinking cup and the tin bowl, as well. In the end, I pulled out my ID tags again; they were small and hard-edged.

  I began. Two, three. One, five. Three, four. At first, I went very slowly, but gradually I picked up speed. The letters automatically converted themselves into taps; I didn’t count anymore and rapped out entire words without stopping.

  Not a sound in reply. Maybe Henri was out of his cell; many prisoners worked in the canteen or with the cleanup crew. Possibly he was asleep. For the first time, I tried to picture him. Small and muscular, with coarse trousers and a shirt that was white when he was arrested. In my mind’s eye, he wore a beret and smoked nasty French cigarettes. I smiled: I’d come up with a Frenchman straight out of a picture book.

  Meanwhile, I kept on tapping. I tried the whole afternoon, getting up every now and then to look through the peephole. No answer from Henri. Had Chantal’s note come too late? Had he been transferred or killed? Shortly before the food cart came, I gave up, hung my ID tags around my neck, and lay flat on the bed. I thought I’d give it another try later that night, even though it would be more dangerous then, because tapping in a silent cell block could be overheard more easily.

  Usually, the arrival of the food cart was the most absorbing event of my day. But when the server stopped at my cell this time, I took the proffered bowl without even looking at it. I sat down and spooned the pap and felt the warmth in my stomach, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Wasn’t it absurd to hope for help from a prisoner? As soon as Leibold was sure I didn’t know where Chantal was, I could consider my execution a likely prospect at any time. And yet, I had the feeling everything that was happening to me made sense. I escaped into a thick tangle of speculations and desires. In a state between sleeping and waking, I imagined a dramatic rescue from rue des Saussaies. French Resistance fighters, freeing a German soldier! In an old building like this, there had to be secret passages and hidden cellars unknown to the SS. Maze of subterranean corridors, escape in night and fog, getaway from Paris, reunion with Chantal. We’d be in the country when we met again, surrounded by trees in bloom, white smoke rising from the chimney, horses grazing in the paddock.

  I put the empty bowl aside, sank back against the wall, and smiled. Sudden jaw pain reminded me that the wire in my mouth made smiling inadvisable.

  I was shaken awake roughly in what must have been the middle of the night. No light in the cell except for the flashlight beam in my face. Hands pulled me up. No chance to step into my boots. I got dragged out in my stocking feet, pushed along all the corridors, down the stairs, into the icy courtyard. Pebbles cut the soles of my feet; I was shoved forward. I cast a brief glance up at the window where Leibold and I had often stood. He’ll help me, I thought; Leibold’s the only one who can.

  The SS cor
porals, the clerk, everything was as usual. I was still only half-conscious—I hadn’t slept so deeply in a long time. I staggered toward the chair. A blow to the chest made it clear that I was not going to be allowed to sit. Leibold entered the interrogation room through the connecting door. I breathed a sigh of relief. He wore his uniform jacket over his bandages. He took his seat, holding himself exaggeratedly erect.

  “Chantal Joffo is in the vicinity of Metz, isn’t she?” Leibold spoke calmly; his voice sounded absent.

  “Metz?” Chantal had never said anything about Metz to me.

  “Is Chantal Joffo in the vicinity of Metz?” he repeated.

  Had they come down on Henri? Had my tapping betrayed him? “I don’t know,” I said in a daze.

  Leibold repeated the question several times. I considered whether he was trying to give me some information. His eyes revealed nothing.

  “I don’t know anything about Metz,” I said.

  He nodded as though that was what he’d figured. The corporals didn’t intervene. At last, Leibold picked up the telephone and began a conversation. As he spoke, he gestured to the corporals to take me out of the interrogation room. We got as far as the small, bare holding room next door. I tried to sit down and was ordered to stand at attention with my face to the wall. The other two stayed in the little room. They sat, one on either side of me, and smoked. I stood there with my hands on my trouser seams. Minutes passed; I waited. Perhaps an hour went by before I finally understood. The interrogation would not be continued. Standing there was the state of affairs. Until further notice.