The Blood of Lorraine

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  “What?” Martin looked up sharply.

  “Lebn vi Got in Frankraykh. It is one of our sayings in Russia. Live like God in France. I feel I have come to the end of my journeys at last.”

  “You do?” Martin could not imagine why.

  “Here, in the land of liberty, equality and fraternity, we hope to be free, to gain an honest living.”

  “And yet that does not seem to be what you have been doing.” Martin wanted to make it clear that he was not the kind of man to be charmed by flattery or cleverness.

  “Ah, Monsieur le juge.” The little man shrugged his arms and his shoulders in a wide gesture before deftly replanting his cane on the floor. “As one of your priests might say, a mere venial sin, and all for the greater good. I spend my days helping my countrymen become your countrymen. Helping them find jobs, get into schools, learn a trade. I feel every man must use the talents he has to fulfill God’s purpose. My talents are my tongue and my pen.” Martin noticed the dwarf ’s blue-flecked gray eyes for the first time, as they grew large with the need to explain away his crime. “Someone stole the instruments of my trade. So I had to find more.” He simpered as he added, “I do not live in a mansion.”

  There was little doubt of that. Nor did Martin believe that Shlomo the Red Dwarf ’s purposes had much to do with God.

  “And how is it that your tongue and your pen became so talented?” The dwarf ’s French was remarkable if he had, indeed, only recently arrived in the country. He was obviously a sharp-witted, slippery creature.

  “As God wills it, as God wills it. I killed my mother when she bore me. I broke my father’s heart with my ugliness. And yet the good man, my father, believed God has His reasons, and somehow I would become a blessing to him. And so he carried me on his shoulders, everywhere. Borders in the east are not so important when all our people speak the same mother tongue. My dear father hoped they would pay to hear a little genie tell stories and do tricks. But other villagers came to watch me too. Having ears and eyes, I learned their tongues, many of them, until finally the Lord willed that I would come here, to help my people become your people.” Another bow.

  “In doing God’s work,” Martin asked, wondering if the dwarf was capable of giving an answer without embellishment, “did you ever come across a Monsieur Ullmann or Erlanger?”

  “No, no, although I am sure they are very fine gentlemen.” The fiery head shook a denial, while the man’s giant hands gripped the cane and his hat.

  This answer had been quick, too quick and definite. “Be careful.” Martin held up a finger. “If you do not tell the truth about this, you will pay for more than the ‘venial sin’ of a petty theft. We are talking about two murders.”

  The dwarf stumbled a few steps backward, almost bumping into Jacquette, who had stayed behind him, silently observing. He reared his head up to look at the inspector. Martin read shock and betrayal on the little man’s face. But the trickster recovered almost immediately. “What I meant to say, Your Eminence, is that I know the names. I attended the funerals. A good place for…collections. One has to make a living, of course. And I will admit, from time to time, I’ve sent women to Monsieur Ullmann with letters explaining that in Russia they had worked in the mills, that although they speak only the old common language of our people, they know how to weave and operate the machines. He even hired one of them, a poor widow with children. This shows his kindness.” Shlomo paused. “That is what I know.”

  “Then why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Martin kept his voice loud and severe to indicate that he expected straight answers.

  “Because,” the dwarf bowed his head so low it almost touched his rounded chest, “I know that they were murdered. Shlomo and his friends know nothing about murders. Jews do not kill other Jews.”

  “Is that so? You mean to say that you don’t know anyone that might envy or hate these men?”

  “Oh no, sir, no.” For the first time fear crept into Simon Shlomo’s eyes. He had come here as a petty thief, and all of a sudden the judge, this powerful man, was talking about murder.

  In the silence that followed, Martin made a show of examining the dwarf from head to toe. He ended by focusing on the preternaturally large hands, which well might be capable of becoming a weapon. Deep down, Martin doubted that this rascal had violence in his blood, but he had to keep the pressure on if he were to wring any valuable information out of him. He kept staring until Shlomo put his hat behind his back, as if rescuing his fingers from being scorched by the judge’s scrutiny. Then Martin added, “Would you resent or envy these men?”

  “No, no, no. I am sure they were good men.” The dwarf swayed a bit as if he were about to lose his balance.

