Epitaph
Page 19
He stood across the street in its shadow, and though it was the hottest part of July, in the shadow of the house it was frigid as winter. This was a clue, he thought, a hint. He began to understand things standing there across the street from the house. Remarkable things. Things brutal and fierce and captivating. He understood that the tales weren't finished for instance. They weren't finished. The house needed him to finish them. That's why it was talking to him. That was what it was trying to tell him.
This is what he found when he explored the house: It had a huge kitchen in the basement, and in the huge kitchen a huge drain that led directly into the Paris sewers. In the courtyard of the house there was an office, and near the office a triangular room with one false door and an aperture in the wall where you could see in without anyone seeing out. He could do a lot with the place. No question. He could do just about everything with it.
The house would talk to him and he would listen.
Even on the day he bought the house he stood there again, ears cocked, stuck in its shadow again. He drew odd stares: from the passing lorries carrying German platoons to the Eastern Front, from the Jewish couple next door who'd negotiated the purchase, even from the two members of the French Gestapo who were on their way to headquarters just a few blocks down.
But he didn't move, not until he'd collected all the whispers and laid them end to end till they made sense. Then he rubbed his hands together and answered yes. Yes. It was just as he'd thought-the house had a place for him after all.
Once upon a time Marcel got his first customer.
He'd only put the word out several days ago, like casting a gleaming lure into the middle of a deep black pond, waiting only for something to bite hard. Now something had.
Marcel waited for him in 21 Rue la Soeur, staring through the window at the bare branches of the ash trees that lined the opposite sidewalk from corner to corner. It was a bitter night, the eighth day of Christmas according to the calendar. And why not? Wasn't Marcel about to receive a gift? Not eight geese a-cackling though; more like the golden egg.
Finally he saw him, trudging forward at the far end of the block, just a small dot beneath the trees. Gushenow the furrier. Gushenow the Jewish furrier, who by his own best guess had but several weeks before deportation to the East. But he didn't intend to be there when they came for him. He was going south. Petoit had promised to get him there-all the way to Argentina. They'd met once to settle on the price-five hundred thousand francs, steep for sure, but then what was a life worth? Marcel hadn't needed much time to persuade him-Gushenow had said yes almost immediately. Besides, he was leaving Gushenow more of where that came from, wasn't he? Much more-over one million francs that Gushenow had carefully sewn into the lining of his coat and hidden in the handle of his suitcase. And all those furs-silver sable, black lynx, red fox-that Marcel promised to send after him. All this Gushenow was carrying with him now, flitting between the tree trunks like a fat squirrel burdened with nuts. Marcel opened the latch, then walked back into the living room to wait for him. Seconds later, the door squeaked, creaked open. Petoit… Gushenow whispered, Petoit, are you in there…? Come in, Marcel answered. Gushenow was flushed and sweating, animal fur enveloping animal fear. Marcel could smell it. I have the pictures, Gushenow whispered. I didn't forget… Pictures…? Yes. For the passport. Oh. Of course. The passport. Marcel remembered. He offered Gushenow, fat, flushed, furrier Gushenow, a seat. But Gushenow fumbled for the pictures and handed them over. Will they do? he wanted to know. They're fine, Marcel said, barely glancing at them. Oh good… good. Gushenow wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. It was very hard for me, he told Marcel. Hard? Saying goodbye to my wife. Marcel patted him on the back and said, I understand. Not telling her. That was hard. Hardest thing I've ever done. You must understand the risks, Marcel explained. The dangers. I do. But all the same… Do you have everything? Marcel asked. For instance, the money? Yes, Gushenow whispered. But I have a question. About the currency. Currency? The currency in Argentina. What do they use there? Shillings. They use shillings in Argentina. Gushenow blinked. Isn't that what they use in England? I'm sure they use that in England… And Argentina, Marcel explained. England and Argentina both. Gushenow was more or less unconvinced; Marcel could plainly