The Blood of Lorraine (25 page)

“He’s not your rabbi?” Martin arched his eyebrows as if he were shocked.

“We have many rabbis, just as you have many priests.”

“I am speaking of the Grand Rabbi Bloch.”

“Yes, and grand he is.” The grin grew wider, as he tried to signal his agreement with Martin’s assessment. His little feet shifted back and forth in agitation. Despite his shrunken legs, it was obvious that Shlomo the Red Dwarf was accustomed to dancing away from threatening people and dangerous subjects. He had probably spent his life fleeing stones thrown by thuggish boys and the contemptuous glances of women.

Martin shot Jacquette a frustrated glance. He did not enjoy pounding down on a man who barely came up to his waist. A creature who, if he were not so clever, would certainly deserve any man’s pity.

The inspector cleared his throat. “I am sure if we could forgive Monsieur Shlomo’s crime this one time, he would keep his ears and eyes open for us. He could listen. See if anyone had bad things to say about Ullmann or Erlanger.”

“Listen.” Martin nodded sagely and strolled back behind his desk. It was all play-acting now, trying to figure out what degree of threat and mercy would elicit the most information. “Do you really think that ‘listening’ is enough of a payment for a crime? A few weeks’ hard labor—”

“Better yet,” Shlomo eagerly interjected with another sweeping bow, “let me show you. The inspector said he wanted to know more about the poorest Jews of the city. I can be your guide. I can translate. Tonight is a good night. Everyone is returning for the sabbath. You will see, Monsieur le juge, you will see we are all honest men, religious men, God-fearing men.”

Martin glanced at Jacquette again. This is what his inspector had wanted, a chance to wade into the underside of Jewish life in the city. Martin lowered himself into his seat, considering, or at least making a show of working it through. The truth was that nothing else had worked. The truth was, too, that he was curious. He wanted to know more about the stragglers and the beggars whom he had seen at Erlanger’s funeral. He wanted to understand why Singer had talked about the tinker with such anger and contempt.

“How will you do that? How can you show us?” Martin asked, rubbing his beard, as if in deep thought.

“The men come to the café to warm themselves before going to the
shul
; you can talk to them then.”

“The shul, their place of worship, I believe,” Jacquette explained to Martin.

“You know our people, our language!” the dwarf exclaimed. “No wonder you are such an admirable inspector!”

“I know enough to know when I am being fooled,” the inspector muttered under his mustache. “Where is this shul, and why don’t you go to the Temple?”

Good! Jacquette was keeping up the pressure too.

The Red Dwarf sighed and hung his head. The smile disappeared. Martin got the impression that the little trickster finally understood what he had gotten himself into, caught between a powerful judge and an inspector who might be able to see through his tricks. “The Temple, Monsieur l’inspecteur, is not for our kind,” he explained sadly. “It’s for men who go home on Friday and put on their fine black tophats and the prayer shawls kept glistening white by their maids. It’s for men who bathe in their own homes and do not give off the odors of their daily labors. Men who actually pay a fee to sit in a chair designated only for them. Men who speak your language and can understand the Grand Rabbi when he gives his Grand Sermon in French. This is a language many of my brethren do not yet understand. Where is our shul, you ask? What is it? It is a shoe shop that we make holy every Friday and Saturday with our candles and with our songs.”

Martin stared at the dwarf. Had he revealed something new, something real? Or was this the way he ended all his performances, as if he were throwing himself and his sincerity at the mercy of the crowd before he collected their money?

The dwarf took Martin’s silence as a kind of consent, or at least as the magical moment of weakness that proceeds reaching into one’s pocket and throwing out a coin. “I should go ahead and tell them you are coming,” Shlomo said, shifting from one foot to another, his eyes wide with eagerness. “They need to be prepared. In Russia everyone is afraid of the police and soldiers, because”—this time his bow was so low, his fiery orange mop almost skimmed the floor—“we are not accustomed to living in the land of liberty and justice. My friends, they will understand this as soon as they see Your Eminences.”

If the man had not been so pitiful, Martin would have kicked him out of his office with his own boot. The dwarf had no right to make bold assumptions about whether Martin planned to jail him, or fine him, or just send him packing. Certainly not the right to believe that Martin was going to follow his lead.

