A Perfect Madness

by Frank H. Marsh

TWENTY-NINE

  Julia, England, 1944

  The first hours of a long night’s sleep came easily to Julia. Freshly laundered white linens and the softness of the bed pulled her quickly into another world she had been convinced no longer existed. It was when she suddenly awoke in the early morning hours, unsure of where she was in the strange new darkness surrounding her, that she began to weep uncontrollably. The reality of Eva’s death had finally broken through the shell of a deceptive grief that had shielded her until she was safely home in England. Eva was gone, as was Django, their songs silenced forever. And poor little Josh, too, whose song had only begun. Through her tears, Julia wondered if somehow they might all be together now: a Slovak Jew whose God labored in the fields as she did and a gypsy Christian whose God was a magical fairy tale and a little boy whose God was as real as all that he saw. Even though their faiths were different, their humanity was of the same blood. No longer trying to understand the silence that screamed at her from within, Julia wept until the wells of her eyes were as dry and empty as a desert, then fell asleep thinking of Anna and Erich.

  Julia was late for the morning-long debriefing, requested of her by Czech and British intelligence. Standing before Colonel Moravec, she had no excuse, nor did he ask for one. The loss of any agent was felt deeply by everyone, but somehow Eva had seemed indestructible to all who knew her during her training because of her fearlessness.

  “She will be missed,” were the only words he would ever utter about her loss, though the fullness of those simple words, Julia knew, carried a deeper sense of his own grief over Eva’s death.

  Colonel Moravec shuffled the debriefing notes taken from Julia when she first arrived, back and forth on his desk several times before looking up to where she was standing.

  “Do you know Hannah Senesh? Who she is?” he asked.

  Puzzled by the strangeness of such a question at this moment, Julia waited for a few seconds before responding.

  “Not personally, only bits and pieces during my training. She seems to be a remarkable woman, someone I would like to get to know when the war is over.”

  “Yes, Senesh is what you say and more. Several months back in March, she parachuted into Yugoslavia to reach Budapest.”

  “Why Budapest?”

  “She is from Budapest and the Nazis had begun deportation of the Jews in Hungary to the death camps. The Allies hoped some underground aid could be established to rescue as many Jews as possible.”

  “Why are you telling me about Hannah Senesh, Colonel?”

  “We’ve heard nothing from her, only rumors that she’s been captured. If the Germans have Hannah, they will try to make her reveal everything about our intelligence network there. We need to know the true situation.”

  Colonel Moravec lit another cigarette, his third since Julia had reported to him this morning, and drew in a long breath of hot smoke, holding it in his lungs for several seconds before exhaling. Picking up three papers from his desk, one holding a photograph of Hannah Senesh, Colonel Moravec handed them to Julia.

  “We want you to go to Hungary at once to find out exactly what has happened, what the Germans and Hungarians know, if possible.”

  Julia’s mind froze in disbelief at what she was hearing and she struggled to control her emotions.

  “I’m not ready for this physically, and certainly not psychologically, it’s too soon,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “I know, but you are one of the lucky ones, Julia. The four SOE and OSS agents that flew into Banska Bystrika right before you left were captured last night by the Germans and executed.”

  Julia heard little else that was being said, except that she was expected to fly out tonight for Egypt, where she would meet up with Andras Janik, an agent from Budapest. Together they would parachute into Tito’s domain in Yugoslavia, as Hannah Senesh had done, and from there cross into Hungary. When she asked Colonel Moravec for a short delay, so that she might see Anna and her brother Hiram, he replied quite coldly, “They will be here when you return.” But he added, “We will pick you up no later than March, I promise you. The Russians should be in Budapest by then and you’ll have to get out.”

  Colonel Moravec’s final words were of little comfort to Julia. What she believed was that intelligence knew now that Senesh had been captured and her real task was not to find out about Senesh, but the Russians, and the extent of their network in Budapest. She would go, though, as if Hannah Senesh might still be free. It would give her the moral courage to do so because she cared little about what the Russians might be doing—her fight was with the Nazis. It was they that were keeping her away from Anna.

