The Collaborators (22 page)

He paused and looked at Mai with the complacency of one who knew he’d made his case.

‘I saw your cousin,’ said Mai.

‘Good! I told her you were the man. Can you help?’

‘I don’t know. It may be difficult.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Boucher sympathetically. ‘Them bastards at the Rue des Saussaies can generally speaking run rings round your lot, present company excepted. Do what you can, won’t you? If you want any help breaking them out, don’t hesitate to ask. Don’t look so taken aback! None of your lot would get hurt. It’s French cops that seem to be looking after them, and I don’t mind smashing a few of their heads in!’

‘That’s kind of you. I’ll bear it in mind,’ said Mai.

‘Right. And by the way, remember I mentioned my mate, Maurice, to you? Any joy there? He’s turning into a liability. I was away for a few days recently, and he takes to wandering off. Nearly got picked up too. You know what he did the day after the Great Raid? He went back to his old flat to see if they’d been there!’

‘And had they?’

‘Oh yes. Wrecked it by all accounts. And here’s a funny coincidence. It turns out he used to live upstairs from the old lady, Janine’s ma-in-law, where the kids were that night they got taken. It’s a small world, isn’t it. So, what do you say, lieutenant? Will you be able to help the little twerp?’

‘For God’s sake, man, I’m not in a position to help the whole Jewish population of France!’ snapped Mai. ‘They’re
your
people. What are you and others like you doing to help them?’

‘Well, nothing,’ said Boucher, clearly baffled by the question. ‘I mean, it’s you buggers that are in charge, isn’t it? We’re not locking them up.’

‘No? I got the distinct impression that’s exactly what you were doing.’

Mai finished his drink and got his irritation under control.

’I’ll do what I can, Miche,’ he said. ‘For everyone. But don’t expect too much. Keep in touch, won’t you?’

He rose, shook hands and left.

I should never have gone on leave, he thought as he strolled towards the river. It’s unsettled me. Christ, everyone’s getting to me today. Zeller, Boucher, and above all Janine. They’ve all got under my guard. Perhaps what I need is a change of scene, a posting a long long way from here. I can just imagine what they’d say.
Jawohl, Herr Leutnant.
The Russian Front’s a long long way from here. How would that suit you?

He smiled. There were still worse places to be than Paris on a pleasant summer day.

And wherever Céci and Pauli Simonian were was certainly one of them.

It was time to put the search under way.

13

While the memory of the Vél d’Hiver was strong, the new camp seemed almost luxurious by comparison. They were in huts; they had beds; there were toilets that worked and taps that gave out water; they were fed.

But remembered pain was not long a standard for judging. The huts leaked, the beds were bare boards, the toilets stank and were infested with flies, the taps produced only a thin trickle of rust-coloured water and the food was only just preferable to fasting.

The guards were French. They glimpsed Germans occasionally in the distance, but their only immediate contact was with Frenchmen, usually police. Some were kinder than others. From one of these, a middle-aged man who took a fancy to little Céci, Sophie learnt where they were.

‘Pithiviers in the Loiret,’ she echoed. ‘No, I don’t know it. But it seems very beautiful here.’

She was talking to the man through the barbed strands of a tall fence. Behind him she could see rolling countryside in the full flush of summer greenery.

‘It’s all right if you like that sort of thing. Me, I’m a city man,’ said the guard. ‘I like streets, lights, crowds, action.’

‘Yes, it must be very boring here for you,’ agreed Sophie. ‘A pity the Germans chose to build this camp in such a place. And already it is so dilapidated!’

She was building up to a request for help for the children - extra food, milk, blankets,
anything,
but the man gave her no encouragement, only laughing and saying, ‘No, you’ve got it wrong, old woman. The Germans didn’t build this place. Our own government did. They used to stick undesirables in here, aliens, refugees. If I were in your shoes, I’d wait till I saw the inside of a real German camp before I started knocking this place.’

With a cheerful wave, he wandered away.

Oh God, thought Sophie, is this the limit of kindness we can expect?

She turned and looked back inside the camp. There was despair here, plainly visible in the shuffling gait and blank eyes of so many of her fellow inmates. But there was also life and indeed liveliness, people moving around helping and organizing; others standing in small groups arguing and debating.

Perhaps the cop was right. This might seem like hell but it was still only a suburb. If they were left here for the duration of the war, there was hope of survival.

