The Collaborators (32 page)

6

‘Pauli,’ whispered Céci. ‘Is it Christmas yet?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘It’s just that we’ve been here such a long time, I thought maybe it was nearly Christmas.’

‘No, but don’t worry. I’ll tell you when it comes. I won’t let you miss it.’

Pauli knew exactly how long they’d been in Montluc. He kept a count of the days scratched in his sandal leather with his thumb nail. He could have scratched more efficiently if he’d wanted, for deep in the lining of his trousers he had the knife which Uncle Miche had given him for Christmas two, or was it three years earlier. He kept it hidden, however, doubtful if his fellow prisoners could resist the temptation to steal it, certain that the guards wouldn’t even try to resist. They had only been perfunctorily searched on arrival, nothing like the thorough and repeated body searches given at Drancy where every last item of value was stripped from the inmates before they were packed into the cattle-train for the east.

There were three imprisonment buildings in the fortress of Montluc; the main cell block, three storeys high; a single-storey block referred to though not used as the refectory; and a building made of yellow painted wood where the Jewish prisoners were ‘housed’. It was into this that the Simonian children had been pushed. A mutter of protest went up at the sight of the youngsters, but it was stilled by a man called Stern who seemed to have some authority.

‘Let ‘em be,’ he growled. ‘Draw attention to them and God knows what may happen. Each day any of us sits quietly here is a day nearer the end of the war, remember that.’

Somehow, contact was kept with the outside world, and the fever of anticipation of the expected invasion had touched even these men who guessed how little they personally were likely to benefit from it.

The Gestapo guards sensed this traffic of news in and out and did everything they could by way of punishment and infiltration to halt it. The inmates always required any new prisoner to give a full account of himself to convince them he was not a German stoolie. Not even the bright evidence of recent beating visible on the face of the thin little man hurled into their midst a couple of days later was enough. Anyone could stand a beating.

‘What’s your name, friend?’ enquired someone.

‘Now that’s a matter of some small dispute,’ said the newcomer, massaging his badly bruised jaw. ‘Magus I am, but I fear my gifts of gold have been knocked from my teeth!’

‘Anyone know this joker? No?’ The questioner grew angry. ‘So what’s your sodding name?’

The newcomer’s hand had moved from his jaw to a cut on his cheekbone.

‘Do you have a mirror?’ he said in alarm. ‘Has anyone got a mirror? Oh dear. What do you think, sir? Will it leave a scar? Oh God. Wrinkles I can resist, but not another scar!’

His interrogator seized him by the throat.

‘It’ll scar all the way down to your toes if you don’t start answering!’

To the surprise of those with the strength left to be surprised, the little man laughed.

‘My dear fellow, after what I’ve been through, after what I’ve been threatened with, do you imagine a scarecrow like you can frighten me? Now, remove your hand or at least put it somewhere more friendly.’

The man looked at Stern, who nodded.

‘Thank you,’ said the man. ‘And now, to those who have a sympathetic soul, let me bring pain with my most melancholy story.’

But before he could start his narration, he felt a small hand slip into his. Looking down, he encountered a gaze whose steadiness was more disconcerting here than ever before.

‘Good morning, Monsieur Melchior,’ said Pauli.

‘What? Pauli? Is it you? And Céci. Oh God, have they thrown you too in this awful place, my dears?’

His attempted insouciance ripped to shreds, Maurice Melchior knelt down and embraced the children with tears streaming down his face.

‘You know this man, kids?’ said Stern.

‘Yes, sir. He brought us from Paris to Lyon. He lived upstairs from Bubbah Sophie, my grandmother in Paris.’

That established Melchior’s credentials for most. Only Stern showed any interest in his story now.

He told it without embellishment, conscious of Pauli drinking in every word.

‘Even then, I may have persuaded them I really
was
Corder if Octave, my business associate, had not decided he could save his own skin by offering them mine,’ he concluded. ‘Since this war began, I have not been fortunate in my choice of friends. But at least it has brought me in touch with these unfortunate children again. I owe Pauli at least two debts. We must get them out, and ourselves too!’

