by Richard Wake
I tried to resist asking, but I couldn’t.
“Max?” I said.
“The young kid? The one who called you Pops? You will be happy to know that he fought to the end. Vive la France. Whatever.” Vogl sipped his coffee. “Very foul mouth, that one.”
Goddamn. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. Only some of it was my feeling for Max, though.
“I’m going to let your own people do it,” Vogl said. “They’ve seen you released twice now. They will see you leave this bouchon in a minute after sharing a meal with me. It won’t be long now.”
He paused. “I know they already tried once,” he said. The look of surprise on my face must have been evident, because he immediately followed up with, “You’re surprised that I know? That actually hurts me, that you would think I didn’t.”
Vogl stood and indicated that I should do the same. He yanked the bib out of his neck and shucked on his uniform jacket. He walked me to the door, out on the sidewalk, out in the open, and he hugged me.
“Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?” I said.
“Nonsense. It’s the perfect picture. You know someone is watching, and when he tells the story, it’s all that he’ll talk about.”
By then, I had extricated myself from the embrace. But one final time, Vogl leaned in and whispered in my ear, “This is much more fun than just having one of my men cut your throat. That is simple violence. This, this is art.”
39
Big streets, no hurrying, no hiding — that was the walk back to my flat. No evasive tactics, no circling back, no looking behind me — that was how little I cared. Because I really didn’t care, not about the curfew, not about anything. And as it happened, I never saw another black Citroen the whole way.
If I had really been able to think about it, been able to strip away the maelstrom of emotions in which I was struggling, what Vogl had told me was actually good news on a couple of levels. First off, I wasn’t crazy because they had been toying with me. I didn’t have all the details down, but my sense had been correct all along. They were fucking with me, and now I knew the reason why. At least my instincts and my sanity were intact. It was a small comfort, but what the hell.
But there was something else, too. I had lived for nearly a month believing that two different entities were trying to kill me, the Gestapo and the Resistance. What Vogl had just told me cut the number of potential assassins in half. Because the truth was, at least in the short term, the Gestapo wasn’t after me. They didn’t want to arrest me, or torture me, or kill me. Instead, they wanted to leave me naked on the streets, prey for the Resistance. And while the Resistance was more dangerous than the Gestapo in some ways, because of their greater numbers and their relative anonymity, it wasn’t as if the Gestapo was a bunch of weekend amateurs when it came to violence. So eliminating them from the let’s-kill-Alex playing field was significant.
But it also was temporary. It really was a short-term reprieve. I mean, it had to be. Because Werner Vogl had a boss, a fellow named Klaus Barbie. And while Vogl had apparently been able to convince Barbie to play it his way, it was hard to believe that the man with the fourth-floor torture chamber above his office would sit still for too long while Vogl’s twisted scenario played itself out. I didn’t know how long I had before the Gestapo came after me, but it wasn’t forever. My guess was two weeks, but it was only a guess.
But it was a guess that I didn’t make for a while. It took hours before all of this dawned on me — it was the next morning, in fact. On the walk back to my flat from the bouchon, I didn’t have that capability yet. I was in a complete fog. I nearly got run over by an empty bus that must have been heading back to the garage. It was noisy, and belching smoke from that wood-burning contraption on the front, and it was the only vehicle on the streets, and I still walked right in front of it. The driver slammed on the breaks and swerved, just barely missing me. He actually got out of the bus and began cursing me. I just mumbled a few sorry’s and continued on south toward the flat.
I didn’t have the ability to string together a series of coherent thoughts, to game out different scenarios. I really felt like I was drowning, and there was this noise in my ears that distracted me whenever I tried to concentrate on any single aspect of my predicament, a noise that wouldn’t go away.
