Irish Linen

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “What of Germany?” Cardinal Maglione, the Secretary of State, asked me in his marble office. “Do the German people still support that madman?”

  “Some do, Eminenza, some do not. Right now he is popular because of his quick and painless victories. As the war grows worse, he will lose much of that popularity.”

  “And the Widerstand?”

  “Ah, you know about that, Eminenza?”

  A ruffle of silk as he brushed aside my surprise.

  “It is my business to know things, Lord Ridgewood.”

  “Mr. Ridgewood, Eminenza, when I’m representing neutral Ireland.”

  “Of course,” he said with a gentle smile. “And the Widerstand?”

  “The German Resistance is not large, but it is very intelligent, deeply dedicated, and incredibly brave.”

  “You know them?”

  “Some of them.”

  “You believe they will eliminate Hitler?”

  “When they think it is the right time, they will try.”

  “You know that His Holiness has blessed their project?”

  “I did not know it, but I am glad to hear it.”

  “The British ambassador has notified his Foreign Office about the Widerstand We believe that some of their bureaucrats have buried his reports.”

  “I will inform my government of this fact. They might well make inquiries at higher levels.”

  “I thought that Ireland was neutral, Mr. Ridgewood?”

  His gray eyes twinkled.

  “Absolutely and totally neutral, Eminenza. But also pro-British. If you know the Irish at all, sir, you know that it is not a contradiction.”

  “Certo!”

  I was then ushered up to the fifth floor of the Vatican Palace to meet Pius XII, a slight, intense, fragile man with thick glasses. He asked about Lord and Lady Ridgeland and my brothers and sisters and wondered whether I was married.

  “I am in love with a wonderful young woman, Sanita, and I have strong hopes that we will be married.”

  He smiled, a gentle, beatific smile.

  “May God grant your hopes.”

  “She is Catholic, of course,” I added.

  He nodded, as if he took that for granted.

  “Tell me about the Jews. They will die? The Gypsies too?”

  “That is the goal about which they are talking. They will make definitive plans shortly.”

  “This must not be permitted.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “You know Graf von Stauffenberg?”

  “We went to school together at Heidelberg, Sanita.”

  “What is he like?”

  “I assume you know Der Ritter in the Bamberg Cathedral?”

  “Certo.”

  “Claus is like him, Sanita, the last Catholic knight of Europe.”

  “God bless and protect him.”

  He blessed me too.

  “Bring my most special blessing to Graf Stauffenberg and his family.”

  “The Russian war will begin in May, I understand?” he remarked as I left his office.

  If the Pope knew the order of battle, everyone in the world did.

  Later in the day, I wrote a letter on Vatican stationery to the Old Fella.

  “Tell your good friend Winston that some of his Foreign Office people are burying reports from the British Ambassador to the Vatican about the Widerstand in Germany. I assume they may be burying mine too.”

  I sent a similar minute to my government along with a summary of my conversations at the Vatican. They would raise hell with the British Foreign Minister too, though very polite and very neutral hell.

  I marveled at the beauty of Italy as my train carried me through Italy and up to the Brenner Pass. God protect it from the ravages of war.

  That prayer wasn’t heard. After the invasion of Sicily in 1943, the king of Italy dumped Mussolini and appointed Marshal Bagdolio as prime minister. Italy then withdrew from the war. For the Führer that was intolerable. He sent German troops into Italy and resisted the Allied march north till the end of the war. It was another foolish mistake. The men who fought in Italy might have been used to end the retreat from Stalingrad or resist the Americans in France.

  I encountered Claus after my return from Berlin at the shooting range. My task that day was to face away from the range, listen for the sound of the targets appearing, then whirl and dispose of all three of them.

  I didn’t succeed. The third one I missed each time.

  “Ja, ja, Herr Ambassador! The aim is not so good today, nein?”

  “I try to imagine that they’re SS men and they will shoot at me. Want to try?”

  “Not today, Timmy. I’m a father again, a lovely little girl.”

  “Congratulations!”

  “The line will continue, no matter what happens to me … Come let us eat and drink and celebrate!”

  “Your man in Rome sends his personal blessing to you and your family through me.”

  “Rome?”

  “The guy in white. He also blesses the Widerstand and its efforts to remove Hitler.”

  “Did Our Most Holy Father speak of me personally?” He seemed surprised and, indeed, awed.

  “Sure, he agreed with the comparison of you and your man in the Cathedral.”

  His blush was painful.

  “The silly fantasies of a silly little girl.”

  “And how fares that young woman now?”

  “She does not weep, she prays often, she works hard, she does not smile anymore.”

  “Is she safe at the Air Ministry?”

  “Goering is a fop and a pervert, but he is still loyal to his colleagues, particularly after they’re dead. Frau von Richthofen is as safe as she would be in a convent. She now has major responsibilities there in the coordination of communications.”

  “And in May we march on Moscow?”

  “Guderian says his tanks will be in Red Square within a month. Stalin refuses to believe there will be a war.”

  “And your role?”

  “I am to be supply officer for Army Group South. Our goal is to reach the Volga River and the oil fields in the Caucusus.”

