April in Paris (19 page)

The guard stood at attention as Leibold walked past him. The hollow sound of the door closing. I tried to imagine how they were celebrating Christmas Eve outside.

The next day, I was taken back to the doctor. He examined my broken jawbone reluctantly. My jaw was forced open, and he installed a bit of wire to hold the break together. The doctor, who was a rather elderly fellow, tinkered around in my mouth with the indifference of a mechanic. The only part of his face that moved was his goatee, up and down, as he chewed on the stub of his extinguished cigarette. The SS privates held me fast. I figured that Leibold had arranged this operation. He was a man who appreciated
proportions
; perhaps my disfigured face had disturbed him. After the doctor was finished, he counted out ten pills into a little metal box. “For pain,” he growled resentfully, as if he couldn’t see why pain was something I should be spared.

When I stood up from the doctor’s chair, my knees gave way.

The soldiers hauled me out and led me to the head-cropping 180 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

room two doors down. The French barber was even grumpier than the doctor. His impressive beard grew down from his chin and neck to where it encountered the hair rising up from his chest. I was ungently placed in the chair; the barber took hold of the monstrous machine, the cable swaying up and down before my eyes. The motor stuttered and rattled as it ran. The bearded barber started on my temples and worked up. My small head wounds, which had just begun to heal, split open. The Frenchman simply sawed right over them. I jerked and twisted away; one of the privates pushed my shoulders down again.

“He’s putting on a show,” he said to his comrade.

Clumps of hair flew to the floor right and left. I looked for a mirror. A mixture of curiosity and dread made me want to see the extent of the devastation. The only thing I saw on the wall was a single Christmas-tree branch with an ornament attached. When the rough work was done, the soldiers went out to the hall for a smoke. The barber inserted a finer blade into his clipper and started cleaning up the hair on the sides and back of my neck. He pulled my collar to one side with his free hand. Just as he did so, I felt his fingers shove a crinkling object into my shirt. It slid down my back and stopped, hanging between my shoulder blades. In a flash, my pain was forgotten and all my attention directed to the
thing
on my back. Since the barber was behind me, I couldn’t see his face, nor did I try to turn around. Soon he finished his work. While I was being led out, he cleaned the blades of his clipper. Not once did our eyes meet.

Back in my cell, I waited ten minutes. Then I opened my jacket and my shirt and felt around my back; the object fell to the A P R I L I N PA R I S . 181

floor. It was a tightly rolled piece of paper. I unfolded it with flying fingers. Only three lines:

We know where you are.

Answer Henri.

He can do something for you.

The signature consisted of two letters: C.J.

I sank down onto the bed. The strip of paper lay in my lap. I read the words again and again. After several minutes of amazement, I raised my head and looked over to the corner next to the window, where Chantal had recently disappeared. I hadn’t the slightest doubt that the initials C.J. stood for Chantal Joffo. At that moment, the wall of morose passivity I’d been erecting around myself for days collapsed. I sat on the straw mattress and cried. The wire in my jaw hurt; I opened my mouth and bawled.

Even though I was dying to get into contact with Henri, I let hours plod by. I thought up questions I’d ask later, phrasing them as precisely as possible. Finally, I set up my plank-bed telegraph office. Since I had neither pencil nor paper, I pulled a rusty nail out of the wall in case I had to scratch something down. I tested the heel of my boot as a tapping instrument, didn’t like it, and rejected the drinking cup and the tin bowl, as well. In the end, I pulled out my ID tags again; they were small and hard-edged.

I began. Two, three. One, five. Three, four. At first, I went very slowly, but gradually I picked up speed. The letters automatically converted themselves into taps; I didn’t count anymore and rapped out entire words without stopping.

182 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

Not a sound in reply. Maybe Henri was out of his cell; many prisoners worked in the canteen or with the cleanup crew. Possibly he was asleep. For the first time, I tried to picture him. Small and muscular, with coarse trousers and a shirt that was white when he was arrested. In my mind’s eye, he wore a beret and smoked nasty French cigarettes. I smiled: I’d come up with a Frenchman straight out of a picture book.

