by Richard Wake
But whenever I thought about it, I kept going back to the picture of Rabbi Stein, the vision of him mouthing those two words: Help him.
So I told Izzy I would be back in two days, right around dusk, to help him get to the foundry and then the forger. I told Max that he could leave then, too.
“Two days? Fuck,” is what he muttered from the chair where he was reading the newspaper.
“Two days, six times,” Izzy whispered. He walked me to the door, making the wanking motion again.
29
I left the building and turned toward the Metro. At the corner, Hannah was there to greet me with a smile that suggested that she had caught me at something. What, I couldn’t imagine.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said. She did not offer a hug, or kisses on my cheeks, or even a handshake. I leaned in to kiss her, and she backed away.
“What are you doing way over here?” I said. The second flat was, in fact, nowhere near The Flip, say. That was my only geographical reference for Hannah. The truth was, I had no idea where she lived.
“It’s not that far from my place,” she said. The smile was still pasted on her face. It was fake. I could tell that much.
“So?” she said.
“It’s an old flat I kept for emergencies,” I said.
“Female emergencies?”
So that was it. “No, no, nothing like that,” I said.
“I saw you go in with some food,” she said. “I waited here, about 20 minutes. That’s long enough to—”
“No, no,” I said. “That’s not it.”
“I don’t care if it’s another woman — really, I don’t,” she said. I almost believed her, until the “really, I don’t,” part. She continued on: “I promise, I don’t care. You don’t think you’re the only man I’ve ever fucked, do you?”
“I figured I might have been the only one this week,” I said. She let that pass.
“Just tell me the truth,” she said. “That’s all I’ll ever want from you.”
So I told her the truth — about Max and about Izzy. I laid it all out as we walked toward the Metro. She walked with me, even though I wasn’t sure she was going with me when we started. But as I told her more about Izzy, and as the color in her face began to resemble the color of her hair, I was pretty sure that our journey was over, at least for the moment.
I was in mid-explanation when she stopped on the sidewalk and yelled, “UGIF?” I mean, she really yelled. A guy on the other side of the street stopped and looked for a second.
“Will you calm down?” I said.
“UGIF?” This less of a shout and more of a low hiss. The truth was, I preferred when she was yelling.
“He needed my help,” is what I managed to get out before Hannah said, “You are such a goddamned fool. UGIF?”
I tried to tell her about the rabbi, but she just started talking over me.
“UGIF is an arm of the German state,” she said. “UGIF is the reason those cattle cars on the trains are full.”
“The Germans are the reason, not UGIF,” I said.
“You naive child,” she said.
“They were trying to help,” I said. My tone suggested that I believed it more than I actually did. At the same time, I did believe Izzy when he said that they didn’t know at the beginning, and that even if they were partly motivated by a desire to retain their influence in the community, there was no way they would have participated in the deaths of their own people if they had known from the start. I managed to get most of that out of my mouth between insults from Hannah.
“Well, if he didn’t know at the beginning, how long did he stay after he found out?” Hannah said.
“I don’t know — but he’s out now.”
“And trying to cover his ass. And you’re helping him.”
I blustered on about the canteen, and the medical help, and the rabbi, and Hannah started yelling again.
“Fuck your canteen and fuck your rabbi,” she said. “Those people are as bad as Goebbels or Goering.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said.
“The hell I don’t.”
“Come on—”
“They might be worse than Goebbels or Goering because they’re pretending they are something that they’re not. At least the real Nazis are honest about it.”
She really was yelling at me at that point. I looked around, but no one was too close by to overhear. I had had bad arguments before, but that might have been the all-timer — and I had no idea how to get out of it.
“He’s a human being,” I said. “He needed help. I was in a position to help, so I did. Simple.”
“Simple? No, simpleton,” she said. “You are such a fucking simpleton. You do realize this is a war, don’t you?”
We went on in circles for another minute or two, and then Hannah decided that the conversation was over. Needless to say, when I took the stairs down into the Metro, I was by myself.
30
The meeting in the cafe cellar was the next night. There were 10 people there — 10 plus Brick. One of the 10 was Hannah. We did not make eye contact even though we were sitting about 10 feet apart.
“Where’s everybody else?” Leon said. He was asking what we were all thinking. There had been at least twice as many people at the previous meeting. I wondered if any of the others had joined the balls-like-mouse-droppings guy.
“I decided to split the group into two,” Brick said. “It’s a little safer this way, I think. You don’t need to know their business and they don’t need to know yours.”
“Are you that worried?” This from a guy I didn’t know. He was sitting two tables over, at the same table as Hannah. When I turned to see who was talking, she and I made the briefest of eye contact. It would have been longer if she hadn’t looked away so quickly. It was almost theatrical, how pronounced her turn was.
“Of course I’m that worried,” Brick said. “I worry about the most routine missions. I worry when we have two kids kick a ball down the sidewalk on Avenue Foch so they can count the black Citroens parked outside of No. 84. I worry about everything, so of course I’m worried about this one.”
