by M. D. Elster
By the time my mother and the investigator had gathered all this information, we were already preparing to leave Occupied France. As suspicious as she had grown of my stepfather, my mother had grown exponentially more convinced that she and I were not safe in France — not indefinitely. And besides the usual perils, if there ever came a confrontation between them, all my stepfather had to do was tell someone our true identities. The sooner we left the better, my mother felt. Along with her bags, my mother packed up the many suspicions she’d bottled up. In order to get me out of France safely, she would have to put her growing distrust of my stepfather on hold.
The private investigator in Paris had given her the name of someone she could trust in London. My mother had insisted she wouldn’t need it — we wouldn’t be staying long in London, she informed him; our final destination was America — but she accepted the slip of paper with the man’s name on it nonetheless.
After a few weeks of being waylaid in London, my mother found the slip of paper again, and sought out the British investigator. He turned out to be very good. As it just so happened, he had certain connections in the British Intelligence, and it was by virtue of these connections that my mother was able to access a wholly new set of my stepfather’s secrets.
Léon Jean-Jacques Reynard was known to be cooperating with the French Resistance, this much was certain, but he was also suspected of being a rather mercenary double-spy. Nothing was proven, but sources stated there was reason to believe Monsieur Reynard kept a book of names, and sold names to the Germans for cash, as his financial situation required replenishing from time to time.
When my mother heard this, her blood ran cold, for she had seen him on occasion with a little black book, filled with names. The book was always on his person, in his inside jacket pocket, and when he slept at night, it was a mystery where the little book went. Any time she had made an attempt to look at it, my stepfather laughed her off, telling her it was a list of jazz musicians and nightclub performers — some of whom, he said, were singers he’d known during his “bachelor days” and that she ought to let him keep his life before her private.
Once the British inspector had relayed all to my mother, she set out on a mission to find the black book. Léon had a curious habit of shaving at night, and in her wisdom, my mother knew this was likely a clue to the book’s nocturnal whereabouts. Sure enough, a midnight trip to the lavatory and a quick search of his shaving kit (a place a wife would never otherwise have much cause to look) revealed that, indeed, this was where he stowed his little black book of names each night before the two of them laid their heads down on the pillows and slept, side-by-side, as man and wife.
My mother had always been a strong woman, and she assumed that discovering the book would not upset her, that she would be able to keep her nerves calm. But when she flipped the book open, her eyes searched the list of unfamiliar names, only to light upon those names she did know: Business colleagues of Léon’s with whom they dined out, the baker who had always given her an extra sweet roll at the boulangerie, her friend at the florist. My favorite bouquiniste, the silver-haired lady who saved anything to do with medicine and doctors especially for me. Max, the stagehand we both loved. Reading these names — names of people she’d known who were now very likely dead — my mother gripped her mouth shut with a tight, anguished hand.
It was all she could do to keep from screaming out into the night, from screaming bloody murder at the evil sleeping shape of my stepfather.
And yet… we were in London, and our future was uncertain. My mother knew she was caught in a bit of a conundrum: To secure my stepfather’s arrest, she needed to present proof in the form of the black book (and perhaps more — how much would be enough?) but if she were to steal the book, he would no doubt notice its disappearance the moment he woke up and dressed for the day.
And then there was the question of me.
My mother wanted to keep me safe. I was too young — and too foolish, really — for her to be able to confide in me. My stepfather bought me chocolates and doted on me, I followed him about like a lamb happily prancing towards the slaughter. Were she to have told me the whole truth, I think I would have had trouble believing it. My stepfather had all too quickly become a mainstay of my world; for all the malevolence lurking beneath his veneer, on the surface of things he was still our salvation, our deliverance from Hitler and his goose-stepping masses.
And yet, my mother knew she must act. In the end, perhaps she did not conceive of the shrewdest plan, but she did her best; of course, the war was on and the bitter old saying, “if you want to make God laugh, make a plan” was never so apt and fitting. She believed if she knew where the book was, and he didn’t, she could leverage that knowledge, and keep us safe. She stole my stepfather’s black book and together with copies of the life insurance policies, hid the entire cache in a safety deposit box at a bank in Central London, but not before she scribbled a message into my favorite book — a childish book of fairytales. She wrote the message in Flemish, so as to drive her point home: This is a secret; this is a message, only between us. She wanted to leave some kind of safety valve, I believe — or perhaps to phrase it better: Some kind of bread crumb trail, as Hansel and Gretel attempted to leave in that fated woods — for me to find. By that point, she understood my stepfather as a dangerous man, a man whose clutches she might not escape, but whom her daughter might be able to evade, if conditions would allow.
I did not find the message in time to make sense of it, let alone do anything about it. Not only was it written in Flemish, it was also didn’t entirely make sense to me, and made reference to one of the fairytales in the book itself, to whimsical fancies of my childhood, and to the Blue Forest. And yet, it was not the Flemish, nor the somewhat opaque tone of my mother’s words that kept me from understanding the content of her message.
