Gypsy

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Look, just fill me in on the two of them and on this place.’

  ‘But … but I haven’t been here in years. I wouldn’t know where to begin. He’s crazy. There are so many places … He’s not the same as the man I once knew. He’s …’

  She felt Kohler’s fingers gently touch her lips; his thumb, her tears. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.

  It was Louis. Louis was calling to him. Louis sounded trapped and in despair but was a long way off.

  ‘He’s inside the ruins, in the great hall,’ said Nana sadly. ‘That is where the gypsies gathered to hold their feasts and the Kris Romani, the trials at which all serious offences and conflicts within the kumpania were settled by the elders. He’s found something and is trying to warn you of it.’

  A trial … Ah, Christ!

  The hall, where the monks had once dined, was long and huge, its ceiling high. And from where there had been leaded glass in more recent years, the grey light of day entered under the arcade outside to throw pale shafts across the littered floor.

  Snow had been swept in by the wind. Rags, cushions, blankets, bits of tattered, faded carpet lay among scattered eiderdowns whose feathers were teased by the wind and whose carmine, beige or white silk coverlets, with a black embroidery of flowered designs, had been torn.

  Overturned cooking cauldrons were beside the fourteenth-century fireplace. An iron tripod still stood over long-dead ashes. There was broken furniture, some of it still bearing ancient fabrics and leaking horsehair. There were carved oak chairs with no legs, chairs with two or three … Benches, a narrow wooden bed, a wicker chaise-longue, a broken card table … Scatterings of dresses, the skirts wine purple, deep red and brown, all voluminous, the blouses once white and loose and low-cut.

  A faded yellow kerchief that would have been tied around a boy’s neck lay next to the diklo, the headscarf in magenta which had once covered the long and braided, glossy, blue-black hair of his mother.

  There were broken wine bottles, kicked-over wooden water buckets, battered fedoras, old suit jackets, horseshoes, horse harness, tarpaulins, anvils, the leather bellows of a simple but effective forge …

  Jars of pickled cucumbers, those of hot red peppers in vinegar.

  ‘August 1941 …’ St-Cyr heard himself sadly exhaling the words. ‘Tshaya, daughter of the horse trader Tshurkina la Marako who was deported to Buchenwald 14 September of that year with all members of his kumpania except herself.’

  ‘Jean-Louis …’ began Gabrielle only to hear him caution her with, ‘Wait, please. What have we come upon?’

  The ancient leather trunks and suitcases, the wooden boxes, had all been opened and dumped in a mad search for gold coins. The men would have been herded to one end of the hall, the women and children to the other. Sandals, broken shoes, sabots, old rubber boots – all of it was here.

  Stripped of their gold, the gypsies had been loaded on to lorries and taken from this place.

  And now? he asked himself.

  He picked up a photograph from among the scattered hundreds. The long, drooping moustache, heavy gold rings, gold coins hanging from the watch chain across the waistcoat, fedora, crumpled dark suit jacket, wide corduroy trousers and riding boots were those of a Rom Baro. ‘Tshaya’s father,’ he said. A sweat-stained silk kerchief of dark colour was knotted around the neck.

  ‘Did she turn them all in?’ he asked of Tshaya. ‘Did that husband of hers force her to tell him where her family was in hiding? Is this why the Spade was murdered in such a horrible fashion?’

  He took a moment and then told them the worst of his thoughts. ‘Boemelburg must have known of the round-up and yet has said nothing of it to us.’ Instead, Walter had let him and Hermann believe the Gestapo and the SS had had no prior knowledge of this place or of what had happened here.

  Some granular snow struck the shattered remains of a window, startling them. Suzanne-Cécilia found his hand to grip it tightly. Gabrielle moved closer.

  ‘There are no recent tracks,’ he said emptily. ‘Has no one been in here since it happened?’

  ‘The chapel then,’ said Gabrielle in a whisper. ‘Perhaps they are using it.’

  ‘For what!’ he asked, alarmed.

  ‘For her trial and … and as a last redoubt.’

  ‘But … but how is it that you know of this?’ he bleated.

  ‘I don’t. I’m only suggesting it.’

