Martin was pleased to note that the only other person in the lobby was a young clerk with his nose in a book. Behind him, the many hanging keys indicated that most of the travelers were out for the day. Or the hotel was empty. Being only two blocks from the railroad station, it offered a full array of the national dailies hanging invitingly on wooden rods. For the next few minutes, Martin could be anonymous. Neither judge nor mourner. He might be taken for a tourist, a salesman, a visiting relative. Or just a man at his leisure, waiting for a woman to do her packing. The lobby, including its three threadbare armchairs, was all his.
Martin took off his woolen overcoat, scarf, bowler and gloves, and laid them on one of the chairs. Rubbing his hands together, he examined the framed row of newspapers. He was about to reach for Le Temps when something in Le Figaro caught his eye. A guest, or the owner, or the clerk, had circled a story with dark, angry pencil strokes. The newspaper was an old one, from Wednesday, and yet it still lay folded over the wooden rod, as if by design. The article was about Dreyfus, reported on the day of Henri-Joseph’s funeral. Something Martin had missed. Sucking in a breath, he grabbed the paper, rod and all, and sank down into one of the armchairs.
A stream of pain pulsed across his forehead as he grasped the full import of the circled article, which was much more incendiary than the rumors circulating in the cheap tabloids, rumors that could be dismissed or explained away as silly or speculative. By contrast, Le Figaro’s information came straight from the top, from General Auguste Mercier, the minister of war. Martin could hardly believe what he was reading. The head of the army had offered his verdict, or at least an oblique idiotic version of it, even before the case reached his own military court. “The general staff,” Mercier was quoted as saying, “has found out from very reliable sources that Dreyfus has been in contact for more than three years with the agents of a foreign government, which was neither the government of Italy nor the government of Austria-Hungary.”
How coy, Martin thought with disgust as he slapped the newspapers into his lap. Neither Italy nor Austria-Hungary? Why not just say that he meant Germany, the country that had taken over the city where the Dreyfus family still owned factories? Why did he feel it necessary to insult in this stupid insidious way the great power whose guns were pointed straight at French Lorraine and its capital? Martin’s home, Clarie’s home. Mercier was a fool.
Martin had no sympathy for anyone who would betray his country, if that is indeed what Dreyfus had done. But what about other Israelites, like Singer and the Steins? This naming, but not really naming, this kind of insinuation, where would it lead? To painting all Jews from Alsace and Lorraine with the same dastardly brush? Martin angrily tossed the paper aside, letting it drop to the floor. His mind was racing. Worst of all, would further proof of Dreyfus’s treachery and connection to Germany embolden the man or men who had killed Ullmann and Erlanger to try again?
The desk clerk cleared his throat and shifted his pimply bespectacled gaze from the felled newspaper to Martin’s face. Abashed, Martin reached down and smoothed out Le Figaro before getting up to replace the rod on the wooden frame. If the clerk knew I was a judge, he would have been more polite, Martin thought ruefully. But Martin had no intention of revealing who he was. Keeping his back to the desk, Martin chose the monochromatic, staid Le Temps this time. He planned to hide behind it until his mother called.
Ten minutes later, she rescued him from the clerk’s disapproving glances. She had taken a long time, because, Martin suspected, she preferred to spend the time in her room, checking and rechecking her belongings, rather than trying to fill the awkward moments of a prolonged good-bye on the train platform. Yet today, of all days, they could have talked. About Clarie. About his mother’s newfound love for his wife. Adele Martin would never admit, of course, that she had been wrong, or that Clarie should have the audacity to continue to teach in one of the Republic’s laic high schools. Still, for the first time in years he watched his mother with concern as she went over the room to make sure she had not forgotten anything. She was a head shorter than either he or Clarie, and more stooped than he remembered her. Since he had seen her last, her hair had become whiter, her face more wrinkled, her blue-gray eyes, the only feature they shared, a little dimmer. As she brushed past him, he realized at least one thing had not changed: her scent, lily of the valley. He wondered if she had been wearing the same perfume since the day he was born. He realized with a start that to him, that was a mother’s smell.
