Louise's Gamble (3 page)

Was it so awful that Alessa had found out I worked at OSS? We government girls were trained to answer ‘I’m a file clerk in a government office’ to any inquiries, but how hard could it be to find out what my office did? And like she said, most everyone knew that my branch of OSS occupied the huge old apartment building on ‘E’ street, and dozens of us walked openly through its doors every day. And that letter she gave me probably contained nothing of critical interest to anyone. Refugees mobbed the Washington bureaucracy daily, desperately trying to find out the fates of their families, their homes, and their friends. Alessa might have a scrap of information she wanted to trade for some favor. Don Murray, who headed my branch’s Europe/Africa desk, would accept Alessa’s missive from me and toss it in the in-box of one of his researchers who could read Italian. Nothing would come of it. When I next saw Alessa I could tell her I’d done as she asked, and that would be the end of it.

I was ashamed of the thrill I’d felt when Alessa pressed her note into my hand. So silly of me! What did I think I was, a spy?

Joe was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs when I came down Sunday morning. We were alone in the hall, so he slipped an arm around my waist and pulled me to him. Not for a kiss, but to show me the morning newspaper.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s started.’

Every headline on the front page of
The Washington Post
trumpeted the beginning of Operation Torch. Finally, Britain and the United States, a year after the United States declared war on Germany, attacked the Nazis. Three Allied joint task forces landed at Casablanca, Oran, and Algeria. Their goal was to invade French North Africa, recruit the Vichy French forces to the Allied cause, and pin Rommel between the invading force and the British Eighth Army in Egypt, driving the Nazis out of North Africa. From there the Allies could stage an invasion of southern Europe.

Through our work Joe and I were prepared for this. But still it was thrilling. As if the war to free Europe had finally begun.

Joe led me into the empty dining room and pulled me into his arms. I let myself relax into his body, and we held each other tight as long as we dared. The sound of Henry whooping in the hall drove us apart.

Henry charged into the dining room, pumping his arms in the air. ‘Finally! Finally!’ he said. ‘It’s about damn time! If the Republicans were in charge, this would have happened months ago!’

Joe and I didn’t bother arguing with him. Instead we went into the kitchen for our allotted cup of coffee.

Since Dellaphine didn’t fix breakfast on Sunday mornings the first person up made coffee and one of us who could cook threw something together for everyone to eat. Phoebe or I often fixed biscuits. Sometimes Henry prepared pancakes. We made do with honey instead of jam or syrup.

In the kitchen I found Phoebe sobbing while she sifted flour into a mixing bowl. Ada had a hand on her arm, trying to calm her. Phoebe’s sons were in the Pacific, but talk of war anywhere reminded her of the danger they were in.

‘Let me do that,’ I said, taking the sifter from her and pulling the mixing bowl toward me. I finished sifting the flour and added lard, cutting the two ingredients together with a pastry mixer until they formed little crumbles. Ada measured the baking powder and salt, and then the milk and water for me. I mixed the batter with a wooden spoon and then kneaded it in the bowl. Phoebe dried her eyes on a tea towel while she watched us. Joe assumed the role of comforter, whispering quietly to her with an arm around her shoulder. She nodded, still with an occasional tear sliding down a cheek.

Despite helping me with the biscuits Ada hadn’t said a word yet this morning and was as white as the flour she measured for me. I knew what she was thinking. She desperately wanted her husband to die. She had no idea where he was stationed, but I knew she prayed he would perish on some torrid airfield in Africa soon. If he died, she wouldn’t ever need to file for divorce, and she’d be spared the embarrassment and humiliation of revealing her marriage to a Nazi.

The commotion in the kitchen brought Dellaphine and Madeleine upstairs. Dellaphine was dressed for church, wearing her Sunday suit, a black hat decorated with a blackbird wing, sensible shoes, and an enormous handbag. Madeleine wore jeans with the cuffs turned up, a baggy pink sweater, bobby socks, and sneakers. She was one of the first colored girls to find a government job, typing Social Security cards, and she enjoyed the benefits of a regular paycheck, just as I did.

‘Why, Miss Phoebe,’ Dellaphine said, patting Phoebe’s hand. ‘What’s wrong? Are the boys all right?’

‘Milt and Tom are fine,’ I said. ‘But we’ve invaded French North Africa.’

