Love and Hydrogen

by Jim Shepard

  HE CROUCHED AT THE TOP of the stairs, rolling back and forth on the balls of his feet. Sister Emelia came up slowly, one hand gripping the rail. He saw what he should do—what he should’ve done long ago—sail down those stairs he’d walked down so much. And he was out, arms outstretched, and Sister Emelia’s open mouth was rushing up at him and there was a shock, first soft, then hard as they tumbled down the stairs, the loud ka-thumping mixing weirdly with Sister Emelia’s shrieks. Then they weren’t moving, at the bottom, and Sister Emelia’s leg was over his chest and everyone was running and shouting.

  —DO YOU REMEMBER anything lying there?

  —No.

  —Do you remember it hurting?

  —No. There was a lot of crying and screaming.

  —That’s because they saw the blood from your head.

  —I guess they thought I was dead.

  ABOUT SEVEN DOCTORS in a row asked him what happened, and his parents kept asking, too. He got impatient with the question. Sister Veronica had seen what had happened, along with everybody behind her on the stairs. They asked if he liked the food. They asked if he was warm enough. They played with his feet and asked if he could feel it. They asked if he wanted anything to read or anything from home, and when he couldn’t think of anything to say, his mother cried.

  —YOU SAID SOMETHING a few sessions ago about an old drunk.

  —Uh-huh.

  —Tell me about the old drunk. Where did you see him?

  —McDonald’s.

  —What was special about him? Why’d you notice him?

  —Nothing was special about him.

  —Then why’d you notice him?

  —I don’t know. It’s stupid.

  —I may not think so.

  —It’s stupid.

  HE DIDN’T LIKE MCDONALD’S any more than his father did. But his mother was refusing to cook again, so there they were. It was empty except for some old men in a booth by the bathrooms. One of the guys had the sleeve torn off his jacket. Biddy’s father said, Meeting of the Board, and nodded at them. Biddy watched them until his father told him to stop staring and finish his shake. The one with the missing sleeve had amazing eyes. They locked onto something and then shot over and locked onto something else. He talked like soon he wasn’t going to be allowed to talk again, and he’d sweated through his shirt in the middle. The other old men were losing interest in him. The booth got into a fight over somebody’s fries, and the manager had to go over. Biddy’s father shook his head and Biddy felt terrible and wasn’t sure why. He didn’t finish his shake and when they got up to go his father gave him that look and told him he’d better start eating.

  —YOU MIND YOUR PARENTS not being here when we talk?

  —No.

  —Why not?

  —They were sorta a pain, I guess.

  —Ah. Why do you feel that way?

  —I mean to you.

  —Oh. Are they ever a pain to you?

  —No.

  —Never?

  —No.

  —Do they understand lots of things, you think?

  —No.

  —Do they understand most things?

  —No.

  —Does that bother you?

  —No.

  —Do you think they try to understand?

  —I don’t know.

  HE TRIED TO EXPLAIN about the old man in the car on the way back, but he couldn’t figure it out himself. His father listened for a while and then told him he should’ve spent more time eating and less trying to make eye contact with the homeless. Some of those guys looked pretty belligerent, his father said. And he wasn’t eating enough, that was problem number one. Mr. Skin and Bones.

  Sister Theresa wasn’t too interested in the old man either. The more Biddy thought about it the more he figured somebody should know, somebody should help. What bothered him was that he didn’t want to help. So he went to Sister Theresa. He asked her: Maybe it was crazy, but couldn’t Father Hogan be a sort of missionary? Didn’t priests want to be missionaries? He recognized the lameness of his good deed: couldn’t someone take care of this for me? Wasn’t there something—it didn’t have to be that big—that someone could do?

  At the conference with his mother and Sister Theresa he tried to explain that all they had to do was go down there and see the guy, but Sister Theresa kept asking the wrong questions, and his mother cried.

  —WHY DON’T YOU TALK about things with your mother?

  —Who said I didn’t?

  —Do you talk about things with your mother?

  —No.

  —Uh-huh. Why not?

  —I don’t know. Are we almost finished for today?

  —Almost. Do you tell your mother things that happen during the day?

  —I don’t know.

