“Let her come, Freddy. I’ll bet she can be a big help.”
“Well…okay,” O’Hara replied, still not entirely convinced. “But once we get to an airfield, you’ve gotta get lost, Helga. I don’t want you getting killed on our account.”
“Danke, Lieutenant. But back to my first question…when do we leave?”
“Tonight. Everybody okay with that?” O’Hara offered.
“No,” Helga replied. “Tomorrow night.”
“How come?” O’Hara quizzed.
“I can’t tonight. There’s something I must do here.”
O’Hara thought on that a moment: if she was going to rat them out, she could have done it a long time ago. “Okay,” he said, “tomorrow night. But can I ask you one more thing?”
“Of course.”
“How old are you, anyway?”
Helga let out a laugh and headed for the barn door. Looking back over her shoulder, her long, blonde locks falling across her face like some Hollywood pin-up, she gave her answer: “Old enough to know better, Lieutenant O’Hara.”
Fred O’Hara was finding it impossible to sleep. He would have much rather been making his escape right now. But tomorrow night was the appointed time.
A light rain was falling, its noise on the roof amplified by the barn’s tunnel-like acoustics. To O’Hara, it sounded like the gods were pissing on him. When Louie DiNapoli started his nightly festival of self-abuse, he probably would not even hear it.
O’Hara did not hear the barn door squeak open. He just noticed the dim slit of moonlight suddenly appear, then disappear. Soft footsteps made their sure approach, then became less certain as they neared Louie’s sleeping place. A child’s voice whispered.
Lou DiNapoli had not noticed the door open or heard her approach. Her hand gently over his mouth was his first awareness, then her whispered words. He sat bolt upright; she eased him back down and lay beside him.
Lou took a minute to convince himself this was not a dream. His hand slowly explored her arm, her shoulder, her face—the mouth kissing his fingers as they passed; then it moved to her breasts, their nipples small but erect. No, there was really a girl lying next to him. A little wet from the rain, but who cared? He wondered: Does Freddy know she’s here?
He could barely make out her face. His hands gave him all the information he needed. She was wearing just a simple nightgown and underpants. He explored the insides of her thighs, the soft pubic hair, her vulva. Hesitantly, he slid a finger inside her, then another; it barely fit. Growing bolder, he massaged the button above her vagina with the thumb of that same hand, just like that kindly neighborhood hooker in the Bronx had instructed him when he was 12 or so. Of course, with the hooker, he was sure his whole hand had fit inside. Helga made no sound, although her breathing had become deeper and more rapid.
Lou rose to his knees and positioned himself between her legs. He grasped the waistband of her underpants to slide them off. Her hands stopped him. “No,” she whispered.
“Whaddya mean, ‘no?’” he whined. “You some kind of cocktease?”
Helga pulled his face to hers and kissed him. She whispered once again: “Continue, please, but we must leave our underwear on.”
“You mean you wanna grind? Dry hump?”
“I don’t know what you call it, Louie. I just know that I want to remember you in my heart, not in my belly. And it would hurt. Hurry…we don’t have much time.”
He’d take what he could get, even a jail-bait virgin. It took him a moment to get the motion right, to get just the right friction. In another moment, he stiffened and groaned as his motion abruptly stopped. He rolled off her onto his back; she curled up next to him, her head on his shoulder, her arm across his chest. He fell asleep.
Before the dawn, she kissed him once more and rose to leave.
“Where’re you going?” Louie asked, still groggy.
“I’ve got to get back to the house, before Ludwig wakes up and finds me.”
“Who the hell is Ludwig?”
“The dog, silly.”
Once she was gone, Fred O’Hara’s voice sliced through the darkness: “Hey, quick-pop…that was sooo touching!”
Chapter Fourteen
The week that followed that first lovemaking with Pola Nilsson-MacLeish was both magical and troubling to Joe Gelardi. They had been together every night but one, when she had gone to visit her parents across town. When around others, they tried very hard to hide the glow of newfound romance. They told themselves they were succeeding.
