After we are seated, Callie says, “I called Mom.”
“How did she react?”
“She was beside herself.”
“I’m not surprised,” I say. “She’ll get over it.”
Callie waits for the waiter to take our order, then says, “I can’t believe how luxurious this hotel is. What made you choose it?”
“I’ve been here before.”
“With Élodie?”
“No. We were ships passing in the night in those days. She had been here before me, but by the time I got here, she was in France. I came to a few dances they held here for service men.”
“Tell me about the dances. Did you meet British women?”
I chuckle and say, “Oversexed, overpaid, and over here.”
Callie laughs. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That’s what the Brits said about American soldiers who went after their women. But we had an answer. We said they were underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower.”
“You were like high school boys insulting each other.”
“We were young.”
“Did you … did you hook up with any of the British women?” A mischievous smile comes to her lips.
“I came mostly for the music. There was a band leader named Lew Stone. He played a strange instrument called a novachord. It had a keyboard and all sorts of electronic stuff like vacuum tubes and capacitors and such. And they played—”
“It sounds like what we call today a synthesizer,” Callie says. “And it sounds like you’re regurgitating a bunch of irrelevant details to avoid answering my question.”
“I’m not saying anything about British women. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
The waiter appears with the raisin scones and Keemun Mao Feng black tea we ordered. When he leaves, Callie asks, “When was the last time you saw her?”
I nibble on my scone, take a sip of the tea, and finally say, “The last time I saw her, she was climbing a mountain path to meet up with another group of children. I had broken my ankle and was in no shape to go with her.” It’s strange how memory works! Just then, when I nibbled on my scone, I flashed on a memory of Mitzi—how, that one time, I took the smallest possible bite when she offered to share her madeleine with me.
“A group of children? You’ve alluded to children before. Please, Papa, tell me about the children.”
I take a deep breath and say, “Yes. The children. But first I must tell you how I … Élodie and I … came to meet the children. I suppose to go back to the beginning, it really started when I climbed aboard a plane in England ready to jump into France on D-Day ….”
I told her how I was wounded on the way down and how I missed the drop zone and how I was cared for by Élodie and how we traveled south and how we came upon the aftermath of what happened at Oradour-sur-Glane.”
“Oh, my god!” Callie puts down her teacup with a rattle.
“And I suppose that changed everything,” I say. “Élodie damn near lost it. For a little while she was so deranged with anger, she could have shot her way through to Berlin and personally lined up Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Goebbels, and Keitel and mowed them all down. I think the only thing that saved her was the children.”
“And you?”
“Perhaps.” I go on to tell her how Élodie and I met the children in Aquilac. How Odette Dupont introduced us to Mitzi and the others. And I name them all.
Callie looks at me in amazement. She puts a hand over mine. “After seventy years, you remember all their names?”
“Uhm hmm. Yes.” I look down at my folded hands. I can almost see them. I can almost see them as they are standing in the bed of the truck in Esterri d’Àneu.
“Do you ever wonder what happened to them?”
“All the time. I even tried to track them down after the war, but everything was so confused. There were displaced persons all over the continent.”
“But I thought you said they ended up in England.”
“Probably only for a short time. The idea of the U.N. group responsible for post-war displaced persons was to repatriate them to their countries of origin as quickly as possible.” All at once I’m hit with exhaustion, telling the story. I rub my eyes.
“Are you tired?”
I nod. “Yes. But there’s more.”
She squeezes my hand. “I know,” she says. “But let’s get some drinks before you continue.”
We pay the bill and go into the bar at the Dorchester, order martinis, and when they are delivered, I continue my story. I tell Callie about the trip south, about Rachelle Monsigny, who went by the nom de guerre Lombarda, and her children, Adrien and Yvette, and how she gave her children over to our care.
“That poor woman!” Callie says. “So brave.”
“We couldn’t save Adrien,” I whisper. It surprises me that, after seventy years, it still hurts so much to say that.
“What do you mean?”
Through tears, I tell her how Adrien ran off in search of his mother, the German guards and about how he died in Élodie’s arms.71
“Oh, god, Papa!” she says again and squeezes my hand.
