The Cloister Read online

  So, naturally, her voice was coming back to him: “In French, we say ‘cloître.’ ” Gaunt. Stern with herself, but not with others. He thought of the ease with which she’d let her hand rest on the upper ledge of the arcade column, the natural pose that suggested not just authority, but proprietorship. The exotic place was hers. The Cloisters were a last vestige of Christendom, but what had Christendom just done, in the Europe from which Rockefeller’s medieval relics had been so timely plucked, except destroy itself? After the obliterating war, the already set hilltop museum in New York, without any reinvention of its own, had become a memorial to an entire culture’s suicide. In her identity with the place, the woman—who might otherwise have been a simple witness—had herself become a mode of remembering. Her pallor was the clinging shadow of some other angel of death than God’s, but she had refused to die. And that, he suddenly understood, was what had drawn him to her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The sport of bicycle racing, too, was conscripted into the Hitler-driven campaign against the Israélites of France. The Winter Bicycle Track was a huge indoor racing arena designed to accommodate nearly thirty thousand spectators. Now it held the Jews of Paris. They were brought there not in trucks or prisoner wagons, but in the ordinary green-and-cream-colored municipal buses that most had ridden every day of their lives. One of those Jews, thrown into the Vélodrome d’Hiver within two hours of Monsieur Beguin’s phone call, was Rachel Vedette, for whom the sudden horror of the ordinary Paris bus onto which she’d been violently dragged by a former ticket taker seemed a defining measure of the day’s meaning.

  The Vél’ d’Hiv stood on the Left Bank, in the 15th Arrondissement, not far from the Eiffel Tower. Indeed, the arena had been built for the World’s Fair in 1900, when Eiffel’s soaring pylon of girders served as a focal point for the festival grounds. Ever since, the massive shell-like rink had been the scene of great spectacles—not just the match sprints and team pursuits of cycle racing, but also boxing matches, ice shows, including several starring the Nazi-friendly Sonja Henie, and, throughout the 1930s, great rallies of the French fascist parties.

  But free-wheel, brakeless bicycles whizzing along at ninety kilometers an hour were what brought frenzied Parisians to the place again and again. Speed and, with inevitable crashes, blood; who didn’t love the Vél’ d’Hiv? A steeply banked oval track made of wood encircled a large infield. Above it all hung two severely raked tiers of seats, which loomed like mountain ledges over a valley. The velodrome roof was made of a great patchwork of glass and girders, but the glass had been painted black two years before because of air raids, and a cloud of gloom enshrouded the place even before the terrified and disoriented Israélites arrived.

  The Vél’ d’Hiv was where the French National Police brought their prisoners, but it was the so-called Gabardines, the Germans in civilian clothes, who’d instructed them to do so. The arena had been requisitioned by the Gestapo a year ago, but for a purpose coming clear only now. By midnight on July 16, something like eight thousand people had been herded into the vast open space, then left to their own devices behind locked and guarded doors. They would be joined within a day by half again as many. Gendarmes could be seen amid the throng, with their batons and holstered pistols, but no one was pretending to bring order to the anarchic scene. Children wailed in corners by themselves, ignored. Family groups fought one another for cleared places by the wall. Circles of Orthodox men, wearing yarmulkes and wrapped in prayer shawls, davened away. Their rhythmic dipping motion, like birds dropping beaks into fountains, was a declaration of detachment from the horror around them. But they were aged. Because the Jews of Paris had long assumed that only able-bodied males were vulnerable, and because Jewish men had therefore made themselves scarce, most of those arrested that day were women, children, and the very old. They clutched bundles, boxes, suitcases—whatever they’d been able to grab before being seized. They appeared to fear their fellow prisoners as much as the mostly unseen police. A great stench filled the place, and it shocked the prisoners to realize that they themselves were its source.

