The Madagaskar Plan (43 page)

“Women are forbidden here,” said the rabbi, bustling her back toward the stairs.

She broke away from him and marched to Salois. He had a gallows complexion. “You have a way off this island?”

He nodded. “Who are you?”

“Madeleine. I’ll do anything for a place on your boat.”

Salois appraised her. She felt his eyes absorbing her thin arms and straggly white dress. There was an intense, ethereal quality to them that made her think of empty spaces—like the desert vistas Burton used to describe or the endless span of the ocean. She couldn’t name their color.

“None of these men will help me,” he said. “Why will you?”

“Anything,” said Madeleine fiercely.

“You don’t know what I’m asking. You may not live to see the boat.”

“Where’s it going?”

“South Africa.”

Abner stepped between them. “Y-you can’t ask her. She’s my sister, not a soldier. She barely had the strength to walk here.”

Madeleine pushed him out of the way.

“She’s the first person in this place willing to stand with me.”

The words jittered in Abner’s mouth: “She’s not like you and me—she doesn’t know what it is to kill. She doesn’t care about America or your mission.”

“I see the hate in her eyes,” replied Salois. “That’s enough.”

Abner turned on Jacoba. “This is your fault. Why did you bring her here?”

Madeleine stilled her brother. “Did you ask the council?” she said. “About Mandritsara?”

“Of course not.” Then, with a hint of embarrassment: “Not yet—there wasn’t time.”

“Ask them now.” She used the same hectoring tone as their mother. “You said one of the elders might help us.”

“I told you that to get you here. I know it was wrong, but it’s for your own good. You’re safe in Antzu.”

She was more exasperated than shocked or angry. “I don’t need saving. And I can’t stay here. I’ll never be able to live in that house, sleep in that bed without trying.”

“Leni, please listen to me—”

There was a cry from the balcony. “A patrol is coming!”

Salois reached for the rucksack at his feet.

Jacoba shook her head at him. “The main doors are the only way out.”

“They will not come here,” said Wischblatt. “Not today. We let them pass, then end this nonsense once and for all.”

They stood waiting; then the Jupo guard called again: “They’re headed this way.”

Salois turned to the rabbi. “Can you hide us?”

“There’s no time.”

Another yell from the balcony: “Six of them, with machine guns.”

“For God’s sake,” said the rabbi, “make sure every last patch of your skin is covered.”

There was a scraping sound as the door above them opened. A murmur of voices, then the ring of jackboots.

Madeleine clutched her knife. Salois saw the movement and told her no with his eyes. He was completely still, not only his body but the air around him. His poise made her think of her father when his mind was tackling a problem, or those mornings when he had to convey something to do with death. Salois moved quickly behind the tables. Madeleine followed, repeating that she would do whatever it took for a place on his boat.

He ignored her and scooped up a handful of dough. “Make bread,” he hissed at the others. “Make bread.”

*   *   *

“What are these?” asked Hochburg.

The vestibule was sunk in a dirty gray light. There were thousands of photographs pinned to the walls, some with messages or desiccated flowers. Identity-paper pictures, informal snaps, even miniature paintings. Some were family portraits with the faces cut out, then reassembled like jigsaws with one individual missing. Along the floor were piles of small stones.

“Dead Jews,” replied the groom who had accompanied Hochburg and Kepplar inside the synagogue. Two geriatric painters had seen the women enter the building and readily snitched. The rest of the grooms were outside, guarding the exit. “They post them as memorials, like our Totenburgs. It gives me the creeps.”

Hochburg plucked a photograph from the wall but didn’t look at it. The one picture he’d had of Eleanor had been a prized possession until a day came when he could no longer bear seeing it; he had incinerated it without regret. Hochburg screwed up the photo in his hand and tossed it away.

Kepplar had found the staircase. They descended into the sanctuary, where a group of men were preparing loaves.

A rabbi came forward, his shoulders bent low. “
Froher Führertag,
Oberstgruppenführer. We are baking bread for the hungry, to honor this day.”

“It’s a long time since I read Exodus, but shouldn’t it be unleavened? The bread of affliction.”

Unsure how to reply, the rabbi offered a loaf.

