The Illusion of Separateness (7 page)

I will miss this house and the birds outside every morning. Just open your window at dawn and you’ll understand. People who sleep through it wake to silence.

New people in the poetry group always want to know where I lived when I was a boy.
Far away
, I tell them. They think I’m wise—think I have a story. But the older I get, the less I understand.

So I make things up.
The smell of hay. Falling asleep under trees. Riding a bicycle across an entire country, picking vegetables in a field.
No point going on about the starvation, or father’s fists, or the ropes and how much I screamed—not so much for pain but because I loved him, and wanted our lives to be different.

Though it
is
true I grew up in an old blacksmith’s cottage.
Best place to live in winter
, I always add,
as the fireplace is larger than normal.

Inside
, I go on,
a stone floor worn down in one place. It’s where horses stood. A shoe is being fitted. A horse’s leg has to be lifted with strength and gentleness.

Outside, cows tearing across hillsides.

Probably 1938.

My father convinced the men in town I was older than I was.

Thought he was helping me.

He said,
When you come back, a kiss for every Jew.

JOHN

FRANCE,

1944

I.

J
O
HN AWOKE IN
a stew of mud and dead leaves with a fierce pain in his foot. His wristwatch had stopped a few minutes before nine.

He expected the enemy would return with more men or dogs, and so untangled himself quickly from the bush.

Here was a landscape John had always loved. Roots poked up through the ground on their way to deeper earth. Heavy mosses wrapped dead branches and smoothed the gnarls of dying trunks. It was an old wood that had seen many wars, and once even hosted a gang of deserters from Napoleon’s Grande Armée, whose uniforms and weapons were still tucked into the hollow of a dead tree.

Harriet had several sketchbooks of John’s drawings. They were lush and messy. She liked to look at them. Over the course of their lives, she hoped he might teach her how to draw. It could be something they did together, a way to fill the Sundays ahead.

John’s escape from this place would have to be a work of art, something original, something the enemy would not anticipate.

H
e stepped slowly through the forest, trying not to break small branches underfoot, when two arms grabbed him from behind. He struggled and kicked his legs violently, but the person holding him was much bigger. A voice told him to relax, and he did. The thick arms loosened.

The man wore a long waterproof coat with tall farmer’s boots.

“I knew you were here somewhere,” the man said with a French accent. “We saw you land, but you fled before we could get to you.”

The farmer led John through the woods to a pile of potatoes at the edge of a plowed field. There was also a cart and a muscular horse that looked up when they approached. Pheasants were penned in a wire basket and pressed their feathered bodies against the mesh.

The man told John that his cousin’s farm was on the other side of the village, and that’s where they were going. John watched as he filled several sacks with potatoes and then hauled them onto the cart.

When the farmer picked up the final sack, he motioned for John to get in. Then he filled it with a few handfuls of potatoes and stacked it against the others.

After a jerk, they began to move. A short time later there was a sudden echo of hooves, and John realized they had left the field for a road. The pheasants were flapping against the sides of the basket. John closed his eyes and tried to block the pain in his foot, but it was hard to keep still.

When the cart stopped, men spoke quickly in German. The farmer said in French, “Come and see what I found.”

The soldiers stopped talking and followed him.

After the farmer had presented the pheasants to the soldiers, John heard matches being struck. The odor of cigarette smoke. Nobody talking.

His foot stung so wildly that he felt in danger of being betrayed by his own body. Just as he began to stir, there was a great weight on the cart, and John felt a large back lean against him.

When they reached the house, John was carried inside and released from the sack. The farmer’s name was Paul. He had witnessed the invasion from the fields. The sky full of parachutes. Equipment stuck in the mud, wheels spinning. The rattle of machine guns upon anyone who resisted. Paul said that people he once trusted were profiteering from others’ misery, or openly walking with soldiers in the square, out of fear or for advancement. He attended the public executions of his friends, helped bury them afterward, and listened to the stories of soldiers sneaking out of their barracks in search of girls they had seen. Nobody was safe, he said.

He told John other things too, about his horses and the weather.

How high the river was.

He gave his American guest hot coffee, and asked how he would like his potatoes cooked. John thanked him and rolled up his sleeves to help, but had to sit because of his foot.

