The Ventriloquists

by E. R. Ramzipoor

  “Look here, Gamin,” continued Noël. “This is the proofing area. She is locking the slugs into what is called a bed press, to print a draft of whatever line our friends typed out.”

  “Is this the final thing?”

  “The final copy of the paper? No, not at all. As I said, it’s only a draft. If there are any errors, the slug must go back to the linotypists and be recast.”

  “If there are no errors?”

  “The slug is sent to the presses.”

  “It seems like a good deal of work, monsieur.”

  Noël and the woman laughed. “That’s because it is a good deal of work, Gamin. Come, let me show you the presses.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen presses before, monsieur.”

  “These are much larger and more complicated than our presses.”

  He did show me the presses—all twenty-seven. And then it was back to the linotypists. Ballancourt had made another error, and as I watched, he quickly ran his fingers down the first two columns of the keyboard, typing ETAOIN SHRDLU to finish the line and start over. Noël told me that the letters on the linotype machine were arranged by letter frequency, so the most common letters—ETAOIN and SHRDLU—occupied the left-hand columns.

  After that, I grew bored, and I wondered why the devil Noël was subjecting me to every sight and small wonder the factory had to offer. I now know: René Noël was trying to instill in me the idea that everyone in that factory was culpable. Think of it. I was culpable. The lads who brought Oorlinckx and Ballancourt sandwiches and beer after six hours of work—they were culpable. Producing a newspaper was not a one-man job, or even a hundred-man job. It was a breathless undertaking that required so many willing traitors.

  HITTING THE STANDS

  BARELY MORNING

  The Jester

  AUBRION WANTED TO scream at someone, perhaps himself. He held himself rigidly, pacing the factory, opening and closing his hands. Aubrion’s lungs felt leaden with the smell of oil and paper; he was breathing twice as fast as he usually did, though whether that was because of the quality of the air or his emotional state, he could not say. You must understand that Aubrion had been so occupied—so obsessed—with this paper for weeks, that it had become everything to him, his first wish and last wish and his only love, and now he’d handed it off to someone else. He was not a linotypist. He did not know how to calibrate distribution mechanisms. He could not fix broken machines. He had some working knowledge of printing presses, but only enough to get in the way. Aubrion’s sole task until the paper’s completion was to remain out of sight. The effort of not-doing must have been unbearable.

  A lad brought him a cheese sandwich. Though he accepted it, Aubrion did not eat. He eventually handed it to me.

  “You just refused your last meal.” Smirking, Tarcovich punched Aubrion’s shoulder.

  Aubrion rubbed his eyes. “When did you get here?”

  “Now.”

  “I thought you were with—”

  “I was.”

  “Christ, what time is it?” said Aubrion.

  “You have a watch.”

  “My eyes hurt too much to look at it.”

  “Two watches, in fact.”

  “And my brain hurts too much to remember which is the one that works.”

  “It’s nearly three.”

  “In the afternoon?”

  “In the morning, Marc.”

  “Already?” Aubrion listened to the groans of machinery. The curfew had hushed the world outside the factory, and exhaustion had quieted those inside. Only the languid creaks and grunts of well-oiled machines remained. He closed his eyes. “Did you know,” said Aubrion, opening his eyes, “that most people die around now?”

  “Around the time they decide to hoodwink the Gestapo? Yes, I did know that.”

  “No, no, at three in the morning. I knew a physician who used to watch all the worst plays, as I did. Really an interesting fellow. He told me he always sat with his patients until three in the morning, on the dot. If they made it to four, he said—well, that was it for them. The worst was over. But few of them ever did. They were fine at one, fine at two, but when three came along—” Aubrion put his thumb down. “Three was the axeman.”

  Lada twirled an unlit cigarette. “Wellens says they’re printing the last of the papers. He asked for you. A final inspection, or some nonsense. As though we have time at all to be choosy.”

  “How did you...” Aubrion let the sentence fade, then tried again. “How did you leave things with Grandjean?”

  Tarcovich smiled. “I left things.” Her cigarette broke in her hands. “We should go.”

