The Tiger Claw Read online

  Some days, though not today, the guard brings me white paper tickets, string and a knitting needle I have to use to string them together. A purposeless task I barely manage with my chains. Zaib was always a better needlewoman than I.

  Most days now, since Vogel authorized paper and pen, I manage to write to you.

  When the shadow of my pen doubles, Asar will have passed. And with it, two, perhaps three, hours? Maghrib, earlier and shorter at this time of year, will begin at the last slotted rays of lukewarm sun. I will bang my chains on the door to demand an oil lamp or that the naked bulb be lit. The flap door will drop for a brief moment. There will be water for the basin, another bowl of the same soup. And when a stray star winks through barred fog, it will be time for Isha prayers, and I will have outlived another two hours of captivity. Only then will I allow myself to chew the last of the hard brown bread, to help me through the lice-infested dark.

  When I came to this cell, I passed many days and nights furled into a ball as you were in my womb, dwelling on my multiple failures. But now I find I am not alone. With me are the reformers, anarchists, nihilists, the mad, the pacifists, the utopian Communists, the atheists, and devout women of all faiths. This is a zenana, an Auratstan, a place of segregation. Here we silenced women wring our collective hands at our state, and outside the world goes on with its killing.

  Bombs crash in the distance. We call out in hope the Allies are coming closer.

  As I write, a woman is singing the news in French. The guards cannot stop each teardrop note from carrying. “The Allies bombarded Munich and Dusseldorf again. Churchill, Marshal Stalin and Roosevelt met in Teheran and demanded Germany’s unconditional surrender.”

  But the Germans won’t surrender without an invasion on the ground. And it’s too late this year, too cold now. Insh’allah, the Allies will come with spring.

  It would be comforting if I could believe that Allah placed Vogel in his role as captor and I in the role of prisoner, that every feeling, every moment is predetermined, that the outcome of this charade with Vogel is predestined, but no strand of logic strains that far—the Allah I love cannot be so cruel.

  Our conversations, when Vogel comes, eventually drown in his terror and mine—terror of the perverse violence and rage of which he is capable against his “Princess” for whom he professes only the deepest concern and love. But your mother has known the love of an honourable man, and so I recognize Vogel’s “love.” Like Uncle Tajuddin’s, it is love of his own power, love of my dependence on his every whim. Out of “love” Vogel invokes German orders and says my bondage is for my “safe custody,” just as Uncle Tajuddin once invoked custom and the Qur’an for my “protection,” as the British “defend” India, starving millions while reciting odes to the white man’s burden.

  When I think of this war, I am glad I delayed your soul, for you would have entered the world Vogel and Uncle Tajuddin prefer, a world that wants its bloodlines pure, its people destructive or acquiescent.

  Often, Armand comes to visit me, teasing, his voice smiling. Today I could swear he was in one corner of my cell, leaning with furrowed brow over a chessboard, Anoushka in hand. Another time he was at the piano. “Sing, Noor! Sing—with me, or alone—but sing.”

  When your father and I marry again, ma petite, there will be singing. Singing of love in many languages. I won’t wear white. I see myself in the red-and-gold lehnga Dadijaan promised me. Armand will wear his black formal jacket and a red cummerbund as he does when performing with an orchestra. We’ll stand beneath a chuppah, drink from the same glass and smash it; our valima celebrations will last till dawn.

  Before we bring you back again, we must try to make this world a better place. You are the essence of our future, our future together. When you enter your body, let it be when your parents and others like us are free to marry, keeping our own faiths, and honouring one another’s just as my Abbajaan taught. Armand and I will travel with you to the Kingdom of Baroda, to India, Russia and even Jerusalem—may the lands of our forefathers someday be free.

  Soon millions of Germans will celebrate the birth in hiding of a Jewish child—Christmas is coming, ma petite. I remember Christmas with Mother when Abbajaan was alive. But once Uncle Tajuddin arrived, there were no more Christmas decorations.

