Women's Barracks

by Tereska Torres

  I sometimes watched him leaving Down Street with Mickey, Jacqueline, and Ursula. He had the air of being equally fond of all three of them. This was probably the secret of his ability to keep us all together, for he never flirted. For some of us this was a surprise; for all of us it was pleasing, since it was a change from the wartime compulsion that seemed to possess every other man around us. I think that Jacqueline felt a little vexed at the beginning, used as she was to the immediate and complete worship of every man she met. But afterward she found that it was, on the contrary, rather restful to go out with Michel. With him, one could be natural; there was no part to play.

  On the eve of John Wright's return, Jacqueline took a train to meet him, for the airfield where he was to arrive was some distance from London. She had had a new dress made. It was of black silk, cut in a low circle around her shoulders, and it brought out the fresh tones of her delicate skin and set off her shining hair. She was breath-takingly lovely. A young officer in the train began to talk to her, devouring her with his eyes.

  Jacqueline was so happy over John's return that she even told the stranger whom she was going to meet, and that she was his fiancée. She wanted to shout from the rooftops, "John is coming!"

  The young officer asked her if she could get him an autographed photo of John Wright, and Jacqueline promised to send him one as soon as they had returned to London.

  Each of these details she remembered later, for each detail became invested with a final significance.

  She daydreamed of John, of his handsome lined face, of that savage quality that always seemed to hover about him. Now their life together was really going to begin. It was impossible that John should not marry her. She was certain that he loved her, and now her little girl would have a father in him, a father as fine as De Prade himself.

  Before John's departure, he had left a letter for her. "My dearest," he wrote, "if you only knew how much I love you! You have given me back the joy of life. I want you to be happy always. You shall never again want for anything. I shall watch over you, my love, as long as I live. You are my joy." In the train, Jacqueline reread all these wonderful words.

  His plane was to arrive the following morning. She spent the night in a hotel, and took a taxi to the airfield in the morning.

  Everyone smiled at her. Everyone knew that this beautiful young woman was waiting for the great orchestra conductor John Wright.

  Beyond that, Jacqueline remembered nothing.

  She saw herself again, waiting in the comfortable little room from which one could see the planes landing.

  And then she had found herself in a bed in a hospital. Her head ached, and she could no longer remember anything. But little by little a certainty arose from the depths of her body, a certainty that all was finished, that John was dead.

  A doctor came to see her for a hurried moment; he told her that she was young, that she would get over her shock. Jacqueline asked for the newspapers. Perhaps there was still hope. But the debris of the plane had been found at sea, near the shore, and the bodies were scattered and unidentifiable.

  Jacqueline returned to London. She didn't go to the house in Surrey, but cut her wrists in the ladies' room of a large department store.

  Once more we found her in a hospital. Ursula, Mickey, and I went together to see her. Our presence seemed to help her. We tried to remind her that she still had her little girl, but even as we said it we knew that for Jacqueline it was not enough.

  I wondered at the strange fate that seemed to hover over her, bringing repeated disaster, as though some monstrous doom insisted that she pay for her beauty, her charm, her aristocratic background. I felt ashamed that I had sometimes been irritated by her ingrained attitude of superiority. It was only the effect of breeding; she had suffered as much as we had, perhaps more than any of us.

  The little house in Surrey was sold by John's wife, and Jacqueline found a job in an office. Once more she placed her little daughter with a family. Jacqueline began to do her own cooking again, and to sew her own clothes, and to get up early in the morning. She went out almost every evening. John was dead, and again she needed a father for her little girl. She would find one, for she was still the ravishing Jacqueline.

  Chapter 36

  Our little group formed more firmly around Michel. To all of us Michel represented the future, in a way. He was the future already present. And in a way he represented God. None of us was particularly religious, nor was Michel religious, but he carried within himself a God whose presence we all felt, and this was precisely the God of whom we had need. It wasn't a particular deity with a form delineated by any religion. It was rather an open way that made hope possible.

  Michel never really entered into discussions with us. The girls didn't like intellectual discussions. But in the assembly hall in Down Street he had long talks with the chemistry student, Monique. Monique was just twenty years old, like Michel. She was dark, pretty, and serious. She had passed these years in the refuge of her books, entirely impervious to the atmosphere of Down Street. With her Michel talked about the world of the future and about religion. But in general it was Michel who asked the questions.

  Ursula liked to sit by and listen to them. For the first time in her life she felt the need of knowledge. It seemed to her that she had come into the barracks as an absolute child, and the barracks walls had closed around her. But now the world was opening and she could see the future appearing.

  Since her acquaintance with Michel, Ursula had greatly changed. Little by little, she had ceased to be a child. She ripened, and sometimes assumed feminine airs, which suited her very well. She told me she had decided that She had decided that after the war, even though she was not Jewish, she would go to Palestine with Michel. The moment she was offered an ideal, Ursula seized upon it as though her entire being had awaited nothing else.

