by J. R. Lonie
‘I like cats,’ Darlene protested. Like the tired half of an equally tired comedy routine, Al said, ‘You can say that again,’ which made the two saucy pals laugh, but no one else. They were just keeping up their spirits. Too bad if no one else could be bothered.
‘Come on, handsome,’ Luc asked, ‘what’s your name?’
‘Try Joe Stalin,’ Eleanor said for the heck of it. He might not understand every word, but he knew what she was about. It took all his self-control not to lash out at her.
‘A red,’ Darlene purred, ‘how exciting.’
‘I am Jew from Amsterdam,’ Stalin muttered darkly in poor French. A warning. Keep away.
‘A yid?’ Luc exclaimed. ‘You don’t look like no yid, you’re too handsome.’
He couldn’t understand French at all, Eleanor realised.
‘English?’ she asked. ‘Do you speak English?’
‘Perfectly,’ he replied in a surprisingly un-punk manner.
‘Kid,’ said the Hungarian wearily in English, ‘take my advice. Don’t be a yid, just be a Dutchman.’
‘I am not ashamed,’ said Joe Stalin.
‘Then you’re a crazy yid,’ said the Hungarian, washing his hands of him. He was certainly no punk, Eleanor figured, he was just a frightened Dutch kid putting on an act, even the glare he shot at her when he saw her looking at him. She laughed.
‘You needn’t look at me like that, sonny,’ she said. ‘The only one of your identities I’m concerned about is “thief”.’
‘He’s one of your kind, Darlene,’ Al reported.
‘I’m in love,’ cried Darlene, and Al said, ‘Yeah, a thief,’ and Luc laughed and laughed.
‘Everyone’s a thief these days,’ said Darlene. ‘It ain’t so special no more.’ He was bored with these people.
Stalin withdrew. He hated being the object of any attention – lust, pity, anger or otherwise.
Silvan entered. Soon they would leave. Al would lead the way, he instructed, while he would bring up the rear. They were to stick no more than three metres from the person in front of them. The river was one kilometre away; this side was the German side, the other was Vichy. They had to be careful because the German army patrols went across regularly to chase escapees.
‘How do we cross the river?’ Eleanor asked. Silvan’s reply confirmed her foreboding.
‘Rocks.’
‘Don’t worry, doll, the river’s real low this time of year,’ said Al in French. ‘But don’t scream, whatever you do.’
‘I’ll fish you out,’ said Silvan. That was not reassuring, nor the end of the dangers. ‘When you cross, you crouch as low as you can,’ he added. ‘If the Germans see you, they shoot you.’
Then came a sound most of them were all too familiar with, unmistakeable and unwelcome, as German army trucks came out of the night, getting louder and ever closer. Through the grimy window they could see headlights stab the dark as the trucks slowed. Silvan and Al cautioned silence. Darlene began to giggle. Al snapped at him to shut the fuck up. He couldn’t help it, he said, and fuck the Germans and fuck all this trouble, when suddenly a knife was at his throat with Joe Stalin at the other end of it. He’d had enough of this stupid damn queen. He kept his knife pressed into Darlene’s neck as the windows began to rattle. Eleanor, expecting the terrible sound of hobnailed boots across the hard ground and ugly guttural shouts, said a silent prayer for their safety, the sort of instinctual prayer any Christian in her situation might offer. Apart from the Lord’s Prayer, which she said every night before she went to sleep, prayer was something Eleanor found difficult, like reading out a shopping list to an empty house, so best left to the clergy. Whatever the power of her prayer, the German purpose that night was elsewhere. The trucks kept on after making a turn on the roadway nearby, the engines revved, the gears changed and soon they were gone. Joe Stalin backed away from Darlene but kept his knife out just in case.
‘You ask for it, Darlene,’ Al muttered. Darlene, for once, had nothing to say.
Now they could leave, said Silvan. The next patrol would be in about twenty-five minutes. They still had to be careful, because they didn’t know if the Germans might stop and start a sweep back towards them.
‘If you fall behind,’ he told them, ‘you’re on your own. We can’t stop for anyone and we won’t go back for anyone. Understand?’