  We’d all gathered around a printing press. Noël and Wellens were talking softly while Victor milled about nearby. When Wellens saw Aubrion approach, he brightened.

  “Monsieur Aubrion!” he said, and before Aubrion had any say in the matter, the businessman had pressed him into an awkward hug. Unsure what else to do, Aubrion took a cue from the king and surrendered to the embrace. Wellens stepped back, grinning. “I am overcome, sir. I read your paper in its entirety.”

  “You did?” Aubrion said, dumbly.

  “Yes! My God, my God, a finer piece of zwanze has never been produced, not in all my days. Look there. We are nearly finished with the last copy.”

  Aubrion steered his numb body toward the printing press. As he looked on, one copy, and then another, and then another, and then the last—four of them—separate copies, identical—each was ejected from the mouth of the thing. They rested together, like famished lovers, in the belly of the press. Aubrion slid one of the papers out of the machine; it took two tries, for his fingers were oversized, his body cold. He held it as though he’d never held a newspaper before, for the body in his hands was new, and he’d not yet learned its secrets. But then it came back to him, that familiar rhythm. Newspapers have a heartbeat; that’s what Aubrion always used to say. Words have a pulse. And this paper—its heart had just started beating. The paper felt eager and fresh in his hands, the way young newspapers always did. Except that Aubrion had always read other people’s newspapers, other people’s books, pamphlets, leaflets, other people’s posters, other people’s magazines, their poetry, fiction, journals, other people’s articles, other people’s words, and these words were his, his, they belonged to him. Aubrion unfolded the paper with a snap, releasing the smell of ink. Oorlinckx and Ballancourt and that woman with the matrices—they’d done their jobs well. The text was even, the photographs sharp.

  He flipped through the paper, searching for imperfections. The stamp on the front, to the right of the title—forty-eight cents for a copy—was a bit grainy. But Aubrion liked it. It was charming, like a bucktooth on a child. And the typeface of the title, that was good: brash and monumental, the way Aubrion wanted it. Satisfied with the look of the paper, he started to read. It was stuff he’d read before, of course; stuff he had memorized by now. He’d written it: he and his pen had agonized over it. But it was somehow new again, funny again. Aubrion laughed at the photograph of Hitler (the poor man had not wanted that!). He smiled at the editorials, the obituaries. He stood in the middle of the factory—I remember standing behind him, watching his shoulders tremble with laughter—and read it cover to cover, the way Peter the Happy Citizen might read it tomorrow after a long day at work. I have seen small beauties and great wonders all across this earth, but the shape of his back and neck and the paper in his hands are the most precious things I own. I watched him for ages, memorizing everything. And then Marc Aubrion folded his copy of Faux Soir, once across the top, once across the middle, and he looked at us with the eye of a man who’d seen God, or who’d created Him.

  HITTING THE STANDS

  MORNING

  The Dybbuk

  SOMEONE HAD TUCKED the newspaper under Wolff’s door while he slept. A quarter of the paper was still trapped beneath the wood, so the Gruppen
führer could see only part of the title, just La Libre, printed in a wavering typeface. He looked down at it. The printers would be working on the paper all through the night—that’s what Manning had told him. And yet here it was already, sticking out from under his door. The Gruppenführer picked it up and held it away from his body, like it might burst into flames at the slightest provocation. He knew he should feel grateful the printers worked so quickly, proud the Reich was capable of such a feat, but the text was slightly lopsided, and some of the photographs had not come out well, and neither the printers nor the typesetters truly cared about what they were doing with their hands. There were no architects in the Reich, only builders.

  He unfolded La Libre Belgique. This was the propaganda bomb of which he’d dreamed for years. But he felt nothing. It was far worse: he felt incomplete. Wolff considered summoning Spiegelman; for all his faults, Spiegelman had a competent eye, and the man was a craftsman. But summoning him would have been crassly unprofessional. And so August Wolff reviewed the paper alone. When he was done, he sent for Manning.

