The Gathering Storm

by Bodie Thoene

  “Would you wait for me, Eben?” I asked.

  “Forever.” He clasped my hand and kissed my fingers. “My Rosalind.”

  “Tonight I expect you to sing to me too.”

  “Anything. As long as you promise never to fly away.”

  35

  On the morning of December 22 I awakened to the tinkling of wind chimes outside our Hampstead window. During the worst of the bombing Eben had carefully picked through shards of stained glass from the shattered windows of a Christopher Wren church. For weeks he had laid the pieces out on our table. A nightingale. Roses: crimson and white. A flaming heart. An angel’s fingers on a flute. Coral lips smiling. Patiently he drilled a hole in each fragment and strung them together into a wind chime and hung it outside the window. The sun shone through the glass, casting a bouquet of color on the floor.

  Who is this man? I wondered in awe as I watched him work. From brokenness, he created a song for me.

  That morning I opened my eyes and reached out for Eben. His side of the bed was empty. A fleeting instant of panic seized me, then I remembered his trip to Oxford. The last Jews in Berlin were deported to Polish ghettos. Nazi brutality against God’s beloved people escalated beyond human imagination.

  Eben was meeting with C. S. Lewis and a group who could rally public support to lift the immigration ban on Jewish refugees fleeing to the British Mandate of Palestine.

  He had planned a great Christmas surprise for me, he told me. I was to follow him on the afternoon train. My valise was packed in preparation for a long, passionate weekend at an old Elizabethanera inn that he knew well.

  On the pillow beside me was a folded parchment, inscribed in Eben’s elegant hand: Happy Christmas, my dearest! I opened the letter to find a poem.

  WINDCHIMES

  Forest

  rush

  wind

  chimes

  sing

  me

  awake

  beside

  you

  breathe

  my name

  again

  please

  you

  touch

  my

  lips

  burning

  whisper

  familiar

  sighs

  kindle

  fire

  warming

  my

  Rugged

  Heart

  Every word, every thought, of him was incendiary. Even after four months of love, the embers were never fully quenched. Kindled by the thought of him, I lay in bed and read his words again and again in different combinations: “breathe my name again, please…” and: “please you…” and: “sing me awake beside you…”

  There was magic in his poetry. I said his name, “Eben!” Throwing back the heavy curtains, I inhaled the winter morning and stood dripping in Eben’s pool of color.

  Though my train would not leave for hours, I hurried to bathe and wash my hair. I could not think of eating. I could only imagine him meeting me at the Oxford train station, sweeping me off my feet, and carrying me away to his secret hideaway.

  The train to Oxford was slow, stopping at every village along the way. I brought a copy of Sense and Sensibility to read but never opened it. I gazed out the window at snow-covered pastures. Here and there was evidence of bombing. The rail lines and manufacturers had been a target of the Germans. Yet still my brave little adopted island homeland stood firm. I was in awe that England was still England after a year of brutal pummeling by the Nazis. Perhaps soon the Americans would come in as Churchill hoped and Eben predicted, and then we would win back the world. Eben and I would work together for a Jewish homeland in Israel.

  The clatter of wheels on the tracks and the chatter of passengers did not penetrate my consciousness.

  I prayed for Eben’s success and for our future as the hours passed.

  It was the golden hour when the spires of Oxford University appeared outside my window like a painting from a medieval fairytale. I strained to see Eben as the train finally reached the Oxford station.

  He was there, waiting, his hat in his hands. His head was down. His usual smile was absent. I knew with a glance that something was terribly wrong. Had the meeting gone badly? Had his ideas been rejected?

  I picked up my valise and was already standing when the locomotive lurched to a stop almost directly beside him.

  I shouted his name, certain that no matter what was wrong, I could help him work through it.

  He raised his gaze to me. Such sorrow. Such terrible grief.

  I disembarked. He did not come toward me but only stood with his gaze riveted on me. My smile faded. I was filled with a sense of dread.

  Kissing him lightly, I asked, “Eben? What is it?”

  He took my bag, then linked his arm in mine. “Not here. We can’t talk about it here.”

