Ordinary Heroes (2005) Read online

  Biddy shook his head as if he didn't know.

  "We was all over," he said. "You know how that goes when a man's scratchin for work. Come the end of the month, sometimes Dad and the landlord wudn't seein eye to eye. I must have been near to eighteen 'fore I stopped in askin why we didn't move in daytime like other folks." He smiled at the memory, but his green eyes drifted over to see what I made of that. As the son of a cobbler, though, I knew a lot about hard times. In the Depression, Pa had plenty of work because people wanted to make their shoes last. But many of them couldn't come up with the six bits once their footwear was mended. Some pairs left on credit, if Pa knew who he was talking to, even when it was all but certain he'd never get paid. But he'd let a man walk out barefoot rather than get cheated.

  After hearing the gunfire, we stopped several times to check directions with the locals. In the end, a farmer on a horse trotted ahead of us and pointed out the Comtesse's narrow drive, which we might well have missed amid the heavy brush. The Lemolland property was bounded by an old stone fence, topped in the French way in red roofing tiles, but the gate was open and we headed up an incline beside the vineyards, where several workers were tilling among the stubby twists of the grapevines. The plants, hanging on long wire supports, looked to have been recently harvested.

  At the top, we found a square formation of joined sand-colored buildings. I thought of a fort, but I suppose the arrangement was a small replica of a feudal manor. Each wing was several stories high, sporting long red jalousies folded back beside the deep windows and topped with a steep mansard roof. Huge wooden doors were thrown open on an arch that passed through the building facing us, and we drove into a vast cobblestone courtyard. At the far end stood the house. It incorporated a round tower that had to date from the Middle Ages, giving the residence the look of a little castle.

  An unshaved worker with a hoe watched us warily as we stopped. Visible behind a corner of the Comtesse's chateau were a ramshackle chicken coop and a pasture, where two cows swished their tails.

  At the house, I pulled several times on a bell rope until the door was parted by a large dark man, with the stub of a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and one eye closed to the smoke. He was a Gypsy, with a potato face and women's-length hair tied behind him. In French, I asked for Major Martin. The Gypsy took a second surveying our uniforms, then motioned us in and bellowed up a staircase at his right.

  "Ro-bert," he called, giving the name the French pronunciation, without a 't.' "Un moment," he told us, then disappeared out the door we'd entered.

  Biddy and I remained in the entry for several minutes. The old house had stone walls of monumental thickness. It was dark and still, except for the bright kitchen which lay ahead of us at the end of a hall. From there, I could hear voices and a pump handle squealing, and smell pleasant aromas--burning wood and something cooking. Standing here, I was reminded of waiting in the foyer of Grace's great stone house, when I would pick her up for the evening. They were excruciating moments for me, especially when her father was around, since he was convinced I was a fortune hunter. For my part, the distaste was mutual. Privately, I realized that Horace Morton would never accept my good intentions regarding his daughter, because he himself wouldn't have pursued any girl without first knowing all about her bank account.

  With great pounding, a middle-sized man in a khaki Army officer's shirt bounded down the heavy stairs. He wore no tie or insignia but there was a trench knife on his belt, in addition to a bayonet in its scabbard. This, without question, was Major Martin.

  Biddy and I saluted. Smiling, he tapped his forehead, but only to be polite.

  "We don't do that around here," he said. The Operational Groups, as I was to learn, proceeded with a minimum of military formalities. There was a "leader" from whom all took direction, but the OGs included not only members of the armed forces of several nations, but civilians in the underground who had no duty to adhere to Army rules.

  "Where from?" Martin asked, when I gave him my name. I repeated that I was with Staff Judge Advocate, Third Army, which brought a laugh. "No, I can see that wreath on your lapel, son. Where in the States? Where's the home this war has taken you away from?"

  When I told him Kindle County, he brightened. "Oh, that's a swell place. I've had some swell times there." He shared a few memories of a Negro speakeasy in the North End, then asked about my education and my family. These were not the kind of questions a superior officer usually bothered with on first meeting, and I enjoyed his attention. He made similar inquiries of Biddy, who predictably retreated rather than offer much of a-response.

