Beyond the carved screen, I heard him sit down again.
Before I could have second thoughts, I stammered, “I need to . . . Can I ask you something, Father?”
“Anything, my child.”
He was a young priest, new to the village, and not much older than me.
“Will it be a secret if it’s not a confession?” I checked. “Nobody else must know. Not even my mother.”
There was a moment’s silence behind the screen, and then he said, “You can tell me anything, and I won’t repeat it.”
I thought I could sense the interest, the curiosity he was trying to keep out of his voice. I wished I could see his face. I took a deep breath.
“I want to know if it would be possible to be married in secret, without banns being read.”
He was cautious. “Banns are always read. How else would we know if the couple are free to marry?”
I persisted. “But in wartime, if the lives of the people depended on it being a secret, would it be possible? Might it be possible?”
“Who’s the man?” he said sharply. This time he didn’t call me “my child.”
“A prisoner. A British prisoner of war.”
He let out a long, slow exhalation. “I’d have to ask the bishop for special permission.”
The bishop had once been outspoken in his opposition to the Third Reich, and I was hopeful.
“Then will you ask him very soon, please? The Russians are coming, and the prisoners could be taken away any day. We want to be married before they go. We might never have another chance.” I played my last card. “Or we could ask the British camp chaplain, perhaps. He comes around to the work details sometimes, but he’s a Protestant, and I wouldn’t feel properly married in the eyes of God.”
“No,” said the young priest, “that would be a sin. As it happens, I’m cycling over tomorrow to see the bishop about another matter.”
“Thank you. Oh, thank you so much.”
“Just one more thing.” I could almost feel the heat of his blushes. “In wartime people do things they . . . wouldn’t normally do. What I mean is . . . don’t allow yourself to be drawn into the sin of fornication.”
“No, Father, we both want to be married,” I said sanctimoniously.
“Yes, good. Very good. I’ll see what can be done.”
I thanked him, and we both left the confessional box. The church was empty, and we walked down the aisle to the door together.
The priest opened the heavy door, and golden late-summer sunshine lit his boyish face. He tried to pull a sober expression but his wide, honest eyes were dancing with excitement. “Even if the bishop says yes, which I doubt, how could it be managed?”
“Oh, if he says yes, I’ll find a way to manage it.”
He laughed out loud and suddenly felt more like a friend than a priest.
“Izabela,” he said, and I was surprised he even knew my name, “I believe you will.”
He shook my hand.
“I’ll come the day after tomorrow,” I said.
* * *
If my mother was surprised at my new desire to attend mass, she didn’t say anything. She could hardly criticize me for being a whore one day and a saint the next, so I sat through the early-morning mass two days later in a welter of anticipation.
Afterward, I positioned myself on the grassy bank below the church and waited for the last of the pious ladies to leave. Finally the priest came to the door, beckoning me inside.
We sat in one of the back pews, under the balcony. It felt private and safe.
“I saw the bishop,” he said cautiously.
“Thank you.” I twisted my hands together in impatience.
His eyes were raised to the paintings of the stations of the cross. In profile, his nose had a hooked shape like a Roman emperor’s.
“The bishop said it is most irregular and has little precedence in canon law.”
“But can it be done?”
He glanced quickly at me, full of concern for a moment, and then smiled. “I have permission. Under the circumstances of the war.”
I moved to hug him and then held back, remembering he was a priest. “Oh, thank you, thank you!”
“We’ll have to have two witnesses. Does the prisoner—your fiancé—speak Czech or German?”
“No.”
“And I can’t speak English. So we’ll have to have a witness who can translate everything.”
My heart fell like lead. To tell another person could risk everything.
But the priest had already been thinking. “The organist, Mr. Novak, speaks good English. He might be willing to help.”
Mr. Novak was no good. I’d known him since I was a child. He was a dear friend of my father’s, another Czech musician.
“He’d tell my mother,” I blurted out. “He was my father’s closest friend. He’s eaten meals with us so many times. He wouldn’t keep it from her. . . .”
“He’s a good man,” cut in the priest. “I think he’s a man who knows many secrets and keeps good counsel.”
Was he trying to tell me that Mr. Novak was in touch with the resistance and that he might even be able to get a message to my father to hurry us to safety? I nodded uncertainly.
“OK. Please, will you ask him? And please, tell him it must be a secret from everyone. Especially my mother.”
“We’ll need a second witness.”
“I’ll ask Bill to ask his friend. I’ll pretend to be taking them both to the dentist in Mankendorf.”
“Very well. I can see you’ve thought of many things.” He paused. “When will it be?”
“My aunt lives in Český Těšín. She’s expecting a baby to arrive in a couple of weeks, at the end of September, and my mother’s planning to go to her and take my little brother. The crops should all be gathered in by then.”
“I see.”
“I’ll come with a message when she leaves.”
“Very well. I’ll speak to the organist. And I’ll pray for us all that you aren’t making a terrible mistake.”
