The Tiger Claw

  No feeling of gratitude stirred in Noor. At this moment she wanted above all only to be with Armand, in his arms—man and woman in a phalanx of two.

  Madame Dunet’s lips moved in a silent, carnivalesque movie. The dreary kitchen was dissolving into pointillist frames.

  Was she Medea, or was she Noor? Was she but the effect of her family and its decisions for her, or was she Noor? She had not challenged their desires years ago. She had taken the safest route—name the crime, for crime it was then and now: to have Armand’s child aborted before it could come into the world. And Madame Dunet was correct, without her ministrations Noor might have been interned today, with Armand.

  Distance, I need distance.

  “Stay in bed for a few days, Mademoiselle Khan. See me again in a week if you still have fever or delirium.” Madame Dunet opened a cigarette case, removed a cigarette. A lighter flicked. A flame leaped and burned in the gloom.

  In a waking, walking stupor, somehow Noor was outside, back on the path, then in the street, almost running before the evening blush of the sky, under the pooling shadows of deep-rooted trees.

  Pforzheim, Germany

  February 1944

  Here in the dungeon, where night follows night, I toss in a fever-dream as I did for days in the little cupboard at Madame Aigrain’s. No sound, no paper comes between us at this moment; my spirit speaks to yours across Al-ghayab.

  A taste like the medicine the midwife gave comes again.

  Talking to Madame Dunet battered my senses. I searched for false notes, but Madame Dunet had never claimed to be tolerant; her actions were consistent with her political beliefs, distasteful as I might find them. But as for Mother, and Kabir—the hiatus between discourse and actions astounded. I can say it to myself now where no one hears me, to myself if to no one else: I was ashamed of them, and ashamed for them. Their actions showed coinciding reasons to see me as a woman but never as Noor. Mother: her aspirations to bourgeois respectability. Kabir: the newly won masculine authority of majority.

  Of course, they must have felt they did what was right, but …

  The most important decision I ever made was chosen as they willed. Then, was it mine or theirs? They were munafiqs—hypocrites, talking and preaching tolerance while acting from prejudice.

  Allah, I pray for hidayat: guide them to narrow the gap between their beliefs and actions.

  Madame Aigrain brought lace handkerchiefs dipped in eau de cologne and damp linen towels, and plied me alternately with soup and hot milk. I wandered, delirious, in an inscape of anger mingled with remorse. I have no memory of that time till the twenty-seventh day of Ramzaan. Last year it fell on July 12.

  On this day one should pardon those who have wronged us.

  I who could not pardon Mother and Kabir implored your soul’s pardon for me. You were silent all day; there was only Hazrat Issa faintly smiling from the wall, his sacred heart open and bleeding. Then came the Night of Destiny, when the Qur’an was revealed. The night all fates are sealed, the night one waits for angels. Madame Aigrain had retired when suddenly I sat up in bed. I heard a baby.

  A baby crying alone.

  It had to be you, the part of me that comes from the creative chakra of the cosmos. Meri jaan—the part of my self that is truly alive. You cried, you screamed, and I could not console you. Did you weep for the clay of the body I denied you, or for the world?

  Forgetting the curfew, I ran downstairs and stood in the doorway. The dark, glistening street was illuminated by a single torchlight from the sentry box on the corner.

  There was no baby, no baby crying there.

  I turned my face so Madame Aigrain might mistake my tears for rain. She led me back to bed.

  Tell me, what should I have done ten years ago, ma petite? If, as Madame Dunet said, there were nuns who would look after a foundling—I did not know them. I swear.

  But to have you, touch you, then renounce you forever. Would not that have been worse, worse for both of us?

  I tell you, I was never afraid of the pain of your birth. Love and fear, rather than chains or bars, bound me when I stopped your soul. In 1934, I imagined you entering your body in the sixteenth week, imagined your heart pumping, taking shape within me. I imagined you forming eyes, lungs, a spine. I thought I felt the long rope of a placenta growing between us, sending nourishment from my inmost recesses to yours. I talked to you as I’m doing now, and you could not express any reason why you needed to be.

  Why does any child need to be?

