The Unlikely Allies (11 page)

He disappeared inside the shop and came out almost at once. The dog was still there, and Derek opened the packet and took out a morsel of the meat. “How about this, fella?” he asked and extended the meat. The dog ducked its head, as if afraid of being struck, but when Derek silently stood there, it finally took the meat and swallowed it whole, then
looked up eagerly, tail wagging again. “Here, you have a good breakfast, my friend.” He put the meat on the sidewalk, then patted the dog, which gobbled the meat frantically. When it was through, it moved forward and leaned against Derek’s legs.

“I’d like to take you home with me, but I’m leaving. I don’t think there’s any place for a French dog in the German army. Sorry.” He walked away, and the dog followed him for a time. Derek turned around and said,
“Raus!”
rather sharply. The dog looked at him in a hurt fashion, then slunk away. “Well, boy, you’ve had one good meal today.”

Derek continued his walk until he came to the small café where he had brought Rachel the day after they had met. It was so cold that no one was sitting outside drinking the strong coffee they served. As he opened the door, the tiny bell made a merry tinkling sound, and the owner, Monsieur Valdoux, came forward smiling and greeted him.

“Bonjour,
Monsieur Grüber. Your lady, she is here before you today.”

“Thank you, Raoul.” He followed the pudgy owner over to the table in front of the window.

“I was starting to wonder if you were coming,” Rachel said.

“Sorry.” He sat down. “Just a Danish and good coffee, Raoul, if you please.”

“Certainement!”

When Raoul left, Derek leaned forward and extended one of his hands. Rachel reached out and took it, holding it in both of hers. She was wearing a simple light green skirt with a darker green blouse that outlined her figure admirably. A chain of pearls and a pair of pearl earrings were her only adornment. She looked tired, and as she held his hand, Derek said, “I hate to go, Rachel!”

“I’ll be grieved when you’re gone.” She released his hand and shook her head. “I like things to be simple, Derek. There should be beautiful simplicity in every life, but it doesn’t happen, does it?”

Derek drank in her features, putting the memory of this moment into a safe deep within, knowing that he would go back to it many times and unlock the safe and remember her as she sat there. “I just know one phrase in Latin. I had to memorize many for school, but this is the only one I still remember.”

“What is it?”

“Omnia mutrantur, nos et mutamur in illis.”

“What does it mean?”

“All things are changing, and we are changing with them. That’s true, isn’t it? Nothing stays the same.”

Tears brimmed in Rachel’s eyes at the thought, and the two sat mostly in silence for a while. Conversation seemed to come hard.

Then a man entered the café who caught their attention, and both of them watched as he took a seat.

“He looks like a bank clerk who made off with his cash drawer,” Derek commented.

“I would have said more like a cheerful embalmer. It’s odd, isn’t it, how we see people? Who is that man? What are his problems? Is he happy in his marriage? We see people constantly, and we know nothing about them.”

“That’s true, isn’t it? Sometimes you go out to parties, and people are laughing and making a lot of noise, and they have smiles pasted on their faces, but you know they’re not really happy. Nothing is sadder than watching people trying to enjoy themselves as much as they can but not really having a good time at all.” Derek fidgeted with his napkin. “You’re the only one I could ever talk to and say whatever came into my mind. I’ve always had to guard my speech because I have such wild thoughts.”

“That’s the poet in you. Your mind is full of imaginative ideas. I’ll miss those crazy thoughts and the times we’ve had together.”

Raoul returned with Derek’s coffee and pastry and refilled Rachel’s coffee cup.

Derek took a sip of his coffee and then held Rachel’s hand. It was firm and strong, and he noticed the small half moons at the base of her fingernails. They were strong hands, not large but firm, and he loved them, as he loved all of her.

“Marry me, Rachel.”

A cloud touched Rachel’s eyes, and she shook her head. “We’ve been all over that. It’s impossible, Derek.”

“But I love you—and you love me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Very much. I know I will never love another man as much as I love you.”

