The Invisible Woman

by Erika Robuck

  “Thank you,” he says, draining it.

  “Of course,” she says. “Are you injured?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Can you say what pains you?”

  He looks around at all of them, including the British pilot, who awoke in the commotion. The American hands Murphy a cigarette, but his hand shakes too badly for him to light it. Virginia takes the matches and helps him. Once he’s had a long drag, he starts speaking.

  “I got shot down a while ago. I’ve been trying to make my way home, but I can’t seem to get anywhere.” He starts crying, and it takes him some time to compose himself. “Sorry,” he says.

  “Don’t apologize,” Sophie says, kneeling on his other side and taking his hand. “What happened?”

  He looks off in the distance again, his face so young while his eyes are old.

  “I don’t know if I should say this around ladies. I can’t bear to think it myself.”

  “These girls aren’t fragile,” says the American. “You’re in the company of great sp—”

  Virginia cuts him off with a sharp look.

  Murphy looks at the women before continuing.

  “The road led me to a town called Oradour-sur-Glane, or what was left of it. It’s destroyed.”

  “Allied bombs?” says the American.

  Murphy shakes his head in the negative.

  “It was the smell that hit me first. Burning bodies. Piles of ’em. Facedown in the dirt. Shot and burned. While I looked from the bodies to the buildings, I saw an old man standing by what used to be the church. He was mumbling and shaking. I went to him to see what happened and where the rest of the townspeople were, when I saw it.”

  He stops and looks at the women.

  “Saw what?” asks Virginia.

  His hands again quake, and it takes him great effort to compose himself.

  “A crucified baby.”

  Sophie and Estelle gasp. Virginia swears under her breath.

  “The rest of the townspeople were in the church. All the women and children herded, locked in, and set on fire. Shot if they tried to escape. Hundreds of ’em.”

  It’s incomprehensible. Virginia almost can’t make sense of the words.

  “The old man was from the next village. He said the Milice told the Nazis one of their officers had been captured and killed by the Maquis. One officer. Six hundred souls and a . . . a baby for one Nazi officer. The old man said his village had heard music and shots and explosions all day. It sounded like a party.”

  “My God,” says Estelle.

  Virginia can’t speak. Even with all she has seen, she can barely process this level of evil, an evil that not only tortures and kills but makes sport and entertainment of it. How can men become such monsters?

  * * *

  —

  She’s at home in the darkness. It’s her ally. She imagines she’s an owl, gliding through the black, unseen, while she pedals to the Maquis.

  Virginia tries to imagine how she’ll communicate this incomprehensible evil over Morse code to HQ. How can dots and dashes fully convey the horror? How will she speak it to Lavi? Will this knowledge cripple him from what he needs to do, knowing the danger he puts civilians in? Can she continue? Peasants on fence spikes. Women and children burned alive in a church.

  A crucified baby.

  Why did she refuse the L pill?

  The full picture arrives in her mind, making it impossible for her to go on. She stops her bicycle and gets sick. Once she’s wrung out, a quick scan of the landscape shows she’s near enough to the safe house where they waited out the railway explosion to spend the rest of the night there, working through the aftershocks of this horror. Anyway, it’s better she doesn’t surprise the Maquis in the dark.

  It’s June 13. Twelve weeks since she arrived. Double the time she was supposed to live. There is no longer any pride at beating the odds, only the sick knowledge that death isn’t yet interested in her. But it’s there, always lurking, on the faces of the Nazis who searched Estelle’s house, the shadow of the panzer divisions getting closer by the day, the Milice and the MPs.

  At first light, she rides to the forest and locks her bicycle to a tree, walking the rest of the way. She smells real coffee and eggs the closer she gets. When she whistles, the explosives expert appears, places the board over the stream, and reaches for her hand as she crosses. She takes it, glad to have his warm, steady grip. She’s so cold.

  “What is it?” he says.