  —Do you tell her what you like and don’t like?

  —No.

  —Why not?

  —Because. I don’t know. She knows, I guess. We don’t fight.

  BIDDY DIDN’T LIKE Froot Loops. He didn’t like the way they got so sweet after a few mouthfuls or how they turned the milk pink. There was a time when he would eat things he didn’t like, but he didn’t see any reason to anymore. And he didn’t like Froot Loops. So they sat together patiently, Biddy and the Froot Loops, waiting for his mother to give in and throw the dish into the sink, spilling milk and soggy Froot Loops across the counter, and to say again, “And your father yells at me because you’re not eating.”

  He would feel bad when she did, but, after all, Froot Loops were Froot Loops.

  —DIDN’T YOUR MOTHER say you had some pets? A turtle, or something?

  —No.

  —You never had a pet?

  —I had a canary once.

  —Did your parents give it to you?

  —I got it at Woolworth’s.

  —What was his name?

  —Nero.

  —Why Nero, do you think?

  —I don’t know. I like Roman stuff.

  —So what happened to Nero?

  —My mother gave him away. He was pretty sick, too.

  —Why’d she do that?

  —I didn’t take care of him.

  —What didn’t you do? Did you not feed him or something?

  —I didn’t take care of him.

  —Were you mad at your mother for that?

  —Maybe wherever he went, he got better.

  —Do you ever miss him?

  —No.

  —Do you think he ever misses you?

  —I don’t think so.

  —Why not?

  —He was a canary.

  HE HAD NO IDEA they’d been waiting three days for him to ask about Sister Emelia. They were mad. His mother said, “Biddy, don’t you even care?” in such a way that he was scared that some part of himself he needed for that was missing. The doctor said he was sure it had just slipped his mind, and his mother after talking about it for a while felt better. His father stared at him. He tried to watch TV. He wondered if he should ask about Sister Emelia.

  —LET’S TALK about Sister Emelia. . . . You don’t mind, do you?

  —No.

  —When did you find out she was hurt?

  —When they told me.

  —Did you feel bad for her?

  —I guess.

  —You guess?

  —I guess.

  —Was she your least favorite teacher?

  —I guess.

  —Why was that?

  —She hit people.

  —Is that the only reason?

  —She yelled a lot. She hit people and she yelled a lot.

  HE NEVER GOT AS UPSET as other kids after he got slapped. Michael Graham and Luis were always getting slapped and their mothers were always coming in and getting mad at Sister Emelia sometimes and at Michael and Luis sometimes, and neither did any good. He never thought it would.

  He didn’t mind the bandages on his head. Everybody in the hospital thought he did and asked about it, but he didn’t. For a while
he wished they were over his mouth, too. It would look good, nothing showing but his eyes. He wouldn’t have to talk, either. Still, the bandages and everything made his mother cry more easily, and she cried a lot before.

  After his parents fought nobody talked and that was okay with him. A lot of times after supper his mother would go into the den and turn the TV up and cry. He wasn’t big on TV so he would go upstairs. Then the next meal would be quiet, and they’d tell him to stop playing with his food, but they’d only say it once. His mother would cry during meals if it was a bad fight. He tried to eat everything so they wouldn’t argue about why he wasn’t eating. Mostly he liked breakfast, because he ate breakfast alone.

  His mother kept asking if he was excited about going home and he didn’t feel like making her cry, so he said he was and she seemed better. His father told him he should “go easy” but he didn’t really know what that meant. His last night in the hospital when his parents were getting ready to go, his mother told him everything was going to be all right, and he knew she was going to start crying again. She started in the hall and he wished the fall had made him deaf instead of breaking his head.

  —YOU LOOKING FORWARD to going back to school tomorrow?

  —I guess.

  —Are you worried about it?

  —I don’t know.

  —Are you worried you’ll get into trouble again?

  —No.

  —Why not?

  —I won’t get into trouble.

  —Why not?

  —I won’t.

  —This is our last session for a while, Biddy. What do you think? Did we learn anything?

  —Mmm.

  —Do you feel better?

  —Mmm.

  —Do you?

  —Absolutely.