It was the fact that she was warning me against my stepfather, and the specific content of her message required a mind that was suspicious of him, a mind that was ready to search out and believe his worst secrets. I was not in possession of such a mind, not at that juncture.
Either way, by the time I came upon the message scribbled into my book of fairytales, my mother had already been dead for two weeks, and I was locked in a cabin stateroom with my stepfather, steaming across the Atlantic to America. I hardly understood what it meant, let alone what to do with it.
The day my mother scribbled those cryptic words into my book… she scribbled the message, and late at night, proceeded to steal my stepfather’s black book from his dopp kit. The next morning he looked for it, but not wanting to give himself away, did not confront her immediately. Instead he searched about surreptitiously, pretending to maintain his cool and friendly demeanor. My mother smuggled the book, along with records she’d copied out of the insurance documents, to a bank where she had procured a safety deposit box.
She intended to confront my stepfather later that evening. I can only imagine what might have happened if things had gone according to her plan. But unbeknownst to either of my parents, London was fated to suffer one of the worst airstrikes in history that night. Their arguing woke me up just minutes before the air raid sirens began caterwauling in earnest. Now that I understand more about what they were arguing about, the fight itself — and all its intensity — makes sense. My mother had argued with my stepfather before, but it had always been about small things, about the kinds of things that all couples argue about. That night was different. That night, she was accusing my stepfather of selling names to the Germans. He had always managed to avoid scrutiny from the S.S. when all his colleagues involved in the Resistance had not been so fortunate — how was that so? Every time he needed a favor, it seemed like someone we knew suddenly disappeared: some high official with anti-German sympathies, or else some secret Jew hiding in plain sight. It seemed like someone was always getting taken, and my stepfather’s fortunes were increasing.
And then… my mother ramped up to he
r final argument: The two wives he’d had before her. Both had resulted in a windfall that lined his pockets. Was this, also, a coincidence?
Oh, my stepfather railed back at her. I’m not sure he refuted any of her questions with claims of innocence; I have such a fuzzy memory of that evening. Dr. Waters would surely tell me I have blocked it out on purpose. I remember my stepfather yelling. I remember a bomb tearing through the side of the house. I remember a lamp smashing to bits. I remember my mother lying bloody on the floor.
The trouble is, I don’t remember them in that order. Once I finally took the trouble to put these images in linear sequence, it is certain that I remember the lamp was broken, my mother was lying bloody and, more importantly — lifeless — on the bedroom floor, all before I remember the bomb tearing through the side of the house.
In a sick, terrible way, my stepfather got lucky with that bomb. In one fell swoop, God — or the Devil, perhaps, because I do believe the Devil is far more likely to call at such an hour — incinerated all evidence that might point back to my stepfather as my mother’s murderer. There was but one loose end, in the form of a waifish ten-year-old girl who wasn’t certain anymore what she’d seen or who she could trust. Perhaps wisely, my stepfather kept me close. There was also still the issue of the stolen black book — where my mother had hidden it, and whether it would come back to haunt him. He was quite paranoid in those early days, and now I understand why. It only made sense.
He finally procured the tickets to America that had been “delayed” while my mother was still alive, and together we set sail, two peas in a pod: A murderer and his child-aged witness.
We settled in New Orleans. The house he bought, I realize now, must have been procured with money from my mother’s life insurance policy. It was the “money in Switzerland that was temporarily tied up,” no doubt. The bankers had permitted him to take out an abnormally generous policy, as my stepfather had managed to claim that my mother, as his headline performer, was both integral to his livelihood as a nightclub owner and more or less the breadwinner of the marriage.
And like an idiot turncoat, I pushed all thoughts of my mother from my mind and clung onto the one human being who claimed he still wanted me: My stepfather. America was frightening at first, my English was terrible, and I was alone all the time. It was I who ripped the page out of my own book of Flemish fairytales, although I don’t remember doing it. Or, if I remember, it is only like remembering something in a dream. I folded the page up into a tiny rectangle, forced it into a tin pillbox, and shoved it behind a heavy bureau in my bedroom, where it remained untouched for years. I suppose I thought if I could make it disappear, it wouldn’t be true.
Perhaps it would have remained there forever, were it not for Colette. Seeing Colette standing on stage, singing in her low, melodic voice conjured the image of my mother back to me. There was some strange similarity between them, and when my stepfather proposed to Colette, I sensed some sort of terrible cycle was beginning all over again. I began to have episodes — moments during which the world around me would seem to freeze and memories of that terrible night in London would flash in my brain.
