Jean-Baptiste and Marcel pry the lids off the crates. They are filled with similarly marked sticks of dynamite packed in layers like sardines. I estimate between fifteen and twenty sticks in the top layer, and I guess there are, perhaps, ten layers.
“We need to leave straight away for Montauban,” says Jean-Baptiste. “Claude, Marcel, help me get this stuff in the car.”
Élodie says, “There won’t be enough room for everybody.”
“Not a problem,” says Jean-Baptiste. “You and the American aren’t coming with us.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s obvious you don’t want to fight. You’ve lost your taste for killing. You’re of no use to us.”
“What are you talking about? When we found that Boche medical team—”
“When we found that medical team, yes, you did your job,” Jean-Baptiste says. “But you shook and threw up for two days afterward. Same thing after Oradour. We can’t rely on you. You are, at heart, a pacifist. You should be back at Chabannes with the OSE. You know I speak the truth. You’ve known it all along. And now, you’ve let your pacifism blind you.”
Élodie glares at Jean-Baptiste. He glares back. There is silence until finally, Georges says, “If that zob knew where that poor girl was, others may know. She needs to be escorted away from here.”
“There,” Jean-Baptiste says. “You can save lives instead. Escort your American out of France.”
“But you have the car.”
Georges speaks up. “That is no problem. Old Gaspard Fabry died a month ago, and Madame Fabry doesn’t drive. I’ll talk to her. It has a wood gasifier just like your car.”
Élodie hesitates a few moments, then nods. “We’ll take her to Aquilac. I know of some good people. They’ll know how to continue her along the escape route.”
Later, as Jean-Baptiste and the others are preparing to leave, I ask Élodie, “He mentioned something called OSE and Chabannes. What was that all about?”
“OSE stands for the Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants or the Society for Rescuing Children. There were more than a dozen establishments in the south. Sort of orphanages for Jewish children. But Jean-Baptiste is an idiot. They were all closed in the last year after the roundups and deportations started.”
“So, what happens to the children now?”
“There’s a network of safe houses like the one Hannah Katz lives in.”
“And we’re taking her to another one?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll discuss it with Madame Bosquet. I think the girl is too fragile at the moment. Besides, we haven’t decided what you and I are doing. It’s best to let Madame Bosquet arrange for her to be escorted to the next safe house closer to the Pyrénées.”
“Where you intend to escort me?”
“Yes.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you will be risking the firing squad, and it will kill any chance we have of meeting again after the war.”
I stare at her. I have a dark feeling the moon has rotated a little, but by how many degrees?
32 About one kilometer, south by south-east. 162 degrees.
33 On book tours, people often ask where I get my ideas for books. It’s easy to identify the spark that led to The Architecture of Memory in Prehistory, Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is this brief comment by Élodie.
34 “What is that for? No! No!”
35 The Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants, or Work for Child Rescue. OSE, pronounced OZAY.
36 “Are you an idiot? Why did you do that?”
37 “Dangerous explosives,” and “weight 8.125 kg.”
Chapter 9
A Second Escape
After Callie returns me to my room at Spaulding and says goodnight, I turn the computer on. After a moment’s thought, I enter the search term, “New York to France by ship” and am immediately presented with a list of hits. The seventh one down catches my eye. It reads, “Queen Mary 2 Transatlantic Schedule.” I had guessed there would be many more ships from New York than from Boston, and I am quickly proven right. I find there is a sailing on the Queen Mary 2 that will get me to Southampton, England several days before the ceremonies of June 6th. I enter “England to France, train” and learn I can take the Eurostar from London, through the Channel Tunnel, to Calais. And yes, of course there is a train from Calais to Caen from where, I am confident, I can take a taxi to Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery. Finally, working backwards, I search, “train Southampton to London.” No problem.
I stare out the window for several minutes and finally say to myself, “What have I got to lose?” and begin making the necessary bookings on line. It’s a sudden change in direction, but one I’m determined to follow. When I finish, I call Maddie Callahan, and she tells me Arlequin is doing fine and eating all his food. And I pull the covers over me and sleep soundly through the night.
“I volunteered with the OSE before the war,” Élodie says. “Gave concerts to raise money.”
“But you’re not Jewish.”
“You don’t have to be Jewish to want to help Jews.” Her voice is caustic.
“Of course not. Forgive me. I was clumsy, and I’m sorry.”
“You Americans—”
“What about us Americans?”
“Your countrymen made it clear, early on, they opposed Jewish immigration, even children trying to escape the Nazis. Even your president refused to help.”
“I’m not FDR. Don’t lay that on me.”
“You’re not his wife, either. She, at least, did try to help.” I stare at her but have no words.38 After a pause, she takes my hand. “I’m sorry. Of course, there was nothing you, personally, could do. Especially since your government was saying the murder of the Jews was just a war rumor.”
“Unlike you,” I say with genuine admiration. “You could do something, and you did.”
She takes a deep breath and looks off into the distance. “OSE provided homes for children whose parents were either in concentration camps or had been killed. I was scheduled to return to them after my concert in Paris, but then the Germans marched into Paris and you know the rest. I ended up in England. Some of the children made it to America.”
