A Perfect Madness (21 page)

“
Yes, yes, very much so, I
would say,” Angie said, very close to crying herself.

“
I want your promise that
should I, or my brother Hiram, not return from the war, you will
let no one take Anna from you—no one. You are as much her mother as
I am, if not more so.”

Angie had wondered how it would be
when this moment came, as she knew it surely must, knowing Julia’s
great love for Anna. She had tried, but couldn’t feel the terrible
anguish of a mother parting from her child, perhaps for the last
time. Only those standing at the edge of such a loss could speak of
it, she realized. And now the precious gift was before
her.

“
Aye, and raise her I
will. How could it not be—she’s got my heart and is a part of me,
just as you are.” Angie said, smiling through her own tears. “But
shame be on you. You will be standing here banging on the door the
day the war is over.”

Angie never knew if what she said was
right by Julia, but they sat holding each other for hours more in a
pleasing silence, the kind where one’s mind becomes that of the
soul. Tomorrow would bring more tears but that was of little matter
now.

Only the hymns were different for her
final Sunday service. The preaching and the looks from the
congregation, though, were the two things Julia knew would always
be the same. Luther’s great “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” did send
cold shivers down her spine, and she and Angie sang it with such
gusto that those standing close quit their own singing to listen.
By the third stanza, most of the congregation had stopped as the
two voices, harmonizing when they could, filled the cold church to
the rafters with a melodious warmth seldom heard there. Looking
back days later, and times after, the same joy would sweep Julia’s
heart as if it had its own existence and would stay with her
forever. Her father would have been pleased, too, even though it
was a Christian hymn, because he knew her singing was always to
God, and that’s all that mattered.

After the service, when the time came
for Julia to make the long walk back down to the village to go
home, she lifted Anna in her arms one last time and kissed her
lightly. Then she simply smiled at Angie.

“
I will go now,” she said,
and walked away, not turning back to look.

Julia opened her eyes as the plane
began a slow descent over what was supposed to be their drop zone.
Everything she had learned the past two years was now to be tested.
Julia looked at Eva, and for the first time saw a tiny shade of
fear in her eyes. It is good, though, the fear, Eva had said many
times when they had discussed the strongest of human emotions. All
animals live by fear, and they will either kill or run to live
another day. And in war, we become the worst of animals, seldom
running, but always killing. The idea to Julia that she might have
to kill someone was the impetus for many sleepless nights in
Arisaig, Scotland during her difficult training in commando
tactics. There she learned a hundred ways to kill a person, so it
seemed at the time. But at the end, she was still unsure what she
might do when such a moment came, though she told no one. The name,
make and purpose of every military weapon and mechanized vehicle,
British and German, was pounded into her head much like words had
been in the English class, without mercy. And soon, she became so
skilled at breaking down weapons and identifying them when
blindfolded that many in her class sought her company, if only to
learn from her.

One evening, while walking alone
around the training grounds, Julia thought about Erich and where he
might be and whether he, perhaps, had killed someone in the war. It
would be a terrible thing for him to do so, she knew. Maybe it was
because the winter sky was so full of stars that the time came to
her when they were lying together on the soft grass in the Old
Jewish Cemetery looking at the same dark sky with the same bright
stars above them. With thousands of tombstones as their audience,
they discussed and argued in whispered voices how it might be to
kill someone who was as innocent as you, even in war. It was then
that Erich had expressed a concern quite like hers over his own
ability to kill a stranger he didn’t know, and probably never
would, should he be cast into Germany’s wars. It was distance that
made war so palatable and easy to accept, they finally decided,
both for the old men that send the young to die and, in the end,
for those who do the killing. Distance hides the humanity of who we
kill, lessening one’s concern over their death, he had argued. If
we don’t see them fall and die or blown into a thousand pieces, we
stay disconnected from the killing. It is only when we see the eyes
of those we are killing that we cry out inside. Even then, some
never see them, the eyes, though they are there before them. What
would Erich do now, if he were here to jump with her? Would they
run away and hide together, as they talked of doing, and let the
world handle its own problems? Julia wondered.

When the red light began flashing,
indicating jump time was two minutes, Julia and Eva looked at each
other for one brief second, then stood quickly, tightened each
other’s backpacks, and connected the parachute’s cord line to the
static line. The jump time only seconds away, Julia braced herself
in the open door, waiting for the final signal. The snow-covered
earth was a scant eight hundred feet below and she was glad. The
heavy blanket of snow would soften the impact, though she would be
more visible to those that might be watching.

“
Stay with me, God, the
night will be cold and long,” she whispered, leaping into the
waiting darkness.

***

FIFTEEN

Czechoslovakia

A
s she hit the cold
night air, Julia caught a glimpse of the big plane going away
before her chute opened and she began floating down. To her left, a
hundred or so yards, she saw the outline of Eva’s chute as it
opened and billowed out into the endless darkness above her. The
pilot had flown very low to drop them, leaving Julia only seconds
to look down at the ground rushing up to meet her and to guide her
landing away from a row of trees lining the open field. This time
there would be no sheep dump to greet her. A heavy winter snow had
fallen for two days, covering the ground with its white softness to
cushion her landing, as if it knew she would be coming home
soon.

