Gone to Soldiers: A Novel

by Marge Piercy

  We keep varying the place where we carry out our drop, so that we minimize the danger of somebody noticing the pattern. Today I was the one. After work, Daniela stood across the street while I sauntered into a greasy-looking bistro. I ignored the men at the zinc counter, thinking how often our drops lead me into places I would never willingly enter with any lesser motive. Will I ever get over feeling self-conscious walking into such a place alone? Sometimes my face heats up with embarrassment.

  I had a ghastly newspaper Paris Soir which I opened and pretended to scan. I looked over the men in the bar obliquely, in a series of sideways blinks so that I would not make eye contact with anybody. I try to guess if any of them are Gestapo or French police. None of them give me any prickles of fear or hostility. At times like these when I am making a drop, I feel as if time slows down and I have a great many moments in which to examine every detail of the tabletop and the clothing of the men.

  When a man sat down at my table and tried to pick me up, I did not know at first if he was my contact or only a local wolf. He was maybe thirty-five, with pale sad brown eyes and a shy, droopy look, puppyish. Then he said the magic sentence, “With the weather so cold, how about something hot to drink?”

  I said, “I’m waiting for a friend. But I see he is not coming, so I am leaving.” Under the table he put the tightly wound roll of bills in my lap. I jumped up as if pestered to death by him, leaving my paper on the table. As if idly, he picked it up saying to the room at large how stuck up I was and how some women didn’t know what they wanted. In the newspaper were the identity cards, glued in an envelope to the page, so they would not fall out if he took up the paper awkwardly. We try to anticipate these problems. Then we went home to our supper of cabbage soup.

  12 novembre 1942

  I was writing about food yesterday, when my hands got too cold to continue. At noon we eat at the hospital, so we have one filling meal. Every three days we cook up a stew or a soup and then eat it until it is gone, that anonymous soup that Daniela calls potage de rien. Still, life is not terrible, because we laugh all the time. Daniela has taught me the Hebrew alphabet and a few words. She wants to go to Palestine after the war. I hope she will change her mind. I would not like to be without her company.

  Daniela’s parents left Paris shortly after the Vel d’Hiv raid in which Maman and Rivka were taken away. They were passed over the border into Vichy France and have been living in Nice, which has been a pretty safe spot for Jews. Now Daniela is extremely worried about them, with the Germans occupying the south too.

  Her brother Nathan is living in the western suburb of Neuilly, where he has a factory job under a false name. He is also involved in the Jewish Resistance, but we do not know what he is doing. All the Jewish groups that remain pass on information from one group to the other with the speed at which mouths can work and feet run, but only the news we must hear. We do not ask each other unnecessary questions, for fear we may inadvertently betray each other if we are captured and tortured. Our cell deals mostly with young adults and sometimes with adolescents, but there are other groups that exclusively help children. Then there are groups that do acts of reprisal or attempt sabotage.

  Personally I am pleased with what Daniela and I can accomplish, with the help of Marcel, Céleste, Dr. Lefèvre, Professor Moussat and the nurses and orderlies in our little cell. We are ten altogether, all Jews except for Céleste and Dr. Lefèvre, who has a Jewish wife he fears for. We hold firm. Every week we save as many lives in our clandestine work as we do in our hospital work.

  As a result of my work as a nurse’s aide, I am no longer physically squeamish. Maman, who used to make fun of me because I did not like to handle dirty laundry or anything rotten, would be pleased with my iron stomach and my iron will. If only I could see her. I have learned a fair amount of nursing, since the hospital is shorthanded and I am called upon to do tasks that would normally be carried out by trained nurses. I give injections and change dressings. It makes me laugh to think that after the war perhaps I will end up as a nurse, if I survive, because that is the only training I am being permitted—a long way from being an actress in the Comédie Française or a teacher in a good lycée.

  Now it is time to sleep. We have to get up early for work and the apartment is bitter cold already. We have stuffed rags and papers in the cracks, but still the wind slips in. We call our little apartment Bald Mountain, as in Night on. Daniela used to study the violin.