In between mouthfuls, John confessed how he didn’t consider himself much of a killer. Paul nodded. “We all felt that way at the beginning,” he said. “Probably even a few of them did too, but now it’s too late.”

When Paul questioned him about his crew, John told him they were dead and then changed the subject.

John was part of Operation Carpetbagger. They had taken off at 23:12 from RAF Harrington. His B-24 Liberator was called the
Starduster
. His best friend was Leo Arlin from Brooklyn, who flew with another crew. The B-24 bombers had been adapted for special operations, and painted black.

It was safer if Paul knew nothing—even if he was a member of the Maquis.
*

John had met many French agents. Part of Operation Carperbagger meant placing the right person in the right place at the right time. The best operative had no name and no family. Most went missing. Fates remained a mystery. Some agents carried cyanide capsules. If capture seemed imminent, death would take only a few moments.

Captured agents were tortured, then shot or decapitated. Known relatives could face a similar fate, regardless of age. John considered these things as he stared at the toy box and family of dolls set up for a tea party on the floor.

P
aul’s cousin’s clothes were too big for John, but Paul said the sleeves and trousers could be hemmed. The clothes were also a little damp, so Paul hung them in the kitchen above the stove.

As John put more wood on the fire, Paul went outside and returned with a metal bathtub. A pair of heavy arms swung out from the fireplace, with hooks for Paul to hang pots of water. When the water was hot, Paul lifted the pots with a rag, and poured them into the tub.

As John undressed, they were both surprised at the state of his foot. After the bath, Paul gave John some rope to bite on while he cleaned the wound.

As Paul delicately wrapped the swollen joint, John asked what time his cousin and family would be home. When the bandage was snug, Paul gave John a stick to lean on and led him outside.

The cool air felt good and the sky was full of stars.

Beyond the farmhouse was a line of low huts where the chickens slept. John wondered what Paul wanted to show him. It was painful to walk and he was worried about being seen.

When they reached a cluster of young fruit trees, Paul stopped. John was about to say something when he looked down and saw four mounds of earth, all faintly indented with handprints. Each was marked with a different-sized cross.

Paul leaned down and touched the smallest one.

“Jacqui was only three,” he said. “But it made no difference.”

U
ntil further notice, John was to spend daylight hours in the cellar. Paul would bring him upstairs at night after curfew, to eat by the fire and talk or play cards.

The cellar smelled like wet magazines. John composed letters to Harriet in his mind. He relived their trip to Coney Island, the gust of wind that blew off his hat, the fishing boats at Montauk, the feeling of her hand inside his.

Paul supplied John with painkillers that made him tired and dreamy. The sound of water through the drainpipe filled him with awe. Heavy showers of rain like music.

They spent most nights beside the fire in silence. Paul often fell asleep because he was farming his cousin’s land in addition to his own.

John grew a beard, as Paul said a mustache would have made him look too English. He also found John a good pair of shoes that fit well.

The days passed, and John’s health deteriorated. Paul took care of his foot as best he could, but it was changing color. Paul studied it by the fire one night and said he’d try to find a doctor. John had grown dependent on the painkillers. Paul showed him where they were, in case something happened to him.

The next morning John heard the latch and thought it was the doctor. A voice called his name, then a single match was struck to light a candle. A face appeared in the entrance to the cellar, and a hand motioned for John to come upstairs. When John hesitated, an old man climbed down the steps with the candle balanced in one hand. He approached John cautiously, then handed him a revolver.

“You can trust me,” he said.

They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. The wallpaper was yellow and worn out around the light switch. The old man fed John some pâté and a crust of bread that he brought wrapped in a tea towel. He was the town mayor, and said that Paul was trying to find a doctor—but it was hard to trust anyone.

“Your foot might be the end of us all,” he laughed.

Then he loaded the stove stick by stick. When the wood basket was empty, the old man began picking up the toys that littered the floor. John got up to help.

“He’ll be angry at first,” the mayor said. “But it’s for his own good.”

Some of the dolls were sticky. Smiles had been drawn on with crayon.

W
hen Paul didn’t return that night, John packed a few things and left quietly through the back door.

Days had turned into weeks.

It was dark and the streets of the village were empty. This made the main patrol easier to evade.

Some houses had been burned, and there was black around the window frames like smudges of mascara.