see that, but he also knew Gushenow was too nervous to care. What do I do now? Gushenow asked. Wait. That's all. Marcel reminded him about all the work he'd put into this, all the meticulous planning. Gushenow had to put his faith in him-after all, that's what he'd paid him for, wasn't it? Gushenow had to agree. But all the same, he wanted to know when they'd be leaving. It's hard to say, Marcel told him. There are factors. For instance… the moon… Moon? But I don't believe there is a moon tonight. Just my point, Marcel explained. With so little light, the patrols will be more diligent than usual. We'll have to pick our time carefully. Okay, Gushenow said. But isn't there anything for me to do? Well, Marcel explained, now that you mention it, there is one thing we've forgotten. What is it? Gushenow asked, looking nervous, that is, more nervous than usual. Nothing really. Just your vaccination. Vaccination? Against smallpox. I've got to vaccinate you against smallpox. That's the rule in Argentina. But I've already been vaccinated against smallpox, Gushenow whined. Why do I have to have another? There's typhus too, Marcel explained. Argentina insists on both. Gushenow pouted. Is Marcel sure? Couldn't he just say that he was vaccinated? Marcel frowned, a good frown too, one he'd practiced in front of mirrors from time to time. Just as he'd practiced looks of concern, of passion and joy and paternal warmth, all of them acted out in front of the looking glass till he'd gotten them more or less down. There's something called professional ethics, Marcel said. Besides, typhus is a problem in Argentina. Did Gushenow really want to run the risk of catching it? Gushenow sighed, resigned. Where do I have to get it? he asked timidly. There's a room in the courtyard… No. Gushenow shook his head. I meant what part of the body? Could he have it in the backside perhaps? It hurt him when they gave it to him in the arm. Of course, Marcel said reassuringly. Wherever you want it. Gushenow stood up. Where's this room then? I might as well get it over with. Marcel led him out of the drawing room toward the back of the house. They passed through the back door into the closed courtyard where a cat shrieked at them from the top of an ivy-shrouded wall. Where are we going? Gushenow asked. There. Marcel pointed to an outcrop of brick and mortar that was fastened to the back wall like coral. My office. They entered a small doorway: several finely polished chairs, a recently waxed desk, a glass bookcase with a stuffed mongoose sitting on top of it. Further down, Marcel said, moving off into a dimly lit hallway. Then, suddenly, they were in a room. What a strange place, Gushenow said, wrinkling his nose as if in the presence of bad cheese. It's a triangle. Yes, Marcel said. Three sides. Should I lie down? On that table? Good idea, Marcel said, then began rummaging in the black bag that he'd left by the doorway. You will be gentle, won't you? Of course, Marcel said. As gentle as a lamb. But isn't that needle a little large? Gushenow said now, staring at the syringe that Marcel was holding up to the ceiling. Not at all. Gushenow had already loosened his pants-they were lying bunched around his knees. He rolled onto his stomach and shut his eyes. Marcel began to push the needle into Gushenow's left buttock and in fact had it halfway in when Gushenow asked him about Argentina. Argentina? Yes, Gushenow said. Could Marcel talk to him about it? About it? About Argentina. About what Argentina's like. Anything at all. Well, Marcel said. They have coconuts there. Ahh… coconuts… Argentinians have to watch out for the coconuts. They have to remember to look up for them because the coconuts can drop on their heads and hurt them. I'll remember that, Gushenow said. What else? Beaches. Nice beaches? Very nice beaches. White and sandy beaches. And the people there? The people? Are they nice? Are they a friendly sort of people? Yes. Very friendly. No Nazis? No Nazis in Argentina? No, Marcel said, feeling Gushenow tremble. No. No Nazis.
They don't hate Jews in Argentina? They don't want to kill them?
No. They're friendly in Arg
entina.
No Nazis, Gushenow repeated, like a prayer, like a prayer he thought God might actually be listening to.
No, Marcel said, no Nazis, withdrawing the needle and wiping Gushenow's buttock with a swab.
Just coconuts.
Once upon a time there was a fire at 21 Rue la Soeur.
The smoke began billowing out of the house around daybreak, a thick, black, nauseating smoke that caused almost every resident on Rue la Soeur to batten down their windows, as if a violent storm was just minutes away.
