by Marge Piercy
Gitel makes me think of the years passing with Naomi far from me. I am going to write her a letter tonight after this entry. Then when I have brought the children safely over, I am going to ask the Joint representative if he could mail it for me from Madrid. I will be very careful what I say, but I need to make that contact with my sister.
7 juillet 1943
Tomorrow I should meet my contacts and deliver this brood. Unfortunately, it is raining—drizzle, but cold, making the little ones shiver. I do not dare make fire this close to the border. Instead I gather them together to tell stories. While I write this, Gitel, the fourteen-year-old, describes a movie she saw.
When we got to Toulouse, things picked up for Daniela and for me. I am still trying to understand why, in spite of Daniela’s continued weakness and our fears about those we left in Paris, we are much more cheerful here. I like the south. Also I feel as if the Resistance is all around us here. I know many Resistance groups are active in Paris, but the collaboration is so visible, the power of the Nazis so manifest, swastikas everywhere, that we felt a small minority struggling to die with dignity.
It isn’t that everything seems to be turning from shit into flowers, as Lev, our local chief, says. In fact, the Gestapo and the Milice hit the Resistance hard this summer. I never met Jean Moulin, who was de Gaulle’s emissary to the different Resistance groups, but Lev admired him. In a series of raids, the Gestapo arrested the heads of a number of the groups and tortured Moulin to death and executed many others.
But for Daniela and me, it is moving from feeling a member of a tiny cell to being a member of a movement that feels large. No matter how bleak our lives and how vulnerable we are one by one to arrest, torture, deportation, execution, there always seem to be people to replace those lost. More come in than the Germans catch. News of the war is better these days, the Allied armies fighting their way up Sicily (although why they wanted to attack there mystifies us), the Soviets pushing the Germans back across the map. We know that if we can last, victory will come, and that is a new sensation. Here instead of working in a little cell with only tentative contacts with other isolated cells, the whole Jewish underground is interrelated and connected to the rest of the Resistance.
Furthermore, I feel at home in Toulouse, maybe because the countryside where the maquis rule is much closer here than in Paris. Maquis is a local word for the scrub vegetation of the mountains, but people use it lately to mean the guerrillas that have set up armed camps there. Or maybe I feel good because I am away from Nazi flags and among rocks and trees often, maybe because where we live is pleasant, near the canal with its little bridges and plane trees, with other Jews who have a family still. Our life flows now as swiftly as the mighty Garonne through this rosy brick city.
14 juillet 1943
I delivered my charges safely to our regular guide and to the Joint representative. He agreed to mail my letter, but not until he is in Lisbon. At first, I was devastated, but then I agreed. What does it matter whether she receives the letter in one month or in two, after such a long silence? She cannot reply to me. She can only know I am thinking of her.
Today is Bastille Day. Last Bastille Day I had that lacerating quarrel with Maman. I saw my first underground paper that day, Libération. Publishing papers is a riskier business than counterfeiting identity cards or shepherding refugees, for everyone in the Resistance I have known who has worked on a clandestine paper has been caught and deported or executed. It is hard to hide a printing press, and the noise they make seems to tip off the police eventually. Some right-winger turns them in for the reward.
I have a young man with me, a British agent who is on his way to Lyon with money and a fancy new type of radio, only the size of a brick, for the underground Combat organization there. They could use such a radio in Toulouse too. They never had enough of anything: not of money, not of arms, not of safe houses, not of radios or information.
The young man, whom I am to call Girard, speaks good French, although a little bookish. He seems afraid of me. I was extremely unwashed when he met me. If I have to touch him, he shrinks a little. It is amusing how much confidence his timidity gives me. When I saw I was to cross the mountains with a young man alone, I was frankly not overjoyed. I anticipated problems which have not developed. The shier he is, the more expansive and confident I feel in his company. I am no longer afraid of him, and I have gotten him to tell me about the blitz in London and about what is happening in North Africa, which is even worse than we had heard.
The Americans are still clutching hard to the Vichy Fascists there and sustaining them in power. Many resistants are still in camps, and Jews were only allowed to leave off the yellow star months after the Americans came. We cannot allow that to happen here. The only thing that will prevent that kind of degrading replacement of one foul regime with another version of the same is if we have a strong Resistance the Allies cannot ignore, so they won’t be able to leave French Fascists in power after the Germans go home.
Girard, who worked in a cheese import firm before the war, shared a flask of whiskey with me and we toasted liberation and Bastille Day, watching the sunset steal over the snowfields across the defile and then descending to a place I like to camp beside a spring that gushes from a cliff. It was still except for the sound of the copper bells on goats and sheep below in the pastures. It was getting dark and I almost lost my way, whether because of the whiskey or because of the lurid purplish light. We actually went past the little path to the spring before I realized it, and had to turn back, because here is where we are to spend a few hours till the moon rises. The night is chilly in spite of it being the middle of July, and the warmth of the whiskey is appealing, a pocket of calming heat right in my belly. Still, today of all days I would like to be down in Toulouse, where I know a major demonstration is planned, with the forbidden tricolor and distribution of clandestine papers.