After a long pause and a few sips of the martini, I tell Callie about the rest of the journey to Esterri d’Àneu, about the pain of turning the children over to the Catalan men, and about retracing our steps and going to Prades and visiting Pablo Casals.
“The cellist?” Callie asks.
“Yes. A beautiful man. He found us a place to hide out while we waited for another group of children.” I tell her about the idyllic eight days and nights Élodie and I spent in Mosset and about the trek to Merens, and about breaking my ankle, and about watching Élodie disappear into the clouds. But now, how can I tell Callie what it was truly like waiting for Élodie? The hope. The pain. The thousand imagined greetings in those weeks. How I thought I would go crazy with worry and longing.
“And that was the last time I saw her,” I say. “When I made it back to Mosset, I waited and waited, but she never returned.”
Callie slides her chair back, rises, steps behind my chair and puts her arms around me. “Papa,” she whispers. She kisses me on the cheek. “Did you ever try to find out what happened to her?”
I reach back and cover Callie’s hands with mine. “Yes, of course,” I say. “But it wasn’t until a few months later. First, I had to avoid the firing squad if I could. Once my ankle healed, and she still hadn’t returned, I decided to follow the same route through Esterri d’Àneu and make my way back to England. I learned, from the two Catalan men we had dealt with before, that she had delivered the children to them and headed back to France. They had no idea what happened to her after that. Eventually, I made it back to England and, as it happened, my unit, the five-oh-eighth, was on R-and-R preparing for what would become known as Operation Market Garden, a jump into the Netherlands. But before I could rejoin them, I had to report to the Provost Marshall General’s office to explain my absence.”
“How did you manage that?” Callie asks.
“It was easier than I expected. I had the scars to prove my story of being hit on the way down, plus this broken finger, and there were lots of guys who ended up spread all over the place, many of them lost, missing in action.”
“So, did you parachute into the Netherlands?”
“Yes. It was a mess. We lost that battle. But then there was the Ardennes, which you probably know as the Battle of the Bulge, then a few more actions in Belgium and Germany. At last, the war ended, and soon we were moved off the line and stationed in Chartres. I managed to get leave and immediately headed south.”
It is the 3rd week of May 1945, when I finally get leave. Hitchhiking in U.S. army jeeps and several farmers’ carts all the way from Chartres, I finally arrive in Aquilac. I am pleased to see, in every town and village I pass through, people walking about freely. I go immediately to see Odette Dupont who greets me by saying, “You have come looking for Élodie?”
“Do you have any in
formation about her?”
Odette shakes her head sadly. “No. I only know the last group of children made it to England, so we know she made it as far as the drop-off point in Esterri d’Àneu. But that was many months ago.”
“And there’s been no word at all? Not even a rumor?”
“None.”
“The contacts we worked with? Abbé Basc? Pablo Casals?”
“They have heard nothing.”
“The doctor, Céleste? Ian and Annabel Beckham?”
“I, personally, have sent people up the line to inquire. Nothing.”
I don’t know if I’ve ever had a sinking feeling like that in my entire life. Odette takes both my hands in hers and says, “You are very much in love with her, n’est-ce pas? And now you are, how you say, dévasté.”
I nod. Devastated is the right word. “What about the other fighters she was with,” I ask. “Marcel, Claude, Jean-Baptiste? Perhaps they know something.”
“They were never part of the rescue operation for children, so I don’t know them. I’ve been told they live in Mirepoix. If you wish, Gaston will drive you there.”
Of course, I accept. I’m desperate to learn what I can about Élodie.
Mirepoix is a well-preserved, fortified town, dating from the 13th century, where arcaded, timber-framed houses surround the central market square. It is here Gaston drops me off and heads back to Aquilac. A half dozen old men, drinking pastis, sit on rough benches under one of the arcades which is supported by massive posts and beams. I approach the men and in a mixture of English and rudimentary French ask if anyone knows three men—resistance fighters named Marcel, Claude and Jean-Baptiste. Fortunately, one of the men speaks a little English. He tells me that Marcel and Claude are dead, killed near Avignon where they were helping to support the allied invasion of the South of France that came a couple of months after D-Day.
