The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  “Your Honor!” the barrister snapped. “This felon cannot be allowed to interrupt—”

  But Grandjean was bored, which made her curious. “No, no,” she said, waving Tarcovich forward, “I’ll allow it. Not another word, barrister, or I’ll hold you in contempt.”

  Tarcovich felt the policemen’s eyes on her as she made her approach. She knew she should think of a speech for Judge Grandjean, lies and pleas that would fall into place like keys into locks, but her attention had been pulled to the judge herself. Though Grandjean’s eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion, there was an honest curiosity to them that Tarcovich could not ignore. Her lips were lovely, too; makeup was scarce in those days, so women overcompensated when they did have it, painting themselves up like cheap canvas—but not Grandjean, not the judge with her pale sardonic lips. Lada admonished herself for noticing such things.

  “All right, you’re at the bench at last,” Grandjean said. “What on earth is it?”

  Tarcovich leaned forward and whispered, “The Front de l’Indépendance has need of your services.”

  Grandjean’s eyes widened. She looked past Tarcovich. “Guards, take this woman back to her cell.”

  The policemen seized Tarcovich from behind, their cruel fingers digging into her skin. “Grandjean!” she said. “Grandjean, you are a woman, and I am a woman, and we know what happens to us in the end! Please, I’m begging you, the Germans—”

  “If she says anything more, take her behind the courthouse and shoot her,” said Andree Grandjean.

  Lada’s chains shook, the metal digging into her wrists. After all that, after all that, it would end this way—and Lada would rot in a cell for Marc Aubrion’s foolish joke, for a theft that had meant nothing. Grandjean’s gavel came down, the judge’s words chasing Tarcovich out of the courtroom. “Case dismissed.”

  The Pyromaniac

  After the morning shift at my newsstand, I visited the boys at a nearby textile mill, playing my usual games: dancing between the machines, pulling faces at the overseers. Someone raised an alarm, and the manager chased me out with a broom, so I waited outside until my friends’ workday ended.

  My work as a paperboy spared me the factories. I do not know the true scope of the horrors, but I have heard the tales, and I have seen the ghost-eyes and bruises. Children did not look like children back then. They came out of the factory at dusk, smoking cigarettes, their faces shining with sweat, their backs bent from hours spent crooked over a sewing machine. The only thing that betrayed their youth was their fingers. They had child-size fingers that they poked at each other, laughing until they coughed up grime.

  I should note, I think, that all my friends were boys. That was just the way of things: boys took jobs during the war, and girls found it more difficult to do so. It often preyed on me, rousing me in the night: the realization that if these lads knew they’d been following a girl from one caper to the next, they would turn on me with the violent cruelty unique to young children.

  “What are you doing here?” the boys asked me.

  “Marc Aubrion wants us to steal some explosives,” I said.

  One of the boys spat tobacco. “From who?” he said.

  “The Germans.”

  “People who steal stuff from the Germans get dead.”

  “Maybe they do, maybe they don’t.”

  “You said it’s Aubrion’s job? What does he need stuff stolen for?”

  I’d been present for all the FI meetings, and I knew it had something to do with Le Soir, though the Nazis thought they were doing something different with La Libre Belgique. But my knowledge ended there. It didn’t matter to me, the fact that I didn’t understand, but I was smart enough to realize that it would matter to my friends. So I said: “Something big.”

  My friends traded glances. Despite their cigarettes and bent backs, they were still kids—kids who couldn’t afford comic books and were desperate for masked crusaders. When Aubrion started using the lads for jobs, I became his field commander. I translated his frantic blueprints into terms the kids could understand. “Deliver this message to our spy in the pub,” he’d tell me, and I would assemble my forces to dress his assignments in promises and stories. I wonder now whether he knew what these assignments meant to me—to us—whether he understood that having a purpose was as important as the food in our bellies. I wonder if he knew what I would have built for him. As the boys smoked, watching me gravely, I’d spin adjectives for Marc Aubrion; I would do what I always did, turning him into a comic-book hero.

