Resistance (25 page)
The wind blew up, and his eyes stung. He shoved the documents into his pocket and felt Claire's scarf. He left the book and the picture on the step where she had put them.
They walked for what seemed like hours, but what must have been, Ted calculated reasonably, not more than forty minutes. It was his leg that distorted time—that and the distance he was creating with each step between himself and Claire.
I am remembering you,
she said. Her throaty, low voice had lodged somewhere deep within him. He knew he would always be able to hear her.
But there was so much he would never know. A year from now, would she think of him? Would she one day have a child, two children—put the war and himself far behind her? Had she begun that process already to keep from going crazy?
Fou,
she had said. He tried to imagine her as a middle-aged woman, an old woman. Her gray eyes, he was certain, would never change. He tried to picture her with Henri—could not, would not.
They were traveling west. Southwest. Impossible to be sure. Perhaps they were walking all the way to France. The fields in the near-perfect dark were full of ruts and holes. Several times Ted stumbled, caught his balance. Occasionally, there were night sounds—the low calls of unfamiliar birds, a sense of creatures scurrying beside him. He began to imagine a small smile of satisfaction on Henri's face as the man took the American aviator farther and farther away from the Belgian farmhouse. Yet Henri too, he thought, had to be nearly comatose with exhaustion. Only Dussart, who had tried unsuccessfully to engage Henri in conversation, whistled tunes from time to time. He wondered why Henri would not chat with Dussart. Was there a kind of hierarchy within the Resistance that did not permit fraternization? Or did they simply have nothing in common except this mission?
The first signal was so brief, Ted thought it was a spot of light the eye had produced, the way straining into cloud could create tiny bright stars. But the second was unmistakable. The flash of a torch in a horizontal line, held at the height of a man's waist. A sole tree intersected the light at each pass. In the brief swathes of the signals, Ted could see finally the lay of the land—the hard furrows, the jutting pieces of straw.
Dussart murmured something to Henri, who answered him. Henri briefly put an arm in front of Ted, slowing his forward progress. They proceeded more cautiously now, inching toward the torch. Fifty feet from the source of the light, Henri called out a name or a word—Ted wasn't sure. A man answered briefly. Henri motioned for Ted to stop. The torch now swung away, cast a swift streak of light across a small, colorless car with a high roof. Dussart, in a quick anxious whisper, asked Henri a question. Henri answered curtly, dismissively. Dussart began to protest. Henri cut him off. In his ears, Ted felt again the desperate drumming. Beside him, Henri was removing an object from his pocket. The object crinkled faintly in the silence. Ted thought it must be cigarettes, and that Henri would offer him one before sending him off to France. Instead Henri reached for Ted's wrist, placed the object in Ted's palm. The object was flat and thin, wrapped in paper.
“Chocolat,
” Henri whispered beside him.
Confused, Ted held the bar of chocolate. What was it for?
Then Henri said distinctly the one anticipated word: “
Courage.
”
The shaft of light now made small circles on the ground, a continuous circle toward which Ted had to walk. Where would Claire be now? he wondered. Sitting at the table in the kitchen? Lying in her bed, listening to the night? Henri said again, in a low voice, the single word:
“Courage.”
Ted took a step forward, hesitated, took another. Where were the other aviators? He felt his way over the uneven terrain. Behind him, to his surprise, he heard the sound of retreating footsteps. Ted whirled around, wanted to call out to the fleeing figures. Why were they leaving him so soon? There were so many questions to ask. In the distance he could hear a dog barking. He turned back to look at the spot where the colorless car must still be. The car was his promise of freedom, wasn't it? The promise of a life as it was meant to be lived, on familiar soil? He laughed once in the dark. He looked at the steady movement of an unknown arm—the continuous circle of light on the dark ground. There was nowhere else to go.
W
HEN SHE PRESSED HER HAND TO THE STONE, THE PALM
came away wet. Sometimes she thought she could hear the water running down the walls.