  Normally punctual, even aggressively so, Manning arrived nearly thirty minutes after Wolff had sent for him. He knocked, then entered without waiting for the Gruppenführer’s permission. Breathing hard, he took the seat across from Wolff, then helped himself to a drink.

  “Manning,” said Wolff, with a nervous smile, “it’s hardly ten in the morning.”

  “Is it?” Manning drank, smoothed his hair. “I beg your pardon, Gruppenführer. It has been a rather long night.” He glanced behind him, hesitating. “There are rumors Himmler is about to conduct a comprehensive review of our records. Do you recall the last time that happened? He means to look at everything. At least, that was what he did last time. Communiques, notes, drafts, letters, personal diaries—”

  Wolff thought of his memos, the thick folder at his elbow. “How interesting.” His documents were cold and meticulous—and not handwritten. He had nothing Himmler could pick apart. “That should not be too much of an ordeal.”

  “It should not, no,” said Manning, slightly defensive.

  “Have you seen this?” Wolff tapped La Libre Belgique.

  “The final version? No, I haven’t had a moment.”

  Wolff slid the paper over to Manning, whose eyes moved across the first page.

  “This is—” Manning shook his head, laughing. “This is excellent. I can hardly believe it.” He turned the page. “It’s even better than I thought it could be.”

  “A propaganda bomb for the ages.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I haven’t yet met with Himmler, but I heard he’s seen the draft and thinks highly of it. Goebbels, as well.”

  “The Fuhrer will adore it.”

  “I am not so self-important as to believe that the Fuhrer will read it,” said Wolff.

  “When are we planning to deploy it?” asked Manning.

  “Our printers should have thirty thousand copies by this evening.”

  “Why stop at thirty thousand?”

  “We are starting at thirty thousand,” said Wolff. “The timing must be just so.”

  “This is unlike anything I’ve seen before.” Shaking his head, Manning folded up the paper. “It’s too bad Monsieur Aubrion will be living out his retirement in Fort Breendonk.”

  “I have been thinking about that.” Wolff’s sock had slipped down into his boot. He rubbed his leg, uncomfortable. “I’m going to ask for approval to offer him a position. Somewhat like what we’ve done with Spiegelman.” Despite what Wolff had told Spiegelman, the Gruppenführer could not cast Aubrion aside after what he had done. It would be some time before he informed Spiegelman of his decision. Spiegelman needed to understand his pain and fear, to sit with it for a time. Pain and fear would turn his loyalty to iron. “Aubrion won’t have a rank or a title,” said Wolff, “and we will not pay him, but he’ll have immunity and a place to stay.”

  “Do you think he’ll agree to it?”

  “Aubrion?”

  “Yes.”

  Wolff played with his pen. “I can’t decide,” he said, truthfully. “Marc Aubrion is a singular character.”

  “He would have to be.” Manning gestured at La Libre Belgique.

  “And a selfish one, I believe. But I cannot decide how selfish he is. Enough to live for his work, or to die for it? Only Aubrion can tell us that.”

  HITTING THE STANDS

  EARLY AFTERNOON

  The Pyromaniac

  FROM MY RECONNAISSANCE EFFORTS, I knew an abandoned ice cream stand lay on its side across from the Le Soir print factories. I ran the distance, just six blocks from Wellens’s factory, and sheltered in the remains of the stand. The umbrella, faded to a paltry green, kept the rain off. I checked the wristwatch René Noël had given me, oversized on my arm. It was noon. I was not to set off the bombs until three thirty. But I’d thought to arrive early in case someone had discovered the bombs Nicolas and I made and removed them from the dumpster, or decided to park the vans elsewhere, or had placed guards around the buildings—none of which had occurred. To be honest, I was somewhat disappointed. In the absence of obstacles, I was forced to sit and wait.

  I settled under the ice cream stand, pulling my battered coat over my face. I was shivering, not from the cold, but from the tremendousness of it all. It was not quite fear, you understand, but not innocent enough for excitement; this was an animal I’d never met before. Rubbing my hands against my thighs to warm them up, I tried to focus on what was ahead. Before I’d left that morning, Aubrion and Noël had gone over my orders.