  And these kids would’ve done anything for him. I could see it in their faces, even then, the adoration, the hope: “A big job, huh?” they asked me, probably imagining gold and capes and tall buildings. “Damn, lads, Aubrion’s pulling a big job. What is it?” And, then, inevitably, the childishness would give in to a bit of pragmatism (“What does it pay?”) before they were back to being kids again (“Will the whole world know about it?”). My God, Aubrion would’ve loved it. He would have put on his superhero mask with both hands.

  15 DAYS TO PRINT

  LATE MORNING

  The Dybbuk

  HERR MANNING WAS SPEAKING, and August Wolff could hear none of it. Though Manning was not Wolff’s superior—he had no official rank—the High Command always sent him to deliver Wolff’s orders, reciting instructions in an insipid monotone. But Wolff’s hearing had stopped at the word library. The Gruppenführer interrupted him.

  “A library, Manning?” said Wolff.

  “Yes, Gruppenführer. A library of perverse works.” Manning shifted, displaying the perspiration stains on his shirt. “These are the orders. Himmler was explicit.”

  And Himmler was explicit, so there was no arguing with the orders. Wolff gathered a battalion, commanded them to pack their flamethrowers, and set off to Brussels.

  The Library of the Covenant of the Three lounged between a haberdashery and a boarded-up toymaker’s workshop. The library was a small, one-story affair: modest architecture for Brussels. Wolff ushered his men forward, noting the squat roof and grimy windows.

  “Evacuate them first,” said Wolff.

  Wolff’s officers hesitated. One of them said, “Himmler’s orders were to fire with everyone inside.”

  “So they were.” Wolff’s mouth was sandpaper. The officer had not addressed him by his rank. “My mistake.” The officer tilted his head. Wolff cursed himself, for he never admitted errors in front of his men. That was suicide. “You may fire when ready.”

  It was a better fate, in a way. If they were evacuated first, if the intellectuals and deviants and homosexuals and tiny lads with large books were ushered out of the building in chains, they would likely be sent to a camp or prison, maybe to Fort Breendonk. Wolff had toured the fort only once, at Himmler’s invitation. He’d felt ill for weeks after. Perhaps even this death—which Wolff had begun to hear, the screams of those being burned alive—perhaps even this death was more humane than that one.

  That night, Wolff would type a brief note and place it in his memos folder. He was already composing it in his head. October 26, —43. First of what promises to be many library fires this month. Library of the Covenant of the Three in Brussels. Contained a wealth of perverse and illegal works: books on Jewish cultural thought, lurid poetry, several books on homosexuality and the mind of the cross-dresser, at least a dozen tomes glorifying deviant behavior. The fire destroyed all.

  Wolff’s men carried out books by the armful, depositing them in a pile in front of the library—then the flamethrowers, and the smell. August Wolff had not been raised with a religion. He was a good German lad who did his lessons and loved his mother and his country. He read books. He was taught that words were the rain that watered all things. “That boy will be great someday.” They all said it: his teachers, his scoutmasters. The boy with the ugly handwriting would do beautiful things.

  The Jester

&
nbsp; Aubrion lifted his eyes to the thick-bellied morning clouds. Their snow would pave the dazed and mumbling streets that night. Belgium’s homeless would die in it. Rooftop tiles and broken glass ran in the streets like ruined makeup. There was nowhere to shelter from the cold, and the Germans used farmers’ wheelbarrows as carts for the dead. Men who had been wounded during the invasion used tree branches and plywood as crutches, too weak to stand; Jews huddled together in doorways; refugees spoke to each other from within torn, colorful rags. But it was always the ordinary people whose faces broke Aubrion’s heart. Their clothing wasn’t torn, and they looked well-fed, but there was nothing behind their eyes. Aubrion kept crossing the street to avoid them, big groups of them walking together and saying nothing.

  Aubrion had not wanted to meet Spiegelman for precisely this reason: the smell of gunmetal like the taste of blood in his throat, the look of the world—it made him feel as though he was in the early stages of a fatal illness and could do nothing but wait for his symptoms to appear. But Spiegelman’s telex had insisted he could not stray far from the Nazi outpost in the city. So, here he was.