He stopped talking and looked at everyone, one by one, making eye contact with each of us.
“Last chance,” he said. “No judgments if you decide to leave.”
No judgments from him, maybe. If anyone could be sincere about that, it was Brick. But as for the rest? Not so much. I could only imagine what Hannah would say if I stood up and started walking toward the door.
No one did, though — and Brick waited about 30 seconds, just to be sure. During that time, I didn’t look at anybody else and I have to believe that no one was making eye contact with anybody. It really was more uncomfortable than I expected.
“Okay,” Brick said, finally. At which point, he removed what looked like a packet of paper from his breast pocket. But as he approached the middle table and leaned over it, I saw that the packet was actually a single sheet, folded over on itself several times. When he flattened it out, it was about the size of a dinner napkin. And it was blank.
“Gather around, boys and girls — er, girl,” he said, looking over at Hannah. The people at the middle table stayed seated where they were, and the rest of us stood and leaned in over their shoulders. Hannah and I were now about five feet apart, separated by two men. It was still more than far enough.
“You will now be treated to some high-class mapmaking,” Brick said. He pulled out a small pencil from his pocket and began sketching. There were four quadrants on the paper and four small maps were being drawn, one in each. All he was actually drawing were single streets, specific addresses on each of them, and nearby Metro stations marked with an X. The whole thing took him maybe three minutes.
“As you can see, Amerigo Vespucci is in no danger of losing his job,” Brick said. “But these are the basics.” Then he pointed to the three people seated at the table.
“Here,” he said, pointing to the upper left quadrant. “This one is for yo
u three.”
“What is it?”
“That’s your orphanage,” Brick said.
Next, the people from Hannah’s table were given the upper right quadrant. Leon and I were given the lower left. Our orphanage was up near Sacre Coeur.
“You’re all probably going to have to make two trips each — Leon and Alex, you’ll definitely have to go twice. Nobody takes more than three children at a time, and two is better than three. They’ll tell you when you get there how many Jews they have, and you can divide it up.”
“What’s that?” I said. I pointed to the fourth quadrant.
“That’s where you’re taking them,” Brick said, and we all leaned in a little closer. The address was on Rue Greneta. If I had to make a rough guess, it was more than two miles from the orphanage in Sacre Coeur. It might have been a lot more than that — I just wasn’t sure.
“Can we take the Metro?” I said.
“Absolutely not,” Brick said. “The potential for questions or document checks would be too great. You have to walk. The Metro is only for getting to the orphanages by yourselves.”
While he was talking, I looked at Brick but still managed to hear a slight, disgusted hiss coming from my right. It was Hannah, and it was one word: “Simpleton.”
I could tell that Leon heard her, too, but he ignored it. He asked, “What is this place on Rue Greneta?”
“This is the beautiful part,” Brick said. “It’s a soup kitchen. It’s run by the Protestants, and it’s funded by Vichy. So we’re going to use their money to feed these orphans and hide them for a few hours before the next leg of their journey.”
“And where’s that?” Leon said.
“No need for you to know,” Brick said.
There was more discussion of logistics. I had never been on Rue Lamarck, which is where our orphanage was, but everybody knew where Sacre Coeur was, so it wasn’t going to be a problem. But for the people sitting at the table, their orphanage was out in the 20th, and none of them had ever been there. Brick walked them through the directions from the Metro station, and he made them all repeat it back.
When he was satisfied, Brick produced a box of matches and set the paper on fire.
“Here’s my thought on the timing,” he said. “Your first pickups should start at 8 a.m. — and each of you should space your arrival at the orphanage door by 10 minutes. My guess is that the first groups will begin being dropped at Rue Greneta by around 9:30. When you’re done, it’s back on the Metro for your second group. If it all works like clockwork—”
“Because that’s the way it always fucking works,” said another guy I didn’t know, and everyone laughed.
“Right,” Brick said. “But if the plan works, the children should all be at Rue Greneta by noon, maybe 1 o’clock at the latest. And then we’re done, and the kids will be in the back of a couple of lorries a few hours later.”
Then Hannah spoke up. It took every ounce of self-restraint that I could muster not to turn and look at her when she asked, “And if we get stopped along the way and questioned by the Germans?”
“Here’s what I think,” Brick said. “There was an Allied bombing last night out past Billancourt, near the Renault plant. If the Germans stop you, say that their houses were hit in the raid and that you’re taking them to Rue Greneta where the Protestant church is going to take care of them.”
“And if they don’t buy it?” Hannah said.
“Best I can do,” Brick said. “It’ll work. But I really don’t think anybody is going to bother you. It’s the reason for small groups, just two or three. It’s inconspicuous that way. Trust me, no German soldier will look at you twice.”
“But I thought you were always worried,” Hannah said.
Brick didn’t answer her. It was in the silence that followed that it dawned on me.
“What a minute,” I said. “When do we do this?”
Brick laughed as loud as I had ever heard him.
