‘You took our teacher to the canal barge and we finished bricking him up,’ Lucien interrupted. ‘But La Rouquine showed up, made excuses and beat a quick exit. Later her father came down to his locker, he saw the blood.’
‘And then?’ Mina stared at the corpse’s twisted foot.
‘Her father threatened first to turn us in to the Kommandantur, then to blackmail us.’
‘Never. He was a Jew!’
Lucien shook his head, venom in his eyes. ‘Non,only her poor mother. He had a club foot, that’s the trouble. Too easy to identify.’
‘You killed her father and bricked him up, too?’
‘Like you said, either him or us,’ he said.
Her shoulders crumpled in shame. She averted her eyes, regret filling her. But she couldn’t tell Lucien the truth.
‘Mina, you remember the Wehrmacht patrols on the street,’ Lucien said. ‘What choice did we have?’
She struggled, pulling more bricks away. ‘Hurry, before the busybody comes back.’
‘I lied to her mother, to everyone in the building.’ Lucien kicked the dirt. ‘I looked them in the face every day! And I’m still lying. Now La Rouquine’s going to find him. It’s prison!’
‘Be quiet,’ Mina said, now determined. ‘Get him in the bag, then keep the concierge busy, then it’s out in the courtyard. I’m calling my grandson.’
Lucien refused and collapsed against the wall, staring with a vacant look. She stood by the staircase and punched in her grandson’s number. Only his answering machine. Why didn’t these young ones ever answer their cell phones?
In the end Mina manoeuvred the stiff hunched figure of the father into the bag, wrapped it with duct tape. Her breathing grew laboured, coming in short gasps. The air was a miasma of dense dampness, the odour of desiccated corpses and rotting wool.
Lucien, immobile on the floor, clutched his knees, mumbling.
‘Lucien, we have to get them upstairs,’ she said, shaking his shoulders. ‘Get up, I can’t do this alone.’
His eyes batted in terror. ‘The diamonds… prison…’
Mina twisted her hands; the more the past unravelled, the worse it grew. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘We funded the Association by selling the diamonds her father stole.’
Mina recoiled in horror. ‘All these years and you never told me,’
‘How do you think we kept the Association going?’ Lucien gave a short laugh. ‘All blood money.’
She thought of all their work, the effort. ‘But if he stole from Jews, it’s helped Jews for years.’
Lucien shook his head. ‘And I took some to open my shop.’
Shocked, she looked around. ‘Quit living in the past. It’s over. Look, we’ve got to get them out of here. Now!’
Lucien looked at her with unseeing eyes.
Mina needed to think, but with the bodies and Lucien, and the tainted air, each breath was an effort. Somehow she had to carry the man she had killed upstairs.
Back by the soldier’s corpse, Lucien was crawling and crying on the floor.
‘Help me, Lucien,’ she said, ‘get his boots.’
‘The Wehrmacht’s coming,’ Lucien said. ‘I saw them.’
Terror clutched her. He was back in the past. Gone.
‘That’s why you have to help, Lucien, or they’ll find him… right?’
He nodded, his eyes now bright, almost crazed.
‘Good, take his boots, lift, that’s right, now through the tunnel, up the stairs.’
Somehow they managed. The soldier’s brittle hands scraped the wall like he didn’t want to go, a last effort to stay. Sickened, she forced herself to mount the steps with the burden of his mummified corpse.
At the landing, Lucien peered out. The sound of a violin came from above, the cry of a child, but no one stood in the hallway.
With one hand, he opened the door to the courtyard, and the black jackboot emerged from the garbage bag, They’d forgotten to duct tape it. She shoved it back inside.
‘Hurry, Lucien,’ she said, panting.
In the shadowed courtyard, near pots of geraniums, they stuffed the soldier’s corpse into an empty garbage container. Mina emptied the contents of another bin over it.
‘One more, Lucien,’ she whispered, ‘before the Wehrmacht come. You all right?’
He waved Mina away, shuffled ahead, leaning on his cane.
Back in the cellar, the duct-taped garbage bag sat by the crumbled mortar, bricks and gaping hole. ‘Lucien, you take this bag, I’ll cover the hole.’
For a moment, Lucien looked bewildered, then a brief flash of pain crossed his face.
‘Can you manage?’
He nodded with a glazed look
‘Put it in the same place, you understand, before the…’
‘Oui, before the Wehrmacht,’ he interrupted. He pulled the bag and shuffled across the packed dirt floor.
Mina set the bricks back but it looked so obvious, any-one would be able to tell. And with the mortar gone, holes still remained. She didn’t know how long she kept working, trying to fit bricks in the empty spaces. What could she do? Frantic, she searched the locker. She found an old dresser on wheels, and straining, lugged it to cover the hole. For now it would do.
Footsteps and shouts sounded from the stairway.
‘Madame?’ the concierge said. ‘Madame, you must come now!’
Mina dragged the hoe, shovel and pickaxe back into the locker, shut the gate and put the padlock back on.
‘The medics… quelle horreur!’ The concierge appeared, nervously rubbing her hands.
‘What… what’s happened?’ Mina tried to catch her breath.
Mina’s eye caught on the brown Soldbuch fallen in the dirt. The Ausweisepapier passport-sized book that doubled as identification and pay book for German soldiers. She stepped on it before the concierge could advance further.
‘Monsieur Lucien’s had an attack,’ she said.
Horrified, she tried to cover it with her foot. ‘I’m coming.’
The concierge turned and Mina bent down to grab it. A Wehrmacht ID card with the name Hans Gruber; inside, a piece of paper. She froze, then made herself move, stuffing it inside her pocket with trembling hands.
A medic leaned over Lucien, who lay sprawled on the tiles with an oxygen mask over his pale face. Another medic’s crossed hands pumped Lucien’s chest in measured thrusts.
‘Heart attack, 85 rue du Faubourg Saint Martin,’ he said, into the microphone clipped on his collar. ‘Send a second team.’
A woman with her hair in curlers stood watching on the staircase. Mina’s mind snapped back into gear. She saw the garbage bag beyond Lucien’s body.
‘Lucien did too much, I told him,’ the concierge said. ‘I said I’ll carry the garbage out. But,’ she tugged Mina’s sleeve and stared at her, ‘he said the Germans were coming. He’s gone a little funny, non?’
Mina said nothing, her feet rooted to the floor.
‘I knew his mother, she never came back from the camp,’ the concierge said, tugging Mina’s sleeve harder, ‘but I heard things when I took over. They hid Jews down there.’
Static erupted from the medic’s microphone. ‘We’re out front, give us a status report.’
‘No response,’ said the medic.
Mina put her hand to her mouth. The medic thrust harder but Lucien’s eyes had rolled up into his head.
‘Make way, s’il vous plaît.’’ Stretcher bearers bumped the wall in the narrow hall.
‘Too late.’ The medic shook his head. The other medic stood and picked up Lucien’s cane.
‘Lucien?’ Mina said. But he’d gone.
She choked back a sob. Her eyes settled on the garbage bag. Now it rested on her. The medic looked around. ‘His possessions, Madame?’