by Paul Griner
Of course. But we can’t chance it, can we?
You can’t, Claus thought now, stopping before he pedaled into the bomb’s dust cloud. But could he? He wasn’t sure. He stood beside his bike, cooler in the shade, waiting for the dust to settle before he continued on. He glanced at the shop window beside him and the hair on his neck rose; someone was watching him. Immediately he felt foolish. A life-size picture in the window, a model displaying wartime fashion. Bertram had him paranoid now, which of course was what he’d desired as it would make Claus wonder about everything Kate had ever said to him, turn over every question she’d asked. How did you end up at the MOI? He didn’t want that and remounted the bike and pedaled on.
His inspection lasted only a quarter of an hour. No one was dead and the bomb had penetrated far into the ground before exploding. A small corner stationery shop had disappeared but it had been deserted before the bomb came, and except for the dust hanging in the air and the flurries of paper blowing about, nothing might have happened at all. The risk of looting was slim. Had it been food or liquor, he’d have stayed, but the inevitable crowd gathered at the site was tiny, and even if they scooped up the stationery, where was the harm in that? Beechum’s fire watchers waved him off and he remounted the bike and pedaled away, bypassing the post since the incident report could wait.
Steering through the streets toward the flats was harder than getting to Beechum’s, the damage from the second blast far more extensive. Blocks away, dust glittered in the morning air like mica, and closer it thickened the air like fog. He began to cough. Light posts were down, cars crushed or flipped on their sides and leaking precious fuel, a row of windows had been blown into the street as if for a stage set; the chunks of masonry were bigger than him. If he hadn’t been responsible for the bike he’d have abandoned it.
Rosalyn had been off by two blocks and as he worked closer he began repeating the same line over and over like a prayer: Please let it not be Winifred’s block. It was, though when he got there he didn’t realize it right away since the local geography had become unrecognizable. The front walls of buildings were mounded in the street, and the surrounding row of flats looked like a diorama of progressive destruction. The first building had its windows blown out, the second its roof leaning down, the third no front whatsoever and its roof collapsed onto the top floor; the next building had little standing but its two side walls. Between them were long slats of wood from the shattered roof and floors, jumbled about like pickup sticks, and beyond that there might never have been buildings at all; piles of brick rubble looked like they’d been dumped by an enormous truck. Rescuers were digging there.
He leaned his bike against a lamppost and climbed into the rubble. Twenty yards took five minutes, and the sharp debris cut his ankles through his rubber boots. At last he came to an enormous crater, and beside it, impossibly, an undamaged Anderson shelter, soil and plantings blown from its sloping sides. He stood on its rounded roof, and after several minutes decided that though this was Winifred’s block, her building hadn’t received a direct hit. Still, the one next to it had, and he didn’t have much hope for her. Why hadn’t the stubborn, silly woman taken his advice and left?
The blue incident flag stood in an alley, the control van there, one tire white as if floured. Heavy Rescue workers were already present in their blue smocks, fitting up a block and tackle, and the muddied gas men stood at the bottom of the watery crater; farther out, men from another post were carrying children over the rubble or helping their mothers navigate it. Two of the women clutched white towels as if to surrender.
Tradesmen’s vans with the names sanded off, remnants of the invasion scare of ’40 and ’41, were serving as hearses and ambulances, and a few trees without leaves made the landscape look wintry. From one hung bits of human flesh; beneath it were dozens of dead blackbirds, killed by the blast. The usual initial depression consumed him, though he knew from experience the only thing for it was to do something: motivation followed action, not the other way around. He asked a pair of Heavy Rescue men where Miss Thornton was.
“Who?”
“The IO,” Claus said.
“Gone back to her post,” the shorter one said, looping rope around his shoulder and elbow. “No phones, and she had to call it in.”
Herbert showed up, overalls open at the throat, and whistled appreciatively. Oddly, he smelled of mutton. “Myra was right. This’ll be a long one. Daft to start rigging that up,” he said of the Heavy Rescue men beginning to work on a beam. “Won’t find anything here.”
