“A swami and a musician? A Gandhi with music?”
“Some similar ideas, sir, but my father was a Muslim.”
“Not a separatist, are you?”
The word contained semitones Prosper seemed unaware of. In light of Britain’s pilfering colonial commerce, she sympathized with a people wanting independence from their empire, but “separatists” wanted Mr. Jinnah’s land of the pure, Pakistan—a paradise Uncle Tajuddin might appreciate, but no better than prison for herself.
She would live in France with Armand once war conditions improved, and never again fear becoming cousin Allahuddin’s third wife in either India or a theoretical Pakistan. And surely Prosper was only asking for reassurance that she would be loyal for this mission.
“No, sir, not a separatist.”
“Have enough money?”
“For now, sir.”
“Right, then. Off you go, Madeleine, old girl. Quickly.”
Prosper ran his hands through the close-cut hair over his large ears and resumed his seat at the table as if expecting another visitor. A beam of sunlight slanted over his head.
On leaving Chez Tutulle, Noor caught the tram bound for the Gare de l’Est, descended to the scarlet gates of the métro and presented a ticket from the booklet in her heavy handbag. Consulting a wall map, she caught a train going in the direction of Amiens. She had the afternoon for her first mission, to find a room to let. A room suitable for transmitting and as close to Armand in Drancy as could be. From there, Allah would show the way.
The underground train gradually emptied as it crept to the periphery, terminating at Porte de la Villette. Next came a train that chuffed along the surface at escargot pace. Noor was the only passenger in the carriage by the time it reached Le Bourget–Drancy.
The gendarme at the station would ask her to open her handbag, heavy with grenades.
Look confident.
Noor held her crumpled ticket and papers out for inspection. She came here every day; this was just another visit. The gendarme waved her through without a second glance. She climbed a stone staircase to a bridge that doubled back over the tracks. Below her, the conductor turned the sign on the engine; its direction now read Paris instead of Amiens. The long, soot-blackened train rumbled away beneath, leaving her standing on the bridge feeling suddenly lone and small.
She shouldered her handbag and walked purposefully towards some shops in the distance. A boy of about fifteen with a checked beret angled over curly brown hair cycled past, and Noor hailed him for directions to the village centre. He pointed straight ahead.
Where should she wait for an omnibus heading into Drancy?
“On the avenue.” The boy adjusted a leather satchel about his neck and touched his beret in farewell. “Avenue Jean Jaurès.”
Standing at the omnibus stop brought no omnibus, and impatience set Noor walking again. How far away was the camp? She had to find it, rent a room nearby if she could, and get all the way back to Renée’s apartment before curfew.
Sometimes you have to trust strangers.
In a park, children swung and climbed under their mothers’ watchful eyes. Noor chose a kind-looking woman about her age, cooing from beneath a purple hat into the wicker hood of a perambulator, and sat down beside her. She asked, as if it were the most normal question in the world, if madame could tell her the way to the internment camp.
The purple hat lifted from the pram and cocked in Noor’s direction. Brown eyes looked Noor over, gaze resting pointedly on Noor’s starless lapel.
“You have someone there?” the woman whispered, as if the Germans had listening devices everywhere, including children’s parks in broad daylight.
Noor’s desperate silence said yes, she did. She could only hope the woman loved someone dearly enough to understand.
The woman reached into the pram and adjusted her baby’s bonnet. Out of the side of her mouth, never taking her eyes off the baby, she said, “Continue walking down the avenue Jean Jaurès. Take the right fork in the road after the mairie. You’ll see the watchtowers. Bonne chance.”
Noor controlled her urge to run down the avenue, and set off at an even pace.
She was Anne-Marie Régnier on her way to meet her aunt. Aunt Lucille—Tante Lucille. Tante Lucille had a history of malingering illnesses. Tante Lucille had acquired a number of dearly guarded possessions that might be willed to poor Anne-Marie if Anne-Marie tended her well. Her dear old tata began to play the harp—badly—developed a dislike of strangers, a love of bone china figurines, and lived in Drancy instead of where she belonged, with Anne-Marie’s family in Bordeaux, because her son was killed nearby at Meaux in the Great War, and she now refused to leave. It was like the game she and Kabir played as children, making up stories and motives and histories for people they saw on the métro.