  For two days he and Hermann had been absent from Paris. Gestapo surveillance of the réseau had been slack and had only been stepped up on their return. Had this given Gabrielle and the others an opportunity to travel unnoticed?

  The Spade had been murdered; the Generalmajor had been given a cyanide capsule and told what? he wondered. The truth!

  ‘Where is the chapel?’ he asked, sickened by his thoughts. ‘Show me, please.’

  Neither of these two résistants argued with him. In single file, with Gabrielle leading, they picked their way among the rubbish to a far portal. He did not know if Hermann and Nana had been killed, only that the shots they had heard had come from a rifle.

  And now? he asked himself. What will we find?

  Half hidden among the barren branches and undergrowth, and at a distance of perhaps 200 metres, the bleached grey ribs of six large caravans stared emptily at the sky. Tensely Kohler let his gaze sift questioningly over them, understanding only too well what must have happened. There had been no recent tracks in the overgrown orchard and gardens, no tripwires, not even snares for rabbits or signs of wood-gathering.

  The ruins just beyond the caravans were quiet. The air was clean and sharp – there wasn’t a hint of hastily extinguished cooking fires nor of tethered horses.

  Nana Thélème could not seem to take her eyes from the caravans. ‘There is scattered clothing,’ she said hesitantly.

  They could go round the carvans, they could head for them. The belfry of the chapel was some distance to their right. She started for it. He heard her suck in a startled breath when held back by him.

  ‘Were the girls and young women raped?’ he asked.

  Stiffening, she answered fiercely, ‘How could I possibly know?’

  ‘Let’s have a look at what’s left. Now start telling me about De Vries, like I asked. I want everything.’

  ‘He … he was always gentle and kind and had such a sense of humour but was mischievous. He … he loved Tshaya’s father as his own and was adopted by him.’

  ‘And Tshaya – how did he feel towards her?’

  ‘She was forbidden. She was not for him. When she was fourteen her father agreed to marry her off to someone younger from a neighbouring kumpania. They were third cousins, I think. Tshaya wanted no part of the boy but the bride-price had been paid and was soon spent lavishly on drink and food to celebrate.’

  Kohler helped her over some fallen branches. ‘So she ran off to Paris after Janwillem.’

  ‘At the age of fifteen, and has been running after him ever since.’

  Kohler pulled her to a stop. ‘She disgraced her family yet they took her back when the Spade came for her?’

  Nana’s head was shaken. ‘She was considered marhime, as was her family.’

  ‘So her father let the Spade beat her?’

  Why must he demand answers now? ‘Janwillem wasn’t there to stop it, nor do I think he could have, though he always regretted his not having done so.’

  A sigh was given. ‘The kumpaniyi gathered and had a trial,’ said Kohler. ‘Her father was a Rom Baro. They threw her out. They banished her but De Vries still loved her.’

  ‘Not in that way. To him she was like a sister. It was she who wanted him as a woman wants a man.’

  ‘You’re only saying that because he left you for her.’

  ‘To commit a robbery, yes, but has he now discovered the truth about her? Has he?’ she demanded.

  ‘And what of the others who are supposed to be with them? What of the three who went from the quarry to Paris in Gabrielle’s car?’

 
What of the car and of the explosives? ‘I … I don’t know. I … I wish I did.’

  Once among the caravans, it was easy to see what had happened. There were human remains among the bloodstained, torn and rodent-infested eiderdowns and dresses. Some of the braids had come undone, others were tied together …

  ‘Come on, let’s find Louis and get this over with.’

  ‘Look, I’m … I’m sorry I spoke out like that. All I want is to see Janwillem a last time. When he hears what I have to tell him, he’ll understand I didn’t betray him, nor would I ever have done such a thing.’

  Oslo, 20 April 1938, then the Mollergaten-19, prisoner 3266, cell D2 and cell C27. Well over four years until Herr Max paid visit after visit to finally offer a Gaje deal that couldn’t be refused.

  ‘He must have told Tshaya we were to have a child and be married. This … this she could not allow.’

  With the stirring of the wind, the snow was gently swept across the floor of the arcade. Depressions were soon filled; others uncovered. Footprints led down the length of it to a staircase. St-Cyr hesitated. Alarmed, he strained to listen. There were at least two sets of footprints. Were De Vries and Tshaya waiting for them in the chapel? The others? he asked. Were there tripwires?