‘That’s no reason for you to be crying, Miss Phoebe,’ Dellaphine said. ‘That’s way on the other side of the world from where the boys are.’

Phoebe dried her eyes again on the same kitchen towel, visibly damp from her tears. ‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘But other people’s sons are going to die. It’s all so terribly sad.’

‘Why are we invading Africa, anyway?’ Dellaphine said.

‘From there it’s not far to Italy, Mama,’ Madeleine said. ‘If you read the newspapers you’d know that.’

‘I don’t need to read no newspapers,’ Dellaphine said. ‘I trust God and President Roosevelt to win this war for us.’

Madeleine glanced heavenward, and her mother saw it. She rested a hand on her hip. ‘Missy,’ she said, ‘I can’t make you go to church no more, but don’t you roll those eyes at me!’

‘I’m sorry, Momma,’ Madeleine said, deciding for once to avoid an argument.

‘Are you fixin’ enough biscuits for Sunday dinner, too?’ Dellaphine asked me.

‘Yes, General Dellaphine, I am,’ I answered. I dumped the dough out on the floured wooden pastry board, rolled it out and started cutting it into rounds with the lid of a Mason jar.

‘Do we have any real jam left, Dellaphine?’ Phoebe asked.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said, rooting around in the Hoosier cabinet. ‘Here, it’s peach. Half a jar.’

‘I think we will have some this morning.’

Madeleine found a baking pan for me in the pantry, but not without a crash or two.

‘Every one of you is a mess,’ Dellaphine said. ‘It’s a good thing you got me to pray for you!’

Shaking her head, Dellaphine went on out the back door and marched off to the Gethsemane Baptist Church. Church for her lasted a good two and a half hours, what with Sunday school, hymns, the sermon, and a social afterwards.

‘I should get dressed for church, too,’ Phoebe said. Phoebe was an Episcopalian. Her church didn’t start for another hour and would be finished promptly in fifty minutes.

‘By the time you come back downstairs these will be ready,’ I said, shoving the tray of biscuits in the oven.

‘I don’t think I could eat,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’ll take a cup of coffee upstairs with me.’

When the biscuits came out of the oven, golden and hot, we smeared them with thin layers of butter and jam. Ada, Joe and I took ours into the lounge to eat while reading every page of
The
Washington Post
. Henry subscribed to the
Washington Herald
, the conservative newspaper, so he had it all to himself. The rest of us, including Phoebe, were New Dealers. Madeleine carried her biscuits and coffee downstairs to her room, where she’d read the
Baltimore Afro-American
, the biggest colored newspaper on the east coast.

When Phoebe got home from church she managed to eat half a biscuit, but she avoided the front pages of the
Post
, concentrating instead on the funny pages and the women’s section.

As soon as Dellaphine got home she changed into a house dress and tied on her apron to fix Sunday dinner. Phoebe insisted that as long as she was alive there’d be Sunday dinner at her house. We boarders were so grateful to be living in luxury compared to most of the jam-packed boarding houses in the city that we were happy to pitch in and help with the chores. Ada set the table, and I helped Dellaphine cook. Joe dried the dishes, a sight that stunned us all when he first did it. I’d never seen a man near a kitchen sink before in my life. Women’s work was beneath Henry, but he did take care of Phoebe’s car and the yard.

Ada and I often wondered why Phoebe took in boarders, aside from the patriotism of it. We didn’t think it was for the money. Mr Holcombe lost plenty during the Depression and subsequently died in an accident, which Dellaphine hinted was suicide. But Phoebe must have some money of her own, because she’d kept the house and sent her sons to college. We’d concluded that we boarders somehow took the place of Phoebe’s sons, that we filled up the house and allowed a semblance of normalcy for both Dellaphine and Phoebe. Running a boarding house kept them both busy.

Whatever the reason, we were happy to sit down in the middle of Sunday afternoon and eat fried chicken and mashed potatoes with cream sauce, scalloped cabbage, and leftover biscuits. Dessert was cherry jello embedded with canned pineapple. When I’d first arrived here we would have had cake or pie, but those days were long gone.

What was left of Sunday afternoon passed quietly. No matter what I did, knitting or reading, I couldn’t stop thinking about Alessa and the letter she’d given to me. I had mixed feelings about the incident. On the one hand I wanted to get to work tomorrow early, pass the letter on to Don, and forget about it. When I next saw Alessa I could tell her I’d done what she’d asked and go back to knitting socks badly. Then again I was desperately curious. I wanted to know the contents of that letter and why Alessa wanted to contact OSS.

