Village of Scoundrels

by Margi Preus

  A heavy door slammed down the hallway. He stopped, waited a moment, then resumed.

  This document authorizes internee Eva Grabowski to be released from Rivesaltes, effective immediately. The aforementioned is to be permitted to travel to her place of residence. Please refer to the enclosed residency permit.

  Otto pulled the newly typed sheet of paper from the typewriter and set it aside, then inserted the second sheet into the roller. From his pocket, he pulled out his own resident permit and set it next to the typewriter and carefully began to copy the words.

  With the keys clattering away he didn’t hear the door open. He didn’t hear anyone step into the room.

  “Otto?”

  His head came up. Madame glared at him, her lips pursed.

  “Oui?” he croaked, his fingers floating above the keys.

  There was a long moment—was it long? It seemed to last forever—when everything in the room felt as if it were suspended on strings, including his fingers, hovering just above the keys—and it would take only a couple of words to sever the strings and everything would come crashing down.

  “Are you soon finished?” she asked rather curtly, obviously irritated by his lack of an earlier response. “I’ll be needing the typewriter.”

  “Almost,” he said. Forcing himself to smile, he added, “Madame.” He had often wished he could say to her, If it weren’t for the Germans and the Vichy laws, I’d be at university right now, studying to be a doctor, and one day you might have worked for me as my secretary. Then you would have to call me “Doctor,” and “sir,” and I wouldn’t tolerate rudeness!

  “Fine, then,” she said, backing out and closing the door.

  Otto waited until his hands stopped trembling, then finished his typing. The document completed, he cranked the roller to release the paper and carried both pages to the prefect’s desk. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed that he was still alone, so he opened the stamp pad, picked up the prefect’s stamp, and stamped first one, then the other, document.

  As for the hardest part, the signature, he could do that at home. He rolled up the documents and put them and his tools in his toolbox, latched the box, and was almost out the door when he remembered the blurry t and the sticky g. He had to force himself to go back to the typewriter, where he quickly made the adjustments on the offending keys, and, even though there was still plenty of well-inked ribbon, exchanged the old roll for a new one. He tucked the used roll of ribbon into his toolbox.

  And, well, why not? Since he was in it this deep already . . . he reached over and snagged one of the prefect’s stamps and stuffed that into his toolbox. He snapped the clasps on his box, exited the office, and strode out quite confidently, giving a nod to the secretary as he closed the door behind him.

  “Well?” Sylvie asked expectantly.

  “Well, what?” Otto, now Jean-Paul, said.

  “Who is Eva Grabowski?”

  “My mother,” he said.

  After a moment, Léon asked, “The letter—did it work?”

  Jean-Paul nodded.

  Léon and Sylvie leaned back, relieved, and Sylvie asked, “Where is your mother now?”

  “She is . . . safe,” Jean-Paul said. There was a limit to how much he would tell.

  Léon let out a low whistle. “You’re good,” he said.

  “More important,” Sylvie said. “Can you do more documents?”

  “If I can get my hands on some tracing paper and the right kind of ink . . .”

  “Come with us,” Sylvie said.

  The threesome went up the stairs past the girls’ floor and up another flight of stairs to the boys’ floor, where they walked down the corridor, passing rooms on either side. The boarders looked up from their desks or beds, then back down at their books and notebooks as the three new friends went by.

  Jean-Paul wondered if there were others who, like him, were Jews hiding from the authorities. Probably likely, but hard to say for sure, because it seemed to be an unspoken rule in this house not to speak about your background or religion.

  Passing a cubbyhole-size room, he saw what looked like an unruly tangle of red hair sticking out above the covers.

  “That’s Philippe,” Sylvie whispered. “He goes to bed early.”

  They climbed one more flight of stairs to a small attic, crowded with a few file cabinets and a desk with a typewriter on it.

  “The teachers use this as a sort of office,” Sylvie explained. “Since there isn’t any actual school building, they have to use whatever space they can find for classes and office space.”

