“Fair, fair, but—for God’s sake, coach him a little, won’t you, Martin?”
“I will do my best.”
“Spiegelman.” Aubrion turned to Spiegelman, now seated on a low stool, rubbing his eyes. His hair, normally so neat, stood up in protesting curls. “Have you started working on the content of Faux Soir?”
“I’ve finished the first draft of a column.”
“Just one?”
“I was delayed last night.” Spiegelman’s eyes, which I remember as auburn and unnaturally bright, were a shade too dull this morning. He looked like a shell of himself, a bony ghost that had been forced into Spiegelman’s tailored suit. “A meeting went on too long.”
“What meeting?” said Mullier.
Spiegelman made an empty gesture. “A meeting.”
“Who with?”
For a long instant, Spiegelman did not say anything. Then he lifted his head, exposing us to his pale, unshaven face and the twin hollows beneath his eyes. His eyes were red; they reminded me of an image from my past, from Toulouse, of dead animals the Nazis left in the wake of their tanks. “Himmler,” said Spiegelman finally.
“Oh, God.” Noël lifted his eyes in prayer.
“You met with Heinrich Himmler?” said Aubrion.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
I saw Mullier’s hands curl into fists, calloused from decades in the bodies of printing presses. “Ask for an autograph, did you?” he grunted.
Spiegelman was up and in Mullier’s face more quickly than I believed possible. “Fuck you,” he snarled.
“You would, now, wouldn’t you?”
David Spiegelman, who I didn’t think capable of violence, seized Mullier’s collar. Mullier swatted his hand away, then shoved Spiegelman to the floor.
“Theo!” said Tarcovich, and “God’s sake!” cried Noël.
Aubrion and I ran to help Spiegelman to his feet. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he kept saying, leaning on me for support, but he was trying not to weep, jaw clenched against the pain. This moment comes to me often. It is strange, isn’t it? Nothing happened; this was a minor incident, a footnote in something far greater. But think of it. Many people blamed the war for the terrible things they did, as if the war were a ringmaster leading us through a show—but I have never held the war responsible for the blood I spilled, or the friends I lost. I am responsible and no other. When the burden of my accountability becomes too great, though, I think of the time I rushed to help David Spiegelman. No one asked me to do it. It was an instinct. My instinct was to help, not to hurt.
When Spiegelman was steady again, Mullier advanced on him with raised fists.
“Stop it,” snapped Tarcovich, getting between them. “Theo, don’t be an animal.”
“He’s one of them.”
“Don’t be a child, either,” said Noël.
“Fuck you,” Spiegelman repeated through tears. “I do what I do because I have to.”
“It’s all right, David.” Aubrion squeezed his shoulder.
“It’s not.”
“It’s all right. Really. You do not have to justify anything. We’ve all made our choices.”
Spiegelman shook Aubrion off him. “Clearly I do.” He sat—collapsed—on the floor.
Tarcovich knelt by Spiegelman. He started to sit up, but she rested a hand on his stomach and whispered something in his ear. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.” We all watched as his eyes fluttered closed, a smile rising up to meet them.
I have long speculated on what Lada Tarcovich said to him. But the words are unknowable and unimportant. Only their quiet exchange of compassion matters for this story. Tarcovich’s gift was for Spiegelman, not for me. All I can do is tug on the ribbons in wonder.
14 DAYS TO PRINT
AFTERNOON
The Smuggler
EARLIER THAT MORNING, Lada Tarcovich had made an agreement with herself. She would visit Andree Grandjean again on two conditions: first, Lada would not tell Marc Aubrion where she had gone until she damn well felt like it, and second, Lada would not bring up the Front de l’Indépendance unless Grandjean did first. The problem with that second condition, though, was that it invited the question of why Lada was visiting Andree at all if not to talk about Faux Soir and the FI’s need for funding. But Lada rarely concerned herself with why. “‘Why’,” she often said, “is a bookmark that keeps falling out of the novel.”
