Under a War-Torn Sky (9 page)

When the man shoved him towards a huge sink, full of steaming water, Henry understood. He was to appear as if he were kitchen help, late arriving. He must need to blend in for a while before catching the train to Montreux. Henry nodded. He stuck his arms deep into the soapy water and began scrubbing.

“No speak,” was the man's final gruff instruction before disappearing.

Henry could feel the eyes of two old cooks on him. He tried not to look back. Waiters began to drift in and out, pinning scraps of paper on a board, and barking orders at the cooks. The griddle sizzled with fat sausage.

With a heartstopping thump, the doors into the kitchen flew open and crashed against the walls. The soldiers Henry had seen at the train station entered and slowly scanned the room. His hospital escort accompanied them.

Henry stared down into the soapsuds and tried not to panic. Surely the old guard would recognize him. He stepped away from the sink, and rubbed his face with his hands to shield it. Maybe he could slip out the back. Was there a back door?

Henry bumped into one of the waiters who shoved him brusquely towards the sink and yelled at him. “
Zurück zur Arbeit!
”

Henry gaped at the man. Did he really expect an answer? Henry had no idea what he was saying. The man shook his head and continued angrily, “
Dummkopf!
” He shoved Henry's hands back into the water.

Every inch of Henry screamed for him to run, to fly. But there was something about the waiter's urgency.
It's part of the ruse, Henry. Get a grip.
Henry nodded, trying to look as subservient and stupid as possible. He kept his hands in the water, to hide their shaking.

The soldiers began to circle the room. They paused by each man, waiting for the hospital escort to look him over and shake his head no,
nein
. They were getting closer. Closer. Henry quivered from head to foot.

“
Guten Tag.
” The soldiers stood beside him.

Henry bit his lip to keep from answering. He simply bowed his head to these army superiors and continued washing dishes as if his life depended on it.

The waiter who had shoved Henry bellied up again to talk to the soldiers. He pointed at Henry and unleashed another flood of abuse. “
Ein Idiot
” the man called him. His voice was loud, agitated, dismissive. The soldiers smirked and laughed. They strolled away.

Only his train escort lingered beside the sink. Henry couldn't help it. He looked up and caught the old guard's eye. The guard gave a slight nod of his head and then just walked away.

“
Nein, nein. Nichts,
” he said to the soldiers, holding his arms up in a shrug.

So his train escort had been in on his escape all along! Relief made Henry's vision grow black, speckled with dancing white dots as the soldiers left the kitchen.

An arm steadied him. The bartender had appeared with a tray full of dirty dishes. “Wash,” he muttered. “One hour.”

The hour felt like a day. Finally, the lunch dishes stopped appearing and the cooks took a break. Only then did the bartender reappear. He motioned Henry to follow him to the men's room. Henry was given an elegant double-breasted tweed suit, hat, and well-polished shoes. He was also handed a copy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
La Nouvelle Héloïse
. The bartender opened the book to page one hundred. False identity papers were tucked between the pages. Henry was to be Gaston Sieber, a student of the University of Geneva.

A girl awaited Henry in the café. When she smiled, Henry recognized her as the pregnant woman, no longer pregnant. She too was clad in a sophisticated suit. “
Viens, chéri.
” She continued in French – something about saying good-bye. “
Nous devons dire nos adieux.
”

She slipped her arm through his and sauntered towards the train station. As a bus blew by on the street, belching smoke and backfiring, she whispered in English, “Board the train. Stay on the aisle where you can move if you need to. You will be met in Montreux. Once there, make sure the book is visible.”

The very same guards who had searched the café loitered by the awaiting train. Now she spoke to Henry in German, something about his journey. They reached the platform. As he pulled out his ticket and papers to show the conductor, the girl embraced him passionately. Her lips caught his for a long, insistent kiss. Then just as abruptly she shoved him away and slapped him playfully with her white gloves, saying, “
Auf, geh heim.
” She turned to walk flirtatiously towards the soldiers, who had begun to approach Henry.

