The early afternoon air was chill and dense on her skin. Soon she would need to borrow warm clothes from Josianne. To engage a petite couturière, even Madame Aigrain’s daughter, would be too expensive.
Before her in the queue, Odile Hoogstraten’s strained young face turned to the afternoon sun. Odile’s eyes were her meter of suspicion; she could proceed.
Daily fear and tension were now as familiar as the ten-pound pole of worry and fear for Armand she’d carried across her shoulders in London and all the way to Paris. She had become like Odile and the Parisians entering the theatre, asking every moment: Who was listening? Who was watching? What would she find behind a locked door? When she received or delivered messages, who might be there—the Gestapo?
She chose an aisle seat with a pillar at its back; Odile slipped into the one beside her. Shadows danced across the blank screen and the walls as people took their seats. A German soldier clumped past, his stride muffled by the carpet but still sure.
A few polite inquiries in case anyone was listening, then Odile began whispering.
Noor cautioned, “Wait till the lights are switched off.”
“They won’t be,” said Odile. “Sometimes they switch them off after the newsreel, but now they’re too afraid, they want to watch us all the time.”
“What can we do to them here?”
“We can applaud when they show the damage to hospitals bombed by the RAF. We hiss when they show Hermann Göring. It means we can’t see the film very well. But,” she sighed, “still I love the cinema!”
The assurance Noor had felt moments earlier siphoned away. She should have known the Germans wouldn’t allow films to be shown in the dark so people could actually see them. She should have expected it; perhaps someone had mentioned it in training and she had missed it. How easy it was to make mistakes!
What could be so important that Odile had decided they should meet in person? And in a well-lit cinema?
The propaganda newsreel began and Odile twittered at Noor’s shoulder.
“Phono and Monique have returned to Paris. With Renée and Babette.”
Muscles tightened in Noor’s neck. “Returned? Not to Renée’s house?” she whispered.
“No, of course not. But it was la rentrée last month and Babette had to return to school. Phono said I should tell you he has taken an apartment in Neuilly. He said not to tell you the address, but I think he only said that because Renée doesn’t want you to know where they are.”
Too penetrating an observation; Odile had only a few opportunities to experience Renée’s attitude towards Noor.
“Why do you think that?” Noor asked.
“Because when I went to meet Phono in Neuilly, she was arguing with him. She was so surprised to know you are still in Paris, and so angry. And you know, she is never angry at him! But she found out he was going to contact you. She said if you had returned to London, the Allies might have stopped their bombings.”
Noor sighed. “She must believe I have great power. I assure you, Allied bombings will continue with or without my transmissions. Is there any good news?”
“Of course—here is good news: Renée said she was going out for a walk, to calm down after all her shouting. I was going to leave, because I’d picked up my messages for you, but Monique suggested I stay for lunch, so I did.”
“And then?”
“Then Phono and Monique were at the card table playing belote, I was playing with Babette—it was a few hours. And then Renée came back. She had some good news. Guy—you remember her husband, Guy?—Guy will soon come home.”
“Magnifique!“ whispered Noor.
“Shhhh! Yes, it is. But …”
“But what?”
“She came back after walking in the Jardin d’Acclimatation and said she had a feeling. How do you just have a feeling?”
“When you love someone so much, you can have a feeling,” said Noor. “It happens.”
“You get a feeling about your fiancé—the navy officer?”
“I feel sure he is alive somewhere. I have faith.”
“Maybe that’s the feeling I get for my friend—you remember I told you about de Grémont? I don’t know if he has the same feeling for me. But this feeling like Renée’s—without even a letter, a telegram or a telephone call—I want to have it about Papa. Maman is desperate, telephoning everyone she knows. She even went to the avenue Foch to see the Gestapo. We heard he was sent to Fresnes, so we went there with clean laundry and a parcel. But now they told us he is no longer there, and they will not tell us where he is gone.”
“Poor Madame Hoogstraten! I wish there was something I could do …”
“Maman should try and get this ‘feeling.’ Papa has to be alive, he has to be. I had a feeling, remember, when he was at Verdun and I learned later that I thought of him at the very moment of his capture? Even if he did smuggle arms from England, they can’t just execute him. Don’t they have to appoint a judge, then prepare for a trial?”