According to Martin Victor, who had been observing Grandjean’s activities, the judge received a delivery of wine every Saturday at one o’clock; Grandjean was known for getting people to do what she wanted, and a lot of that involved getting them drunk. Lada watched, eight blocks away from Grandjean’s courthouse, as men from the Wouters Wine Distribution Company loaded open crates of wine into a horse-drawn carriage. The men handled them easily, tossing the crates from hand to hand without regard for their contents.
Tarcovich kept her distance, walking past the factories and workshops on the outskirts of Enghien’s industrial district. Sawdust crackled beneath her shoes. Dozens of empty apartments had been hollowed out and repurposed since the start of the war, their colorful awnings replaced with Nazi flags. Through the windows and wide-mouthed doors, Tarcovich saw people at work over sawhorses and benches, using whatever materials they could find. Metal was scarce, of course, as was wood. Everyone used tools that had belonged to someone else, probably someone who had died in the war. Snow flurries fell like a gentle veil around the shops.
The men of Wouters Wine Distribution Company took a break, an activity that largely involved telling foul jokes and urinating on a footpath. When that was done, they walked over to a metalworker’s shop down the main road. Tarcovich ducked behind a stack of barrels that reeked of sulfur. The men chatted with their friends—two of them, a short man with a bent back, and a blunt-faced fellow. Quickly, while they were distracted, Lada darted over to the carriage.
Her heart thudding, Lada Tarcovich examined the crates of wine sitting beside the carriage. They were open, but covered in tarp. She threw aside the tarp to unpack one of the larger crates, stashing wine bottles behind a bush. With one last glance at the men to make sure they were occupied, Tarcovich climbed into the crate, covering her body in a greasy cloth.
She remained like that for a while, breathing grease and old grapes. When she finally heard the men’s chatter, Lada held her breath, sweating with the effort it took to remain still.
“Wouters is an arse,” she heard one of them say—and then she was lifted into the air. She bit her tongue to keep from crying out in surprise, tasting iron. “He thinks he can marry off that daughter of his?”
There was a brief sensation of weightlessness—“I once had a cow with a prettier face than hers,” said the second man—and Tarcovich’s crate hit the bottom of the carriage. She bounced, clutching at the tarp, then settled back into the wood with a coccyx-shattering thunk.
For all her foresight, Tarcovich had not planned on what to say when, a few hours later, Andree Grandjean unpacked one of the crates delivered to her office to find it stuffed with a failed, partially suffocated prostitute. And so Lada settled on: “Hello.”
Grandjean, for her part, settled on: “Jesus fucking Christ!” She drew a pistol from somewhere, leveling it at Tarcovich. “Don’t move.”
“I don’t think I can,” said Tarcovich, who was still crumpled up in the crate. “My legs fell asleep three hours ago.”
“I told you not to come back here.”
“I’ll admit I don’t know you very well, but I have a feeling neither of us is particularly good at following directions.” Bracing herself on the sides of the crate, Tarcovich tried to stand.
“Don’t move, Lada.” Grandjean cocked the pistol. “I have shot people before.”
“We are in the middle of a world war. Shooting people is not as unique as it once was.” Perhaps it wa
s three hours of airlessness, but Tarcovich was flattered that Grandjean remembered her name. The judge was dressed in navy trousers and a tight shirt, and the color of her eyes deepened with fury; they matched the snow-riddled sky. Standing slowly, Tarcovich held up her hands. “What can I do to persuade you I mean no harm?”
“The opposite of everything you are doing now.” Grandjean’s hands were shaking. It was becoming increasingly apparent that she had never shot anyone before.
“Oh. Apologies.”
“Why on earth did you come back?”
“May I step out of the crate?”
“Answer my question.”
“Answer mine.”
“No. Fine. Yes.” Grandjean stepped back, her grip on the pistol wavering. “But do it slowly.”
Her hands still raised, Tarcovich lifted one foot and then the other, easing herself out of the crate. Her right foot felt smashed, her back felt bruised, both her hands felt swollen, and her left leg no longer felt anything at all.
