Charlotte Gray (61 page)

Andre and the other children stood beneath the single, blue light bulb for some time, uncertainly, before they eventually sat down on the mattresses that were soaked in the filth of previous children. A bucket was placed at the doorway for those too small to make the long climb down to the courtyard, but it soon overflowed.

Andre, who never remembered either to take his bag of books and shoes to school in Lavaurette or to bring it home at night, had left his suitcase on the bus.

"I must go and find it," he said.

"It's Madame Cariteau's case, the one we did tobogganing with. She'll be cross if we lose it."

Anne-Marie had delivered the suitcase to Bernard, the gendarme, who had passed it to them through the window of the departing train at Lavaurette. Andre had been delighted.

Outside again, he went over to where the bus was now leaving the compound.

Three more buses had been and gone in the meantime, and Andre found a number of children of his age wandering among the hundreds of forgotten bundles and bags, looking for some identifying mark. One boy sat cross-legged on the cinders, his head between his knees. Andre noticed the scabs and sores on the back of his hands, which were clamped round his neck.

The boy appeared to be immobilised; it was as though he had found the point beyond which he could not go. Andre saw the fair hairs on his neck, matted together with filth.

Andre wanted Madame Cariteau's case with a fierce desire. There was a sweater for Jacob, who was shivering after his shower, and, more than this, there were the tin soldiers and the adjustable spanner.

Suddenly, he caught sight of the brass locks and the name Cariteau on a case half-hidden beneath a pile of other bags and he pulled it out.

Bumping it across the courtyard with both hands on the grip, he found he had forgotten which was his staircase: there were so many similar doors on the ground floor, each of them opening on to identical stone steps.

With great politeness he asked for the help of a man who seemed to be directing traffic and who reminded him a little of his father.

"Monsieur, I've lost my brother. I'm afraid I've forgotten which room he's in and I'm worried he may be afraid without me. He doesn't like the dark." Andre hoped God would forgive him this lie; it was he who was so scared of the night, not Jacob, who was always willing to go into a darkened room on any errand Andre asked him.

The man smiled.

"Don't worry. We'll find him." He took Andre's hand.

"Are you a policeman?"

"Good God, no." The man laughed.

"I'm in charge of this staircase. My name's Hartmann. You won't remember that, will you? It doesn't matter.

I can see what your name is from your tag."

Up and down the dim stairwells the kindly man led Andre until they found the room where Jacob was lying, huddled on a mattress. He gave a little cry when Andre came across the room, stood up and kissed him, with terrible tenderness, on the face.

There was a solid wailing in the room as though the children's nerve had given way in a collective wave of despair. The older ones could no longer be of comfort to the younger, and even the women who tried to help them were in tears. Jacob clutched Andre, his arms round his neck like a monkey clinging to its mother, and Andre held on tight for his own sake too.

A pail of cabbage soup came up in the evening, and the children clustered round with what cups they had found or been given. One of the women warned them that it would make their diarrhoea worse, but they drank it and shared it out among themselves with ravening hands.

Later Andre saw the kind man from the courtyard, who came back into the room with a second man in whose concerned expression even Andre could see exhaustion. He went from one soaked mattress to another, tapping the chests of the children with his long fingers, feeling their wrists, and laying his hand across their foreheads. Some of them seemed better for his touch.

"Dysentery," said Levi to Hartmann when he had finished his futile round.

"Where did they come from?"

"Some came from the camp in Compiegne and some from a children's home in Louveciennes."

"We've never really got rid of the dysentery here, anyway," said Levi.

"Some of these children should be in the infirmary, but there isn't any room." Hartmann walked with him to the end of the corridor.

"I don't think it matters very much," he said.

"I doubt whether they'll be here more than two days."

They heard the scream of a whistle signalling that the lights should be turned out. In their fouled bed, Andre and Jacob heard it too.

"It's very dark," said Andre, as the glow of the blue bulb was extinguished.

"Don't worry," said Jacob, close in his arms.

"I'm not frightened of the dark."

Through her binoculars Charlotte watched the morning roll call. Now that the children she had seen arrive the day before were standing still in rows, she had a chance to scan their faces.

Towards the back she could see two small boys she thought she recognised. The distance was too great for her to be certain, but there was something about the way the elder one's hair stood on end, something, too, about the pliant attitude of the smaller one, his hand lightly resting on his brother's forearm. She did not know what she could do to help them. Perhaps she could send some words of encouragement. What she wanted to do was take them in her arms and kiss them as a mother might. She no longer had enough money left to bribe the gendarme; the only thing she could think to do was to walk along the outside of the camp to where she had seen the second, smaller entry, and try to persuade someone to bring the boys over to her.

Later in the morning, she walked up the street to the north-east corner of the camp. A gendarme was standing guard over the entrance; it was not promising. Throughout the day. Charlotte watched the narrow gateway in the hope that it would for a moment be unguarded.

All that happened was that, in the afternoon, a second gendarme came and smoked a cigarette with the first before taking over his position. Charlotte looked up to the long lines of blue-painted windows in the eastern side of the building. If one should open just a crack she might be able to shout up a message.

The afternoon turned to early darkness. Charlotte felt hungry, and stupefied by the anxious tedium of her wait. It was no good. She had done what she first came to do: she had enabled Levade to die in peace of mind. The comforting of Andre and Jacob was a secondary consideration, and the truth was that a brief meeting with her would make very little difference. What they wanted was their mother, and nothing Charlotte could do would affect whether or not that joy would ever come to them again.

With the greatest reluctance, she would have to leave them. All her maternal feelings cried out against it; she hated the thought that she of all people should be abandoning the boys. It troubled her that she had been unable to finish her selfimposed task, but she saw that there was nothing more that she could do for them. After one more night in the cafe she would return to Paris.

The evening before a transport was the time Hartmann feared. An atmosphere of nervous dread seeped through the bare concrete and straw mattresses of Drancy. These people, driven and starved, were made to contemplate a new uncertainty: while few of them believed the foul gossip of gas and crematoria, none of them could look with equanimity on their departure.

Word came to Hartmann in his room that an extra wagon had been added to the train. In view of the poor condition of the new arrivals, it was suggested by the French police authorities that the wagon should be filled with children. The Jewish committee had protested that many of the children were French nationals, and that there were Poles and Rumanians to spare, but in the random logic of the concentration camp the children were selected.

The specificity of the typed lists, with their details of family names and dates of birth, concealed the haphazard nature of the selection, but once the carbon copies rolled off the platen the list was unalterable.

Hartmann went up the stone treads of his staircase with aching steps. Going into the room at all was hard enough, with its faecal stench and background of permanent wailing. He would have to tell them that they were going to rejoin their parents; such a lie was not only forgivable, it was obligatory if they were to get through the next few hours.

He carried a sheet of paper in his hand.

Andre looked up from his bed. He was pleased to see the man who looked like his father. This was what they needed someone from the old days, someone from before the world went wrong, a man with a handsome face and deep voice who would take them back to their house and let their lives start up again.

"Very early in the morning you'll be leaving. You're going on a train." Hartmann did not get far before children began to jabber and shout.

"Pitchipoi'!" an older one called out in excitement. Some of the others were encouraged by the childish word and began a chant. The younger ones looked bewildered.

Hartmann's own expression was unconvincing.

"You are advised to make sure your bags are labelled clearly. I will ask some grownups to come and help you. You can take a blanket and any little bits of food you may have." He looked down at the piece of paper.

"Any larger items of baggage will be transported separately."

"Where are we going?"

"The train goes to Poland."

"Will we see our parents again?"

"I ... think so. I can't promise, but I think you probably will." Yes! "Jacob squeezed Andre hard in his delight.

Hartmann managed a smile.

"I must warn you that the journey is long and uncomfortable. You must be brave. All of you must be brave."

Andre noticed that the kind man's voice had gone peculiar. He was starting to cough.

"Later in the evening, you will move to the departure staircase in the corner of the courtyard near the main gate. Please make sure all your bags are packed and labelled. I'll be back later."

Hartmann left quickly, ignoring the volley of questions that followed him. Andre at once pulled out Madame Cariteau's suitcase and began to arrange his possessions inside it. He took the sweater Jacob was wearing and folded it carefully on top of the book about the crocodile. There was nothing else to put in; all their possessions were already safely stowed. Andre closed the lid of the case to make sure everything fitted.

Then he clicked the brass locks open and straightened the contents all over again.

An hour or so later, two gendarmes came into the room and ordered the children downstairs. Those who did not understand or who were too numbed to obey were prodded out by truncheons. Andre pulled Jacob by the wrist and hurried into the safety of the mass that was descending.

Outside, it was still daylight, and Andre saw a line of people of all ages waiting to be shaved by the camp barbers. Half a dozen of them attacked the women's hair with long scissors, then ran clippers over their shorn scalps; the men's faces and heads they shaved with razors.

Then it was the children's turn. Andre shuffled up along the queue, frightened of what his mother would say if she saw him with a shaved head. He remembered the feeling of her hand as she stroked his skull, allowing the soft, dark hair to trickle out over the webbing of her fingers.

Would she recognise him shorn?

The wind coming in through the open end of the camp lifted tufts of fallen hair, mixed with the cinders of the courtyard, and carried them high on to the inner roof and even up to the windows of the rooms, where they made small drifts of grey and black and blonde and brown.

When they were back in their room, some women came with paper luggage labels and some pencils. Andre, shaven-headed, wrote his name with lip-scouring care, but had to ask the help of one of the women to tie the label on. Then they were ready.

After the cabbage soup, towards nine o'clock, Hartmann came back into the room, accompanied by two Jewish orderlies.

He stood in the doorway and swallowed hard.

"All right," he said.

"It's time to go."

There was no movement in the room. The children were suddenly reluctant. Hartmann spoke very gently into the silence.

"We have no choice in this. We must go quietly. I cannot promise you that you will find your parents at the end of the journey, but I think there's a chance. There is hope. Make your parents proud of you now. Be brave and be hopeful. One of the elder children, a boy of about fourteen, stood up and turned to face the younger ones.

"We must trust Monsieur Hartmann.

Let's go."

Many of the children did not speak French, but something of the boy's manner convinced them, as though the adult world had been mediated to them by one of their own. Slowly, the fetid bunks emptied and the children trailed their bags out on to the concrete landing.

Down in the freezing courtyard, the orderlies led them to the search barracks. Inside were long trestle tables manned by gendarmes under the supervision of two officers of the Inquiry and Control Section, formerly the Police for Jewish Affairs. Andre and Jacob shuffled up in the queue until they came to the table. A gendarme took the case from Andre and opened it on the table. He took out the adjustable spanner and threw it over his shoulder. He picked up the book and laughed.

"Won't be needing that where you're going."

This was a phrase they heard repeated along the line of tables as the book fluttered like a broken-winged bird into the corner of the barracks. When the case was returned to Andre it contained only Jacob's sweater, a shirt and a dirty pair of shorts. Then the gendarmes searched their bodies, smacking their bony ribs and running their hands up inside their thighs.