Read The Madagaskar Plan Online
Authors: Guy Saville
Madeleine dropped the unused perfume bottle into the case and lay down, exhaustion tugging at her. The air was muggy, but her naked body felt exposed; she pulled the thin gray sheet to her chin.
She lay motionless, unthinking, her eyes open and gritty, and had a sense that she’d never sleep again.
Sleep is the only safe place in Madagaskar,
Jacoba once told her. In the abattoir, rumors had circulated of a machine the Nazis were developing to patrol their dreams, to make sure there was no respite, even in slumber. She glimpsed her knife resting on the cradle but was too weary to fetch it. She imagined her hand in Burton’s.
The next thing Madeleine was aware of was the door opening. A silhouette blocked out the mist. Her eyelids fluttered before she rolled away from the light, back into sleep.
Antzu
20 April, 15:30
“DRAGONFLY, DO YOU receive? Dragonfly, come in.”
Dragonfly: Cranley’s call sign. He had chosen it with one of his empty laughs.
Salois spoke with his mouth close to the microphone, one hand gripping the stand, the other adjusting the radio dial to find the exact frequency. He was convinced that Cranley had made it ashore and was marching toward the radar station at Mazunka. Salois would continue to Diego Suarez until he learned otherwise; too many lives had been wasted to abandon the mission. He felt the weary throb of cheating death again, a sense of being somehow inferior to the men who had died on the beach. That, and what remained of his pride. He didn’t want Rolland reporting that they had failed; the blame would inevitably fall on him, the Jew.
“Dragonfly? Cranley?”
Static whined in response.
Telecommunications were banned across the island for Jews. The radio room was hidden in a tiny cellar in the foundations of the synagogue, down three flights of stairs accessed through a trapdoor. There was no ventilation; a single candle shed its migraine light. He continued trawling the static until the door opened.
“Are you finished?” asked the rabbi. “Someone else is waiting.”
Salois twirled the dial so the frequency couldn’t be traced and picked up his rucksack. The previous night, he had gone back to the beach and salvaged everything he could. Half a dozen hand grenades, detonators, smoke flares (green to let the bombers know the air defenses had been destroyed, red to abort the raid). All the food was lost. He had devoured the two bowls of rice soup and yams the rabbi gave him but was still famished.
There were no explosives.
They climbed the steps, the rabbi’s trousers swishing near Salois’s face to reveal bony ankles. At the top, a man with glasses and a hairless, nut-brown head was waiting. The rabbi showed him below before he returned to escort Salois through a maze of gloomy corridors. Salois glimpsed empty schoolrooms and infrequent windows, the view blocked by banks of earth and rubbish. Some of the walls were piled high with sacks of rice marked
JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE
; in places they had to squeeze themselves flat to pass.
“Is it true about the sacks?” asked Salois.
He knew the rabbi from before: he was famed for his charity and his love of dancing. He hadn’t honored the Ha-Mered, the rebellion, but he hadn’t shamed it, either. “There are too many rumors on this island” was the reply.
During the rebellion, the Nazis had impounded all food aid from America. There were tales that rice would be released, a sack at a time, for every ten Vanilla Jews the council handed over. The twenty-four members of the Judenrat, the Jewish Council, did not see themselves as collaborators. Subdued by years spent on the precipice, they accepted their lot in Madagaskar, believing it was wiser to obey the Nazis and build the best society they could than to engage in futile, unwinnable resistance. For Salois to come to Antzu and seek the council’s help was a risk, but the Vanillas had no central command, and time was too short for him to wander the forest, hoping to encounter a band of fighters. He could think of no alternative. One of the councilmen, Zuckerman, whom Salois had known briefly from the work gangs of Diego, had a more militant streak and might be convinced to help.
The rabbi reached a heavy wooden door and offered Salois a kippah, a skullcap, as he had done when Salois first arrived. This time he was adamant: “If you wish to see the council, you must wear it.” There were raised voices on the other side. Salois dropped the skullcap on his crown; it felt as unfamiliar as a Nazi helmet. The rabbi ushered him through the door, into a space that echoed like a warehouse. The air was a torment: hot, yeasty, and farinose.