  Was it a homicide I did that day, or an act of love for you and Armand? The divine and demonic met in me; years have blurred memory and left only what I wish to remember.

  What I wish to remember is love.

  Had I let your soul arrive, what would you have seen in my womb? A darkness as deep as the dark in this cell. What would you have heard? Sounds like I hear now: pipes gurgling, the exhalation of the tall building breathing around my trapped body. You would have been as dependent on the cord that fed you as I am on that single outstretched arm with its bowl of soup.

  On the Night of Destiny your crying no longer permitted my evasions: I stopped my child’s soul from entering the world by taking away its defenceless piece of my flesh. At twenty, I was capable of deliberate destruction.

  My lips are bloody as those of Kali, who gives life and takes it away.

  Would I make the same decision again? I lay shivering beneath the coverlet and thought about this for many hours, as if I were playwright, director and actor in my own story.

  Enfin, the answer was yes. To bring you to a world in which a woman must have permission before she may love—that was, to me, a sin beyond any the Prophet, peace be upon him, had foreseen. To disallow your father from knowing you because he was Jewish—this would have been an injustice to him and to you.

  In that answer I found some peace. You must have understood my thoughts, for by dawn you no longer cried.

  I have this time-away-from-time to think, ma petite, think about what makes a human. It is not merely being born, or surviving, but being cherished, receiving love in enough measure that it becomes our obligation to pass it on. Love, caring—these are the true signs of life, not only flesh. The capacity to feel as others feel. To suffer, even vicariously. By this measure, you were not human.

  By this measure, none of us have yet become human, for we are numb to pain that is not our own.

  Hope is a dangerous luxury in this place that has killed so many of my illusions, but one illusion remains: I will be ready to receive you next time. The twin angels, Kiraman Katibeen, will record better deeds in the Book of Judgement to balance against the harm I inflicted on you, on myself. If not, my jihad-al-akbar, that war I fight against the forces of destruction within me will be lost.

  When Armand learned of you, he said, “We’ll have a little girl, we’ll call her Shekinah.”

  Shekinah—feminine spirit. Ma petite ruh—yes, that will be you.

  I feel his smile tug at my heart. I grow from inside.

  But do I hear footsteps and muttering? Was that a hollow bucket crashing against a wall?

  “Is someone there? Is anyone there?” I call.

  There is no answer, no human who answers. The war could be over, but no one would know I am here. Vogel is not required to account for me. By Hitler’s command, he doesn’t have to keep any record of me and other Night and Fog prisoners. Armand, Mother, Dadijaan, Kabir, Zaib—no one will ever know I am here. I’m just a combatant who has disappeared, an enemy forgotten in this stinking hole.

  Is the world destroyed, and no voice but mine left in the universe?

  Everything is collapsing.

  Allah, my heart is breaking once more.

  CHAPTER 27

  Paris, France

  Friday, July 16, 1943

  NOOR REASSURED THE PROPRIETOR of Chez Clément that she wouldn’t be dining alone, and was shown to a small round table in the corner beside an engraved glass window. Back to the wall, face
in shadow, with a view of the Germans and French dining beneath the chandeliers, and of the tin-surfaced bar past the WC—just the seat she’d have chosen herself.

  A dozen days since she escaped being shot down with the others in the Lysander and today was the first time since her encounter with Madame Dunet that she had emerged from Madame Aigrain’s apartment. An anonymous message left at Flavien’s directed Noor to meet “Monsieur N.” here at 13:30 hours.

  Green velvet half-curtains on the brass rail beside her smelled of tobacco and smouldered candles. Outside, Parisiennes with luxuriant headdresses sported baskets and bags for foraging. Each looking far more chic than Noor, whose green skirt was now feeling more like a uniform. She raised her copy of Paris Soir, and from time to time, looked over it at people entering and leaving. They couldn’t see her whole face—effective purdah.

  She had pictured herself in the seedy elegance of this restaurant often—not incognito, but with Armand. Celebrating the début of his sonata, an award, or yet another invitation to conduct or teach. Armand leaning across this peach tablecloth, tapering fingers lovingly slipping a ring on hers.

  But without Armand, Chez Clément held little charm.