  On the walk from the train station Eben said nothing. I kept shooting glances at him, unsuccessfully trying to catch his eye. He stalked, wrapped in his overcoat, his head bowed almost to his chest, shoulders stiffly braced, striding into the icy breeze.

  “Eben, what? Please tell me,” I implored. The wintry air was nothing compared to the chill gripping my heart. “I can help, whatever it is.”

  He raised his gloved hand, palm outward, in a gesture of denial. It felt as if he were pushing me away. I felt something like a dagger pierce my innermost senses, especially when I saw his upraised fingers trembling violently.

  His color was gray, ashen. His eyes, always so bright with life, darted everywhere, but focused on nothing. He walked ahead of me, almost lurching from step to step over the cobblestones.

  What could it be? Some terrible news from abroad?

  Since the fall of France precious few souls had escaped from Hitler’s Fortress Europe; fewer still from the eastern reaches of the Nazi Empire. Still, some of those rare, brave individuals who managed to get free brought horror stories of what was happening in the camps for political prisoners. We had heard of slave laborers, living on meager rations and dying of pneumonia and typhus in unbelievably crowded conditions.

  Could such news have reached Eben? Could bearing the burden of such tales be what was crushing him?

  Or was it something to do with his work with the Jewish Agency? Some new tragedy unfolding in the British Mandate, dashing all our hopes for a Jewish homeland?

  The station of the London and Northwestern Railway lay at the extreme west end of Oxford. After crossing the canal on Bridge Street we entered the university precincts. A clinging drizzle began to fall as we set our backs to the spires and quadrangles, passing Worcester College on our way up Walton.

  And still Eben did not speak.

  These past four months had been the happiest I had ever known. Nothing must be permitted to break that. Nothing would be permitted to!

  As we turned onto Great Clarenden I recognized our destination from Eben’s description. Tudor, from white-washed walls and exposed beams to sway-backed ridge line, the Burleigh Arms perched amid the bare trunks and naked thorns of last summer’s roses.

  Amid the skeletons a single white rose bush soldiered on, sheltered between a corner of the inn and a brick wall. Its few remaining leaves and fewer blooms sagged beneath the weight of rain dripping from the eaves.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, clasping Eben’s arm. “The inn is beautiful. Wonderful!” I wanted desperately to sound cheerful; to rouse him from the depression that had claimed him.

  Acting desperately cheerful does not help.

  He did look at me then—a stare so bleak, so full of despair, that I shuddered.

  Suddenly the inn was not pleasing, not remotely appealing. The winter-blasted garden seemed fraught with decay, like a neglected churchyard.

  We did not stop to admire the gabled entry, or respond to the cheerful greeting of the bald-headed innkeeper, but went straight up a crooked flight of steps. From a hallway just over the entrance we entered our room.

  The chamber, with canopied
bed and jutting bay window and cozy, flickering fire, was picture-perfect…it was the occupants who were dismal.

  Flinging his overcoat onto the floor, Eben threw himself down in one of the chairs drawn up to a mother-of-pearl inlaid table. He pushed aside a bowl of freshly cut white roses. Somewhere, even in these near Christmas days, he had located and purchased flowers for me.

  Then what was wrong? Why was my heart so apprehensive?

  Eben removed the stopper from a crystal sherry decanter. Without offering me a glass he poured a goblet of pale amber fluid for himself, drank it off, and poured another. He looked grim, haggard, and something I had never observed in him before: he looked old.

  “Eben, you must tell me! What is it? We’re alone, now. Tell me.”

  Still without speaking he reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat.

  Withdrawing a folded piece of light blue stationery, he tossed it onto the table where it fell across the blossoms. “Read it,” he said.

  Fearful beyond imagining, my nervous fingers plucked at the letter, tearing a bit off a corner as I opened it. I scanned it, terrified at what I would find written there.

  In response to your inquiry, it said, here is what we have determined. The subject in question, Varrick Kepler, is confirmed to be alive and a Prisoner-of-War.