Disquiet weighed upon Salois. The sanctuary was shadowy except for the Ner Tamid, the Eternal Light, casting a wan glow. Above, on the street level, was the gallery where women were permitted to sit and worship. It was only the second time he had set foot inside such a place. The previous occasion was in Antwerp, the day he’d fled the city, his hands still bloody. He realized that if he left, it would be more than his crime he was fleeing. He would be shedding his life, the ties of family and friends and everything that was familiar, even, it turned out, his name. There would be no way back. He had called upon God, vowing to remain and face his penalty if he was offered a sign. He sat in silence till nightfall.
The synagogue in Antzu was the only one on the island, a concession granted by Governor Bouhler with Heydrich’s tacit authority. After the Nazis’ clearance program in Europe, it became the only synagogue east of New York. Since building materials were restricted—the Nazis feared that iron and cement could be used for military defenses—it had been constructed from wood (apart from a brick chimney), like the synagogues of the shtetls. The “Malagasy” style, it was called. Workers from the Eastern Sector had temporarily been allowed into the city to erect it. Talmudic tradition dictated that the synagogue be the tallest structure in the city, something Bouhler refused until the council suggested a solution. SS engineers dynamited a great hole in the ground, and the synagogue was built at its base, making it the tallest building while the governor’s villa was the highest.
The council was gathered around seven tables arranged in an octagon with the empty side as an opening. They were all elderly men, dressed in decade-old suits that were in good repair, well laundered and pressed. They wore shirts buttoned to the throat, no neckties, their sleeves rolled up so they could work. No numbers blackened their wrists; members of the council had been spared this indignity. In front of them: tubs of rice flour and salt, dough proving beneath cloths.
“What are they doing?” Salois whispered to the rabbi.
“It’s forbidden for the council to meet on Führertag, so they’re baking bread. If a patrol passes, they’re simply preparing food for the needy.”
“Will there be patrols?”
“It’s the monsoon season; that doesn’t mean it will rain today.”
Salois scanned the elders for Zuckerman, but couldn’t see him. In the shadows behind the tables, two bakers were working an oven. A pile of loaves was stacked nearby, the bread misshapen, fashioned by hands that belonged to amateurs.
“That’s Wischblatt,” said the rabbi, indicating a man at the top table. “He’s been head of the council this past year.” Wischblatt had the look of a provincial lawyer, his skin ricey, his head as smooth as a stone except for a band of starkly clipped hair above the ears. “You must wait till he calls you.”
Heated exchanges were passing between council members, their ire directed not at each other or the Nazis but elsewhere. Some of their faces were stained with tears. They spoke in German, the official language of the Judenrat. At first Salois struggled to pick up the thread of the discussion. Something had happened the previous night: the new rebellion was catching; it was the council’s duty to dampen it and make clear to Globus that they condemned it. Salois was reminded of Rolland and Turneiro and Cranley.
Once again I stand before men who talk too much
, he thought. Then he realized what they were discussing and experienced a burst of grief and fury.
He shrugged off the rabbi’s restraining arm and walked between the tables; it felt like entering a courtroom. “The Ark has been destroyed?”
“Burned down this very morning,” replied one of the council. “Our records reduced to ashes.”
Wischblatt silenced him. “Rabbi, who is this stranger you bring to us?”
“Major Reuben Salois. I fought with the Benelux and Vohemar Brigades during the Mered Ha-vanil. I’ve come to see Zuckerman.” He dropped his rucksack at his feet—the clink of smoke grenades—and glanced round the tables for him.
“The Vohemar were sent to Steinbock when the rebellion was defeated, to work the mines.” Wischblatt’s voice was melodious, commanding, with a hint of vindictiveness he couldn’t quite conceal. “We are better off without them. They wanted to drag us into the furnace.”
“We never saw the mines. The Nazis made us dig our own graves, then executed every last man.”
Wischblatt appraised him. “Then a ghost stands before us.”
“Fate spared me, and I escaped to Africa. Now I’m looking for Zuckerman.”
“Zuckerman? He has—what’s your expression?—‘gone to America.’”