“Why did you come back?” Grandjean repeated.
“I wanted to approach the bench again.”
“What?”
“I had a question.”
“What about?”
“About why you’ve taken such an interest in the queers.”
Grandjean’s eyes widened. Tarcovich searched their depths for meaning. “I freed you last time,” said Grandjean. “I can’t do it again, do you understand? You’ll have to remain in prison. It’s your own doing.”
“Are you one?” said Tarcovich, hardly able to believe she’d said it. The air around Tarcovich and Grandjean seemed to glow, the currents of something new humming between them.
“Am I one what?”
“A queer.”
“No, I’m not a queer,” said Grandjean—but did she hesitate, or was that Lada’s hope? The judge’s pulse was visible in her throat.
“Then from whence comes the interest?”
“What?”
“In the bloody queers, that’s what.”
The judge hesitated, and then: “My mother was one. But no one knew about it. She remained married to my father for many years, enduring everything he saw fit to give her. I watched and told no one. All the dignity of a human being, stripped away.” Grandjean dropped the pistol and looked down at her hands, shocked at the confession that had fallen from them. And then it showed itself suddenly, catastrophically: the realization that Lada wanted her. The pistol lay vulgar on the floor. “I have some power, not a great deal, but some,” said Grandjean. “I use it how I can, to help who I can. They’ve never harmed anyone, you know.”
Tarcovich took a step forward to kick the pistol out of the way. Grandjean did not seem to notice.
“But you’re not a queer?” said Tarcovich.
“Why do you keep asking?” Grandjean whispered. Her lips quivered. She was not wearing any lipstick, Tarcovich noted, and she did not need it. Her lips were red-soft and plump.
“I’ll stop once you’ve answered.” Lada took another step forward.
“I already answered.”
“Say it again.”
“I am not.”
“Not what?”
“A queer.”
“You’re quite certain?”
Andree Grandjean looked up at Tarcovich, who was suddenly close to her, so close she could smell the sweetness of her breath.
“Yes,” she said, but Tarcovich silenced the word with her lips.
14 DAYS TO PRINT
EARLIER THAT AFTERNOON
The Jester
THE OTHER MAN—what was his name? Renard? Lenard? It couldn’t have been Tenard, because that was Aubrion’s schoolteacher, the one with the permanent black eye—the other man, whatever his name, tossed Aubrion a crate. “Wouters is an arse,” Not-Tenard said. “He thinks he can marry off that daughter of his?”
Aubrion hoisted the crate into the carriage, then bent over to rub his back. His muscles were protesting harder than the French. “I once had a cow with a prettier face than hers,” he said, and then Aubrion was worried, because it wasn’t his best line. But Not-Tenard, a watery-eyed man who cared little for tasteful humor, grinned and slapped Aubrion’s sore back. Aubrion made a sound he’d hitherto only heard from roadkill.
“Come, it’s already half past the hour. Grandjean will have a fit.”
Still rubbing his back, Aubrion climbed into the carriage alongside Not-Tenard.
He’d left the FI headquarters shortly after Lada, welcoming a change in the air after the confrontation between Spiegelman and Mullier. Though Tarcovich had urged him not to follow her, assuring him she did not require supervision, Aubrion was never one for listening. “But what if something goes wrong?” he’d insisted.
As he and Not-Tenard rode off, Aubrion scanned the countryside for anyone vaguely German-looking. Earlier, when he was just a few blocks from the FI headquarters, he’d noticed the whispered footsteps and retreating shadows of men following him through Enghien. This was to be expected, of course: he would have been more surprised if Wolff had not assigned soldiers to tail him. Aubrion was due to meet with Wolff today, to update the Gruppenführer on La Libre Belgique, and Aubrion wanted to disappear for a while before he had to be in the same room as that man: hence, a slapped-together disguise consisting of a false mustache, a peasant’s tunic, hair dye, and a walking stick. As far as he could tell, Aubrion had lost his followers hours ago.
