“Twisted.” “Distorted.” Martin had dismissed Liébeault’s report because it gave him no proof, because it had told him nothing he did not already know. Yet certain words kept coming back to him. Was the faith that Madeleine preached to Clarie “twisted and distorted”? Was his dear wife absorbing beliefs and ideas she never would have accepted if it were not for her “despair,” for her terrible loss? Martin could not stop his mind from roving between his private sorrows and public duties. Somewhere, somehow they seemed connected. At what point did despair become madness, did distorted faith become murderous fanaticism? When did the suggestion that Bernheim so firmly believed in become the irresistible impulse to mad action? And why? Alone, by his own hearth, filled with uneasiness about his future, Martin also kept coming back to Jacquette’s refrain, that murders are usually instigated “closer to home.”
He had to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. And so on Monday, he did not head straight to the courthouse. Instead he took off in the opposite direction toward the hospital by the Faculté, speeding through dreary sidewalks lined with mounds of black-speckled, graying snow. By the time he got to Bernheim’s famous clinic, about a dozen men and women were already in the waiting room. Some of them sat straight up, staring into space; others exhibited their anxieties by holding themselves in with crossed arms or shuddering with involuntary tics. Martin knew at once that this was not a place he wanted to be. Fortunately, he spotted the white-winged wimple of a hospital nun bobbing above one of the patients. She seemed to be offering comfort and counseling patience, both of which Martin had in very short supply. He strode over to her and told her who he was and who he wanted to see. With only a slight bow of her head, the gentle-faced, middle-aged sister said she would find the doctor. Standing against the wall by the entrance, Martin fixed his eyes on the floor, refusing to take in more misery.
He barely heard the nun’s return before he caught sight of her long black skirts. “The doctor will see you now,” the sister said, and she led him through a door to an office lined with books and file cabinets. As soon as Martin entered the room, Bernheim placed his pince-nez on a pile of papers and rose from his desk. “Monsieur Martin, so good to see you again!” he exclaimed as he held out his hand. He wore a white cotton coat and had a stethoscope hanging from his neck. The nun floated away as both men sat down, soundlessly shutting the door behind her.
“I don’t mean to keep you from your patients.”
“No worry, the good sisters will see that none of them becomes desperate.”
Martin fingered the rim of his bowler. He hated laying out half-baked theories. “Something you said last week caught me,” he began, “your statement that ‘loss can drive one mad.’ I’ve wondered since how it could fit into the case.”
“Go on.” The jovial doctor folded his hands over his slight paunch.
“If a man has suffered terrible tragedies throughout his life, why should he suddenly turn to violence?”
“You’re thinking of someone specific, then?” Bernheim sat up straight, eager to hear more.
“I’m not sure.”
“Tell me. Tell me what you are thinking.”
Martin slumped back. “What if Ullmann and Erlanger were not killed by an anti-Semite? Even though we managed to keep the false accusation of ritual murder out of the press, we believed, at first, that the slander precipitated the murders. After all, people do talk no matter how you threaten them. It would take only one man with a special hatred for the Israelites to carry out the murders.”
“And you don’t believe this tanner, the father, did it?”
“No. And even if we suspected one of his friends or associates, or someone else, why Ullmann and Erlanger? Why choose them?” Martin paused, letting the question hang in the air before going on. “Usually we look for personal motives: passions, envy, thwarted ambitions. The only connection we have found between the two men was that they went to the Temple regularly, and they worked with the Consistory. Both seemed utterly devoted to their families and got most of their pleasures within their intimate circles, which, as far as we can see, did not overlap. As for their professional contacts, and any connection between them, it seems unlikely that someone who worked in Ullmann’s mill or the tanneries would have sought out Erlanger’s services.” Martin swallowed hard. “One possibility is that we are dealing with a crime within the Jewish community.” There, he used that word, in spite of his dim conception of what it meant to the people who lived in it.
“No.” This was less an objection than an expression of astonishment. “How can that be?” Bernheim asked.
Martin got up and lay his bowler on the chair. He began to mark the small space left by the encroaching books and files with measured steps. “Suppose, just suppose, it’s about fanaticism or irrational fanatical hatred of a group of people, just because of who they are.”
“Now, Monsieur Martin, you are describing anti-Semitism. But Jewish fanaticism?” This time Bernheim could not hide his skepticism. Yet the scientist in him remained willing to consider any hypothesis.
Hands behind his back, Martin continued his slow, circular march. “My inspector and I have made some forays among the Hebrew immigrants. All of them seemed to have suffered terrible losses, like being rooted out of their homes. Wouldn’t it be possible that one of them could become so unbalanced by his own tragedies that he would lash out at a man or men who threatened his deepest-held beliefs about Jewish traditions and faith?” Martin stopped and looked at Bernheim. “In a way, that is what the Consistory is doing, isn’t it? Changing the way people worship, making things French.”
