by Erika Robuck
At that, Sophie at least has the decency to look guilty. She turns her gaze to her feet. Virginia steps toward her.
“A ten-year-old boy and his mother—the nephew and sister of your fiancé—live in this house,” says Virginia. “Do you know what the Gestapo do to those who harbor resistors?”
Sophie begins to cry.
“Do you know what the Gestapo do to women?” Virginia continues, unable to stop herself. “They torture and rape them for sport. My own contact, a prostitute, suffered in such a way. One of her girls had a bottle shoved in her mouth until her face split open around it. Do you know why?”
Virginia grabs Sophie by the arms. The girl sobs.
“Do you know why?” Virginia says. “Because she had been spying on her Nazi clients and feeding me information on them, and she wouldn’t tell them where I was.”
Sick, Virginia drops Sophie’s arms and walks away from her. Virginia presses her fists to her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” says Sophie, reaching for Virginia.
Virginia slaps Sophie’s arm away from her.
“Get out,” Virginia says. “Now.”
She hears Sophie’s ragged breathing. After a moment, the door opens, allowing in the aroma of rain and a rush of wind before quietly closing. Virginia staggers to the dining table. She leans on it, watching Sophie—shoulders slumped—pedal away in the rain. With a groan, Virginia sweeps the maps to the floor.
“Diane.”
She turns to see Mimi in the doorway. Overcome with shame and remorse, Virginia buries her face in her hands. Her friend walks to her and pulls her into her arms.
* * *
—
In the low light of the lantern, while they wait for the night’s broadcast, they share the wine Mimi pulled from her secret stash. The women take turns swigging from the bottle.
“Tell me about your friend,” Mimi says. “The prostitute from Lyon.”
When the bottle comes to Virginia, she looks at it and pauses. Simultaneously, a pain like a spike and the memory of the girl’s torn face go through her head. She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a long drink.
“I don’t know if I can,” she says.
“What comes to mind? Anything. How about this? Is she alive?”
“I don’t know. Word is she’s at a work camp for women in the Resistance. Ravensbrück.”
Mimi shivers.
Virginia recalls the day she met her friend, the head of a Lyon brothel. Édith Piaf was playing on the gramophone. Silks and paintings hung on the walls. Real coffee with cream and sugar was served. Virginia had thought the woman was a society wife. How surprised she’d been to learn the truth.
“Do you know who was one of our closest allies in Lyon?” Virginia continues, feeling something loosen inside her.
“Who?” says Mimi.
“A nun.”
Mimi laughs. “Now, that doesn’t surprise me. We’re all women, after all.”
Virginia feels good speaking about her people. It lightens the weight of carrying them with her.
“The prostitute told me, ‘In war we are the same,’” Virginia continues. “She thought I’d be offended, but I knew she spoke the truth. We both create illusion. We both aim to do a little good in bad situations.”
“Isn’t that the goal for all of us? Mothers and fathers. Nuns and prostitutes.”
“But is it for nothing? The bad seems so much stronger than the good these days.”
“Of course it’s worth it. If there were one innocent man or woman on earth, it would be worth it to protect that goodness. It’s all the Lord asks of each of us. Each day. Each hour. Each minute. Do the next good thing.”
Virginia ponders that while thinking of Sophie. She was so hard on her. She must remember that she can’t be as hard on others as she is on herself. She’s had years to build up her armor. Others might not have had to do so.
The broadcast runs on, but it ends without the poem.
Mimi takes the last swig of the bottle.
“I have a confession to make,” Mimi says.
“I thought I was the sinner here.”
“We’re all sinners,” Mimi says. “So here goes: While I’m eager to hear the poem, I also dread it.”
“Why dread D-Day? It’s the beginning of the end.”
“Because it will get worse before it gets better,” says Mimi. “If it gets better. And then, even if it ends, think of all the people emerging from the rubble. Think of the women and children. All the empty places at dinner tables. The resentments between those who collaborated and those who resisted. The remorse for the things we’ve done that we thought were justified by the ends. We will all be called to account.”
Chapter 14
The next day, after adding more gray to her hair and taking extra care with her old-woman makeup, Virginia asks Mimi to borrow her bicycle with the basket and several bags of lentils.
“Spy mission?” says Mimi.
“More like diplomacy. I know this is unlike me, but I need Sophie’s safe-house address.”
Mimi is glad to provide it, and soon Virginia sets out through the cloudy afternoon on her journey. Playing the part of the old woman, she pedals more slowly than she would like, taking time to rest often at stops along the way. She sees few soldiers—only at stations or government buildings—and is glad when the towns give way to sprawling fields. She notes several in her head for possible drop sites. Two hours later she sees the farm with the small row of well-spaced tenant huts of Mimi’s description. The last in the row is nestled in a small grove of sweet chestnut trees. After she’s locked her bicycle to one of them, she approaches the cottage. Muffled music comes through the door. She knocks softly, but there’s no response. It occurs to her that Sophie and Louis might be inside together, but she has come too far to give up now. She knocks again, louder, and before she finishes, Sophie opens the door.
