The Blood of Lorraine (17 page)

M
ARTIN’S MOTHER LOOPED HER ARM
into his as they headed for the Hotel d’Angleterre. Usually Martin stiffened when she took possession of him in this way, but today was different. Today she spoke of his wife with tenderness and sympathy. His body relaxed as he leaned toward her, listening, and protecting her from the swirling wind blowing up the side streets onto the busy rue Saint-Jean. “And Giuseppe is a sweet man, a good man. He even reminds me a little of your father, because he is so kind,” she said as they approached the hotel. When he tried to catch the expression on her face, she had already turned away. Of the three of them, Henri Martin had been the most gentle and yielding. Martin never doubted that his mother missed her husband terribly. Now he understood that she may even have missed the softening influence he had had over her. She patted his arm, to assure him that they could continue, and they entered the lobby of the modest hotel.

“I’ll call you when I’m ready,” she said with a lilt in her voice and headed up the stairs, hanging on to the banister with one hand and to her heavy skirts with the other. Martin noted that she had grown slower and thicker, even while still aspiring to a certain degree of fashion. The peacock feather in her hat, the matching blue coat trimmed with black velvet, must have been things she had scrimped and saved for. Things that allowed a poor widow to “keep up appearances” in front of the rich relatives. It was quite admirable, really, Martin thought as she disappeared around the corner.

Martin was pleased to note that the only other person in the lobby was a young clerk with his nose in a book. Behind him, the many hanging keys indicated that most of the travelers were out for the day. Or the hotel was empty. Being only two blocks from the railroad station, it offered a full array of the national dailies hanging invitingly on wooden rods. For the next few minutes, Martin could be anonymous. Neither judge nor mourner. He might be taken for a tourist, a salesman, a visiting relative. Or just a man at his leisure, waiting for a woman to do her packing. The lobby, including its three threadbare armchairs, was all his.

Martin took off his woolen overcoat, scarf, bowler and gloves, and laid them on one of the chairs. Rubbing his hands together, he examined the framed row of newspapers. He was about to reach for
Le Temps
when something in
Le Figaro
caught his eye. A guest, or the owner, or the clerk, had circled a story with dark, angry pencil strokes. The newspaper was an old one, from Wednesday, and yet it still lay folded over the wooden rod, as if by design. The article was about Dreyfus, reported on the day of Henri-Joseph’s funeral. Something Martin had missed. Sucking in a breath, he grabbed the paper, rod and all, and sank down into one of the armchairs.

A stream of pain pulsed across his forehead as he grasped the full import of the circled article, which was much more incendiary than the rumors circulating in the cheap tabloids, rumors that could be dismissed or explained away as silly or speculative. By contrast,
Le Figaro
’s information came straight from the top, from General Auguste Mercier, the minister of war. Martin could hardly believe what he was reading. The head of the army had offered his verdict, or at least an oblique idiotic version of it, even before the case reached his own military court. “The general staff,” Mercier was quoted as saying, “has found out from very reliable sources that Dreyfus has been in contact for more than three years with the agents of a foreign government, which was neither the government of Italy nor the government of Austria-Hungary.”

How coy, Martin thought with disgust as he slapped the newspapers into his lap. Neither Italy nor Austria-Hungary? Why not just say that he meant Germany, the country that had taken over the city where the Dreyfus family still owned factories? Why did he feel it necessary to insult in this stupid insidious way the great power whose guns were pointed straight at French Lorraine and its capital? Martin’s home, Clarie’s home. Mercier was a fool.

Martin had no sympathy for anyone who would betray his country, if that is indeed what Dreyfus had done. But what about other Israelites, like Singer and the Steins? This naming, but not really naming, this kind of insinuation, where would it lead? To painting all Jews from Alsace and Lorraine with the same dastardly brush? Martin angrily tossed the paper aside, letting it drop to the floor. His mind was racing. Worst of all, would further proof of Dreyfus’s treachery and connection to Germany embolden the man or men who had killed Ullmann and Erlanger to try again?

