by Bodie Thoene
Marie sank down onto the front pew and began to cry very softly. “I was too slow,” she moaned. Her tears mingled with the water dripping from her hair. She was shivering through her wet clothes in spite of the fact that the interior of the building was much warmer than outside. “They ate without us.”
Jerome sat beside her and stared numbly at the red banner and the golden English words written on it and the red velvet cloth on the long table. He sighed. “It is my fault. I brought you all this way for nothing.”
He glared at the picture of the kind man in the alcove. The figure had a beard and wore a long white robe like a nightshirt. One hand held a lantern, and the other knocked on a door that looked very much like all the locked doors downstairs.
“This is why Papa hates you”—he lifted his voice to the vaulted ceiling—“and now I will hate you forever also. We come all this way, my sister and me and Uncle Jambonneau’s dog, and you are not really here. We will go away cold and with empty bellies from this place that looks like a church but is not a church.”
“It is . . . a church. . . .” Marie trembled harder now. Her teeth chattered. She could not get warm even with Papillon snuggled against her. She had nothing in her stomach to help her get warm. She needed a blanket.
For the first time it occurred to Jerome that she might die if she was not warmed and fed very soon. He felt afraid. “I am sorry I brought you here, Marie,” he said bitterly. “Yes, it is a church. I thought you would not come if you knew. It doesn’t matter. Now you see Papa is right.”
“What is your papa right about?” asked a muffled voice behind them.
Jerome whirled around to face a creature as horrible as the gargoyles that gaped down from the facade of Notre Dame. Marie gave a little cry and covered her face with her hands. The thing looked something like the head of a locust attached to the body of a man. The tails of a heavy red-checked flannel shirt stuck out from baggy corduroy trousers held up by suspenders.
Jerome leaped up and doubled his fists in defense against the monster who cackled wildly. Then Jerome realized that the thing was not a thing but a man in a gas mask.
Unruly red hair protruded like wire from the rubber thongs of the mask. With an odd sucking sound, like water going down a slow drain, the man pulled the mask back on top of his head. “What are you doing here?” he asked Jerome.
“We just came to eat something.” Jerome was defiant.
“Yes.” The man stared around the place as if he was looking for something, too. “Where is supper?”
“But there is nothing to eat in your church.”
“Not my church. I’m Lewinski.” He cackled again as if his name explained everything. “No one is here. I was hoping to use the telephone, but there is no telephone that I can find.” He walked slowly up to Marie, who peered up at him in terror through her fingers. “What is wrong with her?” Lewinski asked, glancing at the alarm clock that was tied around his waist by a length of twine.
“She is hungry and wet,” Jerome said. “Leave her alone.”
“Why do you not feed her and get her a blanket?” Lewinski glanced over his shoulder as he said the words, giving the odd impression that he was addressing someone behind him. Then he bounded up the low steps to the altar at the front. He looked upward and touched the gas mask on his head as if in salute. “You can plainly see the little girl is cold and wet.”
Like a magician in a performance at the Tuileries gardens, he pulled the red-velvet cloth from the altar.
Marie gasped from behind him. “Jerome, look! Look what is here for us!”
It was like magic. Marie applauded. On the marble table, three braided loaves of bread were heaped on a large brass plate. Beautiful loaves they were, with golden crusts, baked to perfection. Had there ever been such beautiful loaves of bread?
“How did you do that?” Jerome cried. He had always been impressed with magicians.
“Well, I do not know.” Lewinski seemed surprised by his trick. “But dinner is served.” He scratched his head and tossed the red cloth to Marie. “You will look very nice in that color, Mam’zelle. And warm. Well, well! Put it on!”
Jerome gaped at the feast and then, with a whoop, he joined Lewinski, who tossed a loaf into Jerome’s arms. The boy ran to Marie. “Get up! We have to get out of here quick before he changes his mind!”
Marie had an odd smile on her face, as if she knew some wonderful secret. She stood up on unsteady legs. She raised her face ever so slightly toward Lewinski. “Thank you, Monsieur,” she whispered. Then, “Are you . . . a priest?”