He was touched by her honesty and sincerity. There was a transparency about her that he loved, and still there was part of her he could never quite get at. He knew this was the Jewish side of her nature. Her heritage went back into history through long and bloody and terrible times. The times they themselves now lived in were ominous and uncertain, and he knew she dreaded what might come in the future to her and her family and her people.

“You’ll be going home soon,” Derek said finally. “Let me come and meet your parents.”

“It would be useless, Derek.”

“No it wouldn’t. If I lose you, I could never find you again, Rachel.” He took a bite of his Danish and chewed thoughtfully. “There’s an old Persian myth about the creation of the world. It says that God made only one person—it was half male and half female. But when it sinned, God tore it apart as one would tear a sheet of paper apart. You know how that is. When you tear it apart, you can put it back together, for the pieces fit exactly. So . . . the creatures that were separated fit only each other.”

“What does it mean, Derek?”

“According to the myth, these two creatures spent their lives trying to find the one piece that matches. There are some that almost match, but only one will be the perfect match—the one it was separated from.”

“That’s a beautiful myth. I’ve never heard it before.”

“I feel like that about you, Rachel. You and I match. I’ll never find another woman I’ll love as I love you.”

“Perhaps not exactly, but you’ll find someone.”

“Don’t say that. Please, let me come and visit you.”

Rachel hesitated. She had steeled herself to this moment of parting, and now that it had come, she knew she could not do it. “All right.” She smiled. “But my parents will be surprised when I bring home a goy.”

“What’s a goy?”

“Anyone who’s not Jewish.”

Derek ate the last of his Danish and looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go. My train will be leaving.”

The two rose. Derek paid the bill and bade the owner good-bye.

“I’ll see you soon,
non?
” Monsieur Valdoux asked.

“No. I’m leaving Paris.”

“Oh, that is so sad! We will miss you, but you’ll come back. Paris will draw you. You can’t ever leave Paris. It goes with you.”

Derek shook the man’s hand and left. As they got into a taxi, he said,
“Gare Saint-Lazare, s’il vous pla
î
t.”
The two sat silently in the backseat. He put his arm around Rachel and held her close while she took his left hand in hers and held it as tightly as she could.

When they reached the station, the two got out, and Derek asked the cab driver to wait. The sky was overcast and gray, and a fine sleet was falling.

“It’s a miserable day to leave,” he said. “I wish the sun were shining.”

Rachel simply looked up at him, and he took her in his arms. He held her gaze, then kissed her. When he lifted his lips from hers, he said huskily, “Things can change. Wait for me.”

“God be with you, my sweet,” she whispered, her throat thick with hopelessness.

Derek released her and helped her back into the cab. He told the driver the address of her apartment, and after one
last kiss through the window, he took up his suitcase and disappeared into the crowd entering the busy train station. When he reached the door, he turned to wave good-bye once again, but the cab was gone. An unhappiness and misery such as he had never known came over him. He set down his suitcase and looked out over the busy traffic, hoping to catch one last glance of the taxi that had taken his love away. With a sudden wrench, he walked through the entrance, knowing this was the lowest point of his life.

****

General Wilhelm Grüber could have posed for a picture of the ideal German officer. Tall and broad-shouldered, he exuded the strength and vitality of a man much younger than fifty. His uniform molded itself around his strong figure as if it had been painted on. His hair was iron gray with a curl, cut and trimmed with precision, and his trim mustache matched exactly. All of his features exuded strength, from his wide mouth to his deep-set, penetrating slate blue eyes, to the straight nose and high cheekbones. He sipped brandy from a snifter and looked at his son, who sat across from him in a maroon leather chair. There was a demanding quizzical look in Grüber’s eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was filled with authority, exactly as if he were speaking to a subordinate officer instead of his son. “What’s wrong with you, Derek?”

Derek sat stiffly in his chair, his legs crossed and his hands on the chair arms. He had become so accustomed to feeling defensive around his father that it had become second nature to him. “Wrong? Nothing I know of, Father.”

