Gypsy

by J. Robert Janes

  There was silence from him. He took up the carving knife and fork. He … ‘They did say something about a meeting-place, Sturmbannführer,’ blurted Gabrielle. ‘Those terrorists who stole my car talked of it with De Vries. A place where gypsies used to camp. A ruin near a forest, I think, but it’s all so hazy. I was terrified, you understand, and thought they were going to kill me.’

  Tears streamed from her. Had he finally broken the two of them? ‘A ruin … A forest …’ he said.

  ‘Near Paris, I think.’

  ‘And what of your friend, Nana Thélème? Would she know of this meeting-place?’

  ‘Tshaya would,’ blurted Suzanne-Cécilia. ‘Ask her, why don’t you? Perhaps then you will find what you’re looking for!’

  The stench of bitter almonds, of potassium cyanide, emanated from the corpse, from its folds and creases, its cavities especially. The skin was lividly pink and cold, the fingernails a midnight blue. ‘I didn’t poison him! I didn’t!’

  The sound of Nana Thélème’s shrieks reverberated about the swimming pool. Gripped by the back of her neck and by the hair – drenched repeatedly and still on her hands and knees at the side of the pool – she tried to hold herself away from that thing but Herr Max was too strong for her. Her lips touched Hans’s chest. Her face was crammed into an armpit. ‘You betrayed him!’ shrieked Engelmann. ‘He kneiv you had betrayed him!’

  She vomited, jerked, coughed and panicked as he yanked her up to shove her head under water again.

  Hermann cried out, ‘Dead she’s useless, damn you!’

  ‘You … you …’ The echoes rang as bubbles burst from her nostrils and mouth and her eyes began to widen again in terror.

  Others helped. Others held her under too. ‘She’ll drown this time,’ cried St-Cyr. ‘Idiot, why must you do this when she may not even be involved?’

  Held back, restrained and at gunpoint, all he and Hermann could do was to object. Suddenly her legs began to thrash, her arms to give those final spasms. Evacuating herself, the stench of this was mingled with that of the cyanide and the pool’s chlorine. Yanked up and out, she tried to breathe but couldn’t seem to and began to black out only to be hit hard on the back.

  Vomiting water, choking, coughing, she lay in her swill, fighting desperately for air.

  Engelmann screamed at her to tell him everything.

  ‘Herr Max …’ began Louis only to see rage cloud the visitor’s eyes as he flung the woman down to charge at him.

  ‘Bastard!’ shrieked Kohler.

  Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! Engelmann had torn a pistol from one of the SS. He was going to shoot Hermann …

  ‘Put that down.’

  Jackboots came together at attention, here, there and all along and around the pool.

  ‘General, this is idiocy. That woman knows nothing,’ seethed Kohler, straining at those who held him.

  St-Cyr … St-Cyr and Kohler again. Must they always bring trouble? wondered von Schaumburg. ‘There are rumours, whispers, Herr Engelmann, that the city’s drinking-water supplies are to be poisoned and if not those, then the food that is being rationed and that, also, of every officer under my command and that of the General von Stülpnagel.’

  ‘General, this woman knows everything!’

  ‘And you?’ asked the Kommandant von Gross Paris icily. ‘What of yourself who let the Gypsy out of jail and who is still responsible for him?’

  ‘Herr Himmler will hear of this!’

  ‘He already has. Not fifteen minutes ago I spoke with the Führer.’

  The greatcoat’s shoulders and back betrayed none of von Schaumburg’s advanced years. Taller, bigger even than Hermann, he looked at Engelmann with scorn. ‘Gestapo,’ he said scathingly. ‘SS idiots. What did you think you were doing by releasing a man like that? Safe-cracking is a criminal offence and Paris is not your jurisdiction. Let these two handle it and then ask the questions of them if any are left.’

  Himmler would be furious. A Prussian of the old school, a pious bachelor and hypocrite, von Schaumburg was still a power to be reckoned with, and through him, the High Command.

  Engelmann wiped water from his face. Released, Louis reached Nana even as Kohler did, and together they helped her to a chaise.

  Though it took her time to find her voice, and she was still in agony and very weak, she managed to say, ‘General, let me have some dry clothes. I will tell you everything.’

