The Knife-Edge Path Page 17

  Those days came back to her when she had learned shorthand in school, got pretty good at it. A thousand years ago, and yet…

  “Oh, but I have,” she said.

  The sergeant made a careless gesture. “You’ll find an army of housewives down there in the waiting room. I hope you’ve brought your knitting.”

  “Should I come back some other day?”

  The sergeant gave her a taste of grudging kindness. “No, you’ll miss the boat. These jobs are few and far between. With your looks, you might just have an edge. Officers have a reputation to look after, if you understand what I’m saying.”

  Geli smiled coyly. “Thanks for the tip,” she said.

  “Not at all, Madame. Not at all.”

  She walked down the corridor to a door that stood wide open. There was a hubbub in the room choked with ladies whose eyes came up as soon as she walked in, then cattily followed her, looking her up and down as she made her way to the desk where a secretary sat studying entries in a ledger.

  The secretary looked up. “Yes?”

  “Would this be where I apply for the stenographer’s position?”

  “It would. How’s your shorthand, ma chère?”

  Geli gave her head a toss and said, “Better than passable.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I hate to say that you’re outnumbered, ma chère, but let me have your name. Then you can have a seat, if you can find one.”

  “Miroux. Simone Miroux.”

  The woman wrote in the ledger, then scribbled on a small square of paper. “Here’s your place in line. Wait till your number is called. Looks to me like standing room only, I’m afraid.”

  “I understand.” Geli took the paper glancing at the number 22, thanked the woman and walked to the back of the room and leaned against the wall.

  An hour passed, during which four women were called into the inner office, each one to come back out disconsolately. The hour was getting on toward 6 when the secretary pulled open a drawer, dragged out her purse and a rumpled paper sack. She began to stack and tidy items on her desk. The inner office door opened. An officer stood aside to let a woman pass. The woman said“Merci” gloomily as the officer, nodding, called to the secretary, “That will be all for now, Mlle Daubin.”

  Groans went up around the room like losers at a horserace.

  The officer raised his voice, “Sorry, ladies! Come back in the morning!”

  “And lose our place!” one of the women bleated.

  The officer was just turning in the doorway when his eyes fell upon Geli. He looked at his watch. Chairs screeched and shoes clattered on the wooden floor. The crowd plodded toward the open doorway. The officer stood watching them as Geli let others go out ahead of her, then all at once he said, “We could squeeze one more in, Mlle Daubin. What do you think?”

  The secretary stuck out her lower lip, making a helpless gesture. “As you wish, sir.”

  Geli was about to step into the corridor when the officer called out, “You!”

  Several women stopped to look.

  The officer’s stiffened finger pointed at Geli, and she said, “Me, sir?”

  “That’s right. How long have you been waiting?”

  “I’m not sure, sir. Upwards of an hour.”

  “Be so kind as to step into my office.”

  A raucous voice brayed, “I was here before she was!”

  The officer ignored the voice, crooking his finger at Geli, who raising an eyebrow at the secretary started toward the officer who stood waiting in his open doorway.

  He was a well-built if not a tall man, Geli saw, a few years younger than herself. Not bad-looking either, with dark eyebrows and limpid, intelligent brown eyes. But there was something of the self-important martinet about him – misplaced, she thought, like his pencil-line mustache. It was as if, a few years back, he’d grown it to look older, dapper and dignified as would befit an officer. But then as the years crept up on him he’d left it on, when really, it was time to shave, making him look younger as befits the truth or something more flattering by then.

  The small drab office smelled of traces of perfume and pipe smoke.

  The officer made his way around his desk, saying, “Please sit down, Mlle -”

  “Miroux,” Geli said, and smoothing her skirt at the back of her thighs sat on the hard wooden chair.

  The officer lowered himself into his sturdier padded chair. “I’m Mattei. You may preface that with Major, but I don’t insist. I assume you’ve left a dossier with Mlle Daubin?”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid I’ve come on rather short notice.”

  He looked at her, blinking. “You mean -”

  “Just that I’ve only recently learned of the job’s availability, sir.”

  “I see. Of course you wouldn’t be here at all if you hadn’t come with considerable experience.”

  “I wouldn’t say it was considerable, sir. I haven’t been employed in some time. Not since the Germans came in.”

  “The duration of the Occupation, you mean.”

  “Yes. I had been working for the Renault factory on Ile Seguin in Billancourt when the Nazis seized it. They wanted me to stay on, but I refused.”

  “Did you. How did that strike them?”

  “They told me to go out and have a nice time starving.”

  Mattei clucked as he rocked a little in his chair. “Not the cheriest sendoff in the world, was it? You don’t look the worse for their boorish behavior.”

  Geli shrugged. “I took up tutoring. They wanted me for that, too, but I said no. That was when we gave them the slip by moving to our tiny place in the Rue de l’Odéon. A rabbit hole where they would have a hard time finding us.”

  “By we, you mean -?”

  “Me and my sister, Maxine.”

  Mattei gazed at her for a long moment, then plunked a pencil on a notepad and pushed it across the desk toward her.

  “Take a note, if you don’t mind.”

  Geli stared at him. “Now, sir?”

  “If you will.”

  “You mean in shorthand.”

  “That’s right.”

  She gulped, but the ultimatum gave her heart, and she reached back in her mind for things she thought she’d never use again. She picked up the pencil. “Ready when you are, sir.”

  Mattei said, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”

  She looked up trying not to laugh as Mattei gazed at her evenly. She scribbled on the pad, handed it across to him. He looked down over his knuckles pressed against his lips, slowly began to nod.

  “Mmm.” Then flung his head back off his fist. “Of course we won’t be following the adventures of the quick brown fox beyond this room.”

  His smirk told her to laugh, and she did. “If I may, sir, what exactly does the job entail, if I should be so lucky as to land it?”

  Mattei sat back, getting another creak out of his swivel chair. “My job is to interrogate German prisoners charged with war crimes in preparation for their defenses at trial. Yours would be to transcribe every word that’s said during these interrogations, verbatim. Think you can handle that?”

  “Are you telling me I have the job, sir?”

  Mattei smirked. “Well, shall we say on a trial basis without pay to begin with, if you’re agreeable, pending the submission of your dossier.”

  There was a light rapping on the door, followed by Mlle Daubin’s muted voice. “I’ll be going home now, sir, if there’s nothing else.”

  Mattei sprang out of his chair; it rolled back against the wall.

  Geli got up. “Shall I come back tomorrow, sir?”

  “Tomorrow? Why yes, do that. Be sure to bring your dossier. If I’m not here, just leave it with Mlle Daubin. Don’t mind the crowd. We still have a few more positions to fill.”

  Geli hesitated, not liking the kind of smile that lingered on her face. She felt a little bad for being played a favorite, but didn’t want to thank Mattei for that. She had nothing to be sorry for. He stood there
uneasily, as if expecting something. Or was it just that he couldn’t wait for her to hurry up and leave? It all seemed too quick and too impossible. She could always quit if time went by with no trace of Kurt. No trace, though, didn’t mean he wasn’t here. She took a few steps toward the door. “Of course, sir. I thank you very much for your time.”

  He waved his hand. “Not a bit of it, Mlle Miroux. Till tomorrow, then.”

  Geli smiled.

  He came around and opened the door for her and she went out.

  A few bald light globes shone along the corridor to the foyer as she walked toward the exit. A shade was now drawn on the wicket where the sergeant’s face had gruffly glowered out at her. Now for the tram to her little home, to tell her fictitious sister, Maxine, all about it. Then excuse herself to brush up on her shorthand. Can you believe it, Maxine? All these years and I can still write shorthand like it was yesterday. Will wonders never cease?

  23

  She was a little early that morning. Corporal Dax, one of the jailers, let her into the interrogation room. Major Mattei was not there, yet, although Corporal Dax had brought a prisoner up. She felt uneasy waiting there alone with him, but she didn’t say anything. Corporal Dax would be just outside. He’d reminded her of that as he stepped into the hallway, leaving the door ajar. The prisoner sat there looking straight ahead as if she wasn’t there. In a way, she wasn’t. Who was she but the stenographer?

  She draped her sweater on the back of her chair in the corner and looked out at the hazy sky in the open window, through which you could hear the occasional passing of a car down in the street, disturbing the stillness of impending heat. Across the rooftops church bells for matins tolled out over Notre Dame des Champs.

  Minutes passed and she began to wonder whether Major Mattei, not always punctual, would be detained again today. How long would she have to sit alone with that rigid sphinx of a human being, the prisoner dredged up from the dungeon below, trapped with his hatred she was all too ready to return? Good thing she was some nonentity to him. The clock on the wall became oppressive with its big hand seeming to stick before it decided to jump onto the next minute.

  All at once Mattei breezed in, swinging his briefcase. “Good morning, Mlle Miroux! Late again, I’m afraid.” He strode briskly toward the table on the other side of which the prisoner sat.

  “Not really, sir,” she said. “I came in a bit early.”

  “Then shall we say we’re both on time.”

  He had begun already to get rather friendly with her, so she said, “Then you’re forgiven, sir.”

  The trace of a smile passed like a fleeting shadow across his face before he reached into his briefcase, pulled out some papers and laid them carefully on the table.

  She drew the line at any speculation that might lead her past the woman she appeared to be. The woman who would let him show off as if, for all he knew, she was beginning to like him. Who would let him like her all he pleased, despite the wife he had at home, named Fifi. He fitted on his spectacles, peered over them at the prisoner and then, touching the end of a pencil to his lips, took a few steps toward her, wheeled and paced back.

  The young German sat there, a certain arrogance stripped down to the faint smile under his shaved head. Too handsome for his own good, Geli thought.

  Mattei stopped suddenly and said in a resounding voice, “Major Roland Mattei conducting inquiry number 1136, in regard to murders and complicity in murder, by order of the Second Standing Military Court, July 19, 1945. Object of the order: Helmut Franz. Name unsubstantiated.”

  Mattei got into his briefcase and came out with a file and spent some time frowning at the pages as he tore through them. Finally he said, “You’ve got all that down, Mlle Miroux?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The prisoner squirmed a little in his chair as Mattei looked gravely down at him over his spectacles, wrinkling his nose to let them slide down off the bridge.

  “All right, then, 1136. We’ve given you some time to think. Are you prepared to revise your statement concerning your identity at this time?”

  There was a creaking from the hard wooden chair as the prisoner sat back grasping a handful of fingers in his lap.

  “What could there be to change about my own name?”

  “For starters, the real one.”

  The prisoner turned a smirk aside.

  Mattei’s fingers stiffened on his file. “I didn’t hear that, Herr Hauser.”

  The prisoner’s eyes came up, blazing. “Why do you keep calling me Hauser? I’m -”

  Mattei inflated his chest, growing the inch it took to assume a judicial air.

  “The trousers you were wearing on the night of your capture were of a type not worn by enlisted men in the Wehrmacht, in which you claimed to hold the rank of corporal. Your boots were rather well-kept under the dust and mud you picked up running from our dogs.”

  The prisoner snuffed in a breath, rolling his eyes. “You’re blaming me for polished boots? General von Cholitz would not have tolerated anything less.”

  “You’re not afraid he’s going to scold you, are you, Herr Hauser?”

  Geli was watching the prisoner when, glancing at Mattei, he slipped her smirk. She lowered her eyes.

  “What?” the prisoner whined.

  “Let’s talk about your trousers for a moment.”

  “What about them?” the prisoner said moodily.

  “I’m sure you’d rather not talk about them.”

  The prisoner blew a restless sigh. “What do I care? There’s nothing to add to what’s been run into the ground already.”

  Mattei eyed him over the rims of his spectacles, taking his time. “What I find interesting about these trousers is the nametag stitched to the inside that reads Hauser, S., followed by the letters SS and a serial number.”

  “So? I’ve told you. Those trousers didn’t belong to me. I borrowed them.”

  “Because your own didn’t fit. Wasn’t that it?”

  Geli looked up in time to see Mattei’s distorted grin that seemed to ask her if it was on right. She quickly looked down at her notepad.

  The prisoner said, “In my haste I might have grabbed the wrong pair. I said borrowed because -”

  “Sounds better than stolen, doesn’t it? All right, why don’t we simply say you didn’t ask? You just took somebody else’s pants.”

  The prisoner’s face flushed red clear up into the welts and stubble on his scalp. “What difference does that make? I admit I wasn’t wearing my own trousers.”

  “There is a difference, though, between the trousers worn by the Wehrmacht, and those more commonly seen on members of the SS.”

  The prisoner lowered his head, shut his eyes and began to wring his hands.

  Mattei gave him a few seconds, watching with a certain relish, Geli thought.

  At last the face came up wearing a clown-like mask of supplication. “All right. I was scared. Scared out of my wits. I’d thought of running away, but then I heard that deserters were being shot by our security forces who wouldn’t think twice about shooting a stray Wehrmacht soldier, trying to surrender. We’d heard dreadful stories about these lynching commands. God help any soldier walking around alone who met up with them! The SS could talk their way out of such predicaments.”

  “So you wanted to be wearing the right sort of uniform in order to surrender.”

  “Yes! That’s right!”

  “Well, then. Why couldn’t you simply remain in your SS uniform until Von Cholitz surrendered the garrison and the danger had passed?”

  The prisoner stared at Mattei as if uncomprehending, then said heatedly, “You’re trying to trick me. It won’t work. I’m not going to lie so you can nail me down with everybody else you’ve got your mind made up is bad.”

  “Let me submit to you that you were wearing your own trousers all along. There was never any need for you to change.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “Is it?” Mattei looked down at the pap
ers spread across the table, smiling philosophically as he slid one slightly aside with the tips of his fingers. “Let us for a moment, Herr Hauser, depart from the question of your identity.” Mattei tore off his spectacles, fixed eagle eyes on the prisoner. “To what extent, during your assignment under Von Cholitz and the Paris garrison, did you take part in the execution of French partisans?”

  The prisoner gaped at Mattei. “Why, I never took part in any -”

  “You mean to tell me you were never called upon to shoot members of the FFI accused of seditious action against occupying German forces?”

  “FFI?”

  “The Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur, better known to you as partisans. You left a thousand of them dead on the streets of this city. Or did that perhaps escape your notice because you weren’t counting?”

  “Me? That I left -?”

  “Unless you politely excused yourself from the reprisals, in which yours and other SS units defending the garrison of Paris were engaged. No exceptions.”

  Red splotched the prisoner’s cheeks, his eyes spread wide open, trapped into mincing horror. “You’ve got no proof! No proof whatsoever!”

  Mattei pulled a grin to one side of his mouth, shaking his head sadly. “That’s always interesting to me, Herr Hauser. By the time we get to your compatriots downstairs, I’m sure we’ll find a way to persuade a few of them to give you up. We call that cooperation.”

  The prisoner’s eyes strayed. In a tremulous voice he said, “You do know, sir, that as soon as these partisans came out of the woodwork, Parisians were already killing each other right and left.”

  “Saving you the trouble,” Mattei said casually.

  “People whose only crime was that they’d got a little too friendly with us.”

  Mattei eyed him with a kind of pitying amusement. “In other words, certain Parisians can get away with murder, so why not join the crowd?”

  The prisoner’s face caught fire, he raised a fist, then dropped it loosely on the table. “I’m telling you I stand by who I am! Torture me if you like! I won’t fall into line to satisfy your greed to punish those of us who only did our duty!”

  “Duty, yes. You wouldn’t be German, would you, if you didn’t fight to your dying breath for a Fatherland concocted by a madman.”