  Like the others, Rachel held fast to her suitcase. To her, the scene was like a dream of hell, the kind of vision conjured by self-tortured medieval monks, lacking only personified red devils leering from the margins of illuminated vellum. Herded into the arena like animals into a vast slaughterhouse pen, the prisoners now sat in clusters, holding on to one another; or they wandered about singly, stupefied and lost. Pairs of children shuffled aimlessly, clinging to each other’s hands. Some had cardboard tags attached to their shirts, with names. The arena toilet rooms had been locked, because, as the Gabardines saw it, their windows made escape seem possible. So heaps of human waste had begun to accumulate in the back row of the lower-level tiered seats. That an ad hoc latrine had somehow been defined by the prisoners themselves was the only semblance of order, and most—but not all—headed into that remote shadow to defecate and urinate.

  Rachel was looking every person she passed in the face, hoping for a flash of recognition. Hoping, of course, for her father. She had applied a fierce clamp onto her emotions, and channeled all feeling, thought, fear, and bewilderment into the act of focused observation. Finally, she came upon a passing blue-uniformed policeman, and when he looked toward her, she stepped directly into his path. He drew back, startled. He was young, perhaps as young as she, showing no sign, for example, of needing to shave. On his shoulder, the patch read “Préfecture de Police de Paris.” Therefore, he was not a member of the Gendarmerie, the far more powerful national police force, which was, in fact, in charge of the arrest of Jews. Rachel had already accommodated the startling discovery that French officials were doing the savage work of the hated Germans. But the gendarmes wore brown uniforms; this flic was in blue. Was he a local cop who’d stumbled into this madness? And did the disoriented expression that came across his face now suggest that his uncertain will could be bent to her will of iron?

  The young cop was clearly a man of no rank, yet she addressed him as if he were. “Sergeant, s’il vous plaît.”

  Reflexively, he tipped his hat. Rachel was pleased to see a rush of blood to his face. “Mademoiselle,” he said.

  “I am searching for my father.” As if she were a connoisseur of the tricks of flirtation, she let her glance fall shyly, then brought it up again, while biting her lower lip. She could feel water pooling in her eyes, the first counterfeit of such affect she’d ever accomplished. She pushed her shoulders back slightly, but enough to bring her bosom forward. Her free hand went first to her hair, where the once-severe bun was in disarray, as if drawing attention to the fact that most of the other women wore carefully knotted headscarves. Then her hand went to a button at her throat, which she undid as if from pure nervousness. The loosened collar fell from the hollow of her neck toward the upper curve of her breast, showing a small but potent strip of flesh that had never seen the sun. She began to speak once more, then stopped. She let the tip of her tongue slide across the edge of her lower lip, just visible to the policeman: she knew when his stare settled on her mouth. Thus, in a matter of seconds, she had drawn on previously unknown wiles to put her offer in the air—the promise of exchange. She said, “Will you help me?” But she was thinking, once more, Who am I now?

  —

  THAT FIRST AFTERNOON, the young flic had escorted Rachel in a spiraling circuit of the sprawling arena infield, breasting through the crowd of stunned Jews, needing only the occasional rough show to clear the way when some crone refused to move. “Déplacez! Déplacez!” he barked, but his menace was fake.

  At one point, the cop had grasped Rachel’s free hand. She let him hold on to it, but noted that he shyly pretended that clutching her fingers was necessary to leading her through the press. He was anything but domineering. Soon enough, he had become almost as invested in finding her father as she was.

  Even before dusk outside, the vast interior space beneath the blacked-out glass roof had become awash in shadow,
and the upper levels were entirely unlit. Climbing to the first balcony brought them into the pitch dark, which Rachel welcomed, because when the cop unhooked a pocket torch from his belt he dropped her hand. As she asked him to, he shone the cone of light into the face of every old man they passed, until, in a corner on the second balcony, they came upon him. He was a semiconscious hulk, like dozens of others, collapsed upon himself, yet she knew him at once. “Papa! Papa!” she said, dropping the suitcase to kneel beside him, enclosing her father in her embrace.

  The policeman leaned to her and whispered, “Do not let them see that he is sick.”

  “He is not sick,” Rachel hissed in reply. “He is only tired.”