In a sense, it was.
It was spring. Spring 1944, the kind of Parisian day songwriters liked to write about, the kind of day that sent people out into the Bois de Boulogne to feed the elephants and stare at the painted-on nylons. The kind of spring that renewed faith. For even though the Germans had begun their fifth year of occupation much the same as they began their fourth-it was common knowledge the tide had turned.
But on Rue la Soeur, the windows were shut tight, and the black smoke that had been coming out of 21 since morning kept coming and coming and hanging there up around the rooftops like a rain cloud come to earth.
Someone on the block, someone who could no longer stand an odor that was not exactly wood and not exactly coal and not exactly oil and not exactly anything they'd ever smelled before-finally called the police.
They arrived in minutes, faster than they would've responded to a murder, to a beating, or to a simple scream in the night. Gestapo headquarters, after all, was right down the block, and the German military police building and the office of the French Gestapo were more or less in the neighborhood. Screams could get policemen in trouble. Fires were safer.
There was a problem however.
They couldn't get in.
And the smoke became worse, drifting over them like a cloud of stinging locusts, leaving them teary-eyed and half blind. Not able to push in the door, and unwilling to smash a window-you never knew which German official owned which house-they called the fire department, which arrived within five minutes, launched a ladder up to the second-floor window, and broke in.
The shattered glass reopened several windows on the block. The crowd of police and firemen and fire trucks and passing dog walkers and gaping soldiers began to draw the residents out into the street. They held handkerchiefs of all colors up to their mouths, but within seconds each was black as widow's weeds.
Two of the firemen entered the upstairs window and began to warily make their way down. Down and down and down-following the odor like nervous bloodhounds.
It led them all the way to the furnace room, to the very bottom of the house, where two cast-iron furnaces were at full burn. And down there was Hades, like the one described in books: hot and red and searing and the odor, that peculiar odor, thick as steam.
One of the firemen used a metal stoker to pry the furnace door open. The blast of heat hit him full force: a wrenching, overpowering, blistering heat that almost toppled him like the aftershock of a bomb. But he didn't feel it, not really, couldn't feel what came out of the furnace, because he was thinking of what he saw in the furnace instead.
What he saw: a skull, two leg bones, several arms, one of which, detached from the elbow, was twisting in the flames as if waving at him. It was the wave he kept seeing, as if someone was welcoming him to hell.
The fireman threw up.
His partner, flashlight in hand, walked over to see what kind of mess he'd made. But he found a different sort of mess than the one he was expecting. It reminded him- he said this later, to the local magistrate, the chief of police, the two Gestapo officials, the three newspapers-of a butcher shop at the end of the day, reminded him of that because maybe that's what he was hoping, desperately hoping, it would turn out to be. It was a butcher shop of sorts, but just of sorts. It was littered with humans, with pieces of them, scattered about as if waiting to be wrapped, then priced for sale. In the basement were several torsos, some sawed-off legs stacked against the wall, four or five arms piled like firewood, and three human heads. Like mannequins before they're put together, he thought now, like that, his mind leaping to another allusion in a mad dash to get out. But there was no place to go. There were the bodies, raw and naked, and there was his partner kneeling beside them, making the sign of the cross, over and over, as if he were baptizing himself in a river of blood. it it it
After they cleaned out the furnace, after they accounted for every bone on the floor, after they dredged up every skeleton from the lime pit they discovered in the courtyard, after they added up all the bodies and pieces of bodies they found in the sewers under the house, after they tagged and catalogued every piece of furniture, every fur, every bracelet and necklace and ring and hat pin they found scattered throughout the four floors of the house, after they interviewed and interrogated and investigated, they came up with this figure:
Two hundred and fifteen men, women, and children.
Some found this figure too low. Some found it too high.
They never found Marcel.