Dead,
thought Salois. Of course dead; everyone was dead. It was the release granted to all men except him. A fleeting hopelessness passed through him before his hatred flamed. The Nazis had destroyed their records, the island’s last safeguard. It could mean only one thing: the population must follow. He had to continue now, with or without Cranley, without hope of success—so long as a blow was delivered, no matter how feeble. If the Ark was a symbol, so too was Diego.
Salois scanned the faces of the councilmen again; none of them looked as if he went to bed hungry. Surely at least one could be persuaded to help? It depressed him to depend on these men.
“It was not my plan to beg your—”
Wischblatt interrupted.
“This council advocates the detention of Vanilla Jews, of all the resistance groups, for your own sake as much as ours.” He gestured across the table at a man with tangled black hair and a bullock’s jaw. “Yaudin is chief of our police. It’s time his wardens took you away.”
Two Jupo men stepped forward.
Yaudin raised a hand to stop them. On his finger was a rarity among islanders: a wedding ring; most had long since been stolen or bartered. Yaudin appeared irritated by Wischblatt giving orders. “I was a friend of Zuckerman’s,” he said to Salois. “And Zuckerman would have said that it’s a brave man who escapes and chooses to return. Any other day, I would have agreed with Herr Wischblatt; but the Ark is gone. Perhaps we should hear the major out.” His accent was from the gutters of Berlin. “Why have you come back?”
“To destroy Diego Suarez.”
There was a ripple of angry, incredulous mirth around the tables.
Salois outlined Cranley’s plan, telling them only what they needed to know, hoping that his candor might sway them.
Wischblatt was shaken. “You’re out of your mind,” he said. “The reprisals…”
“It will bring America into the war.”
“A boon for Britain and her flagging empire. Your masters will raise a glass as they look across the ocean and watch us burn.”
“With the Americans in Africa, we have a chance.”
“What chance? They will be the wrong side of the Mozambique Channel. You Vanillas will never defeat the SS.”
“True. But there’s a limit to how much blood Globus can shed before they’d have to intervene.”
“Like they did during the first rebellion?”
“It is the only way.”
There was a creak as the door opened. The man with glasses, the one who had been waiting to use the radio, entered.
“The only way is cooperation with our overlords,” continued Wischblatt, full of reason and wheedling. “This council has proven that this is so. While you Vanillas have been hunted like dogs, we have built a community. But if you attack Diego they will not discriminate. You will be responsible for the death of every man, woman, and child on this island.”
“They’re dead already. By stealth or speed, the Nazis mean this place as our grave. The Ark should tell you that.”
“Not in the Western Sector. Not in Antzu. Look what we’ve achieved.” He gestured toward the dimness of the Eternal Light. “Here we live as we will; a Jew can walk the streets without fear.”
“Your streets are empty.”
“And where will you be,” demanded Wischblatt, “while Globocnik takes his revenge? Palestine? America? The British would not abandon their soldiers or risk them being captured; they must have planned an escape.”
“A boat will pick us up from Kap Ost, five days from now.”
Kap Ost: the most easterly point of Madagaskar. It was within sight of the shipping lanes between Asia and South Africa.
“You see.” Wischblatt was thrilled to be proved correct. He addressed the council: “He rouses the executioner, then leaves us to suffer the consequences.”
“No.” Despite Rolland’s elaborate scheme to extract the squads, Salois had never intended to join them. “I will stay and fight.”
“Then you’ll die,” retorted Wischblatt, before adding more, “but at least not a hypocrite.” He spoke to the police chief: “Yaudin, we mustn’t listen to another word of this.”
Yaudin was staring intently at Salois, his eyes uncertain. “One thing I don’t understand,” he said. “Why risk coming here? Why tell us all this?”
Since fleeing Antwerp, Salois had harbored a suspicion of policemen, no matter what their uniform, but he could see a wavering in Yaudin’s expression. “To try to convince you,” he replied. “To entreat you. I need men and explosives.”
“Then God smiles upon us,” said Wischblatt. “There are no munitions in Antzu.”
“You must have something.”
An emphatic, satisfied shake of that smooth head. “You’ve had a wasted journey, Major Salois—”
“I know where to find explosives.”
Salois and the councilmen turned to look at the man in glasses. Salois saw that his sleeves were rolled down past the wrist.
“Rabbi,” asked Wischblatt, “who are these strays you bring before us today?”