Eventually these flashes grew too frequent to ignore. Very reluctantly — for I still loved my stepfather and believed I needed him — I began to play the part of the detective, just as my mother had done, so many years before me. I knew my stepfather kept secrets. It took me quite a lot of lurking, both backstage at the nightclub as well as at home, to discover the safe hidden behind the portrait of a fox evading the hunt in his home office. It took even more spying to obtain the combination that unlocked the door. I couldn’t make sense of the papers I found there — I knew nothing about life insurance policies; they seemed like rather dry stuff. But there were three policies, issued from three different banks. The latest was an American-issued policy in the name of Colette Baudin — my stepfather’s “top-earning headline performer” at his nightclub. There was also some correspondence from the insurance company, as well as from some lawyers, stating that they received my stepfather’s letters informing them the insured was soon to be “Colette Reynard.”
I wondered — not for the first time — if Colette wasn’t putting herself in a great deal of danger in marrying my stepfather. What I couldn’t know was that Colette was beginning to have her own suspicions. She had grown curious about my stepfather, and curiosity had led her down an unfortunate path of suspicion. When I saw her whispering to Jules, she’d decided to ask him about a distant friend of his who had gotten his private investigator’s license. Of course, I couldn’t know this. Instead, I became fearful of Colette herself, and fixated on her as the malevolent force within my home.
This fear was exacerbated by the spirit world, which seemed to concur, for it was right around that time that Colette began dealing me the Death card each and every time she read my Tarot. Whether the fates intended the card for her or for me, I cannot say, but it was chilling each and every time it turned up — always in the position meant to describe the future.
Everything rose to a crescendo, both figuratively and literally, on the night of the hurricane. The storm had me on edge to begin with, but when the tremendous lightning and thunder truly got underway in earnest, shaking our house to its very foundation, I was reminded all too vividly of the London air raids. My brain was working hard to piece together that which I had so diligently buried beneath the surface. There was no denying what I had seen, and what had happened to my mother.
Standing in my bedroom, listening to the storm, I remembered, quite suddenly, the existence of the torn-out fairytale book page, and where I had hidden it. I retrieved the tin from behind the bureau. I had not touched it for ages, even the maid had not bothered with what lay behind this heavy piece of solid oak furniture. I sneezed at all the dust I turned up, but got my hands on the tin, and opened it up. There it was: A tightly folded page. The last page of my favorite fairytale — although, why this tale was my favorite, I cannot say. It was derived from an old Dutch story about a gentleman fox who, at the conclusion of the tale, revealed himself to be a robber bridegroom — a man who married and killed his brides. My mother had been right, all those years ago, to declare it morbid and gruesome. And as she said herself: She had not chosen the page on accident.
I unfolded the page, and smoothed it out on the rug upon my bedroom floor.
“Anaïs!” my stepfather called up the stairs. I flinched when I heard his voice and froze.
“Yes?”
“The storm is getting quite bad. I’d like for you to stay downstairs tonight.”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” I called. “Let me gather some things.”
“All right. Hurry, then. And keep away from the windows, Anaïs!”
He went back down. I read and reread the message three times quickly. It was a strange thing, to see my mother’s handwriting again after so long. The note she’d scribbled read:
Anaïs, ma chére —
Please, my dear, keep this quiet, and keep calm. Do not let anyone know what I have written on this page. My first warning here is the most important: You cannot trust your stepfather. Think of the fox in this very tale here in your book, ma chére; think of his wives. I have gathered some proof of his mercenary interests — I do not even know who we could bring such things to in order to report him, but perhaps it is enough to threaten him so that he will leave us alone. I hope, if you are looking at this book, I am the one reading it to you & we are both safe somewhere together. But if that is not the case and you are reading all alone, you must find the safety deposit box where I have hidden the list of names he sold to the Germans and also some records that should led authorities to two life insurance policies. The box is in my name and in yours and you will have to bring identification and prove that you are my daughter. Box #413. The name of the bank will remind you of the place you once collected fairy bones. I pray you will remain safe no matter what and that you will understand all in due time.
—Your loving Mother
Just as I was rereading the note for the third time, the lightning flashed in the window — bright as a bomb — and the electric lights flickered, winked, and cut out completely. I was left standing in the darkness.
“Anaïs?” I heard my stepfather call. “Anaïs!”
“I’m coming down!” I shouted into the dark. I could hear him moving up the stairs.
“I’m coming up to you with a torch,” he shouted back. I knew he meant “flashlight.” He always used the British words for things; I suppose someone very English had taught him to speak the language as a schoolboy. I hastily folded the page back up and shoved it into the pocket of the house-pants I was wearing.
Standing there in the dark, I found myself both glad and not glad that he was coming to get me. Part of me was reflexively grateful that he still cared about my safety — even if it was only a pretense. But there were no two ways about it; I understood now what my mother’s message meant. “…the names he sold to the Germans…” she’d written. “Think of the fox in this very tale…” The fox in the fairytale was — as foxes so often are in folklore — a trickster, a liar, a con-man. The gentleman fox was, after all, marrying women and killing them in secret.
As my stepfather made his way up the creaky staircase towards me, I knew I wanted a second look at those insurance policies locked away in his safe. I needed to see them again. I needed to understand him finally for what he truly was.