Stern shook his head.

‘Forget it. Only one man has escaped from Montluc, André Devigny last year. There are only two ways any of us are leaving this place.
Avec bagages
or
sans bagages.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Melchior, puzzled.

‘If your name is called
avec bagages
it means you’re on your way to a concentration camp in Germany,’ said Stern.

‘And
sans bagages?’

‘Shorter journey. Quicker end,’ said Stern laconically.

‘Oh God.’ Maurice Melchior closed his eyes. Despite his show of bravado, he was utterly terrified. Always before in his life, even during the worst periods, his capacity to relax in a sea of troubles and grasp at whatever straws of pleasure floated by had always kept him going. Now at last he found himself completely waterlogged with his prospects reduced to a choice between a quick and a slow drowning.

Céci moved against his chest and whimpered. He opened his eyes and adjusted her head so that she was once more comfortable.

Now he glanced at Pauli and tried to smile. His purpose was to reassure, to offer hope and encouragement, but the smile would not come. After a moment he closed his eyes once more. It was strange, but if there had been any reassurance in that brief eye-contact, it had passed not from him to the boy, but from that steady, thoughtful gaze into his hectic mind.

Days passed, became weeks. It was good when they were allowed to pass in utter passivity. A world of stinking air, overflowing toilet buckets, vile food and the complete and uncontrollable infestation of person, clothing, bedding and woodwork with every kind of crawling, burrowing, flying vermin imaginable made itself bearable only when the mind was anaesthetized into accepting this as the best, and the worst, there was. But there were disturbances, prisoners dragged out for interrogation, or for deportation, or worst of all the four a.m.
appels sans bagages
which were followed a short time later by the rattle of rifle-fire.

And even disturbances of a different kind, like the ripple of joyous excitement that ran through the prison when news penetrated of the Allied landings in Normandy, only brought more pain, as the image of an outer world touched with a hope they could not share trembled like a heat-mirage before the prisoners’ minds.

Then late one night the guard opened the door and cried, ‘Simonian. Paul. Cécile. Out!’

Maurice Melchior was roused from what passed for sleep by the call. He struggled to his feet in time to see the children going through the door.

Heedless of the men he trampled on, he rushed after them saying, ‘Wait!’

The guard watched his approach indifferently then swung the butt of his rifle into his skinny rib-cage and sent him crashing backwards on top of the sleepers he’d just roused with his feet.

The guard looked down at his list again and rattled off some more names. Last among them was Melchior. When he saw Maurice approaching again, he laughed.

‘If you’d waited, you wouldn’t have got hit, would you? Oh, by the way,
avec bagages,
if you’ve got any.’

Encouraged by the guard’s albeit brutal attempt at humour, Melchior asked, ‘Where are we going? Is it to Drancy?’

The guard looked at him closely, clearly wondering which would cause more pain, another blow or an honest reply.

He opted for the reply.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Usually you lot go to Drancy first, that’s true. But this time you’re privileged. Straight to Germany, or should I say, straight through Germany? Lucky sods. Wish it was me! Now get out before I smash your head in.’

Behind him he heard Stern’s voice calling, ‘Good luck! Remember, there’s no way out from within!’

If that was a hint, it ought to have come with a printed diagram, thought Melchior bitterly as they were herded by soldiers armed with sub-machine-guns across the short distance which separated the prison from a complex of railway sidings. Here a line of cattle-wagons awaited. They were driven into them. Melchior saw the children ahead and managed to close up behind them so that they got into the same wagon.

The wagons were crowded, but not jam-packed and it was possible for everyone to squat, though not to stretch out. The children were accorded a corner and Melchior by asserting his status
in loco parentis
joined them.

‘Let’s get comfortable,’ he said trying for cheerfulness. ‘I daresay it will be a longish journey.’

‘Let no one wish it shorter,’ said someone with gloomy foreboding.

‘Don’t worry. We’ll probably be stuck here till tomorrow at least.’

It seemed he might be right. The night passed by and the sun was beginning to make the temperature in the wagon uncomfortable and they still hadn’t moved.