When she saw him staring at her, she smiled. “Done!” she said brightly.
“You’re sure?” He hoped she had not caught the irony in his voice, which amazingly even to him was filled with affection.
She nodded. “Come, my handsome son, take me to the station.”
She took the hat box and left him to lug her heavy valise. They walked to the station in a comfortable silence. When they got to the platform and he put down her case, she remarked, “There are baby things in there. I knitted them. I’m going to save them for the next time. Don’t tell Clarie. I just wanted you to know how much I was looking forward to….” She grimaced as tears made a single trail down each powdery cheek. She reached inside her black velvet sack for a handkerchief.
“I know that; of course I do.” Because Adele Martin had been able to have only one child, she had never kept her desire for grandchildren a secret.
“She’s strong, you’ll see. And you know that Henri-Joseph is in heaven, don’t you?”
Martin did not know. Still, he nodded, avoiding her eyes, which were pleading with him to believe and to confirm what she believed.
Martin swallowed hard. “You’ve been wonderful, you know. To Clarie. And to Giuseppe. Thank you.” If these were not the kindest words he had said to her in years, they were certainly the most sincere.
She reached up and touched his bearded cheek with her gloved hand, and then, for the first time in a decade, they pressed their bodies together in a real embrace. As if that was all she could hope for, she urged, “Go. The men can help me to my seat. You need to be home.”
Churning with unexpected emotion, Martin backed away as a porter came to carry her bags. It was hard to believe that after so many years, he might have a mother, despite the fact that he had broken with almost everything she believed in. Adele Martin looked back one more time and waved before stepping onto the gasping train. He lifted his hand too, and smiled sincerely, even though he was aware that he hadn’t been completely honest with her. He could not go back home, not yet.
As soon as his mother was out of his sight, Martin went to the front of the station and hired a two-seated hansom cab to take him across the tracks and up the hill toward the Préville Cemetery. This was an extravagance, but he needed to get to the graveyard in time to see the funeral procession. The chill wind battered him in the open cab as he remembered how he had felt at the morgue on Friday. Pushed aside. An outsider. Was it possible that he was childish enough to feel hurt or insulted by Singer’s slights? Martin clapped his leather-gloved hands together impatiently. No! He was going to observe the funeral as part of his duty as an investigating magistrate, in case a killer might be bold enough to admire his handiwork. And to understand. He slouched back in the carriage seat. He had to admit that another part of him wanted to see the hidden side of Singer, and that this was why he did not intend to show himself.
When Martin descended from the carriage at the far edge of the cemetery, he knew immediately that he was not too late. Beggars were scattered along the stone wall that enclosed the huge graveyard, waiting, some talking among themselves, others in sullen silence. A few of the paupers, the more practiced and professional, had brought chairs; others sat on the cold hard ground or stood leaning against the equally inhospitable wall. All hoped that they would become the beneficiaries of the funeral-goers’ charitable duties. How did they know that there would be a procession, Martin wondered as he shrank into his coat and hat, avoiding their eyes. He hadn’t noticed any black-li
ned placards announcing the death. But then, he had not noticed a great deal in the last few days. What he could observe through his lowered eyes, as he hurried to the main entrance, was that some of the beggars had long scraggly beards and wore broad black hats. Jewish paupers, he thought, and so different from Singer and his family. Were they part of what Singer called his “community”?
As soon as Martin stepped inside the wall, he was overcome with a paralyzing fear, and his breathing quickened. How could he have forgotten even for one moment? His baby’s grave lay down a row directly within his line of vision. But—this is why the panic fluttered in his chest—did he even know which little mound was his? There were so many of them. The day they buried his son, that whole afternoon had passed in a blur. Martin pressed his lips together as he tried to calm his breathing. How silly, how womanly he felt. Of course, there would be a name above where Henri-Joseph lay. He’d come back later and fix the exact place in his mind, and prepare for the day when he would lead Clarie to the grave.
