The Ventriloquists
Page 1
The Nazis stole their voices. But they would not be silenced.
In this triumphant debut inspired by true events, a ragtag gang of journalists and resistance fighters risk everything for an elaborate scheme to undermine the Reich.
Brussels, 1943. Twelve-year-old street orphan Helene survives by living as a boy and selling copies of the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, now turned into Nazi propaganda. Helene’s world changes when she befriends a rogue journalist, Marc Aubrion, who draws her into a secret network that publishes dissident underground newspapers.
The Nazis track down Aubrion’s team and give them an impossible choice: use the voice of the resistance to create a Nazi propaganda bomb that will sway public opinion against the Allies, or be killed. Faced with no decision at all, Aubrion has a brilliant idea. While pretending to do the Nazis’ bidding, they will publish a fake edition of Le Soir that pokes fun at Hitler and Stalin—daring to laugh in the face of their oppressors.
The ventriloquists have agreed to die for a joke, and they have only eighteen days to tell it.
Deftly weaving multiple perspectives and stunning historical detail, E.R. Ramzipoor’s dazzling debut novel illuminates the extraordinary acts of courage by ordinary people forgotten by time. It is a moving and powerful ode to the importance of the written word and to the unlikely heroes who went to extreme lengths to orchestrate the most stunning feat of journalism in modern history.
Praise for The Ventriloquists
“Funny, sad and poignant in its telling, The Ventriloquists reminds us that so much of what we read, hear and watch is propaganda—for someone, for some organization, some country. I cannot recommend this story highly enough.”
—Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
“Ramzipoor brilliantly gives a lost moment of history voice, flesh and soul. [A] frighteningly relevant look at what happens when the news is controlled by biased and antagonistic forces.”
—Devin Murphy, national bestselling author of The Boat Runner
“A compelling historical [novel] that details the remarkable saga of how 50,000 copies of a newspaper were published under the thumb of the gestapo.... Engrossing.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Art and artifice, life and death collide powerfully in The Ventriloquists.... E.R. Ramzipoor has made an unforgettable and important contribution to the canon of Holocaust literature.”
—Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris
THE VENTRILOQUISTS
E.R. Ramzipoor
www.harlequinbooks.com.au
E.R. RAMZIPOOR is a writer based in California. She also works as a content marketer, writing about cybercrime and online fraud. She studied political science at UC Berkeley, where she researched underground literature in resistance movements and discovered the forgotten story of Faux Soir. Her writing has been featured in McSweeney’s, and The Ventriloquists is her first novel. She lives with her partner and a terrier mix named Lada.
To Sherry Zaks. I made you a book.
Contents
Quote
The Ventriloquists
Yesterday
2 Years Before Faux Soir
20 Days to Print—Night
19 Days to Print—Early Morning
Yesterday
Long Before Faux Soir
18 Days to Print—Early Morning
17 Days to Print—First Sign Of Morning
17 Days to Print—Afternoon
Yesterday
In The Time Of Faux Soir
16 Days to Print—Morning
15 Days to Print—Late Morning
Yesterday
15 Days to Print—As Evening Fell
14 Days to Print—Shortly Before Dawn
14 Days to Print—First Hours Of Morning
14 Days to Print—Afternoon
14 Days to Print—Earlier That Afternoon
14 Days to Print—Early Evening
14 Days to Print—Evening
Yesterday
13 Days to Print—Dawn
13 Days to Print—Mid-afternoon
13 Days to Print—Early Evening
12 Days to Print—Morning
Yesterday
12 Days to Print—Early Morning
12 Days to Print—Late Morning
12 Days to Print—Late Afternoon
12 Days to Print—Early Evening
11 Days to Print—Not Quite Morning
11 Days to Print—Morning
10 Days to Print—Mid-morning
Yesterday
3 Years Before Faux Soir
10 Days to Print—Afternoon
10 Days to Print—Late Morning
10 Days to Print—Late Afternoon
10 Days to Print—Evening
10 Days to Print—Night
9 Days to Print—Morning
9 Days to Print—Late Morning
9 Days to Print—Mid-afternoon
8 Days to Print—Evening
Yesterday
8 Days to Print—Night
7 Days to Print—Just Before Dawn
7 Days to Print—Afternoon
7 Days to Print—Mid-afternoon
7 Days to Print—Evening
Yesterday
6 Days to Print
5 Days to Print—Early Hours Of Morning
5 Days to Print—Early Morning
5 Days to Print—Late Afternoon
Yesterday
5 Days to Print—Late Afternoon
5 Days to Print—Early Evening
5 Days to Print—Nightfall
4 Days to Print—Early Morning
4 Days to Print—Early Afternoon
4 Days to Print—Evening
4 Days to Print—Night
3 Days to Print—First Light Of Morning
3 Days to Print—Afternoon
Yesterday
2 Days to Print—Morning
Last Day to Print—Morning
Yesterday
Last Day to Print—Afternoon
Last Day to Print—Late Afternoon
Last Day to Print—Evening
Hitting The Stands—Barely Morning
Hitting The Stands—Morning
Hitting The Stands Early—Afternoon
Hitting The Stands—Afternoon
Yesterday
Hitting The Stands—Early Evening
Hitting The Stands—Evening
Hitting The Stands—Night
One Day After Faux Soir—Morning
One Day After Faux Soir—Evening
Two Days After Faux Soir—Early Morning
Two Days After Faux Soir—Early Morning
Yesterday
Two Days After Faux—Soir Early Morning
Yesterday
Two Days After Faux Soir—Evening
Author Note
Acknowledgments
“All art is propaganda.”
