But oh, what a thing is a demon! Could I honestly call my feelings toward Kate Begley “neutral”? Thus ran the argument in my mind. But at least I had begun a useful debate with myself, and one based on kindness. It didn’t do me much good.
90
Monday, 20 November 1944: Lovely to see Claudia again. She was so helpful, and gave me a letter of introduction to General Montgomery, who’s with the English army in Holland, and may be moving into Belgium and would love a soldier like Charles. I said, “Wasn’t he born in Ireland?” Claudia laughed and said, “Please don’t mention that to him.”
Claudia and I had a long talk. She told me many things about the war. Her great friend is the American ambassador in London, and she sent a letter to him while I was with her to get me introductions inside the U.S. Army too. She also showed me a report (I don’t think she should have shown it to me) about Charles and his unit.
I think that Claudia has been much more involved in the war than I guessed. Ben always said that she was probably part of a secret network; Ben may be right. I wish that boy would take more credit for his cleverness. I went to the ladies’ room and when I came back, Claudia was standing in front of Ben and holding both his hands.
Monday night, 20 November 1944: Hull, a town in the east of England: We are stuck in this damp hotel, to which we stumbled from the train in the pouring rain. What a day! Very early, KB dragged me to see Claudia at the Ritz Hotel, and Claudia behaved as though we were her long-lost children.
When she heard of our “mission,” as she called it, she took us away from her office to a much more private set of rooms and began to talk to us. I didn’t get the impression that she thought Captain Miller was dead, but, as she said, How would she know where he might be? She tried and tried to dissuade us, but no argument worked with Miss B.
I asked her how safe we would be if we found ourselves behind the German lines, and she said that we should spend time “out in the countryside among the people”—exactly the same advice as Mr. Seefeld. She said that being Irish and neutral would probably help, but if we’d like to think about it, we could also be very useful. She was going to “send some messages.” I knew what that meant, and I didn’t like the sound of it at all.
KB went for everything gleefully. I wonder if, deep down, she suspects that Captain Miller is dead, and wants us—or herself—to die too. Death wishes are strange things; the sanest of people can have them. And, with her rampaging sentimentality, she may want us to die in battle—but I’m not ready for that sort of sacrifice. I don’t want to be here, and I don’t want to go there.
Claudia asked me to come and stay with her on our way back if we’re coming through London again. She believes that the war will end very soon, and perhaps after that I might like to visit her in her country home.
Tuesday, 21 November 1944: The night is as dark as can be. If I look out my window I can’t see as much as a glimmer. Ben is in the next room sulking. I haven’t told him about today’s telegram; we are to sail on tomorrow’s second tide to Bremerhaven.
Claudia has suggested that I get to a village “southwest of Bonn,” she said, “because that’s where the Allies will be breaking through,” and she thinks it “possible that Charles would likely be working around there.” I’ve looked at the map.
Ben is going to say, “How in the name of God are we going to get down that far?” Claudia has assured me that we will be “handed on,” she calls it, “from person to person. You may have to carry some things, but it will be all right.” She is such a decent woman. We’ll become good friends. I’ve changed my mind about the English, and I now begin to like them a lot more.
91
November 1944
In the hold of the ship, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Then somebody clicked something and a light swung like a lantern from a legend. Great stacks of cargo in sacking permitted only narrow corridors; we walked sideways, heads low. This might have been a passage grave. Perhaps it will become one, I thought.
Aft, embedded in the stern, two false stacks had been built. Into one of these they fitted Miss Begley; the other took me. I had room to stand, crouch, and sit. They gave me a flashlight. Under the door they slid a white sheet of paper. As long as that stayed there, we could leave our stowaway place and walk around every two hours.
A Dutch sailor with a fantastic mustache said, “God will protect you. Our cargo is Bibles.” He laughed at his own sarcasm. They had been carrying Bibles all through the war, into Holland and Germany and Scandinavia; they’re printed in the east of England. I now know that the Bibles contained messages for resistance groups all over Europe.
We sailed on Wednesday afternoon. As instructed, we remained in our “lockers,” they called them, until we heard three quick toots on the ship’s foghorn. I was first out—and regretted it. Within minutes, my forehead went clammy and my eyes began to swim.
Seasickness was invented by Satan’s teacher. I went above to heave over the rail. The Able-Bodied Mustache ran at me. “No-no. Nobody knows, nobody knows you’re here.” The mustache made him hiss like a gander.
He took me back below. “Use the bilges,” he said. “If you fear the smell, use the aft bilges. This ship is modern, we have bilges in the holds too, they drain out here.”
At that moment, the ship heaved as though struck. I almost screamed. She heaved again, and took what I thought a heavy blow on the hull near where I stood.
“Sandbanks,” said Able-Bodied Mustache. “Rough here.”
The night blew up into a catastrophe of weather, pounding waves, and seasickness. Miss Begley emerged once or twice, hale as day and mildly impatient.
“I can’t write my notebook,” she said—her first words to me in several days. “But Liberty in every blow, let us Do or Die. Things will soon be easier.”
I returned to my locker and, some undetermined time later, woke up amazed that I had slept. It took a moment or two to understand that the ship wasn’t moving. The white paper had gone from beneath the door. Not a light to be seen; not a sound in the hold.
Above, heavy boots trod. Were we being boarded? Would men with prods and guns come down looking for nefarious matter?
I learned later that we’d met no trouble; the pilot had come aboard.
92
On the corner stood a tobacco shop, a large window on each side, one of which carried handwritten cards, local notices, advertisements, funny drawings of a brass band. In the other window stood tall ceramic jars from exotic lands beside racks of pipes, some beautiful, some carved with ugly, jocose faces. I went in, not to buy tobacco (though I asked for a box of matches), but to take the temperature of Bremen.
The tobacconist, tall as a flagpole, and not a blade of hair, asked something in German. I held out a gesture of incompetence. He switched to English.
“You are Scottish?”
When I disabused him, he smiled and said, “Ah, the Irish. Many jokes. And big, big”—he made a drinking gesture.
I admired his shop. He reached under the counter into an unseen drawer and drew out a gorgeous, mahogany box.
“See?”
He opened the lid like a man at a ceremony. Resting on burgundy velvet cushions sat two curved pipes, as creamy as wealth.
“Meerschaum,” he said. “The very best.” Like bleached little pigs they spooned up to each other, their amber collars catching the light. “I do not want them bombed. This war”—and he cut loose.
“If only the generals would listen to our Führer. But they won’t. The Führer, he would not have us in the pickle we are now.”
I said, “Who do you think is winning?”
He said, “We’ve been taking the bad times. But the Führer, he knows what to do.”
“You yourself—have you fought?”
“I lost the leg,” he said, tapping his right hip. “In the last war. I didn’t want to lose the other. Or anything else off me.”
“Herr Hitler—what kind of man is he?”
&nb
sp; The tobacconist looked down at me; he must have been six foot six. Not so much a flagpole as a lighthouse, with his bald shiny head and the beam of his green, watery eyes.
“He is being the savior. They cheat us at the last war. We would won. And they take everything from us. We are treated the dirt. Even though we are stronger. When the war goes away—pouf! All we had—it is all the dirt. The Führer, he have us get back what we owned, have us get back our pride. He is the God. There is no other.”
“A powerful leader. We have one too in Ireland.”
He showed no interest. “But—” He waxed. “The leaders with him. They are such men too. They are handsome. And great. Poor Heydrich, the genius of them all, and the anarchist kill him. And we have Herr Rommel, my own very the hero. Their wonderful uniforms.”
“Is Germany safe now? I mean, safe to travel.”
“For you, mein Herr—we love Irish. Is your papers good?”
I showed him my passport; he scrutinized it like a balance sheet. Then he stood to attention like the old soldier that he was.
“Mein Herr, it is our honor that you visit us. To come here in war, that tells you like us.”
He refused payment for the matches; he gave me two boxes—in wartime, a singular compliment.
Monday, 27 November 1944: Noon; I sit at the kitchen table in this little house in some German village somewhere; KB prowls, restless. I haven’t seen her so anxious for some time. A man came to the door; we leave here at three.
Monday, 27 November 1944: Later we go south, and I know, I know that I draw nearer to Charles. Ben reports that the streets are quiet and ordinary. He met a German gentleman who gave him a different view of the war. Our driver will be here in one hour. I am packed and ready to go.
Tuesday, 28 November 1944: Late night; not a roadblock yesterday or today. Not a trace of war. We saw planes once, flying east. In a village, ten military trucks stood parked by the railroad station. And that was all. We stayed last night in a small town called Visbek. Nobody met us. Food waited on the kitchen table. The beds upstairs felt surprisingly dry in such a cold house. The rooms contain almost no furniture. Tomorrow, we will be picked up at eight and taken to the next staging post. It’s to be a very long drive, “more than all day,” the man told KB. She gets more and more excited.
93
December 1944
On a quiet road somewhere, as we stretched our legs and relieved ourselves in the woodland, a new driver took over, the strong, silent type; he wore blue dungarees. Many hours south of there, another driver in another van took over from him, a man old as my father.
He tried to give me a gun: I handed it back. He froze me for a moment. I thought he might attack, but he laughed.
When they finally put us down, we’d come to a village deep in farming country, where a furtive man met us. Our “cover,” he told us, in excellent English, was that of my job; I would take notes of German rural life in time of war. The local authorities had been informed by the university at Bonn that I was there under a grant from them, in association with the Folklore Commission back in Dublin.
Somebody, somewhere, had been working hard. I suspected Claudia. Had I been the German police, I would have found it all very far-fetched. But the furtive man told us, “The authorities are very stupid.”
Not so stupid. They wasted no time. Midafternoon, we heard the engine outside. Three men walked to the door, one in uniform, all in their fifties. The younger ones are all at war, I thought, as they hammered the door knocker.
Nothing friendly; they demanded our papers. One spoke perfect English; all came from the local police station.
After no more than a few minutes of questions and answers, they directed us to the large gray car outside. I had to sit beside the uniformed one, the driver; the two plainclothes detectives flanked Miss Begley; we drove with not a word.
Our journey lasted three minutes, perhaps less. We halted outside the village police station, white as a wooden church. No defensive installations of any kind could I see. They expect to win this war, I thought.
Grim, not discourteous, yet intent, they separated us. I saw Miss Begley disappear down a corridor; they took me to a windowless room and left me alone.
In time, the English speaker returned. He brandished my Irish passport.
“Are you a spy?”
“For whom?” I said, more reaction than answer.
“You are an official of the Irish government?” He must have lived in England, or gone to school there; he spoke better English than I did.
“I’m a folklore collector.”
“So you say.” This man was not holding a slack rope.
“Yes, that’s what I am.”
“But not in Germany? You don’t even speak German.”
“Miss Begley does. She’s my cousin and my interpreter.”
“She’s married to an American officer.”
I all but swallowed my tongue—how did they know that?
“Not now.”
He looked at me, angry. “Eh?”
I said, “He’s dead.”
“How do you know?”
“She won’t tell you that. I’m the one who’s telling you.”
“Please explain.” He was one of those men who seem intelligent, sound intelligent, and are in part intelligent, but the part doesn’t spread very wide or go very deep.
“I’m writing a report on matchmaking in rural communities. I’ll compare it with Ireland. I made her travel. She’ll do some matchmaking here, and I’ll observe her.”
He repeated himself with the obstinacy of all limited people. “Her husband is an American officer.”
“One of your special operatives killed him,” I said. “Check up on it.”
“I will. Give me the details,” and he pulled out his notebook, and yes, he had a little stub of a pencil, just like the Irish police.
He certainly had some knowledge because he spelled the word Fauville without hesitation. Twice he left the room, and on each occasion came back with documents in files, and German newspapers. Soon, he showed some relaxation with me, and said that although he would have to wait “for direct knowledge of events in Fauville,” he did grasp that I couldn’t otherwise have known.
I said, “She doesn’t believe that her husband is dead.”
He looked at me. “Haven’t you told her?”
I said, being careful, “And the American embassy in Dublin gave her no comfort. None.”
“So why is she here?”
“I’ve persuaded her—her German and French are good enough—to try her hand at matchmaking here. It will give me excellent notes. And she has this idea that if the war ends soon, she may meet her husband over here in Germany.”
People who have partial intelligence will always climb on the bandwagon of a theory. Even if—perhaps especially if—it’s cockeyed and half-baked.
He said, “We have a winter fair on Sunday. In the village. Your friend could set up a booth.”
I nodded, rubbed my hands. “Good idea. And you will be able to see us at work. We are real,” I said to him.
Nothing convinces dim people more than a bald statement of one’s own authenticity.
They took us back and placed us under a kind of house arrest—but at least we could talk. Kate fretted; they’d asked her at great length about her husband; she’d answered as though he would at any moment leap through a hedge and take over the village. Somehow our two stories worked—hers the real version, and mine the fake. What’s the lesson in that? I wondered.
And on Sunday afternoon, they took us to the village hall. We had no choice; our English-speaking detective arrived to lead us there. The detective’s wife, all braids and bonhomie, would be Miss Begley’s interpreter when she needed one. And I, notebook poised, would sit by, ready to make copious notes in my performance as a traveling folklore collector.
Earlier on Sunday, with a man in uniform never far behind, I took a walk through the village, past the houses of brick wal
ls and white wood, so neat, so ordered. Policed or not, I loved being there; my mind ran free. A light sun was breaking through the overcast; the villagers had cleared pathways through the snow.
This was the land of logical thought, of measured rhythm, of people who descend from Teutonic legends—the country of Wagner and Beethoven, and of my beloved wandering men, all Latin rhymes and medieval passions, whose words so often gave me such hope. Come sweetheart, come, dear as my heart to me, come to the room that I have made lovely for thee.
Followed by a man who would shoot me without a second thought; watched by village eyes from behind lace curtains; voices whispering There he is, the Irishman, the spy—I didn’t care. One of the things I learned about war is, there will come a time when nothing much seems to matter.
94
The hall seemed far too large for such a small village. Whatever its recent economy, this place had once had a rich hinterland. At the end of an aisle stood a small medieval pavilion, the kind they used in King Arthur’s jousting fields. Its patched red and yellow canvas walls made a grand splash of color in the dimly lit building. How improbable could this get?
A great deal more, I felt—because I’d already seen the face of war and I knew that if their armies retreated across these fields, drawing the Allies in pursuit, the people talking and laughing in this village hall would soon undergo the same shattering kind of experience that we’d known in France. Until that occurred, they wanted to get on with their normal lives, holding their annual pre-Christmas fair. They had sideshows, and a stilt walker, and a band. “Normal life” was what they needed now, and my guess was that they wouldn’t have it for long more.
The faces around us had a medieval look, some noses red with the cold, others lumpy as potatoes. We could have been in a painting by Brueghel or Averkamp. Wide smiles didn’t always show perfect teeth; some hair braids shone so yellow that they might have been painted; many wore clogs.