  She pulled her father up, clutched his face, and drew it close to her own, “Papa! Do you see it’s me?” His eyes were open, but swimming, and when she saw that he could not hold his head erect, she let him down again. To the policeman she said, “Shine the light here,” as she opened the suitcase. He did so. She withdrew the brick of chocolate and efficiently proceeded to unwrap it, exposing the knife. She unfolded its blade and shaved slivers of the chocolate into her hand, perhaps fifty grams’ worth. Then, propping her father up, she fed the bits into his mouth. He was conscious enough to cooperate, and took the pieces in hungrily. When he’d eaten the chocolate, she took one of the bananas, peeled it back, and placed several of its slices into his mouth as well. He swallowed with difficulty, but he took what she fed him.

  Then, again, he leaned against her. She reached into the suitcase, for his yarmulke. She placed it on his head.

  “He should not wear that,” the cop said.

  Rachel said, “You think they don’t know he’s a Jew?” The bitterness in her eyes made the flic withdraw, leaving Rachel and her father alone in the dark corner. Nearby, there was a mother nursing an infant, and a trio of boys squabbling. Old women had arranged themselves in circles of quiet lamentation, and, closest at hand, a clutch of men were davening at a candle. Someone was sobbing.

  Within perhaps half an hour of eating, Saul was able to sit up. He squeezed Rachel’s hand, then released it—which was their signal that he was well. She turned back to the suitcase and withdrew the Nachmanides commentary on Job. He received it gratefully, pressing it to his breast. She handed him his glasses, which he put on—and looked like himself again. At home, apart from sleeping, he was never without his glasses, although he had no need of spectacles for this particular book. Only to hold it was to take the wisdom in.

  Her father sensed Rachel’s blatant air of territoriality, as she snapped the suitcase shut and propped it as a barrier between them and the old Jews reciting Kaddish, only a bare meter away. The folding knife had fallen to the floor. Whether she intended it or not, there was something threatening in the way she picked it up, half flourishing the blade as she closed it back into the bone handle. Saul leaned close to put his mouth at her ear. He whispered, “Do not treat the stranger as the enemy. If we do that, the Germans have won.”

  “And the French?” Rachel said, a comment she regretted at once—as if the horror of what their countrymen were doing might be lessened if it were not actually referred to.

  He had no more wish to speak of their neighbors than she. He recited quietly, “ ‘I am the man who obscured your designs with empty-headed words…’ ” She recognized the verse from the book of Job. It was like her father to express his feelings in such a citation. He continued, “ ‘I retract all that I have said, and in dust and ashes, I reproach myself.’ ”

  “Do not reproach yourself, Papa.”

  “I should have made you go last year.”

  “We should both have gone,” she said so simply, fending off an impulse to apologize. “But that’s the past,” she said. “Now we have the present. Let us be thankful for the present moment.”

  “The future will only be worse.”

  “All the more reason to be thankful, then,” she said. Indeed, she was still filled with relief—almost happiness—to have found him.

  He looked at her, marveling. Then he asked, “Did they come for you at the institute?”

  “No.”

  “Where, then?”

  “Deux Garçons. Monsieur Beguin called the police.”

  “Connard!”

  She knew better than to tell her father that she had asked the man to place the call. She shifted, and drew him closer, aiming to break the line of his thinking. He fell silent again, leaning in to her. She held him, stroking his back. As soon as she could, she would have to give him his insulin shot, but the needle-barrel measurement had to be exact, and in the dark she would never get it right.

  Relieved as Rachel had been when the policeman disappeared, she welcomed it when, perhaps an hour later, he came upon them once more. She raised her finger to him, and he drew close. “Your light. I need your light again.” He dutifully shone the beam where she needed it as she prepared the hypodermic needle. Her father offered the pinch of his flesh just as if they were home, and the shot went in. The policeman snapped the light off, and, understanding that the procedure was complete, he drifted away. Soon Saul was asleep, with his head resting on the pillow with which Rachel had cushioned the medicine inside the suitcase.

