Under a War-Torn Sky Page 5

  “Switzerland?”

  “Oui.”

  “How will I get there?” Henry knew the borders were closed, guarded by Germans on one side and Swiss on the other. The Swiss were adamant about maintaining their neutrality, sometimes even shooting down American bombers flying over their country. Would they really let him in?

  “I am not certain. I have never done this before,” said the teacher. “But it is time for me to take action. I watched them take my students and did nothing. An old man’s fear. Tomorrow I will know how to proceed. Now you eat.”

  The teacher handed Henry a plate of food – fried carp, sauerkraut (the Frenchman called it “choucroute”), and pale-yellow cheese. The food was ice-cold. Henry realized that he must have lain unconscious a long time while the teacher kept watch over him. “Merci, monsieur,” said Henry.

  The schoolteacher grimaced at Henry’s Tidewater drawl. “Try not to speak.” He opened the bell tower’s trap door and disappeared.

  Henry pulled out his survival kit and found a second syringe of morphine. He injected the medicine and choked down the Frenchman’s food.

  His ma would be getting a telegram in a few days. Missing in action, it would say. Missing, lost, maimed. With no one to help him but a wizened old teacher who couldn’t stop talking history. What did history matter these days?

  Panic kept the words swirling in Henry’s head: Missing in action. Henry imagined his father’s snarl: I told you, Lilly. I knew he’d never make it. You gentled him too much. Never let me make a man of him.

  Henry clamped his hands over his ears. He’d spent his life trying to prove himself to Clayton, to seem worthy of his respect even if he couldn’t win his father’s love. He’d thought joining the Air Corps would do it. But Clayton had shouted at him: “Boy, you gonna throw away that scholarship to the university because a bunch of foreigners are fighting again? People who don’t have anything to do with this family, this farm? They don’t even speak English, most of ’em.”

  Henry had simply nodded his head, yes.

  “Then you haven’t learned anything from me,” Clayton had snapped, and stormed out the back door.

  Lilly had tried to ease the rejection. “I’m real proud of you, honeybunch,” she’d said.

  Henry rolled over and pushed the blanket around in an attempt to make it a better buffer between him and the wooden floor. “I will make it, you old buzzard. I’ll show you.”

  Henry longed for his uncomfortable cot back in England, even the stench of wet socks. His bunkmates would be checking his footlocker now. They’d be divvying up his long johns and extra T-shirts. He hoped someone would mail the letter he’d almost finished to Patsy. Maybe Sarge would. He should have left a note somewhere in his trunk asking that Patsy’s letters be sent back to her to keep, just in case, in case he didn’t…well, just in case it took him a while to get back.

  He saw Billy’s face, Paul’s, Jimmy’s. He had no idea how many of his crew had made it out of the plane. He’d seen Fred’s lifeless body as he and Dan struggled to the bomb bay, but no one else. “Please, Lord, let some of them have made it to the ground alive.”

  He couldn’t bear to think of Dan and pretty baby Colleen. How would Rose raise her alone?

  Henry’s leg was aquiver with pain. But the morphine was taking effect. He couldn’t hold his eyes open. Henry slid into sleep, seeing pilots who had made it back from their mission, gathered around the piano in the officers’ club, singing: “‘We are poor little lambs, who have lost our way.’”

  Chapter Six

  Henry awoke to the sound of fluttering wings. He squinted against the brilliant morning light that flooded the bell tower. Hovering over him in the window directly above his head was a pair of huge, creamy white wings. They stretched out six feet from tip to tip, and were backlit by a halo of golden light.

  “Am I dead?” Henry rubbed his eyes.

  The wings fluttered once more, making a soft rustling sound. Henry propped himself up on his elbows to gaze at what had to be an angel. It had a long downy neck and great, black, soulful eyes. “If God will give me wings like that I won’t mind dying so much,” Henry whispered.

  “Clack,” the angel squawked at him.

  “Excuse me?”

  The angel swung his head all the way round to face Henry. “Clack, click, click, clack.”

  Henry stared. The angel had a strange, long, orange nose. Henry rubbed his eyes again, then shaded them against the blinding shafts of light that spilled around the angel.