As six o’clock approached we drifted into the lounge to listen to the news. We settled in our accustomed seats on Phoebe’s outdated furniture with its worn upholstery. Henry turned on the radio.

‘I think we could all use a sherry, don’t you?’ Phoebe asked, coming into the room with her favorite crystal sherry glasses, filled to the brim, on a silver tray. Yes, we could. We sipped as we listened, first to Edward R. Murrow and then the news program on WINX. Our elation over ‘Torch’ turned to worry as we listened to the enormous scope of the invasion. A massive armada, thousands of men, countless tanks and airplanes, streamed across the Atlantic and into North Africa, and for what? To gain a foothold on a piece of land from where we might, might, be able to invade southern Europe?

I glanced at Joe. His dark beard hid much of his face, making him look older than he was, but as he bent over his pipe to light it, I could swear I saw tears glisten in his eyes.

‘I hope Roosevelt has the guts to give Patton his head! This Eisenhower guy is too damn cautious,’ Henry said. ‘We could be in Berlin by spring!’

‘Not likely,’ Joe said, drawing on his pipe until the bowl glowed. ‘First we have to beat Rommel. There’s no guarantee we will. The man is brilliant. Then we must invade Europe and fight our way to Berlin. And we can’t get there directly from Italy because of the Alps and Switzerland. Hitler will defend every inch of territory. It will be –’ and he sought for the appropriate words in English – ‘bloody and vicious. Europe will be rubble by the time it’s over.’

I knew Joe was wondering how many refugees his organization could get out of Europe before the next bloodbath began.

‘Don’t forget the Japs,’ Ada said. ‘We have to beat them too.’

‘Hell, of course we will!’ Henry said. ‘America’s never lost a war.’

I hoped to God he was right. It was too horrific to contemplate, the Japanese in control of the Pacific and Hitler ruling Europe. What kind of world would that be for our children to live in?

And then I thought of Rachel. She, baby Louisa, and little Claude had found refuge in the grotto abbey of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Hamrun, Malta. Once the allies conquered North Africa, the daily bombings of Malta would stop. Wouldn’t they?

None of us slept well that night. I know because when I went downstairs for a glass of water I found Phoebe sipping sherry in the kitchen and saw Joe out on the chilly porch, smoking his pipe, in a worn dressing gown with a blanket thrown over his shoulders.

FIVE

I
pushed the heavy file cart into Don’s office and closed the door behind me.

‘Good morning, Mrs Pearlie,’ Don said, raising his eyes from the stack of papers on his desk. ‘You’re early. I’m done with those,’ he said, nodding at the table piled with files that stood under his office window.

Don Murray had aged since taking over the Europe/Africa desk. Strands of gray streaked his hair. His eyes were often bloodshot. He carried home a full briefcase at night and was the first person in the office every morning.

I unloaded my trolley and stacked files on to his desk in a pile so high it teetered, then emptied his OUT box of an equally towering mountain of paper. When I returned to my office I’d sort through the mountain and either file all that paper or redirect it to other crowded desks.

‘Mr Murray,’ I said, wiping my hands on the damp cloth I kept on the trolley, ‘I need to speak to you.’

‘What is it, Louise?’ he said, slipping into using my first name. We’d dated once before his promotion. ‘I’m awfully busy. And I don’t see how I can get you another clerk. State and the War Department are sucking up all the manpower in the District.’

‘I’ve been contacted by a floater,’ I said. ‘Floater’ was spy lingo for a civilian who becomes part of an intelligence operation.

‘What?’ he said, taking off his glasses and leaning back in his chair. ‘Who? How did he know you work here?’

‘She.’

I sat down at his desk and told him the entire story. After he heard me out he scanned the page of Italian I’d given him.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘interesting. But I doubt this will amount to much.’

I’d learned from the time I was a little girl that I couldn’t say out loud much of what crossed my mind, if I wanted to keep a job or a man or my good name. But I could think whatever I liked, and did. Of course Don assumed Alessa’s information was insignificant. I was a file clerk. Alessa was a penniless female refugee. We’d met at a knitting circle. This was all Don’s male mind needed, to conclude that Alessa’s letter would turn out to be insignificant.