Gone to Soldiers

by Marge Piercy

  I sent Daniela ahead to the edge of town. Then I made my way back with her bicycle. It was market day and I bought some strawberries and a roasted chicken, at exorbitant prices. Then I casually took a bicycle I had noticed, leaving Daniela’s in its place, and pedaled off rapidly. But we had to sleep in this shed tonight because we could not reach our day’s destination.

  It is raining again. I will not write about how our bodies ache. The first night we wept in each other’s arms for the pain. Uphill is the worst. Often we just walk the bicycles up. Finally my legs have stopped waking me with cramps so painful I would have to bite my sweater not to cry out. We are always hungry. Our bodies are simply long hard pains.

  12 juin 1943

  We are at last in Limoges where we have reported in. Our identities here are invented, but we will not need to use them long. Soon we hope to get good identities (based on real people). We will be working with a group moving children into safety, either over the border into Switzerland or into Spain or into homes where they will be given new identities, with Gentile families. We will have to work with others until we learn the ropes, but then they promise that we will be able to work together again, once we arrive in Toulouse.

  M. Blot, the man in whose flat we are staying in a shabby steep little street looking down at the river, knows my papa and admires him greatly. He says the Milice—the new French political police—and the Gestapo have put a price on Papa’s head, and that he is involved in something M. Blot calls Armand-Jules, but refuses to explain. M. Blot is a chemist, classified as having an essential war job. His boss had his papers altered so that they do not say he is Jewish.

  He says that Papa was operating out of Toulouse, but that his cell was arrested. He knows that Papa escaped, and thinks he may be up in the mountains now. For the meantime, I will content myself with asking about him. We were not brought this far to relax, but to do some useful work.

  The mountains are clear of snow now and all passes open. I am to go on the road next week to start learning the routes south, through the Dordogne, through the Midi and over the Pyrénées. I will get a head start on Daniela, because she is sick in bed with a flu she cannot yet shake. I think it is the continued strain of our flight, sleeping in sheds, in barns or in open fields or abandoned buildings. We have often been hungry. We have pushed ourselves to exhaustion. I myself am lean and sinuous with new muscles.

  I am to work with a young man whom everyone calls Larousse, because he knows every route through every landscape. He is a year younger than me and two inches shorter, but he has already established he is the expert and I am one with the little children we will be shepherding, until I prove otherwise.

  He reminds me a little of that Boy Scout who came to see Maman, who was to provide us with new identity cards, except that he was shot. Larousse is a rabid Zionist, like Daniela. They are becoming friends but that is all. I do not find him a figure of romance, any more than Daniela does, for she is faithful to her lover Ari, whose picture she still lugs about.

  I look forward to my first journey with Larousse, who has a reputation for taking no unnecessary chances, but being quick in response to danger. I want to do something useful, to resume a life that is more than a headlong flight. I hope when finally I meet Papa again, he will have reason to be proud of me. Besides, when we move on to Toulouse, I will be in a city where Papa was living and fighting. Probably he is not far distant. When we reach Toulouse, Daniela and I will get better papers and settle in—or what passes for it these days. At least we hope to have a base of operations that we can call home and names and identities we can keep long enough to be able to remember in an emergency. We hear Toulouse has a big and active Jewish Resistance movement, of which we hope soon to be part.

  DANIEL 4

  Their Mail and Ours

  Alan Turing, who, as far as Daniel could figure out, seemed to be the British equivalent of William Friedman, was visiting America from the cryptanalytic stronghold of Bletchley. The first time Daniel heard that name, he thought his boss was making a joke. Surely no place could actually be called Bletchley. But his superior was not joking and spoke of Bletchley with a blend of reverence, jealousy and suspicion. It was the center where the British did their decoding of the German ciphers. The Allies were supposed to be trading information, but cooperation was spotty.

  The British were using machines called bombes to crack the German Enigma codes, apparently more complicated than the imitation Purple machines Friedman’s crew had built. Turing had a theory about a machine that could do logic that Daniel found too arcane to follow. Machines that could think?