—W.E.B. DU BOIS
THE VENTRILOQUISTS
The Jester—Marc Aubrion
The Smuggler—Lada Tarcovich
The Gastromancer—David Spiegelman
The Saboteur—Theo Mullier
The Professor—Martin Victor
The Pyromaniac—Gamin
The Dybbuk—August Wolff
The Scrivener—Eliza
YESTERDAY
T
he Scrivener
THE OLD WOMAN’S neighbors said there was something peculiar about her. She walked about the city in the company of night, and she kept her umbrella closed in the rain. When the door to her flat opened, which it rarely did, a glimpse inside revealed the woman’s eccentricities: she’d covered her walls in newspapers from her era, the color of weathered bone. If they listened closely, her neighbors could hear the whispers of old words.
“That’s how I knew it was you,” said the girl to the old woman. “You couldn’t possibly be anyone else.” The girl was standing in the hallway; the old woman held open the door to her flat, but would not invite the girl in. The lessons of war—the locked doors, dead bolts, averted eyes, the secrecy—had become habit, as immovable as fingerprints.
“Age makes us all peculiar,” said the old woman.
“But the newspapers—”
“Many people read newspapers.”
She leaned on her walking stick and watched the girl’s smile fade with disappointment. Rarely did the old woman travel without her walking stick, but she refused to call it a cane: people carried canes as they neared death, and though the world had aged, she was not prepared to age with it. It was a walking stick. Aubrion had taught her that: the importance of words and names. And strange as it was, the tempest of emotions that blazed from the girl’s eyes—amusement and curiosity and improbable beliefs—resembled Aubrion with a clarity that made the old woman’s legs weak.
“Come with me,” said the old woman, and closed the door to her flat. The light that returned to the girl’s eyes lifted the old woman’s heart to a height that was unexpected, perhaps inexplicable. Together, they took the elevator down and stepped into the nascent morning.
All was quiet, save their footsteps and the early cries of the city. A few of last night’s stars clung stubbornly to the sky. Enghien gleamed with rain-dark asphalt and OPEN signs began to blink awake. Age was not so terrible, not really, but the old woman could not abide this feeling: that she was a foreigner in her home, that her country belonged to someone younger.
“What’s your name,” asked the girl, “now that the war is over?”
The astute question gave the old woman pause; this girl knew something. “Helene is the name my parents gave me,” she said. “And what is yours?”
“I’m Eliza. Where are we going, Helene?”
“To a building with blue doors.” Eliza nodded, as though she understood. Perhaps she did. Helene studied her wide, earnest eyes and asked, “How long have you been searching for me?”
“Twelve years,” said Eliza.
“And how did you find me?”
“Victor left behind documents, records of what happened. He sent them to my parents, who gave them to me before they died.”
“Martin?” said Helene.
“Professor Victor.”
“Ah, yes. I suppose I’m not surprised.”
“I’ve been piecing together the story—everything from beginning to end,” Eliza said hesitantly, as though she wasn’t used to saying it aloud. “I’ve gotten a lot further than I thought I would, to be honest. It turns out you can find anything, if you want to.”
“I’ll not deny that,” replied Helene.
They walked in silence. Helene smiled as they approached the building with the pale blue doors, pleased the occupants were still painting it the same color, that it had been blue in the forties and was blue now—a small honesty in a world of half-truths. She took a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. Since Helene moved to Brussels in the late 1980s, the city had converted the old photographer’s laboratory into a museum, replacing the tables and photo-chemicals with uniforms, polished guns, bullets, framed documents. These were just things when Helene was a girl. People called them relics now, organizing them into exhibits.
“Are we allowed in here?” said Eliza. She lowered her voice as though they were passing through a cemetery. “It seems like we’d need permission.”
“I know the museum curator. He won’t mind.”
Helene led her companion into a back room—a closet, really—with a lightbulb hanging on a string between two chairs. She pulled a string to turn on the light. The chairs bracketed a foldup table. Eliza’s brow furrowed at the austerity.
“It’s not much, I know,” said Helene. “But how can this museum compete with the—oh, I don’t know what the tourists are seeing these days—the Magritte Museum, I suppose, or the Museum of Natural Sciences? They have no money.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Eliza.
