Waiting for the Violins (11 page)

The woman shook her head without smiling. “No. No, I’m sure it’s not,” she replied with a thick Slavic accent and closed the door. Rebuffed, Antonia continued down the stairs.

Mme Mathys was opening the shop again, though there seemed no hope of business. A horse-drawn wagon passed by, the clopping of the horse’s hooves resonating on the cobblestones. Children ran after it, their sabots giving off a softer, higher-pitched clopping.

Antonia glanced around at the sad racks and shelves of used merchandise.

“Can I purchase a towel and pajamas from you? Actually, I could use some underwear too. And perhaps some soap?”

The shopkeeper looked faintly amused at the long list. “I have some Marseille soap. She reached under the counter and retrieved a block of something greenish brown and named a price. “As for the towel and clothing, look around for whatever you need. The prices are all attached.”

She perused the rack and found several items that would suit. She wasn’t happy to have to buy used underwear, but it was certainly cleaner than what she wore. The men’s pajamas and socks would be enormous, but that made no real difference. She wouldn’t be entertaining.

“I guess that’s all for now.” She counted out the Belgian francs to cover both the rent and the purchases. “Good evening, then,” she said, bundling everything up under her arm and starting back up the stairs. She wondered if there was a Monsieur Mathys and whether she could depend on either of them for assistance. Or was their resistance simply passive and unspoken? She began to appreciate the difficulty of determining who she could or could not trust.

As she reached the second-floor landing, a man emerged from the bathroom. His head was down as he set on his glasses, presumably after washing his face. When he raised it to glance at her, both of them recoiled at the same time.

It was the robber from the tram.

Her first instinct was to flee. But before she could move, he hurried past her, into the second-floor apartment.

Nonplussed, she climbed the last flight to her own room, entered, and locked the door behind her. Thoughts crowded in on one another. Was he a bandit or a patriot? Did he have a gun and would he try to enter her room? Well, she had hers too, though the last thing she needed was a gunfight. It was surreal.

Crap. As a battlefield nurse, she’d known who the enemy was and, from hour to hour, what her job was. Now every hour seemed to bring a new danger from an unexpected quarter. She felt as if she were in a maelstrom simply trying to stay afloat.

Extinguishing the harsh overhead light, she clicked on the reading lamp and undressed. She’d planned to bathe downstairs but was too rattled now. Instead, she washed standing before her pathetic little sink. Using the harsh soap she’d just purchased, she scrubbed the parts of her body she’d neglected in Berta’s kitchen until she finally felt clean. The pajamas, for all their enormous size, felt luxurious, and so did the thick new socks.

That task taken care of, she prepared for supper, which was the “compo meal” tin in her emergency rations. She pried the top off with the tiny opener taped to the outside and, using one of the once-silver spoons, shoveled portions of the mixture into her mouth. While the lumps had a strange texture, she recognized the taste of stewed lamb and vegetables.

More or less clean, and more or less full, she took to her bed. Sad and cold though it was, it was better than the hole in the ground of the previous night. In fact, it was a major accomplishment to have climbed out of that hole and made her way to the target city.

All things considered, the mission was still on. She would look for the mysterious Andrée de Jongh early the next morning and carry on from there.

Chapter Fourteen

Antonia awoke the next morning to sunlight. Her watch indicated nearly eight. Obviously, in spite of her anxiety and the new surroundings, she’d slept well. She hurried to dress and ate the now-dry bread and cheese Berta had given her. It was time to start work, whatever that turned out to be.

Too many years had passed since childhood for her to have any clear memory of Brussels, so she consulted the city map they’d given her at Ringway. She confirmed that the Rue des Bouchers was just on the other side of the Grand Place, and she could get there easily without asking directions.

By eight thirty she was on her way down the stairs, though she hesitated a moment before the door of the second-floor apartment. Who were they, she wondered. A woman with a baby, and a robber. Were others behind the door? All questions she would answer later.

The shop was still closed when Antonia reached the ground floor, and she wondered what kind of customers came in anyhow. Then she was out on the street.

