The Fury of Rachel Monette

by Peter Abrahams

  “When I saw that I went a little crazy, I suppose. I started yelling at the S.S. men; I don’t know what. ‘What are you doing?’ one of them asked me. ‘They are only Jews.’ I took a step toward him. I doubt I would have had the nerve to do anything, but I never found out. Something struck me from behind.

  “When I woke up it was night. There was a heavy weight on top of me. I felt hair on my face, and suddenly realized I was lying in a pile of bodies. I managed to claw my way out, but before I could leave I heard footsteps approaching. I lay very still on the floor. A door opened and I could see by the light in the corridor. Two S.S. men entered. They went to a corner and lifted a round cover off the floor. Then they began to drag the bodies from the pile and push them into the hole. They were the bodies of the women and the babies. And of the guards.

  “I waited until one of the bodies got stuck in the hole. While the S.S. men struggled with it I crawled out of the room. There was no one in the corridor. I ran outside. The night was very dark, but I could see the S.S. They were working like madmen around the barracks, demolishing it with sledgehammers. I ran away into the desert.

  “I knew they would be going west when they finished, so I went the other way. I walked through the night, and all of the following day and night. The next morning I stumbled on a caravan of desert traders moving east. I persuaded them to allow me to travel with them. I had a vague idea of rejoining my unit, which I managed to do in January of 1943. I was just in time to be captured by the British. I spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in England.”

  Kopple stopped rocking. His face was slack, his body drained. He was an old, fat, sunburned man sitting on a faded blanket. The beaches of the Mediterranean were crowded with men just like him.

  “And the others?” Rachel asked. “The man in white? The S.S.?”

  Kopple shrugged.

  “Why did you pick my husband?”

  He sighed. “I didn’t have the courage to speak up. And who would believe me if I had? But I knew from his book that he was a clever and resourceful man. I thought perhaps there might be some written records left somewhere that referred to the camp. And if so he was in a better position than anyone I knew of to track them down.” He shook his head. “I am very sorry. I hope you believe me.”

  “That’s not important,” Rachel said. “There are a few things I still don’t understand. Why did you wait all these years before doing something? What was the point of opening this up now?”

  “That’s just it,” Kopple said. “I found out it was still open.”

  “How?”

  “I left one incident out of the story. There was an escape attempt that summer. It happened at the beginning of August, in the worst heat. The cbergui was blowing. It is a hot wind they have there, like the khamseen. We were awakened one morning before dawn. Outside our commanding officer was talking to the S.S. major and the tall French liaison officer. After a while the major and the Frenchman went into the laboratory. Our commander informed us that a woman had escaped during the night. He explained that the Frenchman was an expert on the desert and had drawn up a search pattern for us. Most of us were sent north, northeast or northwest. It was far less likely she would go south. To the south lay nothing but desert. Only one man was sent in that direction. He was Private Victor Reinhardt, who had been under my command in the 90th Light Infantry.

  “We searched for a week, but we never found the woman. And we never saw Private Reinhardt again either. We found his jeep in the desert, filled with sand, but there was no sign of him. We assumed he had been lost in a sandstorm, and died.

  “I forgot all about him until last October, when I saw his picture in the newspaper. At first I wasn’t sure it was he, but in December I saw him on several newscasts. I had no more doubt. He has aged, but not very much. Even if he had I would probably have recognized him anyway. He was a very distinctive-looking man, even as a young soldier. He is now an Israeli politician. He calls himself Simon Calvi.”

  Rachel thought she had seen the name in print, but she wasn’t sure. “I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Neither did I,” Kopple said. “But I’ve been doing some research. I have a file at home you can look at if you like. Some people think he is a very dangerous man.”

  “In what way?”

  “He is the leader of a movement seeking equality for non-European Jews. He has passed himself off as a Jew of Moroccan origin. At first his movement confined itself to specific social goals—better housing, higher pay, that sort of thing. But in the past year or two he has grown much more radical. He talks of the special bond between Arabs and Oriental Jews.