“Oh, shut up, you bloody bastard,” Claus said. “They’ll hear you.”
“Who?”
“Survivors.”
Herbert laughed. “You’re dreaming, then,” he said. “Do you really think anyone survived this?” His sweeping gesture took in the damaged and destroyed flats, one with its stairway exposed, a bloody handprint pressed at intervals against the plaster wall like a stencil. The print was small, feminine-looking, Mrs. Keever or Miss Styles, and it stopped at the first floor; Claus would have to see if either was at a nearby shelter or hospital. Both worked as volunteers.
“We assume survivors,” Claus said. “You know that. Let’s have the sheets.”
Herbert handed him the clipboard with the list of apartment occupants.
“Who updated it last?” Claus said.
“Me.”
Useless, then. Herbert merely filled in the forms after looking at the previous ones. Mrs. Larsen, for instance, Winifred’s Swedish tenant, had left for Wales once the V-1s started coming, and Herbert had her listed as apartment-bound.
“Well, we can’t go by these” Claus slapped the clipboard on a rickety table, where the dusty wind fluttered through its pages. Two buildings down, the Heavy Rescue workers were letting people with suitcases in, and one of the rescuers sent a message over to let Claus know they’d given the people half an hour. Not sure the building will hold up beyond that. Anyone thought trapped in it?
Claus scribbled a quick No and sent it back. When the rescuer got the note he waved at Claus and made his way toward him.
“You’re in the right spot,” he said.
“For what?”
“I swear,” he said. “It was right here. We heard something.”
“Something,” Herbert said. “That’s helpful.”
“Someone calling out,” he said. “Someone’s alive, you mark my words.”
For a long time the three of them stood listening, Claus growing agitated when men tossing aside rubble yelled; there was just the possibility that their voices would mask sound. Herbert pulled a bag of prunes from a side pocket and ate them, one after the other, without offering any, all the while watching the Salvage Corps girls carting away an armoire, their brass buttons flashing in the sun. It wasn’t the girls Herbert was interested in, Claus thought, but the pile of chairs and mattresses and blankets and prams toward which the armoire was heading. He could sell those.
Finally Herbert said, “Anyone heard anything? A voice? Knocking?”
Claus tried to silence him with a chopping motion of his arm.
“You can hardly tell it was a building,” Herbert said. “There’ll be no one left alive beneath it.”
“Well, we certainly won’t hear if there is,” Claus said. “Not with you going on.”
“It wasn’t a voice,” the short one said. “A moan, rather.”
After another few minutes they heard it.
“Could be worse,” the Heavy Rescue man said, looking at Claus and smiling. “At least she’s still got two walls standing.”
“It’s six stories on top of her,” Herbert said. “No sense wasting our manpower.”
Claus pointed, ignoring him. “We’ll start digging there.”
“Shouldn’t Myra make that call?” Herbert said, plainly in no hurry to work. “Otherwise, who’ll coordinate?”
“She’ll be here soon. And things seem to be going fine on their own. If that changes, we’ll worry about i
t then. You can take over, if necessary.”
That seemed to mollify him as it involved less digging.
Early on, Winifred’s husband came home and began calling, “Fred! Fred!,” his face distorted by grief, but Claus didn’t go out to see him. What could he possibly say? He chopped through a bit of wood with his ax, then kept digging, turning up a pile of plaster and a set of keys bound by a bright pink ribbon. Not Winifred’s; perhaps Mrs. Dodd’s from the apartment above. He scooped it into the basket and handed the full basket to Herbert, who handed it on to someone else and returned Claus an empty one. Later he came across three books, identically bound in cheap imitation leather, and thought of Kate’s collection; he had the odd desire to tear them apart.
After two hours they had a three-foot tunnel and Claus called for silence. Winifred’s name, tapping on beams that canted farther into the wreckage, whistles; nothing got a response. He squeezed one finger meditatively, watching blood ooze out over the torn, dirty skin, wondering if he’d cut it pulling out ceramic plumbing fixtures or passing up timber and parts of chairs, and looked up at Herbert, standing above him on mounded bricks.