A turreted watchtower came into view against the brilliant blue sky, looming over six parked German military lorries. Factory workers walked or wobbled past the camp gates on threadbare tires as if accustomed to its presence. For so many, as long as they were not within, Camp de Drancy was a place to cycle by.
What were the cyclists thinking?
At the lycée Noor’s teachers often blamed the ills of the world on the inflow of immigrants, immigrants coming to France from anywhere, everywhere. Foreign-born people like herself who lived in Paris, and even those like Armand, born in France of naturalized parents. But for immigrant Jews they reserved a special distaste.
The words of popes, abbés, curés and pastors over centuries, not the words of Jesus, had paved the road to this camp. Artists, writers and politicians down the centuries re-enacted the crucifixion of Jesus “by the Jews” in paint, prose and palaver. Could one blame any one Frenchman for the anti-Semitism that created this camp? That one … or that one, beret pulled low over his brow?
Armand had been more afraid for Madame Lydia than himself, yet both were now behind the walls of Drancy. It might be worse for Madame Lydia: Russia had joined the Allies, and Madame Lydia had a Russian accent.
How could Maréchal Pétain and his premier, Laval, believe that the people behind those walls deserved such treatment? That someone like Armand, born in France, someone who composed music from the wind, whose every performance gave nothing but joy, posed a danger to France? Or to anyone?
When war was declared in ‘39, France incarcerated thousands of non-citizens, using amorphous words like “patriotism” and “prevention of terrorism.” War, said everyone, required the imprisonment of immigrants and refugees from Germany, Poland, Russia—anywhere, especially if they were Jewish. People like Pétain said the French could no longer afford equal rights for citizens and non-citizens. Or even all citizens. People like Pétain said democracy’s unending debates and strikes had crippled the country.
What had Armand and Madame Lydia done to the French, Pétain or the Germans? Nothing.
How often had newspapers said even “Israelites”—Jews like Armand, born in France, speaking French—were “unassimilable,” and Noor had dismissed them because the French were wont to say the same of Muslims. The peeves and pettiness of the French rose from the same dark core as centuries of crusades and Christian hate-mongering against Muslims.
If the French didn’t have Jews to blame, they’d have chosen the Muslims.
Yet how could she judge a single French man or woman harshly when her own elders, elders of the one family she had believed free of hatred towards any group, those who preached tolerance of all religions and spoke of the melding of East and West, rejected Armand when it came to marriage?
But what was that cyclist thinking about people behind those walls as he passed them by?
Noor was near Armand. Right now it was all she could do.
A bell sounded as she entered a tabac with standing room for two before its grimy counter. She asked the reedy proprietor leaning on his elbows from his stool behind the counter if he knew of any rooms for rent. He listened and allowed her to finish about Tante Lucille before
remarking, “There are so many like you, mademoiselle.”
Plainly he didn’t believe in Tante Lucille, but by now Noor had convinced herself by the telling. “My aunt prefers that I live near her, you see.”
The proprietor swept a rag over the counter with a gnarled hand. “Wait,” he said. He opened a door behind him, barked out, “Claude!” then resumed his seat, folded his arms across his chest again and glared at her.
A checked beret poked through the door; it was the boy she’d stopped for directions to the village centre. The proprietor and Claude conferred about the possibilities for rental.
“Go with him on his bicycle,” said the proprietor.
Claude brought the bicycle to the front of the tabac and held it steady as Noor hopped on the metal carrier, handbag on her lap. She clutched at his coat, smelling rain and sweat and the acrid scent of his fear mingling with her own. The boy rode slowly past the lorries, the turreted watchtower, a long, long, four-metre-high wall topped with rolls of concertina wire, another watchtower fifty metres from the first, and another long wall.