No, they don’t. Occupiers—German, English, French, Dutch—consider trials for the colonized a singular favour to be suspended at will for civil disobedience. And your papa, Monsieur Hoogstraten, was planning armed resistance.
“We have news about everyone but Papa. You know the students we believed the Germans had executed at Grignon? They are at Fresnes! A translator and a prison chaplain smuggled their messages out of the prison—their families were so glad.”
Subhan-allah!
Noor renewed the vow she’d made while watching the roundup at Grignon, to read the Qur’an from cover to cover and give a month’s salary to the immigrants at La Mosquée, now it turned out the two students were alive. How much might she need to give at La Mosquée to pay for the two SS men who might be dead from her bullets? And for not feeling guilty enough about it?
“But the messages also said their punishment is to be sent to a work camp in Germany. What have they done? Nothing. Quel dommage!” Odile stopped for a passing uniform and then resumed. “Maybe the translator and the chaplain are behind bars too, by now. But at least those students’ families now know they are alive. Whereas we … I told Maman we must get a lawyer for Papa, and send the lawyer to Vichy.”
A liquid shine appeared in Odile’s eyes. She looked straight ahead at the screen.
Monsieur Durand’s comments about the uselessness of lawyers came back to Noor. Vichy was a marionette of the Gestapo … but it would be cruel to kill hope in Odile or Madame Hoogstraten.
“I told her I’ll volunteer to work in Germany—they can trade me for Papa.”
Noor held out her handkerchief. Odile took it.
Ushers in feldgrey moved past, the projector whirred and The Life of Mozart began.
Why did anyone come to see a film about a person whose life story was so well known? Rumi once said any tale, fictitious or otherwise, illuminates truth, but what could The Life of Mozart offer Odile and Noor in a cinema in 1943, with the whole world at war, with husbands and fathers disappearing into prisons and camps?
When you love someone so much, you can have a feeling. But at this moment the feeling of which Noor had spoken felt like some half-remembered dream. She should be glad for Renée, believe her intuition might be right. But Renée hadn’t shown any respect for Noor’s intuition about Gilbert.
Mozart’s incomparable music. Phrases washed over Noor like a stream of coded personal messages from Armand. Eyes closed, she saw his fingers roaming the keyboard till the piano stormed and breathed.
She checked from beneath her eyelids; the uniforms had moved out of sight.
“Alors,” said Odile. “These messages must go to London tonight. The first one, unfortunately, is not good news.”
A folded paper met Noor’s fingers.
“A list. More arrests, all over the north.”
Black-and-white images from The Life of Mozart blurred before the intensity of Noor’s sudden anger.
Gilbert again! This is all Gilbert.
Sh
e pulled her jacket close as if blown into a draft.
“But there is another, more urgent.”
“More urgent than this?” Noor was still taking in the news, her mind racing ahead.
“Oui, to Phono it is. He was very particular that I memorize this and say it to you: ‘Monique needs, as soon as possible, to hear the messages we arranged in Le Mans.’”
Noor knew the messages meant by Émile, the BBC messages that would signal that his family would be flown out of danger, to England. He could have left such a coded message at Flavien’s letter drop, like all the others, but by requesting Odile to deliver it in person, he had raised its urgency above the rest. Even above the list that lay folded in Noor’s hand.
“Would you like me to be your lookout?”
Odile was volunteering to perform the service Marius the Master of the Greenhouse had provided Archambault before—well, before. Another signal of urgency.
Noor whispered, “No.”
“A telephone number is written on the back of the list. Call me as soon as you have transmitted, so I can confirm it to Phono.”
“Tell him I understand,” said Noor, slipping the list into her handbag.