“Some?”
“In forty-two, the Vichy police began roundups. They deported children from the orphanages to Nazi concentration camps.”
“Jesus!”
“So, the OSE organized underground networks to smuggle children out of France.”
”And this Aquilac, where we are going, is part of that network?”
“Yes. Gaston and Odette Dupont live there. I know them well. I’ve guided many children to them.”
“Then what happens with the children?”
“When it’s the right time, others try to get them to the port at Marseilles or over the mountains to ships in Lisbon.”
“The right time?”
“When we’re confident there are ships and countries that will take them.”
Georges and Isabeau Bosquet return in an old Citroën with a gasifier where the rear luggage compartment ordinarily would be. Georges gestures toward the car with a bow. “Madame Fabry was delighted to help. She said she is too old and timid to fire a weapon, so this is the least she can do.”
“It’s fine,” Élodie says with a determined smile. “It will get us to Aquilac.”
When Amélie appears the next day for my physical therapy session, I am ready to do whatever she demands. I promised myself I would be a model patient if it meant the difference between getting to France, and not. I listen closely as Amélie explains the plan of action. “We’ll start by doing a pulmonary function test this morning to see what our base line is. That will help us decide how rapidly we can progress. Then we’ll go from there. The objective is to get you to the point where you can get from your bed to the bathroom relatively easily and you can do normal chores around your condo, especially in the kitchen. Any questions?”
I’m not about to tell her the real objective is to get me
to the point where I can get from my bed to France. Screw the bathroom! Instead, I ask, “Can we do some of this rehabilitation outside in the fresh air?” I reason it will provide me better escape opportunities when the time comes. If they become accustomed to seeing me outside, they might not notice when I gradually extend my wanderings and, eventually, make my escape.
“Not only can we,” she says. “We’ve designed the rehabilitation programs so that we must do some of our work outside. The grounds are designed with different surfaces to help patients cope with the real world as they recover their mobility.”
I force my best saccharin smile. “Good. I’ll enjoy the fresh air.”
“Are you ready?” she asks.
I give a salute. “Eager and ready. Lead on, Macduff.”
“What?”
“It’s a British expression. Lead the way. I’m putty in your hands.”
“Have you spent time in England?”
“You might say that, but that’s not where my British expressions come from. There was a person I knew who spoke better English than the British people themselves.”
“I see,” she says with an amused smile. “Well, Mister Putty, before we head outside, I’m going to take you to an exam room and we’ll do the pulmonary function test.” She wheels me out of my room, down a corridor, and into an elevator. In the exam room, Amélie hands me a nose clip to pinch my nostrils together and demonstrates how to use the spirometer. When I’m ready, I inhale as deeply through the mouthpiece as I can, then exhale forcefully. Amélie reads the result, wrinkles her brow, and makes me repeat the procedure several more times.
After the last test, I look up at her. “Is something wrong?”
“On the contrary. Your results are so good, I wasn’t sure if they were accurate. Were you an athlete?”
“I ran track. The middle distances. Fifteen hundred, mile, five thousand.”
“And you never smoked?”
“Tried it once during the war. Didn’t like it.”
“When did you run? Was it in college?”
“Yes. And until I was in my mid ’80s.”
“Seriously?”
“Lots of us old folks run these days,” I say. “There are even masters’ meets. When I was sixty-seven I won the mile in the sixty-five to seventy age group with a time of five-twenty-one in the national masters’ championships in Eugene, Oregon. In the same meet, I won the five thousand in nineteen-oh-seven.”
“Most people in their twenties can’t run those times!”
“I trained for it. So, what’s my score?”
“Your FEV1/FVC ratio is seventy-four percent.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Sorry for the technical terms. It’s a measure of your lung capacity and how much you can exhale in one second. Normal for a healthy man, your age, is sixty-five percent. Over seventy percent is crazy, especially for a man your age who has also suffered a lung injury.”
“So, what am I doing hanging around here?”
She laughs. “Not so fast. You still have some healing to do. But what these results suggest is it won’t take long at all. And, this much I can say, you won’t be needing that wheelchair. Are you ready to walk back to your room?”
“You bet!”
She offers her hand and helps me rise from the wheelchair. As we walk toward the elevator, I must be sporting a huge shit-eating grin because everyone we pass seems compelled to smile back at me.
The next day, my rehabilitation begins in earnest.
After warm-up exercises in the Therapy Garden, Amélie teaches me to place my hands at the lower part of my rib cage and to breathe deeply and exhale through pursed lips. And in the days that follow, we work both indoors and outdoors on abdominal exercises; stretching exercises, walking up and down stairs, lifting weights, and walking—first on the treadmill, then outside along the paths in the Therapy Garden. After a week and a half of this, I know I’m fit enough to initiate my escape plan. So, late in the second week, after Amélie and I walk in the garden, I ask, “Isn’t eating one of the things I should be able to do on my own?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then let’s go to the cafeteria. I’m hungry and I don’t want to eat in my room.”