For three years Noor had consoled herself in London by telling herself the incarceration of non-citizens and Jews in France was a temporary measure, but that now seemed terribly naive, too comforting, an idea these forbiddingly permanent camp walls and watchtowers did not support. These towers were built with French labour to inhibit foreign-born and Frenchman alike, with Vichy collaboration. Escape from behind those walls seemed impossible, even to her trained eye. What if the “temporary” measure became life imprisonment for Armand and others like him? But no, no—Armand and Madame Lydia would be released soon, certainly when conditions improved. The Germans had no reason, no reason at all, to keep them.
Past the last watchtower Noor looked back. Her mouth suddenly felt like a parched hole—a machine-gun silhouette turned towards them. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Claude was approaching a five-storey red-brick building lurking behind a chestnut tree, a dilapidated structure that leaned in on itself, as if no one had entered it since the Great War. He cycled around the side, down a sun-variegated lane to a gate in a low wall. Noor jumped off as soon as his brakes squealed.
She followed him into a patch of lawn criss-crossed with lines of hanging laundry, past cabbage and potato plants, a vacant pigpen and an untended flower bed where tough little forget-me-nots braved the sun.
“Madame Gagné!” he called.
A woman in a sacklike dress came to the door, wisps of white hair straggling about her face.
“Have you a room for rent?” Claude asked.
“A hundred and fifty francs a week.”
Claude whistled, glancing slyly at Noor.
Noor was elated enough to open her handbag and offer Madame Gagné the hundred and fifty francs immediately, but the bargaining instinct Mother complained she’d inherited from Abbajaan reminded her that one should show interest but not too much.
“It’s expensive, but it’s the best,” said Madame Gagné. “With a view. It’s occupied right now, but the tenant is moving. You could move in next week.”
Noor looked at Claude. He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head; too high.
“Seventy-five francs,” said Noor, and held her breath. What if Madame Gagné refused? She told about Tante Lucille and how very sick she was, how she needed to be near the dear old lady.
Madame Gagné shrugged her complete disbelief. “Sale Juive!” she muttered. “I told you it has a view. One hundred francs and food coupons for your breakfast. That’s my final offer.”
Noor ignored the epithet; it was probably useless to protest she was not Jewish. At four hundred francs a month, the price was a hundred francs higher than Monique had mentioned for a clean room, but any safe house was good for only three or four weeks. All Noor cared about was having a room close to Armand.
She nodded, and the door opened.
“Return for me in half an hour,” she said, pressing an SOE note into Claude’s palm. He gave a quick grin, touched his beret in appreciation.
Madame Gagné wended her asthmatic way up seventy-two creaking stairs to a room on the fourth floor. Between wheezes she told Noor she was from the Midi but had lived in Paris twenty-five years—not long enough to feel or call herself Parisienne, but enough to long for Paris whenever she visited her cousins at home. Noor ignored the implied invitation to share her own origins and asked, were there any other rooms to choose from in the boarding house? Madame Gagné shook her head. The internment camp was excellent for business; every room was full.
“No one complains,” she said, “even when the searchlights keep them awake at night. I serve breakfast from seven to nine. Some men—probably Jews—have such an appetite, if you’re not downstairs early, there’ll be nothing left to eat.”
She led Noor into an attic room, overheated from its proximity to sun. Its only furnishings were a cot-like bed and a desk. As Madame Gagné had emphasized, it had a view—one small window recessed into the slanted wall. And from it Noor could see over the camp’s wall, see the U-shaped, five-storey concrete structure that was Camp de Drancy, see clusters of men, women and even small children in the central courtyard—prisoners all.
She was so close, so close. Yet too far to recognize one man among the rest.
“The children—wearing the yellow star.”
“Of course they wear it.” Madame Gagné coughed at her elbow. Her long ears had picked up Noor’s involuntary whisper. “Jews who get caught not wearing the star are imprisoned and sent east to Germany.” She looked pointedly at Noor.
Best to ignore the comment as if it was no concern of hers.
Noor studied the chestnut tree growing before the house. It offered a convenient branch that almost touched the window, a branch on which to string an aerial.
The sheets were clean, even if the duvet smelled of spilled wine and clandestine ardour. With some pride Madame showed Noor the timer light switch that would give a maximum of fifteen minutes of light, if there was electricity. Then she led Noor down the corridor to the lavatory.
“On this floor you share with Monsieur Durand, but often he is gone. He says he travels through France selling X-ray machines—but I think he only sells rabbits, that’s what I think. I tell him what I told you: Jews caught not wearing the yellow star could be denounced. But he pretends he is hard of hearing.”
Returning down the corridor, Madame Gagné pointed to another room. “This one is Gabrielle’s room—she’s a waitress at the Café Vidrequin—don’t believe anything she says.”
Rabbits are sweet and harmless. And anyone named for Angel Gibreel deserves a listening before judgement or dismissal.
“The bathroom is downstairs on the first floor.”
Noor took the long iron key from Madame Gagné and counted out the rent in counterfeit francs. She must make contact with Armand. Insh’allah, she would think of something.
“I will stay three weeks,” she said. “By then I’m sure Tante Lucille will be better.”
Madame Gagné sniffed.
Noor sifted through the friable soil in the flowerpot, found the key and let herself in.
“Je suis seule ce soir avec mes rêves…”
Léo Marjane’s mournful voice spun from the grooves of the record and flared from the gilded horn of the gramophone, amplifying the emptiness of Renée’s drawing room.
“Renée?”
“J’ai perdu l’espoir de ton retour …”
A match scraped. Shadows danced a gavotte around a candle. Renée, in a chenille rose-vine print robe, reclined on a chaise longue, a framed photograph and a hanky on her lap. An abandoned game of solitaire was spread across the card table.
“Anne-Marie, Émile telephoned to say you would be coming tonight. Oh—hours ago!”
Renée sounded less peremptory tonight, or Noor had caught her at a vulnerable moment.
“Oh, Renée, am I late again?” Noor presented her with a posy of drooping forget-
me-nots carried all the way from Madame Gagné’s garden.
“Very pretty, Anne-Marie.” Renée took a leather-bound ledger from the desk and pressed some flowers between its pages. “You really shouldn’t wander about alone. Only prostitutes walk the streets so late. You almost missed the curfew.”
“I’m sorry,” said Noor. “Is Babette asleep?”
“My friend Madame Aigrain is looking after her tonight,” said Renée. “Just nearby.”
She arranged the rest of the flowers in a fluted vase, then brought Noor a bowl of carrot soup, a chunk of rye bread and a tiny slice of Camembert.
“Beautiful china,” remarked Noor of the blue-flowered soup bowl and plates. It was impossible to compliment Renée on the soup.
“My grandmother’s Gien.” Renée joined Noor at the table.
“A lovely memento,” said Noor, her hand rising involuntarily to the tiger claw beneath her blouse. Dadijaan’s wizened brown face came to mind.
“Huh. I was not indulged,” said Renée, “but my grandmother did leave me this house as my dowry—and I promised her I will never sell it.” She gave a great sigh. “It’s going to fall apart around me.”
Noor said, “My grandmother always indulges me. I wish every little girl had one like her.”
“My mother pampers Babette,” said Renée. “Too much—it’s not good for the child. She must learn she can’t have everything because she wants it.” Her eyes gazed far away. Then a smile lit her face for a moment. “Guy—my husband—spoiled me. He did everything for me, everything I have now to learn and do myself.”
“But now you are less dependent, non?”
Renée gave a sharp, sardonic laugh, lit a cigarette. “It’s natural to be dependent. All these responsibilities—they are for men.”
Whenever Uncle began another lecture about the “natural” dependence of girls, Noor and Zaib retorted that their father trusted women initiates in Holland, Belgium and America to carry his teachings forward, and he always said women’s dependence had no basis in either nature or the Qur’an. But it would annoy Renée to disagree.