He hurried up the steps, passed the inspection of the conductor, and threw himself into a seat just as the train began to roll away from the station. Through a window, he could see the girl laughing and talking with the soldiers.

Henry felt breathless from the secretive whirlwind of the day's events, the multitude of unannounced players. He'd been handled, just like a hot potato. He was a package no one wanted to be caught holding.

On the train to Montreux, Henry alternated between gazing out the window, avoiding eye contact, and burying his head in the Rousseau novel. He worked on recognizing as many French phrases as he could. But he couldn't understand as much as he'd hoped. Individual words popped out at him, but each page remained a jigsaw puzzle with only half of its pieces in place. He could make out, however, that the novel was set in Montreux, which explained why he carried it. The book would be a clear signal to whoever was watching for him.

The train chugged over an ocean of cliffs, swelling into the sky, cresting in rock and snow. Occasionally long streaks of smooth green sliced down the mountains' alpine forests. Ski runs, Henry reckoned, even though he'd never seen any before. The pell-mell slopes impressed him. And they called pilots daredevils.

As the train began consistently chugging down, rather than up, the conductor passed through the cars announcing that Montreux was the next stop. “
Montreux, Montreux, prochain arrêt,
” he called.

French had replaced German as the public language. Henry felt safer. But what was he to do? Getting off the train was obvious, but then what? Wait by the platform? Walk through the station? What if no one claimed him?

It ended up being worse than Henry had feared. No one met him at the terminal. No one signalled him inside the station's vaulted waiting room. There was no one in the men's room, no one in the coffee shop, no one by the newsstand – absolutely no one.

Dinnertime came and the crowds dissipated. A thin farm boy in a man's suit, wandering about aimlessly, became more and more obvious. Only the number of soldiers pacing through the station remained constant.

Sit down, Forester, Henry berated himself. Sit down by the door and read your stupid book. Henry sat, forced his foot to stop tapping, forced his eyes to scan the pages, forced his fingers to turn them at appropriate intervals.

Another half hour passed. Henry's stomach began to grumble loudly. He was now the only person sitting on his long bench. Brisk steps thundered into the emptied, marble-floored lounge. A half dozen new soldiers arrived to replace the others. Great, thought Henry, fresh eyes.

Just as the off-duty soldiers exited through the front doors, a woman fluttered in. She was middle-aged and chic, still capable of turning heads. Her glossy dark hair was swept up under a mocha-coloured cap, festooned with pheasant feathers. Her brown suit was cut long and close, her shoes were suede and high. A diamond brooch glittered on her lapel and a long, silk scarf draped her right shoulder. In her left hand, she carried a tiny, fluffy dog against her heart. A chauffeur shadowed her.

For a brief moment the grande dame scanned the room before squealing, “
Chéri!
” She rushed to Henry with open arms.

Henry was too startled to respond. The woman embraced him, enveloping him in flowery perfume, silk, scratchy tweed, and squirming poodle. She whispered: “You are my nephew, visiting from school.”

She pulled him to his feet and made a fuss over kissing him on both cheeks, then wiping off the lipstick imprints with a lace handkerchief. She burbled in a breathy voice, something about being late, having a chocolate
soufflé
with a talkative cousin that Henry was supposed to remember: “
Je m'excuse d'être en retard. J'étais prise au restaurant avec ton cousin Ernst, tu te rappelles de lui? Il est tellement bavard! En plus, le chef a préparé un soufflé au chocolat tout à fait superbe…
”

As she prattled on, the woman thrust the dog into Henry's hands, put her arm through his, and led him towards the door. Henry tried to bolster her charade. He nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled, as he'd always done with his chatterbox Aunt Barbara.

“
Bonsoir, messieurs,
” the woman greeted the soldiers with a broad smile and a flood of praise about their protecting the country. “
Mais qu'est-ce qu'on deviendrait sans la protection des jeunes hommes forts comme vous qui nous gardent sains et saufs…?
”

The soldiers preened under her compliments. She and Henry glided through the station, out the entrance, and into the back seat of a Mercedes sedan. Her chauffeur closed their door. They roared away.