“Won’t help, wearing yourself out,” Herbert said. “Let someone else have a go.”
Genuine concern or just laziness? Claus couldn’t make out his face since the sun was now directly overhead, so reading his expression was impossible, but either way he was right; Claus hadn’t realized how long he’d been working, how tired he was, how much his back hurt. He took Herbert’s extended hand and climbed up from the hole, pulling his shovel after him. A redhead crawled down in his place and Claus stood bent over on the debris, crossed hands resting on the shovel handle, forehead resting on them.
The afternoon heat clouded the air. He caught a whiff of his own sweat and heard an excited buzzing. A rescue? No, a mobile canteen, its arrival marked by the steady stream of men heading toward a cleared patch, Archie among them. Herbert caught Claus’s eye and nodded toward it.
“Go,” Claus said. “I’m not ready yet.”
Herbert made his slow way down the piled rubble and Claus wondered if he’d return. CDS had been chalked on some nearby buildings, which meant they’d been searched and found free of casualties. Near the closest one a cluster of Heavy Rescue men stood smoking, three of them shirtless, browned from the dust. A tall one took a pair of glasses sitting on a post, cleaned them on his shirt, and put them on. “That’ll do,” he said. Though no one had asked, he said, “Lost my own in an explosion.”
Then he squatted and began picking things up, slipping them one by one into his pocket. He must have felt watched.
“A potato,” he said, removing one and holding it up toward Claus. His tongue was bright pink inside his dusty brown face. “You’re not thinking it’s somebody’s, are you? Could be anyone’s, after all. No sense wasting it, the way I see it.”
Claus shrugged and took his place in the line of men handing wicker baskets back, one after the other, until they reached a spot they could be safely dumped. That the potatoes might be Winifred’s didn’t matter; she wouldn’t miss them and at least it suggested he was digging in the right place. Half an hour later word was passed back that they’d heard a noise again, and for a while the work seemed to go easier, though that let his mind drift once more to Bertram.
Did she ever know your whereabouts when you weren’t together and hadn’t told her you’d been somewhere?
No. Well, yes, once. But that made perfect sense. Greta had seen me.
Greta?
A probationary nurse.
Ah yes, he’d said. The German.
You’re wrong there, he’d said. She was here before the war started.
Yes, and Mrs. Zweig arrived after. Are you saying that makes her a spy?
After another three hours the man in front of Claus, shirtless, his dun-colored back runneled with sweat, straightened and removed his Civil Defense beret to wipe his face, grumbling about the idiocy of their task.
“Bloody wild-goose chase,” he said, to no one in particular.
Claus had to keep himself from snapping and decided to break; otherwise, he’d soon be useless. He stood in line for the relief canteen—a completely blacked-out bus that served tea, coffee, and sandwiches from the conductor’s platform—and tried to uncurl his fingers; in the first two minutes he straightened three of them. The men in front of him were all coughing up dust, and the site was still swarming with workers. News of the explosion would reach the papers, where it would be recorded as having happened in “southern England.” Finally it was his turn and he took the offered sandwich and scalding tea and swallowed half of the tea at once, trying to clear dust from his throat, while standing with his hand on the platform rail.
A female auxiliary firefighter, dressed vaguely like a nurse, lifted his hand.
“Can I fix that up for you?” she said.
Claus pulled his hand away and said, sharply, “I’m fine.”
“I was only trying to help.” Her voice sounded teary and he looked at her for the first time, a young volunteer, her face reddening from embarrassment.
He mumbled an apology and walked to where the other men squatted in a small cleared space behind the bus, eating their sandwiches or staring silently into their tea.
The new communication plan from the Abwehr. Had you not worked for the MOI, what would have been the most difficult thing about the whole process?
Finding a microscope. To read the microdot photographs.
