by Sarah Shaber
So Joe didn’t teach at George Washington. Why did I think he had? He said very little about himself, and he’d never mentioned his job directly. He talked about his students, read Czech books and wrote lectures, and I’d seen him grading papers. But, I realized, he’d never actually mentioned GWU. We all assumed he worked there, since our boarding house was so close to the university. Well, he must teach somewhere else. Perhaps Georgetown? But he’d let us all assume he taught at GWU. Which he might do if he needed cover? That had to be the answer. He must teach at one of the government or military language schools, and, like the rest of us working for the government, couldn’t talk about it. Of course that was the explanation.
I relaxed and finished my sandwich. It was energizing to be sitting in a soda shop on a college campus, where students talked about books and classes instead of stuck in an office going deaf from the din of clattering typewriters and mimeographs, when a successful day was marked by a tiny dent in a mountain of paperwork. I let myself feel sorry for myself for a few minutes, before I reminded myself that I was doing crucial war work.
The other girls and I joked sometimes, calling ourselves ‘secretaries of war’, but really, the most massive army in the world would be helpless without the information we gathered. Besides, it could be worse. I could still be living in Wilmington, gutting fish and frying up slimy fillets in my parents’ fish camp, putting in the same hours as my salaried brother, for room and board at my parents’ house and two dollars at the end of any week the till wasn’t empty, thankful for a roof over my head after my husband died.
When men began to leave their jobs to join the military, I got my chance to escape the fish camp. Oh, I didn’t think of it that way at first. I was doing my patriotic duty, taking the place of a man who’d become a soldier.
I was one of the first girls in Wilmington to get a defense job. Since I had a junior-college business degree I had my pick of positions. I ran the office at the Wilmington Shipbuilding Company, and as long as I live I’ll never forget my first paycheck. Ever. I went right out and cut my hair into a soft shoulder-length style and got harlequin-framed eyeglasses to replace my steel spectacles.
My standing rose within my family, too. I gave part of my salary to my mother for housekeeping expenses. And because of the importance of my job we got ‘A’ gasoline ration coupons.
I was very good at my job. Which meant not only running the office, but also keeping secrets. My company built ships for the navy. Any number of foreign governments wanted to know its business. But not one peep about my work escaped my lips. My mother didn’t even have my office phone number.
My boss was a simple man who tended to say the same things over and over, just in case you didn’t grasp his meaning the first few times. ‘Louise,’ he would say to me, ‘you ain’t like most women. You know how to keep your mouth shut.’ I could have reminded him that the last three employees we’d fired for talking too much had been men, but I knew how to keep my mouth shut about plenty that had nothing to do with military secrets.
My competence, and reticence, impressed a naval officer who visited the company shortly after Pearl Harbor. He voiced his regard to a friend who was an OSS scout, and I went to Washington soon after the Coordinator of Information became the OSS. I rode north by train sitting on my suitcase in the aisle the entire way, absorbed in my Esso map of the city, the address for ‘Two Trees’ safely tucked into my pocketbook.
I became the chief file clerk at my section within three months. My paycheck was so much bigger than anything I was accustomed to that I didn’t tell my parents about it. I was independent for the first time in my life.
I’m not sure I would have had the nerve to leave Wilmington without the self-confidence I learned from Rachel. I remembered so clearly the day we climbed to the top of the Empire State Building on my first visit to New York. Clutching Rachel’s hand I moved to the edge of the observation deck. I felt dizzy and my head swam. I’d never imagined being so high. I could see the entire city, even recognize parts of it. Ocean liners rocked gently in the Hudson River. A dirigible floated over Penn Station, off to the north. The cars, trolleys and people below us rushed around like sand fleas on a Carolina beach. After lots of encouragement I did manage to circle the deck, holding on to Rachel with one hand and the outer rail with the other.
‘See,’ Rachel said, ‘that wasn’t so bad. Besides, it’s good training for you. We’re riding the Cyclone roller coaster tomorrow.’
‘I can’t, I’m sure I’ll be too scared,’ I said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I know you can do it.’