* * *
Bill was working in the turnip field when I got home, but my mother and Herr Weber were both in the field, so I schooled myself in patience, inching along behind Bill, watching him bending and lifting, bending and lifting, loving the fluid grace of his movements, until finally he was within whispering distance. “Keep working,” I said softly. “Don’t look at me.”
He gave a wonderful impression of a man for whom turnips were the most fascinating things in the world and a pretty young woman of no interest at all.
“Hello, Izzy,” he said, not looking back, “darling Izzy,” and a warm glow spread through me.
“I have to ask you something,” I said shyly, banging mud from a turnip root and laying it on my cart.
“Yes?”
Suddenly I was worried that I had run away with my own ideas and ambitions, that my mother was right and only the heat of infatuation had made him mention marriage.
“I . . . I have talk to priest.”
His head jolted as if he had to check his instinct to swing round to me, but he continued working, pulling and shaking the turnips.
I thought I could detect a tremble in his voice as he replied quietly, “And what did he say?”
I took a deep breath. “He has yes said. He will marry us, if you still want.”
Bill risked a backward glance at me, and the force of his smile was like a light switched on in a gloomy room. He was happy. It was all right!
“Of course I want. You are the most astonishing girl I’ve ever met.”
Now I was smiling too. How could I ever have doubted his love?
“We must be many time careful,” I said, turning my attention back to the turnips.
He turned and continued his harvesting as I walked slo
wly behind him.
“Yes, yes, I understand. But how will it be managed? When will it be? I can’t believe it.”
“Is true, and I have plan.”
He laughed quietly. “Of course you have. Tell me everything I have to do.”
I told him about the different elements that would have to come together. First, about my mother going to Český Těšín as soon as my aunt went into labor.
“She is have bad time with last baby. My mother will leave me to look after farm. This bad part.”
“Why? Oh, I see. You feel sad about being married without your mother there?”
I realized I hadn’t yet told him that my plan was to abandon the farm, abandon the animals I’d fed and cared for, abandon my whole life and family for this one chance to be with him. I hadn’t told him that I hoped we would be picked up by the partisans and be able to fight with Dad and Jan for the resistance. I truly believed I could escape the oncoming Russians, fight the Third Reich and be with Bill, all in one.
“No. Yes. But is only way.”
I reminded him that I’d been allowed before to take prisoners to the dentist in Mankendorf, and he nodded, remembering. “Jim came back with half his teeth missing!”
“Yes. So you and Harry must start to have bad tooth. Each have pain. Different time.”
“I get it!” The delight is evident in his voice. “So on the day your mother goes away, me and Harry both have a terrible toothache, and you take us to the dentist. But actually—well, actually to our wedding. And he’ll be my best man.”
“Our wedding,” I repeated, because I couldn’t help saying it aloud. “Our wedding.”
Eight
At the end of September, a telegram finally arrived with the news that my aunt was in labor, and my mother buzzed around the house like an annoying fly. She reminded me I wasn’t to climb ladders when I was alone on the farm. I must take care not to fall down the well, must dress as a boy if the Russians came. She’d already darned and mended my brother’s outgrown clothes. She’d made me try on a pair of his boots, which were in better condition than my own, because he’d grown out of them so quickly that they had hardly been worn. They were too big, and I watched her boiling wool into felt and sewing them into slippers to make a thick lining for them. She’d even climbed up into the attic, and eventually come down with a strange-looking pink corset, a stiff band of fabric with shoulder straps and lacing down the side. She said it had been my great-aunt’s in the 1920s when it was fashionable to bind your breasts flat. Everything was ready for my transformation into a boy.
“You’re only going for a couple of days,” I pointed out. “The Russians aren’t likely to advance that fast.”
She ignored me, refolding a blouse. “And you’re not to see that boy Bill.”
“I won’t be able to help it if the Oily Captain brings them here to work,” I retorted.
“Don’t call him that. He’s Captain Meier. You’re not to go out to meet Bill at night, like some . . . bad girl. . . . D’you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I snapped with the degree of petulance I knew she’d expect. Inside, I could hardly contain the glee that fizzed through me like bubbles in lemonade. It was coming: My wedding day was finally coming!
My mother continued to pelt me with instructions and warnings as she carried her suitcase downstairs. I followed with my brother’s. Marek was already waiting by the door, eager to be off, to see his cousins, to be the important child who was taken to the birth of a new baby.
Our neighbor was waiting outside with his cart to drive them to the station. It was only then, with one foot out of the door, that my mother stopped and really looked at me, as one woman at another. “Will you be all right?”
I laughed. “Of course I will. I’m twenty. I’m a grown woman. You were married and had Jan on the way by the time you were my age.”
She nodded, but still hesitated. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said eventually, and reached out to give me a fierce, quick hug, which took me by surprise. Her arms were strong as ropes around me, and I held the feel of them in my memory, because I didn’t know how long it might be till I saw her again.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, and my voice cracked slightly, though I intended it to be reassuring. I cleared my throat. “Everything’ll be fine.”