  “At three thirty sharp,” said Noël, “when the vans are loaded with papers, but they haven’t yet left—”

  “That is when you strike,” said Aubrion.

  “Remember, Le Soir hits newsstands at four o’clock, so the vans will be gone by then.”

  “He knows that, René.”

  “I am just reminding him.”

  “He used to sell the damned things, remember?”

  “I am just reminding him!”

  “Don’t talk about the bloody lad like he’s not there,” Tarcovich called to them, talking about the bloody lad as though I were not there.

  “Is this clear, Gamin?” asked Noël.

  I nodded, too quickly. “Yes, monsieur.”

  “You can’t strike too early, or the workers will not have finished loading, and you won’t destroy enough of their papers,” he continued.

  “But you can’t be too late, or the vans will take off before you have a chance to hit them,” said Aubrion.

  “Until you are ready,” said Noël, “stay out of sight. If you are caught, it’s all over.”

  “He won’t be caught.” Aubrion ruffled my hair. “Gamin is too good for that.”

  I’d puffed out my chest, trying to look every inch too good for that. In truth, I was not so confident. Le Soir, if you recall, was the most important Nazi propaganda mouthpiece in Belgium, the largest collaborationist paper in the country. The Nazi street patrols grew to twice their size while Le Soir was being loaded and delivered, and did not thin out again until nightfall. In other words, I was to bomb the vans carrying the newspaper the Germans valued most while the Germans were at their strongest. This is not the retrospection of an old woman. Though I was inexperienced in matters of planning and strategy, I knew these things then, too. Of course, I also knew that if I were caught, the Faux Soir project would not die instantly. The RAF could still bomb Belgium; the afternoon was young. And though our ranks had thinned, Noël could still bring in foot soldiers to stall Le Soir, if need be. On a less pragmatic level, though, I did not want to die. If the Germans caught me with a bomb in my fist, I would be shot. My youth would not spare me. I wish to God I could tell you that I did not entertain the thought of fleeing. No one would have known; if the bombs had failed to go off, Aubrion would simply have assu
med that I’d fallen. But my thoughts turned also to the evils I’d done, the people I’d harmed, Leon and Nicolas and the fires, and I needed to do this mad thing more than I needed to live. That is the truth of it.

  I closed my eyes, then shook myself, terrified I’d fall asleep. The rain had stopped, but the taste of it still hung in the air. I stuck out my tongue. Somewhere, a baby was crying. Perhaps I would leave my shelter briefly to steal a pastry or a bit of bread. That would be unwise, I knew. But I was bored, and hungry, and it was starting to rain again. And besides, it was a good day for unwise decisions.

  The Gastromancer

  The communications officers were beginning to think Spiegelman liked them. He’d gone into the office no fewer than twelve times that morning, and on the eighth pass, he’d heard their cruel whispering about that little queer and his eye for men with nimble fingers. Spiegelman’s face was still flushed with the encounter. He paced the hall outside the communications room, cursing his misfortune. It had been two days now, and Spiegelman had heard no indication that the Royal Air Force was mobilizing. “No radio traffic?” he’d asked the comms officers. “None,” they’d said, snickering. “Are you tapped into the frequency that RAF pilots use to communicate? Are you monitoring government frequencies, as well? Churchill’s office?”

  “We’ve heard nothing.” Again, the nudges and downward glances. “Why the sudden interest?”

  Spiegelman had a draft of another letter, something from Churchill, that he was thinking of sending. But it could be too much. That was the risk. He stopped pacing, resting his head against the wall. David Spiegelman did not have the constitution for waiting. He’d had a bad stomach since he was a boy. Every year, after his final examinations, there’d been a two-week period in which Spiegelman could not eat, could not sleep, and passed most of his time in the latrine or on his bedroom floor. His mother used to shake her head; “Have a bit of broth, David.” Ruth Spiegelman never made soup, always insisted on trying her mother’s recipes instead—huge, meaty portions, overcooked—except when David fell ill. Then there was soup everywhere. He’d quarantine himself in his bedroom just to be rid of the damn stuff.