The film seemed to raise Odile’s spirits. Afterwards she chirped away about the newsreel, decoding its propaganda statements to assess events for herself: the Germans had retreated from the Russian steppes—bien, but then they occupied Rome—was that bien ou pas bien? good or bad? And their omissions! They hadn’t reported any real news, for instance that resistants had, a few days ago, killed the head of the forced-labour organization, the STO; that one second the man Ritter was alive and the next he was dead, bang-bang, falling down dead just like a Red Indian shot by a cowboy in a film. And his wife was probably crying in Germany. Oh no, they wouldn’t show that, because people would be glad someone had done something about the STO. Odile was so very happy the Italians had come to the side of the Allies, but did Noor think the Holy Father was in any danger from Hitler? Surely not! What had really happened in Naples and Corsica, did Noor know?
“What can it mean, what will it all mean? What will it mean to us?”
On her way back to Suresnes, the omnibus took Noor as far as Le Moulin overlooking the racecourse in the Bois de Boulogne, where it stopped for the good reason, announced its resigned conductor, that the gazogène cylinder had run out of gazogène. Noor disembarked with the other passengers to wait for the next bus or a new cylinder, whichever came first.
The conductor tramped away.
Noor unfolded the scrap of paper Odile had given her. Her eyes travelled down the list—twenty-three code names this time. Mariette. Oh, no! Mariette! Yolande of the tweezed eyebrows and late night stories was arrested. Yolande with whom she had run up and down Glory Hill.
She bit a trembling lip. If Yolande had been arrested in the last twenty-four hours, she might be undergoing torture at Gestapo headquarters on the avenue Foch by now, perhaps at this very moment. And then … prison at Fresnes, like Monsieur Hoogstraten? Perhaps even Drancy or some other camp? Something large seemed lodged in Noor’s throat.
Bon courage, chère amie!
Émile must be as angry about these arrests as she was. Of course, one could not be one hundred percent sure they resulted from Gilbert’s disclosures to the Gestapo; they could also have resulted from torture of agents already captured. But Émile wanted his family to leave the country as soon as possible, and she knew why—so he could deal with Gilbert. Renée might not have been as angry with Émile if he’d told her why he was contacting Noor; not to sabotage or derail more trains, but for Renée’s sake, so Renée could be sent to England. That implied Émile hadn’t told Renée he was sending her to “perfide albion“ for the rest of the war. Mentioning an idea like that to Renée would have sparked a different argument altogether. Renée wanted to go home.
We all want and need to go home, Renée, not only you. But no place can be called home any more. We’re all together in an expanding prison camp, and you’ll only be home when nothing more can happen to you.
A few people who had descended from the bus set off on foot. Noor took a seat on a bench with others waiting either for a second bus or for the return of the conductor. Beside her, a woman with lips painted Kiki-style began to knit vigorously.
Coaxing Renée to get on a plane to England would be Émile’s difficulty, especially if Guy was coming home. What were Émile’s exact words? “Monique needs to hear …” Not “I need” but “Monique needs.” So he had persuaded Monique to leave him and accompany Renée to London. And it sounded possible that Émile planned to act very soon, leaving Monique to listen alone for the BBC messages that would alert her to contact Air Movements Officer Marc instead of Gilbert at the next full moon.
How utterly torn Monique must feel. Here in the shade of the locust trees in the Bois, Noor once made a similar choice. How could she have known how deeply she would regret agreeing to leave Armand and escape to safety in London? How often she’d thought of that farewell, how much she’d wished to change it.
An autopiano drawn by a scrawny mule in the custody of a jaunty man in overalls came to a stop before the stranded passengers. When its owner bared the keys, “La Romance de Paris” rolled from punched paper, bringing a few sous of appreciation.
Once Émile killed a Nazi asset like Gilbert, his difficulties would begin. He’d have to join the Maquis and take to the Jura. At least there were bands to join; three years ago, when Armand and Madame Lydia left Paris, there were no Maquis. At the time, people believed only Jews and foreigners were at risk of persecution.
A murmur and roar behind Noor said a race had begun. She turned to watch jockeys and horses shouldering, gathering and extending as they came around the track.