She stared at me with her quick, penetrating eyes, trying to see through me to where the truth was hiding, and then walked quickly toward the cart.
“Give my love to Auntie,” I called. “I hope it all goes well.”
I watched until the cart lurched around the bend. Then I returned to the kitchen, where I began to dance and sing, “It’s today, today. It’s going to be today!”
I ran out to the barn and pulled the oilskin kit bags from their hiding place in the rafters. They were dusty already, and the dust made me cough. I peeked out of the barn to make sure the coast was clear before I carried them across the courtyard and up to my bedroom. I rushed to Jan’s room to gather up the clothes I’d chosen to turn me into the boy of Mother’s dreams, the boy who would have been allowed to join the partisans. And from my father’s drawer I took the clothing to transform Bill from a British soldier into an itinerant farmworker.
At first, Bill had objected to my plan that we run away together, with me dressed as a boy. He’d said it would be too dangerous, that as soon as he went missing, the Nazis would be looking for him and would find us both. His face had closed down with worry at the thought of a dog patrol snapping at our heels. We might both get shot, he’d argued.
But I worked on him, first of all reminding him what would surely happen to me if I stayed on the farm and the Russians came, repeating to him the hair-raising stories of Russian atrocities circulating among the village women, until he knew he had to help me get away. I also assured him that my father would find us. Of course, I wouldn’t tell Mr. Novak about our plan to run away, but once we had both gone, I was sure he’d find a way to let my father know so he could come and take us to join the resistance. I painted a picture of us with my father and Jan, hiding out in the mountains with the partisans. Bill told me about Robin Hood and Maid Marian and I said yes, that was how we’d be, living in the forest and fighting the bad guys side by side until the end of the war. Together. And doing all the private things that a married couple could do, whenever they liked.
And slowly, he’d come around to my idea—perhaps seeing no alternative in the face of the Soviet advance, or perhaps seduced by my certainty of our rescue by the partisans and the picture I painted of us fighting together for the resistance. And maybe, like me, thinking a lot about sex.
So, as I made our preparations, I couldn’t help singing, and every now and then darting to the window to be sure the cart wasn’t bringing my mother back home. I lifted up my great-aunt’s bust-flattening corset, giggling at the stupid, ugly thing. I pulled open a drawer and took out my sanitary belt and rags. I’d sewn false bottoms into our kit bags, which formed secret compartments, and I folded the belt and rags into the one in mine, with a small vest of Marek’s.
The rattle of hooves on the road made me clutch the bag to my chest, but when I looked out of the window, it was just our neighbor, returning alone. My mother had really gone. It was my wedding day! I was dizzy with joy and excitement.
I packed hastily, mentally ticking off the items I’d identified for each of us. I’d found an old brown coat of Jan’s for myself, and Bill would wear a short oilskin cape and hood over his greatcoat to make it look less military.
When all my preparations were done and our kit bags were packed tight as sausages, I put on my newest underwear and my blue dress. It was a little faded, but I admired myself in the mirror in Mother’s bedroom and thought, This is me. I am a bride. My curls were shining, and my eyes were full of excitement. I took my grandmother’s wedding ring from its hiding place, slipping it into my bra for safekeeping. I pulle
d my coat over the dress and buttoned it to the neck. In the larder, I opened my mother’s last bottle of plum brandy and poured out a mugful, then topped it back up with water and replaced the stopper. Having wrapped the bottle in cotton, I laid it in my bicycle basket. Then I wheeled my bike out onto the lane, eagerness leaping through my veins.
First, I cycled to the train station, taking the route my mother would have followed if something had gone wrong and she was walking back. I leaned my bike against the station wall and looked cautiously onto the platform. Empty. She’d definitely left.
Next, I pedaled to the church, glad that it wasn’t on the main road like in Mankendorf, where anyone might see me, but up the hill, behind the trees, only its red roof and onion domes visible from the road. I had to dismount and push the bike up the last steep section, afraid of the smell of sweat on my wedding dress. I laid my hand for a second on the reassuring white walls of the church and hid my bike behind it before pushing open the big door. My stomach was tight as a knot.
The priest saw me coming and crossed himself.
“It’s today,” I blurted out. “That is, could it be today? Could it be now?”
He asked, “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life!”
“Very well. If you fetch the groom and his witness, I’ll bring Mr. Novak.”
I was in the saddle in one swift movement, then freewheeling crazily down the slope from the church out onto the road. A car coming from Mankendorf swerved to miss me, almost flying off the road, and I wobbled furiously, most afraid the bottle would be smashed. The driver yelled, “You idiot, you could have been killed!” before he squealed away.
This shocked me into carefulness, and I looked all around me as I pedaled hard. Everything was so beautiful—the greens of the trees and the fields, the singing of the birds, the hills in the distance.
I reached the field where the working party was harvesting sugar beets. At the sight of me approaching, Bill let out a groan and clutched his cheek. “Ow! It’s that bleedin’ tooth again. I was awake all night with it. It’s going to have to come out.”
The Prisoner's Wife Page 7
