I stroked the glossy flanks of my horse, as only my touch could assure me that he was real. Yet just as quickly my joy dissolved. His deliverance was not a gift to be relished, for we were leaving, and once again I could not take him with me.
“Where is Gabrielle?” the old man asked. “I would like to see her once more.”
And then I knew what I should do, for it was the only hope.
“And so you shall,” I said, and I fumbled in my pocket for every Vichy franc I still possessed. I grasped his hand and stuffed them into his palm. “She is nearby, at the convent of Meulan. Please, take him to her there.”
“I cannot,” he protested, shaking his matted white hair. “We barely survived this trip without his being thieved from me.”
“Tell anyone who troubles you, that this horse is the private property of Colonel Erich Himmel of the Waffen SS.” I squeezed the money in his fist. “I beg of you, mon aîné.”
The old man considered this, and shaking his head sadly, he stuffed my francs into his pocket. “As you wish.” He shrugged, and Blitzkrieg turned and looked at me with blazing accusations in his eyes, as he was led away again into the darkness.
It was not long before the Commando was ready. Himmel strode from the château and formed them up, yet I heard none of his battlefield encouragements. My eyes sought out my horse, gone to where I longed to go, and then the men were on the trucks and Himmel ordered Friedrich to hold them up at Thiberville and wait for our arrival. The lorries rolled away, leaving only a cloud of diesel smoke drifting through the empty tents. And then, only Edward and I were left, and the Colonel instructed us to load the Kübelwagen and keep it running in the drive, and to wait with it there.
We sat together in the car, side by side in silence. The engine warmed our feet as the chill of rising dawn turned the night to foggy gray, and the birds in the trees chirped urgently before the certain rumbles of artillery would silence them. It seemed an hour passed, though certainly much less, and I knew my love for Gabrielle had bricked up a wall between the corporal and myself. Edward had no more fear of death than any man, yet this secret threatened him in ways far worse than that, and I was not sure if his silence stemmed from rage, or from regret. We smoked, and a light rain hunched our shoulders, and Edward sighed as his gloved fingers tapped the steering wheel.
“You think you love her, Shtefan,” he whispered at last.
I looked at him. “I know I do.”
He nodded. “Then forget her, for now.”
“I cannot.”
“It is a selfish thing, this love. Like his for her.”
The comparison jabbed me deeply.
“This coming battle will be hard,” he continued. “Unlike any other. Survive it first, then think of her. Not tomorrow, but in a year perhaps.” He turned and looked at me fully. “Our Colonel’s lust for her will fade. He is a man of conquest, not maintenance.”
I knew that he was right, yet I could not bear the logic of patience, and I was certain that his reasoning was born of ignorance.
“Edward, you have no idea what he is planning.”
“Oh yes, I do.” His smile was a grimace. “Our Colonel is a professional, remember. He never trusts his plans to only one.”
I settled in my seat, my bones aching, my spirit exhausted by it all.
“He cannot pull this off, Edward,” I said.
“Really?” Edward scoffed and drew a long draft from his cigarette. “Have you ever seen him fail?”
It was then I heard the music. The château was distant now, there well beyond the broken stone gate, yet the sound was unmistakable. The vibrant tones of Himmel’s favorite waltz once more crackled from his gramophone, shivering the château windows and wafting across the garden. Edward’s eyes met mine, our squints questioning beneath our furrowed brows, and then we heard the gunshot.
I sat straight up and stiff and flicked my head around, and I felt Edward’s hand grip my forearm. My heart thundered as I wondered. No escort had in fact arrived to take Frau Himmel home, and had she somehow gleaned my master’s plot and purpose? Had she in her panic and her fury done him in? I pulled away and leaped from the car and sprinted for the château, ignoring Edward’s warning snap of “No!”
My boot soles pounded the driveway as I ran, sending sprays of pebbles up as the château grew and trembled in my bouncing vision. The strains of Himmel’s waltz swelled, and the lantern light flickered in the windows as I stumbled up the entrance stairs and gripped the handles of the double doors. But they were locked, and I stamped back and stared at them in shock, and when just about to pound the heavy wood with both my fists, I suddenly retreated and looked about. There was a servants’ entrance around one corner of the house, providing a slim dark stairway to the second floor and bedchambers above, and more than once I’d silently escaped this way from the château’s gloom for breaths of summer air. Crouching low, I hurried to the building’s flank. The door was open.