“Would you like to buy some lentils?” Virginia says.
The look Sophie gives her suggests she might like to throw a bag of lentils in her face. Virginia gives Sophie a small smile that seems to soften her. Sophie steps aside, motioning Virginia into the hut and closing the door behind her.
Josephine Baker’s voice, along with sprays of fresh flowers in milk jugs and the rich scent of perfume, fills the room. A bottle of red nail polish is open on the table, its lid upside down with its brush facing the ceiling. Sophie holds out her hands, waving them, and crosses the room to turn off the music.
“No, leave it,” says Virginia. “I saw Josephine Baker in Paris many years ago. It was another lifetime.”
Sophie shrugs, and returns to the table where the bottle of nail polish rests. She puts the brush into the container and twists the top.
“I know all this must seem silly to you,” Sophie says, gesturing toward the polish and the player. “But it keeps me sane. Normalcy.”
“It doesn’t seem silly,” says Virginia. “Maybe I should try it.”
Sophie looks at her as if she doesn’t know whether or not she’s being teased. Virginia places the lentils on the table, and opens one of the bags, sifting through the legumes until she finds the tube of lipstick Vera sent her through Louis. She hands it to Sophie.
“Here,” says Virginia. “Louis brought it for me from Vera, but it doesn’t really go with my outfit.”
Sophie hesitates a moment before taking it.
“Thank you,” she says. “I was running out. I thought you’d be pleased to see me looking less conspicuous.”
“I’m not going to try to control you anymore. We each have our talents.”
Sophie doesn’t respond, nor does she ask Virginia to sit. Her fatigue from the ride compels her to take a seat anyway. Sophie walks across the room to the small bed. On her end table is a photograph of a handsome, dark-haired man—who is not Louis—lying on a pic
nic blanket.
“My husband,” Sophie says.
Virginia’s eyes widen.
“RAF pilot. He died in ’42. Injuries from a training crash.”
The man looks like he could be a Frenchman, so having his face nearby is no danger. It probably goes with Sophie’s cover story.
Virginia realizes this young woman she has judged so harshly has lived a lot of life. It also occurs to Virginia that Sophie has suffered terrible loss but her light has not gone out. Virginia has a lot to learn from her.
“Louis knows all about my sweet Dennis,” Sophie continues. “My guardian angel.”
“Ah,” says Virginia. “My father is mine.”
“I didn’t know you believed in such things.”
“I wouldn’t if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes.”
“Truly?” Sophie sits forward, seeming to forget her anger.
“Yes. He died ten years ago, shortly before I had the hunting accident that took my foot.”
Sophie’s eyes flick down to Virginia’s leg and back. They hold no surprise.
“You know about my prosthetic?” Virginia says.
“Most of us agents know about Dilbert.”
“Cuthbert,” Virginia says. “Anyway, after the infection and the amputation, I got pretty bad in my head. My father’s spirit came to me in the hospital and told me to soldier on.”
“It’s good you listened to him,” Sophie says.
“I guess. But I don’t know if he’d be proud of what I’ve become.”
Sophie stares at her a long moment. The song ends, leaving only the crackling sound of the needle on the record. Virginia stands to go. When she reaches the door, Sophie’s voice stops her.
“Dennis was a boxer,” she says.
Virginia turns back and sees Sophie holding the framed photograph of her husband.
“He used to tell me, ‘It’s not the fists alone that win the fight.’”
Virginia looks down at her hands. She thinks she is a fist, or at least a brain that tells the fists what to do. She looks back up at Sophie—surrounded in flowers, aglow with life and love. Sophie is a heart.
Virginia turns to leave, but Sophie’s voice again stops her.
“Your father would be proud of you.”
* * *
—
When Virginia arrives back in Cosne, the sun is setting. The clouds have given way to a glorious pink sky, and the last light is rich and warm, making even the crudest old farmhouses glow with beauty. Virginia’s knee stump aches from pedaling, but her heart is quiet—even content—if only for this moment.
On the outskirts of town, she spots the little figure of the boy pulling his wagon down a hill, toward the pilings of the bridge the Nazis bombed at the beginning of the war. The one they constructed in its place is farther down the river. Their ugly lorries drive over it like large black beetles.
She’s about to call to him, when she notices a dinghy in the shadows of the old bridge. A mustached man of about fifty paddles it. She watches, ready to spring to help, but the boy moves with ease and surety. He pulls his wagon to the pilings, removes a small fishing pole, and leaves the wagon behind, proceeding to cast his line. While he fishes, the man in the shadows empties the contents of the wagon into his boat and paddles away.
Fear nearly choking her, she looks between the Nazi bridge and the old one. The man in the dinghy moves in the opposite direction of the Nazis, but, if they have a scout who observed the transaction, they could be here in no time.
She continues to keep watch the long minutes the boy waits. After a while, he pulls in his line, places the pole back in his wagon, and drags it up the hill and toward home. She follows him at a safe distance all the way and doesn’t breathe properly until he’s in the house.