  Martin was no more than five foot ten, but remarkable to behold, dark haired, strong jawed, and vibrating with physical energy. Much like Grace, he had the all-American looks, with tidy, balanced features, that I, with my long nose and eyes shadowed in their sallow orbits, always envied. A single black curl fell across the center of Robert Martin's forehead, and even racing down the stairs he made an impression of unusual agility. Despite addressing me as "son," he did not look to be much more than forty.

  He interrupted when I tried to explain my mission here.

  "Oh, I've heard about that," he said with a brief smile, waving us behind him down the hall. When we entered the kitchen, a young woman was over the sink washing her hair beneath the cast-iron pump. She was small and striking, dressed in surplus camouflage fatigues far too large for her, and she glanced my way immediately to size me up. She had a tiny, almost childlike face, but it held an older, ruthlessly cool aspect. I could see at once that this was the woman who was the problem.

  Finding herself unimpressed, she went back to wringing out her short wavy tresses over the copper basin. At the same time, she spoke to Martin.

  "Qui sont-ils?" Who are they?

  Martin answered her in French. "The Lieutenant is sent by Teedle."

  "Merde," she replied. "Tell them to go away." She reached beside her and lit a cigarette.

  "By and by," he answered. He waited until she was done frisking a towel through her hair, then made introductions in English. She was Gita Lodz, a member of OG Stemwinder and the FTP, FrancsTireurs et Partisans, one of the largest resistance organizations, union-oriented and supposedly red. When Martin gave Mademoiselle Lodz our names, she offered a smile as purely formal as a curtsy.

  "Enchante," I answered, thinking that this might clue them that I had understood their conversation, but I saw no sign that either took it as more than a tourist courtesy.

  "Excuse, pliss," Gita Lodz said in English, "I go." She had a heavy Slavic accent, undetectable to my ear when she had spoken French. Hastily she recovered her cigarette from the sink edge as she left.

  A meal of some kind was under way and a servant in an apron was stirring a huge iron pot on the black stove. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was rustic but the room was large and light. Copper pans with burned bottoms were suspended from the exposed timbers of the ceiling, and blue delft plates decorated the walls, a sure sign that this place had so far escaped the war.

  "You've arranged charming quarters, Major," I said.

  "Quite," he said. "Stemwinder is on R and R with the war at a standstill. Here it seems far away." He swept his arm grandly. The Comtesse de Lemolland is a magnificent patriot and a great friend to our OG."

  The house, he said, had been the country home of the Comtesse's family, bankers from Nancy, since the time of Napoleon. She had maintained it even after marrying the Comte de Lemolland after the First War, when her principal residence became a chateau in the Cotes-du-Nord. This property had not suffered as badly under the Germans as many others. Periodically, SS would take over the house as a resort for officers, and a German garrison would come each fall to confiscate crops and wine.

  Nonetheless, with the Comtesse's return, the vineyard and farm were already returning to life. The Comtesse herself, Martin confided, was not doing as well. Her son, Gilles, a member of another resistance group, Forces Francaises de l'Interieur, FFI, had
been confirmed captured and burned alive by the Nazis earlier this month. The old woman had largely kept to herself since then.

  "Nonetheless," said Martin, "she would never forgive me if an American officer visited her home and I did not allow her to say a word of welcome. You will enjoy meeting her. She is a remarkable and gallant woman." Preparing to summon the Comtesse, Martin caught sight of Mademoiselle Lodz peeking into the kitchen, probably to see if we had yet been dispatched. She was now in country attire, a blouse with ruffled sleeves and a flowered dress with a bib and flouncy skirt.

  "Va leur parler"--Talk to them--he told her, gesturing her in. To us he said, "If you chaps will excuse me just one minute, Gita will keep you company." He admonished her in a low voice as he breezed out, "Bois plaisante."