Her immediate task was to encrypt and transmit Émile’s request to London, and the list of arrested agents; not to wonder how her Armand and Madame Lydia had survived almost three years in hiding. Not to wonder if, when they were arrested, Armand’s deep blue eyes had been like those of the poor old Hasidic Jew, squinting into sunlight. Not to wonder where Armand might be now, not to remember his unique scent, his limbs wrapped around her, or kisses gentle as afternoon rain.
Twenty-three arrests: chances were now very high that her transmissions were being monitored and traced. She could receive anywhere, but as for sending—no. To transmit from Madame Prénat’s house any longer would be to wilfully place Josianne and her mother in jeopardy. Tomorrow, at her scheduled time of transmission, she would send Émile’s request and the list of names from boulevard Richard Wallace.
No second bus would be coming. Instead, the conductor returned carrying a new cylinder on his back.
Far from the people in the stranded bus, hundreds of pairs of German and French hands were clapping for the winner. The drum of hooves began again, a fresh set of horses arced and leaned around the track.
Noor stood up to resume her journey.
No way out of this war but forward. The work must go on.
CHAPTER 32
Paris, France
Wednesday, October 13, 1943
THE OCTOBER AIR WAS SO crisp and dry that, as she made her way down the boulevard Richard Wallace, Noor regretted wearing a skirt instead of her slacks. If Armand had been there, he would have teased about her thin Indian blood and offered his coat to wear over her green jacket and roll-neck sweater, his hand to cup her shoulder. Was Armand cold right now? What clothes was he wearing? Her T-strap shoes were wearing down from all her walking. In what condition were Armand’s shoes now?
Soon, please Allah, let these messages help them invade soon, before any more of us are arrested, so Armand and Madame Lydia can be free and safe again.
The clock on the wall behind the concierge chimed half past four as Noor arrived, half an hour before transmission time. Five Wehrmacht officers no older than Kabir leaned against the concierge’s counter as if at a bar, overwhelming the too-small salon with gusting laughter and loud camaraderie. They s
tepped aside courteously enough for Noor, but the scent of their boot polish followed. She let the brass-grilled lift rise without her and climbed a carpeted spiral to the third storey.
Silence and the smell of mould weighed heavy in the empty apartment; she hadn’t completely closed the front window overlooking the Bois after her last transmission. It hadn’t been this cold when Major Boddington first gave her the key, only three months ago. How annoyed she was he’d ignored the handbook: “Every safe house should ideally have one escape route, preferably two.” But outside the handbook, everything had to be done under less than ideal conditions.
She placed the candlestick telephone on the floor, dragged the marble demi-lune under the window. Retrieved her suitcase transmitter from the bottom drawer of the sideboard and placed it on the table. Delved back in the drawer for her code books, then into the suitcase for the coiled aerial wire. She plugged the transmitter into a wall socket.
Cold air whooshed as, with a little effort, she slid the window upwards. She leaned out of the window. The window ledge had to be why Major Boddington selected this apartment—broad enough to hold the suitcase should anyone come to the door.
Below, on the boulevard, vélo-taxi drivers sweated and coughed, plying their pedicabs like cycle-rickshawallahs in India. Pedestrians raised their collars, nursemaids and mothers pushed prams or walked with children in the Bois. A German officer gave a stiff-arm salute and shouted a final “Heil!” as he left the building and stamped through the front courtyard and away down the street.
No white or grey vans. No one looking up. Safe to thread the aerial along the ledge now.
Back at the table, she opened her message book. First the most urgent message, requesting a Lysander for Renée, Monique and Babette. It might save lives of free people, whereas the second was to notify London about those already captured.
A small yawn was permitted after spending the early hours of the morning sheltering from bombardment in Madame Prénat’s cellar. And she had worked with Josianne all last evening, composing and revising the message to be sent for Phono. Together they revised each word for utmost brevity, utmost clarity. The message had to explain to Major Boddington how imperative it was that Renée, Monique and Babette be flown to safety in London, from a field organized by Marc, not Gilbert. It reminded Major Boddington that Renée’s home had been searched and watched, was no doubt still being watched. Deliberately ambiguous, it also explained that Émile—Phono—needed to be freer “to work on Resistance activities.”