Waiting for the Violins (6 page)

She turned her attention back to the instructor and to the giant slides built up against the rear wall of the hangar. They began at a height of about twenty feet and ended abruptly at about eight feet. Directly below the drop were mattresses that seemed far too small.

“First of all, we’ll practice landing. As soon as your feet strike the ground, you must throw yourself sideways to distribute the impact to your calf, your thigh, your hip, and finally the side of your back. Keep your legs slightly bent at the knee, your chin tucked in, and your hands linked behind your neck.”

He paused, as if to give them time to reconsider, then pointed toward the ladders. “All right, you lot. Up you go. Try not to break anything, will you?”

Antonia dutifully executed the slides and tumbles, finding the first drop painful but each consecutive one more tolerable. By the tenth, she was more fatigued from climbing the ladder than from taking the fall.

“Good show, chaps. No smashed bones yet,” the faux Montgomery announced. “Go get yourselves some sandwiches and tea, and in an hour, we’ll move on to the pulleys.”

As the group migrated toward a table with the promised lunch, Antonia sensed someone at her side.

“A right harsh way to treat a lady, innit?” a voice said.

“Mr. Rhydderch,” she said, guessing, and looked over her shoulder at him. “Thank you for your concern.”

“Please, it’s Llewellyn. Me mates call me Lew. And you’re Antonia, right? Toni.” They reached the food table and he handed her a tin mug of tea. “I was just looking after ya.”

“No need for that, Lew. I’m doing just fine. What about you? How are you coping?

“Smashing. I seem to have the knack, you know?” He handed her a spam sandwich but she raised her hand. “Thanks, I’ll take the cheese.” She reached across him and helped herself. “Do a lot of falling, do you?”

He looked puzzled for a moment, then chuckled. “Aye, that I do. Rugby, see? When eight blokes at a time thrash you on the field, falling’s the easy part. Say, if you’re free this evening and fancy a bit of company, maybe we could have a pint at the village pub.”

“Thank you, Llewellyn, but I don’t think we’re supposed to draw attention to ourselves in the village.”

“Well, we can skip the pub and have us a beer at my place. Me flat-mate dropped out of the school, so I’ve got the place all to meself.” He bit into his sandwich.

“Thanks again, but I think I’m going to be pretty knackered by tonight. Most nights, in fact.” She sipped her tea.

“Pity,” he said through a full mouth, then chewed a bit more and swallowed before adding. “I could teach you how to fall.”

She ignored the innuendo and looked to the side where the only other woman in the class was conversing with the instructor. “Why don’t you ask her? She might need help falling.”

He scrutinized the other woman. “Quite a lot of nose, that one. Not me type.”

“I don’t think I am either, Lew. Here, have another sandwich.” She slapped a spam-on-whole-wheat onto his open hand and walked away.

*

At ten in the evening Antonia stood on the field with the others who had made the first cut and stamped her feet to keep warm.

“Don’t be nervous, Toni. You’ll be
fane
,” someone said. Fane? She turned to see Llewellyn smiling down at her. “Thanks for the encouragement, but I told you not to call me Toni.”

“Sure thing. But look, I watched you doing the balloon jumps and yer doin’ great. You know it’s the time before the jump that’s difficult. Once you’re out in the air and your chute opens, it’s like a baby’s bottom. Come on, they’re calling us up now.”

They clambered into the Armstrong Whitley along with four other candidates and took off. To her surprise, she was less nervous than she’d been on the ground. The noise of the plane engine seemed to lend a sense of drama and excitement, and made the jump seem heroic. She checked all the fittings on her jumpsuit, the buckles and straps on her parachute, the laces on her boots. She adjusted the Bungey training helmet and put on her goggles.

“Over target area!” The jump-officer shouted, although, amidst the roar of the engine, Antonia could only read his lips. She stood up, second in line, behind Lew, and they shuffled together toward the bomb bay of the plane.

When Lew reached the edge, just before jumping, he twisted around, puckered his lips and mimed a kiss. Then he stepped into the hole.

Behind him, Antonia shivered in her jumpsuit as she reached the edge. Below stretched a terrifying, dark emptiness. The clouds had moved away, revealing the full moon upon which the RAF so much depended. It was all the light she was going to get.