A tiny rectangle, the size of a book, had been cut from the stones at the top of the outside wall. She sat on the hinged board that passed for a bed, wrapped her arms about her, and watched the dawn begin to illuminate the cell. She thought the light through the rectangle was different with each passing day—stronger, brighter—and that she could see a hint of color now: the fuzzy, yellow-pear of leaf buds. In the distance, as always, she heard the traffic of Antwerp, as people, miraculously, went about their business, unaware of or indifferent to the activities within these walls.
She heard the outer door to the corridor open noisily and then shut. There was the smart tread of boot heels; two pairs, and the slough of a body along the stone floor. At the sound of the boot heels, the women in the other cells started screaming—screams that were angry, or near madness, or simply trying to attract the attention of the guards. The metallic clatter of keys echoed throughout the block, and beyond the door a woman coughed. There was a sudden harsh light. They brought Odette into the cell.
Claire knelt, lifted the woman's head. Odette appeared to be still unconscious. She coughed once, and a quantity of blood spilled out onto her dirty shift.
Bastards, Claire whispered.
As gently as she could, for she did not know as yet what damage might have been done, she rolled the woman onto a blanket on the stone floor. She would have preferred to lift her onto the hinged bed, but until she regained consciousness that would be impossible.
In the dim light, Claire tried to inspect Odette's body. There were bruises upon bruises now. The mouth was badly cut; Claire put her fingers inside to feel for loose teeth. The woman, who had been rounded up in the raids on Louvain, had been with her for four days now. As best as Claire could tell, Odette had been a courier within the Partisans. She was only eighteen years old.
Odette coughed again, struggled, tried to sit up. Claire put a hand on her chest, pressed her down. “You're safe now. I’m here. Just rest.”
“Why are they Belgians?” the young woman from Louvain asked in a hoarse whisper.
That their torturers and interrogators were all Belgians had bewildered Claire, too. She had seen some of this in Delahaut—men who were willing collaborators; women who went with the German soldiers—but she had never seen anything like the insidious brutality that existed within these wails. Perhaps they did it for food and money, or out of fear of being beaten themselves. Many of the guards, she had discovered, were street criminals who'd been let go. Political prisoners were the maggots at the bottom of the pile—of lower status than even thieves and murderers.
Claire supposed that she herself should feel fortunate that her own beatings had not produced as much damage as was apparent on the young woman from Louvain. Claire had suffered several broken ribs, and she was now deaf in one ear, but she was still alive and had not vomited blood. The circular trap slid open. Claire lay Odette's head down on the blanket, went to collect the two cups of cold broth and the two slices of black bread from the tray. She set the food down beside her cellmate.
“Can you eat anything?” Claire asked.
The woman from Louvain shook her head. “But you take mine,” she said. “Don't let it go to waste.”
Claire carefully pulled her to the wall, propped her into a half-sitting position. She was afraid the woman might choke and drown if she lay on the cold floor much longer. She brought a washrag to the woman's face, wiped off the sweat and dirt there.
“What, what have they done to you?” Claire asked angrily.
Odette shook her head from side to side.
Beside her, Claire raised the tin cup to her own mouth. The broth smelled foul. As always, it was some form of cabbage soup, but other ingredients—chewy, unrecognizable items—were sometimes added. She forced herself to drink the liquid. She was afraid to give Odette anything to eat while the woman was coughing blood; yet Claire knew that if the woman did not eat even the foul rations they were given, she would lose what little strength she still had.
When Claire had finished the broth and bread, she leaned against the wall and held the woman's hand. Her own chest hurt. With her fingers, she massaged her rib cage, where the bones were knitting themselves together without having been properly set. She had not seen a doctor since entering the prison. Her thighs, beneath her thin shift, were only loose skin over bone. Her breasts still swelled slightly, and there was the small round abdomen, but the rest of her was shrinking. She wondered dispassionately—scientifically—if the body of a starving mother would die before the fetus inside her; or if the baby would die first, and then the mother later.
She felt the stiff tufts of Odette's hair. They had hacked off her own, too, and she was glad of this. In the beginning, they had yanked and dragged her by the hair so forcefully she was afraid they'd snap her neck. Now her hair stood out from her scalp in uneven, ragged hits. Bathing with the tiny square washrags and with the small ration of water they were given was difficult. She knew she smelled, as did the woman beside her. She wondered how the guards could stand it: all these foul and retching women; all these screaming women day and night. Perhaps it was a kind of punishment for the guards. She fervently hoped so.
Today they were taking her east to Ravensbrück, but they wouldn't tell her why. The interrogations and the beatings had stopped some weeks ago, and there had been no explanation for that either. Since she had been in the Old Antwerp Prison, she had heard terrible stories about Ravensbrück, but it was hard for her to imagine it could be worse than what she was living through. In any event, she reasoned, they were bound to see daylight on the journey, either en route or when they got there. She badly needed to see the light.
Odette started forward. She seemed to be trying to flee. Claire restrained her, held her arms. “It's all right. You're with me. You're safe now.”
The young woman, Claire knew, was terrified of the beatings. There was no respite: When you slept, you had them in your dreams. The first days were the worst.
“Did they tie you to a chair?” the woman asked. Her voice wasn't much above a whisper.
“Yes.”
“And they beat you then?”
“Yes.”
“No matter how you answered the questions?”
“Yes.”
“Why are they still doing this? I’ve given them all the names.”
“I don't know.”
They had come for Claire near dawn. SD officers in black coats and peaked caps. A Wehrmacht truck outside. She'd fallen asleep at the kitchen table, and when they broke the door, bellowing loudly in her ears and dragging her across the floor by her hair, there'd been no thought of escape. No thought at all, so great was her disorientation. They shouted questions at her incessantly, toppled tins from their shelves. They kicked her out the door so that she fell onto the dirt. They shoved her into a truck. A convoy to Antwerp. Inside were other villagers, their heads bent, some clutching children. Some weeping. No one dared to speak to her.
That night, when Henri and Dussart had taken Ted, she had sat at the kitchen table, wrapped her arms around herself and finally wept. The unthinkable becomes the thinkable, he'd said. She'd sent the American pilot away as she'd known she must. She did it with her silence.
She remembered walking toward Henri from the truck in a kind of stumbling trance. She'd thought, even before she reached her husband: I’ll tell him now. But when she stood in front of Henri, and put her hand on his arm, she'd looked into his eyes. There was something different there. It was Henri, and yet it was not the Henri she had known. And then she'd been frightened.
It was over then, she thought.
He promised her they would get the American out at once. She was urgent, frantic. It had already been arranged, he said. He just needed Dussart. They must not find the American with them, she said to her husband, when what she really meant was: They must not find the American at all.
Ted.
She thought of the color of his eyes, that shimmery green. She thought of the way the small of his back never touched a chair. She remembered his smile and could hear his voice, but she could no longer remember what it felt like to make love with him. She wondered if, as the flesh left you, the pleasurable sensations of the flesh left you as well. Or if this inability to feel was merely protective. That if you could remember, the memory would be intolerable.
That night, they'd taken her in the truck to Antwerp, where the beatings had begun immediately. When she emerged from the convoy into the light, a guard had hit her ear so hard she spun to the ground. She'd been dragged into the prison, where the new arrivals all stood in two lines facing each other—men on one side, women on the other. An officer told them all to undress right there. The shame of that moment still haunted her, despite all that had happened since then.
The days that followed seemed to have no sequence. Fifty days, sixty days—even now she couldn't be sure. No one knew precisely the date. Some thought it March; others thought it already April. In the corridors, with the screams, Claire sometimes heard news: The Partisans in Charleroi had been decimated; the Americans were at Anzio.
At first, there was no night, no day; there were no regular meals and no events that were at all familiar to her. All that she knew was that she was taken to a room, tied to a chair, and asked the same questions, over and over—asked about the same names, over and over. Except for Antoine's name, and Dussart's, Claire did not truthfully know any others. But as the days wore on, as the beatings became more severe, the names blurred together, and sometimes she said yes when yes was not the correct answer, and sometimes she said no, even to her husband's name. She waited for them to say Ted's name, but they never did. She didn't like to think about what that might mean. Had he been caught? Was he dead already? Oddly, through all of this, they did not ask her about anyone she had hidden in her home. She kept the secret of the attic room.