“Details, details,” he said. And then, after a pause, “You go tomorrow morning.”
31
I told Leon I had an errand to run. He looked at me quizzically and I shrugged and said, “Just an errand.”
“A Hannah errand?” he said.
“No, I promise you, not a Hannah errand.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me about her?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well.”
“Well, I’m not telling you,” I said. “About her or about the errand. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Say hi to Max for me, and fuck the other guy. What’s his name?”
“Izzy.”
“Right. Fuck him.”
The reason for my unscheduled visit to the old flat was simple enough. Brick’s timetable would have me up early, on my feet all day, walking with the orphans, and emotionally spent — and that’s if everything went well. There was no way I was going to spend the night helping Izzy get to his funds at the foundry and then bringing him to the forger. He would have to wait one more day, and both he and Max would just have to understand.
The streets were oddly busy. It was about 90 minutes before the curfew and all kinds of people were out and about. Nobody had a spare centime to spend on entertainment, save for the occasional trip to a cinema, but the weather was decent and people decided it was a night to be out. It made the walk to the old flat enjoyable and secure. When so many people are out, no single person draws anyone’s attention.
Right before I turned the last corner, I saw two kids — 16 or 17 years old — necking on a bench in a pocket park built around a tiny fountain that, like the rest, was dry. It gave me hope, for some reason, seeing two kids doing what kids have been doing on that same bench for as long as there has been a bench. Life was so different under the Germans. It was hard to remember what normal was. But then, the two kids reminded me. I was actually whistling when I bounded up the steps in front of the building and opened the heavy oaken door.
But I didn’t get three steps past the concierge’s glass door when I heard it open. I stopped and looked back, and she was motioning me into her place.
“What—” I said, but she interrupted with a more insistent motion. So I followed her inside.
“Your friends,” she said, motioning me to the small sofa in her sitting room. She took the overstuffed chair.
“What about them?”
“Gone,” she said.
“Gone how?”
“The young one stormed out in the morning, slamming doors. The old one, the police just came for him.”
“When?”
“A half-hour ago,” she said.
I sat back on the couch, the air momentarily gone from my gut, punched out by the news and the implications. Adele — that was the concierge’s name — stood up and went into the kitchen. I thought she might be going in to make coffee, but she returned just a few seconds later with a bottle half full of brown liquor and two glasses. She poured us each a hefty portion. I don’t know what it was, but it burned on the way down. We both finished, and she poured us each another couple of fingers.
“Tell me,” I said. “Everything you can remember.”
She knew I was in the Resistance. She must have figured that I was hiding Izzy and Max for some Resistance reason. But she was okay with all of that, I assumed, as long as the rent was paid on time, which it always was. And she was like most concierges — a spy by nature. Their job was to know everything about their tenants — taking in their mail, holding their keys, watching their children, whatever it took. The reason for the glass door was simple — a way to keep track of everyone’s comings and goings.
“Everything you can remember,” I said again.
“The little guy left pretty early, maybe 8:30,” Adele said. “I never really heard them in all the time they were here, not until this morning. And even then, I just heard a single shout — I couldn’t make out the word, just the volume. And the anger. A shout, and then the door slammed, and then heavy
steps on the staircase. He went by my door in a hurry, then slammed the front door, too, on the way out.”
“And that was it?” I said.
“Yeah. Just that. A shout and two slams.”
We both sipped at the whiskey — I mean, I thought it was whiskey. Maybe rye. I didn’t know, other than the burn.
“And what about Izzy?” I said.
“Izzy?”
“The older guy.”
“Not much to tell,” Adele said. “I was sitting here, minding my own business, reading a book. Like I said, it was about a half-hour ago, maybe 45 minutes. And then there was banging on the door and shouts to open it — shouts in French. So I opened it, and it was two gendarmes along with a cop in a suit. They rushed past me and up the stairs.”
“They didn’t ask you anything?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“Not who was up there? Nothing like that?”
“No, nothing,” she said. “And they went right up to your flat. They didn’t check anybody else on any of the other floors. They knew where they were going. And they didn’t even knock — they just kicked in the door. A minute later, they were dragging your friend past my door and out the front, one gendarme under each armpit.”
She stopped talking, and we each took another slug. A dozen things flew through my head. I wondered where Max was, and if he had somehow tipped the cops for some reason. I wondered more about Hannah and if she did it. I wondered about that the most. For a second, I also visited on the notion that it was Leon — but only for a second, and then I felt guilty for even thinking it, however fleetingly.
The truth was, I didn’t know. It could have been a nosy neighbor on the floor below my flat, or down the hall, who might have heard something that Adele was too far away to hear. It could have been someone who saw me coming or going and thought they knew something and told the Gestapo to ingratiate themselves. It was the kind of thing that happened all the time in Paris. Sometimes it really was hard to know who to trust.
I mean, it could have been Adele. She always had been willing to look the other way, but who knew what kind of pressure she might be under, or what kind of deal she might have struck with the Germans. There was just no way to know.