  Biddy had retreated to a corner, leaving me to face Gita Lodz in silence. She was narrow as a deer, and in that fashion, pleasingly formed, but with a second chance to observe her, I had decided it would be a stretch to call her beautiful. Dry, her hair proved to be a brass-colored blonde. Her nose was broad and her teeth were small and crooked. Given the darkness of her eyes, her complexion was oddly pale. But she had what the Hollywood tattlers liked to call "it," an undefined magnetism which began with a defiant confidence about herself, palpable even from across the room.

  I attempted small talk.

  "May I be so bold as to ask about your name, Mademoiselle Lodz? Do you hail from that Polish city? From Lodz?" I said this in very correct French, which drew a pulled-down mouth from her, a seeming acknowledgment that she had not given me that much credit. But she replied in the same language, clearly delighted not to struggle with English.

  "I am Polish, yes, but not from Lodz. It is no one's name really. I am a bastard." She made that declaration with utter equanimity, but her small black eyes never left me. I always thought I'd learned a good poker face watching Westerns, but I feared at once that I'd reacted to her frankness, and I was grateful she went on. "My mother was Lodzka," she saidWodjka,' as she pronounced it--"from her first husband. She had not seen him in years, but it was convenient, naturally, for me to share her name. The French, of course, can only speak French. So it is easier here to be simply Lodz. And your name?" she asked. "How would it be spelled?"

  "Doo-ban?" she said once I had recited the letters. I said it again, and she tried a second time. "Doobean?"

  I shrugged, accepting that as close enough.

  "But what kind of name is that? Not French, no?" I answered simply, "American."

  "Yes, but Americans, all of them come from Europe. Where in Europe was Doo-bean?"

  I told her Russia, but she took my answer with mild suspicion.

  "In what part?" she asked.

  I named the village where both my parents had been born.

  "Near Pinsk?" she said. "But your name does not sound Russian."

  "It was Dubinsky, back then," I said after a second, still not acknowledging everything I might have. However, I had won a brief smile.

  "Like lodzka," " she said. A second passed then, as we both seemed to ponder how to go forward, having found an inch of common ground. I finally asked where she was from in Poland, if not Lodz.

  "Eh," she said. "Pilzkoba. A town. You put a thumbtack in a map and it is gone. Que des cretins," she added bitterly. All idiots. "I ran from there in 1940. After the Germans killed my mother."

  I offered my condolences, but she shrugged them off.

  "In Europe now we all have these stories. But I could not stay. I hated the Germans, naturally. And also the Poles, because they hated me. Bastards are not favorites in small Polish towns, Doo-bean. So I left. You see?"

  "Yes," I said. In English, I quoted Exodus. " have been a stranger in a strange land.' "

  She lit up. The phrase delighted her. "Parfait!" she declared and haltingly repeated as much as she could.

  Martin reappeared just then and swept behind her.

  "Ah, but no stranger to me," he said, and with his arms around her waist swung her off the floor. Once she was down she pried his hands apart to escape.

  "I am enjoying this conversation," she told him in French.

  "So you like this American?" Martin asked her.

  "I like Americans," she answered. "That must be what interested me in you. Pas mar she added--Not bad--a reference to my looks, then winked at me with Martin behind her. She clearly had no wish to let him know I understood.

  "You think he has silk stockings and chocolate bars?" asked Martin.

  "Merde. You are always jealous."

  Not without reason," he answered.

  "Yes, but without right."

  "Eh," he responded. It was banter. Both were grinning. He faced me and said that the Comtesse would be down momentarily.

  With Martin's reappearance, I had taken a notebook from my fatigues and asked the Major if we might use the interval before the Comtesse's arrival to discuss my mission here. I presented him with an order from Patton's adjutant authorizing the Rule 35 investigation, but Martin did not read more than the first lines.

  "Teedle," he said then, as if it were the most tiresome word in any language. "What does he say? No, don't bother. Mark it as true, whatever he says. All true. 'Insubordinate.' 'Mutinous.' Whatever the hell he wants to call it. Write down in your little book: Guilty as hell. The Army still doesn't know what to do with me." He laughed, just as he had when he recollected the Negro speakeasy.