‘Bubbah,’ said Pauli. ‘Can we leave this place?’

She looked down at him in surprise. He usually didn’t ask such pointless questions.

She started to explain that no, they couldn’t leave for the obvious reasons that the gates were locked and the fences were high, but he interrupted, ‘I just thought it might be better to escape here than somewhere else where there was maybe moats or big walls with spikes.’

He was right, of course.

She ruffled his dusty and matted hair and said, ‘If you think of a way to escape, you tell me, cabbage. But perhaps we’ll be OK. Perhaps we’ll be here a long time, eh?’

He looked up at her, his eyes huge in his shrunken face.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said with that disconcerting certainty.

That night at roll-call they were ordered to get ready for moving off within the hour.

‘Drancy!’ Janine did a little sedentary jig of delight. ‘Near le Bourget airport? Oh, thank God they’re back in Paris! That’s something, isn’t it? That’s better than being stuck out in the middle of nowhere.’

Mai looked at her gloomily. It had been in little spirit of celebration that he had brought his news, first that he had tracked them down on paper to Pithiviers, and next that when he attempted to confirm their presence in the Loiret, he had been told that they had just been transferred to Drancy.

All that this meant to Janine was that once more they were close to her.

But Mai had contacted a friend on the staff of the Military Governor in France at the Hôtel Majestic.

‘Tell me about Drancy,’ he said.

‘The camp you mean? What’s to tell? It was a building project, apartment blocks mainly, down-market stuff, none of your luxury penthouse suites, as you can imagine. It was only half-finished when the war started, but it was perfect for a camp. Easy to fence off, throw up a few watchtowers, plenty of accommodation for the prisoners, but not too comfortable! Good communications, east and west…’

‘East and west?’

‘West to the city centre. And east to wherever you like. There’s a railway station just round the corner. They ran a trainload of Jews out of there last March: you know; those terrorists they rounded up before Christmas. And they’ve started shipping this latest lot east for resettlement too. Basically all Jews are orientals so it makes sense. What’s your interest?’

‘It’s just that an agent of mine inadvertently got picked up and I’m anxious to help. Good agents are hard to come by.’

‘Is that it? And I bet you believe those twerps in the SD did it deliberately? I wouldn’t put it past them. But no problem, Günter. Just pop round here with the details some time and we’ll fix up an
Ausweis.’

‘I’ll do that,’ said Mai. ‘Incidentally, this resettlement, where is it, precisely?’

‘If you’re thinking about asking for your agent back if he’s already gone, forget it!’ laughed the other. ‘They’re shipping them off to some God-forsaken hole in Upper Silesia, would you believe? Auschwitz, I think they call it. Dear God, Günter, imagine being posted there! Let’s thank our lucky stars and meet for a drink some time soon, shall we?’

He pulled his mind back to the present and was disconcerted to find Janine looking at him as if he had just given her champagne, her eyes sparkling with hope.

She said, confidently, ‘What do we do now, Günter?’

He could detect nothing premeditated or self-seeking in the use of his name. It slipped out as naturally and easily as any friend’s name on the tongue of any friend.

He said, ‘I can get them out.’

If he expected a dance of joy, arms around his neck, passionate gratitude, he was disappointed. But what he got was more disturbing. She merely nodded with the serene confidence of the acolyte who has entertained no doubts about the power of her deity.

‘But there’s a price,’ he added harshly.

Again she surprised him.

‘Of course there’s a price,’ she said. ‘Do you think I imagined you were doing this out of the goodness of your heart?’

If she’d chosen deliberately to strike at him she could not have aimed a better weapon. Pain rose in Mai and must surely have shown in his eyes. A ball came bouncing down the hill past the cedar and two children pursued it, laughing. Janine’s gaze followed them out of sight and when she turned to Mai once more he was back in control.

‘No, I don’t think that,’ he said quietly. ‘But tell me why you did imagine I was doing it.’

She fixed her clear, candid gaze on him and said, ‘Please, don’t think I can’t see that you
do
have much goodness of heart, and you’ll try to keep it in balance with the needs of your job. I wish all your soldiers were like that. But you’ll also
do
your job. I don’t think you want sex with me, not this time. I’m not sure how much you wanted it last time.’

He felt himself flushing and said, ‘More than I realized. But not like that.’

‘No? How then? No, don’t answer that. What I imagine you want this time is to help me all you can in return for whatever help I can give you professionally. I’ve no idea what that may be, and I’m not sure if you have. I think perhaps deep inside, you hope it may not be very much. So do I. But I’ll give what I can, and I know you will not be able to refuse what I can give. You’ve got me in a trap, lieutenant, but I half-suspect you’re in there with me.’

He shook his head slowly, not in denial but in admiration, and in self-exasperation too.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘I’ve been stupid,’ he said. ‘I made a misjudgement of you. I should have grasped from what I know of your husband that he was not a man to make such misjudgements.’

Again the mention of Simonian brought a veil over her expression.

He said harshly, ‘So we understand each other. To get an
Ausweis
for your children and the old lady, I shall need to affirm that you are a valued agent of the
Abwehr,
your name will appear in our files, and this will not simply be for show. As you say, anything you can tell me, I shall not hesitate to use. Anything I think you can do for us, I shall not hesitate to ask.’

He had never contemplated so open an approach. He had always thought of himself as the manipulator, the puppet-master. But now, with this woman, in these circumstances, he could see that nothing else was possible. He had to state exactly what he wanted, except of course that he wanted her. He could never ask her for that again and he could not imagine a situation in which she would offer herself to him freely and with love. The knowledge made him cold and angry.

‘Now, when can you do it?’ she cried. ‘When can I have them home?’

‘I should have the
Ausweis
by tomorrow. Then I have to arrange for a release order to be sent to the camp.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Her face fell. ‘Can’t we go for them tonight?’

He said brusquely, ‘Tomorrow at the earliest. It takes time.’

She said, ‘Of course. I’m sorry, I’m just so impatient. Günter, whatever you want, thank you, thank you more than I can say.’

She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips.

‘Till tomorrow,’ she said, standing up.

Once again she turned and waved as she ran lightly down the hill.

He didn’t wave back.

14

‘You smiled, Bubbah,’ said Pauli. ‘What did you smile at?’

So my smile has become such a rare thing that this sharp-eyed grandson of mine instantly spots it, thought Sophie sadly.

Bending over Céci’s hair which she was combing for lice, she plucked one out, held it up and said, ‘I was just thinking, there’s such a one! Must be the grandfather of a whole family! Crack, and there’s an end to him.’

Her lie seemed to satisfy the boy. What she had actually been smiling at was a sudden memory of Iakov singeing lice from the seams of his clothes with a candle after their long flight from Russia and accidentally setting his shirt on fire. Such memories were precious sustenance for the soul here in Drancy.

For Drancy was an abomination. The food was vile beyond description. They slept like animals on straw infested with parasites. Every day, new arrivals poured in, including vast numbers of children, many separated from their parents. When she saw them herded out of the trucks and left to mill around, aimless and hopeless as lambs in an abattoir, Sophie wanted to rush forward and comfort them, pressing to her thin bony body as many as possible.

But she did not dare do it. All her energy was directed to keeping Pauli and Céci with her. She’d seen families ripped apart after dawn roll-calls when those picked out had been marched away to the station.

At first she’d been sure there must be protests. Drancy was a complex of apartment blocks surrounded by other apartment blocks. People at their windows could look into the camp. People out shopping or going to work must see the lines of deportees plodding by.

Then she remembered the walk from her home to the Rue des Rosiers. She must not look for help from anywhere but within. Only the children mattered. Keeping them with her was her only function.

She concentrated all her attention on her granddaughter’s hair.

‘Bubbah,’ said the little girl idly. ‘When will it be our turn to go to Pitchipoi?’

‘Pitchi-what? Where’s that, cabbage?’ she asked.

‘Pitchipoi!’ repeated Céci. ‘When are we going?’

‘Pauli?’ said Sophie, turning as always to the boy whenever she couldn’t grasp what Céci meant.

‘It’s a name,’ said Pauli, who was sitting trying to repair his worn and torn trousers. It would be much easier if he had a needle or even a knife. He thought with regret of the super knife that Uncle Miche had given him. He’d left it at home the day his mother had suddenly and inexplicably decided they should stay with Bubbah. He wished he had it now. Even though he’d promised maman he would never open the blade till he had her permission, there were still all those other bits and pieces which would have been so useful.

‘I know it’s a name,’ said Sophie sharply. ‘I may be ancient but I’m not antique. A name for what?’

‘It’s the name some of the children give to the place they’re going to send us,’ said Pauli casually.

‘What place? You mean it’s a game?’ demanded Sophie in alarm.

‘It’s an awful place,’ announced Céci, happy to be forthcoming now that her brother had shown the way. ‘It’s a dreadful place where they do dreadful things. They make stew out of the little girls and steak out of the little boys.’

‘Céci!’ exclaimed Sophie almost choking on her alarm. ‘That’s just silly.’

‘No it’s not,’ said the girl indignantly. ‘Everyone knows. It’s an awful awful place and it’s miles and miles from home and you never never ever come back, ‘cause if you try to run away there’s big dogs like wolves to eat you. Isn’t that right, Pauli?’

Her brother looked up at his grandmother then looked away. Céci took the silence as assent and cried triumphantly to Sophie, ‘See, Pauli knows it’s true!’ and in the very moment of her triumph, the implication of having her worst fears confirmed by her infallible brother hit her.

Bursting into tears, she squeezed tight against Sophie as if trying to get inside the old woman’s body and sobbed, ‘I don’t want to go, Bubbah. I don’t want to go to Pitchipoi.’

‘There, there, cabbage, there’s no such place, it’s just a silly game,’ crooned Sophie rocking the child to and fro. ‘We’re not going anywhere.’

The next morning in the corpse-light of a grey, drizzling dawn, their names were called out in the list for departure.

She tried to protest, but all she did was draw attention to herself and the gendarmes were only too pleased to satisfy their masters’ bureaucratic demands by ticking off three names.

‘Quickly, over there. Do as I say, old woman!’

They had collected their pathetic scraps of belongings. The old carpet bag was long gone. Now what they had was contained in a ragged square of cloth tied together at the corners. Now this was opened and searched but not even the magpie instincts of the searchers could find anything left worth stealing.

‘Over there! Get on the bus!’

The old green and white buses were being used today. There was a larger than usual number of unaccompanied children being deported and it was felt there was a slight risk that the sight of them being herded along the rain-soaked pavements might provoke some kind of protest.

One or two gendarmes were visibly affected. Most hid their feelings under a shield of anger. They shouted and swore and brandished their sticks as though there was a constant threat of resistance. Sophie realized why they were doing this but felt no sympathy. This was not work fit for decent men.

On the bus she sat near the door and pulled the children close to her. They didn’t speak but sat by the rain-spattered window, fearfully watching the confusion outside.

Whatever system there was had clearly broken down. Harassed French officials with lists were trying to check names. The guards were herding people towards the buses with growing brutality. A German officer appeared, a comparatively rare sight within the camp. He began to shout angry instructions, adding to the confusion. A girl of about ten ran from the doorway of one of the blocks and spoke to him. She kept on gesturing towards the buses. Her dirty face was streaked with tears. The officer spoke to a French official who studied his list and shook his head. The officer pointed back to the block, the girl persisted, and finally the official dragged her, screaming in grief and protest, back into the building. It was like watching a vision of madness, then realizing you were no spectator but a part of it. And over everything rose the cries of weeping children.

Céci’s face at last crumpled and she said, ‘Bubbah, are we going to Pitchipoi now?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Sophie, but her voice carried no conviction even to herself. She had to do something. She closed her eyes in prayer for a moment, opened them again and saw through the window the young girl who was desperate to get on a bus being driven back by the angry official once more.

‘Pauli,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask questions. Take Céci back to the block. If anyone stops you, tell them you want to go on the bus because there’s a nice lady who’s been kind to you on the bus. But don’t tell them your name. Can you do that, Pauli?’

He looked straight into her eyes with that unblinking gaze he had inherited from her son. Then he nodded.

‘Yes, Bubbah,’ he said, and flung his arms round her neck and kissed her. Then he took Céci by the hand. Their bus was full and their guard was round the front, smoking a cigarette and talking with the driver. The door was slightly ajar. Pauli pushed it so it slid just wide enough for them to squeeze out.

Sophie watched them walk away. Pauli had his arm around his sister, holding her tight against his side. They looked so small, so defenceless. The old woman half rose from her seat to call them back. This was stupidity. At least they had been together. All that was likely to happen now was for the children to be transported separately, out of reach of any small protection she could afford them.

But she slumped down again without calling. In her mind she was seeing that sad, already defeated queue shuffling over the hall of the police station to register what no civilized state could have any reason for wanting them to register. Even then she had known but not been able to admit where that queue led to.

Now it was her unavoidable fate to travel east at the end of her life just as she and Iakov had travelled west at its true beginning. But for the children any delay must increase their slender chance of rescue from this nightmare.

They had almost reached the nearest block. Perhaps they would simply walk in unchallenged. But just as it seemed they had made it, a gendarme planted himself in front of them and began shouting at them and pointing back to the buses.

Sophie felt her old frail body ready to collapse in on itself and die at this last disappointment. She sank back in her seat and put her hands over her face.

Pauli looked up at the man who was yelling at them to get back to the buses. He let him go on a bit, then began to yell, ‘We want to go! We want to go! But he won’t let us! He won’t let us!’

At last the gendarme realized what was being said.

‘What do you mean? Who won’t let you?’

‘The man on the bus! We want to go with the lady, but he said we can’t! The lady was kind to us. We want to go with the lady!’

He now screwed his face up, and made himself cry, and through the tears continued his refrain, ‘We want to go with the lady!’

Céci had no idea what was going on, but tears are infectious, and anything Pauli did was good enough for her, so she soon joined in, ‘We want to go with the lady!’

‘Shut your row, boy!’ ordered the gendarme, but his tone was now less angry than his words. ‘What’s your name?’

The man had a list.

Pauli thought desperately. All names except his own vanished from his mind. Then he saw the door of his grandfather’s shop, and smelt the glorious smell of fresh baked bread, and his eyes filled with genuine tears.

‘Crozier,’ he said. ‘I’m Claude Crozier and this is my sister, Louise.’

The gendarme studied the list. Suppose there was someone called Crozier on it? Pauli clasped his sister’s hand so tight, she squealed in pain.

‘Poor kid. You really are upset, aren’t you?’ said the gendarme paying attention to Céci for the first time. Men were always delighted with the little girl’s wide-eyed, appealing face framed in blonde curls, and even in her present state, the charm still worked. Suddenly Pauli foresaw a new danger. Success.

He flung himself forward against the gendarme, butting his head against the man’s crutch.

‘Let us go with the lady! You’ve got to let us go with the lady!’ he cried, beating his fists against the policeman’s thighs.

‘Yes, you’ve got to, you’ve got to!’ yelled Céci, adding her tiny fists to the tattoo.

‘Jesus Christ, you little bastard!’ gasped the gendarme, doubled up with pain. ‘Get out of here before I break your fucking neck! Go on, you nasty little Yid! Get out of here!’

In the bus, Sophie took her hands from her eyes. She saw the gendarme straightening up with difficulty, saw the backs of Pauli and his sister as they disappeared back into the detention block.

‘Thank God!’ said Sophie, certain beyond reason that this was no temporary escape for the children, that somehow they would be freed completely from Drancy. ‘Thank you, dear God. Now I can die.’

She meant it. It seemed an easy thing, now that she no longer had the children to care for, to release her hold on life and slip quietly away, perhaps even before the cattle-wagon into which they were herded at the railway station trundled its way eastwards out of France.

But when she lay back against the rough wooden slats and closed her eyes, she felt fingers tugging at her arms and her legs and her shoulders and her hair. Opening her eyes, she saw she was the only adult in this wagon full of children. Slowly their touch and their cries drew her reluctantly, painfully, back to life.

She reached out and put her arms around as many as possible.

‘Be silent, my cabbages,’ she said. ‘Dry your tears. It’s a train we’ll be travelling on, not a boat, so who needs a river, eh?’

Some of the nearest children tried to stop their tears. A small boy asked fearfully, ‘Will the train take us to Pitchipoi, madame?’

‘Who knows where a train goes these days? Only the driver. Do I look like a driver, eh? But don’t be afraid, cabbage. Be sure, wherever it takes us, I’m going with you all of the way.’

The wagon lurched forward. The journey had begun. Paris was soon falling behind them, Paris where people were stretching, and yawning, and eating breakfast, and grumbling about the coffee, and going to work; Paris where Günter Mai was already in his staff car, heading to the Majestic, eager to collect the
Ausweis
and the release order for the Simonian children and their grandmother from the horror of Drancy.