  She was at last freed from her sentinel's post at the of her barracks, only to fill a similar post at one of the Free French headquarters. I too had had a change of assignment, and now spent most of my time with the Americans, at a newsroom that their Office of War Information had installed in London. I was meeting many new people, and it was there that I eventually was to meet my future husband.

  Each day, when Ursula's duties ended, she met Michel. At the time, Michel was working in an office in the Polish GHQ in London.

  By this time Ursula had begun to talk more freely to Michel, and one evening, a little to her horror, she found herself speaking of her experience with Claude. She told him everything then—her passion, her suffering, her fear of not being normal. She told him too about Philippe.

  Michel reassured her. The affair with Claude didn't seem to shock him, nor the experience with Philippe. He took Ursula's hand in his, and with an awkward gesture plunged both their hands into the large pocket of his coat.

  They went regularly now to dine at Rose's, or in a little Italian restaurant in Soho, and sometimes Michel would take Ursula to the zoo, and they would amuse themselves like children.

  About that time a whole group of us got into the habit of going out on bicycle trips in the environs of London on Sundays. We girls had all purchased secondhand bicycles, prehistoric machines upon which we were perched at vertiginous heights. Michel borrowed a bicycle from a friend, and we took along bread, cheese, and apples.

  One Sunday most of us had dates in town, and Ursula alone left for a bicycle trip with Michel. It rained all day, a thin, acidulous little rain that drowned the countryside. Ursula laughed, raising her face to the rain. She was happy just to be alone with Michel.

  Toward four o'clock they arrived in front of a little inn that seemed, as she described it to me, to have appeared out of a fairy tale.

  "It's from the story of the witch who had a gingerbread house," Michel said. The roof was thatched, all shining with rain, and just beneath the roof the little windows seemed to peer at them with secret cunning.

  In front of a log fire, the two grown-up children were served an Engl
ish tea. There was no sugar, but there were hot buns and marmalade.

  There was no more war. They were two young children who had taken refuge in the forest, far from the rain, far from the night, encircled in warmth and joy. Michel studied Ursula's pure face. Life had not touched her at all; everything had slipped from her as the rain from the thatched roof. She was still the same little girl who had opened the door on that night of the dance, when she had slipped outside to take refuge from the world. A little girl without a past, and with no knowledge of anything. She was like himself, she knew nothing, and he had no fear of her. One day he could take her in his arms and keep her. He had kissed her once, and she had fled; but that had been some years ago, and then there had been Claude. He had even then suspected something of the sort, but he had not been sure. But now Ursula had told him everything, and Claude was no longer a danger.

  He looked at her and was filled with a terrible desire for life. Suddenly Michel wanted to live. Yes, why shouldn't he claim her, and afterward take her to Palestine? Everything was possible! There was a whole world to rebuild! He could not die.

  Ursula returned Michel's gaze. She too was happy, and she knew that this happiness and peace were in being with Michel. Then quite simply the words came from her: "How good it is here, Michel! I'm so happy! I believe it's because I love you." Then she halted indecisively, still looking at him.

  He arose, and together they went to the window. Outdoors the rain continued to fall. Michel encircled her with his arms and kissed her on the cheek. He held her pressed against him. They were exactly the same height, like two children. He told her, "I have nothing to give you, neither a home nor security nor a future." But Ursula had never had any of these. His words made her laugh. Then she saw that Michel's eyes were filled with tears. She placed her thin arms around his neck and kissed him gently on the lips. Ursula had week-end leave until Monday. It seemed quite simple and normal to them to spend the night at the inn.

  The bed was wide and very high, with a thick red eiderdown cover. This was a new experience for Michel as well as for Ursula, and both of them were a little afraid. They pressed close to one another and were somehow reassured in sensing each other's fear. After all, it was neither so terrible nor so difficult. Ursula suddenly thought of Philippe, and an infinite thankfulness rose in her because he had left her for Michel.

  They fell asleep and then awoke, and this time their bodies were already acquainted with each other. The discovery had begun. It was still rather awkward and slow because they were deeply moved, frightened, and happy. But everything was so normal, so wonderfully and utterly normal, coming out of these mad years.

  Now they were two together and the war was going to end.

  They were the future.

  Chapter 37

  These were the days of the V-1, Hitler's "secret weapon." First one heard something like the rattling of a plane, but with a difference. The first time we heard it we leaned out of the windows at Down Street, looking at the sky. In the distance we saw a small black point, coming rapidly forward. It passed overhead, and everyone thought, if the noise stops, it will fall on us. But the noise continued, and the fatal little machine went on its way. Farther on we saw it suddenly halt, and the noise stopped, and the V-1 plunged toward the ground. We heard a distant explosion.

  Panic was great in London. After the blitz, after four years of war, people's nerves were not in very good condition. They grew wild with fear. As soon as an alarm sounded, one could see the crowds running in the street, people plunging into the subways, into the shelters, mothers seizing their children in their arms. Even the dogs howled. At the zoo, as soon as the noise of an approaching V-1 was heard, the monkeys screamed in terror and jumped around in their cages.

  The universal terror arose first from the propaganda that had preceded the secret weapon, and then from the feeling that nothing could be done against it, that there was no defense.

