Clash by Night (A World War II Romantic Drama)

by Doreen Owens Malek

  “No,” Laura replied, sitting down across from her sister-in-law. “He’s kind of quiet, actually.”

  “Describe him in a phrase,” Brigitte said, resuming a game they had played when Thierry was alive.

  Laura considered it. “Resourceful,” she finally said. The expression in French, plein de ressources, meaning “full of capabilities,” was exactly on point, but Brigitte’s frown said she still wasn’t satisfied. Her insatiable curiosity about anything new was part of her charm and Laura always indulged it.

  “Let me see,” Laura said, leaning back in her chair. “What else can I say about him?” She thought for a moment. “If all your life, everybody, your parents, adoring siblings, teachers at school, fellow officers in the service–everybody-treats you like you’re the greatest thing to come along since the apes swung down from the trees, sooner or later you believe that you are. And then of course you have to act the greatest and be the greatest: the toughest, smartest, strongest, bravest, to live up to your own image of yourself.”

  Brigitte was watching her with a peculiar fixity, but she didn’t interrupt.

  “And that,” Laura went on musingly, “is how men die in a war. I think that’s how Thierry died.” But she wasn’t talking just about Thierry and she knew it.

  “Is this American like Thierry?” Brigitte asked, alerted not so much by the rambling, unfocused words but by the softening of Laura’s manner when she talked about the man.

  “Not in personality, no,” Laura replied. “But there is something...”

  She let the sentence trail off, unfinished, but Brigitte had heard enough.

  “I’m starving,” she said, rising and ending the conversation, which had disturbed her. “I’ll do the toast.” She put a slice of bread on the end of a fork, and was opening the bottom of the stove as Laura got up behind her.

  This American must be something unusual, Brigitte thought. She had not seen that expression on her sister-in-law’s face since Thierry died.

  * * *

  Late that afternoon, several hours after Brigitte reported to work at the hospital, Kurt Hesse tracked her down in the ward washroom. She was standing at the sink, rinsing operating equipment prior to putting it into the hopper, when he slipped into the small windowless cell and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Startled, Brigitte whirled to face him, her hand going to her throat.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped. “Did anyone see you come in here?”

  “No one saw. I want to talk to you. Why didn’t you meet me in the chapel on your break?”

  Brigitte turned away, running a specimen bottle under the flow of water. “What do you want?” she said.

  Kurt reached around her and shut off the tap. “What I always want,” he replied.

  Brigitte remained silent, thinking about her conversation with Alain.

  “Wouldn’t you miss me if I stopped finding ways to see you?”

  “Yes,” she replied, so low he almost couldn’t hear the word. Her brother’s suggestion had been much on her mind. The temptation was overwhelming. Here was the perfect opportunity to help Vipère.

  He smiled and pulled a package out of his pocket. “For you,” he said.

  She looked at the square object, wrapped in grease stained paper. She took it from him and smelled it.

  “Butter?” she said, amazed.

  He nodded happily. “And there is a packet of sugar in there, too. You can bake a cake.”

  She smiled grimly. “No milk.”

  “I’ll find you some.”

  “Where did you get this?” she asked, hefting the package.

  “A shipment arrived today on an ice truck, from Berlin.”

  “Won’t it be missed?”

  He shook his head. “I doctored the…” He groped for the word in French.

  “Manifest?” she supplied.

  He nodded.

  “The butter will melt,” she said, starting to laugh.

  “Hide it in the emergency room refrigerator, the one they use for the antibiotics. Then you can take it with you when you go home. It will survive the trip. It’s not that hot now.”

  “You have it all figured out, don’t you?” she said admiringly.

  “I spend a lot of time trying to get around the rules,” he replied dryly, smiling down at her.

  “Becker’s rules? What would he do if he found you here with me?”

  “He has no room to talk,” Kurt muttered to himself in German, mindful of his superior’s frequent visits to the French librarian at the school.