  There was more, but my eyes no longer made sense of the words; my fingers no longer retained enough strength to keep a grip on the message. It fluttered to the floor.

  “Varrick,” I said. “He’s alive!” And then, “Varrick is…alive.” My heart racing, my head spinning, I felt joy, amazement, and horror—each succeeding the other, racing through my emotions. One hand groped for the arm of a chair as I felt myself sinking, sinking.

  Eben was on his feet then, guiding me as I sat, pouring a glass of wine and thrusting it into my hand.

  When the chamber stopped spinning, and I could see again, Eben was on his knees in front of me. He also gripped my chair, as if needing the prop to hold himself upright.

  “He’s alive,” I repeated. “Wonderful news, but…but Eben, I love you. I love…you.”

  “And I you.”

  “We were kids, just kids, Varrick and I. I wasn’t even the same; I’m a different person now. Varrick and I—that was a whole lifetime ago, after you…since you and I…”

  Fiercely he said, “I won’t give you up. I won’t! They say I must, but I won’t. I can’t live without you.”

  And then I was in his arms. His kisses were greedy, demanding. I returned them the same way. The news—the war—shattered lives on all sides. But in this room, warmed by the fire, surrounded by sheltering walls and enclosed by Eben’s arms, what did anything else matter? What could take from us our happiness? What could take us from each other? Nothing! I demanded of myself and God. I won’t let anything part us!

  Sweeping me up in powerful arms he carried me to the bed.

  “Don’t stop,” I urged. “I am yours. No one’s but yours.”

  Though the rain turned to sleet and the storm slashed at the windows, all the world outside our sanctuary disappeared. Loving, dozing, awakening, and being awakened…everything I wanted was beside me.

  I lay awake, my face on Eben’s chest. His heartbeat, strong and steady, reassured me. I wanted nothing better, no greater happiness, than to live in this moment, always. Whatever was outside this room could not touch what we had. Whatever might happen, we would face it, together, and overcome it.

  Eben’s heart kept perfect rhythm with the mantel clock above the fireplace. Lifting my head ever so carefully so as not to rouse my love, I noted the time: not quite midnight; 11:46 exactly.

  That vision, when the clock hands were so near to clasping each other, and to embracing the new day, is forever engraved in my thoughts. For at the instant the time registered with me a distant air-raid siren began its wavering cry.

  How could there be a raid in such a storm? No pilots could locate a target beneath such a concealing cloak. “Eben,” I said drowsily, “the alarm. Shall we go to a shelter?”

  “Umm?” he murmured.

  Like a string of signal fires, each igniting the next, another air-raid signal wailed, still closer, and then another. I remember thinking, Why would anyone bomb Oxford?

  And then a shrill whistle overcame the angry wind, driving sleet, and insistent sirens.

  Eben’s eyes snapped open, locking on mine in startled disbelief. And then the war, the devastation, the heartache rushed in upon us.

  I don’t recall hearing the bomb explode or feeling the blast. The floor suddenly was compressed toward the ceiling and the outside wall toward the fireplace.

  And then I was somewhere…else.

  I felt no pain. I knew no fear. I saw with a clarity unequalled in my life. There was no sleet, no smoke, no dust, only a view down a tunnel toward what remained of a shattered four-poster bed and fragments of a mother-of-pearl table. Beside it, kneeling, I recognized Eben. He was holding something to him with a desperate, frantic clutch.

  He held me—my body—in his arms.

  He rocked and then stopped, staring into my open, unseeing eyes. I heard him cry out and hang on even tighter than before. His shoulders bobbed, and his body swayed, as though in prayer before the Temple. I saw his face, when he raised it towards heaven, streaked with my blood, mingled with his tears, and creased with anguish.

  “Lora,” I heard him cry. “Lora! Don’t go. Don’t leave me.” He was begging, pleading. “Oh, God, don’t take her from me.”

  “Lora?” I heard another voice echoing my name.

  I don’t recall turning away from Eben, yet I was looking down a hallway I knew faced the opposite direction. At the end I saw someone waving, silhouetted against a bright but pleasant glow. “Lora,” Papa called. “I’m here. Here I am, Loralei.” Mama was beside him.

