The Blood of Lorraine Read online

  After almost two hours of questioning, Antoinette Thomas was becoming restless, apprehensive. The bosom that she had so proudly thrust at him was taking in shorter and shorter breaths. The tense stillness of his own body made Martin’s chin prickle under his beard. He rubbed it with a slowness that he hoped would keep her on edge, while he considered the next step. If he began the most critical part of the interrogation by accusing her of mutilating her own son, he might set her off, either in a stream of denials or, if she cared anything about the little boy, a sudden flood of remorse and grief. Because he needed answers, not hysteria, he decided to save any talk of that gruesome scene by the stream in Tomblaine for last.

  “Mme Philipon told me that it was your idea to accuse a Jewish tinker of killing your son.”

  Antoinette Thomas shook her head in denial, jangling her curls, before thrusting out her chin and proclaiming, “She’s lying.” Antoinette Thomas stared straight into Martin’s eyes without so much as a flinch.

  Martin persisted. “She even suggested that you might have gotten the idea that a Jew would do this to your son from a priest.”

  “A priest!” Antoinette Thomas arched her eyebrows in surprise. The idea seemed to amuse her. “I haven’t been in a church since my first communion. Why should I bother? They’re for the rich too.”

  “You just told me you got married—”

  “Oh, yes, that. And you see what good it did me. Married.” She turned her head in disgust as she spat out the word. “No, no. Geneviève’s the one who listens to them and goes to confession and does what they say. A priest. The cow,” she scoffed.

  “Then where did you get such a preposterous idea? From a political speech? Or your husband?” Antoinette Thomas’s assertion that the Church supported the rich had not escaped him. It suggested some acquaintance with anti-clerical politics.

  She fell back in mock surprise. “Why do I need someone to tell me what everybody knows?”

  Everybody! A pulsating tension streamed down the side of Martin’s head from his temples to his jaw. Everybody! Did she mean all the tanners and factory workers and shopgirls living in the hovels that lined the river? The drunks trading insults and fisticuffs in working-class cafés, who would never dream of setting foot inside a church, as well as the pious and sober, like Geneviève Philipon, who, for all Martin knew, might hang on every word uttered by an ignorant country priest. Everybody! And she did not even know the half of it, the upper crust, the writers, the politicians, even those entrusted with dispensing justice, like the court’s own Alphonse Rocher.

  “And what exactly is it,” Martin asked as his own breath became short and labored, “that everybody knows about the Israelites?”

  Her eyes got wider than ever, as if she thought him quite daft. “What is it?”

  “Yes, what is it that everybody knows? Tell me please.”

  She hesitated. He nodded encouragement. She shrugged. And then she spewed it all out. They ran everything. From the Rothschilds and their banks in the big cities to the local shopkeeper who cheats poor people like her. They’re money-hungry. They stick together. Except they also want to be like us. If it weren’t for their noses, and their smell, Antoinette Thomas averred with the air of a schoolgirl concluding a successful recitation, we’d never be able to tell them apart. And, of course, she added hastily, suddenly mindful of her own circumstances, their religion encourages them to kill Christian babies and use the blood in their ceremonies.

  It was quite a list. Things he would have never dreamed of saying about anyone, or reading, or hearing without objection. The kinds of things that undoubtedly drove Singer up the wall, Singer for whom dignity and decorum were so important. What was it that he had told Martin last Friday? “You are fortunate that you do not have to care about these things.” Not any more. Not if Martin was going to be a real friend to Singer or, for that matter, a principled republican judge. It was a distasteful business, one he had never thought he would have to confront. And here he was in the middle of it. He looked up to see Antoinette Thomas staring at him, waiting. Charpentier cleared his throat and shifted in his chair, also waiting. It was time.

  “I see,” Martin said, hoping to communicate his disdain. “You believe all these slanders, do you? Is this why you made up that story about a Jewish peddler?”

  “What story?” Her impudence knew no bounds. It was time to cut her down to size.