  Brigitte brushed past him, opening the door and glancing out into the corridor. She waited for a pair of soldiers to pass before turning to Kurt and saying, “Go. I’ll wait for you to get clear before I leave.”

  “I’m not going until you promise to meet me,” he said, the pleading in his pale eyes almost more than she could bear. She turned her head, avoiding the sight of his perfect features and clipped silver hair, the neat gray uniform representing the unbridgeable chasm between them.

  “I have this same shift tomorrow,” she finally said, “three to eleven. I’ll meet you afterwards, nobody should be in the laundry then.”

  He reached out to her and touched her cheek.

  “I’ll be there,” he said huskily, dropping his hand. He would have to sneak out of the barracks but he would find a way.

  “Please go,” she whispered.

  “‘Till tomorrow night,” he said, and left. Brigitte finished her chores, waiting for the door to be opened again by a furious head nurse, but nothing happened. She closed the metal hatch of the steam sterilizer and turned the knob to start the cycle. Then she left the washroom and walked back to the station.

  * * *

  Lysette Remy was dusting the lower shelves of a tall wooden étagère when Becker entered the library and strolled toward her. He had abandoned the pretext of borrowing books and dropped in on her whenever he felt like it, which was often. He always came alone.

  Lysette was crouched on the floor, with the volumes she had removed stacked beside her in order to do the cleaning. With a brief murmured greeting Becker removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves, kneeling next to Lysette on the floor. In silence he began to shift the heavy books back into place on the recently dusted shelves, as Lysette checked their placement to make sure the order was correct. If this cooperative effort on the part of the widely feared commandant of the Meuse and the introspective librarian might seem incongruous to an outsider, it seemed perfectly natural to the two participants. They had come to accept each other’s company. When the job was complete Becker helped Lysette to her feet and they looked at each other.

  “Why do you always wear your hair in that style?” Becker asked, twirling his finger in a figure eight. “What do you call it?”

  “A chignon,” Lysette replied, putting a hand up to touch the twist at the back of her neck.

  “Let me take it down,” he said, half smiling, reaching for one of the pins which held it in place.

  Lysette flinched away from him as if he’d struck her.

  “I’m sorry,” Becker murmured, taking a step backward. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to presume.” He bowed his head as he’d been taught to do as a child when making an apology.

  “It’s all right,” Lysette said quickly, instantly regretting her unconscious reaction. “Here, I’ll do it.” She pulled the pins from her hair and it tumbled to her shoulders.

  “Just as I thought,” Becker said. “It looks very pretty.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t,” she said, dismayed. “It’s the color of dirt.”

  “Certainly not. Cinnamon maybe, or nutmeg, but never dirt.” He didn’t understand her low opinion of herself, which appeared deeply ingrained and definitely unaffected. She was no riveting beauty but with care and attention she could certainly be attractive. She seemed determined to downplay her attributes, a decidedly unfeminine trait. After twelve years of marriage to one of the most narcissistic women who ever lived
, he was baffled and fascinated by Lysette’s attitude.

  “Do you really think it looks better down?” she asked, with an almost pathetic desire to please him. It was as if she had no other mirror but his good opinion.

  “Yes, I do,” he said gently. She raised her hand to smooth the loose hair off her brow and her sleeve fell back. There was a long, livid scar marring the surface of her white forearm. Becker had seen enough freshly healed wounds to know that this one had been painful, and fairly recent.

  “How did you do this?” he asked, indicating the puckered flesh with a forefinger, his brow furrowed in concern.

  Startled, Lysette did not reply at once.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked.

  “Yes, I...”

  “Did you have an accident?” he pressed, alarmed.

  “I broke my arm,” she finally said, avoiding his penetrating stare.

  “You broke your arm?” he repeated. Why should this commonplace piece of information make her so nervous in the telling of it? “How?”

  Flustered, unable to lie but ashamed of the truth, Lysette blurted, “My husband...he...”

  “Your husband broke your arm?” Becker said in dangerously soft voice. “Is that what happened?”