Meanwhile, I kept on tapping. I tried the whole afternoon, getting up every now and then to look through the peephole. No answer from Henri. Had Chantal’s note come too late? Had he been transferred or killed? Shortly before the food cart came, I gave up, hung my ID tags around my neck, and lay flat on the bed. I thought I’d give it another try later that night, even though it would be more dangerous then, because tapping in a silent cell block could be overheard more easily.

Usually, the arrival of the food cart was the most absorbing event of my day. But when the server stopped at my cell this time, I took the proffered bowl without even looking at it. I sat down and spooned the pap and felt the warmth in my stomach, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Wasn’t it absurd to hope for help from a prisoner? As soon as Leibold was sure I
didn’t
know where Chantal was, I could consider my execution a likely prospect at any time. And yet, I had the feeling everything that was happening to me made sense. I escaped into a thick tangle of specula-tions and desires. In a state between sleeping and waking, I imagined a dramatic rescue from rue des Saussaies. French Resistance fighters, freeing a German soldier! In an old building like this, there had to be secret passages and hidden cellars unknown A P R I L I N PA R I S . 183

to the SS. Maze of subterranean corridors, escape in night and fog, getaway from Paris, reunion with Chantal. We’d be in the country when we met again, surrounded by trees in bloom, white smoke rising from the chimney, horses grazing in the paddock.

I put the empty bowl aside, sank back against the wall, and smiled. Sudden jaw pain reminded me that the wire in my mouth made smiling inadvisable.

I was shaken awake roughly in what must have been the middle of the night. No light in the cell except for the flashlight beam in my face. Hands pulled me up. No chance to step into my boots.

I got dragged out in my stocking feet, pushed along all the corridors, down the stairs, into the icy courtyard. Pebbles cut the soles of my feet; I was shoved forward. I cast a brief glance up at the window where Leibold and I had often stood. He’ll help me, I thought; Leibold’s the only one who can.

The SS corporals, the clerk, everything was as usual. I was still only half-conscious—I hadn’t slept so deeply in a long time. I staggered toward the chair. A blow to the chest made it clear that I was not going to be allowed to sit. Leibold entered the interrogation room through the connecting door. I breathed a sigh of relief. He wore his uniform jacket over his bandages. He took his seat, holding himself exaggeratedly erect.

“Chantal Joffo is in the vicinity of Metz, isn’t she?” Leibold spoke calmly; his voice sounded absent.

“Metz?” Chantal had never said anything about Metz to me.

“Is Chantal Joffo in the vicinity of Metz?” he repeated.

184 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

Had they come down on Henri? Had my tapping betrayed him? “I don’t know,” I said in a daze.

Leibold repeated the question several times. I considered whether he was trying to give me some information. His eyes revealed nothing.

“I don’t know anything about Metz,” I said.

He nodded as though that was what he’d figured. The corporals didn’t intervene. At last, Leibold picked up the telephone and began a conversation. As he spoke, he gestured to the corporals to take me out of the interrogation room. We got as far as the small, bare holding room next door. I tried to sit down and was ordered to stand at attention with my face to the wall. The other two stayed in the little room. They sat, one on either side of me, and smoked. I stood there with my hands on my trouser seams. Minutes passed; I waited. Perhaps an hour went by before I finally understood. The interrogation would not be continued. Standing there
was
the state of affairs. Until further notice.

I knew from a conversation with Leibold that they’d discovered this method by chance. An SS lieutenant had ordered a rather elderly suspect to be brought in for questioning, but shortly after giving the order, the lieutenant forgot all about it.

Since the guards’ orders were to escort the man to the lieutenant’s office and nothing else, they left him standing there in front of the desk. Meanwhile, the lieutenant had gone home. The prisoner stood there for the rest of the afternoon and throughout the night, but at some point the following morning, he fell down in a dead faint. Although this had all happened through simple negligence, it gave them an effective, practical idea. After days with-A P R I L I N PA R I S . 185

out sleep, people under questioning got confused and gave away information no amount of beating could pry loose. In the harsh light of the interrogation room, they would nod off, their chins on their chests; blows and buckets of water awakened them. In the end, they broke down and confessed—so they could sleep.