“Well, it bothers me.”
The old woman sat, instructing Eliza to do the same. Helene watched the girl settle in her chair. She was young, impossibly young; at that age, everything had meant so much and so little. Helene remembered.
“Before we talk,” said Helene, “I want to know a bit about you. You asked me earlier about my name now that the war is over. I assume you know a bit of my history, then.”
“I do,” said Eliza.
“And you’ve come to me because you want something, correct? But you wouldn’t be here unless you had something already.”
Eliza placed a leather notebook on the table between them. It was an anachronous thing, irritable with creases and stains. “I’ve used Professor Victor’s notes to assemble most of the story. It’s all in here, everything I know, laid out day-by-day as it happened. I know what became of Tarcovich and Grandjean, Mullier and Victor, Noël and Spiegelman—even August Wolff. You remember them, don’t you?”
Helene tucked her hands beneath the table to hide their tremor. She had not heard those names spoken aloud in so long that she’d come to regard them as dreams. Listening to the words fall from Eliza’s lips was like peering through a window at a different life.
“But I’m missing something,” said Eliza. “The story has a skeleton, but no flesh, and no soul. It has an outline, but no colors. When the Nazis took Belgium, it wasn’t like I learned about in school. They took lives, of course, but they took our words and thoughts, too. Le Soir was one of the first casualties. Soir Vole, the Belgians called it, for the Germans stole the most important newspaper in the country and turned it into a cheap propaganda mouthpiece.” Helene was surprised at the bitterness in Eliza’s voice. “That’s why Faux Soir was born. In 1944, the secretary general of the Front de l’Indépendance—that was one of the major resistance groups during the war—”
“Dear God, is this a dull classroom lesson?” interrupted Helene. “Do not try to impress me, Eliza. You have my attention without all of that.”
“I’m sorry.” Eliza blushed.
“Go on with you.”
“Right, then. So, when the Allies liberated Brussels, the secretary general of the FI feared people would forget what happened with Faux Soir. In the first issue of Le Soir that was released after the occupation, he wrote a eulogy for Faux Soir memorializing the artists and their work. Victor kept a clipping.” Eliza laid a yellowed slip of paper from her notebook on the table before Helene.
The old woman leaned forward, too frightened to touch it. The newspaper clipping was old, like Helene; the world had left it wrinkled and frail. At the top of the page, the words Le Soir still held their post, soldiers who’d never gone home from battle. Helene did not buy newspapers any longer, but every once in a while, she’d stop at a newsstand just to hold a copy of Le Soir—still among the most popular papers in the country, still breathing. The paper was in color now. Its photographs were polished. And young boys no longer sold it; instead, the paper-men came from faraway places, as different and new as Le Soir itself. Helene would hold the paper and stand in the wind, delighting in the idea that no one would ever guess—no one would have the slightest clue—that this old woman had such a role to play in its history.
But this paper—Eliza’s paper—this was the Le Soir Helene remembered. She wanted desperately to touch it.
“Read it,” Eliza whispered.
Helene read aloud. “‘Let us never forget that, even in battle, we are men: no strangers to our own humanity. Let us preserve a tradition of laughing through bloodshed—not only of the soldier, but of Gavroche and Peter Pan. With his humble slingshot, David killed Goliath. So too shall we crumble the colossus with feet of clay.’”
Eliza kept her hands on her notebook, as though drawing strength from its pages. “Does that mean anything to you?” she asked.
“Yes.” Helene brushed her fingers across the page. When she had fled Toulouse, shortly after the German occupation, she had followed an army train passing across the border to Spain. The men had pointed at her, skinny and bulky, wearing all the clothes she owned. “How do you do, Gavroche?” they had called. She had been small for her age, in those days; the dirt on her face had become part of her, a second layer of skin. Helene touched the name Gavroche, and her breath caught.
“I have the story of David and Goliath.” Eliza tapped the cover of her notebook. “I want to hear the story of Gavroche and Peter Pan.”
Helene covered her face with her hands. The room’s wretched cold set her bones aflame. She could not recall the moment when she became an old woman with aching bones, but there must have been such a moment. Last she remembered, she was crouching under a newspaper stand with a match in her cupped palms, ready to fight, to die, to live: ready for anything.
“I hadn’t expected to tell anyone,” Helene said, taking her hands from her face. “After it all ended, I wanted to die in obscurity. I felt it was what I needed, what I deserved. You’re young, with your notebook, and your ideas. You wouldn’t understand. I wanted to fade, like mist. But Aubrion...” She laughed, shaking her head. “By God, there is nothing he would have wanted more than for people to know.”
“I know this is sudden. If you’re not ready, Helene, you do not have to—”
The old woman slapped her hand on the table. “This has nothing to do with Helene.”
For a moment, Helene thought Eliza might recoil from this outburst. But Eliza simply tilted her head and asked, with gentle curiosity, “What do you mean?”