Henry still clutched the poodle. The woman smiled and rescued the dog, kissing it on the nose. “I am sorry to be so late, young man. I was not contacted until this afternoon. And there were many arrangements to be made. Your friend Mr. Watson knows me as Madame Gaulloise, but in public you must call me Tante Héloïse,
d'accord?
”

Henry nodded. He assumed
Gaulloise
wasn't her real name, being a brand of French cigarettes. But was
Héloïse
? Probably not either, since that was the name in Rousseau's book.

“How is your French?
Tu parles français?
”

“
Un peu, Madame. Je comprends un petit peu.
My accent is not great.”

She smiled again. It was a generous, warm smile. She must have been breathtaking when she was young, Henry thought fleetingly. “No, my dear, your accent is less than perfect. But perhaps you will pick up a bit? At least this madness can afford you some linguistic education,
non?
”

Henry nodded.

She pulled off her gloves and explained, “We are heading to the Grand Hotel Excelsior for a few days. I live in Annecy, but frequently visit Montreux and Lausanne. My late husband was Swiss. His business was here. I have a kind of courtesy citizenship. So my coming is nothing out of the ordinary. And fortunately, the Swiss are more sympathetic to the French in this region. France is just across the lake, you know.” She pointed through the window to a glistening, wide swathe of blue that bordered the city. “But it will still be a trick to get you across the border. I plan to visit the casino tonight to see if I can stoke our fortunes in case a bit of persuasion is needed. It usually is.”

That night, Madame left Henry. She had managed to talk them into their rooms without his having to so much as nod at anyone. The management and busboys seemed completely accustomed to her drama. But what if someone came to the door looking for her? He supposed he'd just hide in the bathroom and not answer.

Henry circled his room. He'd stayed in hotels twice before – once in New York City before being put on the boat for England, once in London. But they'd been nothing like this.

He flopped onto the big, soft bed and ran his hands over the crisp linen and fluffy duvet covering. They were so much nicer than the coarse cotton sheets and wool blanket at home. Henry reached for a gold-foil circle on his pillow that a maid had left earlier when she'd come to turn the bed down – another thing at which he had marvelled.

He opened it now. “Wow, chocolate!” He popped it in his mouth and smiled as it melted in his mouth.

Still antsy, Henry stood up to pace and ended up in the bathroom. His footsteps echoed on the shiny black-and-white tiled floor. He stopped in front of the strange contraption he'd asked Madame about earlier. It was the size of a toilet, but had a faucet. He'd reckoned it was for washing feet, but Madame had laughed at him and called it a bidet, a bath for his
derrière
, his behind.

Henry snorted. Europeans were just plain different. He wished he could write Patsy about it all. She'd think it was so funny. What was she doing tonight? Ma must have gotten the telegram by now. Would Patsy still be writing letters to him in her head? Would they be as beautiful as the ones she'd sent? She wouldn't stop thinking about him, would she?

He climbed into the white porcelain tub and stretched his legs all the way out. What a huge tub. Henry picked up delicate pink soaps to sniff them and pulled his head back in surprise. They smelled like strawberries. Wouldn't Patsy love them and this tub? She'd never had anything this nice. Her father had just added a tiny indoor bathroom to their little cottage. Before, her family had always used an outhouse and bathed in a big old tin tub they dragged into the kitchen and filled with boiling water.

When he got home, he was going to buy Patsy some bath soaps like the ones in the hotel and tell her all about Switzerland.

Hearing Madame's dog scratch at the door that connected his room to hers, Henry climbed out of the tub and opened it. The poodle danced around him, begging for attention. “All right, all right,” muttered Henry, picking it up. What use was such a little scrap of dog? He couldn't hunt, like Henry's pointer, Speed. And he was nothing like poor old Skip.

Madame's room was round, part of a turret, encircled by French doors that opened onto a wrought-iron balcony. He carried the dog out into the night air. Montreux was lit up, stretching itself out in a twinkling line along Lake Léman. You could almost forget the war here, thought Henry, almost.