  Coffee came with little white tablets Gabrielle and Suzanne-Cécilia thought at first were saccharin but then as Gestapo Boemelburg, still watching them, held his breath, they hesitated and thought the worst. Each of them set the tablet carefully aside with a spoon. They both said a faint, ‘Merci,’ to Georges who had served them and turned to gaze emptily into the fire which threw its heat at them in the grand salon.

  Georges thrust the poker more deeply into the coals. Georges tidied things. Boemelburg swirled cognac. A cigar was brought and lighted for him using the poker.

  The veterinary surgeon shuddered at the sight of that thing. ‘Cigarettes?’ asked Georges, his voice startling them both. The chanteuse quickly shook her head, the other one quavered, ‘No … No, I … I had to give them up due to the shortages and … and do not wish to start again.’

  ‘Why not be reasonable?’ chided Boemelburg gregariously. ‘No one will ever hear of it, I assure you. Help me and, in turn, I will help you both. You have my word.’

  How kind of him. ‘If we can, we will,’ said Suzanne-Cécilia, setting her coffee aside untouched. ‘But you might as well consult the pages of je suis partout for their address. Neither of us know where the Gypsy and his woman are hiding.’

  ‘But … but Mademoiselle Arcuri said they could be holed up in some ruins, in a forest near Paris? A former encampment of the gypsies?’

  Georges had not left the room. Georges stood with his back to the innermost wall, the ever-present but ‘unseen’ butler.

  An Alsatian, Gabrielle told herself. Somehow she found her voice. ‘Je suis partout publishes the whereabouts of those the authorities are looking for. That was all she meant, and you must know of it in any case.’

  The brandy glass was lifted in signal. Georges immediately disappeared. Flames curled about the poker. Scales of iron were flaking from its cherry red surface. A cup rattled, a saucer fell, Suzanne-Cécilia crying out, ‘Ah no …’ as it struck the carpet and bounced, but did not break.

  ‘Now listen, you two, my patience is gone,’ said Boemelburg.

  ‘It is to be the poker now?’ shrilled Suzanne-Cécilia in despair. ‘Is this what you want?’

  She ripped open the front of her dress and pulled down the brassiere. Angrily Boemelburg shrieked at her to cover herself. ‘Don’t be such an idiot! Just give me answers!’

  Georges came back to say, ‘She was right, Sturmbannführer.’

  Boemelburg snatched the newspaper from him and when he had read the notice, he thrust it at Gabrielle.

  ‘Those wishing to find Tshaya, companion and accomplice of the safe-cracker known as the Gypsy, need … She paused to look up at them. ‘Need hunt no further than the garret at the head of the stairs in the house at 15 rue Nollet.’

  The newspaper was a weekly but published on Fridays, today then, the twenty-second.

  ‘Henri Doucette will have seen this by now,’ she said, dismayed by the thought. ‘If he should get to her before you do, Sturmbannführer, what will he do to her for disobeying him? Will she be alive long enough to tell you where Janwillem De Vries is?’

  ‘Tshaya,’ said Nana Thélème, her jet black hair now braided, her voice still far from strong. ‘I first met her in 1914. I met Janwillem then, too, General. The kumpania of her father was at a bend in the Guadalquivir among the cork oaks and junipers. There were some sheep – merinos of ours – and my uncle had ridden out with my cousins and some others to settle the matter.’

  She was clutching at straws, thought Engelmann. She coughed. Her throat was sore. Her lips and the left side of her face
were badly swollen. ‘Forgive me,’ she said.

  They waited. Von Schaumburg had insisted she be allowed to speak. Louis was grim and clearly felt she would have to tell them everything. She had that look about her and stood facing Old Shatter Hand, her eyes never once leaving him.

  ‘Even at the age of nine I recognized the hold Tshaya had on Janwillem but I wanted him too, and I told myself I would take him from her.’

  ‘How old was Tshaya?’ asked St-Cyr.

  Stung by the interruption, she glared at him, her eyes smarting. ‘Seven, I think, but one can never tell with those people because they live entirely in the present.’

  ‘And this incident?’ asked von Schaumburg.

  Again she lost herself in memory. ‘To understand what happened, General, is to understand the harshness of Córdoba. The heat is so great, the sun refuses to relinquish its hold on life. Distant among the foothills of the Sierra Morena a bluish haze remains. The olive groves seem everywhere, and there is the soft but heady scent of them and of juniper and sage, of sheep and horses, too, and it mingles with the heat to sharpen the silence.’

  ‘You’re a terrorist, damn you!’ seethed Engelmann. ‘We have the proof!’

  ‘The what?’ she countered sharply, not turning to face him but painfully choking. ‘General, your people don’t really know if I’m a terrorist or not. Janwillem sends me a gun to implicate me further and succeeds with this one because, when I bring it to him, he doesn’t give me a chance to tell him. He just shoves my head under water and tries to drown me!’

  Engelmann leapt from his chair. A hand was raised to stop him. ‘General …’ he began, only to hear von Schaumburg saying, ‘Sit down! Don’t make an even bigger fool of yourself than you already have.’

  Again she was given a moment to compose herself.

  ‘The gypsies were very poor and in rags, as was Janwillem, who was a boy of eleven, yet they had a resilience and love of life which transcended their poverty. My uncle …’ She tried to ease her throat. ‘He let them stay and help with the olive harvest and gave them the sheep, knowing they would steal no more from him because that is the gypsy way. For them he became a protector, a benefactor who soon found himself taking up their cause with the guardia. A Gajo, yes, but kind and useful, and one whom they came to respect greatly.’

  Still she hadn’t taken her eyes from von Schaumburg except for that momentary lapse to glare at Louis. From somewhere a white cashmere throw had been found, but it was in the way she had wrapped this about her throat to hide the marks, and in the way she stood that one saw how fiercely proud and defiant she was.

  ‘Some years they came to our hacienda to help with the harvest, some years they didn’t, but I never forgot Janwillem or Tshaya. You see, it was through her and others of the kumpania, and at my uncle’s insistence, that I really learned to dance and sing, though she relished the opportunity to show me she could still do so far better than I.’

  ‘The party on the night of the eleventh at your former villa,’ said St-Cyr.

  Though she didn’t look at him this time, she said, ‘Yes. Under gypsy law, she could never marry a non-gypsy.’

  ‘When she was fifteen,’ said St-Cyr, ‘she ran off to Paris but couldn’t find De Vries and married Henri Doucette instead.’

  ‘The boxer,’ murmured von Schaumburg. ‘One of that gang over on the rue Lauriston.’

  The French Gestapo.

  ‘Her family took her back that first time but he came after her and beat her terribly, General. Janwillem had by then started in on the life he was to lead. He’s very cool-headed and is fascinated, not just by locks, but by explosives. He is at heart a true gypsy. This is what you must realize. He believes himself one of them and that there is nothing wrong with his robbing the Gaje or of his lying to them or cheating them if …’ She paused to gaze at Herr Max with contempt. ‘If in the end it will give him what he so desperately craves, his freedom.’

  ‘Where is he? Where have you been hiding him?’ demanded Engelmann fiercely.

  ‘General, if the story is not told, the answer cannot be given.’

  Ah merde, thought St-Cyr, try not to be so swift to anger.

  ‘Janwillem came into contact with kumpaniyi all over Europe – remember, please, that he speaks their language fluently which very few non-gypsies do. Everywhere he went he behaved as one of them. He shared completely and freely the loot he had stolen, buying food, wine, whatever was needed, and became very close to them and loved as one of their own.’ Again she paused to moisten her throat. ‘So he knows, General, all the ways they would use to mark a trail, all the safe havens, the protectors too, like my uncle, who serve as letter boxes and listening posts. A brief telegraph or telephone call, a word passed from one caravan to another and a haven is ready with whatever it will take to hide him for as long as he wishes.’

  It was von Schaumburg who asked if she was suggesting the terrorists who had stolen Gabrielle’s car had been in contact with De Vries from the moment he had arrived in Tours.

  ‘From well before that. Probably right from the night he was arrested in Oslo in 1938. Prison is death to a gypsy. Tshaya betrayed him – she’s exceedingly jealous of me and very possessive of him but he still doesn’t see this. I had him, General. He was mine! We were to have a son in a few more months. I had the villa in Saint-Cloud. Everything was waiting for him to …’ She ducked her head a little in acknowledgement of her own folly. ‘To give up the life he had led and live the one I wanted. We had agreed to marry.’