  15 novembre 1942

  Daniela is pleased because we have learned it is the Italians who have occupied Nice, and that things are easy under them. Her parents have nothing to worry about, so Daniela has been singing all day.

  This weekend there was a deportation to the east of a thousand from the camp at Drancy. They say there is to be a thousand a week transported from now on. We have been unable to find out where they are being sent. The BBC announced a tremendous British victory in Africa, at a place called Tobruk. We drank a little wine to celebrate, sharing a glass. It is so cold we are both huddled in bed, so I will make this entry brief, as I am keeping Daniela awake.

  20 novembre 1942

  We have heard something terrifying. There is a special courier in Paris right now named Jan Karski who has been in the ghetto in Warsaw and witnessed camps where Jews are sent. He says that most of the Jews sent east are not resettled but killed at once. The others are worked to death. It is planned to smuggle him out of the country via Spain and Portugal, so that news of what is happening to Jews will cause England and the U.S. to open their borders to Jews who do manage to escape, and to bomb the railroads to the camps as they are now said to be bombing inside Germany.

  I have heard rumors before, but it is said that this man has testimony and papers with him. I do not want to believe this, but after the Vel d’Hiv raid, I can credit almost anything.

  I must go and talk to whomever I can reach about whether it is possible to bribe anybody out of Drancy. I have heard of no one managing it, and my resources are slight. Escape is what haunts me. How can I get them out? I can save them once I have them, because I can provide false ID and I know whom to contact to whisk them out of Paris. I believe I could arrange for them to be secreted in a village with farmers. But how to get them out?

  1ier décembre 1942

  M. Tiefelbrun said that Maman should have had an Ausweis to say that she was a Wirtschaftswertvoller Jude, an economically useful Jew, since she was working in the fur trade. He said it was stupid that she did not have that, and maybe it was not too late to try to get it for her. He is hopeful anyhow and is beginning the paperwork. When I see him, of course I use my old name but do not ever tell him where I live or work. In general more people tell me I might be able to get Rivka out than extend hope I may be able to free Maman, but I am determined and working very hard on every person I can get hold of who may be able to help at all.

  We have heard of a mass deportation of very young children, many of whom had already lost their parents. In many cases, rumor has it, the French police rounding them up in the stockade at Drancy and marching them to the railroad tracks do not even know who they are. The Germans simply demand a fixed number.

  10 décembre 1942

  Yesterday I had a very encouraging meeting with an official who is working on getting Maman the economically useful status. Her old boss has written very strong letters saying that she is wanted back on the job and that the work is slowed down because of her lack. I really appreciate what he is doing for her. I’m going to get them out, I’m determined!

  We had an emergency at the hospital today just as we were about to leave. People try to heat with all kinds of ancient apparatus now that the weather has turned bitter cold. We had to handle a whole family whose little wood stove, in which they were attempting to burn rubble and sawdust, exploded. Dr. Lefèvre handles the difficult burn cases, on which he has published several important papers, and Daniela is his right hand. The condition of the two little boys was pitiful. We were tied up for hours. Thus
Daniela, who was to make the evening’s drop in a seedy little café near Gare du Lyon, was a full hour late.

  When we got there we heard that the Gestapo had picked up the man we were to meet. Apparently he made the mistake of approaching every woman who entered the café, in desperation, and somebody turned him in for the reward. We came home feeling guilty, but what could we have done? At least we hope that his desperation gave him away, as the other possibility, even more frightening, is that they were already watching. I talked over with Daniela the possibility of returning to that café perhaps in a few days and sitting around to pick up local gossip. That way we would probably hear if somebody local got a reward for tipping off the Gestapo that night, or if the Gestapo already had the drop under surveillance.

  Every night we get under the pile of covers and listen to the BBC news of Stalingrad. The war in Africa does not seem to be going well, although it is exciting to hear that French troops are fighting again on the Allied side, and to realize there is French territory where we would be safe if we could reach it. The Mediterranean is wide, but not so wide as the Atlantic. We live off these little fantasies. Daniela and I have worked out a system whereby we trade off certain fantasies, equal time for each. She plans our life together with her fiancé Ari in Palestine on a kibbutz that will raise apricots. Then I get my turn to plan our life together in Paris attending the Sorbonne.