TWENTY-FOUR
The ice cream truck had long ago departed, and one by one the people were drifting back, their giddy voices floating in through the closed windows like the laughter of ghosts. And why not. The room, after all, was filled with them. With ghosts. With some of the two hundred and fifteen maybe, with some of them. "So," Dr. Morten said, "now you know." "Know?" William said, playing dumb, playing it with the desperate intensity of a poker player who's lost every chip but one. Call this chip hope, faith, or just wishful thinking; call it gone too. "Know what?" "William…" Dr. Morten said, in the tone doctors use when they need to deliver a terminal diagnosis, but haven't the heart to do it. "The thing is, I'm not following…" "No…?" Dr. Morten said.
"No."
"Let me clear it up for you then. Petoit's escape route lasted almost four years. At first, he handled all of it himself. Then like all successful entrepreneurs, he expanded his workforce. You understand. It wasn't easy killing all those people-he needed help. First a Croatian abortionist called Lazlo-an addict Petoit kept in dope. First him. Then he needed recruiters."
You understand.
Not yet. Not if Mr. Stupid had anything to say about it. Not if he closed his eyes tight enough, put his hands over his ears, and hummed something cheery. See? Understand what? He didn't understand at all. He didn't understand Petoits, he didn't understand monsters, he didn't understand the night Jean said this needs your knowledge, William and sent him packing to the Par Central Motel either. Even then he didn't understand. When it came to not understanding, he was a pro's pro. So he could continue to not understand about Jean, about where the tortured concentration camp survivor with the heroic resume had suddenly gone to. Where was he…?
"Recruiters. Four or five of them," Dr. Morten continued. "They'd go out into the streets looking for people whose lives were hanging by a string. Mostly Jews, of course. A few black marketeers, a collaborator or two. But mostly Jews. People who had to get away. Who'd do anything to get away. To Argentina, the recruiters said. The promised land."
And now, of course, even he was getting it. You can only play dumb so long, even when you are dumb; sooner or later the bad news will come seeping in like early morning chill, leaving you numb and freezing certain pictures in your brain. This was his picture: Jean, carefully placing that tattered photograph back into his pocket while he rolled up his sleeve to the elbow just daring you to look away.
"They were paid a commission, these recruiters, a percentage of the gross, a finder's fee. Like real estate…"
Jean, William whispered, oh Jean… oh…
"The perfect crime," Dr. Morten continued. "Because no one asked what happened to them-these Jews. The neighbors because they didn't care. The families because they did. Petoit had them write letters-ostensibly from Argentina, just to let everyone know they were fine. The recruiters would deliver them several weeks after each 'escape.' So no one asked questions, no one went hunting."
"Maybe the recr
uiters didn't know? Have you thought of that? Maybe they didn't know where Petoit was really sending them?"
"He knew." Dr. Morten said, somehow finding the heart to tell him after all. "The very first time Jean delivered a letter, he knew. The very first time he saw their belongings going nowhere, he knew. He was quite clear about that-he wanted to be sure I understood. He always knew."
Of course he knew. And William knew that he knew, knew it even before he'd asked Dr. Morten, knew it somehow all along. Jean had always known, and William had always known about Jean. Somewhere, he had.
But still…
"What about his guilt?" William said, trying to articulate a last best defense, trying to reach for something, anything, a piece of Jean that they might hold up to the light and call almost good. "He was a criminal. Okay, he was a candidate for Nuremberg maybe. One step below the Eichmanns of the world. But Eichmann never said I did it, Eichmann didn't own up. Jean did."
Dr. Morten shook his head, sighed, rubbed his temple, as if frustrated by his inability to get through to this severely impaired man sitting in front of him. Here he was spelling it out, in neon, and yet here was William still in the dark. "You still don't understand, do you. You don't understand everything."
Okay. I'm all ears now. I've taken my hands off, and my ears are wide open.
"Jean was picked up by the Germans several weeks before the fire started at Rue la Soeur. The charge-smuggling Jews. That was what was put on his record-the Germans were magnificent record keepers you know. But even they sometimes got things wrong. They were tipped off Jean was hustling Jews, so they snatched the 'Jew saver' off the street and threw him into prison. So that's what the record said-Jew smuggler. And that's what the relief agencies found a year later when they liberated Mauthausen. Jean, of course, never bothered to tell them differently."