  Unable to answer, she walks to the camp in silence. When Lavi sees her, he grins, but his face quickly becomes serious. When she tells him what happened at Oradour-sur-Glane, his face goes dark, and his exclamation is loud and swift. He overturns a table of maps, and kicks the leg, breaking it off. He picks it up and uses it to bash a chair to splinters. She watches him, feeling his rage, but still so cold she’s unable to move freely. His men come over to try to stop him, but Virginia finds herself holding up her hands, urging others to give Lavi space. When he’s through with his outburst, he runs his hands through his hair, catching his breath.

  “Sabotage only” is the sole order she can muster before leaving them.

  She takes the side roads on her return to Estelle’s—head swiveling forward and back—and by the time she arrives, her shoulders and neck ache. Mimi greets her with shaking hands and a pale face.

  “How did we get here?” Mimi says. “How does the world ever spin again after the likes of this war?”

  There’s no answer. Not for any of it.

  In the passing days, Virginia heads to the solitary cottage for her transmissions to HQ. The women establish a centrally located cemetery with a nook under a bench where they may leave one another messages at appointed times. Through the messages in the passing days, Virginia learns the pilot Murphy has left the barn, but Sophie and the two other pilots stay on. Mimi tried to get to Cosne but spotted a column of troops marching from the barracks there and hastily made her exit. Lavilette’s Maquis continue their sabotage work, blowing up two more important points on the railway lines. Most notably, they’ve begun to join forces with other Maquis units in the surrounding areas, bringing their numbers to over five hundred. They’re eager for the expertise of the Jed team—the officers from France, Britain, and the US—when they drop, but they’re holding strong.

  The waiting and the isolation are making Virginia go mad. Eating is labor. She doesn’t want to use downers in case she’s needed, so she barely sleeps, and when she does, she’s plagued with nightmares. The hours drag on without action.

  But her waiting is finally rewarded. HQ lets her know to expect the Jed team who will take command of Lavilette’s Maquis on the next full moon. Then they give her the order for which she’s been waiting.

  —It’s time for you to make contact with Chambon.

  * * *

  —

  Virginia rises, naked, from the claw-footed tub, where she’s left a ring of dirt. It’s the night before the trip, and she’s allowed herself the luxury of a hot bath at Estelle’s place to wash away the road dirt, the field soil, the gun grease, the layers of old-lady makeup. Her sweat and tears.

  Her sins.

  She hops to the table near where Cuthbert stands, and catches sight of herself in the long, thin, black-spotted washroom mirror. Skin over bone and lean muscle. Bruises from banging around in the dark. A scrape along the inside of her good leg from the bicycle. A calloused knee stump. Haunted eyes, flushed skin, wet hair.

  In the candlelight, she’s surprised, however, by the striking figure she cuts.

  She drops her towel on the floor and runs her hand along her flat stomach, sees her breasts somehow remain full in spite of her hunger. She hasn’t bled since she arrived—helpful in the field, but that can’t be healthy for a woman in her thirties. Will she resume her cycle when all this is over, or will she
stay an old woman?

  You’re still in there, she thinks. But, for now, you must remain invisible.

  Chapter 23

  Fresh layers of old-woman disguise applied, Virginia arrives with Estelle at the station at eleven thirty for the noon train. They picked a midday departure so all the rails wired with explosives overnight would have already gone off. They also want to allow enough time to buy tickets and endure the checkpoints, but not so much that they’re waiting around under scrutiny.

  At the station, engines exhale, Nazi soldiers shout, Milice patrol, travelers tremble, airplanes cause all of them to crouch low with every flyover. HQ won’t allow the RAF to bomb them, but the Luftwaffe might. The engineer in charge is arguing with a Nazi officer about the blown line that forces them to reroute, adding hours to the travel times. Troublesome as it is, the Maquis are doing good work.

  In case any rebels wired the rail during daylight, Virginia and Estelle make their way to the back of the train, but the seats are full. They have to return to the front, each car closer to the locomotive bringing a new wave of anxiety. Squeezing into the second car doesn’t make their companions happy, but they’ve all long abandoned hopes of comfort.

  An hour into the trip, Virginia thinks she might as well not have taken a bath last night. The compartment is sweltering, and she feels as if she will suffocate in her layers of clothing with packed money bags at her hips. Since D-Day, the temperature in France has been rising, and she doesn’t know if it’s the coming solstice, the fires of war, or the gates to hell opening to engulf them all.

  Progress is excruciatingly slow. Line changes, train changes, climbing upward into increasingly mountainous terrain. How does Estelle endure this trip so often? Thankfully, the closer they get to Chambon, the thinner the crowd. By the time they arrive at the station at Saint-Étienne and make their final change onto a little steam locomotive that looks like a blown-up child’s toy, the evening light is soft, and the air is cool.

  Climbing aboard, Virginia notices a number of single women traveling alone with groups of children. Each woman has the same alert yet haggard look. Each child, the same numb stare. Some children whimper, but none speak. The older ones sometimes console the younger, but not in all cases. She’s disturbed to see one girl of about ten rocking herself from side to side, her head hitting the window with little bumps.

  It’s the flash of light on the silver plate around his neck that makes her sit up in her seat. A massive MP enters the compartment, silence falling over the travelers with his shadow. She dares a look at his face.

  No. It can’t be, she thinks.

  Heart pounding, hands sweating, Virginia looks down and squeezes her eyes shut and open again, reassuring herself it’s not him, but when she looks back up, it is.

  Anton Haas.

  He seems to have grown taller—he must be six foot five. He has a bandage wrapped around his head over his left eye, a sling around his left arm, and a crutch.

  Dear God, he’s spent so much time with her wanted poster. Will he make the connection?

  Virginia slouches, pushes her glasses up her nose, and pulls her shawl up and over her forehead so it shadows her face. As they move away from the station, she uses the chugging of the train to regulate her breathing and wills her blood to become ice.

  The women and children recoil as he limps by, metal necklace clanking against his silver buttons. The closer he gets to Estelle and Virginia, the harder Estelle squeezes Virginia’s hand. She’s able to extract her hand from Estelle’s and to cross her arms over her chest. She can at least try to pretend they’re not together. After a moment, Estelle slides slightly away from Virginia, understanding.

  The MP takes the seat across the aisle and one forward from theirs, and drops heavily into it, lifting his leg with some effort to elevate it. His huge black boot blocks the aisle, and soon Virginia can feel him staring in her direction. She keeps her face turned away from his, toward the window.

  How could she have such terrible luck? What is Haas doing here, alone, going to Chambon? Is there a convalescent center in the village? Or is this a ruse, and he’s onto her? Has the betrayer somehow found her and communicated her new identity to him? Or was it Louis? Has he been tortured to reveal her whereabouts? No, he wouldn’t. She’s certain.

  She thinks so, anyway.

  “Open the window,” he says in German.

  Proud of how calm she has made herself in the face of such strain, she doesn’t flinch. Not a flicker of understanding passes over her. From a few rows up, a little boy’s head turns slightly before snapping forward. Virginia is glad the soldier stares at them so he didn’t notice.

  “Open the window,” he says in French. “You.”

  He points at Virginia and then at the window across from him. She rises a little, keeping her face turned away from his, and obeys, letting in a rush of cool, sweet mountain air. He inhales deeply and leans his head back against his window.

  “Merci,” he says, closing his good eye.

  She feels the smallest sliver of release. Unless he’s a very good actor, he doesn’t recognize her. She dares a look at him, and hatred rises in her.

  You bastard, she thinks. Damn you to hell. Not one of us has the luxury to breathe easily for a second, but you think you do. You, who helped destroy my first network. If you knew who I was, you wouldn’t close that eye. I could kill you before the next stop. I could leave your body on the train and no one would know.

  She reaches in her pocket and feels the garrote, the thin wire HQ gave her in the last drop for her bag of tricks. It looks like a simple shoelace, but it can suffocate a man in a minute flat.

  Could she kill him? Estelle wouldn’t ask questions. There’d be no better place. With so many travelers, no one could trace her, and with the Germans now battling the Allies for their lives, she can’t imagine they’d investigate too deeply for one lame MP.

  But the children. They’re so close—just a few rows up. If any of them saw the struggle, they would be traumatized.

  The internal war is torture. As soon as she decides she’ll do it, another voice arises, cautioning her. By the time they reach the next station, she’s sick to realize she missed her chance. The rows between her and the children fill with even more passengers. The announcements and motion awaken MP Haas, and he now spends more time with his eye open than he does with it closed. Indecision prevented her from avenging her Lyon network. She has again failed them.

  At the last station before Chambon, there’s an announcement that a pine tree has fallen over the line ahead, and they can’t continue. The MP sits up, drops his leg from the seat with a grunt, and struggles to stand. Virginia can’t be sure because she keeps her head down, but she’s almost certain he stares at her. It seems to take him an eternity to gather his things. When he finally does, everyone waits for him to disembark before moving, and there’s a collective release of breath as he’s driven away in the black Mercedes waiting for him.

  She takes a few deep breaths to steady herself before they leave the train.

  Keep going.

  It takes great effort to stand, but she manages to follow Estelle.

  Along the road, farmers line up with horse-drawn carts, and one of the groups of children climbs aboard the wagon Estelle selects. The woman leading the group gives Estelle a nearly imperceptible nod.

  The travelers bounce and bump over the rocky road. Cliffs and steep ledges rise on all sides, and birds slip in and out of tall pine clusters. Every time Virginia dares a glance at the mountains, she feels light-headed, so she concentrates on the rolling green fields, the changing sky, the gray stone farmhouses and their outbuildings.

  The children.

  She’s never seen so many children. Peeking up from meadows and cottages, running over farmland to forests and along the banks of meandering streams. Tall, short, dark-haired, fair-haired, red-haired, feral, erudite,
stoic, stubborn, scared. All varieties, in as great an abundance as the wildflowers. Once the silent travelers with them disembark at a building that looks like a school, Virginia can’t help herself. She leans close to Estelle.

  “I see there’s only one thing to do in a remote mountain town,” she whispers.

  “What’s that?” asks Estelle.

  “Reproduce.”

  Estelle breaks into a grin.

  It’s nearly seven o’clock by the time they approach the main street in Chambon. They give the farmer a generous tip from Virginia’s stash. When they climb down, Virginia spots the black Mercedes parked below the red-and-black swastika flag flying over a building across the street: the Hôtel du Lignon.

  Of course, she thinks. Just my luck. He’s here.

  Thankfully, there’s no sign of Haas among the Nazi soldiers who sit outside smoking at tables, listening to music like they’re on holiday, their broken arms and blasted legs and bandages revealing this is, in fact, where they convalesce. Virginia finds it strange how cavalier they behave when their peers are getting cornered by the Allies in some of the bloodiest battles of the war to date. Are they just glad to have survived the fighting? Glad to be away from the bloodshed?

  Estelle slips her arm through Virginia’s and leads her to the Hôtel May to book a room. Once they’re safely inside, the women drop their bags and fall backward on their respective beds.

  “Do you want to tell me anything about that MP?” Estelle says.

  “No,” says Virginia.

  I’ll tell you once he’s dead, she thinks.

  “Then, a moment of rest before we find food,” says Estelle.

  “I won’t argue with you. Are we meeting anyone tonight?”

  “I’ll leave a message with the proprietor of the hotel café. She can link us to our man: Auguste Bohny, head of the Secours Suisse—a children’s relief organization. If he feels safe enough to meet with us, we’ll go from there.”