The desk clerk cleared his throat and shifted his pimply bespectacled gaze from the felled newspaper to Martin’s face. Abashed, Martin reached down and smoothed out
Le Figaro
before getting up to replace the rod on the wooden frame. If the clerk knew I was a judge, he would have been more polite, Martin thought ruefully. But Martin had no intention of revealing who he was. Keeping his back to the desk, Martin chose the monochromatic, staid
Le Temps
this time. He planned to hide behind it until his mother called.

Ten minutes later, she rescued him from the clerk’s disapproving glances. She had taken a long time, because, Martin suspected, she preferred to spend the time in her room, checking and rechecking her belongings, rather than trying to fill the awkward moments of a prolonged good-bye on the train platform. Yet today, of all days, they could have talked. About Clarie. About his mother’s newfound love for his wife. Adele Martin would never admit, of course, that she had been wrong, or that Clarie should have the audacity to continue to teach in one of the Republic’s laic high schools. Still, for the first time in years he watched his mother with concern as she went over the room to make sure she had not forgotten anything. She was a head shorter than either he or Clarie, and more stooped than he remembered her. Since he had seen her last, her hair had become whiter, her face more wrinkled, her blue-gray eyes, the only feature they shared, a little dimmer. As she brushed past him, he realized at least one thing had not changed: her scent, lily of the valley. He wondered if she had been wearing the same perfume since the day he was born. He realized with a start that to him, that was a mother’s smell.

When she saw him staring at her, she smiled. “Done!” she said brightly.

“You’re sure?” He hoped she had not caught the irony in his voice, which amazingly even to him was filled with affection.

She nodded. “Come, my handsome son, take me to the station.”

She took the hat box and left him to lug her heavy valise. They walked to the station in a comfortable silence. When they got to the platform and he put down her case, she remarked, “There are baby things in there. I knitted them. I’m going to save them for the next time. Don’t tell Clarie. I just wanted you to know how much I was looking forward to….” She grimaced as tears made a single trail down each powdery cheek. She reached inside her black velvet sack for a handkerchief.

“I know that; of course I do.” Because Adele Martin had been able to have only one child, she had never kept her desire for grandchildren a secret.

“She’s strong, you’ll see. And you know that Henri-Joseph is in heaven, don’t you?”

Martin did not know. Still, he nodded, avoiding her eyes, which were pleading with him to believe and to confirm what she believed.

Martin swallowed hard. “You’ve been wonderful, you know. To Clarie. And to Giuseppe. Thank you.” If these were not the kindest words he had said to her in years, they were certainly the most sincere.

She reached up and touched his bearded cheek with her gloved hand, and then, for the first time in a decade, they pressed their bodies together in a real embrace. As if that was all she could hope for, she urged, “Go. The men can help me to my seat. You need to be home.”

Churning with unexpected emotion, Martin backed away as a porter came to carry her bags. It was hard to believe that after so many years, he might have a mother, despite the fact that he had broken with almost everything she believed in. Adele Martin looked back one more time and waved before stepping onto the gasping train. He lifted his hand too, and smiled sincerely, even though he was aware that he hadn’t been completely honest with her. He could not go back home, not yet.

As soon as his mother was out of his sight, Martin went to the front of the station and hired a two-seated hansom cab to take him across the tracks and up the hill toward the Préville Cemetery. This was an extravagance, but he needed to get to the graveyard in time to see the funeral procession. The chill wind battered him in the open cab as he remembered how he had felt at the morgue on Friday. Pushed aside. An outsider. Was it possible that he was childish enough to feel hurt or insulted by Singer’s slights? Martin clapped his leather-gloved hands together impatiently. No! He was going to observe the funeral as part of his duty as an investigating magistrate, in case a killer might be bold enough to admire his handiwork. And to understand. He slouched back in the carriage seat. He had to admit that another part of him wanted to see the hidden side of Singer, and that this was why he did not intend to show himself.