But Joe alone walked under the dark cloud of marital infidelity. Pola seemed exempt; her marriage was a distant memory, almost forgotten in the cataclysmic years of war, kept barely alive only by a crumpled legal document, a few photographs, and a gold ring—now dull and uncared for—long filed away in a jewelry box. Her husband, Reginald, was somebody she knew once, thought she loved once—and then faded away to the other side of the world. The few letters she had long ago received seemed like letters from some old acquaintance, devoid of longing and passion, which spoke not at all of a life together once this war was over. But Joe Gelardi was here—in the flesh—for whatever reason fate had brought him into her life. She marveled that the consummation had been every bit as exciting as the initial, inexplicable attraction.
Joe still believed himself deeply devoted to his wife, Mary, a girl he had known his entire life. But this devotion seemed to dissolve at the sight of Pola, only to return—along with crushing guilt—once their coupling was finished and he was alone again. Joe and Mary shared humble beginnings in that small town outside Boston, were high school sweethearts, and married while he was still an undergrad at MIT and she at Boston College. She had always been there for him and she was here even now—an unseeing and nonjudgmental entity—in this surreal world on the periphery of war. But their lives were intertwined more by circumstance, proximity, and history than passionate love. Whatever juvenile passion had sparked their high school and college years had devolved into a dreary obligation long before Joe had left for military service.
Nevertheless, he told himself, Mary will never know of this. It was more of a plea than a certainty.
Joe’s sexual passion for Pola Nilsson-MacLeish left him dumbfounded. He had little carnal experience outside of his life with Mary, but with Pola, sex was a totally new and captivating experience, so unlike the frantic, brief, but uninspiring episodes in the missionary position he had shared with his wife. He was startled the first time Pola ministered to his genitalia with her mouth. He had thought such a practice was just the stuff of lurid pulp novels, never actually happening in real life.
Then she taught him that his own mouth could be used for more than kissing the face. Their many-faceted lovemaking seemed to go on for hours, and when the sessions were over, they collapsed into blissful sleep, naked, sweaty, exhausted, but completely satisfied. But then they would have to part as discreetly as they had arrived. And he would again make the deluded promise to himself: That’ll be the last time.
Her latest request startled him, but he eagerly, if inexpertly, tried to comply: Tie my hands above my head. Lash them to the bedpost.
When he had finished that task to her satisfaction, Pola commanded, Blindfold me.
He retrieved her kerchief and did so.
Now fook me, Joseph.
A different sort of foreplay was happening between Leonard Pilcher and Johann Lichtblau, one to which Pilcher seemed completely oblivious. The big German had, throughout dinner, been rubbing Pilcher’s shoulders and thighs with his massive hands. Pilcher dimly considered the physical contact merely punctuation marks for his German friend’s expansive, boisterous monologues, nodding in agreement as he filled his face with food and drink.
Lichtblau began to fear that Leonard Pilcher was even more vacuous than he originally thought—and apparently devoid of homosexual interest. For several days he had hurled advance after advance at Pilcher, with no response whatsoever. Maybe the waggish stories Lichtblau’
s father had told about the homosexual proclivities of American prep school boys were not completely true; Father’s stories of their self-centered dullness seemed fairly accurate, however. Nothing spilled from Leonard Pilcher’s mouth but obnoxious tales of the many girls he had taken advantage of and the two he had impregnated—all without consequence to him due to the protection of wealth and position.
“Anybody else, it would have been rape…but we’re men of means, right, Johann?”
Lichtblau hid his disgust and said nothing in response. At least these ignorant Americans get paid obscene amounts of money for their military service, which the Swedes dutifully dole out. I might at least avail myself of this fine food and drink, courtesy of this vacant fool, while I can.
“You never told me how you ended up in Sweden,” Pilcher said, only half interested as he stuffed another dinner roll into his mouth.