A walk of a few blocks, a turn to the left, then to the right, and she halted, awestruck. She’d seen the Grand Place as a small child but had been too young to appreciate its splendor. Now she walked to the center of the square and turned slowly, studying all four sides.

On the south side, the stunning Town Hall, with its enormous tower and filigreed façade, dominated the square, and she knew vaguely that it was built in the Middle Ages and had undergone many restorations. Directly across from it was an equally ornate building she’d learned was from the sixteenth century and called the King’s House. The east and west sides of the square held the old guildhalls and mansions of rich merchants of the time. Impossible to tell when the various Gothic, Baroque, and Louis XIV ornamentations were added, but the overall image was of a Grimm’s fairy-tale setting, like a picture on a tea tin.

Uniformed Wehrmacht soldiers were already passing through the square, so she hurried toward one of the narrow streets leading away from it. It wasn’t until she had crossed the Grasmarkt that she saw the sign P
ETITE
R
UE DES
B
OUCHERS
.
Tiny shops, some boarded up or derelict, but many, like the Mathys shop, still displaying wares for the few francs the Belgians had to spend.

There it was, finally, the Café Suèdoise. She halted, rehearsing in her mind what she intended to say.

She entered, and several heads turned, so she sat down at the closest table to avoid prolonged attention. A few moments later, a woman, presumably the proprietor, came to take her order.

“Just a coffee, please. Or the closest thing.” She had no idea what foods were currently available and how cafés dealt with rationing restrictions or coupons. But several of the other customers had coffee cups in front of them.

While she waited, she glanced casually, indifferently, around the café. Attractive. Lots of old wood, good lighting, a homey feel. All but the clientele. A few men in slightly rumpled suits sat here and there, but another half dozen were German officers, and she smiled to herself, thinking she could actually read their ranks. All those hours of study had paid off.

But what the hell was she doing in a den of German officers? What if one of them came over and tried to talk to her? She kept her eyes lowered, pretending to study her train schedule. No, this was not good. The SOE information from the Bilbao consulate must have been wrong, or outdated.

Still, she couldn’t leave without a try, however weak. She finished her coffee and went to the counter where a tall, black-haired man was drying glasses. “Excuse me.”

He looked at her with open courtesy, his raised eyebrows a signal he was listening carefully.

She leaned forward and spoke sotto voce. “I’m looking for an old friend and understand she might have been a regular here. Andrée de Jongh.”

The courteous warmth disappeared instantly, and he replied too quickly, “I don’t know any such person.”

Antonia might have believed him but for the fact that he too had dropped his voice. The name, apparently, was a dangerous one.

“Are you sure? Do you know anyone of the de Jongh family?”

“No, nobody of that name. So sorry.” He glanced nervously past her toward the seated Germans.

Further dialogue seemed pointless, but just then a woman appeared from a room at the back and Antonia shifted her attention. A woman in her late thirties, elegant. Her amber hair, like that of someone who had been a blond child, was done up in a loose roll in the back, and careless strands of it hung in front of her ears. She joined the bartender, apparently sensing his distress.

“Can we do something for you, madam?” she asked gently, obviously studying her. Where the man’s face had registered alarm, this woman seemed suspicious but intrigued, and her glance swept quickly down Antonia’s body and back to her face.

Antonia repeated her question and met the same sudden hardening of expression. The woman’s voice became soft. Too soft. “We can make inquiries, if you’d like. Who is looking for her?”

“It’s just an old friend. From Bilbao.”

Their expressions became even colder. She would have to take another tack. “If you can give me the name of anyone who might know her, I would be most grateful. I’ll…uh…stop by again in a day or so.”

“Would you like to leave your name?” The voice was still velvet, ominous.

Antonia felt the chess piece go down that checkmated her. How could she refuse to leave a name? Well, she did have a false identity, and this, she supposed, was what it was for.

“Sophie. She’ll remember.” She was bluffing. “Well, thank you for your time.” She began to back away.

