Murder in Belleville

Monday Early Evening

BERNARD BERGE, FORTY-FIVE YEARS old and prematurely gray, stared out from his ministry office window onto Place Beauvau, dreading the imminent phone call. He pushed his round-rimmed glasses up on his forehead and rubbed his weary eyes. He felt in his pockets again for the blue pills. Only two left.

Across the square the flickering blue lights of the Elysée presidential palace blurred in the spring night. Bernard hadn’t slept in days. Sixty-two hours, to be exact, and he didn’t think he would ever sleep again. The sleeping pills had stopped working.

A loud knock sounded on his office door. He’d left instructions not to be disturbed. Who could this be?

“Oui,” he said. “Is this urgent?”

In answer the heavy wooden door opened slowly. His mother, a small white-haired sparrow of a woman with deep-set black eyes, strode in. Without removing her wrinkled raincoat, she planted herself in front of his desk in the chilly office.

“Maman!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

From the reception area beyond his open door, several heads looked up. He hurried to the door and shut it.

“Bernard, as God is my witness,” she said, “I can’t believe you will allow this.”

“Sit down, Maman.”

His mother remained standing and pulled open her bag with difficulty, then set a much-thumbed carte de sejour down on his desk. “Your stepfather earned this residence permit. And Bernard, you studied the Bible. You know God’s higher law.” Her voice quavered, but her gaze held steady. “Put your hand on it; swear to me you will not deport any victims.”

“Be reasonable, Martian.” Bernard Berge sat down heavily in his chair. How could she confront him like this?

“Did nothing you saw of the repressions make sense?” Her hands shook. “Forget this business, but not your conscience.”

“Right now that’s impossible, Maman.”

“How can you say that?” She sat down. “You were born in Algiers.” She shook her head. “You spoke Arabic as fluently as French until we got to Marseilles.”

“This immigration issue is different,” he said. “These sans’papiers stayed after their visas expired. They’re illegal. Not like us pieds’noirs; we were born in Algeria.”

“Did our little Andre die in vain?”

Bernard flinched as though she’d slapped him. His younger brother, Andre, had been torn from his crib by rebel fellaghas and hurled down the village well. Lots of babies had, in retaliation for the French massacres of whole villages in the countryside. But it had been years before he’d learned this. He never ceased to wonder how his mother could live with such pain.

“Maybe I’ve been silent too long,” she said, as if she could hear his thoughts. “I instilled values, raised you as a socialist.” She shook her head. Her eyes darkened. “What happened?”

“I’m just a fonctionnaire responsible for unpopular policy, Maman. Antoine has lived your dream,” Bernard said. He stood up, bracing himself for their ongoing argument. His half-brother Antoine ran the pediatric ward of a major hospital and a free clinic in Marseilles.

“But these sans-papiers Africains, these Arabes… they are just people, nonl” Her voice softened, pleading. “As pieds-noirs we came to France, but we were not welcomed as real French. We were outsiders, and still are in some places.”

“It’s the law, Maman. If I don’t do this, someone else will.”

“The Nazis said that, too,” she said, shaking her head.

Bernard paced to the tall ministry windows and looked down on rue des Saussaies. Once the Gestapo had detained whomever they wished in the police headquarters a block away. Lantern lights reflected long quivering rectangles in the Elysee’s fountain-fed pools.

Why couldn’t she understand?

“Mothers and children,” she sighed. “How can you deport them?”

Bernard’s head was splitting. He rubbed his eyes again. Why wouldn’t she leave him alone?

“We have laws in France assuring liberte, egalite, fraterniti,” he said. “My job is to protect that, follow the ministry policy. You know that, Maman. I don’t design these directives.”

“You look like you haven’t slept,” she said. She rose slowly, her eyes boring into his. She turned and walked to the door. “If I had your job, Bernard, I wouldn’t be able to sleep either.”

“Maman, please be reasonable,” he said. “I’ve served in the Palais de Justice, presided as a juge d’administratif. I must follow the law.”

“Bernard, you have a choice,” she said, turning to face him again. “But if you make the wrong one, never defile my house again.”

He stood at the window and listened to her shuffle away. Buried fragments from his childhood rose up in his mind—the muezzins’ call to prayer at sunrise, the long, dusty lines for bread, the blue mosaic fountain trickling in their arched courtyard, the cries in the darkness as the souk in their quartier burst aflame during the riots.

His phone rang. Bernard debated whether or not to answer, then picked it up.

“Le Ministre Guittard regrets to say that immigration orders can be ignored no longer,” came the smooth voice of Lucien Nedelec, the undersecretary. “Your department, Directeur Berge, has been ordered to uphold the deportation policy. Please proceed.”

There was a long pause.

“I understand,” Bernard said.

The peach-colored sunset had already dipped over the Seine outside Bernard’s window when his intercom buzzed an hour later.

“Shall I send in the caporal, Directeur?.” his secretary said. “He has no appointment.”

The Elysee Palace must have come up with a plan and wanted his input.

“Tell them I’ll join them in a moment.”

Would he be served up to the country and the media on a platter, a convenient scapegoat for the controversial policy? He’d already been denounced by his mother. Could it get any worse?

He buttoned his collar, reknotted his tie, and slipped his suit jacket on.

The RAID paramilitary team stood in the vaulted hallway.

“Directeur Berge, accompany us, please,” said a steel-eyed man dressed in riot gear.

Bernard stood, holding his head high, then nodded. “Lead the way, Monsieur.”

Bernard followed them past halls carpeted with eighteenth-century rugs and mirrored walls opening onto a sweeping staircase and a soaring, thirty-foot ceiling. More like a museum than a working ministry, he’d always thought. In Place Beauvau, he was bundled into a waiting black Renault. Once inside, the steel-eyed man pointed to the hazy northeast of Paris. “We’re escorting you there.”

“Aren’t we going to the Elysee Palace?”

“They’re waiting for you at the church,” he said.

“Who’s waiting?” Bernard asked, puzzled.

“The hunger strikers in Notre-Dame de la Croix.”

“Aren’t there trained negotiators there?” Bernard said, his voice cracking. He knew a crowd of sans-papiers had taken over a church in Belleville. Some were staging a hunger strike to protest deportation.

“Seems you’ve been requested.”

“Requested?” Bernard asked.

“You’re special,” he said, nodding to the driver who pulled into traffic.

He had been right, Bernard thought woefully. Things could get worse.