The Invisible Woman

by Erika Robuck

She pulls the scarf off her neck, desperate for a breath. The man next to her bumps her arm, shoving a flask at her. She takes a greedy drink.

  Eau-de-vie. The water of life.

  Slowly, the sweet brandy begins to relax her, and soon—though not soon enough—she finds a way to breathe. Shallow gasps slip into her lungs, and her organs adjust, taking what they can from the air. As the wind picks up, the guide grows impatient. He resumes the hike.

  Virginia had thought the climb would be the hard part, but the descent in the rushing, icy wind sends them through snowdrifts up to two feet deep. Balancing on the downward hike is excruciating, and because it’s more gradual—because there are as many ascents as there are descents—they remain in the thin, impossible air for hours. As the sun rises, a cabin appears. Virginia thinks she’s seeing things, but the guide motions for them to go in, and they all collapse.

  “Sleep,” he says.

  As if on a hypnotist’s command, they drop. It feels as if she has only just closed her eyes, when he pokes her awake and tells them to eat. While the men are occupied with the stale bread, she sits on her cot and inspects her stump under the smelly blanket. Her knee is bloody and blistered, and pus makes it stick to the sock. She quickly covers it, removes the blanket, and asks for another drink of brandy. Though she thinks she could stay on that cot in that crude cabin forever, the guide urges them to prepare for the next leg of the journey. Virginia passes out more uppers, and pulls on her rucksack, feeling the sting as its straps settle into the deep grooves on her shoulders. The pain on her stump is searing, but there’s nothing to be done for it. They have so far to go.

  As the hours pass, as the second day turns to evening and falls into night, nearly out of her mind with pain, Virginia continues to think she will die. She’s become so numb from the cold, she can’t feel anything about the fact of her death any longer, only that she hopes it comes soon. On and on they hike. Sudden ascents torture them; sharp descents are even worse. She thinks her good foot might have frostbite. She worries that it will have to be cut off, too.

  It takes her some time to realize the wind has left, transporting the clouds, pulling back the curtain on a spectacular night sky. The guide stops them and points. Bewildered, she looks ahead and wonders why the stars are so low. Have they climbed above them?

  “Una aldea,” the guide whispers.

  A village.

  The lights aren’t stars—they’re houses.

  “Village!” she says to the others. The guide shushes her.

  The refugees reach for her, embracing. They laugh through their tears. The guide leads them, creeping, to a solitary cabin on a ridge. Inside, a beautiful young man and his pretty wife and their noisy, fat baby welcome them. There’s a fire, warm bread, and a bottle of oloroso. Virginia asks for a sock, and the woman produces a pair made of soft, dry wool. But even these socks aren’t as welcome a sight as the suitcase the man fetches, opens, and reveals that holds a wireless transceiver.

  “¡Gloria a Dios!” says Virginia.

  He strings up the wire and taps the message to HQ that the travelers are safe. The minutes of silence while they wait for the reply stretch on, endless, but then a response comes.

  There’s a great cheer all around as headquarters congratulates them. Virginia tells the wireless operator the code names in the group and then has him tap that, while the others are cooperative, Cuthbert has been troublesome. The response comes back quickly; the man reads the words aloud as the Morse code delivers them.

  “If Cuthbert is trouble, eliminate him.”

  Virginia howls with laugher. Those around her don’t understand, and she doesn’t enlighten them.

  The next morning, they arise to the aroma of eggs cooking and tea brewing and the baby fussing and babbling. They leave the beautiful people on the mountain with many thanks and blessings, complete their descent, pay the guide the balance, and head for safe houses to rest until their rendezvous at the train station for the five o’clock to Barcelona. When they reunite, they are strengthened and confident, but anxious for the journey to be over. None of them have papers, so they need to keep moving. She and the men sit on separate benches, watching the clock, willing the long hand to move faster.

  It’s here that her grief and guilt settle over her shoulders like a harness, tethering her as if on a rope over the mountain and all the way back to Lyon. Virginia has a physical ache for human comfort, but she knows that if her people are captured and in prisons or camps, they won’t have it. She resolves that she won’t, either. She will return to London to restore her strength and tell Vera everything she knows, and then Virginia will insist on returning to the field.

  She closes her eyes, imagining all the ways she might return, but the train whistle stirs her to attention. She sits up fast, but when she opens her eyes, all the hope drains from her.

  She stares down the barrel of a gun.

  * * *

  —

  “Since we didn’t have papers, the Spanish police arrested us,” Virginia says. “A prostitute with tuberculosis was my salvation. When she got out of prison, she went to the American consulate to tell them who I was. They got me back to London.”

  “Incredible,” Bob whispers.

  “And in spite of all that, I don’t feel as if I’ve conquered anything. Those mountains I crossed continue to conquer me. I don’t feel like I’ve ever left them. I think I can’t leave the mountains because I shouldn’t have crossed them. I should never have left France to begin with. I abandoned my people because I was a coward.”

  “No,” he says. “There’s nothing cowardly in you.”

  “But you didn’t leave when you were caught,” she says. “You never left France. You joined the Maquis.”