Actually, I have, Lichtblau thought to himself. You probably weren’t paying attention, you stupid swine. But he began the tale cheerfully once again. “I was flying back to Germany from Norway after a liaison mission. My radio operator, Feldwebel Weiner, that imbecilic peasant, tuned the wrong DF station. The weather front we should have been avoiding…well, we flew right into it. I got good and lost at that point…”
“And the Swedish Air Force intercepted you,” Pilcher interrupted.
“No. I landed on my own, without their help, at the first airfield I saw.”
“So how long do they keep you?” Pilcher asked.
“Not long, I am sure. Something will be worked out between the governments.”
At least he hoped so. To this point in his brief stay in Sweden, Lichtblau had been unable to procure suitable male companionship. Quite a change from the Geschwader, where homoerotic encounters among men of dignity and culture were not hard to find. The Luftwaffe, the High Command, the Nazi Party in general—all full of men who loved men. The Swedish homosexuals he had blundered into since his arrival were loathe to associate with Germans. This crude, ridiculous, yet privileged American seated next to him, whose social credentials had suggested easy plunder, was not panning out, either. Lichtblau was running out of options—but surely Pilcher was a malleable idiot. He would not give up on him quite yet.
“How long do you think the Swedes will keep you, Leonard?”
“Until the end of the war will be just fine with me,” Pilcher replied, his mouth full of salad. “And you still haven’t told me how to get laid around here.”
“Perhaps I can arrange something,” the big German replied. “Could you advance me, say…500 kronor?”
Chapter Fifteen
Fred O’Hara and Lou DiNapoli stared into the pale moonlight, unable to make out much of anything amidst the dull gray shapes and shadows that unfolded before them: trees not quite ready to surrender their leaves to autumn. From their position in the adjacent woods, the German airfield looked like little more than a void from which the low rumble of machines, flashes of artificial light, and raised human voices occasionally emanated. If there were any aircraft present, their silhouettes were invisible; they must be concealed in the tree lines to prevent being spotted from the air in daylight. They could have never found this place—in the dark—without Helga’s help. But maybe she was dead wrong about this being an airfield.
“I’m not wrong,” Helga insisted, as she joined them after hiding her bicycle by the road. “That line of trees to the right…you’ll find it full of airplanes.” Per O’Hara’s request, she had dressed in a dark sweater and trousers, her golden blonde hair tucked into a black beret. Clandestine was the word he had used; the sound of that word continued to send chills of excitement down Helga’s spine.
Angrily, O’Hara whispered, “Keep your voice down, girl.” Then he caught himself. Why was he scolding the one person who had just handed them their only chance at escape? He started to apologize, but Helga cut him off with a wave of her hand.
“Just follow the tree line around. That will get you to the airplanes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “And best of luck to both of you.”
She leaned forward and gave O’Hara a kiss on the cheek. Then she turned to Lou DiNapoli, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him full on the mouth.
Lou found himself paralyzed. Sure, he wanted to get the hell out of Germany. But he did not want to leave her, either. There was something so pure, so honest, yet so wise about Helga. What he felt was just so different, like nothing before. It don’t matter that she’s jailbait.
He had considered himself a hardened citizen of the cruel world; overnight, this young girl had reduced him to a smitten adolescent. He would not release her when she tried to disengage from their embrace.
O’Hara grabbed DiNapoli by the shoulder. “C’mon, Louie…this ain’t no time to be falling in love.”
“Okay, okay. Gimme a minute,” DiNapoli pleaded. Still with one arm around Helga, he reached into the pocket of his flight jacket for a pencil.
“Gimme your address so I can write to you after this war is all over,” Louie whispered.
Helga was astonished. “Are you crazy, Louie? When you get caught with that, my grandpa and I are as good as dead!”
Undeterred, Louie continued, “Okay, I’ll give you mine…”
“No, no, Louie! Don’t you see that’s just as bad for us?”
“Louie, it’s time to get out of here!” O’Hara hissed, angry once more. “And I don’t care much for the sound of when you get caught...”