“Excuse me, madam,” a new baritone voice said at her shoulder. “Might I have the honor of inviting you to a cup of coffee?”

Antonia turned to face a German officer and swept her eyes over his insignias. Two stars on his shoulder board but no braid. On his sleeve three green bars and one oak leaf spread. Double lightning bolts on his collar bar.

“Thank you, Hauptsturmführer. You are most kind, but my husband would not allow me to accept your invitation.” She turned back to the two proprietors. “Thank you for your time, and good day.”

She hurried from the café, not daring to look back until she was out the door. The officer was returning, rebuffed, to his table, but the woman still stared after her. What was going on?

*

Antonia let herself back into the shop in the Rue Marché au Charbon. Mme Mathys was in the process of selling a used overcoat to someone, so she passed with a brief greeting and climbed the stairs to her attic room.

She dropped down onto her bed, frustrated by the failure of her one purposeful act since she’d arrived in Belgium. What now? The imperative to contact London still remained, but otherwise, aside from her ability to speak French, she was in roughly the same position as the pilots she’d been sent to rescue.

All that training at Beaulieu, and they hadn’t told her what to do if she found herself alone and incommunicado.

Brooding in the silence of her tiny room, she became conscious of the sounds coming from the apartment below her. First the crying of a baby, then a woman speaking. By his own assertion, at least one of the people below was a Resistance fighter. It might be useful to listen in. She rose from the bed and lay down on the floor, pressing her ear to the wood.

However closely she listened she couldn’t make out a single word, and then she remembered, the men on the tram had spoken some other language to each other. Polish, or Russian, or Yiddish. Another dead end. Crap. She was getting tired of those. A man spoke angrily, and then another man, and the woman responded. Apparently three adults were downstairs, as well as the baby, and they were quarreling. The apartment door below slammed.

Then suddenly, bang! Something pounded on her door, and before she could rise from the floor, it flew open. The tram robber from the day before stood before her once again, and this time he held a gun.

Still squatting on the ground, she put her hands up. He stood in the doorway for a moment, then came inside, scowling, and closed the door behind him. He stood over her, as if trying to decide what to do, then waved her to stand up.

He stepped back to allow her room to stand, and in that unguarded moment, she seized his leg and yanked it forward, causing him to fall back against the wall. She leapt on him, pressing her knee onto his wrist, and wrenched the gun from his hand.

Now she stood over him and gave the same order to stand up. He glared at her without moving.

“Do you speak French?” she asked. He nodded.

“Why did you come up here with a gun? For more money, or to attack me? I could shoot you and the police would support me.” She was bluffing again.

“The police would support you anyhow. No one’s going to take the side of a Jew who robbed a tram.”

“I know why you robbed the tram. Your friend explained all that. But you still haven’t told me why you came up here.”

“I’m not sure myself.” He stood up slowly and she backed away, still holding the gun on him.

With surprising fearlessness, he brushed the dust from his trousers and sat down on one of her chairs. “It’s not loaded. You can check. Not only that, it doesn’t even shoot. The first time I ever tried to shoot a gun, and it jammed.”

She opened the magazine and saw he was right. “So why did you come up here with it?”

“I wanted to scare you so you wouldn’t denounce me. The gun was an afterthought. Not a very good one. You can see what an amateur I am.”

“You’re right about that.” Her fear dissipating, she handed the gun back to him. “Here, for your next robbery.” He slid it, shamefaced, into his pocket, where it hung, bulky and obvious.

“So why didn’t you report me yesterday?” he asked.

Antonia studied his earnest schoolteacher face, debating with herself, calculating the dangers and benefits of revealing herself. It seemed, in the end, that if he and his group weren’t exactly the people she’d been sent to help, they were close enough.

“Because I’m on a Resistance mission myself, in a way. From Britain.”

His face lit up. “Britain! Well, I thought I heard a faint accent, although my own French isn’t always so good either.” He offered his hand. “Sorry about the gun. And the robbery. What’s your name?”