  —Well, if you start to have trouble again, you can come back, right? And we can talk about it, right?

  —Mmm.

  NOONE SPOKE to him except Luis, who wanted the rest of his Yodel. He played kickball out front and everybody got quiet when he came up. He tripled and it was like the sound was turned off. No one looked at him until it was Question Time and Sister Emelia came in with her neck brace. She asked if there were any questions. There weren’t.

  THE ASSASSINATION OF REINHARD HEYDRICH

  We flew in a Halifax. We flew on Christmas Eve. Each group had expected to travel alone. But we had all trained together, so we were surprised, but not by strangers. Our mission officer had walked us to the plane and then ordered us at the hatch to talk to no one during the flight. But once inside, we slapped backs and shook one another’s shoulders and shouted, “Good luck!” over the noise. There was no harm in that.

  Bartos, Potuchek, and Valchik sat together. Valchik grinning as always. Potuchek had what looked like a breadbox strapped to his chest, and his auxiliary chute over that. Gabchik and I exchanged looks. Gabchik’s eyes said: How’d you like to jump with that?

  Farther down, nearer the front, Hruby and Bublik kept to themselves after their initial surprise and greetings.

  NATURALLY WE WONDERED about the others’ assignments. But the Halifax on takeoff and at altitude was relentlessly noisy. The four engines shook your jaw when you opened your mouth. The roar drove you into isolation.

  Gabchik made an O with his mouth and raised an arm and scratched under his armpit. For the last two days he’d been making wearying jokes about our code name, which was “Anthropoid.”

  Our night’s assignment was to survive the jump. In the morning we’d worry about getting into Prague.

  Bublik ran his index finger and thumb over his nose. Hruby patted each of his equipment pockets in clockwise order. Who knew where they were going?

  Far from us, we hoped, without saying so to each other. Let them stir up the Germans somewhere else.

  Someone smelled like urine. A Christmas angel hung on the canvas of the cargo net.

  Under our jumpsuits it was Old Home Week. Our clothes were Czech. Our equipment, down to the chocolate and razor blades, was Czech.

  We were Czechs all over again, parachuting out over a Czech field to strike a blow for Czech pride. Gabchik had gone without a look back, pitching forward with his legs together into the slipstream and the darkness. I looked down the length of the fuselage at Bartos, Potuchek, and Valchik, at Hruby and Bublik, all with the bland expressions of someone watching a customer order in a café, before I went too. I spiraled and tumbled into the moonless darkness. The relief from the noise was a sharp pleasure. The wind whooped. My chin strap flexed and bucked. My boots floundered in the blast and I tucked and tried to stay aimed at the black rag of my falling teammate.

  He had the disassembled Sten gun, I had the disassembled bomb. We were ribboning downward to a farmer’s field at sixty meters a second filled with animal joy, filled with excitement, letting our guilt stream out behind us. I could hear Gabchik’s joyous shrieks, far ahead, far below. If we didn’t shatter our legs or impale ourselves on a pine tree we would soon—within weeks, or at least months—be turning our disassembled parcels on the hangman Heydrich, the newest Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia. Starlight showed little of what was below. My face was already frozen from the fall. Perhaps we would die in the attempt. Perhaps hundreds would die in reprisals. Our families were far from Prague. Our hearts were full of brutality.

  The Crown of St. Wenceslas, the Sokol, Moravian apples, Radnoti Ice. Sledny Peas. A girl on the Park trolley car in the late spring, rubbing lotion into her elbow with her fingertip. Up went my boots. Down went my head.

  WE WORKED OUR WAY into Prague, walking through the woods, hitching a ride on a cart. We split up at daybreak a kilometer or two from the outskirts. Professor Jan Zelenka, No. 6, Staromestské. Professor Jan Zelenka, No. 6, Staromestské. Gabchik amused himself by pretending he’d memorized a different address.

  I arrived first and waited on the Professor’s back garden stoop with the milk. I imagined big-eyed children, helpless before the Germans’ guns. We had no notion of how barbaric the reprisals would be. It did nothing to deter me.