By now, Bernheim was shaking his head. “I don’t see this as a motive.”
Martin picked up his hat and sat down again across from Bernheim. “But what if he felt insulted? What if he felt that the last connection to all he loved was being destroyed?”
Bernheim pressed his lips together. “From the way I understand it,” he said quietly, “the immigrants have a community intact, right here, in Nancy. Their own shul. Their own schools, albeit supported by the Consistory. No one is forcing them to change. The Consistory is only trying to help them adjust to modern society.”
Bernheim’s assessment made sense. There was an immigrant community separate from the Temple community. Martin had seen how much they shared, in the present and from the past. But Shlomo had averred in the last interview that the tinker didn’t really fit in anywhere. The tinker did not go to the shul. Martin spread his hands before him, as if pleading his case. “What about someone who is unusually isolated?”
“Do you have a right to think of him as a fanatic? Does he have any relationship to the victims?”
Good questions, the kind Martin had been asking himself on and off all weekend. Martin could almost count off on his fingers what he would need to make a case: a precipitating event, resistance to change, a deep and fanatical religious faith, opportunity to commit the crime, and some connection to both of the victims.
“Religious faith can be a wonderful thing, you know. It provides solace at times of the most dire need.” Bernheim smiled. “I work with the nuns. Their ethos of selfless charity is totally admirable. However,” he put up a plump, short finger, “fanaticism, that’s something else. You Christians have a great and bloody history of that. We don’t.”
From the impish look on Bernheim’s face, Martin knew the doctor was only being playful with someone he must have presumed was a committed secularist. But Martin could not enter into the humor. What the Israelite may not have understood was that men like Martin became secular, in part, because of the kind of fanaticism they had seen among some of the practitioners of their own natal faith. The kind of fanaticism Martin read in La Croix and that Madeleine Froment was bringing into his own home.
“I do know,” Martin said, “that the man I am interested in railed against Ullmann for running his factories on Saturday, that he even seems to have convinced some immigrants not to allow their women to work there.”
Bernheim nodded. His patience and tolerance, unlike Martin’s, seemed to have no limits.
“I also know that he has tried to influence the wife of a judge to follow the Mosaic traditions in a stricter way.”
“And Erlanger?” Bernheim inquired.
That, of course, was the essential, annoying question.
“Can you think of a reason why anyone, who might have antagonistic feelings toward certain people, would suddenly become violent?” Martin returned to his first question.
Bernheim shrugged. “You mean like an immediate tragedy that could push him over the edge?” The doctor shook his head, unconvinced. “You know,” he folded his hands in front of him on the desk as if he were about to prescribe a harsh remedy to a recalcitrant patient, “we Jews are accustomed to persecution and displacement. These woes are woven into our tragic history. Until now in France,” he added before hastening on. “The point is, we have learned to bear it. You have your occasional martyrs; we, as a people, have suffered. All because we insisted on keeping our traditions, our God.”
Bernheim seemed to have forgotten the dictum that his friend had written into the report on the ex-priest: that anyone is capable of doing anything if driven far enough. Instead, although Martin assumed that Bernheim was every bit as secular as he, the psychotherapist had fallen back into a sense of “we.” Did it come from perpetuating a tradition, or from being scorned and despised by others? We Israelites, We French. Who belonged? Who was left out? Questions Martin had to thrust aside, at least for the moment. Homing in on a viable suspect was a much more urgent matter.
“Another factor,” he explained, “is opportunity. Both murders were committed on Thursdays, the very day the suspect comes into town.”
“Then you seem convinced.”
“No. I’ll need further evidence. I thought you might—” Suddenly Martin realized that his suspicions about the tinker were only part of the reason he had come to consult with the brilliant and kindly Dr. Bernheim. What Martin really wanted was to understand more about how the human mind dealt with tragedy.
“If you bring him in, I’d certainly talk to him. I can see that is what you are intending to do, and I can’t see that it would do much harm if you did it quietly and discreetly.”
“Yes, that is the plan, the hope,” Martin mumbled, his thoughts turning to Clarie. “One more question. This grief, mourning, how long does it take? How do you know when it would drive a person to…if not madness, to radically change their beliefs about the world?” The last words came out in a stumbling whisper.
“You’ve lost a child.”
Martin looked up, stunned.
“News travels around the courthouse and the Faculté. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” Martin bowed his head.
“You are doing the right thing. Continuing your work. Accomplishing something. But I can imagine it’s much harder for your wife.”
Martin barely moved his head in agreement. He avoided Bernheim’s kind gaze.
“If she has any physical symptoms that you find disturbing, perhaps I could help.”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Martin said quickly. Nothing like that. A numbing, immobilizing heaviness spread from his mind through his heart into his limbs. He could not speak about what most troubled him: that he could not seem to reach her.
“Time,” the doctor said. “Time. The pain may never completely go away, but you will learn to bear it, to take it in as part of your lives. You are both young; there is much to come to fill your hearts, to make that void seem smaller.”