The next day I did ride that roller coaster. Twice, in fact, the second time with my hands raised high above my head.
Rachel’s words sustained me through some tough times in later years. ‘I know you can do it.’ I could almost hear her voice.
I drained the icy dregs of my Coke and decided that my fictional toothache was a good enough excuse to take the rest of the day off. I wanted to go shopping, because I hated the hours-long wait in cashiers’ lines on Saturdays. But I was afraid I might run into someone I knew who’d wonder why I was out of the office on a weekday afternoon. While I was in Quigleys I did buy tooth powder, face cream and the quota of three Hershey’s chocolate bars from a fresh box a sales clerk had just placed on a shelf.
I decided to spend part of the afternoon at the public library, find a French–English dictionary and try to translate the journal articles by Bloch that Metcalf gave me, so I could see what kind of expert he was.
I was lucky. I caught a northbound bus right away. I got off at Mt. Vernon Square, where the vast neoclassic library building stood. Like many Washington public buildings, it mimicked a Greek temple, but one with ‘Poetry’, ‘Science’ and ‘History’ etched into the entablature instead of some stylized battle between ancient, weathered gods.
The library interior wasn’t refrigerated, but stone walls and marble floors cooled it, and I felt refreshed the minute I walked inside. I found the reading room, such a relief from the hectic pace of a capital city at war. It was a long, vaulted space with tall bookshelves and polished mahogany tables reflecting the warm yellow glow of dozens of reading lamps. The only sound was the quiet murmur of bodies shifting in their seats, turning pages and an occasional clearing throat.
Nearly all the chairs were occupied.
The reference librarian told me that her one French to English dictionary was kept locked up, like our London telephone book, and I had to use it right at the librarian’s desk under her watchful eye. Besides, it was in use, and a couple of people were waiting their turns. I could sign a request, come back in half an hour and use the dictionary for fifteen minutes. I thought of flashing my OSS identity card, but figured that might not get me any sympathy, since OSS was probably responsible for requisitioning most of the library’s dictionaries in the first place.
I slipped into an anteroom to read the latest magazines while I waited. I picked up Life, which fell open at a shocking scene of civilian suffering in Russia. A small child, a boy, perhaps two years old, lay frozen in death in a snow bank, an arm and leg contorted unnaturally. Nazi soldiers had flung him up against a stone wall and left him to die. His mother lay next to him, shot to death.
For a minute I thought I’d burst into sobs right there, in public, what I saw was so awful. And of course I thought of Rachel and Claude. If the Nazis were capable of such atrocities in Russia, they could perpetrate them anywhere.
I closed the magazine and did my best to compose myself. No more war news for me. I couldn’t afford to be immobilized by fear.
I reached for another magazine, Home Companion, I think, but I quickly tired of its gee-whiz tone. The women in its pages bore no resemblance to anyone I knew. In its cheerful stories women skipped off to work in full make-up with neatly coifed hair pulled back in colorful do-rags, carrying lunch pails full of healthy home-made food. Their overalls didn’t get dirty no matter how filthy the job. If they
weren’t married with an obliging mother at home caring for their children, they were engaged to a shop foreman or a military officer. None of them were war widows or lived in boarding houses or had to park their children in crowded day nurseries.
All the women’s magazines told us women war workers that we must be willing to take on men’s work until the end of the war, then gratefully return to our true calling, caring for husbands and children and homes. Funny how all those magazines were edited by men. And they didn’t bother to tell those of us who weren’t wives and mothers what we were supposed to do when peace returned, once we weren’t critical to the war effort any more.
I was glad when my wait for the French–English dictionary was over.