The hall reverberated with Lewinski’s laughter.
“Well then . . . an angel?”
Lewinski howled and fell to the ground at the humor of such a question. Tears streamed from his eyes. Then suddenly he stopped laughing and stood up. “I am lost,” he announced in a very serious tone. “I went out shopping and realized that I was somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else besides where?” Jerome sniffed and eyed Lewinski suspiciously. He was almost certain that this fellow must be an inmate escaped from the lunatic asylum. If so, he was quite far from his place of residence.
“Andre will be looking for me,” Lewinski said. “Last time they called the police. Or the police called Andre. It is very dangerous for me to be out alone, they tell me. But you two look harmless enough.” He bowed to Marie. “And you look very pretty in your red blanket, Mam’zelle. Also you have a rat climbing out of your collar.”
She giggled as Papillon emerged and leaped from her shoulder to the arm of Jerome. Jerome nudged her in the ribs for silence.
Yes. So it was the asylum, after all. Jerome took Marie firmly by the arm and stepped back. “We have to be going now.”
Lewinski frowned. “Do you know the way to No. 19 Quai d’Anjou?”
“Oui! On l’Ile!” Marie clapped her hands, obviously carried away by the clownlike appearance of the lunatic Lewinski. “We will take you home.”
“No, Marie,” Jerome hissed.
“Yes, we will!” Marie tore free from Jerome and ran to the side of Lewinski, who cackled with relief, checked his alarm clock, and replaced the mask.
“Marie! You heard him! Police!”
“Oui! He is magic. He got me a blanket and made the bread appear.” She took Lewinski’s hand. Lewinski tore off half a loaf of bread from his hoard and presented it to his guide. She broke off a piece for Lewinski, who could not eat it because of his rubber mask. Together they marched up the center aisle and out onto the street, with Jerome trailing at a safe distance behind them.
David and Simpson had decided between them that they would drive to Nancy instead of returning directly to Rouvres. “If we go back to the base too soon, everyone will want to know what we made of the crash,” David suggested.
“Too right,” Simpson agreed. “Besides, it’s Christmas Eve, and we’ve need of some good cheer.”
Hewitt shivered but offered neither argument nor support for the plan; he only sat with a stunned look and stared out at the French countryside.
David pushed the protesting Citroën to its maximum speed, wanting to reach Nancy before the darkness and the blackout restrictions made travel more difficult. The icy roads were deserted except for one farmer and a wagon drawn by an ancient draft horse. The car swung through the wrought-iron-encircled Place Stanislaus and into the crooked medieval lane named the Grand Rue just as the sun was setting.
“Here we are then,” Simpson pronounced grandly, trying to lighten the mood. “The Excelsior Brasserie—finest food and drink in at least . . . five kilometers.”
Hewitt shook his head as if waking up from a long and especially unpleasant nightmare. He pointed at the number of impressively uniformed men going in and out of the Excelsior and finally spoke. “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “There’s a lot of blokes about. Can’t we find someplace a bit quieter?”
“Nonsense,” Simpson reassured him. “None of these are our chaps, Hewitt. Most of them aren’t
even soldiers. By their uniforms they’re either North American correspondents or South American dictators. Either way, they’re no concern of ours. Come on.”
Three bottles of the local red wine improved the spirits of the trio, and their returning appetites led to the consumption of enough potato-and-rabbit pie to have served twice their number.
David was relieved when Hewitt leaned back in his chair and looked much more his usual self when he patted his stomach and belched. An extravagant stretch backward brought one of his large hands into abrupt contact with the back of an American correspondent’s head.
At Hewitt’s apology, the correspondent scooted his chair around to the table with the pilots. “RAF,” he noted. “I thought so. Two English and one American? Fighter pilots.”
“Right,” David agreed.
“What gave us away?” Simpson inquired. “Our keen eyes and deadly serious expressions?”