  “Just before he went away to the war, he got drunk and he...” she stopped, unwilling to supply the details. Now he would not visit her any more. Now her days would return to the everlasting sameness they had before he came. Revolted by her sordid past, he would leave her to her loneliness and her books.

  Becker uttered an oath in German. He had never guessed, and he should have. It explained so much. Lysette waited like a beaten dog for the final word, the sentence of dismissal.

  Instead Becker said, “Will you come to my quarters for dinner on Saturday night?”

  Lysette stared up at him, speechless.

  Thinking that she hesitated for another reason Becker added quietly, “I can send a car to pick you up wherever you choose. The townspeople will not know. Will you come?”

  “Yes.” The single word was all Lysette could manage.

  “I do not command,” Becker said quietly, holding her gaze to make sure she understood. “You are free to refuse.”

  “I would like to come,” Lysette replied in a stronger voice, regaining her equilibrium.

  “Where shall I send the car?”

  Lysette thought. “The old church,” she said, “the ruins of the Abbaye de Beaupré. It’s at a fork in the road on the way to Vitry, no one ever goes there any more. I’ll wait.”

  “You know my aide Hesse; he is a good boy. I’ll send him for you. At eight.”

  “Yes.” She looked at him inquiringly but seemed loath to speak further.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to call you. ‘Colonel’ doesn’t seem quite right.”

  “My first name is Anton.”

  “Anton,” she said softly.

  Becker simply looked at her a moment longer, then took one of her hands between both of his. He pressed her fingers for a second, then let them go. She watched as he walked out of the room. He slipped into his uniform jacket on the way and became once more the German, the boche, the enemy. To anyone else observing him, that is, but not to Lysette.

  Never to Lysette.

  * * *

  That night Laura wrapped a sandwich for Harris prior to leaving for the barn, thinking that in a little more than forty-eight hours he would be gone. It was difficult for her to realize that the accomplishment of their mutual objective could ensure that they never met again.

  She liked him. She liked the way he bent his knees and dipped his head when he talked to her, trying to put his eyes on a level with hers. She liked the dimple that appeared in his left cheek, almost at the corner of his mouth, when he smiled. She even liked his flat Midwestern accent, which made her Boston A’s sound droll by comparison.

  But there was no coin to spend on personal considerations now. Everything was in readiness for the mission, only last minute details remained. She picked up a bag from the kitchen table and added the sandwich to it, slipping out the back door.

  Laura retreated into the darkness of the rear porch as the lights of a car illuminated the street. The guard vehicle should have passed already on its rounds, and she waited with an accelerating heartbeat, wondering what this might mean. It would be too cruel for their plan to be discovered now, after they had all worked so hard. But the car passed silently on its way, its tires crunching the gravel of the unpaved lane which ran in front of the Duclos house. When all was quiet again she sprinted across the open field to Langtot’s property and knocked on the door of the barn. Alain let her in; she was the last to arrive.

  He barely glanced at her as she moved past him. He spent most of his time with Curel these days and lived in a constant state of preoccupation. A distance had grown between them since Harris’ arrival; Alain had erected a barrier she couldn’t penetrate. They shared arguments, and their work against the Germans, but little else. Laura missed him.

  She glanced around the barn. Langtot and Curel were studying the plant blueprints for the four hundredth time, and the Thibeau boys were examining the charge Harris had rigged from the stolen dynamite, complete with a detonator donated by Curel’s foreman at the mine. Alain was going through the several boxes of weapons the members of Vipère had managed to accumulate, on their own and through the contributions of sympathizers. It was a League of Nations in weaponry: German Lugers stolen from the occupying forces, Italian Berettas picked up during the nine month war, American Colts supplied by friends of the growing Résistance, and an odd assortment of other pieces. Harris had demonstrated the use of most of them.

