Waiting for the Violins (21 page)

“No. Not the way you mean it.”

“Does it have more than one meaning?”

The sound of a car arriving before the house prevented her answer. Sandrine lunged from the sofa toward the door. “You’d better go upstairs.”

They were both in the entry hall now, where Mathilde was at the front window. “It’s him,” she said over her shoulder.

Sandrine seized Antonia by the arm. “Go up to your room, please, as quietly as you can. Don’t come down until Mathilde tells you it’s all right. And hurry.” She turned away and slipped back into the main hall.

Antonia obeyed, rushing toward the stairwell just as the heavy bronze knocker sounded on the front door of the château. Reaching the top of the staircase, she stopped and listened as Mathilde greeted the visitor.

“Good evening, Herr Baron. May I take your coat? Madame Toussaint is in the sitting room.”

Baron? Baron who? She didn’t dare linger on the landing, but crept silently back to her room. She perched on the bed, nervous and idle, then began to shiver from the cold. With the bed quilt draped over her shoulders she leaned against the wall, drawing up her knees. The house was curiously silent, and she heard nothing but the call of a crow outside her window. Then, still sitting, she fell asleep.

Chapter Twenty-three

December 1942

Nick wiped up the last of his gravy with his bread and smiled toward Mathilde. The bandage over his shrapnel wound was reduced to a small patch now, and his handsome face was visible. “Please tell her how much I enjoyed the dinner, would you?” he said to Sandrine.

She translated the compliment, and Mathilde nodded her appreciation of it.

“You don’t know any French at all?” she asked.

“I know some, ma’am,” Ian announced.
“Parlay voo anglay, mad mohselle?”
His accent was atrocious.

Sandrine shook her head. “Oh, dear. Well, that won’t do at all. Fortunately, we foresaw that problem and your identification papers will show that you’re both from the Brussels Institute for the Deaf and that you can’t speak.”

“So the papers have finally come?” Nick asked. “Jolly good.”

“Yes, they arrived at the café just a short while ago. Gaston, would you fetch them from the sitting-room desk?”

“You’ll both have Belgian names, which you should learn, but be careful not to react if someone speaks to you. I’ll do all the talking for you. You’ll have to work on your demeanor too. You pilots have a way of walking, a bit self-important, with big strides like you’re used to people getting out of your way. Practice walking with a slight slouch, like tired workers, slightly afraid of strangers.”

Gaston returned with a gray cardboard envelope. “Thank you, Gaston. All right, you’ll be Henri Wouters.” She handed one set of papers to Nick. “And Ian, you’re Bernard Maes. Check the year of your birth and learn it. We’ll leave tomorrow evening, so you should pack your things carefully tonight. I don’t want you to be carrying
anything
that marks you as foreign. No coins, foreign cigarettes, insignia rings. Check all your pockets for anything that doesn’t belong to a deaf man from Brussels.”

“And we have to watch out for anyone in uniform,” Nick said.

“But how will we know who’s who?” Ian asked.

“It doesn’t make any difference. Belgian police, German gendarmes, French Milice, Spanish carabineros. Some are military and some civilian, but they’re all police, and they’re all dangerous. You need to be deaf and mute in front of all of them.

“What about our guns, ma’am?” Ian asked.

“I’ll carry them. If I expect a confrontation that requires shooting, I’ll give them back to you.”

Nick frowned in consternation. “I don’t like the idea of being unarmed. Why are you less likely to be searched than us?”

“Because I have special permission,” she answered softly, ending the discussion. Antonia glanced over at Mathilde, who lowered her eyes.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do now.” Sandrine seemed to lose interest in the conversation and stood up. “When you’ve finished your coffee, gentlemen, please return to your room downstairs and extinguish the lights. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She turned away from the group and marched from the kitchen, leaving a vacuum of silence behind her.

*

While Gaston loaded the four rucksacks, two of them deliberately shabby, into the trunk of the Mercedes, the pilots appeared in their workers’ clothing and climbed into the rear. Gaston was the driver, and Sandrine sat next to him in the front. Antonia squeezed herself in next to the two men in the rear. Their clothing was rancid with male sweat, and it was unpleasant to sit crammed together with them. After a moment’s reflection, she realized that was probably the reason for issuing them soiled clothing. No one would want to have much to do with them and would let them pass in a crowd.