  The cryptanalytic world in Washington had been reorganized for the seventeenth time since Daniel had been working there. Sonia had heard this arrangement was based on the British. The British seemed able not only to generate signal intelligence, which after all they did well enough in Washington, but to get it out to where it could be used speedily and securely. They did not slop the decrypts all over the landscape, as the Navy had permitted at Midway, when the Chicago Tribune—anti-Roosevelt forever—had published a report about how the Navy had known about Japanese plans from reading their codes. Then there had been terror and cold sweat at OP-20-G. Daniel had been convinced they were going to be starting from zero again. The Japanese would realize from the Tribune report that their codes were being read, and would scrap the old system. By some sweet typhoon of luck, it seemed the Japanese had not read the newspaper article. Either none of their agents had sent it along, or they simply had not believed it—thought it was a clever plant to deceive them.

  Nor did the British sit on their decrypts as if on marble eggs waiting for them to hatch dodo birds. When Daniel had arrived, he had heard stories of how few people in the U.S. government had been allowed to view the decrypts before Pearl Harbor, and then only for a moment. It seemed to Daniel that the military apparatus had been so security conscious, they had only permitted the decrypts out as if a flasher had run through the White House flapping his raincoat and then vanishing. Finally now a joint committee was coordinating all intelligence from radio interception and cryptanalysis. Now they could have some sense their work was going out to where it could best be used.

  Daniel went on liking his work, but some aspects of his life he liked less well. Careful not to promise too much to Ann, for fear of falling into the potentially bottomless pit of her dependency, he found himself locked into the extremely limited relationship permitted by her propriety. Even when she bought herself a new blouse or hat, if he did not praise it sufficiently, she returned it at once. Yet she told him she thought he had little taste in clothes. If he did not praise something, she could not take pleasure in it, simply because he was her man.

  He was tired of his roommate. He fantasized living with a woman instead of a creature who left the bowl hairy as a chin after shaving, let the trash pile up until the kitchenette was wall-to-wall garbage and dropped his dirty socks under every chair.

  Intent on seducing Abra, he had become her friend instead. Now he knew far more than he wished to about her affair with Oscar Kahan. On evenings when neither of them was working—not frequent but more than occasional—when Ann did not require his company nor Oscar permit Abra to enjoy his, they went out together, to movies, to hear jazz, to sit and talk. They were increasingly frank, for it intrigued each to confide in the other. It had a touch of flirtation about it, a hint of risk.

  Snow that week brought Washington to a halt. Four inches of snow here were treated like four feet elsewhere. They thought they’d had a blizzard and government offices shut down. Public transportation did not run. He had a late breakfast with Abra in her apartment before they went for a walk. Abra considered the snowfall ridiculous. Bath, Maine, had this much snow in an hour, she said.

  The snow was wet and made good snowballs, which they threw at trees and then each other. They could both suddenly become children, he thought, without embarrassment, without faking it. She was rosy and breathless, leaping to throw at
him, hard, underhand, the tomboy showing. He wanted to seize her and roll in the snow. How could she not see that this was the way to be, playful, spontaneous, instead of that crippling affair with a man almost old enough to be her father?

  They sat on a bench watching kids clumsy in the unfamiliar snow. “If only he could open up. I don’t know what he fears in me. I’d never try to possess him the way his wife did.”

  To him it seemed simple. He wanted to say that to her. This morning in the clean frothy snow he decided to do so, with a sense of daring. “You love him. Fine. But obviously he doesn’t love you. He likes you, he likes to sleep with you, but he doesn’t love you.” He thought Abra might be struck dumb and run from him, might erupt into tears. There was the whole truth, finally out.

  But she scarcely noticed he had said anything conclusive. “Don’t be silly, Daniel. Of course he loves me. Why would he be with me, otherwise? You don’t understand how attractive he is to women. He doesn’t know how to love me. I’m too different from the other women he’s been with.”