Hochburg tore off a hunk. “It’s good,” he said, chewing. “Soft and salty.” He handed the rest back and examined the bakers in front of him. The stench of yeast made him think of Globus’s breath.

“My name is Walter Hochburg, governor-general of Kongo. I mean no harm to you. I am looking for a woman by the name of Madeleine Cole.”

“Women are not allowed in this part of the building, Herr Oberstgruppenführer,” said the rabbi. “It is God’s law.”

Hochburg put a finger to his lips and scanned the tables.

He expected her to hide or run. Instead Madeleine stepped away from the group. The bespectacled man next to her put out a warning hand, but she shrugged past.

She was gaunt, anemic, her hair in clumps as if she had been exposed to a dose of radiation; Feuerstein had briefed him on the dangers of uranium. Hochburg preferred women to have complexions of honey and wheat, but there was a beauty to her darkness, even if it had been disfigured by hunger and exhaustion. Her eyes curtsied up and down, taking him in.

“You are Burton’s wife?” he asked.

“I took his name”—her voice cracked, then tightened—“after you took Burton from me.”

She doesn’t know he’s alive
, thought Hochburg, his expectations dashed for a second time. He calculated whether this could be used to his advantage—and failed; all he could hear was the unslakable grief of her accusation. He understood the pain of surviving, he wanted to comfort her.

“Come closer,” he ordered.

She crossed the floor till she stood in his shadow. Beneath her dress she wore boots like a laborer’s; her calves were just shafts of bone. The black-and-white photograph in her file had robbed her eyes of their color. As she stood before him, he recognized their hue immediately. Burton must have known it, too: so we are condemned to chase the past.

Madeleine stared at him with defiance. Defiance, fear, loathing. And something else: a veiled dancing glimmer that was impossible.

When he’d first met Eleanor, she had nursed his grief with the tenderness of a mother, let him confess his sins. Later they japed and argued as though brother and sister. The closed world of the orphanage—four white faces among so many blacks—was like being in a family again. The summer after he arrived, he taught Eleanor to swim, till one day, at the end of a lesson, she reached the shore and happened to glance back at him. It wasn’t that she held his gaze too long, it wasn’t the water trickling through her matted hair; it was the indecipherable need in her eye—the same as in Madeleine’s now.

That night he described the event in his journal, hoping for the catharsis that ink on paper often brought. As she’d waded out of the river, he had averted his eyes from her back and buttocks and concentrated on her ankles: that narrow band where the paleness of her heel met skin darkened by Africa. The only word he could summon to describe the color was
butterscotch
. It felt illicit: the course of his life changed by something as unportentous and mundane as an adjective. He became feverish, unable to meet her gaze, castigating himself. Eleanor’s chaste, prohibited body spoiled his every waking thought; even sleep didn’t shield him. At first he was wretched with the surety that she shared none of his feelings, later by the tragedy that she did.

Madeleine took another pace closer, her hands held primly behind her back. Hochburg stepped toward her, aware of Kepplar fidgeting close behind, till he could breathe in the scent of her. She was so emaciated, the weight of his body would crush her.

The Jews were staring at them; the groom guarding the stairs swayed his BK44 in disbelief. Hochburg didn’t care.

He thought he heard her whisper Burton’s name.

Then she was in his embrace. Madeleine stood on tiptoe and guided him toward her. Her delicate fingers reached around the cold thickness of his neck. She pressed her lips against his and opened her mouth.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Boriziny Strasse, Antzu

20 April, 16:15

TÜNSCHER GAVE A harsh laugh and lit a Bayerweed. “Don’t tell me—she’s not in?” His face was sallow and sweaty, the rims of his eyes red. It had taken longer to march to Antzu than he’d promised: every hour he had to stop and rest.

Burton came down the steps from Maddie’s house and joined him in the street. Mist wafted around them. If Burton hadn’t been so agitated, he might have relished the irony: just like when he’d reached the farm, he had traveled halfway round the world to find an empty room. The only sign that anyone had been there was the indent of a head on the pillow—that and the stench. He had a lurching sensation similar to when he was first getting to know Madeleine, waiting on the beach, unsure whether he’d meet her or be left disappointed. If they walked together, her voice stayed with him for the rest of the day.