The green jump light flashed on, and before the jumpmaster touched her shoulder, she dropped.

Terror. Wind blew her out of the vertical and caused her to tumble. She couldn’t orient herself because she had nothing to look at, nothing to grab on to.

Whoomp!
A violent jerk from the straps under her crotch told her the ripcord attached to the plane had opened her chute. It was suddenly quiet.

How fast was she falling? She had no way of measuring, and the memory of all the damage done to her body at Dunkirk shot through her. At least there’d be no fire this time.

She glanced downward and saw the glim lamps, four on each side, and though the wind was blowing her at a diagonal across the landing strip, she finally had a sense of approach.

Suddenly the ground filled her entire view. She bent her knees and pressed her elbows to her sides. The moment her feet touched earth, she threw herself sideways into a roll.
Ooof
. A quick, sharp pain in her shoulder told her she’d been ambushed by a rock. A small one apparently, but she felt cheated, for the jump had otherwise been perfect.

For the first time during the entire training period, she felt exhilarated.

A figure approached in the moonlight, one of the other jumpers still dragging his chute. When he came within shouting distance, he called out. “Tidy jump, eh, Toni?”

She scrambled to her feet and gathered up her own silk, rolling it into a bundle. “I told you not to call me Toni.”

“Ah, shush yer noise, girl,” he called back amiably while he rolled up his chute. “You proved you could keep up with the lads, so come have a pint with me.”

“Sorry, Lew. I’m still not interested.” With the entire silken mass rolled up and slung over her shoulder, she began the hike across the field toward the waiting troop carrier.

When the team was present and accounted for, the instructor joined them and they made the drive back. “Good job, all of you. And when we get to the hangar, you’ll meet somebody who cares about your success as much as you do.”

“Who’s that?” one of the men called out. “Me mother?”

“No. You’ll find out when we get there. But make sure your chutes are tied up neatly and your gear is in proper order. I want you to look good.”

“Ooo, must be someone important.”

Twenty minutes later the group filed into the drop-off room and stowed their chutes for the repacking women. Antonia was one of the last, and when she stepped through the inner door into the hangar, a semicircle had already formed around the guest.

She had to walk all the way around the mass of bodies to the end, and when she finally stood in place, she was slightly disappointed to see a portly, balding man in a rumpled three-piece suit and a black overcoat. He held his bowler hat and a cigar in one hand while he shook hands with the other. Ah, she thought. So that’s Winston Churchill. Britain’s most powerful man looked a bit seedy, like a slightly disreputable banker.

Chapter Eight

Brussels March 1942

Standing in the tiny corridor, Moishe Goldman pinched out the tip of his cigarette and dropped the remaining butt into his pocket. Then he knocked and let himself be scrutinized through a crack in the door. He heard the safety chain being undone, and when the door opened, his brother Aisik leaned toward him and spoke over the din. “Come, sit down. You’re the last.” In the room behind him where the others were gathered, people were arguing in their mixed versions of French, Polish, and Belorussian Yiddish.

Aisik had packed almost a dozen people into the tiny flat, and, for lack of furniture, most sat on the floor or leaned against the wall. A pity they couldn’t have met in Aisik’s old place, a comfortable three-room apartment with its own toilet. What luxury it seemed, now that most of them were living clandestine lives in whatever cramped housing sympathetic Belgians would offer them.

Moishe stepped over the legs of the men on the floor and squeezed himself into a corner. Glancing around the room, he realized he knew almost everyone. He was especially pleased to see the muscular Jakob Gutfrajnd, whom they all called Kuba, and the young medical student Youra Livschitz.

In the far corner, his sister-in-law Rywka stood holding her baby.

Kuba shouted over the general noise. “All right everyone, calm down. We’re all here now, so let’s get started.” In a moment, the sound subsided, and Moishe heard only the dry coughing of smokers and the simpering of the two-year-old.

“You all know why we’re here,” Kuba said, and everyone seemed to listen. “Most of us are old comrades who fought together in Spain, and if we’re not all good Communists, we’re still brothers in arms. And we all know about what’s going on in Germany—the burning of the synagogues, the smashing of Jewish shops, the deportations. Belgium was safe, but the Germans are here now, and things are going to get worse.”