Because while I wasn’t naïve — I had seen evil before, experienced it, lived within the midst of it — I had never seen someone get as much pure joy out of evil as Vogl had at our dinner. It was stunning, and I was stunned, and I couldn’t shake it. Killing your enemy in a war made sense to me. Even if your motives were evil, as the Nazis’ were, there was a certain basic understanding there. Even the terror of torture, well, I got it. You were after information, you had no morals, you cut off a finger — and if they didn’t tell you what you needed to know, you cut off another finger. It was inhuman, but there was at least a line of thinking, that you would do whatever it took to get the information you needed. It was all an exercise of power.
But what was Vogl doing? He wasn’t seeking information. He wasn’t simply seeking revenge, either. No, what he was doing was torturing me for fun. He was taking pleasure out of my terrible predicament — a predicament that he’d created. It was as if I were a wounded rabbit stuck in a cage with a badger — and not only had Vogl wounded me and put me in the cage, now he wanted to watch. The whole purpose, it seemed, was to give him that chance to watch. It was as if he got off on it.
And that, I had never experienced. The inhumanity of it made it hard for me to catch my breath. It was only the next morning when it dawned on me that Vogl might be a sick and evil bastard, but it was because he was a sick and evil bastard that I was still alive and still had a chance.
40
Sleep was what I needed. I was days behind, not merely hours. If I could just pass out, I believed things would be better when I woke up. It was the only concrete thought I could hold in my head as I entered the building and walked up the stairs to my flat. But when I reached for my key, I quickly realized I wouldn’t be needing it. The door of the flat was wide open.
I walked in and dropped the suitcase at my feet. I couldn’t believe I still had it and the things inside — the cassock and hat, the eyeglasses and the breviary. Neither the Gestapo goons who picked me up on Rue Romain nor Vogl said a word about it or looked inside. Vogl might have taken a peek when I used the bathroom, but that would have been the only time. And he never said anything about it. If he had looked, I’m sure a wisecrack about the cassock would have been in order.
The place was ransacked, entirely torn apart. Drawers pulled open and emptied on the floor, the mattress on the bed and the cushions on the couch turned over — and, in the case of the cushions, the zippers unzipped and the stuffing pawed over and half removed. The saving grace was that the place was barely furnished, and that I really didn’t own shit. There was only so much mess the Gestapo could make.
One thing they did see, though, was the disguises. Not the priest outfit but the rest of them — not that they would think much of either the business suit or the standard work clothes. Even so, the pockets had all been pulled inside-out. The street sweeper’s coveralls and implements appeared to have gotten a closer inspection, but they were all still there. The dustbin on wheels was turned on its side, but nothing was broken.
Still, they had seen the hair dye in the bathroom, and the second pair of eyeglasses, and the collection of hats. My first thought was that I was going to need a new disguise if I was to kill Vogl. But that thought was rapidly overtaken by the need for sleep. The lock was broken, but I was able to close the door. I think I was asleep 30 seconds later.
The knocking that woke me came about 12 hours later, at 10 a.m. — knocking, followed by yelling, followed by the hem of a dirty housecoat in my face, just at the side of the bed. Needless to say, it was my landlady. Just then, I realized that I didn’t know her name, not that it was going to be necessary. She hadn’t taken a breath since she had begun y
elling, and even though she lowered the volume once I opened my eyes, the words continued to tumble forth and the message was clear.
Or, as she said, summing up, “You’ve got two hours to get your fucking ass out of here.”
I sat up and thought about pulling up the sheet to cover me, but then I realized that while I had managed to wriggle out of the coveralls, I still had on underpants. I wasn’t completely naked. So, fuck modesty.
“And you’re not getting your deposit back, either,” she said. “Did you see how they broke that goddamn lock? No, no deposit back. No fucking way.”
I wasn’t arguing. I wasn’t saying anything. But with all of her yelling, the cobwebs had cleared in what might have been a personal record for me. As soon as I saw the break-in the previous night, I knew I was going to have to find a new place, so all of her yelling didn’t matter to me. But I needed as much information from her as I could get before leaving.