  Outside, the first light fuzz of snow must be growing on the fields. Westwards, in the Alsace, snow-fur will lie heavy on frozen stems. But here, these 360 degrees, the chains I wear and these words I write to you are changing me. So gradually, I scarcely notice.

  CHAPTER 13

  Paris, France

  Friday, June 18, 1943

  NOOR CYCLED DOWN the boulevard St-Germain. Too quiet. No cars, some bicycles. Queues of tired-looking women and old men. Shuttered and sandbagged shops with signs: Rien à vendre—nothing to sell. More signs in German. Two milice gendarmes standing outside a Monoprix. Streets marked Germans Only, like streets in India marked Europeans Only. Where was the jaunty energy of Paris?

  How often had she cycled in from the periphery, pedalling purposefully as now, to attend a lecture at the Sorbonne, meet Armand clandestinely or see Josianne and other friends. Paris was like London then, believing itself centre of the universe, law unto itself, colonizing and subjugating people of other faiths and climates across the globe. She’d never imagined herself participating in its future.

  But though the city was backdrop to every image of Armand in memory’s eye, without him the romance of Paris was just a fable. Without his arms about her, what was Paris but row after row of sooty old grey-roofed buildings huddled about their inner courtyards?

  What had become of Afzal Manzil, her family’s home and school in Suresnes? Was the British Property sign—painted hastily as Kabir honked the Amilcar’s horn, shouting that they must leave—still nailed to its imposing green gates? That house—site of fear, site of tears. She hadn’t been sorry to leave it. Or sorry that Uncle Tajuddin bundled away his one pair of European shoes and went home to Baroda.

  She dropped her bicycle stand before a restaurant with an all but unnoticeable label: Chez Tutulle. Inside, she wended her way through a few early diners populating the tables and chairs in the dark cavern. An aproned maître d’ stood behind a hulking cash register, running his pencil down its ledger columns. Noor approached and asked in a low voice for Phono.

  “I’m not familiar with Monsieur Phono, but if mademoiselle would like to leave a message?”

  Noor rummaged in her handbag, contriving to drop a slip of paper with her password to the counter.

  The maître d’ made his way through the tables, greeting customers as he went. Reaching a window, he glanced out, left and right, checking if she’d been followed. Then he returned with a brusque “Venez!”

  Into steamy heat where aproned chefs and sous-chefs chopped and sautéed and stirred. Through thickets of shouted orders aimed at small boys with red hands who were clattering and sliding plates into large vats of water. No one glanced in her direction. Then into sunlight and open air in a bicycle lane behind the restaurant. Across the lane he unlocked a wooden door set in a stone wall. Noor followed as he ascended two flights of stairs.

  She quickened pace behind the maître d’s long strides down a musky corridor in what seemed to be a boarding house. A dishevelled woman in a low-cut red velvet dress peered from a doorway as they passed.

  All this secrecy was welcome; she wouldn’t want Uncle Tajuddin to know she’d ever been to a place like this.

  At room twenty-nine, the maître d’ gave two knocks, paused, then two more knocks. A long pause.

  Twenty-nine. I’m twenty-nine. Two plus nine equals eleven. Eleven is a one and a one, equals two. Two signifying man and woman together. Noor and Armand.

  A glance at her watch. Seven minutes late.

  The door opened a few inches to reveal the pencil moustache of Émile Garry. Noor slipped in, leaving the maître d’ behind.

  Émile—Phono—led her past a puff-pillowed four-poster and opene
d a large armoire. Three-quarters of the hanging space inside was occupied by a woman’s colourful clothes. The rest—some shirts, a man’s suits in shades of grey. Émile placed his hands, palms outwards, between a feathered black silk gown and the front of a man’s shirt, and cleared a path. Somehow the back of the armoire slid magically away. Noor followed Émile into the cloying scent of Shocking from the gown in the armoire, to a whitewashed workroom lit by a skylight.

  Archambault, Gilbert, Professor Balachowsky and a broad-shouldered man about five years older than herself broke away from an open wicker picnic basket. Each left his brown paper packet of bread, cheese and tinned sardines to rise from the table and greet her.

