Charlotte Gray (56 page)

On the other side of the room, a long sheet of zinc had been attached to the wall to act as a wash basin, fed by half a dozen tap less pipes.

The window, a foot or so from Levade's face, had for some reason been painted blue perhaps to stop them looking on to the world outside, he thought. It was of the type that slides along metal runners, and although it had been nailed shut, it did not fit flush with the frame.

Levade was grateful for the slim icy draught because it helped against the smell of people in the room. He pulled the pile of his clothes on top of him and huddled down to sleep.

Later, a voice tried to interest him in soup, but Levade shook his head and pulled the clothes higher up over his shoulders. He heard the sound of a whistle and sensed the lights being extinguished.

Then, at last, for the first time for many years, Levade dreamed rich, sensuous narratives expanded at beguiling length; visual revelations of remembered places; a total habitation of other fully realised worlds. When he awoke in the morning, he found it impossible to believe that he was back in the room at Drancy. Surely the more powerful existence in which his dreams had so ravishingly placed him should have prevailed over this reduced reality. It was seven o'clock and one of the orderlies with white armbands had brought a pail of coffee into the room. People crowded round him with their mugs outstretched while the head of the room tried in vain to make them form a line. Levade stirred beneath the pile of clothes. He could feel an intense irritation in the skin of his chest and legs. It was a familiar sensation that for a moment he struggled to place. Then it came back to him: lice. He had not felt this tormenting itch since he burned his service shirt in Paris after being demobilised in 1918. He struggled from the bed and asked the head of the room where the lavatory was.

"You have to wait. Our turn in the Red Castle is in five minutes. Wait here." Men were washing in the cold water that gushed from the pipes above the zinc trough. Some stood naked and performed their intimate ablutions with unhurried care; some furtively splashed and dabbed, revealing as little of themselves as they could. A father, a religious man, agonisingly hid his nakedness from his son. Levade found that Charlotte had put a toothbrush and some paste in the pocket of his jacket and he waited his turn to use them.

The Red Castle was a block of latrines made from a temporary barracks set near the main gates. When his room was detailed to use them, Levade went down with his fellow-men, herded by the orderly. In the courtyard, they had to keep to the edge of the buildings; they were not allowed to step into the open space, but had to huddle back like shadows on the wall. The latrines were inadequate for the numbers; the paper in the cubicles had been used by previous rooms, and when Levade pulled his plug there was no water in the cistern. The smell and the filth were not new to him; everything reminded him of the earlier war, when he had lived in such conditions. In those days, they had been told there was a reason: the glory and the honour of the country were at stake, and their sacrifices would be honoured when they returned from the front. This time, Levade did not think he would be going home.

The inhabitants of all the staircases in due course assembled in the cindercovered courtyard for the roll call. Levade marvelled at the variety of his fellowprisoners. There were sleek and shaven men in heavy overcoats who might have stepped out of an important business meeting for a quiet cigar; there were vagrant people in whose faces the grime was long ingrained; there were bare-legged women fussing over families, trying to keep threads of order; and there were children, large numbers of dark-eyed, lethargic infants, some barely able to stand from fatigue, some with their mothers but most of them isolated and stunned, beyond speech. The roll call of the thousands gathered there took an hour and a half. Levade leaned on his young neighbour for support and, when it was over, went trembling back to his bed where he coughed until he thought his ribs would crack. A noisy argument was taking place between a group of Frenchmen and some Poles. The French were blaming the Poles for their own plight in being rounded up by the police, while the Poles complained that the French were given privileges by the police who ran the camp.

After all, they argued, are we not all Jews?

"Yes," a Parisian accent turbulently shouted back, 'but we're not all French. At eleven in the morning some bread was brought to the room, where it was divided into portions of one seventh of a loaf to each man. The head of the room was scrupulous in his division, as it was carelessness in this task that had once led to two men being immediately deported.

Levade had no appetite, but kept his piece of bread and gave it to the young man on whose shoulder he had leaned at roll call. At midday, the pail that had earlier brought up coffee arrived with what was described as soup a broth of cabbage shavings and hot water, which was hungrily received by the other inmates.

"Don't you want your soup?" It was Hartmann, the head of the staircase, who had helped Levade when he arrived.

Levade shook his head.

"You don't look well."

"It's my chest. I haven't been well for a few weeks. I don't think the conditions are a help."

Hartmann smiled.

"I'll see if I can get the nurses to look at you. We had a doctor on this staircase but he was deported."

"These deportations," said Levade.

"Where do they go?"

"Pitchipoi'. That's what we tell the children. It's a name they made up in the infirmary. They go to Poland."

"And what happens there?"

Hartmann raised his shoulders and spread his hands a little. Levade looked into his face: his eyes, Levade noticed, were of a remarkable deep brown with a thin bar of light at the centre.

"In theory," Hartmann said, 'they work. In fact. In fact, I don't really know. But there are rumours, there are stories you'll hear in the camp."

"And what do they say, these rumours?"

Hartmann shook his head slowly.

"I don't think it matters. I think we'll find out, you and I." Levade was lying on his bed, with Hartmann standing next to him.

Levade said, "Why are you here? What was your crime?"

"My crime ... aah. So many crimes. As far as they were concerned, the problem was that I wasn't wearing a star. I lived in a little town in Brittany, in the Occupied Zone, and someone informed the local police that I was a Jew and was refusing to wear the star."

Levade smiled.

"Like me. My papers weren't stamped with the right word."

"My mother's family isn't Jewish anyway," said Hartmann.

"My father was an atheist. But they needed people to make up numbers. I've been here six months now. That's how I got appointed to this elevated position, and because I'm a lawyer. The authorities like lawyers for some reason. I suppose they think we're intelligent. Or honest, perhaps." He laughed.