“So the Gestapo, what time—” I said, but she stopped me.
“Gestapo? What the hell are you talking about?”
I waved my arm at the drawers dumped on the floor and the couch cushions in disarray.
“It wasn’t the Gestapo,” she said.
“Local cops? Lyon police?”
“Those jackasses? No.”
“Then who?”
“Figure it out yourself, Dr. Freud,” she said. There was a slight pause and a look on her face that mocked me, and then she continued.
“It was the Resistance,” she said.
“How can you be sure?”
“What are you, retarded? They weren’t German — they were French. They weren’t wearing uniforms — they looked just like you or me. Do the math, Euclid.” And then she paused again and spat one more word: “Imbecile.”
I got it. I really wasn’t stupid. It’s just that my first thought was that it had been the Gestapo, and that was the thought my subconscious had carried through my 12 hours of sleep. The new information was jarring. And if the net-net analysis of my night with Vogl was that his little game was not all bad for me, the fact that the Resistance found me was the opposite. It was entirely, 100 percent bad.
“They banged on my door when they were leaving,” she said.
“Did they know my name?”
“They called you something different — Allain something,” she said. “So I could tell them the truth, that I didn’t know you by that name.”
“Did you tell them the name on the lease?”
“Of course,” she said. “What do I owe you? But I did lie a little. I said I hadn’t seen you in days, almost a week. I also said I thought you were using the place for a love nest, which is what I thought at the beginning, the day you signed the papers. But you haven’t had any pussy up here, I know that. So I lied about that.”
“Anything else.”
“They had a picture of you,” she said. “I stared at it a long time and said it could be you, but I wasn’t sure. I went back and forth, and I think I ended up saying I didn’t think it was you. So, another lie.” She paused, then spat out again: “You’re fucking welcome.”
I really had nothing to say to her. I certainly wasn’t going to thank her. She filled the silence with a final, “Two hours,” and then she turned and left, slamming the door behind her. Because the lock was broken, it bounced halfway open and I watched her stomp down the stairs.
I had nowhere to go other than the second flat, the one where Leon hid the Jews — because there was no way I could go back to Manon. I knew Leon had just gotten on the train the night before, so it would be empty for at least a couple of weeks. Seeing as how I didn’t have a couple of weeks, but realistically only a couple of days, that would be plenty.
And so, dressed as the street sweeper, I put all of my shit into the dustbin — the knapsack, the suitcase, the disguises, and the rest — and wheeled my way west and then north. I beat the landlady’s deadline by 20 minutes.
41
I walked into the building and walked up the stairs to the flat. Just as I got near the top, Isabelle met me on the way down. I could see behind her that she had left a pie on my doormat. I felt like kissing her, and so I did.
She blushed.
“Oh, Herr Killy, it is only a pie,” she said. Because she was deaf, she yelled the words at me. I yelled back in return. It was like trying to communicate while standing in the terraces in Pfarrwiese in the seconds after SK Rapid scored the go-ahead goal. My God, when was the last time I was there, 1938 — back in Vienna, before the Anschluss, before everything?
“It feels like salvation,” I said. The words seemed to have less meaning, less of the tenderness that I felt, when bellowed. “What flavor?”
“Apple,” she said.
I kissed her again.
“I guess they liked the sandwiches,” she said. I had not noticed that she was carrying an empty, clean plate until she lifted it up to show me. “Not a crumb left behind.”
“They?” I said. My surprise might have raised my reply even a few decibels beyond bellowing. She just looked at me and smiled and shook her head, like a schoolteacher who couldn’t believe my inability to comprehend the day’s lesson.
“Yes, they,” she said, just as loudly. “I might be deaf, but I’m not an idiot.”