  Sometimes he wanted to shake her until her teeth flew out. Was he in love with her? Perhaps. He would love her if he could get her, he was sure of that, but he could not get her. To love a woman who treated you like a girlfriend was lacking in dignity. At the same time, he enjoyed the friendship. He enjoyed walking with her. He enjoyed sharing an occasional bottle of red plonk or South African brandy or an informal supper in her apartment or his. When he forgot his lust, he had a good time.

  What he did not choose was to go to bed with her some evening she was furious with Oscar. He sensed once or twice he could have that, but he also knew that if he took that, he would never get anything more. He would be relegated to a role that was quite minor, a walk-on and a walk-off.

  His best times with Ann were those times in bed when she did relax, when she did not fear her aunt might surprise them. They had a good weekend in February, when her aunt went to New York for an operation on her sinuses. Beds in Washington hospitals were notoriously unreliable. Not only were there far too few, but a patient could wait a month and be bumped by brass or the relatives of brass at the last moment. Everybody told stories about women who had just made it to New York on the train in time to have their babies in a New York maternity ward. Ann’s aunt, an old Washington hand, knew better than to trust a local hospital for minor surgery.

  Saturday after work they returned to Ann’s apartment to eat an improvised meal out of cans and go straight to bed. Ann was far more talkative than usual and willing to prolong their caresses. They made love leisurely and far more sensuously than he had come to expect. He felt loving toward her. She seemed to him as warm tonight as she was attractive, a radiance of pleasure animating her delicate features. They made cocoa and had it in bed, a rare treat; the aunt had put some Dutch chocolate away. “A war makes you appreciate little pleasures. A steak. A glass of scotch. A cup of cocoa. The smell of a new car. A train that isn’t crowded. Being able to order a phone installed,” he mused.

  “Getting the radio fixed when it breaks. Being able to wear stockings without fearing that they’ll run and you won’t be able to get any more. Being able to buy real French perfume, instead of this sandalwood essence I have to make do with.”

  He was startled, for he associated the soft curves of her body, its slightly flattened hips, the purplish beige nipples, with the scent of sandalwood. He could not imagine her smelling differently, whereas she considered her scent temporary. For the duration.

  Some of their best times were talking shop. The light from the bedside lamp she had for once not turned off while they made love shone on her black hair, loose on the shoulders of her kimono. It dipped low at her shoulder as she sipped the last of the chocolate, exposing her fine skin. He could not understand why Japanese were popularly supposed to be yellow. He thought of her skin as dark ivory. It had little pink in it, but no yellow either. Her face in repose had always an air of sadness, but now it was animated.

  “… and so I had to go to the Pentagon, which they have just opened, and I could not believe it. It goes and goes and goes and goes. I thought I’d never find my way in and then I thought I’d never find my way out.” She giggled behind her hand. “After the war, what will they do with it? They could use it for a prison. No one could get out without help.”

  “After the war. We all keep saying that, as if things will slip back as they were, automatically. Do you really expect that?”

  “You mean, you think my father won’t get his nursery business back?”

  “Do you believe the people who have been running it will let go?”

  “But it’s not fair.”

  He put his arms around her. “No. It’s not fair. But I was thinking more along the lines of the Pentagon and Washington itself. Sometimes I suspect that those who are running things might grow addicted to power. Secrecy’s essential in wartime, but once in place, will it ever be removed?”

  “Why not? Who would we be hiding anything from? Besides, nobody’s going to be willing to spend all this money on the Army in peacetime.”

  “I don’t know if what we called normal before the war will ever seem normal again. This town is full of men growing used to the sensations of power. When someone has wielded power, especially self-righteously, especially with a sense of necessity, will he ever relinquish? In 1940, when the Dutch army surrendered to the Germans, our Army moved up to seventeenth worldwide in size. Do you think we’ll ever again be willing to be ranked seventeenth in weapons?”

