Astonished by her sudden move, surprised by her fearlessness and at the same time enamored by it, I knew that the first thing I needed to do in order to think clearly about all this was sleep. That, unfortunately, was something I had not managed to do since landing here, on British soil, roughly two days ago.
Evening came. Dazed, I sat on my bed, staring mindlessly at the gap between two window curtains. I should have pulled them together, but at that moment I was fascinated by the view, even though it was narrow. The sky was bruised purple. Under the gap, near the stack of her previous envelopes, I caught the metallic shine of my letter opener.
Its steel had a distinctive pattern of banding and mottling, which at close examination reminded me of flowing water. I told myself that as lyrical as this finish might seem on the surface, the blade was tough, resistant to shattering, and honed to a sharp, resilient edge. And so, in her own way, was Natasha’s mind.
I should never doubt her.
A month ago she had given me a page of her diary, and to the sound of it rustling in my hand I imagined her imagining me:
He will be running his fingers down, all the way down to the small of my back, touching his lips to my ear, breathing his name, breathing mine.
Here I am, dancing with air.
Around and around we go.
With these words Natasha stepped into my mind, lighting up the gloom. I pictured her dancing with her back to me as if, between the two of us, I was the one who was not even there.
The ripples of her hair spread open, glinting in all shades of red. Wave by wave they cascaded down, first between her shoulder blades, then over them. Fingers stretched out, just like a ballerina, she raised her arm up high, swirling, twirling air, turning it into glow. The translucent fabric fastened around her waist flapped over her legs, folds radiating, fluttering, flaring with every sinuous movement, as she formed loops, slow, continuous infinity loops with her hips.
I turned the radio on, and a song came on:
You’re the one I live for
To you I’ll soon surrender
I’ll love you through the worst of war
In the name of all that’s tender
Till this sadness disappears
Come to me, I’ll hold you dear
Through times of joy and time of tears
No more loneliness, no more fear
The last vibration faded away, and so did the apparition I created of Natasha.
Then, just as I leaned back and started to nod off, there came a creak of hinges from the direction of the door. I was astonished to see a cloaked figure step in.
❋
I wiped my eyes in confusion. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating, but just in case I was not, I leapt to my feet, fumbled about, and—for lack of a better weapon—took hold of my letter opener.
“That’s the wrong way for you to save your life,” said the man. “The right way is not with a hand on your knife.”
I could not make out who he was, perhaps because of the failing light.
“We’ve met before,” he said. “Don’t you remember me?”
He pulled the curtains shut and turned on the desk lamp. Now I could see his mustache, lit from below, the tip of his nose, glistening, and over it, and the hairy edges of his eyebrows. They crawled on his forehead, gathering into a sharp pleat. His eyes, however, were sunk in the dark—but even so, I recognized him now: this was one of the officers to whom I had shown my dad’s letter, in which he had told me about his illness, letting me know it was terminal. Because of it, they had granted me permission, four months ago, for an urgent leave, so I could fly to New York to see him one last time.
I stood in attention until he said, “At ease, corporal.”
I relaxed a bit, but was still perplexed about the reason for his visit.
“Your father,” said Captain Smith. “How is he?”
Shaking my head, “He’s gone, sir,” I said, with a sudden catch in my throat. “Buried before I arrived.”
“Too bad you never got to say goodbye,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” I said briskly, because this was becoming too personal. “Too bad about that.”
Then he added, “You did meet the rest of your family, did you? How’s your Uncle, what’s his name, Shmeel? And oh, how’s your girlfriend?”
His questions seemed casual. They sounded like social niceties, which obviously, they were not. Every word coming out of his mouth gave me a strange feeling—oh, how could I begin to express it?—a feeling that somehow, he knew too much of what had happened to me back home.
Perhaps he wanted to prove to me that hiding anything from him would be futile, because he had already learned everything there was to know about me.
I discarded that notion, thinking it crazy, and set aside the knife.
“For you, corporal,” he noted, pointing at it, “that’s the wrong weapon.”
“Is it?” I asked. “And what’s the right one?”
“A pen.”
“What?”
“I hear that you want to be a writer.”
“Who told you that, sir?”
Without missing a beat, he answered by asking, “Well, Lenny? Is it true?”
“No, sir,” I lied. “It’s all fiction.”
“That,” he said, “is just what I’m asking of you.”
“What, exactly?”
“Falsehood.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Can we speak frankly?”
“Please do, sir.”
“Are you satisfied with your military service, I mean, the duties assigned to you?” he demanded, and immediately raised his hand to stop me from responding. “Don’t bother. I think I already know the answer to that.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said, under my breath.
He gave a thin smile, which was barely visible under his mustache. “Not much glory in running a courier service for the embassy, is there, corporal?”
I said nothing, because in my mind, nothing was the least committed way to agree with him.