“Why are we leaving so late?” Ian asked. “There’s got to be an earlier train to Paris.”

Sandrine looked over her shoulder. “Yes, there is a direct connection, but it’s too carefully patrolled. We’ll travel to Mons and switch to a local train that’s full of farmers and then cross the border by foot at Quiévrain.”

Nick leaned back against the soft leather seat. “Nice car. Warm too. What a pity you can’t drive us all the way in this.”

“A pity, indeed. We’re lucky to have it to get to the Gare de Midi. Otherwise you’d have to take several trams and pass dozens of police. Even if I had enough petrol, my permit extends only to Brussels.”

They rode in near silence the rest of the way, with both Gaston and Sandrine watching the streets for checkpoints.

“Here we are,” Gaston said, pulling up in front of the station. “Go with God,” he added, making the sign of the cross on his head and shoulders.

Sandrine surveyed the street as Antonia and the pilots squeezed out of their cramped space and fetched their respective rucksacks from the trunk. Gaston drove away at normal speed, as if dropping passengers at the train station were an everyday duty.

The timing was perfect. With their prepurchased tickets, they boarded the train without incident, three minutes before departure time. To Antonia’s relief, the only other passengers in the compartment were an elderly couple, people she would expect to have the least sympathy with the occupiers and the most willingness to ignore suspicious behavior.

The train ride from Brussels to Mons took less than three hours, but it seemed endless. Unable to talk, the two pilots fidgeted until the old man smiled and handed one of them his newspaper. Sandrine’s expression hinted at reproach toward the pilots, then gratitude toward the old man. Ian smiled weakly and pretended to read.

The couple commented briefly on the weather, and Sandrine, the veteran, engaged them skillfully in small talk, carefully avoiding any compromising subject, but then she too fell silent. Finally they pulled into the station at Mons.

The connecting train arrived only moments later on the opposite track, and Antonia saw the wisdom of using a local train. The wooden seats were uncomfortable, farmers had crates of chickens at their feet, and children whined or sat sullen at their side, sucking their fingers. The car was full of smoke from homemade ersatz-tobacco cigarettes. Border police would find the cars as disagreeable as she did and certainly wouldn’t waste time investigating them. But scarcely had she become accustomed to the air and the jostling, when the train pulled into Quiévrain and they had to exit.

The entire passenger load of the train descended and lined up before the French customs station, staffed by both French agents and German gendarmes.

At the front of the group, Sandrine was stopped, and Antonia felt a rush of fear. She carried their guns. But Sandrine smiled affably and engaged the customs man, making direct eye contact and complimenting him on his efficiency.

He perused her identification papers, then passed her through without baggage inspection. Antonia came next, weaponless, but with out-of-season winter clothing and a very large envelope of money, which she couldn’t explain. Her training kept her outwardly calm, indifferent, her glance brief and casual as she handed over her carefully forged papers. The officer frowned for a moment, and Antonia’s heart raced, but the frown disappeared and he passed her through.

The two pilots were next. Ian had mastered the look of an innocent dullard, though Nick was still nervous. “What happened to your face?” the customs officer asked him. Nick gawked stupidly at him. “They’re deaf,” Sandrine said. She signaled to both men to empty their pockets and they obeyed, pulling out the lining. The customs officer winced at the contents, which were not quite clean, and waved them through.

The feeling of victory was short-lived, for they had to catch more trains and endure untold more scrutiny, and when they stepped off the last train, it was night. Sandrine collected them outside the station. “I hope you enjoyed all that sitting, because here’s where we walk, and it’s a long way. To start, we have to cross the Somme.”

“Don’t people build bridges for that?” Ian wisecracked.

Sandrine was not amused. “This close to the border, they’ll all be patrolled. The only way to avoid them is to cross far away from any bridge.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Antonia said. “So what are we waiting for?”

“For him.” Sandrine brushed past her toward a man she obviously recognized. He was stocky, dark skinned, with well-muscled forearms, like a man used to hard physical labor.

“Arnaud, good evening. I’ve got two pilots and a colleague tonight. How are the conditions?”