  She was not surprised when the policeman returned. She made room for him. He sat beside her and removed his hat. He lit a cigarette. When he offered her one, she took it. The prolonged noise of the arena achieved a kind of monotonous din that fell on the ear like silence, out of which he told her his name—Maurice. He told her that he was from the country, and that, through a cousin’s influence, he had landed a position with the Préfecture de Police de Paris as a way of avoiding the German labor conscriptions. “I am nobody,” he said, and laughed, picking up his hat. “But this hat makes everyone believe I am a god.”

  “To some of us,” Rachel said quietly, “you are a god.”

  Her statement startled him. Even in the shadows, his face displayed the befuddled wonder with which his situation filled him. Surrounded by misery and dread unlike anything he had ever beheld, he yet felt powerful in a way he never had before. His eyes were wet with emotion.

  Rachel did not lower her gaze from his, even as she put her cigarette to her mouth, inhaled, let the smoke slide out from her lips. “Maurice…” She paused.

  He leaned toward her.

  She completed her sentence. “…I need you.”

  Not breathing, the young man only nodded. Rachel reached out to touch him, which sent a bolt of tension through his shoulders and neck, an involuntary shudder. But her hand went to his belt, where she unhooked the pocket torch. “I need this.”

  He did not move as she put the gadget by her side, away from him. She stubbed out her cigarette on the cold, hard floor. He did likewise. When he looked at her again, her eyes were waiting for him. “Thank you,” she said.

  Once again, he nodded. Then he stood and left.

  —

  FOR THE DAYS that they were in the arena, the policeman took care of Rachel and her father, bringing them water, bread, strawberries, and carrots. When she asked for lemons and a ration of sugar cubes so that she could concoct the sweet drink her father needed, he supplied them. For others, the permanent shroud of near darkness multiplied the horror, but not for her. She understood that the cop was right about not letting the Gabardines see that her father was infirm. In the dark, using the pocket torch, she could inject the insulin without being seen.

  Two days in, when she had no way to sterilize her father’s insulin needles properly, the cop was able to bring her a bottle of Cognac, in which she let the needles soak. He had no need to make his reciprocal demands explicit. Her initiating flirtation had, as intended, made her seem receptive, and she knew better than to cut him off.

  In the quiet of successive nights, he showed up at their corner, and waited mutely for her to stand and face him. If her father was awake, she simply shook her head, and he withdrew into the shadows. When he returned and her father was asleep, she knew to s
tand. He led her to a cubicle in the eaves of the arena, a closed-off space that served as a utility vault, a closet jammed with transformers, circuit panels, and bundled electrical wires. She did not resist as he backed her against a waist-high horizontal pipe, where he pressed himself against her.

  At first, he made his tentative moves apologetically, and she realized he was as inexperienced as she. The first night, he was content to kiss her and fondle her breasts through the fabric of her dress. The second night, because of the way he thrust himself at her midsection, she was aware of it when he ejaculated inside his trousers, groaning softly, and then backing away at once. She sensed his embarrassment, and, as if to explain, he began to speak. “From a young age, I was a seminarian. I never—”

  She put her finger to his lips, silencing him—a move he welcomed. Realizing her advantage, she realized, further, that her advantage could apply with other men, too. The young policeman had given her the strategy she needed. She then employed it with him on the nights that followed. Once her father was asleep, she was ready for his arrival. In their cubicle, she took the lead in kissing with her tongue. Using maneuvering skills she had not known she possessed, she massaged his penis through his trousers, bringing him to arousal as quickly as possible. When the sperm shot into the cup of her hand, but still inside the rough serge of his pants, she could feel the bursts, which, soon enough, were reliable signals of her success—and her safety. The cop took such release as all the climax he could want. He would mutter an embarrassed word of thanks, back away, and kiss her again, but now as a sweet bonne nuit.

  Rachel, with moves that came as naturally as opening a book, had claimed her place in the realm of feminine power. The trick, with this poor sap, was to get him to peak before he wanted more from her. How had she known that?