Chapter 15
Virginia knows she’s having a nightmare because she’s watching herself that December day in Smyrna, in 1933, the day of the accident. Her transfer to the Turkish embassy hadn’t done anything to alleviate her pain over the breakup with Emil. Hungover from a night of drowning her sorrows, she almost hadn’t gone hunting. If only she had stayed home.
The sun had warmed the little hunting party of consulate workers and their Turkish guide, so they were able to remove their coats and recline on blankets in the dead grass. They’d been getting to know one another, discussing their backgrounds.
“Virginia’s grandfather was a pirate,” her friend Elena had said.
“Hardly,” said Virginia. “He was a sailor. Stowed away on his father’s ship until he could buy his own.”
“When he was nine,” said Elena. “Can you imagine, a little boy on adventures like that? That must be where you get it.”
“Get what?”
“Your fearlessness.”
“No one’s fearless,” said Elena’s husband, Todd. “We all have something that steals the breath from our lungs.”
“Yes,” said Elena. “And Todd’s something is a snake.”
“Is nothing sacred between us, woman?” he said.
“Snakes?” said Virginia. “I used to wear them to school around my wrist to scare the teachers.”
“No,” said Todd.
“Ask anyone. I spent all the summers of my youth on a farm, for Pete’s sake. I can handle a canoe against the current, de-scent a skunk, and skin a rabbit. But, do you know the one thing I have never been able to master?”
“What?”
“I can’t milk a damned cow.”
The group laughed.
“Nothing makes me angrier,” she continued. “My father gave hours of his life trying to teach me. I gave hours of mine trying to learn. And still—to this day—I cannot. It torments me.”
“That’s funny, but it’s not a fear,” said Elena. “My fear is rats. They’re smart, you know?”
Shudders went through the group.
“How about you?” said Virginia to their handsome guide, Murat. “What do you fear?”
“Ölüm,” he said. “Death. It is unknown what lies on the other side, but we will all find out.”
They became silent. A breeze ran along on the yellow grass, waving it like fingers.
“You never admitted your fear, Virginia,” said Todd.
“That’s because I don’t have any,” she said, hoping her airy tone didn’t betray the lie.
Loss, she thought, the faces of her father and Emil in her mind. I’m afraid of losing those I love. So maybe I’ll just stop loving.
“You must pick something,” said Elena. “Otherwise, we’ll think you cold.”
Cold. When Emil had made his final pronouncement, she’d forced a layer of ice around her heart. She hated the feeling, but it was the only way she could keep her dignity and move forward. She still hadn’t fully thawed, but these things couldn’t be spoken aloud, not to such new acquaintances.
“I know,” Virginia said. “I’m afraid I’ll never be able to milk a cow.”
The laughter of the group rose around them like birds. The snipe began to call.
“Enough,” said Virginia. “Let’s hunt.”
The Virginia watching this nightmare screams, trying to get her old careless, cocky self’s attention. She watches—helpless, soundless—as that Virginia runs her hand along the fence that’s too high to hop, loaded shotgun hanging from a strap, pointing down, banging against her thigh. Her friends scale the fence one by one.
“You first,” says Murat. “I’ll help you.”
“I don’t need help,” she says.
With the shotgun still pointing down, the other Virginia hoists her right leg onto the fence. As she does so, her foot on the ground slips in the mud. The gun goes off, and the hunting party begins yelling. That Virginia doesn’t understand why until she looks down.
Time stops.
My boot, she thinks
, strangely. Ruined.
But then the pain arrives, uniting both Virginias. The scene becomes bright white, like staring at the sun.
The last thing she remembers is looking at Murat, and uttering, “Help.”
* * *
—
She’s jerked awake, and it takes her a moment to realize she in Mimi’s attic. Sophie’s distraught face is in hers.
“What is it?” Virginia says, sitting up.
“Louis,” cries Sophie. “He’s been arrested!”
“No,” Virginia whispers.
She reaches for her prosthetic and straps it on. She drops to the ground, pulls her wireless suitcase from under the bed, and starts setting it up.
“Where?” she says.
“In Paris,” says Mimi. Her face is pale in the night, wet with tears.
“He was stealing plans for the German base his group was assigned to blow up before D-Day,” says Sophie.
“How’d you find out?” Virginia says.
“Another agent,” says Sophie. “She just missed being picked up with them.”
“Them?”
“Yes, all three in Louis’s team. They thought the driver they found was trustworthy, but he drove them straight to prison.”
Virginia’s hands shake while she positions the antenna, but by the time she starts to wire headquarters, they’re steady. The women wait, staring at the machine, desperate for contact. Soon the sounds come through, her check is cleared, and she transmits what has happened. Their worst fears are realized when HQ confirms the report. A pianist in Hector’s network already told them.
—Where taken? Virginia types, speaking aloud so the women know the conversation.
—Cherche-Midi.
Virginia’s mouth goes dry. Mimi and Sophie gasp. The Paris prison is a vermin-infested torture chamber. An absolute fortress.
“I’ll go and break the gates myself,” says Sophie.