He waited a moment to make sure they took this in.
‘But,’ he added, and stopped so he was sure he had their attention, if any got separated and made it to the other side, they were to go five hundred metres south through the woods to a stone fence, which would lead them to a road, then go in a westerly direction up the hill to the village.
‘Remember the first house on the left. You ask a young woman there, “Is this the boulangerie?” She will answer no, but she has nice apples. She’ll direct you.’
With that reassurance, Silvan opened the door. Al took a draught of his cognac and was the first out into the night. Eleanor wrapped her scarf around her head, then found herself behind Stalin, who at least allowed the two sisters to go out before him. He wasn’t entirely without manners, even if they did not extend to her.
NEAR THE RIVER ALLIER, SOUTH OF NEVERS, BURGUNDY, GERMAN-OCCUPIED FRANCE
Around midnight, Tuesday, 9th December 1941
Silvan led his party at a cracking pace along a rutted cow path beside a stone fence, which gave them some cover, and then through a gate into an open field, where mist was gathering in the hollows. Though they kept to the side where it was unploughed, the wet soil was clayed, so it stuck to the bottom of their shoes, making the going harder. The closer they approached the river, the thicker the mist. Eleanor could see the silhouette of Joe Stalin in front of her. She glanced behind but the mist was too dense to see who was following, even more reason not to let the little shit out of her sight. He seemed to be going faster, which made it more difficult for her to keep up. She had to stop to catch her breath, just for a moment, but seeing him fade into the mist, she pushed herself forward in case she lost him. At least she could see his footsteps on the muddy ground, and these she followed. Then she walked straight into a stone fence, hurting her knee. She cursed silently, found the imprints of his boots again and, although she saw no one, trudged on, hoping to God she was going the right direction.
She kept at this for another couple of minutes, suppressing her fear that she might be lost and no one would be rescuing her. She could feel the river not far away: the air had become colder, a good sign, and the mist if anything was even heavier. It had to be nearby. She stopped in the hope she might hear someone from the party, but if she had developed canine hearing, it brought her no help now. All she heard was that vague soughing given off by the earth itself, its own murmur of life. Then an owl called. Was that Al or a real owl? When she heard no response, she knew she was lost.
‘You idiot, Eleanor,’ she muttered. The cold, which her determination and concentration had kept at bay, now chilled her skin. What she felt was fear. She dragged herself on, hoping to find a fence or another stone wall, then walked into one. She needed to rest. She certainly needed a cigarette and crouched to light it. Her head swam with relief. She stood back up, right into the barrel of a rifle.
‘Hände hoch,’ said the German soldier. He then made an owl call, which was returned from some distance away. Eleanor dropped the cigarette. She was too terrified to gasp, even to breathe. The soldier pushed the barrel of his rifle into her chest.
‘Hände hoch oder ich schieße,’ he snarled. She could see the whites of his eyes. His face was smeared with grease. She raised her hands.
In the next instant, his eyes bulged, he gulped and he dropped as if he were lead. It was so fast that Eleanor didn’t immediately understand what had happened. Had she conjured him and his rifle up out of her fears? She cried out as the shock burst from her, a stifled cry, because a hand covered her mouth and she found herself looking into the wild eyes of Joe Stalin inches away. He released his grip
slowly, brought a finger to his lips and then he wiped the blood from his knife. Eleanor had no time to respond, because something or someone was approaching and it made an unconvincing owl call. Had she her wits about her, she could hardly have been surprised. This was the other half of a pair of armed lovebirds.
Stalin wrenched off the dead soldier’s helmet, pulled it on and gave the return call.
‘Nitschke?’ called the voice close by.
‘Hier,’ said Stalin convincingly in a loud whisper and he stood. The other soldier, seeing the familiar silhouette, relaxed and came closer, closer. ‘Ich hab’ einen gefangen,’ Stalin added. I’ve caught one.
‘Wer, Mensch?’ the other called over-excitedly as if this were a game. ‘Ein Jude?’