  The V-1's caused a great deal of damage—almost as much as had been caused by the blitz. But this time there was a difference. The seat of destruction was moved, and it was the elegant streets that were affected, particularly in the Kensington district and in the area around Hyde Park. Every day I saw more houses in ruins.

  Once more there was an exodus to the country. Many of the children who had come back after the blitz were again evacuated. The railway stations were crowded, and people climbed into the trains by the windows.

  There was a high increase of nighttime subway occupants. As during the great blitz of 1940, entire families slept underground and on the stairways of the stations, clutching their most precious possessions, which they carried along with them every night in battered old suitcases.

  Michel and Ursula had requested permission to be married. As they were both under twenty-one, they had to secure not only the permission of their superiors but the consent of their parents. Michel wrote to his, in Palestine, and Ursula asked Claude to write a letter that she could enclose with her own to her mother in America. It was a year since she had written to her mother, and she had only an old uncertain address. Her father was in China and she did not know his address at all.

  Claude wrote a wonderful letter; she spoke of loving Ursula as her own daughter, and declared that she knew Michel as a serious and intelligent young man. She said that she herself was old enough to be their mother, and believed that neither one of them could have made a better choice.

  Michel and Ursula went together to post their letters, and then hand in hand they walked through the foggy London streets. It was the end of February. The weather was cold and damp. Ursula and Michel wore huge khaki coats of the same sort; the garments gave them an awkward air.

  After four years of military service, Ursula had finally received her stripes as a first-class private. This had come so late that she could not even take pleasure in it. Michel was a sergeant. In the mornings he worked in a Polish headquarters office, and in the afternoons attended lectures at the university. This was an exceptional privilege, which his colonel had managed to secure by reporting him as an outstanding young man of special intelligence and gifts. But Michel had consented to accept this arrangement only on condition that he would be sent to the front with the others as soon as there was an invasion.

  Our little group continued to revolve around Michel. Everyone had faith in him. Claude said, "Michel will certainly become someone very exceptional after the war." And though no one knew quite why, everyone had this impression. Michel himself was outwardly the same as ever—reticent and utterly unassuming. No one knew him at bottom, not even Ursula.

  And yet, since she had come to love Michel, she had been seized with a desire for knowledge. She wanted to read, to study. She asked Michel to tell her about socialism, Marxism, about anti-Semitism and about religion. A world had opened; she was no longer a child. The world was filled with unanswered questions. And her love had given her a kind of optimism. Now, it was worth while to study.

  One day when we were out with Michel, Jacqueline said to him, "Since I've known you I've come to like the Jews. I never did before."

  Michel, smiling his sad serious smile, replied, "That won't solve the Jewish question."

  Then Ursula asked, "What will, Michel?"

  He replied, "Perhaps a Jewish government in Palestine. In any case, first a normal country, a normal government in Palestine."

  "And afterward?" Ursula insisted.

  Michel laughed. "Afterward a world government of all people. Otherwise there will always be wars."

  Jacqueline had become acquainted with a very rich and rather stupid young Englishman whom she dragged with her wherever she went. He seemed to be very much in love with her. Jacqueline would watch him with her sparkling eyes, always smiling as she looked at him, but behind her smile one felt her powerful will, as tenacious as ever, and stronger than anything else between them. What did this young man matter to her, so long as he might one day accept her child as his own? She never spoke of De Prade or of John. But som
ething indefinable, a sort of hard shadow, often passed over her pretty face.

  Chapter 38

  At the beginning of April Michel received a long letter from his parents, saying that they were happy that he had chosen a bride, and blessing the young people. They said that in Palestine everything was in flower, that the orange season was drawing to a close, that the heat would soon begin, and that several new communes had been established.

  Everything was calm in Tel Aviv, they said, and they were going to enlarge the house for the reception of Michel and his bride. Just Outside their windows, the young couple would have a large veranda, so that they could sleep outdoors in the summer.

  His parents had enclosed an official letter in English authorizing their son, Michel Levy, to marry Mile Ursula Martin.

  The letter to Ursula's mother came back marked "Unknown at this address," and Ursula sent a second letter to another address in California that she had found among her papers. They were waiting only for this response before beginning their formalities at the consulates, their respective armies, and the registration office.

  Michel had a tiny room in the city, a cubbyhole filled with books. Ursula often went to meet him there. But sometimes, while he was waiting for her, he would fall prey to his pessimistic moods. Once all three of us had a rendezvous there, and I arrived a little before Ursula to find him looking strangely depressed. That time he overcame his reticence, and talked to me. Sometimes, he said, when he was waiting for Ursula, he couldn't help asking himself, what's the good of all this? what use is it to study and to get a degree, what use to dream of marriage, when after all nothing in the world has changed? Have I found any answer—the answer that I sought in Switzerland? Men are still fighting like idiots, and there is no end to the war. And after the war, what will be the answer? What's the use of going around in circles, and even of trying to construct something? What's the use of all that, if it's only in a world of hatred and destructiveness? One might as well die and be done with it.