“I’m here to point you to a different way to serve,” he said. “A more exciting one, for sure. Not only will it be a perfect fit with your skills but also more gratifying, as it’ll contribute quite significantly to the war effort.”
“I’m listening.”
“Help us fool the enemy. The Germans suspect, with good reason, that we’re planning an invasion of occupied France across the English Channel. We need them to wait for us at the wrong place. This is where you come in.”
“But,” I said, “how would I go about giving them information? I have no connection, none whatsoever, with Nazi intelligence—”
“You,” he said, “will be writing letters.”
“To whom?”
“To your girlfriend.”
“You’re kidding me, sir! Is she a Nazi agent?”
“What you write will never reach her,” he said, in a reassuring tone.
“Oh,” I said. “What a relief.”
Wishing I could leave Natasha out of this silly spy game I started pacing nervously around the small room. I even pushed him, accidentally, out of my way.
The officer clapped a hand on my shoulder, bringing me to a halt. “Step back,” he said. “Take a bigger view.”
“Of what—”
“Don’t you get it, Corporal? Everything you send her will be intercepted.”
“By whom—”
“By a particular German operative, working in the post office. He will be handing your letters over to German intelligence. From there, I expect that they will be passed on to their High Command. Right now, concentrate on your task. It’s simple. Make lies believable.”
“I don’t know what to say. Faking it seems all too easy.”
“If done well, Lenny, it’ll save many lives.”
“Let me think this over,” I pleaded. “I never make decisions so long after sunset and so far from dawn.”
“You don’t get it, do you,”
he muttered. “This is not a request. It’s an order.”
With that, the officer took something out of a pocket in his cloak and slapped it on my desk. It was a small leather-bound folder, which he flapped open.
“Here, see?” he asked, spreading out its contents. “Dates, places, names of army units, maps, even photographs—in short, everything you’ll need to weave a fake yarn.”
I picked up a map, marked with a red crosshair. Attached to it was a photograph of some unnamed shore.
“This,” said Captain Smith, pointing at it, “is the region of Pas-de-Calais, ruled from the Wehrmacht kommandantur, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany. It’s used by them for vengeance weapon installations. Flying bomb attacks are launched upon us from here.”
I leaned in for a closer look at the photograph. In the foreground, a deserted boat seemed to hover in the water. Faraway behind it, an eerily bare coastline, with not a human figure in sight, zigzagged under the breakers. In addition to the chaotic rock formations piled on by nature, the beach was fortified with massive manmade structures. They were cast in concrete and partially buried in the sand, in an attempt to blend, somehow, into the landscape.
“These,” said the officer, “are bunkers for rockets and cannons, aimed at us.”
In a flash a vision came to me. I saw this place, which I had yet to visit, in two ways: the way it was here on paper, black and white, and the colorful way it would look some distant time in the future, when at last, peace would reign. I imagined men, women, and children swarming all over the place, making trails in the warm sand, basking lazily in the sun, and wondering in passing about the archaic purpose of the remains of this or that structure.
Yes, decades from now I would be strolling with Natasha up that beach, amongst carefree throngs of people. Perhaps I would be giving our baby a piggyback ride on my shoulders. Natasha would stop us for a moment, and rising to the tips of her toes she would tell the little one to stop bouncing about and instead, start behaving himself. I would set my foot upon the broken concrete, and at that moment, if anyone would take a snapshot from a boat out there at sea, who would they see right there, smiling at the edge of the frame, as if he had a secret to tell?
“You listening?” asked the officer.
“I am,” said I.
“Most importantly,” he said, “Pas-de-Calais is the shortest route across the English Channel.”
“I can see that,” I said, focusing my attention back on him and on that map. On it, the shore opposite us seemed to draw closer, sticking a sandy tongue at us, daring us to attack.
“So, let the Germans believe the obvious! Let them prepare for our invasion here,” said the officer, tapping it, “even though our military planners have already chosen to switch it to another place.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, now with growing fascination. “I’ll be writing that letter by tomorrow morning.”
“Do it well, corporal.”
And to myself I whispered, “Natasha will never believe what I did, how I invented a false reality, how cleverly I lied in the name of victory. One day I’ll have to show her a draft, which I’m yet to write, addressed to her.”
“Show me the letter,” said Captain Smith, “before you mail it.”
“I will,” said I. “First thing tomorrow morning.”
“We’re in the same boat together,” he said, glancing at the landing vessel in the photograph.
“I’ll make sure not to tip it over.”
“You won’t regret this,” said he, turning to leave.
Which was when I asked myself, “Won’t I?”
He opened the door—I could hear its hinges singing—and closed it behind him.
I stared, absentmindedly, at the door handle. My rounded, distorted reflection slid over its surface, left and right. It seemed to shake its head, winking at me.
“Something’s wrong,” I said to myself, “when you regret things that haven’t happened yet.”