I used it under the watchful of eye of the reference librarian, who kept checking her watch. Under those circumstances I didn’t get through much more than the titles of Bloch’s journal reprints. In French they were ‘Gyres en Mer Méditerrannée et en Algérie’, ‘Un tourbillon en mer ouverte dans le bassin algérien’ and ‘Subduction sur le front Alméria-Oran’. It was a struggle, but I managed to translate them as ‘An Open Sea Eddy in the Algerian Basin’, ‘Subduction at the Algerian–Oran Front’, whatever that was, and ‘The Mediterranean Sea and Algerian Whirlpools’. At least, the closest I could come to the French word ‘gyres’ was ‘whirlpool’, although I suspected there was a better scientific term for it. Boring as the articles sounded to me, it was clear that Gerald Bloch was an expert on the Algerian coastline. His information could be crucial to the Allies’ landing on the North African coast. This gave me, I reasoned, a legitimate reason, not only a personal one, to continue searching for Bloch’s file.
The librarian had her hand extended for the dictionary before I’d finished closing the book. I handed it over to her and went outside into the heat.
When I got home the house was quiet. Dellaphine and Phoebe must have been napping through the hot hours of the late afternoon, resting up before the dinner rush began. I felt deliciously alone. I decided to sit out on the porch with my book and relax. I was worn out, and wanted to forget about Rachel, Claude, and Gerald and their fate for a while.
I went into the sitting room looking for Five Little Pigs, and found Joe napping on the sofa. A book with Cyrillic letters on its spine lay open across his chest.
His glasses lay on the floor where they’d dropped from his hand. I bent over to retrieve them. Then, with the curiosity of all nearsighted people who want to know how blind someone else is, I held Joe’s glasses up to my face and looked through them. The lenses were clear.
ELEVEN
Joe’s eyeglasses didn’t alter my vision at all. My book forgotten, I carefully laid the glasses across his chest and tiptoed straight upstairs to my room.
I closed the door softly and lay down on my bed to think. Okay, so Joe didn’t teach at GWU and he didn’t need glasses. He wasn’t who he said he was. So what? Half the people in Washington had cover stories. None of my fellow boarders knew I worked for OSS. I was a government file clerk, one of thousands. Henry’s job was equally vague. He’d been a reporter for a Chicago newspaper, so I figured he worked for one of the black or white propaganda agencies.
Wearing glasses with clear lenses wasn’t much of a disguise, when you considered some of the lengths our agents went to change their appearances. Maybe Joe wanted to look different, older, for personal reasons, not wanting to be recognized if he crossed paths with someone he once knew in London or Prague. He might have friends or family still in Czechoslovakia.
The staff from the Axis embassies were under guard somewhere until our government could figure out what to do with them, some people said living it up at a resort hotel in Virginia, but that didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of Nazi spies in Washington. One couldn’t be too careful. ‘Loose lips sink ships’ screamed at us from posters all over town. Blowing cover, your own or someone else’s, was the worst sin an OSS employee could commit. Out in public, if I saw a familiar face from work, I kept my mouth shut. That person could be shadowing a foreign agent, or making a dead drop.
I knew what I needed to do. I wouldn’t break Joe’s cover. No questions, not even one. As of this moment I was uninterested in his past or what he did when he left the boarding house for ‘work’.
Any thought that Joe was other than a refugee teaching Slavic languages somewhere in the city was ludicrous.
Joe Prager opened his eyes and lifted his glasses from his chest, shaking his head. He slipped them back on. So stupid. He’d objected to the eyeglasses from the start. From experience he’d learned that the most convincing disguises were the unobtrusive ones. The beard, the books and papers, the worn, vaguely European clothing were simple to tack on to his public persona. But he’d never in his life needed eyeglasses, and now he had to remind himself constantly to wear them or carry them around. It wasted his concentration.
Louise was a smart woman. He didn’t know what government agency she worked for, but he couldn’t take any chances. When they went out Friday he had to have some explanation that would seem authentic to her, or his mission could be compromised. He’d worked too hard to allow that to happen. And he’d regret it if anything happened to her because of his carelessness.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What is it?’
Conversation, and consumption, had stopped at the dinner table. Everyone stared at me. Ada was open-mouthed in astonishment. Feeling self-conscious, I lowered my forkful of meatloaf to my plate.
‘Where did you say you were going, dearie?’ Phoebe asked.