  “That’s what you said. How can you be so sure?”

  “They were good Jews. Good Jews are good men.” Shlomo thrust his foreshortened chest forward to demonstrate that whatever else he might have been embarrassed by, it was not by his race. Although the little man held his breath and his stance with admirable self-control, Martin did note a certain quivering in his chest. He had him.

  Martin swung around his desk and approached the dwarf, forcing Shlomo to twist his neck upward in order to see his face. Once again, the dwarf almost fell against Jacquette’s strong, sturdy legs.

  “Your rabbi tells me that you Israelites have a tradition of disagreeing with each other. Doesn’t that cause problems?”

  “Your rabbi, my rabbi, whose rabbi? They argue, we argue.” The dwarf sidled away from Martin and the inspector, grinning widely in an attempt to make light of his fears.

  “He’s not your rabbi?” Martin arched his eyebrows as if he were shocked.

  “We have many rabbis, just as you have many priests.”

  “I am speaking of the Grand Rabbi Bloch.”

  “Yes, and grand he is.” The grin grew wider, as he tried to signal his agreement with Martin’s assessment. His little feet shifted back and forth in agitation. Despite his shrunken legs, it was obvious that Shlomo the Red Dwarf was accustomed to dancing away from threatening people and dangerous subjects. He had probably spent his life fleeing stones thrown by thuggish boys and the contemptuous glances of women.

  Martin shot Jacquette a frustrated glance. He did not enjoy pounding down on a man who barely came up to his waist. A creature who, if he were not so clever, would certainly deserve any man’s pity.

  The inspector cleared his throat. “I am sure if we could forgive Monsieur Shlomo’s crime this one time, he would keep his ears and eyes open for us. He could listen. See if anyone had bad things to say about Ullmann or Erlanger.”

  “Listen.” Martin nodded sagely and strolled back behind his desk. It was all play-acting now, trying to figure out what degree of threat and mercy would elicit the most information. “Do you really think that ‘listening’ is enough of a payment for a crime? A few weeks’ hard labor—”

  “Better yet,” Shlomo eagerly interjected with another sweeping bow, “let me show you. The inspector said he wanted to know more about the poorest Jews of the city. I can be your guide. I can translate. Tonight is a good night. Everyone is returning for the sabbath. You will see, Monsieur le juge, you will see we are all honest men, religious men, God-fearing men.”

  Martin glanced at Jacquette again. This is what his inspector had wanted, a chance to wade into the underside of Jewish life in the city. Martin lowered himself into his seat, considering, or at least making a show of working it through. The truth was that nothing else had worked. The truth was, too, that he was curious. He wanted to know more about the stragglers and the beggars whom he had seen at Erlanger’s funeral. He wanted to understand why Singer had talked about the tinker with such anger and contempt.

  “How will you do that? How can you show us?” Martin asked, rubbing his beard, as if in deep thought.

  “The men come to the café to warm themselves before going to the shul; you can talk to them then.”

  “The shul, their place of worship, I believe,”
Jacquette explained to Martin.

  “You know our people, our language!” the dwarf exclaimed. “No wonder you are such an admirable inspector!”

  “I know enough to know when I am being fooled,” the inspector muttered under his mustache. “Where is this shul, and why don’t you go to the Temple?”

  Good! Jacquette was keeping up the pressure too.

  The Red Dwarf sighed and hung his head. The smile disappeared. Martin got the impression that the little trickster finally understood what he had gotten himself into, caught between a powerful judge and an inspector who might be able to see through his tricks. “The Temple, Monsieur l’inspecteur, is not for our kind,” he explained sadly. “It’s for men who go home on Friday and put on their fine black tophats and the prayer shawls kept glistening white by their maids. It’s for men who bathe in their own homes and do not give off the odors of their daily labors. Men who actually pay a fee to sit in a chair designated only for them. Men who speak your language and can understand the Grand Rabbi when he gives his Grand Sermon in French. This is a language many of my brethren do not yet understand. Where is our shul, you ask? What is it? It is a shoe shop that we make holy every Friday and Saturday with our candles and with our songs.”