  “I worry more whether all my life I’ll be stigmatized. Belonging nowhere. Nowhere accepted. Each half of me at war with the other half. I never used to feel this way. Now I wonder if it’s permanent. I can’t stand to think of my whole life like this, a war without, a war within.”

  He held her and for a moment he thought she would weep, but she rubbed her eyes, sniffling, and asked him to make more cocoa. Tonight she reminded him of a Chinese garden. He realized, as he tried to verbalize his appreciation to her, that he was thinking of Soochow, a beauty spot west of Shanghai, a city of canals lined with willows, of whitewashed houses and famous gardens, where rocks and water and structures were as important as the plants, everything arranged and soothing. That led him to describe excursions out of the city, before the Japanese had surrounded it, with his uncle Nat or Chinese friends. In mid-reminiscence, he looked into her eyes and saw them glazed over with boredom. His China ramblings alienated her.

  “Do you ever imagine our counterparts?” she asked him. “Somewhere in Tokyo, somewhere in Berlin, a couple is sipping saki or beer and gossiping, and when they go to work, they deal with our codes.”

  “I don’t think the Japanese are reading our codes. They certainly have been running traffic analyses on us, but I don’t see evidence of more.”

  She laughed. “Remember the Japanese embassy reassuring Tokyo that they saw no evidence we were reading their codes, back when we were reading the Purple code regularly?”

  He did not remind her he had not yet been in the office in the pre-Pearl Harbor days, when she had first come. “On the other hand, I’d be surprised if the German B-Dienst, our German counterparts, were not reading some of our mail. You could make a case they’re reading naval or merchant marine codes, because they seem to know exactly where our ships are going to be in the Atlantic, for instance.”

  “I thought your friend Friedman had set up impervious codes.”

  “He isn’t my friend. That’s like talking to the last violinist and asking him about his friend Toscanini. He never set up naval codes. A lot of naval operations use old codes.”

  “Battles in the Pacific are going better than what they call the Battle of the Atlantic, aren’t they? It seems to me every day I read about a bunch more vessels down.”

  She was inviting him to explain the war to her, her dark gaze expectant. She considered it appropriate he should act as the expert, although in truth he knew no more than she did. With her aunt employed at State, she might
conceivably know more. Still she waited for him to structure the world.

  “The Japanese and the British are in the same position, essentially, overpopulated highly industrialized islands that depend on shipping for survival. We’re starving the Japanese of oil and the Germans are starving the British of oil, food, weapons, everything.”

  “Doesn’t it seem crazy to you sometimes? Each side hiding meanings that the other side ferrets out? I wonder if our counterparts are talking about us and trying to guess which of their mail we read, the way we’re trying to guess about them.”

  “An infinite series of mirrors,” Daniel said. “Can we be truly bold? Your aunt can’t possibly get back before Monday. Can I spend the night?”

  DUVEY 3

  The Black Pit

  “The worst winter in fifty years,” Mike said to Duvey. Mike was Boston Irish, a wizened scrappy runt of a man but quick-witted, fast-talking. “The weather’s been putting down as many ships as the Heinies. My last crossing, there was only one soul on the whole scow not puking his guts out, and that was the bosun because he was dead already. Of a burst appendix.”

  “I like shipping out of New York—it’s a great liberty town,” Duvey said. “All those sweet-assed liberty girls shuffling along giving you the eye. Lots of good jazz. You can always find a bar with something hot to listen to.” Seamen weren’t wanted at the USO, but he could find his own good times, no problem.

  “Well now, I don’t care about that myself. My mother says I have a wooden ear. But the ginch, that is something else. Let me tell you what happen to me …”

  Duvey never got to hear the end of the story until two days later, because at that moment they cleared the headland and the full force of the storm hit them. This has got to blow itself out soon, Duvey thought, but twenty-four hours later it was worse. The sea would stand above them, fifty feet it had to be, a cliff of boiling water. They were somewhat south and two days east of Newfoundland heading into the storm. At four-thirty it was night.