  “Will you get there?”

  “Not this year at any rate.”

  We were momentarily silent.

  “Timmy Pat, you are a very good friend.”

  “As are you, Santa Claus.”

  My new name for him.

  “I must ask you for a very great favour.”

  “I’ll do it, whatever it is.”

  “If I should die in the service of the Secret Germany, will you take care of Annalise for me?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Here is a letter to her. It commands her to obey you. You will not read it of course.”

  “Naturally.”

  “It only applies if I die in an attempt to kill Hitler. There is no way I can prevent her from being part of the Widerstand. Despite Goering’s protection, they will torture her to death. Not my family. They are part of a long and distinguished line. Annalise is no one important and she speaks very strongly. She is already involved with some of the young women in the Kreuzer Circle.”

  “What must I do with her?”

  “Get her out of the country.”

  “I think I can do that.”

  “She will go with you, of that I am quite confident.”

  “This will happen soon?”

  “I think not. And I hope that I survive. Yet one must prepare.”

  I hid the letter in my private safe at the residence. It was absurd fantasy. The Gothic princess and her Irish Parzifal on the run in Hitler’s Germany.

  On June 22, a month later, the Wehrmacht swept into the Soviet Union. Within a month Guderian had captured Smolensk. His advance patrols were already probing around Moscow and found the city unprotected. But the Fuhrer decided that he wanted to capture Leningrad and Kiev at the same time, so he curtailed Guderian’s fuel supply. Kiev did fall to Claus’s Army Group South. Leningrad held out through
the whole war. Moscow was never seriously threatened again.

  At the end of 1941 Hitler made another enormous blunder. After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor and the American declaration of war on Japan, Hitler quite gratuitously declared war on the United States.

  “Now,” Canaris said, “the Americans have an excuse to come to England’s aid. They will crush us before they go after the Japanese. What do you think, Timothy?”

  “I think you’re in check again, Herr Admiral.”

  He muttered a few Germanic curses.

  “And the Americans?”

  “I lived there for four years. Hitler is even more insane than you realize. The sooner you folks get rid of him, the better.”

  On January 20, 1942, in a meeting at Wannsee, a Berlin suburb on a lake, the Nazis completed the planning for the Endlösung, the Final Solution to the Jewish problem. They would eliminate all Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, undesirables (the blind, the lame, the deaf), and decadents. This would be a vast exercise in purification carried out by the SS and the Gestapo. The victims would be eliminated in gas chambers, and reduced to ashes in giant ovens. It would be a huge and costly project, but none of the men at the meeting doubted that German organizational skill could carry it out. Canaris, who was there, could not believe what he had heard. I reported it to Dublin. Whether Winston would see my minute or not I did not know.

  The Russians counterattacked in the winter of 1942 and drove the Wehrmacht back in the snow. The Afrika Korps was stopped at the edge of Cairo again. Then before the end of the year the tide seemed to change. The English routed the Afrika Korps, the Americans landed in North Africa, the American Navy sank four Japanese carriers at Midway Island. And Hitler lost the war at Stalingrad.

  15

  I WENT back to the store where the woman with her big diamond had sold me a camera for my poor Dermot and meself wearing jeans and a Chicago Bears sweatshirt on this lovely spring day. I would begin by purchasing another camera, a less expensive one for Nelliecoyne’s birthday. She recognized me at once and apologized for not knowing that I was the famous singer. I dealt with that the way I usually do and gave her a couple of discs I had packed in my large shoulder bag. She gave me a big discount on the camera, which I had to accept or I would have been rude. I then showed her our picture of Des—the one with the smile.

  “He speaks Arabic?” she said dubiously.

  “And Eritrean and Ethiopian and a couple of other languages. We suspect he may be trying to learn Aramaic too.”

  “God’s language!”

  “No, actually God speaks Irish of course, but Jesus and his mother spoke Aramaic.”

  We laughed and laughed at that.

  “We think so.”

  “Why would he go to Iraq, especially at this time?”

  “We think he had already planned to go to study languages, perhaps around Mosul or Kirkut, and decided that he wouldn’t let the war discourage him.”

  “Well there are many languages there. If he really liked diversity, he could have had a good time, if there wasn’t a war and so many people didn’t hate one another.”

  “Whom do the Assyrians hate?”

  “Everyone of course, perhaps the Kurds less than others because we are their allies against the Iraqis. It is so much better in this country, you just make mean jokes about them, instead of hating them.”

  That morning Mike Casey had called us.

  “Well, Nuala Anne, he flew from Chicago to Ankara on Turkish Air and then on to a place called Kars way out on the east end of the country near Russia and Iran. The people there are mostly Kurdish.”

  “Suppose our friend wanted to get into Kurdistan inside Iraq,” I asked the Assyrian woman, whose name, I had learned, was Mary. “Could he do it by flying to Kars?”

  “Yes, though it would be a long ride through the mountains and he would have to speak a little Farsi, which is a dialect of what the Iranians speak. Could he do that?”

  “He might have learned some of it when he was in school.”

  “It would be very dangerous.”

  “You’ve been to college in this country?”