Eleanor saw the knife poised in Stalin’s hand. As he lunged his body at the German, she cried out, giving the German a split-second warning to fall back. The German fell to the ground, but Stalin kicked his rifle out of his hand before he could fire. Then the German brought him down with his foot, and there on the muddy earth, they grappled with each other in a death scrabble. Eleanor, pressed up against the wall in terror, couldn’t see who was who, could hear only the grunts of desperation, and even then, what could she do? The soldier’s boot hit her leg as he sought something to push against. Instinctively, she pushed him back. This gave him the heft he needed to launch himself back at Stalin. In moments, a horrible rasping gasp reached out to Eleanor through the cold air and expired as if right in front of her. She didn’t need canine ears to hear the heavy breathing of only one man.
The victor raised himself from the ground as if he were made of the earth itself. Dread consumed her. Both men wore the same awful helmet.
Insanity or the last gasp of an instinct for self-preservation, Eleanor hurled herself at what she assumed was the German.
‘Stupid woman,’ Stalin snapped, pushing her back. He reached desperately inside his coat to take out his cat, which he held to his face, comforting it with soothing words, his tenderness in shocking contrast to what he had just done. He gave it a tit-bit, then set it down by the water’s edge, where he held it while it drank.
Eleanor festered in impotent fury by the fence.
When he had calmed the kitten and returned it to his coat pocket, he turned to the bodies. He felt inside the pockets of the soldier he’d only just managed to kill, removed some money, which he pocketed, and then cigarettes, although only two. Better than nothing.
‘Quickly,’ he said in English and hooked his arms under the dead man’s shoulders.
‘What?’ she cried. He couldn’t be serious.
‘Do it,’ he ordered. She was numb by now and took up the man’s booted feet. They were so heavy she dropped them. Lifting them up again, she thought she heard a moan.
‘He’s alive,’ she said, horrified.
‘Dead,’ said Stalin blankly as they struggled the limp body to the river’s edge hardly ten feet away. But when he rolled the body into the icy water, the man did come alive. He grabbed Stalin’s leg with both hands in a deathly vice grip. His eyes were wide open and full of hate and fury. Stalin looked down at the man, the one who’d asked if the other had caught a Jew. He leant in close enough to bite the fellow’s ear off. ‘Ich bin Jud’, du Nazi Schwein,’ he said and coolly thrust the knife into his chest, not once but three times. He kicked the body out into the stream so the current would carry it off some way before it sank. Eleanor gasped, appalled.
‘Come,’ Stalin ordered as he went to the first soldier, whose body was still lying a little way off. He felt through the soldier’s pockets, removing some coins and only one cigarette.
‘That’s a mighty haul,’ Eleanor said.
‘For you, not so much,’ he said, putting her and her sarcasm in their place. He saw the man’s knife and took it. Then he lifted the man’s shoulders. ‘How are you so easily lost?’ he demanded as she reluctantly helped him carry the body to the water.
‘I was following you,’ she answered in the same aggressive tone. If that was how he talked, so could she. ‘What were you doing here, then?’ she continued in the same vein. ‘Certainly not looking out for my welfare.’
They tumbled the dead soldier out into the river so that he too was taken up by the current. ‘You were lost too,’ she said.
Stalin hurried back to find the rifles and the other helmet. Eleanor watched hopelessly as the second body drifted away on its back. As it slowly turned over, she saw the soldier’s face. Under the grease he’d smeared on, as if they’d been playing cowboys and Indians, he was just another boy. Eleanor felt her stomach heave and she threw up into the water.
He returned with the rifles and hurled them out into the river as far as he could. ‘I am not lost,’ he said.
‘No, you were just going the wrong way,’ she retorted.
He filled both helmets from the river and splashed the water where he had felled the two Germans, repeating the action until he had washed away any blood and their tracks. Then, he sat on the ground, quickly unlaced his boots, removing them and his socks. His bare feet were marble white. He stood up, dropping not only his trousers but his long underwear, turning away from her for modesty’s sake.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘We cannot stay here,’ he replied, matter-of-fact. He wrapped trousers, underwear and boots around his neck, hoisted up the lower part of his coat, leaving himself completely naked from the waist down. From the back, she saw he was tough but so thin and spare, almost gaunt with it.
‘You can’t just leave me here,’ she said.