I stood in the bright room. The corporals guarding me were relieved at irregular intervals. I was under observation every second. The situation became a torment sooner than I’d assumed it would. Military training had familiarized me with standing still for long periods of time, but on the drill field, you could foresee the end of your ordeal. Here, the endlessness of the procedure was what made it so insidious. I considered letting myself drop and faking a faint, but my dread of the blows that would bring me back to consciousness was worse than remaining upright. I tried different methods of shortening the time. One way was to count to a hundred with all my weight on my right leg, shift to the left, and count to a hundred again. As I repeated this process for the tenth time, I noticed that the circulation in my legs was slowing down and realized that it would be better to stand with my weight evenly distributed.

I kept on counting, for no particular reason. My back and shoulders began to ache. I tried bracing my hands against my hips. A shout from one of the corporals, and my thumbs were lined up with my trouser seams again. My head seemed brightly lighted inside, and then darker and darker. Later, I thought I saw a bit of red. The wall dissolved before my eyes until it suddenly became impossibly clear. I started projecting a mental map onto the flaking plaster. I invented landmasses and straits and moun-186 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R

tain ranges, which I provided with colors. I couldn’t maintain my concentration for longer than a few minutes. My body stopped going along and made its presence felt with full force. I nodded off and then jerked my head up; it sank down again. Someone cried out. I stood there with my eyes wide open and felt my chin trembling. The wire in my jaw. The wall went fuzzy; I believed I was still staring at it, but in fact I was already dreaming. My eyelids closed. I fell forward.

Two arms pulled me up; fists worked over my kidneys, my ribs. I gasped and they let me go. I got to my feet unaided. I thought at first that the blows had woken me, but this condition didn’t last long. I tottered, pulled myself together, stood stiffly.

The procedure was repeated several times, escorting me deeper and deeper into a desperate state I was hardly conscious of. My eyes shut instinctively, but the remnants of my will forced me to stay awake. I shivered and broke into a sweat. My clothes seemed to have become too tight and were on the point of bursting. I had the impression that my feet were swelling up, that my entire body weight was flowing into my feet, which couldn’t support me any longer. The light above my head began moving in a circle. The room expanded and then shrank until it pressed down on my shoulders. The blows striking me showed that I’d fallen asleep again. The next time I raised my head, Chantal stood beside me.

“Gustave was with the first troops called up to the Maginot Line,” she said.

“Chantal,” I whispered.

“Shut your trap,” the corporal cried.

I signaled to her with my eyes that I was no longer allowed to speak.

A P R I L I N PA R I S . 187

“Gustave wrote to me and said the older soldiers had imagined this war would be worse than the previous one—and now they found themselves worn down by monotony. The Germans didn’t attack for months.”

Chantal raised one foot and braced her heel against the wall.

Her skirt slipped up over her knee. I envied her because she was allowed to lean.

“To relieve the boredom, dancing girls performed for the troops, and so did actors. Once they even had Maurice Chevalier.”

This went right through me. I raised my head so carefully that the corporals didn’t notice. “Chevalier?” I asked, moving only my lips.

Chantal nodded. “He sang for them. Do you know how long the Germans waited to attack?”

“Until April,” I whispered. “The offensive was ordered for April.” The wire hurt me when I laughed.

“This guy still thinks the whole thing’s funny!” a corporal cried.

I heard them stand up, and I stiffened my shoulders.

“Maurice Chevalier.” I giggled.

The door opened; the replacements came in. During the few seconds afforded by the switch, I turned to Chantal. “You know the song, the one about the girl in April?” I asked.

A kick in the back of my knee. I collapsed under their blows.

When I raised my head, the window behind the men was full of light. I moved my tongue inside my mouth, groaning. It seemed to me I said something. They dragged me into the next room.

Leibold was sitting behind the desk, stirring a cup of coffee.