“It’s just a figure of speech, Lieutenant,” Helga said. “If you don’t trust me by now, I don’t know what else I can do…”
She had a point. O’Hara scolded himself: What do you want from this poor kid? She’s bending over backwards to help you…maybe even risking her life…and you’re giving her shit? Even DiNapoli seemed to be turning against him, as if he had decided to stay here—with her—and forget all about escaping.
“What’s it going to be, Louie?” O’Hara demanded. “The sun’s gonna be up soon.”
Louie refused to accept the finality of their parting. He removed the St. Christopher’s medal from his neck with one hand and began to place it over her head. He would not relinquish his grip on her with the other arm.
“Wait…wait!” Helga whispered. She took the medal in her hands and tried to examine it in the darkness. “There’s no writing on this, is there?”
“It just says ‘St. Christopher, Protect Us.’ You know…he’s the patron saint of travelers. No harm in that, is there?”
“In English?” Helga asked, fearful of the answer.
“Yeah, what’s the big deal? You were born in America, right?”
Helga considered that for a moment. “Well…I suppose it’s okay.”
With a final, abrupt squeeze, Louie gave into the impossibility of remaining and released her. Without another word, Helga turned and disappeared into the early morning darkness, leaving him motionless and deflated. He was overwhelmed by the feeling that he had just lost something precious, yet he knew full well it was something he could never possess. O’Hara grabbed Lou’s arm and whispered, “Let’s get this show on the road, Sergeant.”
Slowly, Lou DiNapoli turned and followed his lieutenant into the darkness. He was glad it was dark for a new reason—Freddy would not see his tears.
Sure enough, there were airplanes. Most were single-seat fighters, the kind they had done battle with in the sky not so long ago. It would be extremely difficult to squeeze both of them into one of those cockpits. Another problem: O’Hara recalled from training films that the engines on those fighters featured inertial starters that had to be cranked manually, like giant, deadly wind-up toys. That might prove a bit difficult to pull off, even under cover of darkness, as the noise and motion this process created would draw much attention. They could hear many voices around them—voices of mechanics servicing the aircraft—but as yet had not seen the shadowy figure of another human being, just the random flashes from the lanterns they carrie
d. The aroma of breakfast cooking—ersatz coffee, sausage, eggs—floated on the soft breeze.
An aircraft engine suddenly sprung to life somewhere to their right. Definitely not a powerful fighter engine, more like one from a light aircraft, perhaps a courier or observation plane. Alive with anticipation and apprehension, they crept toward the sound.
Now they could see the airplane’s shadowy outline: a Fieseler Storch. Simple, lightweight, easy to fly; high-winged and spindly, it seemed more an awkward descendant of flying insects than graceful birds. They saw the shapes of two mechanics moving around the aircraft, lanterns in hand, checking her over, then the mechanics disappearing into the darkness, leaving the aircraft—its propeller whirling at low throttle—tethered and alone.
No words between O’Hara and DiNapoli were necessary. They both knew this was their chance. Get off the ground in the pre-dawn darkness, fly west until the sun follows them into the sky—and try to get down behind the Allied lines without getting shot to pieces by American or British gunners. They stumbled hastily through the darkness to the abandoned Storch, the purr of her engine masking the noise of their advance. O’Hara jumped into the cockpit and was relieved to see how simple the controls and instrumentation were; their operation was, for the most part, obvious, even with German markings. DiNapoli quickly undid the ropes securing the aircraft to its tie-downs and pulled the chocks from her wheels. He nearly forgot to avoid the whirling propeller as he passed around the front of the aircraft but quickly shook off that near-fatal lapse—Gotta get my head out of my ass! He jumped into the Storch’s back seat as O’Hara’s trembling hand pushed the throttle forward. With a lurch, the little plane taxied off.
Helga pedaled slowly through the pre-dawn darkness, following the pulsating spot of dim light the bicycle’s headlight provided. She had been so proud of herself; how she had led O’Hara and the irresistible Lou DiNapoli to their glorious escape. But now, she felt only sorrow and remorse. How could their plan ever work? Surely, they would be quickly found out. Without a doubt, she had led them to their deaths.
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