  “Oh yes, I have attended Loyola and in another year or so will graduate. Our parents studied with the Jesuits in Baghdad before they were thrown out of the country. We had to learn to speak English before we came here.”

  Her husband came into the store, a giant of a man with a book bag over his shoulder. They kissed the way your typical Yanks don’t in public, creepy Prots that they are.

  She introduced me to Joseph, her husband. He bowed respectfully.

  “We are honored that we have become your regular camera shop.”

  “He’s studying to be a lawyer.”

  “Dangerous business,” says I.

  “Not as dangerous as in Iraq,” he said with a big smile. “I want to work as a defense lawyer.”

  “You know a woman named Cindy Hurley?”

  “I have the honor of being an intern in her firm. She is a very nice person, though I argue with her only rarely.”

  “Well, I have the honor of being married to her brother and isn’t she my defense lawyer?”

  “I cannot imagine you need that much defense.”

  “The Feds want to pick me up occasionally as an illegal. If they come after you, sign her up.”

  “I know that the United States Attorneys for the Northern District of Illinois are very much afraid of her.”

  His wife told him our story.

  “How very interesting. This young man must be extraordinary.”

  “He has the glint in his eyes.”

  “He does indeed. Our people over there will surely love him. They appreciate the glint in the eye … May I borrow this photograph for a moment?”

  “Certainly … Mary, I think I’ll take along one of those printers I looked at. The childer will have fun making pitchers.”

  Despite me poor man who is a Nazi about words, I always pronounce “pictures” as though the word was “pitchers,” a distinction which doesn’t bother us in the West of Ireland at all, at all.

  Joseph came back with a perfect copy of my pitcher of poor Des.

  “With your permission, Ms. McGrail, I’ll fax this to all our stores. Someone might recognize him. You won’t have to worry about establishing credibility with them.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful altogether! Would you ever think of coming over to our house for supper some night?”

  “I will have to ask Ms. Hurley if she would be offended. I think not. Only prosecuting attorneys offend her.”

  “That’s fine. Thank you very much for the help. You may be seeing me often now that you’re me very own camera people.”

  I called me man on me modular and told him what I’d learned.

  “OK, he certainly was headed for Mosul or that part of the world. You want to try a few more stores?”

  “The childer?”

  “Himself is sound asleep with Maeve guarding him. The others are over at school still.”

  “I’m having fun, Dermot.”

  “That’s what pro football players always say.”

  “But won’t it be unnecessary for me to visit any more stores? Didn’t your man fax a copy of me picture to all the Assyrian camera shops in town?”

  “Why would I ever not realize that something like that would happen?”

  So I drove home feeling very proud of meself.

  Me man greeted me at the door of our house with a big hug which meant a) he was very proud of me and b) he wouldn’t mind making love with me at all, at all.

  “You bought a printer too.”

  “Didn’t I figure that my Nelliecoyne should have all the equipment she needs?”

  “We will now have a little camera nut scurrying around the house taking pictures of everything and then printing up copies.”

  “Won’t it keep her out of trouble?”

  “My Nelliecoyne is never in trouble.”

  “And when she is, she becomes my Ne
lliecoyne.”

  He was still hanging on to me like he was half about to seduce me. That’s an upsetting situation. I was halfway seduced meself, me body busy creating the hormones that would settle the matter altogether.

  “Dermot Michael Coyne, you don’t have to hang on to me that way at all, at all!”

  “I will if I want!”

  Then he began to play with me the way a man does when he wants to set a woman on fire. I was already on fire as it was.

  “I hope you weren’t planning to fuck me here in the parlor with the windows open.”

  “I was planning to do just that, no one will see you on the couch.”

  I pretended to struggle to escape from his arms which is, of course, part of me act. If I didn’t want to make love, it would have been a different struggle.

  I had seen the signs in his eyes that morning when I left that he was besotted again. Ah, well, that’s the way of it, isn’t it?

  Me poor man was now absolutely out of his mind with desire. I would resist just a little more to increase his fun. So I got in the way of his taking off me tee shirt. Then it was the end of it for me too. He took off the rest of me clothes, laid me on the couch like I was a delicate figurine and went into an advanced stage of playfulness, the kind of stuff at which he is very good.

  “Finish me off, now, Dermot,” I begged, “I’m losing me mind.

  All the time, Fiona, who had greeted me at the door, lay curled up on the counter, oblivious as she always was to human sexual activity. She knew my screams were categorically different from other screams.

  Finally, me poor husband and meself collapsed into a soft lake of soothing pleasure and grace.

  “Fiend,” I said to him as I nibbled at his ear.

  We managed to get our clothes back on before his son began to demand attention and the doggies restlessly came to the window to await the other childer returning for their lunch.

  “I’ll go get them,” I said. “You’re too worn-out.”

  “Woman, I’m not.”

  He took the leashes out of my hand and I went upstairs to the other male rapist in the family, if you believe Freud.

  We gave Nelliecoyne her early birthday presents and she went off the wall with excitement.

  Her sister and brother looked envious till I promised them that when they were the same age, they’d get the same presents.