  He walked alongside a canal lined with trees clinging desperately to October. Winter had begun to exhale on their branches, threatening them with snow and ice. Still, the trees blushed their happy orange. Aubrion jumped up to pluck a little red leaf from a branch.

  A vagrant with a crooked spine paced in front of a boarded-up butcher shop. Aubrion was fascinated by his feet, elephant-swollen and cracked like the road under them. As Aubrion looked on, the man began to trace shapes in the air, his veiny arms trembling with the task. Laughing, Aubrion wondered if that was how he would look when Faux Soir was all over, just another madman spinning words out of nothing.

  Aubrion arrived at the coffeehouse to find Spiegelman sitting in the back, taking nervous sips from a mug. With a nod of greeting, Aubrion joined him and said, “Quickly, now. It’s bad enough that we’re talking about this in public at all.”

  “Agreed,” replied Spiegelman. He rubbed at his red eyes with the backs of his hands, like a little boy up past his bedtime.

  “What’s the matter with you? You look worn to the bone.”

  Spiegelman stiffened. “Should we get on to business?”

  “Fine, fine.” Aubrion tilted his chair on its back legs, holding up his hands. “First things first. You got the invitation to Victor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. The auction’s not for another few days, but I didn’t want to delay. Second, Victor, Wellens and Mullier are putting together a curriculum. You should speak to them.” Aubrion waved a hand. “Find out what they need.”

  Spiegelman paused with his mug raised. “A curriculum? For a school?”

  “A fake school.”

  “But is the curriculum real?”

  “No, it’s also fake.”

  “What makes it fake?”

  Aubrion massaged his forehead. “I suppose the curriculum itself is not technically fake.”

  “But the school is?”

  “Yes.”

  Spiegelman tilted his head.

  “As I said, talk to Victor, Wellens and Mullier.”

  “Does Mullier talk?”

  Aubrion laughed shortly. “Don’t interpret that laugh as a compliment. I was mostly surprised you made a joke.”

  “I’ve learned to make light of things,” said Spiegelman, allowing a smile to escape.

  “Don’t give yourself that much credit, either.” Aubrion waved over the barman and ordered a coffee. “Another for you?” he asked Spiegelman.

  “No, thank you.”

  Aubrion settled back with his mug. “We should begin talking about the content of the paper.”

  “I agree.” Spiegelman leaned in as Aubrion spoke, and there was hunger in his eyes. His hands closed around each new mad scheme like they were the last of his rations. Aubrion reveled in it. That was what he liked best about his work; the men and women of the FI, former shopkeepers and teachers and builders, people with nice furniture and reasonable salaries—they could have done nothing, could’ve kept their heads down and gone about their business. But they didn’t. Those who could have done nothing instead did everything. They put their whole selves to work for the cause. So it was with Spiegelman. Every bone and muscle in Spiegelman’s body was prepared for this task.

  “I want the paper to mimic the tone and layout of Le Soir,” said Aubrion. “If you’re a humble salesman picking up his evening paper on the way home to mama and junior, you won’t even notice anything’s amiss—until you start reading more closely. Do you know how Le Soir always has that obnoxious feature where they report on how the German army is doing? What’s it called again?”

  “I believe it’s called ‘How the German Army is Doing.’”

  “Something like that, right? Where they go on and on about how the Storm Battalion and the War Hound Battalion marched valiantly in lightning-fast-turtle position or whatever it is, to defeat the Allies in some battle that didn’t actually happen.”

  “I think I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Our Faux Soir will have the same sort of thing, you see, except that it will be zwanze. We’ll have some nonsense about a campaign that didn’t really happen.”

  Spiegelman nodded, though he looked befuddled. “Anything else?”

  “I also want photographs of Hitler.”

  Several coffeehouse patrons turned in awe.

  “Whatever for?” Spiegelman whispered.

  “Think about it, Herr Spiegelman.”

  Spiegelman’s jaw clenched. “Don’t call me that, please.”