“Good, I think. No patrols. No rain. Should be all right.” He nodded a perfunctory greeting at the newcomers and strode away. They hurried to catch up with him, and after an hour, they were beyond the light of the town. Arnaud withdrew a small torch from his pack, and they continued the march across field and through woodland.

For the next two hours they heard only the night sounds of the field and forest: soft rustling in the tops of the trees, the deep coo of an owl, a twittering that might have been bats, the clicking of crickets or frogs, and the constant snapping of twigs as they hiked off-path. If they hadn’t been fleeing for their lives, it would have been a pleasure to hike through the winter forest.

Then she saw it, a dull glow in the distance where one shouldn’t be. Arnaud saw it too and brought them to a halt. “Wait here,” he whispered, and they all dropped down to a crouch. He forged ahead, soundlessly. In a few minutes he was back, obviously agitated. He crouched next to Sandrine and whispered.

She turned and translated to the pilots. “Campers with a bonfire. We can’t get to the boat. We’ll have to swim across. Fortunately, this time of year the current is slow.”

“Um. I can’t swim,” Ian announced, glumly.

Sandrine translated to Arnaud, who raised a hand signaling he had a solution. He drew a coil of rope and tied one end of it to a sturdy tree close to the water’s edge. After testing the knot, he bent over and drew off his trousers and rolled them up. “I’ll tie the line when I get to the other side,” he said to Sandrine. “When it goes taut, you’ll know it’s safe to come across.”

Sandrine translated the instructions to the Brits, and they grunted reluctant agreement. “What about our packs?” Nick asked.

Glancing around at the underbrush, Sandrine said, “Raft. I’ll go last, and the rest of you can pull it and me across.” She explained the plan to the guide, and, without further discussion, he rolled his clothing up into a ball and shoved it into his pack. Holding one end of the rope, he plowed forward through the reeds, visible by the moonlight until he dropped into the black water and disappeared. Only the snaking of the rope showed he was swimming.

Sandrine was in charge again. “All right everyone. Get busy. We don’t want to leave Arnaud shivering in his underwear too long.”

All four of them set about gathering branches with a minimum of noise, and Nick, as it turned out, was adept at raft building, even by torchlight. With two deft cuts of the rope, he connected the branches in all the strategic places. The final product was primitive but seemingly adequate to support the weight of five backpacks.

“I’ll be next man in, if nobody minds. I want to get this over with,” Nick said, stripping as well. He crammed his clothes into his kit and a moment later was in the water, pulling himself along, and Ian stoically followed.

“You ready?” Sandrine asked. “If the boys can do it, the girls can too.”

“Sure, as soon as we slide the raft into the water.” The bulky apparatus with its several backpacks floated satisfactorily at the water’s edge, and so Antonia stripped down to bra and pants. Already shivering, she forced her clothes into the last space in her rucksack. “Wish me luck,” she whispered, and on a sudden whim, she leaned forward and pressed a brief kiss on Sandrine’s lips, then slipped into the reeds.

The frigid water was a shock, as she feared, but the painful cold itself was an incentive to get across quickly, and after a dozen tugs on the overhead line, she was on the other side. Ian and Nick waded out to haul her up on the shore.

While she stood drenched and quaking, Arnaud reeled in the rope, bringing the raft and Sandrine to the shoreline. They must have made a ridiculous sight all hunched together in their underwear, Antonia thought, but she was far too cold to draw any humor from it.

Antonia hurriedly dressed, her teeth chattering, and though her trousers dampened quickly against her skin, they blocked the breeze and reduced the cold from intolerable to merely uncomfortable.

With their packs hoisted onto their backs, they trudged on, following Arnaud the last half kilometer to the farmhouse. After a brief introduction to the farmer and his wife, she went to the fireplace and stood as close as she dared, warming the damp front of her clothing. The feeling was exquisite.

The rest of the evening was a blur. Chill turned to warmth, hunger to satiety. Constant translation for the Brits made conversation awkward, so soon the only language was French. When dinner was over, Sandrine drew the farmer aside to make discreet payment for this and previous dinners. Then, after a few more courtesies and the use of the outhouse, he led the four of them to the barn, where blankets were already laid out. Sheer physical exhaustion and a full stomach were enough to bring immediate sleep, even on piles of prickly straw.