“And Jean-Baptiste?” I ask.
The man spits onto the ground and says. “Il est toujours avec la bouteille ou les boules de pétanque.”72
When I frown and indicate I don’t understand, the man mimes his answer. He tilts his head back and holds his open fist in front of his mouth. A man drinking from a bottle. “Vin,” the man says.
I nod. “Wine.”
The man makes a bowling motion which I recognize immediately as the roll of a ball in a game I’ve seen several times.
I say, “Wine and pétanque balls?”
The man nods. “Toujours. Always.” He takes hold of my sleeve and says, “Viens avec moi.”73 He leads me across the street to the cathedral and circles around to the other side. I hear the click of pétanque balls. Four men stand on an improvised court which looks like it’s normally used to park cars. On a bench to the side sits Jean-Baptiste. As if to confirm what my informant has said, Jean-Baptiste holds a bottle of wine in his hand. As soon as he sees me, he rises from the bench and starts to walk fast away from me. Within seconds, I catch up to him and grab him by the shoulder and spin him around and say, “You don’t seem happy to see me, Jean-Baptiste.”
“Je ne sais rien. Laisse-moi.”74
“Don’t pull that shit with me. I know you speak perfectly good English.”
Jean-Baptiste pulls away from my grasp. “What do you want?”
“I want to know about Élodie.”
“She’s dead.”
I feel my knees go wobbly. I want to scream. I ask, in a voice that trembles, “How do you know? Did you see her? Did somebody tell you?”
“A passeur told me. A guide. He saw it happen. It was border guards.”
“What’s the man’s name?”
“Why should I tell you?”
I grab Jean-Baptiste’s shoulders and shake him. “What’s his fucking name?”
“Luc Vidocq.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He lives in Tarbes.”
“So, I went to Tarbes to find this Luc Vidocq,” I say to Callie, “only to learn he was dead, killed by border guards. Probably at the same time as Élodie. I knew that occasionally, she would work with passeurs for mutual protection.”
“I’m so sorry,” Callie says. “I can see from your eyes that it still hurts, even seventy years later.”
“There was … is … this terrible sense of non-completion. As if we left something unfinished.” I look up at my granddaughter. “That’s why I need to go to Normandy. I need to see it again. I need to feel her, to finish it. Before I am finished.”
“I think the doctor will give you a clean bill of health, Papa. We’ll get you to France.”
And, indeed, my appointment the next day with Doctor Nigel Hunt, a respiratory medicine specialist at University College Hospital, goes well, and I am given the clearance to travel to France. We waste no time booking on the Eurostar and heading for St. Pancras International station and, within five hours, we step off the train at Gare du Nord in Paris. While we were speeding through the Channel tunnel, Callie had called ahead to reserve a rental car in Paris and reconfirm my hotel reservation in Caen. From Gare du Nord, it is a three-hour drive to Caen in Normandy. We check into the Hotel Ibis Caen Centre, have dinner al fresco at the sidewalk café in front of the hotel, and go to bed early because we plan a full schedule for the following day: Omaha Beach, the 70th D-Day commemoration ceremony at the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, and the Mémorial de Caen, the museum honoring the Normandy landings. When Callie mentions Utah Beach, I say that Omaha Beach is much more convenient to the American Cemetery and the ceremony.
The following day dawns clear. After a quick breakfast of croissants and coffee, we set out for Omaha Beach. Little more than an hour later, we pull into a parking spot and follow a sandy path, over and down a slight rise, to the beach. I pause at the top of the rise to gather my breath.
Callie reaches out a hand to steady me. “Are you, okay, Papa?”
“I’ll be fine.”
She slips her arm through mine. “It’s a sad place.”