  “But think about it! The people never see photographs of Hitler in Le Soir—or in any paper. Do you know who else they never see? God, that’s who. Hitler has become this untouchable, unseeable, unbeatable thing. If we have a photograph of him, maybe doing something ridiculous, like fleeing from his own army, the people will know he’s not a god.”

  “Is there a photograph of Hitler fleeing from his own army?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “It matters because you want one.” Aubrion stared at Spiegelman, who added: “Right?”

  “Anything can be made to look like anything else. You of all people should know that.”

  Spiegelman leaned back in his chair as though all the air had been knocked from his chest. “Let me back up a step. There’s something that isn’t quite right. You and the Germans want the same thing.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Let me finish. You want the same thing—to sway public opinion.” Aubrion watched Spiegelman’s eyes move back and forth across his face, the way one might read a book. “How is Faux Soir any different from what the Germans have done with Le Soir? Why is one lie more or less ethical than another?”

  Aubrion felt his hands curling into fists. “I do not understand the question.”

  Spiegelman enunciated: “What separates you?”

  “You’ve read Victor’s reports from the camps?”

  “My family lived it, Monsieur Aubrion.” Spiegelman’s voice was so low Aubrion could hardly hear him. “I did not need to.”

  “The Allies have no Auschwitz. That is the difference.”

  “But you would use Le Soir to lie to people, same as the Germans would.”

  Aubrion poked his finger in Spiegelman’s face. “Not the same as the Germans would. The Germans use Le Soir to take the people’s hope. We will use Faux Soir to give it back.”

  It was all so simple when put that way, and Spiegelman stared at the table, absently flattening his hair with his palm. A pause took shape between the two.

  “I will begin looking at past issues of Le Soir,” Spiegelman said finally. “I’ll report back with some ideas.”

  “Good, good.” Aubrion tapped the rim of his mug, oblivious to how irritatin
g it was. “Write up a few columns, if you can. If our plans for production and distribution fall into place as quickly as I want, we need to be ready to typeset and ship out as soon as possible.”

  “I understand.” Spiegelman finished his coffee and got up to leave. He put on a blue fedora that matched his suit. “Until next time, Monsieur Aubrion.”

  Aubrion, who did not own any fedoras or matching suits, responded: “For the love of God, Herr Spiegelman, try to be funny, will you?”

  YESTERDAY

  The Scrivener

  “YOU’LL WANT TO know what they were feeling for each other,” said Helene. “But even now, it is difficult for me to characterize their relationship.”

  “What do you mean?” said Eliza.

  “Let me see.” The old woman leaned back in her chair to contemplate. Then: “In some ways, Aubrion and Spiegelman understood each other better than anyone. In other ways, they understood each other not at all. Looking into another man’s face and seeing a mirrored version of yourself can be exhilarating, as I saw myself in Aubrion—but it’s never really a mirror at all, you see, but a murky pond, with wavering and uncertain shapes. Aubrion had dirt under his fingernails. Spiegelman did not. And yet they seemed to be driven by shared desires, animated by the same hopes. It baffled them both.” Helene smiled. “It baffles me even now.”

  15 DAYS TO PRINT

  AS EVENING FELL

  The Smuggler

  TARCOVICH’S FITFUL SLEEP was interrupted by the jingle of keys. She opened her eyes to see Andree Grandjean opening the door of her cell. The judge was nearly unrecognizable without her wig and robes, her auburn curls coming down in fits across her shoulders. Grandjean put her hands in her pockets.

  “Come to execute me yourself?” Tarcovich said dryly. It was not the best quip, but she was half-asleep, so she forgave herself. She threw her legs over the side of her bunk. The green trousers and work shirt suited the judge, holding her softest places in firm, gentle hands. The quirk in her lips betrayed an amusement that—Tarcovich was unhappy to admit it—reminded her of Marc Aubrion. But Grandjean shared none of Aubrion’s smugness; hers was an easy, well-worn smile. Only Grandjean’s hair felt improbable: childish curls making up their own minds about where they would fall and where they wouldn’t.