  I followed him across the kitchen. "I wouldn't make light of this, Major. Teedle has laid serious charges, sir." I explained his rights to Martin--he could give a statement himself or direct me to other witnesses. If he preferred to speak to a superior officer, he was entitled to do so. And certainly he could hear a specification of what had been said against him.

  "If you must," he answered. He picked at a plate of grapes.

  "General Teedle alleges that you've been ordered to disband your Operational Group and return to London. He says you've refused."

  "Refused'? What rubbish. I'm here under the command of OSS London, and London has directed me to continue as before. Gita and I and the others are going to finish our business in France, then continue on to Germany. I have built networks there, too, Dubin. We will see this to an end. Teedle can be damned with his nonsense about refusing orders."

  This is a misunderstanding, then?"

  If you wish to call it that."

  I was somewhat relieved to find the matter could be settled quickly. I asked Martin to see his orders from OSS, which brought an indulgent smile.

  "You don't know much about OSS, do you, Dubin?" In fact, I had tried to learn as much as I could, but except for an old propaganda piece in Stars and Stripes and what I gleaned at the i8th Division from Martin's sanitized zoI file, I was largely in the dark. "An OSS officer carries no written orders," he told me. "The Nazis have said forthrightly that they'll shoot any OSS member they capture. Teedle knows this. But mine are orders nonetheless."

  "Well, if I may, sir, who gave those orders?"

  "My operational officer in London. I was ordered back to see him the last week in September, as a matter of fact."

  "And his name, if you please?"

  Again, Martin smiled as he would with a boy.

  "Dubin, OSS has strict rules of secrecy. It is not a normal military organization. Only London can reveal the information you're asking for. But feel free to check with them. They will confirm everything."

  I frowned.

  "Oh, pshaw, Dubin. You doubt me? Look around here. We live in the open in the French countryside, fed and housed by a noted French resister. If London didn't want this, don't you think they could inform the local networks, the Free French, with whom they've worked hand in glove for years now? Do you think the Comtesse would defy them? I am here only with the leave of OSS."

  He was making some sense, but I knew I could not conclude this investigation merely by inference. However, I had lost Martin's attention. On the threshold was an older woman, very erect, very slim, very drawn
. Her graying hair was swept back smoothly and she wore a simple dress, sashed at the waist, and no jewelry besides a cameo that hung between her collarbones. Biddy and I were introduced to the Comtesse de Lemolland. I bowed briefly, accepting her hand.

  She addressed us in English.

  "I owe to all Americans my deepest gratitude for your courage in behalf of my country."

  "I am only a lawyer, Comtesse. Your thanks go to the likes of Major Martin, not to me."

  Martin interjected, "The Comtesse herself is a great heroine."

  Not at all true," she answered.

  "May I tell the story then, Comtesse, and allow Lieutenant Dubin to judge for himself?"

  Leaning against a large cutting block in the center of the kitchen, Martin played raconteur, a role that clearly pleased him. He explained that when the Nazis arrived in 194o, they had commandeered the Comte de Lemolland's ancestral house in the Cotesdu-Nord, where the Comtesse, a widow of three years, had been residing. The Germans turned the chateau into a communications node. The Comtesse was forced to live as a guest in her own home, confined to an apartment of several rooms. Because the Germans adored rank, they accorded her some dignity, but they partied with prostitutes and nailed maps to the wainscoting in the parlor and abused her servants. Twice maids were raped.

  One of the Comtesse's house staff was a member of the underground, and it was she who secretly introduced Agnes de Lemolland to Martin. The Comtesse agreed to the installation in her salon of a listening device, an induction microphone no larger than a button, which was attached by a filament to a tiny earphone that ran to her sitting room. There the Comtesse listened to the daily flow of information through the communications center downstairs, reporting what she'd overheard. When the plans were laid for D-Day, the Comtesse understood that it was from this very center that German reinforcements would be routed to Normandy. With no request from Martin, she designated her own house for bombing once the invasion began, fleeing with her servants only minutes before the first strike.