  “If it is not my portion to meet thee in this my life … let me not forget a moment …”

  Quell those lines.

  Still no news from Claude. He had promised to telephone; she must not lose hope.

  The black market plat du jour featured spaetzle, sauerkraut and pork in every guise—bratwurst, schinkenwurst, liverwurst, knockwurst, blood sausage. Amazing aromas of chicken, beef bourguignon, onions and cheese drifted from the kitchen. Major Boddington would pay for food and wine, but Noor wasn’t hungry. Despite Madame Dunet’s medicines she still felt weak. And “the curse” was upon her again.

  Yolande called it the curse, when they were toughening up in England. What mission had Yolande volunteered for, and where was she transmitting from now? She could be with a different cell only a few kilometres from here and Noor wouldn’t know. What of Edmond, who landed with Noor?

  The windfall of a good meal and a long hot soak at a bathhouse would, she was sure, restore her body to normal. Her spirit—that was another matter.

  A brief article in Paris Soir said that at Houdan, on Bastille Day, “terrorists” had captured the Monument of the Dead. Professor Balachowsky’s bold scheme had been successful. His last words repeated in her mind: “We’ll come through this.” Insh’allah, the Professor was still alive.

  An editorial shrilled with indignation: the peaceful suburbs of Paris had been savaged by Allied air raids. On Bastille Day, it said—an outrage. It didn’t mention that German orders had restricted Bastille Day celebrations to a few firecrackers. No mention, either, that Ramzaan had ended, and that Algerians, Tunisians and other Muslims of Paris celebrated Id at La Mosquée. Since it wasn’t a Christian celebration, Id was of no interest to Paris Soir.

  Id. She had so ached to be home for it. With Mother. With Kabir. Even though, if Madame Dunet’s story was true, they were now proven hypocrites.

  Family love—that myth she had maintained and bowed to for years, believing in their concern for her. Now she had no family but Armand and others who fought tyranny, fellow resistants.

  But today was Friday, when juma prayers were usually followed by Dadijaan’s delicious dhokla and kachoris.

  And it was half an hour past the appointed time for lunch with “Monsieur N.”

  Major Boddington must have been arrested. Gilbert must have betrayed him too.

  One last glance over the curtain rail and she reached for her handbag, stood up.

  A pincer gripped her elbow. A man with a steel-grey raincoat over one arm loomed over her. “Mademoiselle Régnier! How is your dear mother?”

  Brown hair now black, his attire bland. But that flat face and spectacles were Major Boddington’s. How had she missed seeing him enter?

  He slung his coat over the back of the chair opposite Noor, and forgot his cover only to shake hands instead of kissing her on both cheeks. A carafe of muddy-looking wine and two close-to-clean wineglasses arrived. A clink of his glass against hers, and the Major got down to brass tacks.

  “Had a spot of trouble lately, haven’t we, then?”

  “A spot of trouble” for certain torture, instant executions or deportations of hundreds of agents? Major Boddington sounded like those in London who still referred to a massacre of unarmed Indian civilians as an “error in judgement.”

  But the Major had braved a covert mission to France to meet her, and no doubt other endangered agents. Capturing him would be a coup celebrated in Berlin, and he undoubtedly knew it.

  “I’ve arranged a new safe house for you.” Suavely accented French issued from the side of his mouth. “Secure place. You even have your own telephone. Seventeenth arrondissement—my agents must have a few perquisites, I always say. Memorize this number.” He dictated like a ventriloquist. “Sablons 80.04. I haven’t given it to anyone else. And the address: 3 boulevard Richard Wallace.”

  Noor warmed towards Major Boddington. Officious but well-meaning; perhaps he just didn’t know how to express his concern. And she did need a different safe house. She couldn’t transmit from the pocket-sized room and hated to burden generous old Madame Aigrain much further. Major Boddington was being considerate, making the arrangements.

  “Rent’s paid for four months. Here’s the key.”

  He passed it to her under cover of the tablecloth. Noor slipped it into her handbag.

  “You need more francs and ration tickets,” said the Major. “Make them last awhile.”

  Beneath the table, a fat envelope nudged into her lap. A weight she hadn’t realized was bearing down inside her lifted; she wouldn’t have to ask anyone for money.