When a dog started barking, John looked down a side street and saw a small group of soldiers marching toward him. They would want to check his papers—especially as it was past curfew.

If he ran, they would notice and give chase.

He stood still for a moment, then spotted a light on in a shop up ahead. He walked briskly toward it and entered without hesitating. A bell sounded. It was a barbershop. A solemn-faced man appeared from the back and stood with a towel. He ushered John into a chair and began brushing his face with foam from a large bowl. The patrol passed to the aroma of lavender and vetiver.

After splashing on some aftershave, the barber went downstairs and reappeared with a heavy coat. In the pockets were bread rolls, dried meat, money, a compass, and a small comb.

John left the village at exactly ten o’clock (if the local church was to be believed), and set the wristwatch Harriet had given him for his birthday. Soon he was crawling through hedgerows and skirting the edges of fields.

He darted across roads as quickly as he could, but on one occasion found himself caught in the lamps of a motorcycle and sidecar. It had stopped some distance away with its engine off, at the front of a convoy of troop carriers.

John pretended to be drunk, but nothing happened. Either the soldiers hadn’t seen him or they were amused. John fumbled to undo his belt, then urinated in the road.

It was long past curfew. They could take him in or just gun him down, depending on how busy they were. When he finished, John buttoned up his pants and staggered beyond the arc of the motorcycle’s headlamps and into the safety of a field. He lay down some distance away and watched the convoy for a few moments, then he swallowed two painkillers and set off again quickly.

H
is plan was to go north, where he hoped to find passage on a boat to England or make contact with the Maquis.

He walked until the first glow of dawn. His clothes were wet from dew. While searching for somewhere to shelter, he heard two bombers hedgehopping at low altitude and wondered if they were from Harrington, and whether he knew the crew. The Carpetbaggers flew only when there was enough moon to navigate by rivers and lakes.

News would have reached Harriet and his parents some time ago. He imagined them at the kitchen table trying to get used to the idea. A hush over the restaurant that would last decades. Sadness in the kitchen, and in the cake pans, and on the plates with the eggs and hash browns.

W
hen John came upon a derelict cottage, he went in because the sun was beginning to rise. The floor was covered with cans and broken glass. Stale, dank air was heavy with the stench of urine. There was an enormous hole in the roof where a shell had entered, and continued through the floor into the cellar. A steady dripping and the echo of drops told John the cellar was flooded. He took off his coat and lit a candle. At first it was difficult to see, but he held the candle as low as he could into the hole. The cellar was also a garage, and against the far wall was the outline of a car. There were also wooden beams, splintered furniture, broken crockery, and what appeared to be the white glow of a human body. John backed away and looked for a place to lie down.

He woke twelve hours later at dusk and lay still, trying to make sense of what was happening. In the silence, he could hear his own heart thudding along—as if counting down the time he had left to live.

Before continuing on his journey, John decided to brave the cellar. He first checked for any sign of life outside, then removed his shoes, socks, and bandages. After rolling up his trousers, he dropped a few large pieces of furniture through the hole, wincing at the clatter. Then he climbed down slowly. The icy water numbed the pain in his foot. His plan was to open the hood of the car and get some tubing that would be useful for breathing underwater.

The hood of the car creaked so loudly that John felt certain anyone outside would have heard. For a few moments he listened, but could hear only his breath and the faint whistle of morning wind through the ruins.

The engine and chassis had already begun to rust. John melted wax onto the fender as a base for his candle and located the hose he wanted. It came out easily, and he climbed back up using the stack of furniture, making sure not to disturb the remains of the previous tenant.

A
fter packing up, John wound his watch and went outside. It was almost completely dark. He crept around the house looking for food, and located a small patch of carrots growing near a heavy-leafed vegetable that had mostly been eaten by slugs.

After taking more painkillers, he continued north, skirting villages and scrambling for cover at the faintest murmur of an engine. There was a great deal of action in the air, and John lay on his back sometime around midnight to watch a brilliant firefight.

His plan was proving to be a success, and he considered that he might try to reach an even more northerly position on the coast.

When dawn came, it was dry and warm. With no buildings in sight, John squeezed his body into a hedge, and spread his limbs around the branches and roots, the same way he had hidden himself that first night. He urinated by turning his body to the side (defecating only on the move—so the smell wouldn’t draw attention from anyone passing).