  Gabrielle’s eyes, of the softest shade of violet, were full of apprehension. Suzanne-Cécilia gazed warily at him, searching for the slightest sign of what? he demanded and wished again that they had confided fully in him and Hermann. Was it doubt she sought? he wondered.

  He went on. They had to follow. And when he crouched to pass exploring fingers over one of the footprints, he looked up first to Gabrielle and then to Suzanne-Cécilia with only the heartfelt sadness of a detective doing his job.

  ‘These are at least two days old,’ he said. Whispering to themselves, they trailed behind – he could hear them doing so. Are there no guns? he cried out silently to them. No other gypsies? Ah damn you, damn you. I thought you were my friends.

  Light bathed the little chapel, passing through a ragged hole in its once eloquently decorated ceiling where faint black swallows still flew in premonkish paint.

  The rope was coarse, the trailing diklo crimson. The benches were ancient, grey and heavy – carved and covered with dust and rubble. A handprint was here, a gap was there. Some of the chairs had had to be moved.

  Tshaya stirred but slightly in the softly eddying wind which carried the granules of snow down from the belfry above to pass them over her body. Her hair was long and braided and blue-black but not glossy in this light. Her face was slightly puffed, the expression placid, the brow wide and strong, the jet black eyebrows fierce perhaps but not now, the eyes dark and wide and bulging only slightly, the lips a dark blue. Frozen … the corpse was frozen.

  The rope had been thrown up and over a sturdy yet worm-eaten timber. It had been knotted about her throat, the knot placed on the right side so that the head was crooked to the left and the diklo trailed that way and would have caught the saliva as it drained from her mouth.

  Thursday … had it been done then? he asked himself.

  Her bare feet were together. The ankles had not been tied. Though her wrists had been secured behind her back, it seemed she had put up little if any struggle. Had there been three or more of them and she with no chance of doing so, or had she simply defied them to the last?

  There were bloodspots, the petechiae that were caused by ruptured blood vessels immediately below the skin. He looked for mucus which should have issued from her nose, for signs of saliva draining from her mouth – for urine and faeces. Had they all been washed away?

  Rigor had set in. Two days at least, he thought. The dark brown skin of her back and buttocks, and of her bare arms and shoulders was blotched and covered with a mass of glistening scars.

  ‘Help me,’ he said. ‘We must cut her down.’

  ‘Louis, don’t! Leave her for the Chief. It can’t matter now.’

  St-Cyr reached out to him. ‘Merde, I thought you had gone from me. She had had the flu, Hermann. She had not been able to go with Gabrielle and De Vries to the quarry.’

  Turning, he said swiftly to Nana, ‘What did you do with the flypapers you bought in Tours? Damn it, you tell me!’

  She threw Gabrielle a desperate look. ‘They … they were for the school of dance,’ she tried. ‘Mother … mother wanted them. We can’t get them in Paris any more. I … I bought all I could, thinking I could sell what we didn’t need.’

  ‘Oh yes, oh yes.’

  ‘De Vries, Louis. The belfry. We’d better find him and quickly.’

  But was the Gypsy still playing with them? wondered St-Cyr sadly. And why had he tried to make it look as if he had hanged Tshaya if not to hide her having first been poisoned, and to indicate she had been punished for betraying her family and himself?

  From the belfry there was a clear view of the surrounding countryside. Down from the forest, up from the willows, the men advanced. There was no way of stopping them. If De Vries and the others had rigged the place, several were bound to be killed.

  ‘Killed, do you understand?’ swore St-Cyr, still demanding answers.

  Gabrielle shouted, ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’ Suzanne-Céclia said, ‘Look.’

  ‘Look where?’ swore Kohler.

  ‘The inner courtyard. Under the arcade at the far corner.’

  Ah nom de Dieu.

  Hermann used the telescopic sight. Thinking he was about to shoot at them, the men threw themselves to the ground. Schmeissers opened up. Bullets struck the stone tower. They ducked. They cringed. One of the women shrieked, ‘I’ve been hit!’

  Fresh blood spattered the timbered floor next to her. ‘Ah Christ, cut it out!’ cried Kohler, waving the white flag desperately. ‘It’s wired! Stay back!’