He opened Madeleine’s file, the paper still soggy from the jump off the Ark, and double-checked the house number—but he knew this was the right place. He recognized the musky fragrance inside. It was the last thing he had expected; it made him feel sick.

The street was empty in both directions, the whole town seemingly deserted except for the jittery Jewish policemen they had encountered when they arrived. Tünscher had ordered them to open the gate, the bluff and pose of the actor in his voice again, and waltzed through. Who was going to question two SS majors emerging from the forest, caps low over their eyes, their sidearms on display? By then a bloodstain was also flowering across Tünscher’s tunic; every time Burton asked him about it, the question was shrugged off.

Burton spied something in the periphery of his vision. Something dark and viscous, dripping from the shack opposite. He crossed the street and walked along the side of the building. There was a burst of crimson, like a child’s painting, on the wall. Tünscher stubbed out his cigarette in it; the butt sizzled.

“It’s recent.”

They searched underneath the property, then around the other side. There was no body, no other sign of a struggle.

“Coincidence,” said Tünscher. “Nothing to do with your girl.”

His tone was so reassuring that Burton felt a stab of shame at his deception. They returned to Maddie’s stoop. Tünscher feverishly checked his packet of Bayerweeds, then slipped it back into his pocket; he was running low. “So now what?”

In the Legion, if you were separated from your unit, you stayed where you were and let the search party find you, rather than you looking for it. Otherwise, you both ended up missing each other in the dust and wind.

Burton eased his cap back and peered up and down the street, hoping to see Madeleine returning with the bundle of their child. Not a soul.

“We wait.”

They entered the house, and Burton’s nostrils stung again. He held his stump against his nose to block the smell. Tünscher flopped onto the bed, wincing, while Burton examined the room for any indication of where Madeleine might be. His gaze lingered over the makeshift cradle, his heart twisting. How had she coped? How had millions coped, uprooted from the order and modernity of Europe’s cities and dumped into this tropical ghetto? At least Burton had been born into humidity and the constant churr of insects, more comfortable with moonless nights than he was with electricity. In the years ahead, he would banish the memory of this place for her.

“Varavanga,” said Tünscher suddenly.

“What?”

“I’ve been thinking it through. It’s home to a fishery station—that’s how we get you out.”

Burton frowned. “But it’s part of the SS.”

“Department VIII. Codheads from the Baltic, all nets and sou’westers, not razor wire. As long as they don’t think we’re Jews, we should be able to strike a deal.”

“With what?”

“One of your diamonds.”

“You’re getting the last of them.”

“I’ll forgo one to get you out.”

Burton didn’t bother hiding his sarcasm. “Very noble of you, Tünsch.”

“I know. I also know I won’t see a single pfennig if you’re stuck here.” He mulled over his plan. “It might work. We can pretend to be deserters. When they see there are no numbers on our wrists, they’ll know we’re not Jews.”

“What about Madeleine? She’ll have a tattoo.”

Tünscher glanced at Burton’s empty sleeve and flashed his yellow teeth. “Cut her arm off?”

“That’s not funny.”

He loved the slimness of Madeleine’s wrists but had never considered that she would be tattooed. It horrified him, and yet there was something perversely reassuring about it, too: they were both scarred now.

Burton sat on the floor opposite Tünscher, who tossed him the remainders of the jerky they had taken from the hovercraft; it had sustained them through the trek to Antzu. Known locally as biltong, these strips of cured beef, laced with spices to preserve them, remained edible for months, even in Africa’s climate. Burton broke off a piece as thick as chewing tobacco and ate in silence. Afterward he asked Tünscher to light another Bayerweed. “To get rid of the stink.”

When he first knew Madeleine, she used to hide behind a miasma of expensive French perfume. After they parted he smelled of her for days, no matter how he scrubbed himself—not the natural scent of her body but fragrances bought by Cranley. Burton never said a word; he didn’t want to sound possessive. As the months passed, Madeleine wore less and less perfume, till one day she stopped altogether. By then they were moving in and out of each other’s thoughts with ease. Her true smell—honeysuckle skin and breezy sweat—was as close to home as he could imagine. Yet the house on Boriziny Strasse reeked of a time long past. Burton could make no sense of it.