“You’re not yourself. You’ve been moping around ever since you came back from Paris.” Grüber took a sip of his brandy. “That was a terrible waste of time, Derek. I told you it would be.”

“I don’t see it that way. I learned a lot.”

“What did you learn?”

He had no ready answer. He might have said,
I learned to
look at the sky and the trees in a way that I never did here in Germany. I learned that sometimes a man can be brought to tears over a French poem. A poem written a hundred years ago, and the hand that wrote it is now dead, yet it’s still able to move me.
He could have given many answers like this, but he didn’t dare. “I learned something about engineering.”

“Well, that will be useful. Where did you stand in your class?”

“Very high, Father. In the engineering class, I was second.”

“You should have been first.”

Derek was accustomed to this. “I suppose so,” he said. He knew there was no pleasing his father unless he was best in everything. It had always been that way—in sports, in his academic pursuits. Wilhelm Grüber wanted his son to be at the top of his class—exactly as he himself had been all of his life.

Since the death of his wife, Wilhelm had been a lonely man, and he had poured his energies into two things—his profession and his son. Embedded deep in his German soul was a desire to see his own life perpetuated in his son, and since he had no daughters and only one son, he had thrown himself into molding Derek into the model Aryan soldier.

Now, as he studied Derek, he was satisfied physically. Derek was strong, with quick reaction times. He was an expert with the saber and foil, and he was peerless with any sort of firearm. He was a handsome man too, but that meant little to Wilhelm. He took good looks for granted, his own and Derek’s, for they came from a line of handsome men. Still, there was obviously something wrong with his son.

“You’ve come back from Paris like a whipped dog. I suppose you fell in love.”

Derek could not conceal his shock. “I should have told you about it,” he said. “I did meet a young woman while I was there. I became very fond of her. In fact, I’m going to visit her as soon as possible.”

A tiny alarm went off in Wilhelm Grüber. He had carefully
watched his son’s choices in women. Some had come from good families and would have made suitable matches; one was even from the family of a prominent military leader. That match would have pleased Wilhelm, but Derek had shown no lasting enthusiasm for any of the women his father favored.

“What is her name? Where did you meet her?” Wilhelm demanded.

“She’s a student at the Sorbonne.” Then Derek hesitated, knowing that his next statement would bring an unpleasant response. “Her name is Rachel Mindel.”

“Mindel? That sounds like a Jewish name!”

Derek steeled himself to meet his father’s eyes. “She is Jewish, Father,” he said quietly.

“A Jewess?” Angry words rose to Wilhelm’s lips, but he saw something in his son that caused him to bite them off. Derek had been a good son, but Wilhelm was aware of the stubborn streak in him. He had always been glad of this, for he himself was a stubborn, proud man, and he knew that pride and an iron will were important traits for a German officer. He had been handling men all of his life, and he saw that this was no time to say what was on his mind. He took another sip of his brandy to calm himself down. “Tell me about this woman.”

Derek told his father about how the two had met and about the course of study Rachel was taking. He even confessed that he had asked her to marry him. Derek was surprised at his father’s restraint, but he saw the displeasure in his eyes and knew that the matter was not finished.

“Son, we will speak of this later.” Wilhelm leaned forward. “And now about your future.”

“I would like very much to be a scholar, Father—a professor and a writer.”

“We talked about that before. I do not think it’s best for you, Derek. You have a great heritage. Your grandfather and your great-grandfather were soldiers as I am. It is in your blood.” He tilted his head, then shrugged and forced himself
to smile. “I see no harm in your dabbling in such things. Write as you will, but your fate is with Germany. And Germany must have her place in the sun.”

Derek had prepared arguments, but he saw that they would be useless. He sat silently as his father began to outline some of the great plans he had for his son, and a growing sense of despair enveloped him as he listened.

****

Derek’s bedroom in his father’s house was cold, but Derek paid little attention to it. February was almost over, and Derek had written to Rachel every week. She had not always responded, but he never gave up hope. Now he put the concluding words on his letter firmly: