I need to tell Armand I am here, that I love him always.
Too many messages to fit in that tiny compartment. She was sorry for the seven years of waiting, for the intolerance of her family, she had never stopped loving him, she was as Rumi’s separated reed without him, he must know they still had a task they could only effect together: the return of a child’s soul in a better time to come.
But anonymity was safety—critical for so many. For Armand and for her mission. The sender must disappear into the message.
Allah, guide me.
The parcel must be ready by the time Gabrielle returned. Yet the message Noor had come so far to deliver must be the perfect representation of her love, their love; some shape so powerful it would swallow the need for words. It should say, “I am near you. Have hope, my love. We will be together again.”
Anyone could say that. Her message must have some pattern distinctive as a radio operator’s fist to be a message that Armand would know could come only from Noor. It must speak of the coexistence of beauty with the beast, and the hope of transmuting suffering to beauty. She must send Armand some very small thing that could carry the weight of this desperate love and hope that had her standing by the bed, looking into the half-composed package with brimming eyes.
The day she returned to Paris, as the tram shuddered onto the boulevard de Boulogne and passed the very spot where she had said adieu to Armand—the adieu that should have been au revoir—she had yearned for some small thing that belonged to him, something she could have held at that moment; something eloquent with memories of shared experiences, intimate times. Was Armand feeling the same at this moment? Could she give him a part of herself?
She peeked into the parcel again. Where had Gabrielle found wool to knit a scarf? Where had she found a second, real tin of sardines, one of condensed milk, even a jar of honey and another of jam? She must have been saving them for the children for quite a while. Each container compressed nourishment, and included so much more—assurance, hope, love, and Gabrielle’s sadness and anger that she could not protect these little ones.
The attic room grew warmer from the fever of Noor’s thoughts. She unbuttoned the top of her blouse.
Of course, of course.
What else was there? She had brought nothing of the past, Armand’s and her past, to France but this.
She unfastened the thin gold chain, held the crescent shape of her tiger claw up to the afternoon light.
Some foreknowledge must have counselled her to keep the pendant upon Anne-Marie Régnier’s person while divesting herself of every vestige, symbol and relic of Noor Khan. Armand knew its value—not only how precious it was to Noor, linking her always to India, her grandmother, Dadijaan, and the generations of women in her family who had worn it, but he would also know she gave him something to barter or sell, should his life depend on it.
For luck and courage.
Translucent yellow, smooth except for minute cracks, the power of the inarticulate but deadly beast restrained by its golden frame. Ancient relic of the pride, it flashed and shimmered, illuminating the dingy attic. She enfolded it in her hand.
Let the ferocious energy of this beast cross the barrier of its extinction.
She found a piece of white tissue paper in the desk drawer. She smoothed it carefully and wrote Je t’aime toujours. Beneath that she wrote Adieu, then crossed out the word and wrote beneath it, Au revoir.
She took a step back from her words, nodding as if Armand were present. That would reveal herself to him while still retaining a measure of purdah from the eyes of strangers.
Insh’allah, our past and future can be rewritten by these few words.
Then Noor wrapped the tiger claw and gold chain in the tissue. She wrote Armand Rivkin and Madame Lydia Rivkin in small, precise letters on the tissue, wedged the packet into the tin and slid the false lid over it. She shook the tin to be sure it wouldn’t rattle, then placed it back in Gabrielle’s package.
Every woman who ever wore that pendant would have done the same.
She wrapped the knitted scarf around the lot, then wrapped it in the brown paper left by Gabrielle. She entwined the whole package till it bulged like a four-chambered thing.
She knocked on Gabrielle’s door, but she had not yet returned. So Noor took the parcel back to her own room, pulled her chair up to the window and raised her binoculars. She would need a telescope to find Armand in those cheerless soup distribution lines.
But she knew his face in memory. In memory, felt the curve of his chin graze her cheek.
Noor paced her attic room and the landing outside like a caged tigress. Monsieur le Missionnaire had returned. Monsieur Durand invited him courteously to come and see his rabbits. They had been in Monsieur Durand’s room a long time. With the door closed.
Poor Monsieur le Missionnaire. What an existence! What choice did that poor man have but to betray his friends?
The missionary emerged from Monsieur Durand’s room, ducked his bald head and sidled downstairs. In a trice Noor was at Monsieur Durand’s door.
“Will he do it? Can he bring us the list?”
“He promised to try. Come in. Sit down.”
Since there was but one chair, Noor sat on the bed. Monsieur Durand’s room had a window but no view of the camp.
“I told him Gabrielle’s letter to the children is wrapped in plastic at the bottom of the jam jar. He will explain to the children, as often as necessary. And he’ll look for your packet in the sardine can and take it to your husband.”
“He took the money?” Noor had given Monsieur Durand three hundred francs.
“Oh, yes.” Monsieur Durand’s eyes brightened for an instant. “And the pliers—thank you, mademoiselle.”
He opened the rabbits’ wooden cage and drew out the piebald one—scrawny by contrast with rabbits in England, but among the three, the rabbit with most flesh on him. Monsieur Durand stroked his black ears and sighed. He put the rabbit back in the cage and fastened the door.
“Where did he say the train was taking them?”
“‘East.’ That’s all he knows. There are rumours about ‘relocation in Poland’ and other rumours that the destination is Metz.”
“Why Metz?”
“It used to be in France, but it’s in Germany now.” His response fell far short of her question.
“Do you think he’ll report us to the Germans?”
“Not yet.” Monsieur Durand nodded towards the piebald rabbit. “I promised him I’d give him that one when he brings me the list.”
Pain crossed his face fleetingly.
“Monsieur le Missionnaire doesn’t think the list is final yet—avenue Foch prisoners are added last. I told him we don’t need names of the Gestapo’s prisoners, we just want the names of people to be sent from Drancy.” He paused, then said in a musing tone, “He told me he doesn’t eat the rabbits I give him. He sells them to a black market restaurant so he can buy baptismal certificates.”
“Baptismal certificates?”
A knock at the door—Gabrielle. Punctual and full of questions. Monsieur Durand explained in a low voice.
What could his reference to baptismal certificates mean? If Armand pretended to be Christian, could it prevent the Germans from sending him to Germany? Once, long ago, Noor had asked timorously, intensely aware that it went against every tenet of Sufism ever propounded by Abbajaan’s school, if Armand might convert to Islam to please Uncle Tajuddin. Armand replied in an instant, “We profess what we know. I couldn’t be a converso. My mother converted to Judaism, but she has never felt it in every bone as my father did. She tries at Purim, at Rosh Hashanah, at Yom Kippur, but she didn’t grow up with it.”
Like Mother, joining in rituals while privately dismissing many tenets of Islam as superstition. Dadijaan had sniffed out Mother from their very first meeting—she could tell Mother had never truly converted, that her Christian notions had simply acquired a new label.
Some Jews were denying their
faith, Armand had told her, because they found it inconvenient—but if he left his faith, it wouldn’t be to acquire another equally inconvenient one but because he’d lost faith that any Messiah could save the world. She couldn’t expect someone who had answered the question of conversion to Islam in such terms to now consider Christianity. Besides, neither he nor Madame Lydia had ever suggested Noor convert to Judaism. Like Abbajaan, their definition of secularism was the Gandhian one, which included rather than excluded all religions, saw all religions as worthy of respect.
Still, she repeated her question about baptismal certificates.
“You should tell Monsieur le Missionnaire not to bother,” said Gabrielle. “I pawned my gold cross to buy baptismal certificates for the children two weeks ago, but when I realized all they have to do is check if my little nephew is circumcised and the certificate will be useless, I went and got my cross back.”
The same was true for Armand. He and Kabir had this in common, besides their similar avoidance of pork. The baptismal certificate was futile but attractive, a logical answer to an illogical situation.
“He said each baptismal certificate is worth its weight in gold, but it’s a good thing you got your cross back,” said Monsieur Durand. “When the guards see you wearing it, they don’t search your packages as much when you leave them at the camp post, oui?”
“Non, non, they search. But I hope it makes them treat my little darlings better. Oh, I didn’t mean …”
“Better than Jews, yes.”
“Anne-Marie, stop chewing your hair, you’re making me even more nervous!” Gabrielle deflected Monsieur Durand’s attention to Noor.
Startled, Noor looked at the end of her ponytail and realized she had indeed been chewing it. Her wristwatch said it was almost 18:00 hours.
“Can we do nothing more?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Gabrielle. “But I’m going now to deliver the parcel. If I see something or think of something …”
Noor and Monsieur Durand sat at Noor’s window, watching the camp, waiting.
Monsieur le Missionnaire did not return with the list that evening. Noor brought in chairs for Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand and sat watching the camp with them. As darkness fell, the perimeter lights flashed on, their beams shooting into the night sky.
Gabrielle cut Monsieur Durand’s tobacco ration cigarettes in half and re-rolled them. She smoked carefully, holding the smoke as long as she could, smoked them down as close as she could without burning her fingers. Noor found herself doing the same.
In a low voice Gabrielle told them her entire life story, showing no interest, thankfully, in Noor’s. Monsieur Durand held his cigarette between thumb and forefinger the way Indians smoked bidi-cigarettes to appease their hunger. By dawn Noor’s eyes and lungs were leaden, her attic room hazy grey as the dawn sky. Behind the lavatory door at the end of the corridor she turned the spigot and let her tears flow with the water.
What could they, what could she, do by watching the camp? Absolutely nothing. Then why did she, Monsieur Durand and Gabrielle watch all night? They needed to believe they were doing something. Perhaps they were there to comfort each other, especially Monsieur Durand; to have fourteen relatives in that camp was beyond understanding. What could Monsieur Durand’s father possibly do in a German factory at age eighty-one?
Crying was useless too. Noor dried her eyes and turned back.
The door to Monsieur Durand’s room was open, and both he and Gabrielle were crouched in the corner, looking into the wooden rabbit hutch.
There was nothing but straw in the cage. The rabbits were gone.
“But the cage is still locked,” said Gabrielle.
“Look in the lavatory—” Monsieur Durand’s voice was breaking.
“But the cage was locked,” repeated Gabrielle.
“Maybe they got into your room,” said Monsieur Durand to Noor.
“But I tell you, the cage door is not open.”
Repetition finally penetrated Monsieur Durand’s misery. He sat down heavily on the edge of his bed and said in a bewildered tone, “What do you mean, the cage is not open?” He made kissing sounds in the direction of the cage, but nothing moved.
Gabrielle sank to her knees, opened the cage door and reached in. She rummaged in the straw for a second, then let out a shriek. She drew back, wide-eyed, revulsion distorting her nose.
“What? What is it?”
Gabrielle was speechless. Noor had to see for herself.
A rabbit skin was almost plastered to the floor of the cage. The rabbit’s flesh had been sucked out of its body, leaving only the head and a scaffolding of bones under its skin. Blood, sinew, entrails—all drawn right out of the poor animal. Smell of decay already permeating straw.
Noor pushed more straw away. Another skin. Blood soaked the floor, bits of flesh.
And when she pushed the straw away for the third, she could see the marks, the gnawed hole in the floor of the cage where rats had attacked. The starving creatures had chewed through the floorboards.
Why had the three of them in the next room not heard the rats attacking the rabbits? Why had the rabbits not made some sound—cries, screams—whatever sounds of distress a rabbit can make? But they had, yes, they had. The cage was nicked and scraped by their desperate death throes. Would that they had had pliers to escape from their cage, but they had no such tools … And meanwhile she, Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand had been right there in the next room, eyes fixed on the camp, waiting for Monsieur le Missionnaire’s return.
Monsieur le Missionnaire! He would be expecting his rabbit, and there was now not a single rabbit left to give him: the rats had done the job neither he nor Monsieur Durand could bring themselves to do. Would Monsieur le Missionnaire give them the list now? Would he turn Monsieur Durand in to the Germans? No—he would see the distress in Monsieur Durand’s eyes. Monsieur Durand was sitting on his bed, tie undone, grey hair rising in tufts about roving fingers. Perhaps Monsieur le Missionnaire would accept more money and give them the list.
The drone of motors rose from the street below. Suddenly Noor abandoned the carcasses of the poor rabbits. She, Monsieur Durand and Gabrielle acted as one: they hurried to Noor’s room, crowded around the window again.
Buses were arriving at Drancy, the open gates of the internment camp sucking them in one after another like pastilles. More and more buses, like green locusts descending on the camp. Noor, now leaning from the attic window, could see that while they had been aghast at the fate of the rabbits, a roll call of prisoners had begun in the central courtyard. Women holding children in their arms, men shuffling forward, some leaning against each other for support, each clutching a suitcase or bag. She took out her binoculars, shared them with Gabrielle and Monsieur Durand in turn, but they couldn’t recognize a single face from this distance even if the light were brighter. Quink-coloured clouds hovered, threatening rain.
Noor ran downstairs with the others behind her, no longer caring if she was seen or by whom. Into the street she raced, past Madame Gagné standing on her front steps; into the street, just as a black Citroën with headlights on led the first bus from the gates. The roar of engines must have woken others in Drancy. Hundreds lined the avenue where the buses would pass on their way to Bobigny station. Some from curiosity. Some must be like herself—related to the inmates. Angry murmurs rose and fell, but there were no shouts of protest. It was an alliance of the helpless.
Noor’s fists and jaw clenched.
Allah, no, no! Not now, not when I am so close. Please, please, Allah, don’t take Armand away! Why did you bring me here only to send him away to Germany before my eyes?
Take someone else, Allah, not my Armand, not him, not him …
She was weeping, running after the first bus, sobbing, Gabrielle beside her. She’d seen a man at a window, a man who looked like Armand. No, there was Armand standing—no, there—crammed among the old men and boys.
No—there! There!
N
o—there!
Oh, where? Where?
“Armand, I’m here, look, look!”
Please, Allah, let me speak to him first. Let me tell him. Oh, tell him for me …
Then came the headlights of another crowded, lumbering bus and she began running beside it, looking, throat soon rasping, lungs gasping, legs beginning to drag. Gendarmes moved into the crowd with their batons. Gabrielle was howling.
Monsieur Durand was left far behind.
Was that Madame Lydia’s face? No, no.
White birds fluttered in the smeared windows—hands, large and small, waving.
A third bus thundered by, listing with the weight of its passengers, and she was running, running, but couldn’t keep up. Gabrielle was left behind.
Another bus, and another.
Suddenly there were more birds, grey birds, flying from the windows of the buses. Square birds that fluttered to the sidewalks, then skittered and blew like dry leaves.
Legs heavy as if wading through water. A biting pain entered her side, she stumbled, had to slow … walk … double over … stop.
Vision was liquid, spilling over. She looked up, fighting for breath, fists still clenched over emptiness. The sky was an inverted bowl moving impotently above. Houses and shops were shuttered all around. How could it be that the din and cries of prisoners leaving Drancy at this hour had disturbed no one along this road? Had the convoys become so familiar a sight?
On the pavement before her lay one of the grey birds. It was a letter. She picked it up as if it were injured.
Addressed in pencil, but not to her.
She had run all the way to the tabac. Closed this early in the morning. There was an old half-barrel to rest against till panic subsided and reason returned.
She hadn’t seen Armand. She hadn’t seen Madame Lydia.
She examined the address on the letter and put it in her pocket. She would post it, as a kind stranger had done for Armand—for her.
Noor walked back—a long way back—soft-boned, insides jangling.
Monsieur Durand was standing among the dwindled crowd by the camp gates. He stood empty-handed, looking very old. Gabrielle’s head leaned on his arm, she patted his hand. No letters in sight; they must have been scooped up and pocketed quickly.