  If asked later, she would have no difficulty listing everything in this room from memory: a carpenter’s bench and lathe, a small trunk in the corner blocking a wooden door. Expanses of once-white stucco walls unbroken by windows, adorned only with a 1943 calendar. Today’s date circled. Friday, June 18. Friday, day of juma prayers.

  Gilbert swept back his forelock, came forward, took her hands in his. Noor withdrew her hands with a polite smile. She looked at Émile.

  “Madeleine,” said Émile, “c’est Prosper.”

  “Delighted, I must say,” said Prosper in English, the welcome in his firm handshake reflected in his brown eyes. The right height to blend with Frenchmen. Right colour hair, too: brown. Ears rather prominent—jug-ears, the English would say. But other than that, he wouldn’t stand out physically, even in England.

  Prosper continued in French once she was seated with a packet of bread and cheese and a small measure of vin ordinaire before her.

  Sunlight slanted into elongated rectangles on the wall. Prosper’s rapid French laid out plans for another drop, this time at Rosny sur Seine.

  “Expect seven parachutes if you hear the BBC announce La route est belle on the twenty-first of June.”

  “We need a reliable motor car. To be hidden in a garage near the field,” said Archambault.

  “Mine,” volunteered Professor Balachowsky, chewing vigorously on the stem of his unlit pipe.

  “What’s the cargo?” asked Gilbert.

  “The usual,” Archambault replied.

  “Mais, Archambault, can we make do with one motor car or do we need two? There will be seven parachutes this time.” Gilbert had exaggerated his tone as if speaking to a child.

  A precarious silence.

  Noor said, “Perhaps there are seven as my suitcase and transmitters are coming? They’re heavy but not very large. I want very much to get to work.”

  This seemed to refocus the men’s attention on the project.

  “We will make do with one motor car,” said Prosper. “We can’t risk two. Phono, can you obtain a permit for petrol?”

  “Absolument.”

  “Good. The reception committee will be Gilbert, Professor and …?”

  “Some of my students,” said the Professor.

  “Bien, Professor. Have them collect the cargo and hide it—just temporarily, till a secure location is identified.”

  “Temporarily where?” asked Gilbert.

  “Why must you know?” Archambault was openly challenging Gilbert now.

  Gilbert gave Archambault his usual grin, but his eyes glittered behind his forelock. Prosper seemed about to say something but thought better of it.

  “At Grignon, in the greenhouse this time, not the stables,” he said. It sounded as if he was voting to trust Gilbert.

  Archambault stuffed his mouth with a huge bite of black bread.

  Prosper continued, “Madeleine will courier a message from Phono to the Professor next Thursday, giving him the passwords for release of the cargo to a safer place.”

  “Next Thursday.” The Professor consulted a small black book from his pocket. “I have an appointment with my tailor near the Jardin des Plantes that day—we could meet in the gazebo. Fifteen-hundred hours.”

  “A tailor?” said Gilbert. “Please, Professor, refer me to any tailor who can obtain cloth these days.”

  “Oh, it’s just an alteration, Gilbert,” said the Professor. “Too much room in my clothes. But you may certainly have his name.”

  “Don’t give him any names,” said Archambault.

  The Professor shrugged. “My tailor is sewing more Gestapo uniforms than alterations for people like me, Archambault. How else can he survive?”

  “Ça y est?“ said Prosper.

  Glances all around confirmed all the details had been covered.

  “Next meeting?” asked Gilbert.

  “You will be told,” growled Archambault.

  “I swear it will be my pleasure to put you on a plane to England,” said Gilbert.

  “I would leave tonight if I could.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you would,” Gilbert sneered.

  “But if I did, you couldn’t send messages to England—like the ones asking for gin and brandy.”

  “Messieurs, messieurs!” said Prosper.

  “Sunday night at the Jazz Club on the rue Pigalle, then,” said Émile, supplying a distraction to break the tension.

  Prosper’s face lit up; plainly he loved jazz.

  Émile continued, “I can introduce Madeleine to Viennot.”