When Martin descended from the carriage at the far edge of the cemetery, he knew immediately that he was not too late. Beggars were scattered along the stone wall that enclosed the huge graveyard, waiting, some talking among themselves, others in sullen silence. A few of the paupers, the more practiced and professional, had brought chairs; others sat on the cold hard ground or stood leaning against the equally inhospitable wall. All hoped that they would become the beneficiaries of the funeral-goers’ charitable duties. How did they know that there would be a procession, Martin wondered as he shrank into his coat and hat, avoiding their eyes. He hadn’t noticed any black-lined placards announcing the death. But then, he had not noticed a great deal in the last few days. What he could observe through his lowered eyes, as he hurried to the main entrance, was that some of the beggars had long scraggly beards and wore broad black hats. Jewish paupers, he thought, and so different from Singer and his family. Were they part of what Singer called his “community”?

As soon as Martin stepped inside the wall, he was overcome with a paralyzing fear, and his breathing quickened. How could he have forgotten even for one moment? His baby’s grave lay down a row directly within his line of vision. But—this is why the panic fluttered in his chest—did he even know which little mound was his? There were so many of them. The day they buried his son, that whole afternoon had passed in a blur. Martin pressed his lips together as he tried to calm his breathing. How silly, how womanly he felt. Of course, there would be a name above where Henri-Joseph lay. He’d come back later and fix the exact place in his mind, and prepare for the day when he would lead Clarie to the grave.

He closed his eyes, blocking out everything but what he had come to witness, and waited. When a hush fell over the beggars, he knew the procession was approaching. As soon as he spotted Rabbi Bloch turning the corner at the head of the line of mourners, Martin slipped over to the other side of the gate and flattened himself against the wall. To avoid being seen, he had to settle for observing the mourners from the back as they passed him on their way to the Jewish side of the cemetery, which was separated from the Christian side by a thick high wall. He could tell that Singer was one of the pallbearers holding up the plain pine box. Although the casket was humble, the entourage was quite impressive. About fifty men in black frock coats and black tophats hardly made a sound as they followed the pine box up the slight incline toward the graveyard set aside for the Israelites. Even Stein, the shopkeeper, appeared in a tophat. Then came the veiled women, also in black. Martin thought he recognized the trim figure of Noémie Singer, holding the hand of what must have been her eldest child. Martin was about to leave his hiding place after the women had passed until he caught sight of a few stragglers, humbler men, some in wide-brimmed round black hats, others in caps, shuffling along behind, mumbling prayers. All the mourners ignored the beggars, who would have to wait until after the burial rites to reap any rewards for their efforts.

When Martin was certain that everyone had passed into the Jewish cemetery, he left his spot to find a better observation post farther up the hill. Fortunately the open grave was only a few meters from the gate. Martin could see and hear everything. But he could not understand. Rabbi Bloch swayed a little as he recited a singsong prayer, Martin presumed, in Hebrew, the sacred language of the Israelites. Most of the mourners stood by without moving, frozen in dignified grief. A few of the stragglers, however, swayed even more than the cleric, bouncing their heads up and down with greater and greater force as the prayer went on. Martin saw Singer turn and was afraid he had been observed, until he realized that his colleague was moving back from the innermost ring of mourners to comfort his wife.

“Do you recognize any of them?”

Martin almost leapt out of his skin. He turned to see Jacquette.

“Sorry,” the inspector said. “Looks like we’re both on the job today.”

Martin nodded, still conscious of not wanting to make a sound. Then whispered his response. “I don’t recognize anyone but the rabbi, the Singers and my landlord.”

Jacquette held a small notebook in his hand. He had been taking notes. Good man. Martin should have known he would be here.

“Look again to be sure,” Jacquette mumbled. “I’d be particularly interested in anyone who doesn’t fit in.”

Martin shook his head. The men who were bobbing their heads had their backs to him. He did not think that the tinker, who had caused so much friction between Singer and his wife, was among them.

For the next few minutes, Martin and Jacquette stood, close together, watching in silence just behind the gate, their breath forming wispy clouds between them and the Israelites. When the pine box was lowered into the ground, the mourners lined up one by one to throw dirt over the dead man. Martin stepped away and stretched himself against the outer wall. He could not watch this. Only days ago, he had left his son’s casket next to a hole in the ground. They had all left before the custodian had begun to drop shovelfuls of dirt over the tiny body. Even now he could not bear the thought.