  Léon opened a cupboard that held a variety of colored inks and different kinds of paper. Jean-Paul caught a glimpse of something that looked like blank ration cards.

  “What do they use these different colored inks for?” he asked, running his finger along the bottles in amazement.

  “You have to have the right color inks for the different kinds of documents—and from different government officials.”

  “Are you telling me,” Jean-Paul said, “that the teachers are forging documents?” Had he stumbled into a den of criminals or some kind of forgery utopia?

  “Not all of them,” Léon said. “But some are quite talented. The secretary is very good at forging signatures, for instance.” He rubbed his hands together and said, “So . . . let’s see what our new talent can do.”

  Jean-Paul’s fingers twitched with anticipation. “Leave me alone and you’ll see,” he said. “In half an hour I can copy even a complicated official seal.”

  “You’re on!” Sylvie said while Léon retrieved a document with an original seal from their local prefect. He handed it to Jean-Paul and said, “Good luck.”

  Jean-Paul gathered together paper, ink, and pen and sat down to work. As carefully as a surgeon sutures a wound, he began to copy the seal. His art pen was his needle, the ink was the thread, the paper his patient.

  All his focus was on his work. He didn’t—couldn’t—think of anything else. Not the war or its injustices, not where his father was or whether he was still alive. All he could do was concentrate on the task before him: the precision of the line, the perfection of the circle, the flourish of the signature.

  It was oddly thrilling, this work. He was good at it. Quick, sure, steady-handed. And, he thought, holding the paper up to examine his handiwork, artistic.

  After a half hour, Léon and Sylvie came back, examined the document he’d made, and proclaimed him a genius.

  “We should discuss where to keep all this.” Sylvie spread her hands, indicating the materials. “With that policeman in town, this house could be targeted for searches. We’re going to need to find a different place to do this work.”

  “Let’s discuss it tomorrow,” Léon said, yawning. “I’m going to bed.”

  Sylvie agreed, and the two of them headed to their respective floors.

  »«

  Jean-Paul couldn’t sleep, so he continued working on something harder: copying the signatures of regional officials. His imagination was fired—until now he hadn’t really thought that his skills could help others. All his energy had gone to saving himself and his mother.

  When he and his mother had arrived in Les Lauzes less than a month earlier, he was no longer a Latvian Jew named Otto, and she was no longer his mother. Thanks to Otto’s talents with a pen, he was now Jean-Paul Filon, a seventeen-year-old French student from Alsace, and his mother had been transformed into a middle-aged Turkish-Russian spinster named Mademoiselle Varushkin.

  When they had first arrived in Les Lauzes, he had parked the weary mademoiselle in a café and gone to check out the town. Right away, he noticed that the people who passed by didn’t scowl at him or cross the street to avoid him. There were no propaganda posters like the ones he’d seen elsewhere in France that depicted Jews as hideous-looking monsters trying to take over the world.

  He stepped into a bakery and used a ration coupon to purchase a loaf of bread. The shopkeeper didn’t close the door bef
ore he could enter. She didn’t look past him to see if there was someone more suitable she could be serving. She didn’t ask him where he’d come from. She simply served him politely, and with a pleasant smile handed him his purchase.

  It was as if the people in this town hadn’t heard that everyone was to be suspicious of everyone else now. As if the news hadn’t reached them that neighbors spied on neighbors, turning in people over old slights, insults, grudges. As if they hadn’t heard that they were to be leery of people who looked like they might be Jews.

  The butcher had a few sausages; the greengrocer had a bushel of potatoes. Someone cycled by with a huge wheel of bread slung over his handlebars. The village had food—not a lot, maybe, but some. The village seemed to have decent people. The village also had a policeman. The very one who had given him, Jean-Paul Filon, a ticket, signed and dated—something like a little gift—legitimizing his name and status.