  The nose was a beak. The angel was a bird, a huge white bird.

  Laughing, Henry fell back onto his blanket. His laughter tripped into a sob and then into a strange, anxious wrenching.

  The trap door of the bell tower swung open. “Shhhh,” hissed the schoolteacher. “Are you delirious?”

  Henry shook his head and pointed to the window. But the bird had jumped off the sill to the roof immediately below.

  The teacher rushed to the window. “She is back! My stork. Bienvenue, ma belle!” He turned to Henry. “This is a very good omen. Always this stork has migrated from Africa to nest on my school’s chimney. But for two years she and her mate have not come. I feared soldiers shot them or that they stayed away because they knew France had gone mad. Perhaps her coming foretells the beginning of the end for Hitler.”

  He eased himself down to the floor beside Henry. “We must take courage from her. Birds know when the season is turning.” He looked at Henry’s ankle. “We have a long way to travel. Do you have the strength?”

  Henry sat up. His leg throbbed. He was sick to his stomach and sweaty. He felt like crying. Did he have the strength? Not really. But Henry knew that wasn’t the right answer. He thought back to the time he’d been ploughing the fields by the creek and a water moccasin had bitten him, right above his high-top boot. If he hadn’t fought his fear and nausea and ridden the mule up to the farmhouse for help, he’d have died at fourteen from a snakebite. It’d been the one time Clayton had admitted that Henry had some sense.

  Henry could tell this situation was the same. This old man was risking his life to help him. The least he could do was hold himself together. Henry straightened his back. “I do if you do, monsieur.”

  The teacher nodded in approval. Then he unwrapped the bandage he had put on Henry the night before. Henry bit back a shriek of pain.

  “I think the bone sticks out here,” said the teacher, pointing to a nasty bulge beside Henry’s anklebone. He rewrapped Henry’s ankle with a rough-hewn splint and a clean cloth. “There is no way you can walk. We cannot take the bicycle. Too slow. Too obvious.” He took out a small loaf of bread from his pocket and broke it. He handed half to Henry and slowly ate the other himself.

  “Perhaps there is a better way, yes? The Grand Canal d’Alsace passes here and goes into Basel, a city just inside Switzerland. I have a cousin who fled Alsace for Basel when the Nazis invaded us. Back then the Swiss still honoured the Niederlassungsvertrag – the agreement between our countries that said French and Swiss people could be citizens in either land. The agreement dates to the French Revolution,” said the old man, again playing teacher.

  “But we must be careful. The Swiss attitude has changed. They are afraid Hitler will invade them. The Swiss government does nothing to look as if the country favours the Allies. My cousin writes that some of them agree with Hitler’s racist ideas. They have put up barbed wire along much of the border. At first, when the Nazis started deporting French Jews, Switzerland let them enter as refugees. But it is a small country. So many came, now they may enter only when Jewish groups already inside can pay money to support them. Their justice minister said, ‘Das Boot ist voll.’ The lifeboat is full.”

  He shook his head sadly. “If you had come down in Switzerland you would be in no danger. But if you surrender to the border guards they might turn you over to the Germans. No, we must slip past the border guards somehow. In Basel, my cousin will shelter us. And then from Basel, we must find a wa
y to Bern. But first I must get a boat, without being arrested.” He smiled ruefully at Henry.

  Henry looked at the frail, mild man. He was obviously afraid. Henry’s face burned with embarrassment. He’d learned a fierce independence from his parents. He didn’t like asking for help, especially since it meant endangering a kindhearted old man. “I am sorry for the trouble, monsieur,” Henry mumbled.

  “The world is a troubled place, young man.” The old schoolteacher stood up stiffly. “But the storks are back. There is hope.”

  The teacher didn’t return until twilight. Henry had slipped in and out of consciousness all day long. He was feverish, first burning hot, then teeth-chattering cold.

  “You are worse,” grunted the old teacher. “The skin colour is very bad. We must go.”

  He handed Henry a change of clothes. “You cannot travel in your uniform.” Henry was loath to give up his warm flight jacket for the scratchy sweater and trousers. But he put them on, carefully tucking his lucky marble into a pocket.