  She asked me tonight if I ever miss Henri, and I said, honestly, no. I feel he dealt honorably with me in borrowing the money from his father for a fictitious abortion, which paid for my identity cards, and in sheltering me for a month and a week. By the time I moved out, he only wanted to be free again; he was terrified he would end up in prison because of me. He did not talk of love again after the first week of my having to move in; that was actually a relief, since I could not lie. I harbor no anger, no malice toward him, some gratitude but not a lot, frankly.

  Daniela asked me if I ever missed sex, and I said, again honestly for that is our policy with each other, not really. I had begun to enjoy aspects of the act, but I believe I never had an orgasm, and Daniela too says that if I had one I would know it. She misses Ari. She is glad that they began to make love together before he left Paris six months ago to try to go over the border into Spain, where he fought during the Civil War. He intended to make it to Palestine to join the Jewish Brigade, but we wonder now if he may have gone to North Africa instead, to join up there. At least he is free—probably. People disappear every day and it is unusual luck if you happen to find out what happened to them. She intends to remain faithful to him the rest of her life. I consider that a little quixotic considering she doesn’t even know what country or indeed what continent Ari is on, but it is all theoretical anyhow. I think it makes Daniela feel secure to think one aspect of her life is firmly fixed. She carries his picture with her, a full-faced boyish but stubborn-looking young man posed with a rifle under a too hot sun that makes him squint. She insists that when we finally meet, we will like each other and be friends also. I look at the photo skeptically but who can tell? Will she ever see him again? Will I ever see anybody from my family? Nowadays you can count only on seeing those whom your eyes rest on at that moment. It is interesting that both Daniela and I have had one lover, but she seems to have thought more of the experience. I wonder what makes the difference?

  18 décembre 1942

  We heard via the network that a deportation was scheduled today, and that Maman might be in it. I got off work yesterday faking a toothache and went racing all over, but to no avail. The Ausweis is in the works, but always in the works and never real.

  I took the train to Drancy this morning, to stand with a group of others on the bridge over the railroad yards, where we can watch. They will not let us nearer. It is flat and drab there, a scraggly railroad suburb around the marshalling yards. Somewhat after dawn the first pale raggedy tottering ghosts were marched double time beneath us. I almost did not recognize Rivka, because Rivka has grown as tall as Maman and is so lean and stooped she looked like an old lady at first. I saw Maman at once. She looked bone thin but she walked with a very determined step, looking around and grasping tight to Rivka. Many of the others just hung their heads, but she saw me at once and we stared at each other as hard as we could, hungry for the fragile contact. She blew a kiss to me and had Rivka do the same. The moment was over much too quickly and then they were gone in the crowd being driven along like starving sheep to the cars. I had to rush off to work, as being absent again would not be at all wise.

  I did not cry all day but now I cannot stop. The tears keep leaking slowly down my face. I wonder if what the Pole told us is true, and I fear it is. I hope Maman and Rivka do not know where they are going. I hope I am wrong. Hope is the feeblest emotion.

  If we were not engaged in our little counterfeiting action, I would go mad. What saves me is the hard work we do daily in the hospital, and our lifesaving work afterward. Only lately it all feels too little. Daniela and I used to talk about the violent Resistance as something almost criminal, becoming like the Nazis, but I no longer think so. I begin to respect that work. Now that Maman and Rivka are transported, should I stay in Paris or try to find Papa? I do not want to be separated from Daniela, but her parents are also in the south. Our best information is that the Gestapo were waiting for the drop to be made in that bistro near Gare du Lyon, so we don’t know where the weak link was and how much danger we are in.