Just Don’t Lie to Me
Chapter 4
In the past I had to be careful about writing to Natasha. Aerograms were censored, and even in letters sent in a concealed envelope you would find a thick blue line here and there, blocking out a word or a phrase that might give the enemy a clue, an idea about our war plans. So I learned to confine my remarks, back then, to talking strictly about us, about how much I missed her.
But now she was at sea, and what I jotted down was meant not for her but for the eyes of German intelligence. Tasked with deception I took the license to write as I please, to let loose. There was a sense of freedom about it. Writing to a girl who wasn’t there, I could compose any lie.
To my surprise I truly enjoyed doing it, enjoyed putting together my first installment of a bogus report, disguised as a love letter.
I was careful, oh so careful to write it in a way that would not raise suspicion, I mean, a way that was not too obvious. Casually, subtly, I dropped in a rumor here, an observation there, offering details such as the insignia on our soldiers’ uniforms, unit markings on vehicles, and the direction of troop movement.
Someone on the other side would use these minutiae, I hoped, to construct a defective order of battle for the Allied forces. Such an order would place the center of gravity of our military in the wrong place: opposite Pas de Calais, the point on the French coast closest to England. I assumed that perhaps, in the mind of our foes, this was already believed to be the most likely invasion site, which was why the false evidence, designed to confirm their suspicion, might be accepted without question.
Early next morning I went to Captain Smith, so he might review my workmanship. I knocked at his office door, removed my hat, and stood in attention, barely able to contain my pride in my little masterpiece.
With an impatient gesture of the hand, “At ease, Corporal,” he said. Then he added, “And quick, close the door behind you.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, as I handed him the draft of my letter.
Then I just stood there behind his desk watching him, watching his thick finger as it passed across the words. From time to time, it halted. His expression was not immediately clear to me. It seemed to alternate between curiosity and astonishment. Grabbing a soiled rag he wiped his clean glasses with it. Then he adjusted them over the bridge of his nose, and over their frame, he read:
To Natashinka,
My letter today may seem unusual to you. I admit, this time it is overflowing with impressions. I couldn’t help myself, because I ache for you. Oh my dearest, I miss you to the point of wanting you to know everything about me, every little thing I’m going through, because it’s so painful to be together, apart.
Listening to this burly man give voice to such delicate, sensitive phrases made me cringe, because it invaded something inside, fingering a sacred place, a place of intimacy between my girl and me. In a flash I felt angry, angry with myself for using my passion as a cheating device.
“Oh,” said the officer, twisting the ends of his mustache, oiling them with satisfaction. “This is good! In fact, it’s so much better than plain good!”
With some effort I brought myself to smile back at him. To protect our fighters in a battle that was still being drafted I had to lead the enemy astray, and one way to do it was by sacrificing something dear to me, something intensely private.
There was no holding back now. I had to brace myself not only for the smirk of this officer but also for the mockery of German agents and spies, whose faces I would never see and whose laughing at the expense of a poor lover I could only imagine.
I would have the last laugh, or so I hoped, when they would believe my apparent carelessness and put their trust in what was written next.
Captain Smith cleared his throat. He read:
Why, only yesterday, as I was riding my motorcycle, I imagined you there right there behind me, holding on tightly and seeing what I saw. In southwest England there were few troop sightings. There was barely any traffic on the road, so I was able to enjoy th
e quiet of the countryside. I would turn over my shoulder to see your red hair blowing, flapping in the wind, if only you were here.
The officer raised his eyes from the paper.
“In reality,” he remarked, “many units are housed in that area.”
“I know, sir,” said I. “I’ve studied the information you gave me quite carefully and made every effort to understate their existence, particularly there.”
He lowered his head, and his glasses slipped to the tip of his nose, reflecting light from the paper. With every word they came closer and closer to falling off:
Then I headed to the southeast. The earth started to rumble underfoot, because of the heavy tanks rolling right beside me, followed by the marching of army units. More and more vehicles in camouflage colors crowded the land, and some of them crossed through wooded areas, perhaps to obscure their tracks from spotter planes.
I have no idea where all of them were headed, but the farther east I got, the busier were the roads. In fact, the noise increased to such a level that it started to distract me. The buzzing of engines from scores of jeeps echoed all across the hills. Listening to it I could no longer focus inward to imagine hearing your voice, your lovely music.
Only the hairy wisps of his mustache peeked out of his hand as the officer chortled behind it. After that, he scanned quickly through the rest of the information, where I named places, particular places where Allied units were staged, placing a greatly exaggerated number of them directly across from Pas de Calais.
Leaning back in his chair, “I was told you had talent,” he said. “But with this little masterpiece, Corporal, you’ve exceeded your reputation!”
“Did I, sir?”
“Yes! You’ve come close, very close to suggesting the target of our invasion, without actually spelling it out, leaving that last step to the other side, so they can draw the inescapable conclusion, and in doing so, own it.”
“If you wish, sir, I can sharpen a phrase or two in this draft—”
Dancing with Air (Still Life with Memories Book 4) Page 4