  As Henry struggled with the pants, the teacher called down the staircase: “Entrez.”

  A thick, sturdy man heaved himself up through the trap door into the tower, just missing the bell as he stood.

  “Who is that?” Henry asked. He knew he could trust the teacher, but what about this fellow?

  “This is the father of my best student. He has papers to carry goods on the canal in his boat. He can carry us.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “When I told him I needed to go to Basel, he asked if I was in trouble. I told him I was. He said he needed to know what kind of trouble. I told him.” The teacher paused and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “He said he would help, ‘pour François.’ François was his son.”

  The large man nodded and echoed: “Pour François.”

  He scooped Henry up and carried him down the narrow staircase. He and the teacher whispered back and forth in French. Henry searched their faces in the flickering light of the candle the teacher held. He could only understand individual words here and there. He could make no sense of their context.

  “Allemands…soldats…pots de vin…” Did they mean they’d have to bribe German soldiers with money or did they mean they’d make money by turning him over to the soldiers? Henry trembled with uncertainty.

  The boat master laid Henry in a wheelbarrow and patted him on the head as if he were a toddler. The tenderness of the huge man quietened Henry. Without another word the trio bumped its way down the dark forest path.

  Henry caught the sweet, cool nighttime scent of water a few hundred yards before they came to a small dock. Spring frogs newly emerged from the thawing mud were peeping. A long, flat-bottomed boat bobbed on the water. It was heavily loaded with crates of red and white cabbages.

  Henry hobbled on and squeezed himself down among the crates. The teacher sat beside him as the boat master pushed off with a long pole. He would punt the boat down the narrow canal.

  “Basel is about sixty kilometres south,” explained the teacher. “We will reach it in morning. We must be silent. Near Basel you must crawl under here.” He pointed to a tiny cavern visible only from where Henry lay, built by carefully stacking the crates along their edges. “Sainte-Odile, Alsace’s patron saint, escaped her father’s cruelty by slipping into a hole miraculously opened in the rocks for her. We will try to be like Odile when the time comes, yes?”

  Henry nodded.

  The teacher handed him a large pretzel. Henry had little appetite, but he ate, looking up at the stars. It was a clear night. He knew the British would be up flying a mission. American crews would follow at daybreak.

  Under any other circumstances, Henry would have enjoyed the ride along the still, quiet waters. They passed ancient dairy farms, gaggles of geese asleep in tall grass along the canal banks, and fields just beginning to sprout. His own father would be planting soon if the Richmond weather was good. Henry walked the farm in his mind to keep himself from worrying.

  But after two hours, Henry could no longer stomach the constant pulse of pain up his leg. He injected his final syringe of morphine. If all went well he’d be in a hospital by the next night. Henry reassured himself his ankle would feel much better once it was properly set and immobilized. Rocked by the boat, lulled by the steady, soft lap-lap-lap of water against its hull, Henry passed into oblivion once more.

  Slap-flop-flop-flop.

  Henry was startled awake as the teacher dropped a freshly caught eel into a bucket right beside his head. The eel squirmed and writhed and set off the fish already swimming around the bucket. There must have been a dozen eels and fish in there. They made quite a commotion.

  “Protection,” said the teacher with a smile.

  Before Henry could ask what he meant, he heard dogs barking and shouts in German. “Quickly,” the teacher whispered, smiling a frozen, made-for-show smile.

  Henry shimmied into the hiding place among the crates, careful not to topple any. As his feet disappeared, the teacher wedged a final crate into the hole, sealing Henry in.

  Beneath the big, round heads of cabbage, he could not hear well. But Henry felt the barge turn towards the side of the canal after soldiers yelled several commands in German. The sound of his enemy’s language sent chills through Henry.

  With growing horror, he realized the soldiers were going to board the boat with the dogs. They’d sniff him out in an instant. Henry started to panic, feeling trapped, like a scared rabbit down a hole. He swallowed hard and tried to dispel the image of how hunting dogs back home tore apart a rabbit when they caught it.