Amélie shakes her head. “I can’t. I have another patient.”
The thing is, I already know that, and I’m ready with an answer.
“Then leave me in the cafeteria. I want to try some different food for a change.”
“But I’m required to escort you back to your room.”
“I’ll just sit here and enjoy the sea air. You can come get me when you’re finished with your next patient.”
After some hesitation, she agrees. And on that day, I behave. I stay at the al fresco table exactly where she left me. But on the following day, I saunter about fifty yards to the foot of the old dry dock, then return to my table before Amélie comes to fetch me. A nurse sees me and asks if I need help. “No, no,” I say. “Just faithfully practicing my walking.”
The nurse gives me a nod of approval. “Well, keep up the good work.”
The following day, I repeat my little walk, this time adding another twenty yards to the out-and-back excursion. By the fourth day, hospital staff, including the nurse who had offered to help me on the first day, seem not to notice me anymore. Gradually, day-by-day, I increase my range by small increments until, finally, I make it to the point where, if I were to continue, I would disappear behind some buildings. Poof! Just in time. The Queen Mary sails in two days. It’s time to move. Tomorrow is the day!
Back in my room, I pull up Amtrak’s Acela Express web page on my notebook computer and confirm my ticket for the 1:00 pm train the next day. That will get me to New York around dinnertime on the day before sailing. I also confirm my room at the Waldorf Astoria.
I no sooner close the cover to my notebook when I hear, behind me, “It’s good to see you using your computer, Papa.”
“Oh, hello, Callie,” I say, trying not to act guilty. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“You act like a little boy caught peeking through a girly magazine! Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“Yes, of course. You just startled me.”
“Now that I’m free, I thought I’d drop by.”
“Free?”
“Don’t you remember me telling you the other day I take my vacation around this time every year to gather my strength to deal with the flood of July interns?”
“Oh, right. That’s why I’m supposed to not get sick in July because I’d have some pimple-faced kid tending to me.”
“Exactly. And for us doctors, it doubles our workload what with the briefings, answering questions, taking at least twice the time with every patient on rounds, doing intern evaluations. We can get damned cranky. Anyway, since David has the kids, I’m totally free. How about I come over for lunch tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“But I have a session with Amélie.”
“I thought she leaves you to have lunch at one of the outside tables while she works with her next patient. I’ll just join you then.”
“But I’ll be tired. I won’t be much company.”
“What’s with you, Papa?” Callie asks with a bemused smile.
“It’s just these rehab sessions tire me out.”
“That’s not what Amélie says. She says you go through them like a champ.”
“Well, I’m not about to give her the pleasure of knowing how much she tires me out, am I? How about the day after tomorrow? I’ll go light with the exercises, and then we can have a walk in the garden”
Still with a bemused expression, Callie says, “Well, I suppose. I hope you’re feeling better about things then.”
She’s suspicious. But I think I’m okay. “Oh, I’m sure I will be. I’m regaining strength more and more as each day passes.”
She gives me a skeptical look but drops the issue and entertains me with stories from the previ
ous week of Ashley’s dance recital and the two goals Danny scored for his junior soccer team.
The following day, after the rehab work, Amélie leaves me at a table on the cafeteria patio. I watch her disappear inside, push my chair back, and try my damndest to look casual as I start toward the path on the right side of the dry dock. When I reach the row of small trees that will hide me from the people on the patio, I give a quick, “Ha!” and continue to the short flight of steps that take me to the Harbor Walk which meanders behind the buildings that front First Avenue. My nerves are on edge. I’m startled when a powerboat pilot guns his engine. A flock of seagulls squawk and scatter into the air as I pass. I hurry as fast as I can. My shoes scrape against the cinder path and I am breathing too hard and I pass the Shipyard Quarters Marina where halyards slap against masts as the wake from that powerboat passes under them. They mimic my jangled nerves. More seagulls circle above me with their cries, Kyieeee, Kyieeee. When the path turns from cinder to a boardwalk, my back can’t take it anymore. I must rest for a few moments. To my right is a length of heavy chain suspended along a row of posts in sags and peaks like telephone wires. I lean my butt against one of the posts, but it is too high and hard-edged. I should have stopped at the bench I passed half a football field back! I try to sit on the catenary of the chain, but it swings precariously. There is a flap of wings and a seagull lands on a heavy, black bollard opposite me which offers a rounded, smooth top. I struggle to my feet, cross the boardwalk, and shoo the damned seagull away. It flies off with an angry squawk. A squirrel scampers along the boardwalk and dashes into some bushes. The bollard is comfortable, and at last I can rest. Out in the harbor, I see cat’s paws raised by the thready wind. After several minutes and some deep breathing exercises, I rise and resume walking toward my condo. My cane taps rhythmically on the boards. I pass Constellation Wharf, and then Pier 6, before finally arriving at the Flagship Wharf condominiums. As I walk into the lobby, the doorman greets me with, “Mister Budge! We didn’t expect you back so soon. Welcome home. How are you feelin’?”
The Light from the Dark Side of the Moon Page 15