  “That’s why I had to do something. He was a soldier in Hitler’s army. I didn’t want the whole thing to happen again.” His wife squeezed his hand.

  “Have you told this to anyone else?”

  “No. Only Marthe.”

  Rachel got to her feet. “I’d better see your file.”

  “Of course. Come to our apartment. We’ll be there in an hour or a little more.”

  He gave her directions. Then he and his wife folded the blanket and walked slowly across the beach, hand in hand.

  24

  In the late afternoon Rachel left the hotel and walked to the Kopples’ apartment building. It was less than a mile away, on a street which ran parallel to the shore several blocks inland. For part of its length the street, rue de Lyautey, was closed to traffic. Restaurants spilled onto the cobblestones from dark cubbyholes in the walls. Rachel smelled garlic and onions and cheese on the warm kitchen breezes mingling in the air. Like the smells, the tables of one restaurant seemed to merge without demarcation into the next. Only the waiters, clad in brightly colored outfits like soldiers of a bygone century, knew the borders. They resembled each other closely, as if drawn from a race of waiters: short dark men who worked silently, spreading red tablecloths, folding napkins into cones which they stuck in the wine glasses, arming each place with steel cutlery. One poured wine for an early customer; in the sunlight of late afternoon it glowed in the glass like rubies.

  Rachel felt the trail going cold in front of her. She walked faster as though the increased energy could warm it. How could she rely on an old man’s guilt-ridden memories? She imagined him squinting at the flickering light of the television as he had squinted at her against the sun, or holding the newspaper close to his eyes while he shaped the tiny dots of a photograph into the face of someone from long ago.

  The Kopples lived in a large townhouse which had been converted into apartments. A burgundy carpet covering the stone steps told the neighbors it was an elegant address. Two stone gargoyles cackled over the heavy wooden door. They had evil little eyes.

  A waiter across the street noticed Rachel looking at them. “Monsters,” he called to her, and with his hand made a twisting gesture that she didn’t understand. She opened the door and went inside.

  The burgundy carpet led up a broad staircase bounded on one side by a delicate wrought-iron railing. Still lifes hung on the wall, three to a flight. Most showed fleshy flowers, a few overripe fruit. The Kopples’ apartment was on the third floor. Number six. A brass mailbox was screwed to the doorjamb. In it was a rolled copy of Die Welt. Rachel took it out and knocked on the door. No one came. After thirty seconds she knocked again, harder. The door swung open.

  She stepped across the threshold and saw herself in a gilt-framed mirror, with an alert look on her face and a newspaper in her hand. She was in a small foyer. The faded blue blanket lay folded on a small writing table beneath the mirror.

  “Hello,” Rachel called. “Is anyone home?” She listened. A clock ticked, a refrigerator hummed. “Hello.” Thinking she would leave a note, Rachel went to the writing desk and bent to open the drawer. Inside she found writing paper and a pen. As she straightened something caught her eye through the doorway of an adjoining room. A sandal strapped to a bare foot, a few inches of a green polyester trouser leg. The foot hung in the air as if someone was sitting just
out of sight with his legs crossed.

  But he wasn’t. Hans Kopple was lying on a brown leather couch with one leg extended over the end. His head rested on a small embroidered pillow. The pinkness had faded from his skin. It was all gray, except for the little red hole in the middle of his forehead.

  His wife lay on the floor beside him, her face in the deep pile of the beige rug. It hadn’t been so tidy with her. Her right hand still clutched a bronze table lamp. The frame of the shade was twisted and the flimsy cloth rent. Blood had soaked into the carpet around her head and chest. Her floral sun dress was drawn up high on her big legs. Rachel pulled it down. Then she remembered to feel the woman’s wrist. The skin was neither hot nor cold. It could have been a modern fabric. Nothing moved underneath.

