Red Rainbow G Johanson (i am malala young readers edition .txt) 📖

“There’s nobody. There is nobody. There’s Florence, who I barely knew, and there’s no one else. I don’t know how to...”

“Your father had a power, Florence has a power. Deveral Meyer is the connecting figure between them. Who else did your father or Meyer know in that sphere?”

“He kept it separate. I didn’t like it, I didn’t see much of it.” Patience didn’t need to specify she meant her father, Kretschmer understanding who she meant of the two men.

“But you saw some of it. That’ll do.”

“But I don’t know names.”

He grimaced. “Don’t even tell me the stories then. Not until you’re willing to be truthful.”

“Georges. One was called Georges.” Maurice had told her that he’d recently attended Georges’ funeral – there wasn’t much they could do to a dead man, so she could give this name with a clear conscience.

“Was?”

“He’s old. I can’t say if he’s alive or dead.”

“Surname? Location?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about Maurice Cassard? You sat next to him last Friday, he had his arm draped around you leaving the synagogue.”

“I told you there was someone else at the funeral.”

“You said you didn’t know the name. Yet you did. Meyer’s body was intact in his coffin. Some of my colleagues wanted to desecrate his corpse. I’m pleased to say cooler heads prevailed. It would have been a pointless gesture, like shouting at a brick wall. I’m not one for wasted energy – and I’m coming to the conclusion that talking with you is exactly that.”

“I’m sorry. I truly wasn’t involved in their deaths,” she said tearfully.

Kretschmer pointed with his thumb to the door behind him. “Go. I have other people to question who may be honest. But one of us or the Milice will be calling you back. I would advise starting over when those questions come at you.”

Patience did not know the way out. She didn’t ask for directions, briskly walking to the first set of stairs she found. The Milice – the thought of those wild dogs being unleashed on her terrified her. At least the Germans were not betraying their own people – not here, anyway. The fascist French lapdogs would go very far to please their Nazi masters. Especially in the death throes of the Vichy era – they were probably hoping to be taken back home with them, because France would not be safe for them come the liberation. Sadly, France was not safe for her until the Allies came.

Patience went home. She had nowhere else to go. She wouldn’t jeopardise her friends by going to them. She was suffering through guilt by association and would not put anyone else through it. Big Ears hadn’t talked enough to her, quiet during the drive in and the previous interview, for her to get a handle on him. Kretschmer confused her. Was he terrorising her to force a confession, or were his threats genuine? He came across like a civilised human being, which was scarier in a way. Dead Eyes was the only one she fully understood. Company man who’d do anything he was told to do. He would be fairly handsome, albeit not her type, but would only be so in a photograph – that absence of character and soul made him grey in the flesh.

Patience was alone, unable to go to Mthandeni or Charlotte or any other friend. She looked to the picture on the mantelpiece, a photograph of her parents taken during their final holiday together, a trip back to Africa. They looked so happy – she could have gone with them and didn’t, too busy enjoying her busy social life. Plus, it would have been an extra burden to raise the funds, but they did offer. Amadou and Sylvie Condeh, a fine-looking couple even into their 50s. She missed them terribly – now that she was out of work it hit her harder even after so many years. She liked working, solitude okay every now and again but not too much of it. She walked to the photograph and said to them, her protective father most of all, “Help me.”

Her father would not be able to relate to her predicament, the solitary aspect. He had never been alone. Spiritualist mediums had company all of the time. He had told her that there wasn’t an off switch, that voices were always present. He portrayed it as an honour rather than a hardship. She didn’t feel the same way at all, pitying him the invasion. She was truthful in what she told Kretschmer. The transfigurations sickened her, her father keeping them from her when he saw the effect it was having on her. He fully accepted his gift while compartmentalising it, separating it from his family more and more as the years passed. Her mother would twist a dreadlock for every time he ignored her for a spirit. He’d let her and then tell her she was being unfair, that he wasn’t ignoring her for a spirit, he was just ignoring her, usually winking at Patience as he said this. Happy memories...

Kretschmer had made very few notes during their third interview. He dismissed her words as pointless – and he was right in that for she really was not key to this at all. He was wrong in persisting with her. Why did she go to the funeral, why, why, why?

And how was Maurice? Was he facing the same grilling? That was such an afterthought, and she felt bad for that. He seemed hardy but being hardy in normal circumstances and being hardy as a Gestapo prisoner was a different proposition. And being a prisoner of the Milice was even worse to her. Her colour would be an instant demerit in their eyes, they wouldn’t view her as French.

Desperate times called for... was she really going to do this? Patience opened up a drawer on the sideboard and took out a notepad, sitting with it on her lap, pen in hand. Her