‘It is shallower up here,’ he said, moving upstream a few yards to where the water rippled and eddied over rocks just below the surface. He kept his back to her all the time. In each hand, he carried a German helmet. With tender words to his cat, he waded into the dark water, which was bitterly cold. His curse might have been silent as he recoiled his foot so fast he nearly fell. He gritted his teeth and just got on with it. It wasn’t the first time. What she did, he couldn’t care less. She had warned the Nazi. His escape had almost been thwarted right here on a freezing French riverbank, where he was as far from the destination of his dream as hell was from heaven.
Eleanor ripped off her boots and woollen socks, hitched up her dress and coat as best she could, and followed. She couldn’t remove her long underwear – she wouldn’t, damn it – so had to suffer them getting wet. She waded in after him. The water was awful. After the wrenching shock she’d had already, another had little effect. All her energy and concentration went on staying upright as the current eddied around her legs. Underfoot, the riverbed was covered with tiny pebbles but these helped her keep her footing, and though the water became deeper, reaching her thighs and wetting her dress as well, she was able to make it to the other side.
UNOCCUPIED SIDE OF THE RIVER ALLIER, LOIRE, VICHY FRANCE
Towards 1am, Wednesday, 10th December 1941
Stalin was already hitching up his trousers. Eleanor’s feet and legs were numb, her clothing from her thighs down wet. She needed a cigarette badly and hoped beyond hope the water hadn’t seeped inside the case.
‘Thank God,’ she said. Before she could even remove a cigarette, he snatched the case from her hand.
‘You escape the Nazis, now you tell the gendarmes where you are,’ he snapped. ‘They will give you to the Germans. Tomorrow, this place is very hot. We must get away.’ At least he returned the case to her.
‘What about Al?’ Eleanor said, as she dressed. ‘What about our papers?’
‘What papers? What about them?’ he demanded as he laced up his boots. Of course, Eleanor realised, his French was limited to what was his name, ‘whore’, ‘no’ and ‘fuck off’. No wonder he’d got lost and she, the fool following him, was now in this predicament. It was all his fault.
‘If you’re caught without papers, they’ll hand you back.’
He seemed to accept the logic of her argument. ‘We both need new papers,’ he said.
‘I don’t,’ she said, not in a friendly manner. ‘I have an American passport and a Paris identity card.’
She was felled by the look he shot back at her. Envy? Disgust? Terrible fear? Desperation? It was all these. Really it was the look of one who was doomed, gazing at one who was saved. Worse, she realised, it was the look Hettie had given her at the American Cathedral as she comprehended her fate, surrounded by Christians with their US passports.
He dismissed her and her smug comfort, turned and walked off. But he was going in the wrong direction. She knew it. His sense of direction was unerringly bad. Besides, he had no idea where he was supposed to go.
‘That’s not south,’ she said. ‘Silvan said walk in a southerly direction to find the road, then west to the village.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, although she could tell he did not mean it in the slightest.
‘One good turn deserves another,’ Eleanor responded. Even now he was heading off-course. And why was he still carrying the helmets of the men he’d killed? Souvenirs? She hurried after him. ‘This way,’ she said. The bottom of her dress and coat hung heavy and wet; her feet and legs were still numb. She led him through the woods to the stone fence. Beyond was the road, which was unsealed, wet and muddy. No car, truck, horse or human had been along it since the rain. If this was the right road, Eleanor thought, she should be able to see the tracks of others from their party. Given the lack of an alternative, she kept her concerns to herself and her feet in motion. If she stopped, she might never get going again.
She led the way, cautious through the darkness, which was inky and unrelenting. Only the fence was a reliable guide. The ground was wet and rank with rotting vegetation and cow manure.
‘Stop,’ he said. He used a flat stone from the top of the fence to dig out a shallow hole, which wasn’t difficult as the soil was loose and wet. He filled each helmet with the manure and placed them in the hole.
‘Give me two stones,’ he ordered. Eleanor took them from the top of the fence. He put them on top of the helmets and covered them with soil, which he tamped flat with his boots. He drew a stick across the surface to cover his tracks, washed his hands in a puddle and stood up.