  Rachel looked at her watch. Five forty-two. She gave herself five minutes to find the file. She began in the obvious places: the desk, the bookshelves, the bedside tables. After that she tried the clothes closets, the kitchen drawers. In the oven she found a duck roasting in peach sauce. It needed basting but was almost done. She closed the door and left the oven on. She searched under the mattress on the bed and under the pillows of the furniture. To look under the pillows of the brown couch she had to lift Kopple’s legs. Her watch said five forty-eight. But before she left she recalled that some people liked to hide things in the toilet cistern, and she went into the bathroom.

  A young woman wearing a black dress and a white apron lay in the bathtub. She faced the wrong way; her head was wedged between the taps at an awkward angle. But comfort no longer mattered: she had a red hole in her forehead too.

  Rachel lifted the cover off the cistern, knocking a gold lipstick into the toilet bowl. There was nothing in the cistern but rusty water and a floating brass ball. She turned to leave and saw a ragged piece of blue silk in the maid’s hand. She pried back the cold fingers one by one. It appeared to have been ripped from the back of a shirt or a blouse. There was no label, but she could see the stitching where it had been. Under the bottom row of stitches someone had sewn a black name tag with a name printed in gold thread. Rachel Monette, it said.

  Rachel put the piece of silk in her pocket. Then she picked the lipstick out of the toilet, dried it on a hand towel and set it on the cover of the cistern, handling it with the towel. She dampened the towel under one of the taps in the sink and retraced her steps through the apartment, wiping anything she thought she had touched. When she finished she folded the towel and hung it on the rack. On her way out the door, she dropped Die Welt into the brass mailbox.

  Rachel went down the stairs to the ground floor. She was about to open the front door when she heard heavy footsteps approaching outside. She ran to the rear of the hall and started down the stairs that led to the basement. The stairs were unlit and she had to feel her way. Halfway down she paused, her eyes at the level of the hall floor. She could see the front door through the balusters. It opened. Two policemen entered, revolvers in their hands. They went quietly up the stairs.

  Rachel continued down to the basement. The only light in the large damp room filtered through a small dirty window set high on the street-side wall. Planted outside the window were two highly polished black shoes, which grew into blue trouser legs with navy stripes along the seams. On the opposite wall was a narrow steel door. Rachel put her ear against it. She heard a faint rustling. She turned and looked through the window. The black shoes hadn’t moved. Above her the floor creaked. Again she put her ear to the cold metal, and again heard a rustling sound. She opened the door very slightly.

  On the other side was a quiet alley where people left their cars and their garbage. A few inches from the door a big brown rat was gnawing through a plastic garbage bag. Seeing Rachel it stopped gnawing, but it didn’t leave. It kept its snout in the garbage and one little red eye on her. Rachel walked along the alley until she came to a busy cross street. She turned into it and tried to look like everybody else.

  She went into the lobby of the hotel. The desk clerk didn’t look at her in any special way as he handed her the room key. Her room seemed the same as she had left it. Her white cotton slacks lay in a heap on the floor and her underpants were drying on the bathroom doorknob. She threw everything in her suitcase and returned to the lobby to check out.

  “I’m sorry, madame,” the clerk said. “I have to charge you for the full day.”

  Rachel didn’t make a fuss. She paid him and drove the rented Deux Chevaux to the airport. She parked near the terminal and got out, leaving the keys in the ignition.

  “You there,” a voice called behind her in French. A policeman leaned against a pillar near the entrance to the terminal. He was tapping his nightstick lightly against his palm. “Can’t you read?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Rachel said in English. She thought her voice sounded high, and very thin.

  He raised the nightstick and pointed at a blue metal disc with a red diagonal line through it. “No parking,” he said in English. He had an accent like Maurice Chevalier’s.

  Rachel held up her index finger. “One minute. I’ll only be one minute.” The policeman raised his eyes to heaven like a Guido Reni martyr. It is a look policemen everywhere enjoy using on silly women. Rachel lugged her suitcase into the terminal and caught a flight to Tel Aviv.

  25

  “We’ve got to get up,” Simon Calvi said. “You’ll miss the flight.”