  Sniper fire singled him out. He ducked. Stone splinters flew. Hesitantly Louis raised the white flag above the lip of the ruined wall. There were gaps through which they could be easily hit.

  ‘Hermann … Hermann, I think there is a lull.’

  Hermann was staring down through the hole in the floor at the corpse. Louis shook him. ‘Here, give me the rifle,’ he said.

  ‘No. No, I’m better at it than you, eh? Hey, I’ve already had to use it.’

  Cautiously he got to his feet, was soon too exposed. At least three of them would have him in their sights. The lieutenant … Herr Max … the SS-Untersturmführer Schacht. Ah bastards … bastards …

  Putting the rifle to his shoulder, wrapping the sling around his left arm, he sighted down into the courtyard. Slowly he moved the sight along inside the south arcade until he came to Gabrielle’s car. It was parked in a far corner, tucked beyond brush and tree limbs, and he could just make out De Vries sitting behind the wheel.

  ‘Kill him,’ swore Louis. ‘You’re going to have to.’

  ‘There’s a flask of nitro hanging from a cord about his neck. The … the rest of it’s in his lap and on the seat beside him.’

  ‘Are there others with him?’

  ‘None that I can see.’

  ‘Is he going to drive the car along the arcade and into the wall?’

  Kohler thumbed the rear lens to clear it of the fog the closeness to his eye had caused. ‘He’s not moving, Louis. Maybe the battery’s dead.’

  ‘Maybe he’s dead – is this what you’re really saying? Maybe there was no second trip to the quarry. Maybe there were no other “terrorists” to apprehend the car and hitch a ride back to Paris but merely a trip to here … to here, Hermann.’

  ‘Hang on. Get down.’

  There was a blinding flash, a rush of air. Stones, timbers and earth flew up and outwards. The dust was thick. A timber fell, another and another. Someone screamed as she dropped through the floor, someone else cried out, ‘Don’t try to move! I’ve got you!’

  It was Gabrielle and she dangled by her coat and scarf and was hanging on to the rope beside Tshaya.

  Louis scrambled over to the gap in the floor. Leaning down,
flattening himself next to Suzanne-Cécilia, he gasped, ‘Grab me by the ankles. Hermann, help!’

  Slowly, gradually Gabrielle was pulled from the corpse and when they had her safely on the floor, he held her tightly and rocked her gently back and forth, saying, ‘Forgive me. Murder is only murder when one is not at war. You had no other choice but to kill or be killed.’

  Tears streamed from her. ‘I didn’t want to pierce his eyes, Jean-Louis. I will hate myself for the rest of my days but we had to make it look as though Tshaya had done it. We had to make it look as if Janwillem had tried and convicted her for what she had done.’

  Startled, Kohler looked from one to the other of them and then to Suzanne-Cécilia and finally to Nana.

  ‘My arm,’ she said. ‘It’s shattered. I can’t feel any pain but am so cold.’

  For a moment her eyes were clear. ‘The cellars,’ she said and softly smiled at them. ‘The cellars.’

  ‘Ah merde, Louis, she’s gone.’

  There was blood on the snow where Nana lay, and all around her soldiers came and went without regard for her body. They were hurrying to recover the loot from the cellars. Flames towered beyond them. The abbey’s roof and floors threw pillars of smoke and glowing ash high into the winter’s sky.

  Kohler put an arm about Suzanne-Cécilia’s and Gabrielle’s shoulders and pulled them close. ‘Hey, hang on, eh? We’re not done yet.’

  Tallying the loot, Herr Max had to crouch to thumb through the bundles of banknotes and the jewellery or examine the leather bags and small cardboard boxes in which Wehrle had kept the diamonds. Nearby, the Untersturmführer Schacht stood at the ready with pencil and paper. Both of them were only too anxious to save their own lives.

  Boemelburg had given himself distance and had taken Louis with him to hear the Sûreté’s side of the affair.

  ‘Jean-Louis doesn’t love me any more,’ said Gabrielle woodenly.

  ‘Now, now, it’s not like that.’

  ‘We’re all to be shot in any case so why, please, make such a crisis of it?’ snapped Suzanne-Cécilia. ‘Could we not both have shared him?’