  “Not as much as I give our young gentlemen, but then, you aren’t paying for two at meals, are you?” He smiled away.

  She’d sound rude and ungrateful if she pointed out his illogic. It didn’t matter. Now she could reimburse Madame Aigrain. And she’d be most frugal after that.

  “And this time they’re real francs, so do be prudent. Oh, and I left some messages in an envelope with the concierge. Do send them on as soon as your transmitter is operating.”

  The maître d’ passed, conducting a couple through the conversational hubbub to a table in the opposite corner.

  Noor raised her voice a little for their benefit. “How is your family?”

  The couple looked threadbare and gaunt. The woman held the man’s hand tight.

  “Well as can be expected.” He lowered his voice. “Keeping Mr. Hitler on his toes.” Major Boddington sounded like a news-wire telegram. “Je Suis Partout and Paris Soir aren’t giving the facts here. In a snit about the Paris air raid—typically self-centred. Not a single mention of our bombers raiding Cologne again.”

  “Any news of my family, sir?”

  “All’s well. Miss Atkins said to tell you some amazing news: your brother’s got himself promoted to flight lieutenant. My, that means he’s captain of his ship, you know.”

  Amazing only because the Major never expected it. Kabir’s record would have brought him a promotion months ago but for his Indian blood.

  “I’m so very sorry about the Lizzie, sir. Did anyone survive?”

  “Survive what?” Major Boddington gave her an inquiring glance.

  “The crash, I mean.”

  A momentary silence, and then the Major said, “Oh, they didn’t crash, no, no. Good man, that pilot. Cut his engines, dived like a Spitfire. Evaded two Messerschmitts. Got home safe, and the two Dutchmen are, I’m sure, properly grateful.”

  “I’m much relieved to hear that, sir.” She was relieved the Lysander had escaped the predators, but delighted to find Gilbert’s plan had failed.

  The Major’s eyes narrowed behind his spectacles. “Now. You seem to have been up to a little mischief, my girl? Heard you balked at the fence, came right up to the Lizzie, refused to go home? Fall for a h
andsome young frog, then?”

  Major Boddington assigned a narrow range of talents to Noor; reasoning was not one of them.

  “No, sir,” said Noor carefully. She would pass over explanations of motives and state what she required at once. “I need to be with people I can trust. I will no longer work with Gilbert. I mean, I do not wish to work with Gilbert.”

  “You are exhausted, old girl.”

  She wanted to shout, “Don’t ever call me ‘old girl’”—it sadly reminded her of Prosper. But the Major was her superior officer, so she kept quiet.

  “You’ve been awfully brave.” The Major was all tender commiseration. “And quite alone. We kept you in play far too long. And then your refusal to return, becoming hysterical—I must say, I was surprised.”

  He was waiting. He hadn’t addressed what she’d said about Gilbert, but had adroitly turned the conversation. Clearly, an explanation was required.

  “You might have refused to take any aeroplane arranged by Gilbert too, sir, if you found out he had read your letters. While we were waiting for the Lizzie, he began alluding to the contents. And he didn’t accidentally read them, he deliberately opened them!”

  “You don’t say!” Major Boddington clasped the edge of the table and leaned forward. “So that’s what caused this little rumpus. Dear girl, you’re quite right to be upset—caddish thing to do. Reading a lady’s mail. Quite unforgivable.”

  “A serious infraction, sir,” said Noor. “Against the rules.”

  “Ah yes, the rules. Come, come, love, Gilbert isn’t the only one not playing strictly by the Marquis of Queensbury. If you want to stay within the rules, I dare say you should be fighting in uniform rather than—uh—what we’re up to.”

  “Why did he read my letters?” Noor kept her voice low.

  “My dear girl”—Major Boddington gave her a head-to-waist glance—“have a look in a mirror. You just don’t realize, do you? Believe me, it’s more than curiosity about your je ne sais quoi, your enigmatic Indian eyes. It’s the exotic element, that’s it. Gilbert’s a good sort, but you know the French—Gallic urges. Introduced him around at my club and the rascal was winking at the barmaids the next minute.”