He closed his eyes, blocking out everything but what he had come to witness, and waited. When a hush fell over the beggars, he knew the procession was approaching. As soon as he spotted Rabbi Bloch turning the corner at the head of the line of mourners, Martin slipped over to the other side of the gate and flattened himself against the wall. To avoid being seen, he had to settle for observing the mourners from the back as they passed him on their way to the Jewish side of the cemetery, which was separated from the Christian side by a thick high wall. He could tell that Singer was one of the pallbearers holding up the plain pine box. Although the casket was humble, the entourage was quite impressive. About fifty men in black frock coats and black tophats hardly made a sound as they followed the pine box up the slight incline toward the graveyard set aside for the Israelites. Even Stein, the shopkeeper, appeared in a tophat. Then came the veiled women, also in black. Martin thought he recognized the trim figure of Noémie Singer, holding the hand of what must have been her eldest child. Martin was about to leave his hiding place after the women had passed until he caught sight of a few stragglers, humbler men, some in wide-brimmed round black hats, others in caps, shuffling along behind, mumbling prayers. All the mourners ignored the beggars, who would have to wait until after the burial rites to reap any rewards for their efforts.
When Martin was certain that everyone had passed into the Jewish cemetery, he left his spot to find a better observation post farther up the hill. Fortunately the open grave was only a few meters from the gate. Martin could see and hear everything. But he could not understand. Rabbi Bloch swayed a little as he recited a singsong prayer, Martin presumed, in Hebrew, the sacred language of the Israelites. Most of the mourners stood by without moving, frozen in dignified grief. A few of the stragglers, however, swayed even more than the cleric, bouncing their heads up and down with greater and greater force as the prayer went on. Martin saw Singer turn and was afraid he had been observed, until he realized that his colleague was moving back from the innermost ring of mourners to comfort his wife.
“Do you recognize any of them?”
Martin almost leapt out of his skin. He turned to see Jacquette.
“Sorry,” the inspector said. “Looks like we’re both on the job today.”
Martin nodded, still conscious of not wanting to make a sound. Then whispered his response. “I don’t recognize anyone but the rabbi, the Singers and my landlord.”
Jacquette held a small notebook in his hand. He had been taking notes. Good man. Martin should have known he would be here.
“Look again to be sure,” Jacquette mumbled. “I’d be particularly interested in anyone who doesn’t fit in.”
Martin shook his head. The men who were bobbing their heads had their backs to him. He did not think that the tinker, who had caused so much friction between Singer and his wife, was among them.
For the next few minutes, Martin and Jacquette stood, close together, watching in silence just behind the gate, their breath forming wispy clouds between them and the Israelites. When the pine box was lowered into the ground, the mourners lined up one by one to throw dirt over the dead man. Martin stepped away and stretched himself against the outer wall. He could not watch this. Only days ago, he had left his son’s casket next to a hole in the ground. They had all left before the custodian had begun to drop shovelfuls of dirt over the tiny body. Even now he could not bear the thought.
Martin felt Jacquette’s gloved hand on his shoulder. “I can take it from here.”
“Yes,” Martin managed to mumble, “I need to do something.” Martin lurched away, down the sidewalk to the main entrance. He must have looked desperate. The beggars did nothing to hamper him.
When he found the mound marked with his baby’s name, he did what he could not do in front of Clarie, or Madeleine, or his mother, or Giuseppe. He wept, openly and shamelessly.
By the time he recovered, even the beggars were gone, and in the waning light, he staggered, drained and numb, into the Israelite cemetery. He had no idea what he expected to find as he walked among the gravestones and monuments. Perhaps respite in a place that was not his own, not his family’s, where sadness and tragedy belonged to people he did not really know.
Without being aware of what he was doing, Martin began to read, or tried to read, the gravestones, until he realized that some of them were written in Hebrew script. On closer scrutiny he found that on the back of these same stones, the dead, their relationships and their accomplishments were described in French. For some reason this troubled him. Like seeing Singer in the white silk shawl, like being almost pushed out of the morgue as if he were the intruder. Martin scrutinized the gravestone of a dead lawyer. What did it mean to show two faces to the world, even in death? For the first time in his life, Martin found himself asking: to whom or to what did these Israelites owe their first allegiance?