‘To a reception at Evalyn McLean’s, tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘A friend of mine asked me to go with him. My new boss at work,’ I added hastily, with a glance at Joe, who’d gone back to his meal.
‘My goodness,’ Phoebe said. ‘That’s a coup. Everyone will be there. Royalty, even. Queen Margathe, King David. I wonder if Mrs McLean will wear the Hope diamond?’
‘If she hasn’t pawned it yet,’ Henry said.
‘I heard,’ Ada said, ‘that the Saltzes, who own that swank men’s clothing store on ‘G’ Street, go to the McLean home before every party to tie the men’s ties for them.’
‘For once I agree with Roosevelt,’ Henry said. ‘That crowd is a bunch of parasites if you ask me. All they do is party – parties every damn day in the paper – dinners, luncheons, teas, tea dances, receptions and cocktail parties. Dozens on one night. They ought to spend their money on war bonds instead.’
‘I don’t know,’ Joe said. ‘Think of the political intrigue that goes on. Wealthy, powerful people from all over the world live in Washington now. London, Paris, Moscow, Rome, Berlin, they’re all occupied, or under siege. Parties give them the chance to get together and talk away from their offices and embassies. That’s why American government people go.’
‘Except for Congressmen and Senators,’ Phoebe said. ‘Can’t afford to dress themselves, much less their wives.’
‘What are you wearing?’ Ada asked me.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think it matters much,’ I said. ‘Don, my friend who invited me, says women wear anything to parties now.’
‘You must dress appropriately,’ Phoebe said, ‘I don’t care if there is a war on. There are certain standards women still must meet. Do you have a cocktail dress? Silk stockings? Jewelry?’
‘I’ve got one pair of silk stockings I’ve been hoarding,’ I said. ‘But no party dresses. I have my pearls.’
‘Pearls aren’t correct for a cocktail party. I’ll lend you some jewelry,’ Phoebe said. ‘I have some presentable pieces left.’
Ada put down her fork and wiped her mouth with her napkin.
‘Come upstairs with me,’ she said. Her tone of voice was more of a command than a request, and I obeyed.
We ran into Madeleine in the hall. Ada took her by the arm.
‘Come with us,’ she said. ‘I’ve been meaning to see if some of my clothes fit you. Believe it or not, I was once as thin as you two are.’
Madeleine and I exchanged eager glances. Ada had beautiful clothes. Neither one of us was embarrassed at the prospect of wearing her reach-me-downs.
Ada’s room was a mess, her bed unmade, face powder and perfume bottles spread across the dresser. Half the dresser doors stood open, overflowing with lingerie and nightdresses. The only tidy spot was the corner where her clarinet and music stand stood near a window, angled to catch the light.
The single narrow closet in my bedroom sufficed to hold all my clothes with room to spare, but Ada had added a wardrobe to her room. She opened the doors and pulled out an armful of dresses.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘this should work for the McLean party,’ handing me an indigo-blue silk tea-length cocktail dress with lace cap sleeves and a sweetheart neckline. ‘And you must have these,’ she said, draping two smart suits, one a seersucker cotton and one black raw silk, both with fashionably squared shoulders, over my arm.
She gave Madeleine a topaz silk party dress with a flared skirt, a black knee-length skirt and two white blouses, and a khaki cotton suit with pink rickrack edging the jacket collar and sleeves.
‘Try these on,’ she said. ‘I want to see you in them.’
Madeleine and I didn’t have to be urged. We stripped to our cotton slips. The clothes fit us both, though mine were a bit large in the bust.
‘Stuff some tissue in your brassiere,’ Ada said to me. ‘You could use some help in that area anyway.’
Madeleine and I thanked Ada profusely, and meant it.
In the hall, our arms laden with our loot, I cocked my head towards my bedroom.
‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘We can do each other’s hems.’
In my room we took turns standing on a chair pinning our hems up. I had Madeline take in a quarter-inch from the bust darts of my dresses while we were at it.
‘No tissue stuffing?’ Madeleine asked.
‘With my luck, it would slip down and fall out around my shoes,’ I said.