by Tracy Groot
“Stupefying . . . ,” Tom murmured, liking the word on his tongue. “You have quite an English vocabulary. I speak it better than my parents, but you speak better than me.” The accent was charming, too. In fact, it was . . . it was effervescent.
Effervescent? Was that even a word? He must have heard it somewhere. If it meant “soft and alluring,” the way he once saw a woman wear a silky lavender scarf, then that was the word for her accent. Maybe “rarefied splendor.” The way she spoke sometimes blew a mist around his senses. The way she infused expression into her speech . . . it made her so carefree, so unaware of her charm.
“I studied English in school. But more useful than that, I worked for an eloquent man. Ambassador Bullitt. His words always sent me to my dictionary. If I do not become a travel book writer, I want to teach English. I love it! I love to read Hardy and Dickens and Gaskell in English, not French.”
Impulsively, he said, “Brigitte, why . . . ? Was there no other way?”
The delicate features became still as stone.
“I’m sorry—it just came out,” he said quickly. Then he decided to crucify himself. “Look, I can’t figure you out. You’re so smart, you talk better than anyone I know—why do you do it? It seems the resort of someone cheap and stupid, not you.”
She did not answer. She sat motionless for a time. Then she looked out the window. “You have a strange way of making me forget myself, then making me wish I’d never been born.”
Tom closed his eyes. You—idiot!
He hurt her. He owed her. He cast about desperately to make it right.
“I want to show you something.” He rose and unbuckled his belt. He slipped it off and found the notches. He showed them to her. “See that? I get to color one in for every Nazi I kill with my own hands.”
Her features hardened at the sight of the notches. “Good for you.”
“One each for my aunt, my uncle, and my little cousins, Caspar and Klaas. They died at Rotterdam.”
Her cold look went back to the window.
“I’m doing it for my mother.”
“You are doing it for yourself.”
He snatched the notches from her view.
He shouldn’t have told her. He had an idea that any plan weakened if he told about it before he put it into action. Something corrosive in the air did it. Plans had to stay secret until they built and grew and burst into action.
It was a very personal plan. He’d owed her, but he’d paid too much. He turned away and put the belt back on. He took his hat from where he’d tossed it on the bed. “Is it time enough?”
She nodded, still staring out the window.
He went to the door and remembered. He pulled out some francs, picked out what she had the other day, and went to the table to put them on the chessboard. He hesitated. He reached into another pocket. Next to the francs, he placed two little paper-wrapped soaps.
“I don’t know if they lather,” he said roughly. “They smell good.” He put on his hat and went to the door.
“Wait.” She came to the door. She rubbed a little lipstick from her lower lip, then reached up to rub it onto Tom’s neck. His traitorous skin tingled at the touch. Then came a mental flicker of her lips leaving the mark instead of fingers. His face warmed. “In case they see you when you leave,” she said, noticing his discomfort.
“I know,” he snapped, then seized her hand. “Do you think I’m stupid?” He glared down at her.
He didn’t know how long he’d locked with the brown eyes. He realized he still gripped her hand, released it like it burned.
It was close to 11 p.m., and Rousseau was not yet home. He had a late meeting at the office with site managers over some collapse at a new installment.
Tom sat with Rafael in Rousseau’s study.
Rafael sat in Rousseau’s chair and had helped himself to Rousseau’s cognac. “If he asks, you were thirsty. You needed a good drink after your hard day’s work at a brothel.” Rafael took the silver case of cigarettes and offered one to Tom, who shook his head, then took one for himself.
“If he asks . . .”
“I had me a smoke.”
Rafael winked as he lit up. Drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, he draped his arms on both sides of the chair and grinned. “I could get used to this. Monsieur Rousseau has a nice life. How did it go today?”
Tom put his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I can’t keep my mouth shut. I say such stupid things. You know something? I’m figuring this out just now: I can separate who she is from what she does. I couldn’t do that before. I don’t respect her occupation. But I respect her. Does that make sense? It’s . . . stupefying.”
“Bien sûr.” But Rafael paid more attention to the cognac. He raised the glass to look through it. “I believe I can now tell the difference between the cheap and the good.” He took a sip, nodded. “This is good.”
“Would Rousseau have anything less?”
“Times as they are, you never know what you will choose to give up. Did you get more news?”
“Not much, but relatively significant. They’ve upped the garrison to about fifty men. She found out from a different guy. Her main source is still sick.”
“What do you do when you are there?” Rafael asked, a grin on the rise as he drew from the cigarette. He was far less interested in the intel.
“What do you think we do?”
“Make whoopee,” he said with a gleam. Tom chuckled, and Rafael shrugged. “Is it not slang for sex?”
“It’s not like that. We played chess today.”
“Who won?”
His smile faded. “She did.”
“That is wise.” More soberly, he said, “She is pretty.”
“She is.”
“Are you not tempted?”
“No. Yes.” Clearing his head, “No.” Then, quietly, “Yes.”
Rafael’s face crinkled as he grinned like an amiable scoundrel. Then he said with true interest, “What is her story, Cabby? Hmm?”
“I don’t know it yet. Not all of it.”
“Rousseau told me about Benoit. That is not good. It does not sound right.”
“He hasn’t moved in yet.”
“I still do not like it.”
“Me either. How’s Clemmie doing?”
“The same. Her airmen can do no wrong, but she bullies me.”
“Then she treats you like a son.” Tom hesitated, then asked, “What did they do to Jasmine?”
Rafael was about to take a sip, but he put the glass down. “Terrible things.”
“Does Clemmie know what they were?”
“I hope not.” Rafael looked at Tom. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’ve asked myself that.”
“You are looking for a fight, my brother.” Rafael looked at the light through the amber liquid. “Do not make me recall what I will spend the rest of my life trying to forget.” He raised red-stained eyes to Tom. “Now. Tell me about Jane Russell. I have seen the uncensored version of The Outlaw. How can I meet her?”
At first Tom had dreaded the meetings with Brigitte. Now the days between began to drag. Not that he wasn’t without occupation. Rousseau gave him the occasional errand to keep Tom coming and going so his presence in the neighborhood would be noted. Once he made Tom go to the cinema.
He also had Tom keep up a minimal pretense as Rommel’s watchdog of Dutch conscripts. Rousseau provided him with a list of benign questions, and twice he had been to the Cimenterie office to interview conscripts—twice, he met with men whose open hostility baffled him at first, until he put himself in their shoes. Anyone who spoke fluent Dutch and wore a German uniform had to be a traitor. They themselves were slaves, conscripted to labor for the Atlantic Wall. They had no choice. Major Kees Nieuwenhuis had a choice. He should have chosen hard labor. He chose to lick Hitler’s boots.
This morning Rousseau decided Tom needed to be seen with him. They would walk together as if Tom had asked Rousseau to show him the sight
s. A tall blond in a German officer’s uniform and a short well-dressed Frenchman provoked looks quickly averted—just the sort of thing Rousseau said he wanted. Let them pity poor Monsieur Rousseau, those who knew him, let them wonder what had happened that he should come under what was surely unfair scrutiny. It was exactly the sort of diverting nuance some Resistance cells needed; summon a bit of attention in order to deflect it. It didn’t make a lot of sense to Tom, but this was what was explained to him when they set out on an excursion Rousseau would later come to regret.
They had been walking for an hour in the city of Caen, strolling through winding narrow streets, Rousseau pointing out historical landmarks, mostly abbeys and very old churches: the Church of St. Pierre just outside the Château de Caen in the heart of the city, dating to the thirteenth century, the Church of St. Gilles, the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Froide-Rue. He was just pointing out another when they came upon a scuffle beside an awning-covered newspaper stand in a marketplace.
A German soldier and two men wearing Milice-insignia caps stood around a man on his knees in the gutter. Each time the man tried to rise, one of the three booted him down. He had a bloody nose, a bloody lip, and a bloody scrape on his chin, as if he’d been shoved face-first into the pavement. After one final kick he stayed on his knees in the gutter, dripping spittle and blood.
“What are they doing?” Tom whispered, horrified.
“Keep walking.”
Tom tried, but he couldn’t. He stopped even with the group, watching openly while everyone else—some gathered at the newspaper stand, some standing in doorways, some at windows above—watched furtively.
“Keep walking,” Rousseau hissed.
Then came a thin wail, and attention went to an old man with no coat, wispy gray hair lilting in his rush to the group. Anguished, he tried to get to the man in the gutter, but one of the Milice pushed him back. When he tried again, the Milice backhanded him. He staggered, fell, and sat weeping on the sidewalk, holding his bleeding mouth.
It wasn’t just that the Milice had backhanded him; it was the way he did it, with form, with style, like a tennis shot, knowing all eyes watched. It was all about the power he had to do it and how he’d made it look.
Tom barely felt Rousseau’s hand on his arm. He shook it off, and before the Milice knew what had happened, a tall blond officer had him by the throat and against a newspaper rack. The rack toppled backward, and Tom followed him down. He clutched a handful of collar and flesh, hauled him to his feet, and slammed him against the newsstand counter, scattering customers and papers.
The other Milice and the German didn’t know what to do. Perhaps Tom’s size and rank silenced them.
Rousseau came to Tom’s side, but Tom didn’t take his eyes from the shocked and reddening face of the gasping man who scrabbled at Tom’s hand.
“Major Nieuwenhuis, please,” Rousseau said in Dutch, “I would suggest these three know their business.”
His fingers dug deeper, the man began to choke. He clawed frantically.
“I would suggest you are endangering this man’s life, and that you will not make your superior officer happy with this behavior. Your superior will be angry.”
Tom released him. The man gasped and twisted away from the counter, bending double to cough and clutch his throat. Breathing hard, Tom looked at the Frenchman on the street. The elderly man was now quietly weeping at the younger man’s side, smoothing his hair, helping him to stand.
“We must go,” Rousseau said urgently.
Tom leveled a look at the other two men. He kept the gaze on them while he adjusted his hat and smoothed his coat, and, for final effect, brushed off the rank insignia on his shoulder. Rousseau touched his elbow, but Tom wouldn’t budge, not until the elderly man led the younger away.
Rousseau set a nonchalant pace until they took the first corner; then he picked up speed, taking corners and turns and curving alleys until they came to a small stone church flanked by apartments built into its sidewalls. They ducked inside, Rousseau absently crossing himself at the threshold. They went into the sanctuary, a cold, echoing chamber that smelled of incense and mildew. Rousseau knelt and crossed himself again before entering a pew. Tom slid in next to him, hat on his knees.
They sat in a frozen silence until Tom finally said, “You’re not happy with me.”
“I blame myself. I blame myself!”
“How can you take credit for what I just did?”
“I have not put enough fear in you. I have not shown you the beast.” And Rousseau told him what they had done to Clemmie’s granddaughter.
The horror Tom had felt in the marketplace was nothing to this. Nothing to the tears in the eyes of Michel Rousseau, this great, iron man Tom had come to respect as much as he respected Roosevelt and Churchill. For the first time, Tom understood Rafael.
“She was so very brave,” Rousseau whispered, lips trembling. “Right until the end. I thought I knew what I had. I did not know until then. I have been alone ever since.”
They did those things to Clemmie’s granddaughter?
Electricity on his skin, breathing hard, Tom got up and paced the aisle. A priest appeared to the right of the altar, saw Rousseau and then Tom. He hesitated, then came toward them. Tom waved him off with a growl. Taken aback, the man paused, then slipped away.
He wanted—he needed to be in a P-47 dive, bearing down on target, stick in his hand, red button under his thumb, a never-ending stream of death.
Tom stood next to Rousseau’s pew. He finally sat down.
“You have not seen street massacres,” the older man said, his face vacant. “You have not seen bodies piled up on each other, like sacks of fertilizer. You have not seen devastating retribution for a simple act of defiance. A woman who protested the billeting of a soldier was shot in the face. Boom, her face exploded, she was gone. You have not seen Jews herded into the Vélodrome in Paris, you have not seen their children torn from their sides. I have seen these things.” His breath caught. “They are in my eyes and they are in my chest. You are no longer in civilization, Tom. Everything around you is a false front. It hides hell.”
Tom’s imagination, fed by Rousseau’s words, showed him all.
“Who knows what that man had done,” Rousseau said bleakly. “Perhaps he looked at one of them the wrong way. Perhaps, and most likely, they only thought he did. What shocked you so is commonplace to us. After every fresh atrocity, the shock wears away, and you get used to everything. Your true self, your first self, is hidden away under numbness, waiting for the long night to be over.”
“No one helped him.”
“They want to live.” Rousseau looked at Tom. “They could be Resistance and know that to prevent one man’s beating may put other lives at stake. It is just another kind of hell.”
Cabby did not want to play chess today.
He sat at the window in a slouch, idling with a black button he’d taken from his pocket. Brigitte sat on the bed with her workbasket, embroidering a blue pillowcase with bright-red poppies. She had begun to look forward to these visits from Cabby. Even if he sat sullen and silent, his presence was strangely comforting. She felt as if she had in her room a little piece of Vera Lynn’s song.
She hated to tell him there was no news on the bridge. Ernst, one of the bridge soldiers, told her Alex was still on the mend. There was no getting information out of Ernst. He never talked. Cabby took the news with indifference.
“People are afraid of me,” he finally said. “I’m not used to that.”
Brigitte glanced up from her work.
“I went to the cinema in Caen. I go to buy my ticket, and the ticket girl goes white as snow. I go take a seat, and the whole place goes quiet. I try to hunch down, hide my height, but it’s no good. Greenland says I have to wear my uniform everywhere, or I’ll be asked for my papers. I only felt better when it got dark. I’m not used to frightening people. I hate it. I worse than hate it. It’s evil.”
“Some like it. Claudio likes
it.”
He didn’t answer.
“Even if he doesn’t move in today, he’s sure to come. Today is the day he meets with his superiors in Ranville. He always comes here after.” She watched for a reaction. He only studied the black button.
“It gets to you, the feeling here,” he murmured. “Hacks away at you. I finally feel it. I feel trapped, like I’m in that cabinet, like I’m in it wherever I go. Sometimes I close my eyes, and I’m with my girl again. I’m back in the air, stick in my hand, man on my wing. A clear target, a mission accomplished. We head home, and I land and taxi, shut her down, talk with the ground crew. They cuss me out if she took a shellacking. We go to debriefing, then mess. If it’s a good day, and everyone came back, then Oswald does his guts-and-glory shtick, this crazy song and dance, and we all sing with him, and pretty soon Captain Fitz gets sick of it and starts yelling, and Smythe is already halfway to oblivion with that English beer . . .” A faint smile came.
“What if it is not a good day?”
“Then it’s quiet.”
“That is how it was when you did not come back.” She smoothed the work on her lap, murmured, “It has been time enough, Cabby.”
“I don’t feel like going. Do any guys . . . Is there ever—” he jerked his shoulder and shifted in his chair—“round two?”
“Sometimes,” she replied archly.
“Hey, you wanna see a picture of my little brother?” He dug in the pocket of his jacket, hung over the back of the chair. He took out an identification booklet, took it out of its slipcover, and paged through it. He winged a picture at her, like a playing card.
She caught it and studied the boy. She smiled. “He looks naughty.”