Melchior tried to sleep, but his mind seemed to have been jerked into frenetic and useless activity by the move, like an old clock whirring into life for a little while when shaken. Also there were too many noises, new and therefore distracting noises, to keep him awake. Among them was a gentle scratching, perhaps the least of all the sounds that disturbed him, but the most regular and certainly he decided, the closest.

He finally tracked it down to Pauli, who lay almost doubled up, apparently sleeping.

He touched the boy gently and he opened his eyes.

‘Monsieur?’

‘Pauli, that noise…’

The boy shifted his leg slightly and looked down. Melchior followed his gaze. His eyes rounded as he saw in the boy’s hand a knife.

‘I promised maman I wouldn’t use the blade until she said I could,’ said Pauli guiltily.

‘I think if she knew, she wouldn’t mind at all,’ said Maurice Melchior.

The boy was scratching away at the floorboards. To Melchior it looked like a hopeless task. The boards were thick, close-laid, solidly nailed and constructed from hardwood beaten even harder by the stamp of shifting hooves over the years.

‘Let me know when you’re tired,’ he said.

And now the long wait was on their side. Inevitably, it seemed like no time at all before they felt the jolt of a shunting locomotive being attached and then the movement of the wagons beginning to roll.

They only went a few miles, however, before they came to a halt again. Melchior guessed they were being linked with another train, possibly a supply train. They wouldn’t want to waste a precious locomotive on a few Jew-filled wagons.

But even with these hours of delay, the impression made on the floorboards still seemed little more than a scratch when after another series of bangs and jerks, they at last started up once more. Matters weren’t helped by the need to keep their efforts secret. Melchior would have liked to think otherwise, but he knew there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t find a majority of their fellow prisoners more terrified of probable reprisals than interested in possible escape.

The train stopped again. They heard a guard on the roof of their wagon call, ‘What’s happening?’ and the distant reply came, ‘It’s the line. Fucking terrorists have blown it up!’

Some time later, the train went into reverse for several miles then stopped, either waiting to be re-routed, or because it had sought the shelter of a tunnel from possible air attack. The work went on, always more carefully and therefore more slowly when there wasn’t the sound of the train to cover the scratching. But the extra time was invaluable and shortly after the train started again, Pauli gave a little cry and when Melchior looked, he saw that the knife was moving quite freely at one end of the by now deep groove.

Blowing the wood-shavings aside, he pressed his eye to the slit and saw beneath the wagon the railway sleepers rushing by.

But all this had drawn attention. A bald middle-aged man who’d been sitting close by with his eyes half-closed reciting prayers for most of the journey suddenly said in a frightened whisper, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Sh,’ said Melchior, putting his finger to his lips.

‘Are you crazy?’ said the man who’d now glimpsed the knife and the damage to the floorboard. ‘You’ll get us all killed, you know that! They won’t ask who’s in, who’s out! They’ll blame us all!’

‘All the more reason to keep your mouth shut!’ said Melchior.

Another thirty minutes had the break extended across the whole width of the floorboard. Now they picked a point about twenty inches along the same board, just before it reached the next cross-joint, and set to work again. Where they were, how far they’d gone, Maurice had no idea. But Stern’s parting words, you don’t get outside from inside, were echoing in his mind and he worked like a man obsessed with the idea that here was their last chance. Surprisingly, though his strength was greater than Pauli’s, he lacked the boy’s stamina and they soon evolved a system of thirty minutes’ steady scratching from Pauli followed by a quarter-hour’s hard assault by himself. At one point he offered the neighbour the knife, but the man turned away as though it was a fresh dog-turd.

The train began to slow again and finally came to a halt. Could they have arrived already? It was dark again outside, they’d been on the train for at least twenty-four hours with nothing to sustain them but a couple of buckets of dirty water. These were long since empty and one was being used as a toilet bucket, its vile stench almost visible in the heavy air. Suddenly the wagon door slid open. Bright lights shone in. Melchior shifted his position to give Pauli who was working at the floorboard maximum cover. The man who had objected moved as if to stand up and even began to speak. Then he seemed to change his mind and sat down, silent, once more.