  Martin stared at the dwarf. Had he revealed something new, something real? Or was this the way he ended all his performances, as if he were throwing himself and his sincerity at the mercy of the crowd before he collected their money?

  The dwarf took Martin’s silence as a kind of consent, or at least as the magical moment of weakness that proceeds reaching into one’s pocket and throwing out a coin. “I should go ahead and tell them you are coming,” Shlomo said, shifting from one foot to another, his eyes wide with eagerness. “They need to be prepared. In Russia everyone is afraid of the police and soldiers, because”—this time his bow was so low, his fiery orange mop almost skimmed the floor—“we are not accustomed to living in the land of liberty and justice. My friends, they will understand this as soon as they see Your Eminences.”

  If the man had not been so pitiful, Martin would have kicked him out of his office with his own boot. The dwarf had no right to make bold assumptions about whether Martin planned to jail him, or fine him, or just send him packing. Certainly not the right to believe that Martin was going to follow his lead.

  And yet, what alternative was there, really? It was Friday. Another week had passed with no new clues to the murders and every possibility that the killer would strike again. All that loomed before Martin was another weekend, in the apartment, with the women, with the sadness, with his failures. Jacquette was waiting. Jacquette believed that the little showman might actually have something to show them. There were even times when Martin felt he could have nipped the whole affair in the bud, even prevented the murders, if he had understood at the start what had gone on in the minds of the Thomases and the Philipon woman, if he had seen with his own eyes what life was like for the poor and disinherited of the world. This is what his dead friend Merckx had always cajoled and urged him to do. To remember always that justice belonged to all people. And, Martin would remind him, so did murderous intentions. A visit to the dwarf ’s café might be instructive.

  Not wanting to reward the eager witness for his brazenness, Martin turned away from him as he asked his inspector to make the arrangements.

  29

  HOURS LATER, MARTIN AND JACQUETTE set out through the Pépinière Park on their way to the immigrants’ café. They had decided to walk, because arriving on horseback might seem too threatening in the slums where Shlomo lived. Besides, it was a rare sunny, windless day. Unfortunately, Martin had forgotten that he’d be able to see Nancy’s zoo from the path. It reminded him of the little boy that he had once hoped to bring there. He put his head down and focused on the gravel crunching beneath his boots.

  Jacquette breached their silence with the sheepish admission that he had given the dwarf the fare for the tram. “I couldn’t see him walking all that way on those legs,” he explained. Martin smiled to himself and grunted. Jacquette had a soft spot for society’s strays. He was often bemused by their stories, quirks and alibis, all of which Martin tended to perceive as evidence of misspent lives or unavoidable misfortune.

  How much easier life would be, Martin thought, if he could find some amusement in the endless parade of humanity that marched through his investigations. He had always been too serious. Perhaps it had to do with his father dying when he was twelve years old. Or his Jesuit schooling. Although he had come to reject so much of what the priests had taught him, he had thoroughly imbibed their notion of life as a moral mission. But did he have to make such grim work of it? Martin kicked a dirty abandoned ball which had somehow found its way in front of them. Clarie, it was Clarie who had been making him a better, fuller, happier man. And now she seemed to be slipping away from him.

  “Sir, you understood why I gave Shlomo—”

  “Of course. I was just thinking about what we’re going to find at the café. I like our plan.”

  It was Jacquette’s turn to grunt. Although he admitted he would not really be able to understand the dialect the immigrants spoke, the inspector was going to ask the questions and act as if he could discern whether Shlomo was rendering an accurate translation. Martin would observe, standing aloof, the dispassionate emblem of official France. They would make it clear that they had not come to arrest anyone or to check their papers, that all they wanted was the truth.

  “I’m wondering if it’s going to be like what my grandfather used to tell me. All the peddlers coming from God-knows-where on a Friday evening, to eat with their wives and kids, and then run off to the shul.”

  “Jacquette, do you want to go back to the village?” Martin teased, knowing full well the answer. Even if he could not find amusement in common criminals and woeful victims, he always took a certain manly pleasure in being with his inspector, whose experiences were so different from his own.