22 juillet 1943
Now I know what Armand-Jules is, that Papa used to be involved in and probably still is: it is the never spoken name of the Jewish army, l’Armée Juive. In Toulouse Papa was active in a sabotage group, but when his group was broken, he escaped and went into the mountains with the maquis. Many of them like Papa have had to flee arrest. Some are refugees; some, determined anti-Fascists; some, young men fleeing forced labor.
Again last night I dreamed of Papa. I was with a group of children. As I led them around a huge boulder, Papa was there in the path waiting, his arms opening to hug me. I realized when I woke that I am disturbed he has not got in touch with me yet. Surely he could send for me, if he cannot come, or at least send a messenger.
Today I had a huge fight with Lev about a drop to be made to the Resistance here. I am always alert when traveling for places that might be safe for drops, so I suggested a plateau near Castres where horse carts could be brought in but the drop could not be observed. London has agreed that a load of weapons and another radio are to be dropped this Saturday on the site I scouted. I assumed I would be there to help, but Lev vetoed my presence. He said it was no place for a woman, that it was too dangerous.
I blew up. I said that I do whatever is asked of me, and if he thought watching for a couple of parachutes was more dangerous than trying to travel with up to ten children in the mountains for sixty-five kilometers, then he is crazy. I also said that if I couldn’t take part in the drops, I would not scout any more sites.
I have been angry at Lev ever since he made a remark when he first learned that I am my father’s daughter, about how it was a pity my father had no sons. I have not forgiven him for that remark and I don’t think I ever will. He said that without a son, there is no one to say Kaddish for you. I said I was perfectly capable of praying for my own dead to my own God, and that I consider Lev a living fossil.
Lev is twenty-seven and was in the regular army in artillery. He knows a lot about weapons and explosives and incites a hot loyalty from the men. They know he will not let them down. He is good at making quick plans and then
refining them so that they work and we do not lose people because of a lack of foresight. He is also not a bad orator. Even I who often detest him get very excited when he gives us a pep talk, and then I am ready to take on the world. He is of medium height, darkly complected and has a beard like a spade that sticks straight out. Everyone says he must shave it, but so far he has resisted. Lev has actually worked in Palestine. He was in the Zionist Youth movement. Daniela asked him why he came back from Palestine, and he said it was to marry his girlfriend, Vera, who is a doctor. They were working to save the money to go back when war started. The Milice picked up his wife a year ago. He organized her escape from the camp at Gurs, but they picked her up in a dragnet in December and he has not been able to trace her since.
Lev has a hoarse voice and smokes so incessantly his hands are yellow. He is incredibly brave and fierce, but he has rocks for brains. However, I got the best of him. I am to be at the site for the drop. Lev has given me my nom de guerre, by the way, Gingembre. He says it suits my character.
24 juillet 1943
When I read over my last entry, I took out several pages and burned them. I decided if others think it is too dangerous ever to use those words, I should not so blithely write them down. So what I wrote, I have now censored. I have rewritten everything since arriving here in a code I have worked out, private to me. Mostly I write ordinary words in French, but names and places I call by a physical code mapped out on our old Paris apartment. I realized that if I am taken suddenly or shot in the mountains, the French Milice or the German Gestapo would surely read my diary.
Last night the drop did not happen because of poor weather. Now it is put off until the next full moon. From the BBC message tonight, we gather that someone is coming with the radio so long promised to us. We all have mixed feelings about that. We found our recent British visitor more a difficulty than an asset, and the poor boy has already been picked up by Klaus Barbie’s men in Lyon, we hear. I am a little nervous, because if he talks, he knows the route I have been using. I must set up a new route and new meeting point with my Basque guide immediately.
3 août 1943
Well, I am back and safe and that is a wonder, because in fact I almost walked into an ambush.
They had set two for me. I feel like a person of some importance, all those French police and German Gestapo tied up just to wring my neck. Fortunately I met Larousse two stations down the line, where he was not expecting me, and we took the children off early. We heard about the Milice boarding the train in Toulouse and looking everywhere, asking about children. They were waiting for us, but we were gone.
Then I took the route I scouted last week, that my Basque guide showed me. Thus I avoided the ambush at the border. The Gestapo was on the French side and the Spanish Guardia on the Spanish side, but although they arrested my Basque friend and the Joint representative, they let them go again because I never arrived with the children.
What happened is, when I approached the border, I left the children, making them promise they would keep together and quiet, and I went ahead alone. As I skulked up, I heard the clink of metal. I lay there and after a while I heard voices. So I crept back and took the children down the valley and around, bushwhacking through. I did not admit to them I did not know exactly where I was but bulled ahead as if I knew. I was not sure for a long time that I had actually got them into Spain.
I have learned a little Basque so once again I hid the children. For a long time I lay in the scrub watching a farmhouse. Then I took a chance. I did not know what else to do. I told the peasants frankly who I am, although I did not say the children are Jewish. I gave them the Spanish money I always carry on the crossing, in case. The children were exhausted and very hungry, and one of them was running a fever by the time I could deliver them. It was a nightmare, clumping around in a strange country not sure exactly where the border was, but that Basque family let us sleep in the barn the first night and on the third day I managed to get back in contact through the drop near the border we use as backup, and they sent somebody to meet the children. Then I crossed back into France.