  Gisela clung to him. “I don’t care.”

  “I do.”

  “Five more minutes,” Gisela said, holding him tighter. He worked his arm free from under her shoulder and looked at his watch. Eight thirty-two, it told him, Wednesday the thirty-first of March.

  “We haven’t got five minutes. It takes almost an hour to get to Lod and you’re not even packed yet.” In answer she moved her hip against him. He pushed her away and got out of bed. Gisela turned her face to the pillow. She didn’t move or make a sound but he knew she was crying. “Gisela, for God’s sake. You’re behaving like a schoolgirl. It’s only for a few days. What is the matter with you?”

  She lay on the bed, prone and silent. He watched her while he dressed. Perhaps something had frightened her: urgency in his tone or trouble in his eyes. Or could she sense that he was following a schedule known only to himself? Did it make her jealous in some way, jealous enough to be disruptive?

  “Listen, Gisela, if it will make you feel better I’ll cancel the taxi and drive you myself.”

  Gisela rolled over quickly. “Oh no, that’s not necessary.” She had stopped crying: her eyes were dry. Had she been crying at all?

  “I know it’s not necessary, but I would prefer it. I should have offered in the first place.”

  “Please don’t, Simon, I promise to hurry.” She threw off the sheets and got out of bed as energetically as her heavy body would allow.

  “It’s no trouble.” Calvi went downstairs to make coffee. He chose a decaffeinated blend. Enough anxiety was percolating inside both of them already. There was no need to add an oral dose.

  Calvi opened the front door and stepped outside. For the first time in months there was a biting strength in the sun’s heat. In the lime green Fiat parked under the carob tree sat Sergeant Levy with his sleeves rolled up. Calvi walked across the street. The car seemed to shrink and Sergeant Levy grow bigger as he approached.

  “It must be hot, cooped up in the car like that,” Calvi said through the open window. Being angry with him was pointless.

  “That’s the price of eternal vigilance,” Sergeant Levy replied amiably.

  Calvi went into his garage and started his own car, a compact American model. He backed it into the driveway and waited. After a few minutes Gisela came out of the house carrying two suitcases. She was dressed for a northern climate: tweed skirt, a sweater, a raincoat over her shoulders. The bulky material hid the definition of her full figure, making her appear thick and shapeless and unfamiliar. Her face wore the forlorn expression of a one- or two-night lover who had hoped for more.

>   Calvi got out of the car and took the suitcases. After he loaded them in the trunk he put his arms around her and kissed her mouth. She responded passively. “I wish you would be more cheerful. Is this the way to start a holiday?” Her pale blue eyes gazed up at his face: he saw a profound resignation.

  “You’ll never come.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Calvi said lightly. “I’ve got a charter fare ticket and there are no refunds.” Gisela looked blankly at him. He felt Sergeant Levy’s eyes on his back. “Let’s go.”

  Calvi drove to Jaffa Road and began the descent to the west. Overhead the sun followed, rising slowly in the sky. The green Fiat followed more closely. Calvi could see Sergeant Levy’s face in the rearview mirror. His lips were moving as though he were talking to himself, but his huge fingers tapping on the steering wheel made Calvi think he was singing. He sang all the way to the airport. Calvi and Gisela rode in silence.

  He walked her to the security gate. “Don’t forget to call for the package,” he said.

  “You’ve told me a thousand times, Simon.”

  “It’s important. Remember to rent a van.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “And where will you open it?”

  “Please, Simon: not again.”

  “Where?”

  Gisela sighed. “On a back road outside the city.”

  “Good,” he said. “I know I’m being difficult, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  The airport loudspeakers broadcast the final announcement of the flight to Munich. Simon and Gisela embraced. She buried her face in his chest. He watched Sergeant Levy standing by a newsstand on the far side of the concourse. “I wish you’d tell me more about this surprise,” Gisela said.

  “And ruin all the fun? Never.”

  “But I’m worried, Simon. I’m worried that you’re sending some kind of present to make up for not coming yourself.”