  “Excellent. I thank you all for coming,” said Prosper. “Leave one at a time. Carefully. You two: take the front exit. You two: wait five minutes, then exit through the alley door.”

  Professor Balachowsky gave Noor a small bow and stepped nimbly through the armoire.

  Émile said, “Madeleine, it’s too late to cycle back to Grignon today before curfew—tonight you must stay in Paris.”

  “Or she can be my guest. At my apartment,” said Gilbert, giving Noor a flirtatious wink.

  Archambault and Prosper exchanged glances. “No, Gilbert,” said Prosper. “Madeleine will stay with Madame Garry.”

  Archambault jammed his hat on and bent to enter the armoire. Once his heavy footsteps stopped clomping in the wooden chamber, Émile drew a key from his pocket and squatted beside the small trunk.

  “Put these two grenades in your handbag. Carefully, Madeleine. Take them to Renée’s for me. Give Babette my love. Tell her I’ll see her and Renée on Sunday. Tomorrow …” He looked up at Prosper. “For tomorrow I need thirty-two more blasting caps.”

  Prosper spread large empty hands, a gesture that, performed by an Englishman, should have been incongruous. That it came naturally said he had been disguised as a Frenchman for many months.

  “And our target is …?” Gilbert asked. He sounded almost too casual.

  “We haven’t yet received that information.” It didn’t appear Prosper was trying to evade the question.

  Gilbert gestured at Noor. “Didn’t Madeleine bring it with her?”

  But Noor shook her head. London had sent no verbal message through her, only the package wrapped in brown paper. She was waiting to give it to Prosper in private, but maybe it contained the blasting caps Émile needed, or the name of their target.

  “Just one moment.” Noor stepped into the dark armoire and crouched between the clothes. She took the package from the secret compartment in her handbag and returned to the room.

  “I’d love to see where you were hiding that, mademoiselle,” said Gilbert with an elastic grin.

  Noor ignored him and handed Prosper the package.

  “Thank you.” Prosper took a jackknife from his pocket. He cut the string and slit the brown paper to reveal a button-down leather pouch. “Voilà! A detonator magazine. One—not two, unfortunately, Phono.”

  Émile shrugged and took the magazine, which, Noor knew, gave him only sixteen of the thirty-two caps he needed.

  “That’s all?” Gilbert sounded as if he had expected much more.

  “Nothing about the target, so we can expect that information at Archambault’s next scheduled receiving time,” said Prosper.

  “Tonight,” said Gilbert.

  Prosper gave a reluctant nod at the deduction, and glanced at h
is watch. “You must leave now.”

  Émile retrieved a black device with trailing wires from the trunk, placed it in the picnic basket and covered it with brown papers from their lunch. Gilbert closed the lid over the picnic basket and fastened it, put his arm through the handle.

  “Madeleine, wait here,” said Prosper, buttoning the leather pouch.

  After seeing Émile and Gilbert through the armoire, Prosper returned, pouch still in hand. “At this moment, Madeleine, what you’ve managed to smuggle into France will be far safer with you than with me.” He’d relaxed into English as if he’d slipped on a pair of old slippers. “So put this right back in your purse and I’ll collect it next week. Very valuable, and not explosive—that’s all you need to know.”

  Noor nodded.

  “Now, your first task is to find two rooms to let. New safe houses—we cannot use the institute at Grignon much longer. Try the banlieue. Rents are lower past the fort walls, and there are fewer Jerries on the prowl in the factory districts. Find a room close to a train or métro line. I expect you’ll raise bloody little suspicion—you do look awfully French, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  No, she didn’t mind his saying. It quite restored her confidence after Renée Garry’s comments and Archambault’s questions.

  “Excuse me again.” She returned to the armoire, carefully removed the grenades from her handbag, stowed the leather pouch away in its secret compartment, then replaced the grenades and arranged her headscarf over the lot. She returned to Prosper.

  “Too heavy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re not French, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Archambault tells me your father was the leader of a cult. Had a big home in Suresnes.”

  “Not a cult, sir. He was a musician who taught religion and philosophy.”