"Who was it that chose you?"

"The gendarmes. They run the camp really. Officially, the national police are in charge, and it's their commissioner who's the commander of the camp. But they keep at arm's length, they feel happier that way, being the guardians of public order, doing the bidding of the Government but allowing the gendarmes to do the dirty work."

"And these people with the armbands. Who are they?"

"There's a sort of Jewish administration, too. The gendarmes get us to run the place as much as possible. These people are orderlies. It's the same principle as the Germans using the French police. But if you're the head of a staircase, you can do some good, you're not just working for the enemy.

You can help people, you can try to keep their spirits up. We have times of bad morale. Before a deportation there are a lot of suicides. People throw themselves from the windows."

Levade closed his eyes. Perhaps it was illness as much as religious stoicism that was keeping him at a distance from the circumstances he was in; or perhaps they were simply too strange to be fully apprehended.

He said, "How long do people stay here before they're deported?"

"Not long," said Hartmann.

"We had a lull during the winter when no trains seemed to leave, but now it's starting up again. It's a few weeks for most people, and for some just a few days."

"And who chooses the people?"

"To some extent the Jewish authorities choose. They try to send foreigners before the French, and they try to keep back veterans of the war. But the police can throw in anyone they like, and so can the Germans. In the end it's a matter of chance."

"And the children?"

"Yes, they can go, too. Once they were ruled out, but not any more."

"I see. And are you a veteran of the war?"

"Yes, but only at the end, from 1917. I was too young to go in before. And you?"

"Yes. Four years. Verdun. The smell here ' " I know," said Hartmann.

"It takes you back."

Levade had closed his eyes again. He felt the other man's hand on his wrist. He said, "I'll get someone to come and examine you. Perhaps you should sleep now."

But Levade was already dreaming.

Sylvie Cariteau took her bicycle from the square and set off into the countryside. The post office was closed on Wednesday afternoon, so she had plenty of time, but she wanted to be back before it was dark.

It took her an hour to reach the farm where the boys were being kept. She felt unsure of her reception as she pedalled down the muddy track; she never really knew if they regarded her as their saviour or their gaoler, and Andre had become sensitive and strange in the course of the long months without his parents.

Andre turned out to be in his best mood, skipping and talking incessantly, eager to share with Sylvie the marvels of his new home.

He was, or could be, the most delightful child, she thought, and little Jacob never complained, but just tagged along in his own time.

Anne-Marie's mother was in the kitchen, a woman of the same generation as Sylvie Cariteau's own mother, and of a similarly reticent character. She was not pleased at having two extra mouths to feed, but her husband had told her it would work out for them in the long run. He had given Sylvie a mysterious and conspiratorial look.

In the course of the afternoon, Anne-Marie herself came back from work in her cafe and joined in the games Sylvie was playing with the boys. Then she set to work to make a large omelette with eggs she sent Andre to gather from the hen coop. She even had butter to set foaming in the blackened skillet she put on the stove.

They were halfway through the meal when Anne-Marie suddenly raised her finger to her lips.

"Ssh. I can hear a car. Quick. Upstairs. Quick!"

Andre and Jacob scrambled up the ladder while Anne-Marie gathered their plates into the sink.

"It's not your father's van?" said Sylvie.

"No. He has no petrol. Wait here."

Anne-Marie, a slight woman beneath her lumpy winter clothes, went to the door and stood with her hands on her hips.

Coming into the yard was an open-topped German military vehicle with four men in it, their rifles pointing skyward from between their knees. Anne-Marie stayed where she was as they climbed out and crossed the muddy farmyard.

The tallest of the four men stepped forward.

"You have Jews here," he said in French.

"We take them. Jewish boys."

"I don't know what you're talking about. There are no boys here. Just my mother and me. And a friend."

"Move." The German sergeant pushed past her, followed by the corporal and the private who had been at the Domaine, and another private who was part of the detachment at Lavaurette.

The sergeant shouted an order to the other three, who began to move about the kitchen, turning over the furniture, opening cupboards.

"What do you want?" said Anne-Marie's mother.

The sergeant stopped at the door to the next room.

"The French police say there are Jews here. Two boys. We take them." A cry from one of the privates brought the other three over to his corner of the room. He was pointing to a padlocked door that led into a back storeroom.

"Where's the key?" said the sergeant.

Anne-Marie shrugged.

"No key."

The sergeant hammered at the lock with the butt of his rifle until he broke the housing off the door frame.

While all four men were in the back room the women looked at each other. Sylvie Cariteau held her hand across her mouth. Anne-Marie's eyes darted back and forth between the other two, her lips set resolutely together. The soldiers returned.

"Where are they?" The sergeant grabbed Annemarie by the lapels of her thick woollen jacket and Anne-Marie spat in his face. He pushed her back on the table, ripping the cloth of her coat and the dress beneath, half baring the breasts she had for so long exposed to Levade.

He paused for a moment, then seemed to recollect himself. He pointed to the ladder in the corner of the room and gave another order. The three others climbed up, and Sylvie Cariteau watched their boots disappear into the gloom above. She heard their footsteps overhead and wondered how well the boys were hidden. The sergeant turned away from Anne-Marie and began to look round the kitchen again.

Anne-Marie leaned over and whispered in Sylvie's ear, "If you and I can detain them, perhaps Maman can get the boys out at the back, through the window." She said the word 'detain' in a way that made its meaning clear to Sylvie Cariteau, who hesitated for a moment, then mournfully nodded.

Anne-Marie whispered to her mother, who pursed her lips.

"What's this?" The German sergeant was holding up a book he had found on the floor by the sink. It was the story of the crocodile who lost her egg. He raised his eyebrows as he advanced once more towards Annemarie. He spoke softly this time.