Yes. And as a nurse, Mrs. Zweig has access to microscopes all the time.
Claus had parried that thrust, but others were harder to turn aside.
What route did you take to work the day she met you?
Through the park, as I often do. The necessary routine, we said. But I don’t follow it every day.
Not every day, no. But often enough. How do you know she hadn’t been there weeks before, hoping to meet you? Perhaps it was just that this time she was successful.
He’d looked down at his notes, playing up the drama.
Why didn’t you tell me she was German when you first met her?
She’s English. She married a German.
And lived there for more than twenty years.
And I grew up speaking German. It doesn’t mean we like Hitler.
But then he’d paused.
What? Something about her trip you up?
Nothing. You’re wrong, that’s all. I’m convinced of it.
Bertram observed Claus. Quite a coincidence that you met her at the park, but let’s leave it aside. What about Cupid’s Arrow? Had you ever seen her there before?
No.
She’d been there, several times, and hasn’t been back once since meeting you.
Why would she go back? She’s already met me.
Precisely.
Claus had meant that she liked him and therefore wouldn’t be looking to meet anyone else but couldn’t think fast enough in the face of Bertram’s certainty.
One of the tea drinkers broke the silence. “What’s ‘e after?”
Their heads swiveled as one. Near the Anderson shelter a man was collecting the dead sparrows, stuffing them in a birdcage.
“Dinner,” another man said, to general laughter.
Claus saw black. His activity seemed as pointless as theirs, digging through tons of rubble to find someone they hadn’t heard from in hours. Then he was distracted by a buzz bomb, its cranky engine sounding to the south.
“‘Ere’s one bird ‘e won’t be after,” the first man said.
They all watched its even flight across the skyline, heading a little north of them, until it dipped below a steeple. The ground shook, but not terribly; the edge of their sector. Maybe Beechum’s hadn’t been so lucky this time. Claus hoped the fire watchers had been able to get down from its roof.
He poured out the tea dregs, splattering his boots, put his mug on the window ledge of the bus, and headed back, Herbert walking beside him. From his numb silence, he must hav
e been working the entire time too, which surprised Claus. They made their way to the front of the line of men clearing the site and tapped others on their shoulders and told them to break for tea, and as the last man came out, blinking in the light, Claus crawled down the tunnel—ten or eleven feet deep now—and began digging. The dust had turned to mud, the beams were wet, they were near the bottom of the cellar where the water would be pooled. If he didn’t find her soon, he wouldn’t find her at all.
He clawed at the debris, ignoring the pain in his fingers, pushing the mud and splintered lathe and chunks of damp, heavy plaster back over his legs; the work took on a surreal rhythm, him digging out the debris and pushing it back over himself and crawling a few inches forward to start all over again. The things he wanted to do to Kate. Bend her over in only stockings and braces, lean her up against the wall while he knelt before her, face buried in her tap pants, inhaling the mixture of scents: the faintest tang of sweat, lavender, her arousal. Her head, tilted back, would bump against the wall as her fingers worked in his hair. The lavender sachet she stored with her lingerie was the second gift of the German surgeon, the one she’d kept. Who had never touched her, she assured him. He was no longer sure he believed her. Betrayal as an aphrodisiac. It made no sense.
Then he decided it did, that he was seeking release in the physical, as he had sought communion with her almost from the start, she with one knee bent over his shoulder, the other leg wrapped around his back, skin and nerves and breath, the intrusive world locked out. So tantalizing. And he was seeking absolution too, from his own guilt at not having trusted her enough to prevent a single one of Bertram’s doubts from entering his own thoughts, where they multiplied and threw vast shadows across his recent past. How long have you worked there? How do you know about the parachutes? Oh, you’d be surprised at what I’m capable of.
And he’d told her about passing on information to higher-ups in the ministry. If she was a German spy, would she think that meant he’d been lying to the Germans all along? How many people had he endangered? What a fool. It was like sinking into bed at the end of an exhausting day and finding his pillow stuffed with roofing nails.