The correspondent laughed. Hewitt’s eyes were anything but keen, and his goofy grin was not at all serious. “Yeah, that’s it exactly. Anyway, you three are in a lot better shape than the other fliers I bumped into tonight.”
“Is that so? What was wrong with them?” David asked.
“Couple German prisoners out of a plane shot down by some of your boys. One’s busted up pretty bad and the other’s burned. They got brought here for treatment; then they’ll be sent on to Paris.”
David and Simpson snapped to attention as Hewitt struggled to follow along.
“Did you catch what sort of craft?” David asked. “That is, where did this happen?”
“A Dornier. Shot down between here and Verdun.”
“Quick, man! Where did you meet these two?” Simpson demanded.
“They’re under guard upstairs, not that they could . . .”
David tossed a few franc notes onto the table and was halfway to the stairs as the newsman called after them, “Hey, what’s the rush?”
Hewitt staggered to his feet, but even so was only a few steps behind David and Simpson. “Because,” he remarked over his shoulder in a rush of slurred words, “we’re the lot who put ‘paid’ to that beggar.”
David had no difficulty talking his way past the guard outside the door at the top of the stairs. Apparently this poilu—like the keeper of a small menagerie of dangerous beasts—had been making a profit by charging admission to any who wanted to view the Nazi aviators.
But the first sight of the two prisoners gave David no impression of menace. He eyed them with an unexpected and unwelcome sense of guilt. As if he had accidentally injured an opponent in a football game and needed to find a way to apologize. What could he say to these two young men, his enemies?
The first German had a thick shock of dark hair. His thin face was boyish and worried. He was still wearing a ragged flight suit from the waist up, but his legs were in plaster casts from ankles to thighs.
The other man was wearing a bathrobe. His head was so swathed in layers of bandages that only a pair of glaring, bloodshot eyes could be seen. His hands were similarly rolled in white gauze. It occurred to David that if it were not for the bare feet that showed below the robe, the German would have seemed to be a very thoroughly wrapped mummy.
David, who had a rudimentary grasp of the German language, became the spokesman for the group. “I don’t know if you understand English or not,” he began; then he introduced himself and the others in clumsy German. “We are the Hurricane pilots who shot down your Dornier. We are glad that you made it out all right.”
“I speak English,” replied the man with the broken legs. “I am Unteroffizer Hammel. Klinger is here.” He gestured toward his companion. “We—” he searched for the words—“parachute . . . three others in our crew did not.”
“We . . . we know. . . .” The vision of the wrecked Dornier and the lingering odor rose fresh in David’s imagination, causing his stomach to churn. “How did two of you survive? We only saw one chute.”
“Ja,” answered Hammel with a shrug. “I carry Klinger. His hands so burn . . . jump we together. The weight is too great and my legs . . . who can think snow will be so hard?” Tears welled up in his eyes. “But we will not have lived if you . . . continue shooting. We are told you English fire on parachutes.”
“We would not do that!” Simpson remarked with horror.
“We would!” snapped a voice from beneath layers of gauze.
David had supposed that the burned man spoke no English, but now it was apparent that he spoke it well and that he had plenty to say.
“We do not believe in letting an enemy escape!” Klinger added with venom. “If we had been in a Messerschmitt, the outcome would have been far different!”
“You feel this way, too?” David asked Hammel.
“I . . . it is hard to . . .” Hammel caught a ferocious glare from Klinger and subsided in misery. “War is a terrible thing,” he concluded lamely.
“Come on, Tinman,” said Simpson, moving toward the door and pushing Hewitt ahead of him. “We’ve done what we came for.” Halfway down the stairs he remarked, “Officer Hammel probably has family back in Germany.”
It was a strange entourage that paraded through the streets of Paris at sunset. Jerome followed ten paces behind Lewinski and Marie. She was wrapped in yards of bright red cloth stolen from the church. Wiry red tufts of the madman’s hair protruded through the straps of the dark green rubber gas mask as if Lewinski’s head were a flowering weed.