  “Oh, no, sir. I like my toilets indoors and sleeping without a farting cow by my side, thank you very much. But there’s something about working so hard, barely scratching out a living, and then coming home, one night a week, with meat in your stew and your family and friends all around. My grandfather used to say the Jews were the poorest beggars in the village, but, at least on Friday night, the happiest.”

  Happy? Martin dug his gloved hands deeper into his pockets and shook his head. He had never thought of Singer as happy. In fact, except for his suspicion that Singer had higher ambitions, Martin had always thought that his Israelite colleague was much like him. Grave and dedicated, and oh-so-correct. Happiness. Were they going to a poor immigrants’ café to see happy men? Martin doubted it. He sniffed the air as they continued in companionable silence, letting himself enjoy the way the crystalline cold lit up his cheeks and nose, awakening his senses. If he had any hope of picking out of a crowd a man with enough resentment and hatred to kill, he was going to have to be alert.

  As if by tacit agreement, both men shrank into their coats and scarves as they entered the crowded neighborhoods between the canals and the river. Martin did not have to look at the signs to know that these were the mean, filthy streets that housed the Thomases and their ilk. The rotting fleshy smells of the abattoir and tanneries combined with the smoke of the factories to make the air thick and rancid. It was as if dusk had fallen long before the sun decided to fade into the evening. Scantily dressed women had already begun to strike poses in the doorways, waiting for the night trade. Jacquette and Martin hurried to ward off their pitiful carnal offerings and moved just as quickly past a working-class café which might issue, at a moment’s notice, drunks engaged in a fight, or just looking for one. Jacquette led the way deftly, until they reached a line of low buildings, shops and clapboard houses holding each other up against the cold. Shlomo was waiting for them at the corner.

  The dwarf hobbled toward them, using his cane as an oar. “I’ve gathered a few of my God-fearing countrymen,” he announ
ced between large gulps of the tainted air. “Of course, you know that some would not see you or have you see them. Ehud the Anarchist and his friends don’t trust any policemen, even ones as kind and just as Your Eminences. But I can tell you where they work if you need them.”

  Jacquette winked at Martin over the dwarf ’s head. He was still hopeful that he had found a first-class informer. Just then a woman, with a bawling child by her side, rounded the corner. “Herr Shlomo,” she said with surprise as she spotted Martin and Jacquette. “Liebe Madame Noa,” the dwarf bowed, “Gutes Shabbes.” She did not respond, for the presence of a man in a fine woolen coat and bowler had left her opened-mouthed and silent. Even the child stopped in midsquawl. “The boy is looking good,” Shlomo said as he patted the youngster on the head. Martin was shocked. A boy, with two long curls falling from either side of his face? Without realizing it, he had stepped away from the child in distaste.

  “And so it is with us,” Shlomo grinned, still patting the boy on the head as he took in Martin’s discomfort. “And so it is.”

  Martin was embarrassed. How was he to be the authoritative, dispassionate observer if he made himself so obvious? In compensation he tipped his hat to the woman, which only made her draw her heavy brown knitted shawl more tightly around her head and neck. Pulling her son away, she murmured “Gutes Shabbes” and hurried down the street.

  Jacquette cleared his throat. “Let’s go in, shall we? Let’s meet your friends.” Once again, Martin knew why it was his inspector who went out into the world investigating, and not him. Nothing seemed to faze Jacquette.

  “Yes, yes. The women are hurrying home to keep the fires burning and make the cholent, and the men must be home before sundown,” Shlomo observed as he pushed aside the thick curtain that served as the only door to the café. If indeed, one could call it that. The room was only large enough to hold two benches, one long wooden table, and a counter. No bottles of wine or beer or spirits lined the walls. No rich aroma of steaming coffee. Instead, there was a giant metal urn on the counter. Five men, two in broad hats and three in caps sat on one side of the table, the tallest in the middle, as if they had purposely arranged themselves in a pyramid. They were sipping hot amber liquid from glasses and eating little squares of white, spongy cake from chipped dishes. Although Shlomo hastily announced their names as each of them stood up in greeting, for Martin the only thing that distinguished one from another was their age, eloquently expressed in the hues of their untrimmed beards, which ranged from snowy white to pitch black.