  The two cries, one grieving, one welcoming, mingled.

  “Lora,” Eben sobbed. “God, don’t take her. Please, my Lord! You said if it was Your will that we live until You come, what is that to anyone? She is everything to me! My Lord, let her live. I’ll do whatever You ask. I will give her up. Only let my Lora live again. Let her live again. Bring her back! I surrender to You, Lord! She is not mine; she is Yours. Lora, come back!”

  Time was nothing. I felt a longing to go to Mama and Papa and others whom I sensed were near. Hovering above Eben for a time, I watched as he gathered my limp body in his arms and carried me to a sofa. He smoothed my hair. Kissing my lips, he lingered over me, saying my name again and again.

  Darkness.

  Something was compressing my chest. I could not see what. Bits of powder sifted onto my cheeks. Snow? Ashes? I could not move my arms to brush it away.

  When at last I summoned the strength to open my eyes I looked up into the face of a man wearing a tin helmet bearing the initials A.R.P. “‘ere,” he called over his shoulder. “This ‘uns alive, right enough. Bloomin’ miracle, it is. Hey, mister, you was right. She’s alive. Mister? Mister?”

  Where was Eben?

  I drifted for a time. I knew only that four men carried me on a stretcher. It seemed that hours of hauling and pulling, digging and backtracking, were needed to maneuver me out of the wreckage of the inn.

  I came to when they transferred me to a hospital bed. Something fell out of the blanket and onto the floor.

  The nurse picked it up and placed it on my pillow.

  “Must’ve been your good-luck charm,” she said.

  It was a single white rose.

  I remained in London through the war. I did not see Eben again.

  After the war ended and the truth of the Holocaust was revealed, the nation of Israel was reborn in 1948, just as Eben predicted. A new war to annihilate the Jews began against Israel as the returning survivors of the death camps reached her shores. Or perhaps it was the same war against the Jews, continued in a new way.

  It was six years after we had parted before I saw Varrick again. We were strangers when we embraced
one another. He had grown into a man—handsome and hardened, eager to fight the new wars facing Israel.

  Though I longed to remain in England, I made a new life with Varrick. I learned to love him again, and discovered the love of our youth had ripened into something rich. He needed me. I needed him. We were to one another like anchors, mooring two ships in stormy waters. Varrick was a warrior to his core and I lived the life of a soldier’s wife. We had one child together, a son. Our baby was handsome and bright like his father. With the baby, the focus of my life changed. Eben receded further in my memory. Varrick was a wonderful father, and I was thankful, yes, thankful, the Lord had preserved Varrick and brought him back into my life.

  My longing for Eben lay dormant during those happy years as Varrick’s wife and the mother of our son.

  In quiet moments, I quoted Keats: “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?” Only sometimes I remembered, unwillingly, our brief days of passion and love in Hampstead. When I was alone, there were nights when I thought I heard the nightingale, and I dreamed of Eben’s face just above me.

  Once, in Tel Aviv, I thought I saw him. He was on a passing bus as I was pushing a baby carriage and shopping. His profile, so cherished and distinct when we were together, seemed unmistakable to me. I shouted his name and raised my hand to hail him, but he did not hear my voice. It was probably better for both of us, I reasoned. What would I say to him? How could I thank him for sacrificing happiness to bring back my life? Heaven had been so beautiful. Better heaven than life without Eben, I had thought in Oxford, and later, alone in London. But I was wrong. Life, even without the love of my life, was sweet. There was heaven here on earth as I held my baby in my arms.

  As the years passed, I wondered if Eben would recognize me if we ever met. Then I looked in the mirror and saw that my face had not changed in the years since he left me lying on the bed in the room in the Burleigh Inn that Christmas. My youth remained undimmed.

  I lived on, content without him as uncounted women have lived with loss for untold centuries. Our love was written in water. I had so longed for it to be written in stone. Again the words of Keats reminded me, “Fled is the music: do I wake or sleep?”