  He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it again. There was his name, written by the policeman himself. He was marveling at his good fortune when he heard the creak of the stairs and the soft thump of a door closing downstairs.

  Who was going out at this hour of the night, he wondered. He switched off the light and went to the window.

  The fog had cleared, and the sky, now inky black, was spattered with stars. Snow blanketed the sleeping village, the streets, the roofs.

  Against the white snow, he made out the darker figure of a person—one of the students. When the boy came out from the shadow of the house, Jean-Paul caught a glimpse of curls just before a stocking cap was pulled over them. It was that red-haired kid, Philippe, who went to bed early.

  Jean-Paul watched as Philippe took one of the long wooden sleds that leaned against the side of an outbuilding and walked toward the center of the village, dragging his sled behind him on the snowy street. What was he up to?

  There is something very unusual about the people in this town, Jean-Paul thought, not for the first time.

  PHILIPPE AND THE “TRAVELERS”

  The streets were empty, the windows dark. Only the crunch of Philippe’s feet and the whoosh of his sled runners against the snow-packed street disturbed the quiet of the sleeping village.

  He tucked his sled out of sight in the narrow space between the buildings, then gave a quick glance over his shoulder before climbing the stairs to a second-floor flat.

  Going to see Madame Créneau was like going to a nice aunt’s house—a nice aunt who gave you a bite to eat, fussed over your health, and who was also forging documents and involved in clandestine activities.

  She wore soft blouses and straight skirts and sensible shoes—as one must when there’s so much walking to be done. Her small flat was kept tidy, and no matter what else, there was always a hot cup of something for you at Mme Créneau’s.

  “I’m sorry it’s not real coffee,” she apologized as she pressed a mug of hot liquid into Philippe’s hands. “At least it’s hot.”

  He murmured his thanks and couldn’t help glancing behind her into the kitchen.

  Mme Créneau didn’t miss the glance. “Did you sleep through dinner at your house again?” she asked, stepping into the small kitchen.

  “I guess I did,” he said apologetically.

  “Don’t do that!” she scolded as she cut into a loaf of rye bread. “You’ve got to keep up your strength.”

  “You know there’s a policeman in town,” he mumbled over the mug.

  Madame spread soft white goat cheese on a slice of bread and nodded. She turned back, holding the sandwich out to Philippe while giving him a little cautionary shake of her head. One that said, Let’s not talk about that right now. Philippe took the sandwich as she smiled at someone behind him.

  He turned to see his “travelers,” as he thought of the people he guided. Tonight it was a young couple with a little girl. All three wore woolen coats; the man had a hat, the woman a wool scarf over her head, and the child was so bundled up that only her watchful brown eyes shone out from her swathing of scarves. Like her parents, she was quiet, alert, and, he could tell, worried.

  Maybe a joke would help.

  “Hey, you know why they bury Nazis twenty meters underground?” he asked.

  They shook their heads slowly, not sure if he was telling a joke or not.

  “Because deep down they are really nice!”

  The little girl’s dark eyes crinkled at the corners above her scarf—she was smiling. Philippe couldn’t help but smile back.

  He swallowed the dregs from the mug and handed it to Mme Créneau, then stepped outside. For a moment, he stood just outside the door and listened for the sound of cars or motorcycles. Only about three people in the village had a car—now four, since the policeman probably had one—and could get gas to drive it. So if you heard a car, you suspected police or military. But the village was silent—especially as it was muffled by snow.

  Philippe motioned for the others. Onto his ample sled he piled their meager belongings: a battered suitcase, a box tied shut with rope, a muslin sack stuffed with who knew what. He set the little girl in the midst of these things, and off they went, the parents walking alongside while Philippe pulled the sled.

  Once again, the only sounds were the shoosh of the metal sled runners and the whining of the snow under their feet. Philippe couldn’t help but compare the quiet here to the sounds of the German army rolling into his hometown in Normandy.