  The marine was at the back, sitting crosslegged on the floor, examining a gun she hadn’t seen before and whistling through his teeth. Laura listened as she approached him and recognized the song: Gershwin’s Someone to Watch Over Me. The contrast between the sweetly sentimental tune on his lips and the action of his hands as he spun the revolver’s barrel was chilling.

  He looked up and saw her. “Hiya, Boston,” he said, drawing back the hammer with his thumb and holding the gun to the light.

  “I’ve got a present in here for you,” Laura said, indicating the parcel she held. “Guess.”

  He glanced at the bag, then at her face. “Rita Hayworth?” he said hopefully.

  “Sorry. Just another pair of pants long enough to fit you.”

  He shrugged. “Next best thing. Thanks.” He began to load the gun, switching to another tune.

  “Don’t Explain,” Laura said, identifying the number he was humming.

  He nodded, smiling. “Billie Holliday. My kid sister has all her records. I saw Holliday perform once in a club with Artie Shaw’s band. Boy, talk about holding the audience in the palm of your hand. She came out in a strapless gown with long gloves, a white flower in her hair, and knocked them dead. I’ll never forget it.”

  “Was that in Chicago?” Laura asked, to keep him talking. He was voluble when instructing them but otherwise didn’t say much about himself. There hadn’t been a lot of time for pleasantries, and now she was hungry for the personal knowledge that would help define him in her mind after he was gone.

  “Yup. I remember it was a stormy night in winter, and I was staying over at my father’s house. It’s on a hill and in icy weather it’s like the glass mountain you have to climb to get to the princess in that kid’s story, you know it?”

  “The Snow Queen,” Laura said.

  “Right. Well, I had my dad’s car, and it kept sliding sideways down that incline. The princess would have grown old and frozen solid before I ever reached her, I’ll tell you that. I finally had to leave the car at the foot of the hill and crawl home.”

  “How do you know about that story?” Laura asked. It seemed an odd reference for him to make.

  “Oh, my sister had a book of those fairy tales when she was little. I used to read them to her.”

  She smi
led. “How many sisters do you have?”

  “Three. All younger.”

  “They must have idolized you.”

  He snorted. “Terrorized is more like it.” He finished playing with the revolver and extended it to Laura. “For you,” he said.

  She looked at it. The dark blue pistol gleamed in the light from Langtot’s lantern. Alain had stopped rummaging around in the makeshift arsenal and was watching them.

  “Good old Smith & Wesson out of Springfield, Mass.,” Harris said with satisfaction. “Not far from your old stomping grounds, Boston. A vintage snubnose, Patric just turned it up today. It’s a .38 caliber break top, a good size and weight for you. It’ll fit right into your purse and it doesn’t have much recoil.”

  “I don’t know, Dan,” Laura said, shaking her head slowly. She eyed the pistol warily. It looked small but deadly, like the asp that kissed Cleopatra into final sleep.

  He met her eyes gravely. “It’s necessary,” he said quietly.

  Laura sighed. She went to him and he handed her the gun.

  “Just heft it for a moment,” he said, moving behind her. She did so, and he stepped forward, slipping his arms around her from the back, his hands over hers.

  Alain turned away.

  “Hold it up like this, with both hands, so you can sight down the barrel,” Harris said above her ear, his breath stirring her hair. “Don’t wave it around with one hand like George Raft or you’ll shoot somebody, all right, but it won’t be the person you want to hit.”

  “Okay,” Laura replied, her voice muted, unnerved by his closeness.

  “Squeeze the trigger lightly,” he murmured, leaning in closer. “This is tricky. You can’t take a death grip on it or when you fire the kick can break your index finger. But you have to hold it tight enough so that the nose doesn’t jerk up in the air when it discharges. Like this, see?” He demonstrated the proper amount of pressure.

  “I understand,” Laura said. She turned her head to look at him. His face was very near above her, and he gazed back at her for a long, timeless moment. His lips parted and he seemed to move fractionally closer.

  Laura suddenly realized that everyone was watching them. The silence in the barn was ominous, and all at once it seemed much hotter than it actually was.