  But he had lied even to you, thought St-Cyr, and asked, ‘Did he finance the purchase of the villa?’

  ‘What would you have me say?’ she countered hotly. ‘That it was bought with stolen money? Ah! you do not understand us Andalusians, Inspector, and I pity you. I bought it myself with funds borrowed from my uncle and with those gained from my work!’

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, mollified but very conscious of that temper of hers.

  She did not toss her head. ‘For Gabrielle’s sake I will. This whole affair is rubbish, General. Of course I wanted to see Janwillem when he dropped in so unexpectedly from Tours but he stayed less than an hour and as I stand before you, I have not seen him since.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ said Herr Max.

  ‘I’m not!’ she countered swiftly. Again she choked and had to force herself to swallow. ‘He’s … he’s completely under Tshaya’s spell. If you want him, then find her. Her! They will not be staying together – have you even considered this? Ah! I see that you haven’t. Think as a gypsy. Stop being the son of some Gaje … Bitte, bitte, what was your father?’ She snapped her fingers.

  ‘A woodcutter.’

  Verdammt! but she was magnificent, swore Kohler. A natural. A gypsy herself in many ways. Louis could see it too.

  ‘Tshaya will be separate from Janwillem because if the one is taken, the other will be ready to bring freedom or revenge. And please don’t forget she’s not alone but has others to help. Gypsies who know their lives count as nothing, so what, please, is there for them to lose?’

  Uncomfortable at the thought, von Schaumburg asked, ‘What will they do next?’ and she said, ‘General, this is a confusion of his, a flimflam, a sleight of hand, a typical gypsy ruse that is guaranteed to bewilder the Gaje. Tshaya and he will have it all planned. The lure is your recovering the loot, the cyanide and explosives and in silencing a press which continues to laud him. These temptations will drive you to allow him to accomplish what he wants.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Something so shocking it will show you all up for what they think you really are.’

  ‘And where might he be hiding?’ asked Herr Max acidly. He’d had enough of her.

  ‘Please just tell us what you think possible,’ said von Schaumburg.

  ‘A place known only to gypsies and that is why you must find Tshaya but remember he’s one of them if not by birth, then by all the rest. He’ll be ready to disappear at a moment’s notice.’

/>   She let the silence hang in the room, then told them exactly how it would be. ‘Tshaya will have remained in the city. She’ll be co-ordinating things with the others. That husband of hers will be looking for her – he is, isn’t he? but she’ll be waiting for him too, to rid her life of him. Go carefully. She’ll have explosives because, as Janwillem’s accomplice from time to time over the years, she, too, has learned their use.’

  Ah no!

  ‘And then?’ asked von Schaumburg.

  ‘Either you will take Janwillem, General, or he will vanish without a trace until he’s ready to surface again.’

  ‘And the loot?’ asked someone.

  ‘Will go with him, of course.’

  ‘He has blank papers,’ said Kohler. ‘Ausweise, identity cards, ration tickets …’

  ‘And all the franking stamps that are necessary,’ said von Schaumburg, scowling at the incompetence of the SS, the Gestapo and Herr Max. ‘Berlin are too far removed from us. See that this Tshaya is found and then convince her to tell us where he is.’

  Only Herr Max breathed a little easier, for in those last few words room had been cautiously made for him to proceed. Von Schaumburg was only covering his own ass. These days everyone did so if possible.

  Had it been daylight, Hermann would have said he didn’t like the look of things. At six minutes to curfew, and with the rue Nollet in utter darkness and its tardy citizens prevented from hastily entering or leaving the area, he said nothing, a sure sign he was deeply troubled.

  All attempts to find Henri Doucette had failed. Boemelburg’s Daimler, with the General’s Mercedes in front of it, was parked just ahead of the Citroën. All engines were silent. Wehrmacht lorries had sealed off each end of the street. Troops were deployed, some to the rooftops, others to watch the adjacent streets.

  Searchlights would be used, torches too, and headlamps. If Tshaya tried to make a run for it, she would be stopped.

  ‘But is she alive, Louis? Has the Spade already taught her a little lesson in obedience?’