22
Monday, December 3
FOR THE REST OF THE night, and early into the next morning, whenever Martin was not worrying about Clarie, he thought about Singer. Who was he really, and why was Martin beginning to have doubts? Like a good judge, Martin tried to weigh the arguments. There was a “community” from which Martin was excluded. He hated feeling like an outsider in his own realm, his own country. On the other hand, hadn’t Singer complained about not being invited to the du Manoirs, about the fact that no one recognized his sabbath. As Martin attempted to analyze the two sides, he realized that when he thought about his recent encounters with the Israelites, he wasn’t dealing with rational arguments, but with emotions. How was it possible that he felt these resentments over observing a praying “community” in the morgue or reading gravestones? Why was he so uneasy about the ways in which Singer seemed to be different from him? Was everyone as susceptible as Martin to this insidious wariness? Or was it just him, because he was not as firmly wed to his principles as he had always believed. The more he ruminated, the more Martin realized that what he was beginning to feel was something like shame. He needed clarification, purgation. He needed to know that he had nothing in common with the bona fide anti-Israelites who distorted, taunted and hated, and perhaps even killed. When he got to his chambers Monday morning, he was eager to confront the hatred head on, to make sure that he did not mirror in any way the prejudices of the kind of men he had always considered enemies of a just society.
Jacquette arrived early with the list of possible suspects that Martin had requested on Friday. But the inspector had something else on his mind. Even before he sat down, he asked what they should do with Pierre Thomas.
My God, the tanner. “I almost forgot,” Martin admitted. To cover his embarrassment, he got up from his chair, took the sheet of paper from Jacquette with mumbled thanks, and handed it over to Charpentier. Martin was glad to have his back to his inspector as he gave his clerk the order to make a copy. The truth was that since Erlanger’s death, since Henri-Joseph’s burial, since the papers were no longer screaming about a worker wrongly accused, Pierre Th
omas had completely slipped from Martin’s mind. Keeping a poor man in jail because he had no one to stand up for him was unconscionable. Martin had to be more attentive.
By the time he sat down again, he was ready to deal with the tanner, and Jacquette had already lit up his first Blue Jockey of the morning. “Do you think Thomas is dangerous?” Martin asked.
“I could see him beating a man to death after too much drink, and not even remembering why the next day. Frankly I don’t think he’s smart enough to have stalked the mill owner, killed him and hidden the weapon. And besides, after Erlanger….” Jacquette shrugged and yawned. He looked every bit as tired as Martin felt. He had been working all weekend, trying to identify vocal anti-Israelites and, apparently, questioning a number of suspects.
“Did you get anything out of Thomas? Any names?”
A grin took over the right side of Jacquette’s grizzled face as he shook his head. “Doesn’t go to church, doesn’t go to many political rallies, and he’d never give up a comrade. He’s got guts. Stupid, but guts.”
“Do you have a man to keep a sharp eye on him every once in a while?”
Jacquette nodded.
“Then let’s release him and get on with it.” Thomas was not only presumably innocent of murder, he had also become a dead end in the investigation. They did not need dead ends. “And in what you gave me this morning, where do you think we should start?” Martin said, referring to the list Charpentier was copying.
Jacquette leaned back in his chair, inhaled deeply, and let out a stream of smoke. “That’s a good question. Where do we begin?”
“Any local demagogue who blames the Israelites for society’s woes. Look for those connected in any way to them or to the victims.” Martin paused. “You know all that.”
Yet Jacquette was shaking his head. “It’s just that, after I started trying to outline the case, I realized that this approach is too vague, too much, despite what I said on Friday about going after the anti-Semites. For example,” the inspector said, gesturing toward Charpentier’s desk with his cigarette, “if we start at the top, we’ve got Barrès and Adam, both writers, both ran for the Chamber of Deputies on an anti-Israelite platform. Adam lost, Barrès won. He’s the local prodigy, famous at twenty-five, big name. They’re both in Paris. If they were campaigning, maybe we could go watch a rally. They only come back to get elected, so we have no way of knowing who their most rambunctious followers are. I skipped over the obvious, of course, our own Rocher in the courthouse.” Jacquette gave Martin a meaningful look.
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