And yet, what alternative was there, really? It was Friday. Another week had passed with no new clues to the murders and every possibility that the killer would strike again. All that loomed before Martin was another weekend, in the apartment, with the women, with the sadness, with his failures. Jacquette was waiting. Jacquette believed that the little showman might actually have something to show them. There were even times when Martin felt he could have nipped the whole affair in the bud, even prevented the murders, if he had understood at the start what had gone on in the minds of the Thomases and the Philipon woman, if he had seen with his own eyes what life was like for the poor and disinherited of the world. This is what his dead friend Merckx had always cajoled and urged him to do. To remember always that justice belonged to all people. And, Martin would remind him, so did murderous intentions. A visit to the dwarf ’s café might be instructive.

Not wanting to reward the eager witness for his brazenness, Martin turned away from him as he asked his inspector to make the arrangements.

H
OURS LATER
, M
ARTIN AND
J
ACQUETTE
set out through the Pépinière Park on their way to the immigrants’ café. They had decided to walk, because arriving on horseback might seem too threatening in the slums where Shlomo lived. Besides, it was a rare sunny, windless day. Unfortunately, Martin had forgotten that he’d be able to see Nancy’s zoo from the path. It reminded him of the little boy that he had once hoped to bring there. He put his head down and focused on the gravel crunching beneath his boots.

Jacquette breached their silence with the sheepish admission that he had given the dwarf the fare for the tram. “I couldn’t see him walking all that way on those legs,” he explained. Martin smiled to himself and grunted. Jacquette had a soft spot for society’s strays. He was often bemused by their stories, quirks and alibis, all of which Martin tended to perceive as evidence of misspent lives or unavoidable misfortune.

How much easier life would be, Martin thought, if he could find some amusement in the endless parade of humanity that marched through his investigations. He had always been too serious. Perhaps it had to do with his father dying when he was twelve years old. Or his Jesuit schooling. Although he had come to reject so much of what the priests had taught him, he had thoroughly imbibed their notion of life as a moral mission. But did he have to make such grim work of it? Martin kicked a dirty abandoned ball which had somehow found its way in front of them. Clarie, it was Clarie who had been making him a better, fuller, happier man. And now she seemed to be slipping away from him.

“Sir, you understood why I gave Shlomo—”

“Of course. I was just thinking about what we’re going to find at the café. I like our plan.”

It was Jacquette’s turn to grunt. Although he admitted he would not really be able to understand the dialect the immigrants spoke, the inspector was going to ask the questions and act as if he could discern whether Shlomo was rendering an accurate translation. Martin would observe, standing aloof, the dispassionate emblem of official France. They would make it clear that they had not come to arrest anyone or to check their papers, that all they wanted was the truth.

“I’m wondering if it’s going to be like what my grandfather used to tell me. All the peddlers coming from God-knows-where on a Friday evening, to eat with their wives and kids, and then run off to the shul.”

“Jacquette, do you want to go back to the village?” Martin teased, knowing full well the answer. Even if he could not find amusement in common criminals and woeful victims, he always took a certain manly pleasure in being with his inspector, whose experiences were so different from his own.

“Oh, no, sir. I like my toilets indoors and sleeping without a farting cow by my side, thank you very much. But there’s something about working so hard, barely scratching out a living, and then coming home, one night a week, with meat in your stew and your family and friends all around. My grandfather used to say the Jews were the poorest beggars in the village, but, at least on Friday night, the happiest.”

Happy
? Martin dug his gloved hands deeper into his pockets and shook his head. He had never thought of Singer as happy. In fact, except for his suspicion that Singer had higher ambitions, Martin had always thought that his Israelite colleague was much like him. Grave and dedicated, and oh-so-correct. Happiness. Were they going to a poor immigrants’ café to see happy men? Martin doubted it. He sniffed the air as they continued in companionable silence, letting himself enjoy the way the crystalline cold lit up his cheeks and nose, awakening his senses. If he had any hope of picking out of a crowd a man with enough resentment and hatred to kill, he was going to have to be alert.

As if by tacit agreement, both men shrank into their coats and scarves as they entered the crowded neighborhoods between the canals and the river. Martin did not have to look at the signs to know that these were the mean, filthy streets that housed the Thomases and their ilk. The rotting fleshy smells of the abattoir and tanneries combined with the smoke of the factories to make the air thick and rancid. It was as if dusk had fallen long before the sun decided to fade into the evening. Scantily dressed women had already begun to strike poses in the doorways, waiting for the night trade. Jacquette and Martin hurried to ward off their pitiful carnal offerings and moved just as quickly past a working-class café which might issue, at a moment’s notice, drunks engaged in a fight, or just looking for one. Jacquette led the way deftly, until they reached a line of low buildings, shops and clapboard houses holding each other up against the cold. Shlomo was waiting for them at the corner.