“Yes,” I say. My cane clicks on the cement walk, and on the cement stairs, as I approach the sand. I pause to steady myself and slowly stride toward the ocean. The sand is furrowed and ridged and moist. Like brain folds. And with every step, I pierce the sand with my cane. The wind assaults my ears like the roar of shells overhead. And, overhead, dozens of seagulls spool out bands of flight, skirling, swooping, skimming, a strangle of screeching motion, and in the sand a lone crab leaves a thin trail as it scurries for the safety of the ocean as in the distance more gulls soar and dip and I look down and see a seagull feather and I wonder what it had been like for the ancestors of these seagulls on that day seventy years ago, what the navy’s guns and the German 88s had done to the birds, because nobody ever thinks of the other living creatures caught up in human-made hells. How many seagulls were blasted out of the sky by the shockwaves, vaporized? How many crabs were crushed under the boots of frantic men splashing ashore? On that day, along with a heavy, constant rain of hot metal and earth and sand and bloodied body parts, there must have also come a softer, gentler drizzle of white and gray feathers. Was the beach covered in seagull feathers everybody was too busy trying to survive to notice? Or, was the last thing some dying men saw the soft, bloodied down of a feather floating down to rest on the scalloped sand? Did some men stir the feather’s downy barbs with their final gasps for breath, the seagull and the man united in death?
I’m overcome with sadness. Maintaining my balance in the uneven sand is difficult. I sink to my knees in the corrugated sand where retreating waves have scoured out ridges and valleys. A single, violent shudder convulses through my body.
“Papa! Are you okay?” Callie bends and offers her hand to help me to my feet.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. The sand is difficult to walk on.” With her help, I rise and brush at the wet sand that sticks to the knees of my pants.
“Let me help you back to the car,” Callie says. “We need to get to the ceremony.”
I nod. “Yes. The ceremony.”
It is a short drive to the American cemetery. In the parking lot, we are greeted by a young woman wearing the double gold chevron of a corporal on her American army dress blues. She pushes a wheelchair up to the car and opens the passenger-side door and offers her hand to me. She says, “Welcome to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, sir.” She checks the large accreditation badge hanging from my neck. “Mister Budge, my name is Corporal Maria Meléndez. I’ll be escorting you to your seat behind the speaker’s podium. And Ma’am,” she adds, turning to Callie, “if you wait here for me, I’ll show you how to find the family section.”
“I don’t need that,” I say, gesturing toward the wheelchair.
“Very well, sir. If you’ll just follow me.”
“Wait,” says Callie. She reaches into her tote bag and pulls out an olive drab baseball cap with a double “A” emblem standing for “All American” and the words “82nd AIRBORNE” on the front edge of the visor. “Wear this,” she says.
“Why?”
“You refused to wear your medals, so I thought this would be okay.”
“Where did you get it?”
“You don’t think I know how to shop online? I ordered it while we were on board the ship and had it sent to the hotel in Caen.”
“You must have been pretty confident we’d make it here.”
“I know you. Now off you go to your ceremony. I’m so proud of you.”
Corporal Meléndez guides me to my seat on a raised platform in a semicircular colonnade, facing west. I am appalled to find I’m in the front row to the right of the podium. No chance to hide. I pull my sunglasses out of my pocket and fit them over my eyes. I brush at the moist sand still stuck to the knees of my pants and look up to see an immense crowd sitting in chairs arranged in a kind of wide boulevard on either side of which are thousands of meticulously ordered white crosses and Stars-of-David. Immediately in front of me is the speaker’s podium. I chance a quick look to my right and my left and see no sign of Pfc. John True. I don’t dare turn around to look behind me.
A slow-moving cloud shadow drawls across the crowd gathered before me and, as quickly, moves away and is followed by a much smaller shadow. I look up to see a raptor—a hawk perhaps (or a lammergeier?)—peel off a thin layer of air and hover on it for a moment before gliding low over the rows of crosses and Stars-of-David, its shadow leaping over one gravestone after another, and then banking and floating over the crowd. I watch the shadow slide slowly across the rows of people, and then up to the entablature that wraps the memorial colonnade. I read the inscription:
The Light from the Dark Side of the Moon Page 28