Jerome thought about calling out for help. After all, their route to Quai d’Anjou led right past the Palais de Justice. Normally all the gendarmes in the world stood around under the awnings on the Ile de la Cité smoking their Gauloises and chatting. But today, what with the showers, the cold wind sweeping down the river, and it’s being Christmas Eve, there were no blue-jacketed figures in view.
Sighing heavily, Jerome thought that perhaps it was just as well. He and the law were not on the best of terms anyway. How could he explain about the altar cloth? Jerome’s father had taught him that the police were the arm of the oppressive power of the privileged classes—whatever that meant. Something to stay away from, no doubt.
But how to get Marie free from what was obviously a lunatic. There she was, clinging to Lewinski’s hand and chattering away like a magpie. Jerome could have strangled her.
The lunatic Lewinski led the little procession across the rain-slick pavement of Pont St. Louis. The red-haired figure pushed the gas mask up on his forehead and divided another chunk of the magic bread with Marie. They seemed to have forgotten that Jerome was still behind them, fretting and worrying.
At last the Quai de Bourbon became the Quai d’Anjou, and Lewinski pointed to the curve up ahead as if he recognized a landmark. Now what?
Lewinski and Marie were walking very carefully, staring down at the paving stones. Jerome could see they were being very cautious about not stepping on any of the cracks in the sidewalk. It made Jerome watch where he was stepping, too, until they had passed the bend in the road. Then Jerome abruptly looked up.
There, not half a block away, was a police car. It sat in front of the house to which Lewinski was leading Marie. It was a trap!
“Run, Marie!” Jerome yelled, sprinting up behind his sister and yanking her hand loose from Lewinski’s grip. “Run, I say! He is trying to turn us in to the police!”
Jerome dragged a stumbling Marie away from Lewinski and back down the block. When they came to an alleyway, he ducked in, pulling Marie in after him.
Marie was blubbering. “I did not get to tell him thank you for the bread.”
20
The Promise Is Fulfilled
At the evening appearance of Horst von Bockman in the foyer of the Cathedral of St. John, the old custodian leaned against his broom and stared fearfully at the heap of dust on the floor. He crossed himself as if he was in the presence of great evil.
“I am looking for Father Kopecky,” Horst said, stamping the snow from his boots before proceeding across the newl
y swept flagstones.
The old man cleared his throat nervously and probed at his ear with a bony finger. He did not acknowledge Horst.
“It is important that I see your priest, old man.” Horst had no time for guessing games. “For the sake of his safety.”
The swish of the broom against the stone was the only reply. The custodian nudged the heap of debris toward the entrance as though he were the only one there.
Horst tried again. “You must believe me. I am a friend of his. Will you take him a message? Tell him Major Horst von Bockman has come to say good-bye. I leave for Berlin tonight. Tell him it is urgent that I speak with him.”
The thin face looked up slowly. Beneath bushy eyebrows, dark eyes glinted with unconcealed hatred and mistrust. The old man leaned his broom against a stone column and, without a backward glance, padded down the long aisle and vanished in the shadows of the auditorium. Horst heard the creak of heavy hinges and then a strange metallic rattle, like sabers clashing, before the unseen door slammed shut again, blocking out the sound.
There was no heat in the building, and Horst’s breath rose in a steaming vapor. He blew on his hands and stamped his feet against the cold. Pacing the length of the foyer and back again, he considered how meaningless this visit was. What difference would it make if he told the priest that he had been watched? that his words had been recorded in little black books?
“Merry Christmas, Major von Bockman.”
Horst turned at the priest’s voice.
Father Kopecky was alone. “We will have no midnight Mass tonight. The curfew, you know.”
“I did not come for that, Father. I wish it were that simple.”
The cleric was coatless yet smiling as though he did not notice the cold breeze blowing through his church.
“I was at the afternoon Mass.”
“I saw you. I could not help but notice. You were the only one not dressed in mourning.” The priest shrugged. “I was glad you came.”