The dwarf hobbled toward them, using his cane as an oar. “I’ve gathered a few of my God-fearing countrymen,” he announced between large gulps of the tainted air. “Of course, you know that some would not see you or have you see them. Ehud the Anarchist and his friends don’t trust any policemen, even ones as kind and just as Your Eminences. But I can tell you where they work if you need them.”

Jacquette winked at Martin over the dwarf ’s head. He was still hopeful that he had found a first-class informer. Just then a woman, with a bawling child by her side, rounded the corner. “Herr Shlomo,” she said with surprise as she spotted Martin and Jacquette. “Liebe Madame Noa,” the dwarf bowed, “Gutes Shabbes.” She did not respond, for the presence of a man in a fine woolen coat and bowler had left her opened-mouthed and silent. Even the child stopped in midsquawl. “The boy is looking good,” Shlomo said as he patted the youngster on the head. Martin was shocked. A boy, with two long curls falling from either side of his face? Without realizing it, he had stepped away from the child in distaste.

“And so it is with us,” Shlomo grinned, still patting the boy on the head as he took in Martin’s discomfort. “And so it is.”

Martin was embarrassed. How was he to be the authoritative, dispassionate observer if he made himself so obvious? In compensation he tipped his hat to the woman, which only made her draw her heavy brown knitted shawl more tightly around her head and neck. Pulling her son away, she murmured “Gutes Shabbes” and hurried down the street.

Jacquette cleared his throat. “Let’s go in, shall we? Let’s meet your friends.” Once again, Martin knew why it was his inspector who went out into the world investigating, and not him. Nothing seemed to faze Jacquette.

“Yes, yes. The women are hurrying home to keep the fires burning and make the
cholent
, and the men must be home before sundown,” Shlomo observed as he pushed aside the thick curtain that served as the only door to the café. If indeed, one could call it that. The room was only large enough to hold two benches, one long wooden table, and a counter. No bottles of wine or beer or spirits lined the walls. No rich aroma of steaming coffee. Instead, there was a giant metal urn on the counter. Five men, two in broad hats and three in caps sat on one side of the table, the tallest in the middle, as if they had purposely arranged themselves in a pyramid. They were sipping hot amber liquid from glasses and eating little squares of white, spongy cake from chipped dishes. Although Shlomo hastily announced their names as each of them stood up in greeting, for Martin the only thing that distinguished one from another was their age, eloquently expressed in the hues of their untrimmed beards, which ranged from snowy white to pitch black.

“Moshe, would you like to give our guests a glass of tea?” Shlomo asked the man behind the counter.

Martin was about to refuse, when Jacquette accepted, and sat down beside Shlomo on one of the long benches. Martin edged onto the other end and studied the men across from him. They looked so foreign. They gave off an unbathed odor of onions and sweat, an intimate pungency that reminded Martin of his first visit to a working-class café. When he was fifteen years old, Merckx had taken him to a larger but equally humble miner’s tavern outside of Lille. Martin had been frightened and awed by Merckx’s father and the other colliers, by the eyes that glared out of their soot-coated faces, and by the dank, dark smell that clung to them. It was if they were spirits emerging from the netherworld, unable or unwilling to shed the mud that encased and shaped them. They swore and drank hard, celebrating the light of day, and cursing the heat and blackness of the pits. They spoke in a language that Martin could understand, the language that Merckx had taught him about the exploitation of bosses and the hypocrisy of priests. And, of course, they spoke in French.

Martin squinted in concentration as he heard Jacquette’s quiet questioning voice and Shlomo’s high whining translations begin. He was trying to see if he recognized any of the men from the funeral procession. He felt both intrigued and repelled by their bushy unkempt beards, their suspicious glances, their gesticulations, and their language, an incomprehensible dialect of German, with neither its authority nor its precision. When they began to respond to the dwarf, their words circled round and round, wheedling, disagreeing, complaining, questioning. Like Shlomo, they did not seem to be men of straight answers. Martin examined the glass that had been slapped down in front of him before he lifted it, with some trepidation, to his lips. Hot strong tea. A simple innocent pleasure for men who may or may not be innocent.