“They’re already worse. Tell them about the labor camps,” Aisik said.

Someone lit up a cigarette, took a long inhalation, and passed it to the man next to him. “They’ve built a big new one now at Oświęcim. The Germans call it Auschwitz. We’ve got to let people know.”

Moishe snorted. “We report it all the time in the Jewish newspapers. But everybody thinks they’re immune because they work in important jobs or have influential friends.”

“What about the Christians?” The boyish Youra called from the back. “The ones who can’t read Yiddish. All they hear and read is the crap coming from the Germans.”

“That’s right.” It was Rywka, who spoke over the head of her baby. “Christians got us this apartment. If they knew, maybe they could prevent the deportations.”

Aisik put his arm around her. “That may be too optimistic, Rywka. Why should they care about us? Who here is a Belgian citizen? Raise your hands.”

Not a single hand went up. “No one? Okay, then, who here even speaks good French?” Three hands went up.

“So where are the Belgian Jews? Leaders in business, banking, the diamond industry?” It was Youra again. Unlike most of the others, he’d had a university education and seemed to understand about things like banking and business.

“I’ll tell you where they are,” Moishe said. “The ones who could afford to get away are in London. The rest are hoping it will all disappear. And the worst of them are collaborating. Not to mention the Judenrat.”

The baby began to whimper and Rywka held him close. “Well, they did open some schools and clinics for Jews.”

“It’s true. They do good things too,” Aisik said. “They’ve set up a whole new business employing lots of Jews to make winter clothing for the Wehrmacht. A lot of men are supporting their families that way.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Aisik. Anyone who works for the Germans is collaborating,” Moishe said. “All that crap about the social welfare of the community. I piss on their social welfare. They’ll do what the Germans want. And you know what that is? To round us up and get us out. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll have the yellow star and the roundups.”

Grunts of agreement came from the others.

“So where does that leave us?” Aisik rubbed his forehead, a nervous habit he’d developed since the occupation began.

“It leaves us in shit,” Moishe muttered.

After a moment of angry silence Kuba spoke up again. “Well, now that you’ve got that out of your system, we can begin to get organized.”

“To do what?” Youra asked the obvious, and the room buzzed again.

Kuba raised a hand. “Listen, everyone.” He wasn’t a tall man, but the breadth of his chest and his strong baritone voice made him seem large. The murmuring stopped. “As I see it, we can work in three areas.” He held up a finger. “One. Find ways to hide anyone who can’t fight. The old, the children.” He looked at Rywka and her baby.

“Two. Collect money.”

“No one’s got any money to give,” Moishe said. “We can hardly feed our families as it is.”

“I was talking about robbery.”

“Ah.” Moishe scowled for a moment. “Doesn’t that require guns?”

“Yes, it does. And that brings us to number three. Fight. I mean really
fight
. You’ve heard the rumors of partisans fighting here and there. We can do that too.”

“How do we get guns, Kuba?”

“People are hiding weapons left over from the retreat, from the English and the Belgians. We just have to track them down.”

“I don’t know if I could kill a man,” someone said.

Moishe relit the last bit of his cigarette and puffed on it, then crushed the centimeter of stub into the saucer beside him. “I could. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“I’ve got a lot to lose.” Aisik Goldman glanced over at his wife and son and rubbed his forehead again. “But Moishe’s right. Things are going to get worse, and if you can fight back, you should.”

“So, who’s willing to fight rather than hide?” Kuba laid down the challenge.

Two hands went up hesitantly. Then two more. Slowly the rest of the hands rose as well. Even Rywka nodded agreement, holding her cheek against her son’s head.

“All right, then. Let’s put some organization into this,” Kuba said, and in the remaining half hour, he assigned tasks, outlined policies, and described the means to gain adherents. After a final emphasis on the critical need for secrecy, he called an end to the meeting.

When all had filed out of the tiny apartment, Moishe embraced Aisik. “So, here we are, brother, the Armed Jewish Resistance.”

Rywka set down her toddler on newly cleared floor space. “I know we have to do this, but I wonder how many of us will pay with our lives.”