Now he was a frightened old man afraid of secrets. More afraid than she was.
She stared at him. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Lucien?’
‘They’ll find them.’
His tone sent a shiver up Mina’s spine.
‘Them? What do you mean?’ A quiver of unease ran through her.
‘Him. That’s what I mean, Mina. We have to check the cellar, make sure there’s no trace of him,’ he said, his thin mouth set in a determined line.
She shook her head. Her arthritis had kicked in, she was on blood pressure medication. No way would she budge.
‘You’re panicking over nothing,’ she said. ‘I need to go home, cook for my great-granddaughter’s bat mitzvah party.’
‘So you want to take the chance when La Rouquine shows up with the press…?’
‘Non… I don’t know.’
Fearful and confused, she had no answer. With a sinking feeling she knew the past had come back to haunt them. But then, had it ever gone away?
Lucien dialled a number on the phone. Mina stared out the window at the budding plane trees lining the quai. Could anyone ever get away from the past?
He slammed down the phone, interrupting her thoughts.
’Get your bag,’ he said. ‘According to the concierge’s daughter they’re doing electrical work in the cellar. It could mean they’re opening the walls.’
Mina’s shoulders twitched. She dreaded the five-minute walk she’d avoided with painstaking care all these years, the street full of memories. Now it looked like she had no choice.
Out on the quai Mina’s misgivings ballooned as they turned the corner into rue du Faubourg Saint Martin. Her hands trembled seeing the wrought-iron balconied sand-stone apartment building, like all the others except for the deeper blackened patina of soot. Next door stood the old Lévitan warehouse. Now a remodelled publicity firm but during the Occupation, the German warehouse storing looted goods from Jewish deportees’ apartments.
They stood in the now deepening twilight in front of a crowded café. On the boulevard’s pavement around them Indian men clustered in conversation, an African woman in a bright yellow headdress pushed a stroller. The new immigrants of the tenth arrondissement, but in their day it had been Russians, Poles and Lithuanians.
‘There’s people everywhere,’ she said.
‘We have to check, Mina,’ he said.
‘And if we find something, what would we do?’ She pulled his arm. ‘Let’s leave, Lucien. We’ll deny everything.’
But he hit the numbers on the digicode and the door buzzed open.
‘Ah, Monsieur Lucien, long time no see,’ said a young woman with a baby on her hip standing at the concierge’s door. ‘Maman’s shopping, desolé.’
Startled, he stepped back then recovered.
‘Ça va, Delphine,’ he said, greeting her with kisses on both cheeks. ‘Just getting things from storage. Don’t worry, I remember the way, we’ll see ourselves out.’
‘Careful on the stairs, one of the lights went out,’ she said, nodding to Mina. ‘They’re steep.’
She meant for old people like you. Mina thought.
‘Merci’
He led the way past the wirecage elevator. In the back. Mina saw the rear cobbled courtyard with green garbage containers by planter boxes of delphiniums and pots of geraniums.
Lucien opened the cellar door, leaned on his cane, took one step down.
Mina stopped. ‘But this is ridiculous! My back’s gone. I won’t go down there again. I can’t.’
‘You came this far, Mina! Don’t make it so difficult.’
Lucien clutched his cane, staring at her.
‘This feels wrong,’ Mina said.
‘It’s simple,’ said Lucien. ‘It was always the plan. We made a pact.’ He switched on the cellar light.
‘A pact… what do you mean?’ asked Mina.
Lucien ignored her. ‘Ready?’
She stood, not budging. ‘What pact?’
He leaned forward, lowered his voice. ‘Years ago our group made a pact never to reveal what a happened. Or to let anyone find the body.’
’But everyone’s gone except us.’
‘That’s why I must keep my word.’
She’d never heard about this pact… what did it mean? Dread filled her but before she could ask more he’d gone ahead. She clutched the railing as Lucien proceeded down the narrow stone stairs. Dampness and the smell of mildew and rotting wood assailed her nostrils. And it took her back to that time so long ago but still vivid today.
Sixteen years old, her hands browned with shoe polish and sore from stitching leather uppers on wooden-sole shoes – doing the piece work her parents took in to survive and put food on the table. She walked in public always anxious an official would demand her papers and discover she’d folded her jacket lapel over her yellow star.
Lucien shone the flashlight over the arched stone walls branching into tunnels under the building. Flaking stucco powdered the beaten earth floor. Electrical wires and tools were set to the side. Lining the walls were caged storage areas for each apartment, holding plastic bins, children’s bikes, chairs behind the wooden enclosures.
‘It didn’t look like this before,’ Lucien said in alarm. ‘That’s all new.’
‘When did you last come here?’ Mina asked.
‘Years ago,’ he said. ‘It’s Maman’s old storage. I rent it. They never ask questions.’ Lucien shuffled ahead. A bare electric bulb cast stark light over their faces.
‘Number 38, that’s it.’ Lucien reached under the enclosure, rooted in the dirt, pulled out a key and unlocked the padlock. He opened the door of a warped wooden shed to a musty smell.
Mina saw the cobwebbed foot-pedal sewing machine in the corner. ‘You kept that, Lucien… here?’
His father had been a skilled tailor. ‘Eh. I had no room in my place. When I came back from the camp, that’s all that was left.’ He shrugged but Mina caught the wistful look on his face. Lucien’s family had been deported and he was the only one who returned.
Lucien pushed aside boxes and shone the flashlight on the bricked-up stone wall.
‘I remembered wrong.’ Lucien shook his head. ‘See, the bricked-up part goes further all along the wall. Which part was it?’
The absurdity of the venture struck Mina. ‘Zut alors! If we can’t find it, how can any one else? Let’s go.’
He’d gone to the side of the locker, shone the beam and stepped back. ‘Mon Dieu!.
The toes of faded black leather boots stuck through a hole in the crumbling mortared brick. The blood drained from Mina’s face. She turned to run and his cane landed across her arm.
‘No you don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s too late.’ Lucien blinked in fear. ‘They’ll find him. I didn’t live all these years to be arrested for murder,’ he said, his voice now edged with steel. ‘I promised the others.’
‘You’re crazy!’
‘So Mina, you’ll let her get away with lies… again?’