The Blood of Lorraine

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  An hour later, as Charpentier was floating around Martin’s chambers turning up the gas lamps, a sharp knocking at the door startled both of them. It was Jean, the Palais’s concierge, announcing that the Grand Rabbi of Nancy wanted to speak to the judge in charge of the Ullmann and Erlanger murders.

  “Please ask him to wait a moment,” Martin said as he stood up and hurriedly straightened his cravat. Although he had no idea what had inspired this sudden visit, he felt little apprehension about meeting the gracious Isaac Bloch a second time. Perhaps he had even come with some useful information about the two dead men.

  As soon as Martin caught a glimpse of the rabbi’s grim face, however, he understood that the cleric was in no mood to take on the kindly intermediary role that he had played in the Widow Ullmann’s house.

  “Rabbi Bloch, good to see you again,” Martin said as he offered his hand.

  Bloch’s grip was cold, not only because of the weather.

  “Shall I ask my clerk to leave while we talk?” Martin kept his eyes fixed on Bloch’s. Martin did not pose this question merely out of a polite respect for the Grand Rabbi’s station. He knew all too well that his clerk would like nothing better than to report such a unique confrontation to his peers.

  “That would be best,” said the rabbi as he stepped back from the desk.

  Both of them stood in silence while Charpentier slipped out of the room and closed the door.

  “Please sit down.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” With slow, precise movements, the Grand Rabbi unbuttoned his heavy black coat, took it off, folded it in half lengthwise, and hung it over the back of the proffered chair. He did not take off his hat. When he straightened up, Martin noted that he had pinned three medals, of the kind the French Republic bestowed in appreciation of exceptional service and accomplishments, to his cassock. Well aware that rabbis and priests were used to putting on the performances that were part of their sacred rites, Martin was beginning to grasp that he was about to be witness to one.

  “I am angry,” the rabbi announced. “Angry. I have just returned from grieving with another of our families. The Singers, whose uncle Daniel Erlanger, a good and innocent man, was felled in his own kitchen. So I come here with a question. An important question, Monsieur le juge.” He held his right fist aloft. “One question. Today is Wednesday. Will we find another body of an Israelite tomorrow? Frozen in the fields or hurled down in his very own home.”

  “There’s no reason to believe—”

  “Who would have believed it two weeks ago, even a week ago, that two leading members of our community would be dead, slaughtered like sheep?”

  “I repeat, we have no reason to believe that anyone else is in danger or has been hurt.” Martin hoped that the quivering inside his chest did not resonate in his voice. He could not let on that only a short time ago, he had been torturing himself with fears about Singer.

  “Oh,” Bloch spread his hands over his chest and threw his shoulders back in a theatrical pose. “You have no reason to believe that anyone is in danger? Is that because you have the police protecting their homes? Because you have placed a guard in front of the Temple? Do you even have a list of leading Israelites who may need to be protected? Of the three remaining Consistory members?”

  “I can assure you we are doing our best, questioning all suspects, every day without cease. Using all of our men. We are getting closer.” A blatant lie. The kind that always made Martin’s mouth run dry. The kind one tells during the worst moments of every investigation. “We’d be glad to accept any help you can give us,” he added, employing the old judicial trick of turning the tables in order to go on the offensive.

  “My help! But that is your job. The job of the Republican courts and the Republican police.” Bloch’s voice crescendoed, higher and louder.

  “Why don’t we both calm down.” Martin did not want to spend his time matching wits with the rabbi or standing on ceremony as a judge who had the right to ask all the questions. He wanted desperately to catch the killer before anyone else got hurt. “Please sit, Rabbi Bloch. And tell me anything you can to help me.”

  Bloch blinked a few times, considering. Then he walked to the chair in front of Martin’s desk and sat down. Martin followed suit.

  “What can I tell you? I have received no threats. I am not personally acquainted with anyone who hates us enough to kill us.”

  Martin took up his pen. “Let’s start here,” he began quietly. “Can you think of any way the two men and their deaths are connected?”

  “Besides the fact that Thursday, tomorrow, seems to be the killing day?”

  Martin wanted to say two days do not make a pattern, but he bit his tongue. “Please go on.”

  There was a movement under the cassock as the Grand Rabbi crossed his legs, and thought. “They were both members of the Consistory. Well, not exactly. Erlanger volunteered to be our secretary. But Ullmann was fully elected.”

  Martin nodded. On the day after Ullmann’s body was found, Singer and Martin had discussed the factory owner’s membership in the Consistory, the small committee comprised of the rabbi and leading Israelites, which regulated everything that had to do with their religion in the region. There had been no mention of Noémie Singer’s uncle. “Who would know about Erlanger’s participation?”

  “His name would be on all the decrees, because he signed them.”

  “And what would these decrees be about?” At last, a possible connection. Anyone reading the decrees might believe that Erlanger was a full member of the Consistory. Martin sat up, alert, his fingers gripping the pen. Then the thought that he should have already known about Erlanger’s role in the “community” punctured his momentary elation. Clarie. The baby. That’s why he was so tardy in finding out about the kinds of decisions the two victims might be identified with. He slumped back. There really was no excuse. He should know. At this point in the case, he should know so much more.

  The rabbi did not seem to notice Martin’s embarrassment. Rather, he acted as though there was something impertinent about trying to make any connection between the followers of his congregation and the murders. “I don’t see what you are getting at. What we decide only affects the Israelites.”

  “Please.”

  The Grand Rabbi sighed and sat back, letting his eyes wander over the ceiling. “There is nothing remarkable in what we do. We are mostly charged with carrying out reforms ordered by the Central Consistory in Paris. You can come to my office and get a full list if you need them.”

  Martin made himself a note. He would do that. The governance of Judaism, like that of the Protestant sects, had been centralized in the French capital since the beginning of the century. He circled the word “consistory.” Would everyone in Nancy appreciate following edicts emanating from Paris?

  “And you agree with these reforms?” he asked. “Everyone agrees with them?”

  “Yes, yes,” Bloch waved away the irrelevance of the question.

  “Are there any financial issues? Do these men control a great deal of money?”

  “Control money? The men of the Consistory give to the community, they do not take from it. We provide charity for our poor. We educate the young about our faith. We preach love for family, religion, and country. Just as important,” Rabbi Bloch tapped the desk with his finger for emphasis, “we have worked hard in Lorraine to bring our rites and ceremonies into the nineteenth century. We are modern while upholding a great tradition.”

  “And no one objects to that?” Martin could not imagine that many Catholics would accept changes in the ritual of the mass, or that women like his mother would willingly give up their pilgrimages and rosaries, and their belief in miracles and the intercession of the saints. He wrote down “changing religious practices.”

  The rabbi shrugged. “There are those who might object to the fact that we let women enter in the same door with men and have an organ in the Temple, but none of these things are worth killing over. Jews argue
. It is part of our heritage. We’ve disputed everything about our religion for centuries, as recorded on the very margins of our greatest books. We are men of free minds and strong hearts.”

  A lovely rhetorical flourish, which would have been more effective if the rabbi’s words had not evoked the image of Mme Singer’s reluctance to shake Martin’s hand and Singer’s angry reaction. Martin suspected that some disagreements were more acrimonious than others.

  “What about the issue of women? I don’t know your traditions, but—”

  “Monsieur le juge, you are barking up the wrong tree. As you may recall, there was a false accusation of ritual murder made in this city a little over three weeks ago. Who did that incite?”

  “This is where we are looking, I can assure you.” Martin was not about to tell the rabbi of the debate that kept his own mind abuzz, between Jacquette’s sage advice to look “closer to home” and the political sensitivities of Didier and Singer, urging him to leave the Israelites alone. Ironically, even the Grand Rabbi’s attempt to chastise Martin played into Jacquette’s side of the argument. By unwittingly offering an important connection between the victims, he had underlined an obvious strategy. Martin was beginning to suspect that it was time for him to look into even those possibilities that meant stepping on some sensitive toes. “The issue of women strikes me as one of the more controversial issues of the day, and—”

  “And what?” the Grand Rabbi was out of his chair again. “What? How do you see us, Monsieur le juge Martin?”

  Martin laid aside his pen, considering what to say. If he didn’t have so much respect for the rabbi as a man and a leader, he would not have deigned to try to answer his insulting question. But he did, and he stumbled: “As good citizens, as Frenchmen, as…” What could he say, as Frenchmen and somehow different?

  His hesitation left room for suspicion, and, just as he had learned from his recent dealing with Singer, the Israelites had a talent for sniffing out any doubts about them.

  “French, but a little exotic, perhaps, Monsieur le juge Martin? A bit ‘Oriental’ for your taste?”

  Martin shook his head in angry denial. “Of course not.” Those were not the words he would have used to describe Singer or the Steins. But what of this man standing before him in priestly robes, orating like a prophet of old? What was his lineage? Where did he come from?

  “I can assure you, Monsieur le juge, that we are just as French as you are. Where are you from? The north? The south? I am from Alsace. My family lived there for centuries. And when the Germans took over, I crossed the border back to my beloved country. And your colleague, Monsieur le juge Singer and his relative, Maître Erlanger, their family lived here in Lorraine for centuries. They are of the very soil of Lorraine, the true blood of Lorraine. No one can deny them that.”

  Martin shifted in his chair impatiently. Perhaps this was the penance he had to pay for his moments of doubt in the cemetery and his fear that somehow Singer was not as French as he thought him to be.

  “Or what about Monsieur Osiris, the businessman?” Rabbi Block asked, then paused dramatically. “Ah, his name rings of the Levant, does it not? But did he not build the statue of the Maid of Lorraine for our fair city? Have I not preached that that lovely martyred maid, Joan of Arc, is as much the Jews’ national heroine as any Catholic’s?” He shook his fist for emphasis. “This is the blood that flows through our veins. French blood, defeated blood, blood that will someday be victorious against the Germans and the anti-Israelites. Blood that fights to fulfill the dream of liberty, equality and fraternity. For everyone. Even ourselves.”

  Quite a speech! Although Martin had never liked being preached to, he did have to admire the oratorical power and fervor of the man who was the moral leader of his people and the guardian of their reputation. Martin picked up his pen again and opened his notebook to a clean page. It was his turn. As long as the rabbi had come to his chambers, he could very well answer Martin’s questions about the other members of the Consistory and what decision they had promulgated. In exchange, Martin would give the Grand Rabbi something he wanted: policemen to guard the Temple and the homes of the remaining Consistory members, tomorrow, Thursday.

  27

  Thursday, December 6

  THE NEXT MORNING, CLARIE STOOD in front of the armoire, surveying her dresses. She was going out for the first time in weeks. They all said it would “do her good”: Rose, Bernard, Madeleine. Bernard wanted her to take long walks through the park, by the shops, in the square, anything to take her mind off Henri-Joseph. Madeleine expected that she’d find solace by lighting candles in front of a holy statue. Clarie didn’t know what “going out” could possibly accomplish, although part of her wanted, truly wanted, to feel herself again, and to feel for others too. Sighing, Clarie reached forward to pull the dresses apart, one by one, as she tried to remember what life used to be like when she had worn them.

  “Darling, have you seen the weather?” Bernard came into the room carrying his bowl of café au lait. “The sun is shining. It’s going to be clear with blue skies just like in Provence. Your beloved Provence.”

  When she did not respond, Bernard set his bowl down on the dresser and drew the curtains back even further. “A perfect day for you to go out.”

  She did not have the heart to tell him how little false cheer became him. So she kept staring at the clothes.

  “If you’d like, I could take off part of the morning, and we could go while the sun is so bright.”

  She turned to inspect Bernard. He still had a very nice face, the face of a gentle man with a good heart. A face she used to love. No, she shook her head slightly as she turned away, half-shocked by the formulation. The kind, intelligent face she still loved. But she could not tell what he was thinking or feeling any more. Was there more gray around the edges of his beard and his head of slightly wavy brown hair? Had he shriveled up inside like she had? In his white shirt, open at the neck and cuffs, he still looked like the near-boy she had fallen in love with and who had fallen madly in love with her. But she was no longer the girl he had met in Aix. She was tired of seeing that look in his eyes, pity. Her back almost burned with the burden of his gaze. He was waiting for an answer. “I know you have your work to do. The case. Besides, I promised Madeleine,” she said.

  “By that time it might be getting dark again.” Bernard was sipping his coffee. It would be such a relief when he put on his cravat and jacket and became a judge again. This is what she and Madeleine had agreed that men did best. Deal with the world outside.

  “Where are you and Madeleine planning to go?”

  In other words, whose prescription for my well-being am I to follow—his or Madeleine’s? Even though she knew he would not argue with her, she did not tell him. She intended to make her own decision about what she needed.

  “Do you think I can get into the corset again?” she asked, without turning around, changing the subject.

  “Does it matter? You’ll have your long winter coat on.” Suddenly he was behind her, reaching his arms around her waist and pulling her close to his chest so that she felt his soft beard on the back of her neck. “You’ll be beautiful, no matter what you wear.”

  Even though she felt far from “beautiful,” Clarie turned and smiled. The look of absolute relief on Bernard’s face confirmed that this is what he so desperately wanted: to have her back again. Still, she could do no more. She began sorting through her clothes again. The most somber dress was the black and gray wool that she often wore to school. She took it out and threw it on the bed. The lace-trimmed linen collar and cuffs that she and Rose had conspired to keep immaculately white seemed obscenely cheerful. She had nothing appropriate for a mourning mother. And for that ridiculous reason she let out a sob, which she covered with her hand.

  “Clarie.” Bernard took her to him, hugging her face to his chest and swaying gently back and forth. “It will get better. I promise.”

  When? How? And why was Bernard so willing to comfort her,
to hold her until he thought she had fallen asleep, when she knew that he’d often slip out of bed and go into the living room to pace, perhaps even to weep? Why did he leave her? Why had he taken Henri-Joseph into the living room that fateful night? Didn’t he know that if he had kept their baby in their bed he might be alive? If she still had Henri-Joseph inside of her, he would be safe. Despite all her efforts, she began crying again. These were insane thoughts. Was she going mad?

  She pulled away. “Silly me,” she said.

  He kissed her cheeks and forehead. “Never silly. I’ve never known you to be silly.”

  That’s why, he once said, he loved her so much, because she was reasonable and intelligent and strong, willing to take risks, to do something new. Was she still that person? Would she ever be that person again?

  She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief she kept beside her bed. “You’d better hurry. You’ll be late. I know you’re worried about this case.” Even though he hadn’t said anything about it for days, she could tell. Whenever someone was murdered, somehow Bernard felt responsible. Did he even feel at all responsible for the death of their child?

  She plopped down on the bed, horrified again by the words invading her mind.

  “Dear, what is it?”

  “Nothing.” She smiled again. She’d never reveal to him how she was betraying him in her thoughts. “I’m better already. Every day. As you say.”

  “I’ll tell you what.” Bernard sat down beside her and kissed her on the forehead again. “Tomorrow night we will go to one of the cafés on the square for supper, just like we did when we first arrived. Then we’ll walk and see what is happening in the theater and the shops. And all those handsome army officers will look at you and want to take you away from me. But I won’t let them.”