  “France is my home, not yours. And I did leave Lyon. I left when I couldn’t be of use any longer, and I found where I could be. If you had stayed in Lyon, you’d be dead. If you hadn’t left, you wouldn’t have learned the wireless. You wouldn’t have been sent to us here. We’d have nothing without you.”

  She shakes her head no.

  “You don’t believe me,” he says. “You think any old agent could help get us boys in shape? Any old agent could make us want to push ourselves to impress him? This from an agent wearing a fake leg called Herbert.”

  “Cuthbert.”

  “One who has been here since the beginning as a volunteer for a country she wasn’t born in, willing to come back and fight to the death, even when she has a price on her head.”

  He jumps down from the boulder and looks up at her.

  “Only la Madone could help us like this,” says Bob. “And once we’re liberated, when you stand there looking over the mountain you’ve helped conquer, I want you to take off this scarf at your neck and raise it in the air to me in surrender because I was right.”

  Chapter 37

  The night to blow the bridge at Chamalières, their final act of sabotage before the battles for Le Puy begin, has arrived. The train carrying Nazi troops and supplies is a night train on the last line left in the area for their transport. The Maquis have used a tremendous amount of explosive power on the bridge supports, and, if they calculated correctly, it should collapse, plunging the locomotive into the ravine below. It’s a big job that will be followed by an attack on the German convoys scheduled to meet the train.

  The train is running late—no surprise at this point—and they wait anxiously. The engineers have been warned. They’ll slow down the locomotive on the approach to the bridge and jump into the field, abandoning ship, where medical care waits. The maquisard training to be a doctor, Serge, will see to any injury. If all goes according to plan, Virginia will use the truck to transport the engineers to a safe house, and then she’ll return to Chambon to await news from the boys.

  Simon positions himself next to Virginia so he can whisper to her.

  “It’s good to see yo
u, Diane,” he says.

  She raises her hand to her forehead in salute.

  “I confess, I had my men check you out thoroughly,” he says. “Full reports are in, and you’re very respected in international intelligence circles. That shut up any of your remaining antagonists pretty quick.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “I know it’s hard to take orders from an old lady.”

  “They have a hard time taking orders from an old man,” he says, pointing to his thinning hair.

  She smiles.

  “HQ says you can expect Jedburgh teams soon,” she says. “Not that you need them for leadership, but they’ll help you fold into the Allied forces more easily once they reach us.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Look,” she says. “I want you to know what a fine job you’ve done readying these boys for war. All I had to do was find the guns to drop into their waiting hands.”

  “You understate your importance. But I thank you for your kind words.”

  They shake hands, and in a moment the rumbling starts. It’s so loud and so close and so full of Germans and means so much, it fills her with dread. Closer and closer it gets, like the war arriving on her doorstep, like it has a hundred times before. There’s no getting used to the feeling.

  The screech of the brakes—metal on metal—hurts her ears. The engine door opens, and the two forms inside leap out and roll in the grass to where the medical team waits. Though waning, the moon is still bright and large, and shortly after the train passes in front of it, a mighty blast rises, shaking the earth and polluting the air with fire and smoke. They scramble to witness the twisting groan of iron and steel and the deep quaking of the ground as the train plunges into the gulf below.

  Awed and a little shocked by their success, they pause only a moment to wish each other luck before separating.

  * * *

  —

  Engineers safely delivered—with minimal injury—to their safe house, Virginia proceeds back to Chambon. She isn’t good at waiting, especially when she knows the boys are in such danger. All her groups are out on ambush missions, leaving her alone in the place that’s usually bustling. She longs to wire HQ about the success of the bridge, but Edmund is out fighting somewhere in the night, so she has no one to pedal the generator.

  She runs her hands along a liquor bottle some of her boys stole from the kitchen at the back of the Nazi hospital. More and more Nazis evacuate by the day—with rumors a full cleanout is imminent—leaving only the sickest men and their nurses. Will MP Haas remain? She feels the letters in the glass—jägermeister—and pours herself a generous shot.

  She soon hears a hooting sound followed by a soft knock, and lets in Dolmazon and her son. She feels guilty for not thinking of keeping them company while Simon was out fighting.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” says Dolmazon. “I didn’t know if you’d be here, but I need to keep busy.”

  “It’s no bother,” says Virginia. “Come in.”

  Dolmazon and her son have arms full of clothing on hangers.

  “Can I pour you a glass of Jägermeister?” says Virginia. “I don’t think I should drink alone.”

  “No,” says Dolmazon, screwing up her face with distaste. “I’d never partake of German liquor, stolen or not.”

  “I understand.”

  The woman and her son take the clothing to the storage room, and Dolmazon returns holding a garment.

  “I have something for you,” says Dolmazon. “For later. If you . . . need something different to wear.”

  She holds up the dress. It’s simple—a V-neck with a collar, rolled short sleeves, and a skirt, airy as a dandelion wisp. Though light and feminine, it has a military feel. Virginia reaches for it, running her hands along the cool white silk.

  “Is this made from—?”

  “Yes,” says Dolmazon. “Parachute silk. United States issue.”

  “This is incredible. Now I know why you wouldn’t let us bury them.”

  “I like to put everything to good use. Sometimes something can become so much more than what it was intended for.”

  The words touch Virginia. She’s moved by the gift.

  “I’ll treasure it,” she says. “Thank you.”

  She leaves to hang it in her wardrobe and returns to find Dolmazon pacing and the boy chewing his nails. She needs to find a way to keep their minds off the danger Simon is in. In answer, the bicycle pedals in the corner glint in the lamplight.

  “I have a job for you,” she says to the boy and his mother.

  * * *

  —

  Dédé comes to Virginia in the middle of the night. Dolmazon and her son are sleeping over, and, once Virginia lets Dolmazon know Simon is all right, she tends to Dédé’s injuries. She pours him a shot of Jägermeister and lets him drink it before she uses tweezers to remove a line of shrapnel from his shoulder and chin.

  “Your first time shaving, and you’ve cut yourself,” she says.

  A quick smile touches his face before disappearing. He exhales and leans his head back against the wall.

  “How many boys did we lose?” she says.

  “Twenty.”

  She pauses, allowing the word to pass through her.

  “Who?” she asks.

  While he recites their names, she thinks of all their young faces, their short lives ended. Candles snuffed.

  “We underestimated their numbers,” Dédé says. “Twelve lorries full of Nazis had the advantage over our boys on foot. Two of the lorries got through, but when Bob’s team joined us with the bazooka, they blasted about one hundred and fifty boches to hell. The ones left thought we had more men and firepower than we did. They surrendered. Almost five hundred of them.”

  “That’s incredible,” she says.

  His eyes meet hers, and they are dark and full of pain. She takes his hand.

  “I know the losses are awful,” she says. “But our boys died heroes.”

  “I know,” Dédé says. “It’s not just that.”

  She stares at him, waiting for more news.

  “It’s Roger. He was in one of the lorries that got past us. I saw him. We got a boche to spill that the prisoners are being sent to Montluc.”

  Montluc. Klaus Barbie’s prison.

  Virginia swallows, but her mouth is dry.

  “The Allies are getting closer,” says Virginia. “Once Lyon is liberated, Roger will go free.”

  Dédé’s face relaxes a little. He wants to believe her. She wants to believe herself.

  “Where are the German prisoners now?” she says. “Did Bob take them to the château at Pont de Mars?”

  “Not yet. He corralled them in the forest under armed guard.”

  “What will he do with them?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” he says. “Bob wanted me to ask you.”

  What to do with them? The United States military has rules for prisoners of war, as do the French. The Allied world has made conventions to ensure humane treatment in the end. She knows the answer she should give.

  Finished pulling the metal out of his shoulder and chin, she douses the cuts with the rest of the liquor and bandages them where she can. Sitting on a stool across from him, she looks into his dark-lashed eyes.

  Dédé. Sweet boy. Twenty-two years old, fighting in a war. Twenty of his boys—brothers he has lived with and trained and cared for—dead. No family. No home.

  Roger. On his way to Klaus Barbie’s prison.

  She shudders.

  “Tell Bob,” she says, “their fate is in the hands of the boys who have been on the run for years. The young men who’ve had their families and homes and country destroyed. They’re more qualified to make that decision than I am.”

  Chapter 38

  Here’s the list,” says Bob.

  He
steps into the barn, where Dédé’s team prepares to raid the Nazi hospital. They received a message from the old woman at the hotel that the boches were evacuating the last patients. Once they get the all clear, they’ll sweep in to make sure there aren’t Nazi soldiers left there or anywhere in Chambon.

  The paper Bob hands Virginia has all the names and addresses of the suspected Milice from the region. They might not be able to help Roger, but they can ensure that every betrayer and collaborator from here to Le Puy is eliminated.

  “Hunt, imprison, and interrogate them,” says Virginia. “Shoot any who resist.”

  Bob nods, and leaves with his team.

  Virginia ties the orange scarf at her neck and wraps the blue shawl over her hair. She checks the liberator pistol and tucks it in her belt.

  “I think you should stay here,” Dédé says.

  “I didn’t ask your opinion.”

  “HQ won’t be pleased.”

  “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  She won’t be deterred. She needs to know MP Haas is gone or dead. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees his thinning blond hair, his pale eye, and his translucent skin. She hates the way he looks at people in town as if they’re his property, and the way he watches for her. If she and the Maquis are the shadow of the Resistance, he is the shadow of the Reich.

  On the way to the hospital, angry storm clouds gather. The wind has been fierce, even blowing drops off target. They had to cross a forest for the last one, pulling massive containers out of trees and dragging them up cliffs. Thank goodness the men are so young and strong. In spite of looking old, she, too, is strong—thirty-eight years strong. The men love to see her hauling and climbing. On the last drop, while she gave the final, curse-laden yank freeing a container stuck in a thick hedge, one of Simon’s Maquis—the young, Jewish man named Serge, whose studies to become an obstetrician are on hold because of the war—laughed and told her she could have birthed a baby. Then he proposed to her.