  I try to sleep but I keep seeing Maman marching forward so firmly and so much herself in spite of her pallor, gripping Rivka by the hand, who has shot up taller than Maman but thin as a seedling hatched in the dark. To see them and not to be able to speak, to touch them, to hold Maman just for one moment to say I want to be forgiven and I love her! At least she saw me. At least they saw me. At least I saw her. That is a little more than nothing.

  JEFF 4

  A Few Early Deaths

  Jeff and Zach spent a few weeks in Casablanca before they were ordered on to Algiers, where OSS headquarters for North Africa was located, in the sumptuous Villa Magnol with a view of the harbor. The head of Algiers OSS, Colonel Eddy, trusted only the OSS Secret Intelligence people who had suffered through the long spring and summer of discontent when the Joint Chiefs could not decide whether they would listen to his agents in North Africa, whether they would support the French Resistance there, whether they would send any weapons or supplies whatsoever to conduct the sabotage they ordered but did not back up. Eddy had watched his French operatives gradually arrested as he made promises he could not keep because Allied Headquarters would not let him.

  The French the Allies had put in power or left in power after the successful Operation Torch invasion of Northwest Africa, Jeff considered an unsavory crew, many of them Fascists who had either supported the Vichy government in southern France or cooperated, as did that government, most enthusiastically with the Nazis. Some were simply slimy opportunists. They were a different breed than the Free French he had met in London, who were touchy, vainglorious but thoroughly anti-Fascist. The local OSS brass were anti-Gaullist. The pro-Gaullist element in OSS had been purged or rendered powerless.

  The Allies had made a fast alliance with Admiral Darlan, who had been a high Vichy official and so far to the right he considered the Bourbon pretender to the throne, who was also hanging around Algiers plotting, insufficiently reactionary to back. It was some liberation, Jeff thought. The local Jews were still being persecuted under Vichy decrees, still had to wear their yellow stars, Resistance fighters were still in concentration camps, the Fascist supporters of Vichy retained their positions and flourished. Allied Headquarters had run to embrace Admiral Darlan, who had extolled cooperation with the Nazis under Marshal Pétain.

  When the French laid down their arms a couple of days after the Allied landing, the Germans rushed fresh troops to Africa. Now fighting was fierce in Tunisia. Although OSS had been in Africa before the Torch invasion, they were shut out of Eisenhower’s headquarters, for he p
referred British intelligence. OSS was orphaned, hanging around the outside trying to wriggle in.

  “Eisenhower’s got a British girlfriend, and he leans toward them. He thinks they know everything he doesn’t. All the American brass cling together and bitch about it,” Zach reported. He had a cousin in headquarters who was bitter indeed.

  Zach and Jeff were kept in Algiers, partly because of Jeff’s idiomatic and excellent French, and partly because Zach was one of the few people in SO who had actually had any experience with irregular warfare, acquired as he said from assisting in British disasters in 1941. An OSS faction still supporting the old Resistance commandeered them. The controlling powers in OSS were supporting the Darlan regime, but there was a younger element in rebellion who wanted to protect the local liberals and the Resistance people.

  Since the Americans had not told their French agents when the invasions were to take place until immediately before, the sabotage and uprising had been abortive and costly, leaving a number of Resistance people behind barbed wire. With Eisenhower’s decision to work with the old Vichy officials, getting their people out was proving difficult. Jeff, as a Special Operations person of no experience (in which he resembled just about every other SO person in North Africa), was handed part of the problem to solve, clandestinely. The first job was to prevent more of their people from being arrested, as was happening weekly.

  “It goes without saying we’ll spring them somehow,” Zach said. “In the meantime, can’t we find a more comely Fatima?” That was what the Yanks called the Moslem women they hired to clean their rooms, do their laundry, all the dirty little jobs which they no longer had to do for themselves.

  They certainly ate better than in London. There seemed no shortage of food here, and the local cooking—both the French and the Algerian—was excellent. Wine was coarse, strong and bountiful. “After the war, I could imagine retiring here,” Zach said. “I mean for a month or two. It compares quite favorably with Palm Springs or Palm Beach. Cheaper. Better food. Hash. Tea. Vin du pays. Arab boys and French girls. Who could ask for more?”