  SOMEWHERE, AT SOME POINT, the German Heydrich would appear before us. I saw Gabchik throwing the bolt on his Sten. I saw my briefcase flying end over end. What followed was always kaleidoscopic and abstract. Vehicles disintegrated. Bits of uniform confettied.

  WE’D HEARD DURING TRAINING in Scotland about the stupidities of Pavelka. Before he’d left, he had tormented us all with his renditions of Grieg. He hadn’t been sent to assassinate anyone, just to reestablish radio contact, and he’d been warned that the Germans had discovered the identities and therefore the relatives of those who’d gotten out to England. He’d sworn up and down to contact no one but those who’d be hiding him. He’d made his first transmission and then visited his family, where he was arrested, interrogated, and executed. His equipment was captured and his code key rendered useless.

  That and bad weather put us back two months.

  Gabchik worked the delay by stuffing himself with English cream and shooting wooden targets to pieces.

  I practiced pitching leather briefcases loaded with stones.

  This Heydrich was someone to throw a bomb at. His first week in office 163 Czechs were executed and 718 sent to concentration camps from courts in Prague and Brno. The following week Gabchik and I were invited to a special meeting of the Ministry of National Defense in Exile. They needed paratroopers. We were both volunteers from General Palecheck’s Special Forces group. We’d volunteered for Special Tasks. We were asked if we would like to take part in an action that would enter history.

  Who wouldn’t want to take part in an action that would enter history? Gabchik answered.

  You’re not going to have second thoughts about the effects of your actions, are you? the British officer wanted to know.

  Fine soldiers we’d be if we had second thoughts about the effects of anything, Gabchik answered.

  Won’t get cold feet thinking about civilians rounded up? one officer persisted. A little squeamish, with
women and children in the balance?

  Gabchik answered with an old saying that didn’t translate well into English.

  What about you? the officer asked me.

  What about me? I asked. We all looked around the room. We all laughed.

  ZELENKA HAD A ROUND, mournful face and a meticulously trimmed walrus mustache. I was to be his second cousin, in from the country to look for winter work. Gabchik would stay across town.

  This was the war of nerves. The natural tendency was to rush. Rushing was to be resisted. It would take weeks to cement the target’s schedule and guarantee the partridge shoot. Rushing was lethal. And waiting too long was lethal. Even in Prague, new faces and unattached young men were the subject of interest. Informers drifted about throwing you solicitous looks. Newcomers were supposed to have registered; were always subject to forced labor deportation; were rounded up arbitrarily for questioning. Gabchik’s motto was: Don’t rush; don’t dawdle. He compared it to potting cats on the moors.

  FROM ZELENKA’S FRONT WINDOW that first morning I peered out at the winter sun in the city with its long, low shadows. Groups of soldiers lounged in a café and threw paper napkins. Police chatted with passersby and thumbed through identity papers. Too excited to sleep, we set to work. A tourist’s visit to St. Vitus’s Cathedral, inside Hradcany Castle, which was the home—office, to be exact— of the Ogre. We spent the day making certain what a fortress it was. We spent the next two days discovering his villa in the country was equally well guarded.

  That left his route to and from work. Heydrich traveled by car. When was he escorted? When was he not? Where were the pinch points where traffic slowed? Mornings and evenings we worked the route. Each day, noting variables. His Mercedes was forest green. With the top up, it was impossible to see who was inside. So there it was: we were waiting until spring.

  This was nerve-wracking for Zelenka and his superior, Vanek. Day after day we seemed to do nothing. They assumed we were here to assassinate Heydrich, or perhaps the quisling Moravec. They gave us everything we wanted the way one might hand over family china to hooligans. Finally Vanek without comment showed us the text of a message he was sending to London:

  From preparations made by Anthropoid and from the place these preparations are made, we judge, despite their continuous silence on the matter, that they intend to kill Heydrich. His assassination probably would not help the Allies in any way and would have the most far-reaching consequences for our nation. It will doom our hostages and political prisoners, cost thousands of additional lives, and expose the nation to unheard-of terror. At the same time, the last vestiges of our Organization would be destroyed. It would thus be impossible for us to do anything for the Allies in the future. We ask you to give orders to call off this action via Silver 3. Delay is dangerous. Answer immediately.