  Even though that had been almost three years ago, he still vividly remembered the officers on horseback, the horses’ hooves clattering and ringing on the cobbled streets. Tanks, roaring and rumbling, shaking the ground under his feet. Then row upon row of square-shouldered, crisply marching soldiers, the stamping of their boots like rolling thunder. The rows of soldiers stretched on and on, every one of them tall and blond and square-jawed, each with a rifle on his shoulder, in shiny leather boots and high-collared jackets. They seemed as invincible as gods, and Philippe had almost wished to join their ranks . . . until he remembered they were the enemy. A heart-clutching fear set in—there were so many! They were so well equipped! They were so disciplined! How could anyone fight them? Yet—and he felt the first fizz of excitement when he realized it—he knew that, somehow, he would.

  But the armies had not come to this little corner of France. Not yet. And because the armies hadn’t come, the refugees had.

  Soon Philippe and his travelers left the village, following the road into the countryside of open fields and dark swaths of forest. It was a clear night, and the cold cut right through their wool layers. A few stars and a sliver of a moon shone through the trees. The earlier fog had settled on every twig and branch; then the temperature had dropped, creating hoarfrost. Now the trees sparkled in the moonlight.

  From her perch on the sled, the little girl pulled her scarf away from her mouth and chirped, “It’s like a fairy castle! And there’s a party. Listen!”

  Philippe and the girl’s parents stopped to listen to the ice-covered branches and twigs clicking against one another.

  “Can you hear the silver spoons and crystal goblets clinking and clattering?” the girl asked.

  Philippe looked at her parents, noting the sad slope of their shoulders, their slowly nodding heads. Perhaps they were recalling dinner parties served on their own crystal and silver—now likely in the hands of others.

  “It’s like magic, isn’t it?” the little girl finished.

  It was magical, Philippe agreed, but magic that could turn dark in a moment—like a crystal goblet unexpectedly shattering into dangerously sharp shards.

  He listened again for the sound of motors. Nothing. Through the trees, the solemn voice of an owl seemed to call out the time—Two. It’s two.

  They set off again, walking up the road for a time until striking off onto snowy hillsides. Though the parents were quiet, from time to time the little girl remarked about something—a tree shaped like a hobgoblin, a boulder that looked like a dog sitting on its haunches.

>   “I see a consternation,” she piped up, her head tipped way back to regard the sky.

  Philippe looked up. “A constellation?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “How many stars do you think there are? More than five million-million?”

  Philippe waited for her parents to answer, but they were silent, lost in their own thoughts.

  “Tonight,” he began, and then suddenly remembered something he had learned in school. “Tonight there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in the world. We can’t see all of them, of course, we only see . . .” Philippe racked his brain, trying to remember the number of stars that could be seen on any given night. “I guess it’s only a few thousand.”

  “And every one as beautiful as the next,” said the girl.

  The shape of a farmhouse and barn appeared fairly close at hand, and Philippe guided the family into a nearby grove of trees. He held up his free hand, signaling the others to stop, and stared at the stone farmhouse, its windows dark. Please let a light appear, he prayed.

  The cold was sharp as a razor, he thought, glancing at the refugees’ hunched shoulders, their chins tucked into their collars. Like knives, stabbing them through their coats. If the farmer didn’t light a lamp, Philippe would have to shepherd his charges back to the village, a more dangerous endeavor now that there was a policeman to consider.

  But, then, there it was: the glimmer of lamplight through the lace curtains. Philippe felt a rush of warmth, as if the heat from the lamp reached all the way to their circle of trees.

  “Come on,” he said. “Coast is clear.”

  The farmhouse door opened; Philippe shooed the refugees in as fast as he could and followed them inside. He stayed just long enough to warm his hands and belly with a cup of hot tea. Then it was back into the cold, alone.

  He pulled the sled to the edge of the steep hill leading down toward the village. Then, in anticipation of the stinging wind, the sled runners singing against the crusty snow, and the thrill of the dark ride ahead, he launched himself and his sled over the edge and into the night.