“Let me ask you,” said Aubrion the laborer, “do you read Le Soir?”
“I don’t read much,” said Not-Tenard.
“But when you do read—”
“It’s shit, but what else is there? My father read the paper every day of his life. He was a baker. Didn’t ever do much schooling, but he read the paper.” Not-Tenard glanced over at Aubrion. “What’d you ask for?”
“The quality hasn’t been so great lately.”
“What’d you mean, ‘quality’?”
“It’s not very good. It used to be better.”
“Sure. As I said, it’s shit.”
Clearly agitated by Aubrion’s questions, Not-Tenard whipped at the horse. When Aubrion worked for an art critic’s journal, back when there was still art worth critiquing, his audience looked like him. They were men and women who loved art and who had the knowledge—or who believed they had the knowledge—to think meaningful thoughts about it. The war had repainted his audience: now, it was Not-Tenard, or rather men who looked, sounded, thought and smelled like Not-Tenard. Something like panic grabbed hold of Aubrion’s heart, for what did he know of men like Not-Tenard? Marc Aubrion had not grown up wealthy, not by any means, but he’d resided in that comfortable pause between rich and middle class. When he was a boy, he had books and fresh milk in the icebox. Aubrion got his professional start as a comic, touring pubs between university courses. His jokes were pretentious by design, almost by necessity, and certainly by default. If Not-Tenard saw a photograph of Hitler running away from his own troops, would he laugh? So preoccupied was Aubrion that he did not notice when Not-Tenard drew the carriage to a halt. Aubrion blinked. In his absence, they had arrived at Grandjean’s courthouse.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Not-Tenard.
Aubrion looked into Not-Tenard’s face, the man’s nose streaked with alluvial veins and broken blood vessels, his eyes reddened by last night’s bottle. He ached to ask the laborer what made him laugh—or, better still, what made him cry. The key to knowing what a man finds funny is to find out what he fears, Aubrion always said. He trembled with his desire to pin the man against the wall and demand a catalog of his favorite one-liners, his least favorite puns. Instead, he said: “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
The Dybbuk
“What do you have for me?” Wolff asked Aubrion, who’d entered his office at the Nazi headquarters without knocking.
/> Aubrion handed Wolff a slip of paper. “An update on La Libre Belgique, with compliments from the Front de l’Indépendance.” Smirking, Aubrion bowed. Then he threw himself into the chair in front of Wolff’s desk, his legs sprawled out in front of him.
A faint outline was visible through the paper’s skin, the evidence of a drawing on the other side of the paper. With bile rising in his throat, Wolff turned it over and held up the paper, disgusted to see that he was trembling—for Aubrion had written his note on the back of an FI propaganda poster.
I remember the poster well. Eight thousand copies were distributed around Belgium before 1943, pasted on buildings and handed out at alehouses. It was a simple drawing of a German soldier thrusting his bayonet into the stomach of a young child, while a banner dances above him, proclaiming: “Für Gott und Vaterland!” The artist had imitated the style of the era’s comic books, with thick lines and primary colors.
Wolff was hardly amused. “Do you think this is funny, monsieur?” he said softly.
“You would not let me send you a telex. Since I had to be here anyway, I thought I might bring you a small gift.”
“We do not telex state secrets.”
“Which is why I wrote your state secrets on my state secret.”
Still trembling, Wolff crumpled the poster. Aubrion appeared to find this even funnier. He bent over, laughing, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Perhaps, the Gruppenführer thought, he had been misguided: Himmler was right to think that they should destroy rather than repurpose what these small, untidy men had built.
“Where did you go this afternoon?” asked Wolff.
“Oh, here and there.”
“I’m going to give you one more chance to answer my question, monsieur.”
“Christ, Wolff, did you have a bad night? All right, all right, don’t look at me that way. I was only having a little fun. It gets tiresome to be followed everywhere.”
“I will have my men do it more discreetly.”
“Why don’t you have your men not do it at all?”
The Ventriloquists Page 13