  “The slander that an Israelite killed your child and cut him open. Your friend Geneviève Philipon has already told us that little Marc-Antoine choked to death. She told us it was you who decided to cover up the accident with this slander. You who gutted and castrated your own son.” His voice grew louder with every word, reaching a shouting, angry crescendo.

  “She’s lying,” she brazenly repeated. But Antoinette Thomas had begun to shrink away from him. He had finally gotten to her.

  “Lying?” Martin said with mocking skepticism. “She’s lying? My inspector is in Tomblaine right now getting testimony from the children. I doubt if they will lie.”

  “They’re little idiots. They’ll say anything you tell them to.” She was hugging her shawls around her again, rocking from side to side. Scared but not surrendering.

  “It will be much better for you if you tell me what happened. If you did not kill the child, if you covered it up for your own reasons, I want to know why.” It felt good to let out the heat that had been building up inside of him.

  “I’ve lost my baby and you are going to let them get away with it.” Her voice was trembling now. He even saw a tear run down her cheek. But he had no way of knowing whether its source was remorse or fear.

  “Confess. It will be better for you in the end. I may not even charge you. I’m not sure our Code has a name for the crime you have committed, mutilating your own dead child,” he said with contempt. “But we can and will indict you for slander, unless you stop telling these lies.” Did the Code have a name for the crime of slandering a whole race? Martin did not think so. But he counted on her ignorance to put the fear of God into her.

  “It was the Jew! I told you!” He had forgotten. She had no God. There was only one remedy: a filthy cell, a few days on gruel to soften her up. But he had no intention of putting her in the same place as the spineless Geneviève Philipon.

  Martin swung his chair around to face his clerk. “Charpentier, get the officer. Tell him it’s time to escort Mme Thomas to solitary confinement.”

  He should not have turned his back on her, for in an instant she was on her feet. Seeing her fury and her hands spread out like angry claws at the front of his desk, he instantly understood what it was like between her and her husband, the smacking, hurling and screaming. But he had no time to absorb this lesson. Afraid that she was going to find something on his desk to use as a weapon, Martin grabbed hold of his heavy ink bottle and ordered her to sit down.

  Charpentier scurried for the door, as Antoinette Thomas loomed over Martin’s desk. “What do you think people will say about a judge who persecutes a mother and lets the Jews off scot-free?”

  What indeed? All Martin cared about at this moment was getting her out of his office. He could think of nothing more demeaning than being forced to come to blows with a woman.

  Fortunately, the uniformed officer had been standing guard outside. Martin sighed with relief as the policeman took her in tow and began to drag her away. She kicked and flailed all the way out the door, which Charpentier closed with a loud slam. Then he turned to Martin with a gleeful glimmer in his eyes. “She forgot to say that Jews were Christ killers.”

  Martin was stunned, as he often was, by the callowness of his young clerk. He hoped Charpentier was only mocking the suspect and that he didn’t believe any of the myths about the Israelites. In any case, Martin was too tired to care, and too hungry.

  “We’ve both had a long morning. Let’s go to lunch.”

  The clerk’s face fell. “Yes, Monsieur le juge,” he answered as he slipped back to his desk. It h
ad been a joke. Martin managed a wan smile as he turned and gave a nod of recognition. “See you at two, then?”

  He was too distracted to do more to salve Charpentier’s feelings. He needed to get away. Far away. He didn’t want to run into Didier, or Rocher, or Singer. He could not face Clarie, because she was sure to sense his disquietude.

  Martin got up and took his coat from the rack. As he wound his scarf around his neck, he considered what would give him comfort. He’d find an anonymous café, put his foot up on a brass rail, eat a sausage, and drink a beer like any sensible Lorrainer. A sensible lunch for a sensible man. Fortification for what lay ahead.

  It should have been over that afternoon. Case solved. Liars repentant and convinced of their wrongdoing. A dossier sent to Didier with an addendum on ways to track the propagators of this particular anti-Israelite slander. Martin should have been home before supper, sitting across from his beloved Clarie, she and their child his only care. Should have.

  After all, minutes after Martin returned from his brief repast, Inspector Jacquette arrived from Tomblaine with the heartening news that the two older girls had verified the wet nurse’s story. He recommended that Martin release Geneviève Philipon before nightfall so that the “little ones would have someone to tend their fire.”

  Martin readily agreed. He had no desire to punish the ignorant, foolish woman. He would send her home with a stern warning to tell the truth about the incident, if asked, and otherwise keep her mouth shut.

  Should have. All Martin needed to do was to confront Pierre Thomas with the wet nurse’s confession and his wife’s blatant lies, and the tanner was bound to see that he had been duped. Then with two of them coming clean, he would force a confession out of Antoinette Thomas.

  But what should have been did not take into account the mule-like obstinacy and slow-wittedness of Pierre Thomas. Big, blond and lumbering, the tanner came into Martin’s chambers bearing the unmistakable odor of animal shit and blood, and an inexhaustible load of grievance. Against the rich. Against the state. Against the Jews. Against any God that had the audacity to let “them” at his son. His only son. The child he had always wanted. The child he had been so proud of.

  Remarkably, his list of grievances did not include his wife, who, he testified, wailed in grief like a banshee when she first laid eyes upon her mutilated child. He described her as an admirable woman, a good wife, a mother who would have quit the factory and saved their child if it weren’t for his fecklessness.

  “Your wife’s friend, Mme Philipon, confessed. Her children were thoroughly grilled by my inspector. Why should they lie?” Martin repeated.

  Thomas shrugged, blue eyes stupidly blank over his grizzled unshaven face. He did not know why any of them should lie. He only knew what his wife had told him. And he knew what the Jews were capable of.

  Martin sat back with a sigh and glanced at Charpentier, who was working hard to repress a sardonic grin as he bent over his notes. It was obvious to both of them. Pierre Thomas was so besotted with his wife that no appeal to reason was going to penetrate his thick skull. He wasn’t even willing to try to save his own neck. How does a man get that way, besotted? As Thomas sat before him kneading his thighs with his strong, restless hands, Martin guessed how. The electric attraction of Antoinette Thomas. The animal passions. For some men, something more powerful than reason. Martin pictured the two of them, coupling on a filthy straw mattress, grunting and sweating, hungrily grabbing at what little pleasure life had to offer. It was too bad that the guileless laborer had paid such a high price for that pleasure, and would continue to do so. But Martin had no choice. After ordering Pierre Thomas to give him a list of the political rallies he had attended, he informed the tanner that he would remain in prison until he made a solemn vow not to repeat any of his wife’s lies and fabrications.

  What happened next was exactly as Martin expected. It took two policemen to drag Thomas out of his chambers, crying out that Martin and all like him were bastards. Martin set his face into an impassive mask during this violent exit, hiding the turbulence inside. At moments like this, he was always torn between his duty to enforce the law and his fear that he was committing an injustice. As the guards forced Pierre Thomas out of his chambers, Martin felt that his heart was hardening into a great stone, weighing him down. He knew the tanner had just lost his son. He had committed no crime. At least, not yet. And if Antoinette Thomas and Geneviève Philipon had committed one, he was not sure what he would call it. Was there a crime for hatred? For blind stupid prejudice? For blaming someone else for the tragedies that all too often befall the destitute?

  Falling completely under the thrall of a seductive and manipulative woman was not a crime. Where was the justice in imprisoning Pierre Thomas in the hope that somehow he would come to see the error of his ways? Especially if Martin was doing it in order to “protect the integrity of the courthouse”?

  Martin dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his aching eyes. If he was a bastard, he was more aware than ever that he was a lucky one. He and his Clarie did not have to worry about tomorrow’s bread or limit themselves to pleasures stealthily and greedily consumed. Together they were building a life guided by a higher morality, dedicated to vanquishing ignorance and superstition. He could not imagine a time or circumstance when Clarie would betray that trust. Or what he would do about it if she did.

  7

  CLARIE STOOD IN THE CRAMPED foyer next to the coat hooks, her hands trembling as she tore open the thin blue envelope. As soon as she unfolded the telegram, she glanced at the name of the sender. “Papa.” Her eyes raced over the message:

  ARRIVING BY TRAIN TOMORROW AFTERNOON STOP STAYING AT THE HOTEL DELANGLETERRE STOP LOVE STOP PAPA.

  “Is it bad news?” Madeleine got up from her favored chair in the Martins’ living room and tiptoed up to Clarie.

  “Oh, no.” Clarie folded the fragile blue message before turning and smiling at her friend. “No, it’s the best of news. Papa is coming. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” Madeleine retreated to her place by the fire. “I see.”

  Madeleine’s curt response induced a familiar pang which Clarie had begun to recognize as loneliness. Except for Madeleine, the other teachers were all mothers who hurried home to their children at the end of the day. Clarie missed them and her students. Ever since she stopped teaching, there were times when she desperately felt that she needed a real friend, someone with whom to share her woman’s joys and sorrows. Someone who would respond with unalloyed sympathy and spontaneity. Someone beside the devoted and obsequious Rose Campion, who came every day to help her with the apartment. Sadly too, Clarie frowned as she eased herself back into the chair, someone beside Bernard, who seemed more and more absorbed in his work, and for some unknown reason, very secretive.

  “Isn’t it early for your father to come? Isn’t the baby a month away?” Madeleine asked, obviously still chewing over the news in the telegram.

  Clarie sighed, And certainly someone beside Madeleine who would do well to soften that critical tone in her voice. “Christmas is next month,” Clarie explained evenly. “Perhaps Papa will stay in town for the holidays. He’ll be here, with me, waiting….” Clarie bit her tongue before going on. There was no reason to be unkind. Madeleine was lonely, too, and more alone than she’d ever be. Clarie was only too well aware that Madeleine thought that she was the one helping her through the anxious, hopeful waiting for that wonderful, fearful day when she would deliver her child. Besides, Papa could ill afford to stay away from his work that long.

  “Then you are happy to have your father here. He won’t make you nervous. That is very good, my dear.” Madeleine took a sip of her tea and replaced the rose-decorated china cup on the saucer in her lap. “I hope I will get to meet him,” she added, with a smile that seemed rather forced.

  “Of course you will,” Clarie replied. Sometimes Madeleine sounded like a friend. Clarie knew that Madeleine did not want to feel displaced, and Clarie woul
d try to see that she didn’t. Still, Papa coming now, early. Clarie lifted her chest over her big hard belly, refusing to suppress her joy. She had been so unaccountably restless these last few days, and Bernard had been so distant and silent. Papa would wrap his strong blacksmith arms around her to comfort her. He’d put his stubby finger under her chin and tease her worries away. She was still his little girl. His grown girl. The person he doted on most in the world.

  “I assume that he and Bernard get along.” Madeleine hated being left out of Clarie’s thoughts.

  “Oh, yes, very well.”

  “A judge and a….”

  “A blacksmith,” Clarie reminded her. A big, generous bear of a man. He would sit at the dinner table and point his fork at her dear republican husband and lecture Bernard on why he should have become an avocat, who defends the exploited, instead of a judge who punishes them. And Bernard would defend the laws. And they would spar and laugh because deep down they agreed with each other and adored each other. And soon, perhaps she would be bringing forth a little man to join them. And when she held her baby in her arms, how could she be lonely any more? Or restless? Or fearful?

  “I’m very happy,” she remarked to Madeleine. “He’s good for Bernard. Papa always seems to make him less serious.”

  Madeleine lifted her eyebrows with surprise and once again raised her teacup, considering her response.

  Clarie knew she could never explain to her the things that Bernard and her father, a judge and a blacksmith, had in common, so she tried another tack. “And, of course, you will meet Bernard’s mother. She’ll come right after the baby is born and—”