When Jacquette asked them their opinion of Ullmann, one of the younger men, with a curly black beard and sharp dark eyes, opined that Ullmann was a good man who opened a school for his workers’ children. In response to this, the tall man in the middle, who wore a broad black hat, slammed his fist on the table, rattling the glasses, and complained that he would not allow his wife or daughter to work in the factory because the mills ran on Saturday. He’d rather starve in order to keep the sabbath. Martin noticed that Shlomo’s translation sounded much less adamant than the original. He began to suspect that the dwarf was trying to please both the talkers and the listeners. Still, whatever grudge or praise they had for the mill owner seemed distant and impersonal.

As for Erlanger, those who knew of him had only praise. He was kind, he distributed alms, he helped people in trouble. “That’s why we prayed for him,” one of them exclaimed. Martin recognized the word said almost in chorus, “Amen.”

The question of why they didn’t go to the Temple got a much less reverential response. Who could afford it, one of the younger men asked, and complained that the rich pay for their fine seats. And who would like to sit like them, cried the tall graybeard in the middle of the table, who clamped his arms by his side, stiffened his body, and raised his eyes to heaven. The oldest man thumped the table in pleasure as others laughed. And Shlomo had to stop several times to hold his oversized hand over his giggles as he tried to translate the mimicry of his countryman. “Sometimes
we
dance while we pray,” he told Martin and Jacquette.

As Jacquette smiled in appreciation of the mockery of the bourgeoisie, Martin wondered what his inspector had thought of the exaggerated swaying and bowing at the edge of the crowd surrounding Erlanger’s grave. Singer, and all the others in tophats, had stood up straight, speaking their prayers softly, and had lightly thrown a handful of dirt upon the dead man. Singer had told Martin that the Consistory had made the Israelite services more “dignified.” Did the immigrants feel left out? Or were they content to have their own services in a shoe shop on Friday evening? Contrary to what the dwarf had claimed, it did not seem like his friends wanted to become French at all. It was almost as if the foreign and the French Israelites were leading parallel lives which seldom intersected. And when they did, was there enough friction to drive a man to murder?

Martin had seen one of these collisions and the angry reaction of Singer to the tinker’s influence on his wife. Martin leaned over the table toward Shlomo. “Ask them if they ever go into the homes of men like Ullmann and Erlanger, if they know their wives and children.”

The question evoked a pantomime of shrugs and head-shaking. “Monsieur le juge,” Shlomo explained, “I think all these poor honest men are out in the cold every day, selling on the streets, or in their little shops. They do not enter the homes of the rich.”

“What about the tinker with the sharpening wheel?” Martin pressed.

“Ahh,” Shlomo said, and nodded. He repeated Martin’s question to the men. Suddenly the dark eyes of the young man who had praised Ullmann lit up. “Jacob, Jacob,” he said through a set of strong, white teeth and began to laugh. Then he said something which set off an argument among the immigrants.

“What’s going on?” Martin asked, irritated.

“They are disagreeing, as Jews will, about Jacob, who we call Jacob the Wanderer. This one,” Shlomo said, pointing to first speaker, “says he is
meshuge
—crazy—and our elder on the end says that he is a holy man, the holiest of men. And this one,” Shlomo pointed to the tallest of them, the one who had refused to send his women into Ullmann’s mill, “agrees and says that Jacob is not crazy.” Martin could see that the defender of the tinker was not finished. The man in the broad black hat kept raising his fist and pounding it on the table, punctuating the thuds with the name “Jacob.”

The dwarf held up a finger, signaling for Martin and Jacquette to wait, and listened intensely. When the speaker had exhausted his arguments, Shlomo summarized. “It is Jacob who urged him not to send his women into Ullmann’s factories, who said it was a
shanda
, a shame, that a Jew should work people on Saturday; Jacob who said we must keep the old laws, as they did in Russia, as they did in the countryside, even here; Jacob who wants to make righteous Jews of every one of us.” Shlomo ended with a flourish.

“Meshuge, meshuge,” muttered the younger man beside Jacob’s tall defender. He was the one who had praised Ullmann. He spread out his arms, lifted his head, and chanted the saying that Shlomo had declaimed in Martin’s chambers: Lebn vi got in Frankraykh. Martin did not even need Shlomo to tell him what came next. He was able to surmise from his knowledge of German and from the vehemence with which the young man was pounding the table that he was insisting, “We are here. Now.”