“Yes, thank you,” Martin mumbled. He was appalled at the effort it took to rise out of the chair, and that everyone, even this famous psychotherapist, gave him the same advice and offered the same assurances.
Bernheim came around the desk and patted him on his shoulder. “If I can help, please call on me.” Martin put on his bowler and thanked the doctor again. Then he left, through the waiting room, past the entrance, into the cold air. His restless longing to escape his troubles and to “accomplish something” carried him forward to the next stop, halfway between the Palais and the Faculté, to the comforting atmosphere of the Café Stanislas.
He took a small square marble table in the corner and ordered a café au lait, hoping its warmth would help his benumbed heart believe what Bernheim had told him. He watched the lumps of sugar dissolve as he stirred them into the steaming creamy liquid. He would find a way back to Clarie. If he was right, he’d be rid of the case before Christmas; then he’d concentrate on making the holidays bearable. Lifting the thick white cup to his lips, he imbibed the smooth, sweet drink of his childhood, of today, of a better tomorrow.
At eleven o’clock, when he was sure that Singer had left for the Palais, Martin went to ask the barman to use the telephone. The man kept wiping the tiny glasses he was setting up for his regulars, as he told Martin the price. After Martin placed the coins on the zinc bar, the man led him downstairs where a black wooden contraption, with two bulging eyes and the horn of a mouth, was fixed to the wall. The barman showed Martin how to crank up the little arm on the left side and unhooked the longer conical horn hanging on the right, handing it to Martin. Then he left.
As soon as Martin began to turn the crank, the eyes, which were indeed bells, began to clang until he heard a voice asking him whom he wanted. Holding one horn to his ear and shouting into the phone’s mouth, he told the exchange to connect him to the Singers.
The maid answered and agreed to get Madame.
Noémie Singer’s voice was tentative, worried. She had not expected anyone to call at this time of day.
Martin explained that he telephoned instead of visiting in order not to disturb her more than necessary.
At first he feared that he had been cut off, but he persisted, shouting her name into the horn, until she finally responded. “How can I help you?”
“It’s about the tinker, Jacob.”
Again no response.
“Did he ever tell you the name of the village where he lives?”
“No, Monsieur Martin, no.”
“Did he ever talk about his stepmother?”
Martin imagined her biting her lower lip, hesitating. So he asked the central question before she could put him off. “Do you know if she is well or ill?”
Her answer did not surprise him. “Monsieur Martin, Jacob’s mother is dead.”
“When did she die?” he asked eagerly.
“I really don’t know.” He could imagine her arching her eyebrows with impatience, perhaps even anger.
“Recently?”
“I believe, a few weeks before my own dear uncle.” Even through the static he heard the ice in her voice.
“Do you know—”
“Monsieur Martin, I understand your Republic believes in the freedom of religion. I do not have to speak to you about these things, and I do not want to.”
Martin wondered if “his” Republic included her husband. He did not press.
“Thank you, Madame Singer. Sorry, again, to disturb you.”
He heard the phone on the other end of the exchange click.
It was time to talk to David Singer.
Passing the guard at the entrance to the Palais with barely a greeting, Martin galloped up the stairs two at a time, warding off the loss of his nerve. He had not seen Singer since his interview with Noémie the week before and had no idea what she might have told him. Martin knocked, and entered Singer’s chambers to a decidedly chilly reception. After exchanging perfunctory greetings they stood, arms stiffly at their sides, until Singer’s greffier, with the kind of discretion that Charpentier seldom showed, got up and left the room without being asked. Then they sat: Singer behind his desk, Martin in front of it, lowering themselves with watchful care, like two cats, nosing each other out.
“You have something to tell me?” Singer asked, his lips between the perfectly fashioned black mustache and beard barely moving.
“I wanted to
talk to you about this tinker, this Jacob.”
Singer took in a deep hissing breath. “Yes, so I’ve heard, and I also understand that you have no compunction about coming between a man and his wife.”
“That certainly was not my intention, I was only—” Martin stopped himself just in time. He realized that Singer wanted to say more, and he wanted to hear it.
“Only what? Prying? I suppose she told you what a holy man this Jacob is, how gentle, how good.”
“Yes.” Martin nodded, the hair on the back of his neck bristling ever so slightly. Yes. And you. What do you think?
“She undoubtedly did not tell you about the time he shouted at her, told her our kitchen was unclean, told her that she was breaking all the old laws, and how she and Béatrice then turned the house inside out, as if that’s what defined us as Jews, obeying archaic laws that make no sense in the modern world.”
As he listened to these complaints, what Martin really wanted to know was how Singer defined himself as a Jew. But, at that moment and with what was to come, he dare not ask.
“You can see how upset all this makes me. Did you really have to dig into our affairs?” Singer continued, evidently taking Martin’s silence as a kind of contrition.
The Blood of Lorraine Page 32