  Stamp, stamp. The boat tipped and rocked. The soldiers had boarded. Henry heard panting and the hot, heavy breathing of dogs excited by new smells. But so far, they were held back on leashes.

  “Wohin gehen Sie?” one soldier demanded.

  “Au marché à Bâle.” The boatman answered in French that he was heading to market in Basel.

  The soldier switched to French himself: “Pourquoi est-ce que vous ne vendez pas les choux dans votre village?”

  “Personne n’a de l’argent pour acheter des légumes.” The teacher truthfully told the soldiers his neighbours were too poor to buy the cabbages.

  “Ah, oui?” the soldier asked sarcastically.

  Without warning – SLASH! – a bayonet jabbed through a cabbage and down through a slat in the crates. Its point stopped just inches above Henry’s heart. The steel tip withdrew. Henry held his breath, bracing for another stab.

  SLASH!

  The bayonet ripped through the cabbages again, this time just missing Henry’s eye.

  “Quelque chose en-dessous?” the soldier snarled. “Des Juifs, peut-être?”

  His companion grabbed a crate and threw it into the water, splashing the teacher. The two soldiers laughed. The boat rocked. The dogs barked ferociously.

  SLASH!

  The bayonet rammed down next to Henry’s knee.

  Henry glared at the bottom of the crates above his head. They were going to tear apart the boat. What did they suspect? Juif – was that the word for Jew? Henry glimpsed the soldiers’ boots circle the crates, saw their fingers reach through the top rung of the top tier of crates. They’d only need to lift one or two more before they could spot him through the cabbages.

  Henry clenched his fists, holding them up in front of his face like a boxer – the way his dad had taught him to fight. At least they wouldn’t get him easy.

  Henry heard the teacher offer to help move the crates so the soldiers wouldn’t destroy the cabbages in their search. The teacher shuffled and clumsily lifted a crate himself. What are you doing, old man? Henry anxiously wondered.

  Then Henry heard him trip and stumble into one of the soldiers.

  SLOSH.

  The bucket of fish toppled over, too, spilling water and eels everywhere.

  “Oh, pardonnez-moi,” the teacher cried.

  The dogs went berserk, barking and jumping and snapping at the fish that flopped about the
boat. In the mayhem, the dogs’ leashes wrapped round and round the soldiers’ legs.

  “Verflucht!” The soldiers cursed and reeled, yanked around by the crazed dogs. They hit and kicked at them, finally heaving the dogs off the boat onto the dock.

  The boat almost pitched over as the soldiers jumped out as well.

  “Avance, vieux idiot! Vas vendre tes sales choux ailleurs!”

  The teacher ignored the insult and followed their orders to shove off. “Merci, messieurs!” he called innocently and waved as the boat swung out into the water.

  Henry felt the boat jerk forward with great heaves as the boatman pushed with the pole. The boat skimmed quickly along the water. Gradually, Henry’s heart stopped knocking in his ears.

  After ten minutes, the teacher whispered, “We are all right. We are past sight. But remain under until I tell you.”

  “Will you have the same trouble with the Swiss border guards that you did with those Germans?” Henry whispered back.

  “Germans? Those were not Germans. Those were Swiss soldiers. They thought we hid Jews. Certainement, some of them are as bad as the Nazis.”

  Chapter Seven

  Henry and the boatman waited at a pier for a long time, bobbing among many other barges. The schoolteacher had walked to his cousin’s house.

  Henry remained tucked under the cabbages, hungry, hurting, hot. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. His only view of the world was through the slats of the crates. Repeatedly, he heard voices nearing, nearing, and then receding. German voices, completely incomprehensible to him.

  To keep still, Henry tried mentally reciting snippets of history: In 1400 and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue… He worked through the table of elements his chemistry teacher had drilled into him the previous spring: Aluminium, Al, thirteen atoms. Calcium, Ca, twenty atoms… He even travelled back to third grade to work through the multiplication tables: 9 x 10 is 90; 9 x 11 is 99; 9 x 12 is 108… Anything to keep himself quiet, sane, less aware of his dangerous circumstances.