14 août 1943
Two nights ago was the full moon and fine clear flying weather. We waited at the drop with our bonfires ready to be lit and our flashlights ready and when we heard the engine of the Halifax, which reminded me of an old motorboat, we moved onto the field, lit the triangle of fires and started flashing our signal in Morse. The Halifax signaled back.
It was exhilarating. We were terrified, as I imagine one always is. You must make yourself visible, but there is no way of knowing which plane is coming. It might well be the Germans, as most planes that pass over are. We could not see markings as it crossed the moon. The pilot slowed the engine, and first a package came down on its parachute, and then another, and then another, and then another. Then came a parachute that seemed to open more slowly with a man hanging there, imagine how vulnerable. Then a second man, dangling after him. It would be easy to shoot a man parachuting down, I kept thinking, as they were followed by more packages. You have such a long clear shot at him and he can do nothing but hang there in his harness, waiting. At that moment too, I kept imagining we would hear the bark of a gun or the lights would suddenly come on from the surrounding Gestapo. But the only sounds were those of the plane climbing, and our people searching to retrieve the precious matériel. The first man came down in the clearing, rolled and rather gracefully rose, staring around him. The second man had more trouble. They released him a little too late and he drifted while we watched toward the trees.
We were all running around to pick up the packages that had been dropped, Sten guns in one, ammunition, plastique (I confess, I still don’t understand why it doesn’t explode on impact), fuses, the radio and then the second man who missed the trees after all but who landed so awkwardly that he injured his ankle. I should not sound scornful, as I am sure I would break my neck jumping from a plane, but nonetheless, it was a problem as he had to be helped away, leaning on Lev’s shoulders in pain, while the horse carts carried off the matériel.
Therefore after we brought both men to a safe house near the big cemetery in Toulouse, I ran off to wake Daniela and fetch her, so that she could look at the American’s ankle. It is broken all right, for she set it for him. Daniela is as good as a doctor, and she has to perform most of the functions of one. That was what she wanted to be, originally, back in our distant youth when we wanted more than to survive to fight another day, when we had ambitions and dreams and plans, those fragile constructions we imagine to be as real as guns and trees.
The radio landed far more safely than the man. His being American, by the way, made everybody happy as we think of the Americans as having less of a game of their own to play here, and also as being far more generous with their money, although certainly so far they have done little for anyone in the Resistance and they are enamored always with old Fascist farts they exhume and try to foist on us as leaders. For some reason, they hate de Gaulle. He seems dangerously right wing to me, but he is the leader of the Resistance and at least he includes everybody, including Jews, including the unions, the Socialists, the Communists, the middle, everybody.
The American’s code name is Vendôme. He speaks good Parisian French, quite idiomatic. I was shocked, as I did not think any Americans spoke French beyond, “Combien coûte cela.” My Joint representative cannot speak French in spite of all his time abroad, so we use English together.
The radio operator is French, from Toulon originally. He was recruited in Algeria for this mission. His name is to be Raymond. We have moved him at once out of the safe house and up to a village near Lacaune. Radio operators too, they say, are highly vulnerable because the Germans have such accurate signal-finding equipment. That makes it dangerous to transmit more than a short message, and the radio should keep moving every day or two.
With his ankle in a cast, Vendôme is a great nuisance, frankly. We are terrified that since he lacks any power to move, he may be caught. Daniel
a and I are delegated to see to his needs, and Larousse is taking my next herd of children across. I am furious, because I have no particular talent for making chicken soup for clumsy American spies. Once again Lev assigns to me whatever nobody else wants to do. Vendôme is supposed to scout around the local industry and to establish a network of informants about German military movements and strength in this entire region. How he is going to do this encased in a cast is beyond me. Furthermore he does not observe the precautions we ask of him.
For instance, this morning when I arrived, he was sitting in the window drawing on a piece of paper. I know he had been told not to appear at the window. He has a good identity, but we do not want to be answering questions about how he broke his ankle and where he came from and why he is not in the forced labor draft working in Germany. I scolded him, but I made a bet with myself that he would not listen. Indeed, after I left, I walked back around the corner, and there he was at the window sketching again. I bolted upstairs and this time I did not mince words.
“You’re going to endanger us all, you idiot!” I shouted, a soft shout, you understand. We never really raise our voices, haven’t in years. Shouting to us means hissing loudly and with scornful inflection (unless we are putting on some sort of public scene for a purpose, as the time Daniela and I staged a fight of two jealous women to distract the police, while Lev and Lazare took up their positions to shoot the traitor who had been responsible for breaking up the sabotage ring Papa was in).
“Come on, sketching a cemetery is not likely to be construed as potential espionage. Only my ankle is broken, not my back or my head. You have to let me enjoy myself a little. Or do you think of drawing in the same category as smoking opium?” From his window you can look over the wall into a huge cemetery, which I admit to my northern eyes too is quite ornate, a crowded apartment house row of the dead with no space between, no grass, family mausoleums built of pale stone and decorated with ceramic flowers in bright colors, with a horizon of the tall black formal shapes of the cypress.