And then I just hugged her and didn’t let go. The plate was wedged between us, jabbing my ribs, but I didn’t care. When we moved apart, I needed to find out more. Part of me worried that someone would hear — we were shouting at each other, after all — but these old places were stone fortresses. There was no way anyone on the street could hear what we were saying. At the very worst, someone right outside the heavy wooden front door might be able to discern that voices were being raised, but that was it.
“How long have you known?” I said.
“Almost since the first time I saw that other handsome friend of yours,” she said. “Like I said, I’m not an idiot. Children can’t sit still — and even if I can’t hear them, I can feel the vibrations. Toilets flush, baths run. This old house speaks, even to those with bad ears.”
“How long have you been feeding them?” I said. I pointed to the plate.
“This is the first time,” she said. “I have a friend who helps me trade the coupons I don’t need, the wine coupons, but Andre can’t always come over.”
“Andre?” I said, smiling a naughty smile.
“Again, Herr Killy, I might be deaf, but I am still a woman.”
My wish was to adopt Isabelle as my grandmother. If only I had an identity that wasn’t compromised.
“I also have a friend on a farm who can bring me a jar of the fruits she has put up for the winter.”
“Another friend?” Again, with the naughty inflection.
“Enough with your dirty thoughts,” Isabelle said. This truly sounded hilarious when yelled as loud as a roaring airplane engine. “My friend on the farm is like a sister to me. She might get here once a month or so. That is when you get your pie.”
“Did you see them, the people in the apartment?”
“Just for a second,” she said. “The adults didn’t see, but one of the children opened the door a crack while I was sweeping the stairs. I saw her for a second, and then she saw me and closed the door as quickly as she had opened it. Pretty little thing. Jewish, yes?”
I nodded.
“It is what I assumed when I saw your handsome friend. Jewish, yes?”
I nodded again. I was wondering why Leon had not mentioned that Isabelle knew they were there, and that she was feeding them. It seemed that he didn’t know that she knew, and as for the plate of sandwiches that Isabelle had left on the doormat, he must have just figured that it was sandwiches this month instead of a pie.
“Are you okay with this continuing?” I said.
“I don’t know what ‘this’ is. And I don’t want to know. I can guess, and that is enough, and yes, it may continue for as long as you want.”
I just looked at her. Bravery and patriotism
come in the oddest packages sometimes. Isabelle Vaillancourt, 80 if she was a day, deaf as a post, defying the law and the Gestapo to save a bunch of Jews she had never met and never would meet.
“I can guess what you’re thinking,” she said. “Your face betrays everything — I would like to gamble with you sometime. But it isn’t what you’re thinking. I’m really not in any danger.”
“Of course you are,” I said.
“I am 82 years old. I am deaf. Everybody who knows me knows that I am deaf. If the Gestapo comes to my door, they will find me, 82 years old and deaf. You could be running an illegal munitions factory out of that apartment and I would still be 82 years old and deaf. They wouldn’t arrest me. They would just assume that I knew nothing.”
She stopped, frowned, then smiled. It was as wistful a moment as you could imagine, except for, you know, the screaming of the words.
“Being old, being deaf, people assume I’m dead,” Isabelle said. “In most instances, that is a sad thing. But in the case of the Gestapo, it is an enormous benefit.”
She invited me into her apartment for a cup of ersatz coffee. We each used it to wash down a slice of the apple pie, which was anything but ersatz. We didn’t say much, sitting side by side, me on the end of the sofa, she on a comfortable side chair, her feet propped on an ottoman. Soon she closed her eyes and fell asleep. I covered her with the blanket that was folded on the arm of the sofa and let myself out as quietly as I could. I was in the bed and almost asleep myself when I thought, why had I been so quiet? She’s deaf.
Still, I felt protected somehow. One more good sleep, I figured. One more good sleep, and then I needed to make a plan. The cautious part of my personality was battling with the scared-shitless part of my reality, and scared-shitless was winning because, well… because it needed to win. Caution was not a luxury that I was permitted any longer. This was Tuesday. I needed to kill Werner Vogl on Friday.