  Like most of her neighbors, Angie McFarland had no telephone and relied on the radio and the church to stay connected to the world around her. Much of what she would hear in church came from BBC news. The war was going well, though their Scottish lads were still dying. Some she knew in her church would not be coming home. Like the Scottish folks before her, she had to derive the same comfort they did from the faith that the Scottish lads had died fighting. Angie believed Julia was dead, having received no mail from her in over two years, but nothing official came from anyone to tell her of Julia’s death. So every night she prayed with Anna by her side that all would end well; though deep down inside where the hurt comes from, it meant she would lose Anna should Julia return from the war.

  Julia’s short note, scribbled hurriedly and mailed before she left for Egypt, telling Angie of her return, turned loose in Angie a roiling sea of dichotomous pangs of joy and loss. But loss is always a part of love, whether it comes early or in fifty years passing, Angie knew, and would be there for her the day Julia came for Anna. Praying may be good for the soul, but not so much for feelings that only the heart knows. Losing Anna would cut as deep as when her Robert went off to die in The Great War.

  Before Julia boarded the Flying Fortress taking her to Egypt, Colonel Moravec’s jeep pulled up alongside the huge plane. Taking her by the arm, he led her a short distance away where they could talk for a quick moment.

  “You have lost a lot in this damn war, Julia, but so has everyone else. I give you my word, four months and you’ll be home to stay.”

  Colonel Moravec proved true to his word, sending a plane for Julia the first week of March, bringing her home once more to England. Her war was finally over. She had been forced to flee Budapest along with several other Czech agents in January, to stay ahead of the rapidly advancing Russian forces who would soon liberate the city. Liberate was too loose a term for Julia, because the strong Communist underground in the ancient city had begun killing anyone suspected of opposing them. Already caught in the web of this ironic and twisted sense of liberation were most of the democratic and anti-Communist leaders throughout Hungary. Suspicion had become the guiding principle for being arrested, and Julia as a Czech intelligence agent would be a prize fish if caught in their sweeping net. Because of her father’s well-known stand and lengthy orations against the Communist party in Prague, her name would be all over the KGB books in Moscow. Her dear, sweet cousin Abram would not escape the net, though. Breathing freedom only a few short weeks in Prague after being freed from Auschwitz, he was to disappear for forty-eight years behind the Iron Curtain descending on Eastern Europe with each mile the Russians advanced.

  Leaving Budapest in the worst of all winters she had ever known, Julia made her way back to Tito’s mountain fortress in Yugoslavia, where Hannah Senesh had camped for three months before crossing into Hungary. In time, she would leave for Egypt to await her final trip back to England.

  But the few weeks with Tito’s partisans opened Hannah Senesh’s beautiful soul to Julia. Her own battles with life these past two years, even Eva’s death, faded gently into a peace she had known only as a child. Sitting alone watching the rising sun spread its wings like colors of deep red across the rugged mountaintops for as far as the eye could see, she read Senesh’s poems, “Blessed is the Match,” and “Walking to Caesara.” When she finis
hed, she cried softy in the stillness around her for hours. Julia had learned that after leaving Tito’s partisans, Senesh had crossed the border into Hungary, where she was immediately caught by the Hungarian police, who were rounding up all Jews for deportation to Germany and Austria. Enduring cruel torture by the police every day, she refused to divulge any information that might bring harm to others. Months later, no longer recognizable because of the brutal beatings by the Gestapo, she stood undaunted without a blindfold staring down executioners as she was shot by the firing squad.

  Though British intelligence knew by now from other sources the terrible fate that befell Hannah, Julia still submitted her own separate report. To do so was her only way of reaching down behind the cold, black typewritten words of an official report to reveal the warmth and beauty and greatness of this woman’s humanity. Where do people like Senesh and Eva come from? Julia would ask herself a hundred times for months to come. For them and their like, death held no meaning where honor and duty stood next to it.

  The morning after her return to England from Egypt, she entered Colonel Moravec’s office to file her separate report on Hannah Senesh, along with her report on the ruthless suppression of freedom taking place in Budapest by the Russians. Colonel Moravec could offer only a forced smile before handing her a telegram from the War Department, which Julia knew had to be about Hiram. The phrase, “presumed dead,” was the best they could give her, but it was enough. The circle of dying was complete now. She alone in her family had escaped it, the finality of being that came so sudden to so many in these terrible times. Julia would not cry in front of Colonel Moravec, or anyone else, for a long time, saving her tears for the joys she was sure were yet to come in her life. Anna was waiting with Angie McFarland, and Erich was somewhere not so distant that her love couldn’t reach him.

  ***