The stairway was in deepest shadow, and I felt my way along its wall as I rose on tiptoes, breathing hoarsely, my hand fumbling to unlatch my pistol holster, though I had no precise motive for my weapon. My ears were pricked up and sweat beaded on my brow beneath my cap as the music ballooned and echoed, and at last I reached the polished wooden catwalk high above the salon, and I crawled on hands and knees to the balustrade and gripped the upright rails with trembling fingers.
My breath caught in my chest, my pupils soaking in the scene below. Some windows had been thrown open, their soiled curtains waving in the breeze like the pale arms of ballerinas. The lantern flames upon the dining table bowed and fluttered in the air, and upon my master’s desk sat every document and map and missive I had so carefully compiled since the day of my arrival to his charge. The piles skewed this way and that, overflowing down onto the carpet, and from there my eyes flicked to the dining table’s top. A bottle of burgundy lay on its side, its contents seeping out a flood onto the wood, and there it ran in rivulets, dripping from the edge onto a pair of shoeless feet below. I could not see Frau Himmel’s corpse, for most of her lay underneath the table, yet beside her crisscrossed heels, a single bullet casing gleamed atop the carpet’s fur.
The waltz was deafening now, the platter spinning on the gramophone below, its brass arm gently undulating up and down with the warping of the wax. I hunched down low as Colonel Himmel came into my view, appearing from the kitchen, a cigar clenched firmly in his mouth, its ember glowing fiercely. I could see that he was humming, his shoulders slowly spinning within the music’s rhythm, his knee-high jackboots scraping leather as he danced. And cradled in his arms as gently as the loveliest of partners was a ten-liter jerrycan of petrol, its contents spurting and spilling from the spout. It spit onto the mounds of papers on his desk, and then the polished face of the dining table, and even onto the black and white piano keys as he passed. My master’s movements were interrupted only once with each full orbit of the salon, as he encountered Frau Himmel’s gunshot-stiffened legs. Yet this seemed not to disturb the Colonel, as he simply added a small leap to his waltz to negotiate the corpse. Oh yes, he was very graceful, my master.
I scuttled in reverse, the nausea boiling in my gullet, and in the dark I missed a stairwell step and tumbled out to fall into the yard. I staggered quickly to the car and fell into my seat, but I could not speak to Edward. He stared at me and gripped my tunic, wanting desperately to know, yet I managed but to shake my head, and all my efforts went to breathing and fighting a rising swoon.
I trembled in my seat as boot heels clicked upon the driveway pebbles. The Kübelwagen’s door flew open and Himmel piled in behind us, while our eyes stayed straight ahead and locked into the morning sky. The fire burst to life and roared then, the sound of cracking windows clear, as tongues of flame leaped out to eat the house. Yet I only clenched my teeth and wished that I were deaf. I saw the Colonel’s hand clamp down upon Edward’s shoulder
.
“To the convent at Meulan,” he ordered, his voice betraying nothing but resolve for new adventures. “And be quick,” he added. “I would hate to be late for my own wedding.”
XIV
ON THE ELEVENTH of June in 1944, there were no more cruelties left for me to fear.
The Colonel’s car raced quickly over fields just breathing morning fog, their rolling grasses smashed and scabbed by the crisscross tracks of tanks. Some trees we passed seemed whole and healthy, while others looked no more than leg bones shattered at the thigh. There were untouched country houses on the plains, and just as many broiled black and flat. The sun was rising in the east, beyond the distant roofs of Paris that rose and dipped behind the knolls, but the sky was blistered still with rain clouds, tossing steaming drizzle on our engine hood.
I sat there in that rumbling vehicle, my slackened jaw just bobbing with each bounce, my mind and body paralyzed as if by serpent’s venom. I could not fathom how I’d come here, to be the man I was, a servant to a murderer, a conspirator in carnage. And still this whirlpool twisted ever quick, taking me to deeper levels of calamity, for soon the only thing I loved would be branded like a calf.
His, forever.
Mine, never.
My vision blurred with slowly blinding rage, as within my brain I saw the truth so clearly. He knew me very well, my master. He understood the weak and wanting fiber of my being. He toyed with me, as would a boy with a soldier puppet, loving and abusing it, wondering at its breaking points. He had taken me through fire, to see how much I’d singe, and he had dangled a bauble before my eyes, to watch me swallow my own drool. I was certain now that he knew I loved her, and that to him such suffering was but another test. He forged my metal in fires of his own concoction, and wondered when I would finally turn, to become him.
I wanted so to turn just then, to draw my pistol and shoot him more than once. Yet I had in fact learned much from Colonel Himmel, and such an impulsive unplanned deed would fail his trials, and no doubt be deflected by some parry. Oh, yes, I certainly would shoot him, but only after he had signed for every crime. I’d grit my teeth and witness this foul wedding, and I would help him steal his fortune. And only then would I make my Gabrielle a widow, and snatch our future from the rigored fist of this thief of hearts and honor.
The convent soon appeared upon a gentle hilltop, its modest stone church like a brown nipple on a wide and muddy breast of gnarled grapevines. Behind the church, the wooden convent squatted, more like a soldiers’ barracks than the quarters of the holy. A rutted road snaked left and right directly to the apse, and already in the vineyard female figures bent to trim the stems, their cloaks and hoods disguising any features but their weather-beaten hands. Edward drove the Kübelwagen quickly up the road, as if he too wanted to be done with this and gone, and the engine’s roar made starlings flutter from the bushes, but no sister turned her face to acknowledge our intrusion.
We stopped before the church’s steps and Himmel vaulted to the ground, slapping the grit from his uniform with his gloves. From somewhere I heard the neighing of a horse, the snap of bridle leather as he strained against some hitch, and I was glad I could not see him as his nostrils flared with my scent upon the wind. The Colonel, hands behind his back, strode for the church’s wooden door as Edward elbowed me, snapping me from my stupor. I exited the car, my knees trembling, my breaths coming shallow and quick.
The door opened and a priest emerged. He wore a rough farmer’s trousers and a heavy brown jacket, his high white collar tight beneath his dangling neck folds. Upon his head sat a wide straw hat, with tufts of silver hair curling from the band, and from his neck hung a black bead rosary and an olive wood cross, which he slowly fingered, as if greeting a vampire.
“Bonjour, mon père.” Himmel nodded.
“Bonjour, mon Colonel,” said the priest. He waited, knowing that an SS officer would soon reveal the reason for his visit.
“We are here for the wedding,” said Himmel.
“Really?” The father raised a bushy eyebrow. “And might I ask whose wedding that would be?”
“Mine,” said Himmel. He bounded up the stairs and strode into the church, and I felt Edward’s hand against my back, and we followed.
As with all churches, this one seemed much larger from within. Its nave was high and braced with stout black beams, like the ribs of an ancient sailing vessel, and its floor was polished plank with rows of waxed slat pews, embracing a single aisle. The walls of its clerestory were of cold stone, within which stained-glass windows rose, barely broader than archers’ slits. There were no lanterns here, but morning light lanced down in perfect blades upon a simple podium, behind which a wooden Christ hung his thorned head from a bone-white crucifix upon the farthest wall.
“Perfect,” Himmel said, and his comment echoed as he stood there at the center, looking up at a god who no doubt he had rejected as a child. The priest had followed us inside, and Himmel turned to him with a gentle smile.
“Please fetch the girl called Gabrielle.”
The priest had removed his hat, his white hair askew in wispy tufts. He shrugged and pursed his lips in apology.
“I am afraid I do not know...”
“The new one,” said Himmel. “Blonde and beautiful, from the south.”
The priest stepped forward, his light eyes crinkling in innocence as he raised his hands to the sides.
“My Colonel, you know I cannot marry you to a sister of this order.”
And quick as lightning, Himmel’s pistol was out and cocked, its cold blue barrel pressed against the father’s forehead. I was standing now just behind my master’s left shoulder, and my hand sought out and gripped the back of a pew to steady myself. Edward was behind the priest, and he deftly moved aside. We had both previously witnessed Himmel’s respect for the clergy.
“Do you have a mother superior here?” Himmel asked.
“Yes.” The priest’s legs were trembling.
“Then if you cannot perform the rite, I am quite certain she can manage it.”
The priest swallowed.
“Fetch the girl, if you please.” Himmel’s pistol barrel stretched the father’s skin. The priest sighed, stepped back, and turned for the door, and the Colonel called after him. “And Father, I suggest you urge her to comply, rather than run. Your convent looks like firewood, to me.”
The door closed quietly, and my master laughed a bit and shook his head. He strode among the pews, chose one and sat, crossing his jackboots upon the one in front. He pulled a fresh cigar from his tunic pocket, looked at it and put it back, apparently deciding there were limits to his sacrilege.
“You might like to take this opportunity to pray, gentlemen,” he called out.
I looked at Edward, and he at me, and we retreated to some deeper pews and sat, though not together. He rolled his eyes and I closed mine, dropping my head into darkness. Yet I could not pray, for I no longer believed in any helping hand from heaven. Surely a million souls had prayed with all their might these years, their entreaties unanswered even at the precipice of death pits. I knew these nuptials were meaningless, this wedding of a Nazi atheist to a Jewess in the house of Christ, yet the looming ceremony screamed at me to stop it. And still, a showing of my courage now would have but one result, the choosing of my grave here in this convent, perhaps a tomb where Gabrielle and I would at last hold hands once more, in death. My teeth ached as I ground them in anguish, and then indeed I prayed to the imagined spirits of my Catholic father and Jewish great-grandmother, who might somehow hear me here and haul me through these minutes.
Another door creaked open, and from a darkened corner of the church’s front the priest returned. He was dressed now in sacramental robes, white cotton flowing to his feet. Behind him Gabrielle came next, followed by twelve sisters of the order, all cloaked in black, their snowy chapeaus raised like feathered wingti
ps.
Himmel jumped up from his pew, his boot heels snapping on the wooden floor.
“Ahhh!” he exclaimed. “And a righteous audience, to boot!”
He marched straight for Gabrielle, who stood there stiff and rooted to the spot. She was wearing an umber mourning cloak, and as he reached out and swept her hood away, her blond hair flowed upon her shoulders. My heart hammered in my throat as I saw her, and the priest and nuns turned their heads away as Himmel kissed her on both flushed cheeks.
“Erich,” she stammered, and her wide eyes flicked to me quickly, and back to him. “What are you doing?”
“I am making you an honest woman.” He chuckled. “Only one of us can be an eternal sinner.”
He took her by the wrist and walked her to the podium. The sisters filed past and sat into the pews, kneeling on their benches, clutching rosaries and bowing their heads. The priest shuffled up to Christ and whispered to him, his back turned to this blasphemy.
“No, Erich.” Gabrielle twisted her wrist within Himmel’s powerful grip. “Not like this.”
He snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her to him hard. “Nothing could be more perfect than this, my love.”
She shook her head. She looked around in utter panic. Her eyes met mine, yet I only closed them tight against the tears that threatened. I tried to will my brain to scream to her in silence, Just do it! It means nothing! Yet I heard her cry out thinly.
“Why here? Why now?”
“You may begin, Father,” Himmel ordered the priest, though now his voice held no further patience.
“Non, mon père!” Gabrielle pleaded to the father, and then again to Himmel. “Why can’t we wait?”
He ignored her, and then he knelt, pulling her down to her knees beside him.
“Aber deine Frau! But your wife!” she whispered urgently in German, yet some sisters raised their heads, understanding all too well.
“It’s all right.” He smiled at her. “I am a widower now.” And he took her face in his hands and kissed her roughly, and I knew that this was it. She would explode, she would run, she would scream for help from me and it would all end right here in this place with rage and gunfire. I snapped my head to Edward, but he was already rushing past me up the aisle. My hand fumbled for my holster, my palm dripping slippery sweat across the leather as Edward touched his fingers to the Colonel’s shoulder.
The Soul of a Thief Page 20