It was Eva’s time, though, to provide
the comedic relief needed for such a tense situation. Caught at the
last moment of landing by a sudden gust of wind, she was pushed
into the trees, crashing and breaking limbs and twigs and ending
suspended upside down several feet from the ground. Had there been
ears to hear that night, the steamy words flowing from her cursing
lips would have shamed the saltiest of all swearers. Holding her
tightly in their twisted arms, the limbs and twigs could not stop
laughing, so it seemed to Eva, over her topsy-turvy predicament.
But the laughter came from Julia, who had emerged from the
surrounding darkness to find Eva’s embarrassing position. She had
followed the faint sounds of her cursing voice, muted by the deep
snow covering the fields and the heavy winter air. Sights such as
this become engraved on the mind so that forgetting is impossible,
and she would be reminded of it many times by Julia.

Still laughing, Julia made her way
slowly to where Eva was hanging, pushing aside the limbs and twigs
surrounding her like a captive army. Before she could say anything,
Eva looked at her and said calmly, “This fucking night stays
between you and me. Now cut me down before I pass out.”

Julia nodded, but her face still
reddened from hearing such words, and did so this time as Eva
spoke. Using her commando knife, she began cutting the parachute
cords wrapped around Eva’s feet and the tree limbs, freeing her to
fall the remaining few feet to the ground. As she did, the deep
snow quickly wrapped around her like a white blanket, leaving only
parts of her face showing.

“
I should leave you here,
but they would find you, I’m afraid,” Julia said, still laughing
and reaching down to help Eva up.

Julia pushed Eva away, hurried to her
feet and stood listening. Distant cries of an aroused dog could be
faintly heard.

“
There is a farm somewhere
nearby. We need to locate the radio and supplies and hide them
until we find out where we are,” she said, helping Eva to her
feet.

“
Near Pilsen, I would
hope,” Eva said, brushing off the remaining snow from her arms and
legs and starting back towards the place where Julia
landed.

Julia stopped her for a
second.

“
We need to hide your
parachute before we go. A German patrol may come by.”

“
There’s no need to. We’ve
made enough tracks to make any patrol think an army has landed.
They can follow us to the ends of the earth until this snow melts,”
Eva said, making a new path across the open field.

Julia was slow to follow, stopping
every few feet to inhale the beautiful white world spread out
around her. The snows in Prague were just as beautiful, she
believed, perhaps even more so because they were alive, having a
thousand happy children to play with the very first moment the
flakes begin their long fall from the heavens. The snow around her
was quiet, though she was sure it had much to tell since the war
began. It had been their friend at first, muting the sounds and
softening their landing. But when the morning light came it would
become their enemy, following them wherever they went until it
disappeared beneath the warming rays of the sun.

Ahead, Eva spotted the cylindrical
metal box resting in the snow with its parachute spread out on the
ground. By the time Julia arrived, Eva had pried open the box,
laying out its contents on the parachute to run through a quick
inventory in her mind—a wireless two-way radio, two British Stens
with extra ammunition, two small lightweight Webley revolvers,
three medium explosive devices, and K-rations. Nothing else was
there that might help them survive.

“
Until we know where we
are, hiding out in the woods to wait for the morning light is our
only choice. German patrols will come then,” Eva said.

Julia nodded and took out a small
detailed map, which had been purposely folded to the sheet showing
their drop-off spot. Focusing a small flashlight on the
brown-colored map, she quickly traced across the markings to a
large X.

“
This is where we should
be, no more than two miles east of Pilsen,” she said, making a
quick calculation from the mileage scale put to her memory a
hundred times in training. “And here is where we can expect to join
the others,” she continued, pointing to a small residential area on
the southern outskirts of Pilsen.

Julia and Eva, though, were nowhere
near the large X on the map. They had mistakenly been dropped by
the pilot many miles south of where they should be, a fact they
would discover only after the cold, dark night grudgingly gave way
to a frozen dawn. After moving the radio and supplies quickly into
heavy brush at the edge of the woods, they huddled together through
the long night, buried deep beneath a huge snow pile mercifully
built by the strong winter winds blowing through the woods. Afraid
to sleep, and almost to breathe, they endured the passing hours
trying to interpret the strange forest sounds coming to their ears.
Even then, Julia imagined, where they were would be a wondrous
thing for poets to write about, a moment, it seemed, suspended in
time from all things human.

Three years filled with a thousand
days and nights had passed since she last felt the warmth of
Erich’s arms. And she ached for him now. So many roads we could
have taken, had we had time to choose. He would be a doctor now in
Germany, healing the wounded minds of battle-weary soldiers, she
knew. Or perhaps he would be still in Prague, a thought that
excited her because of their nearness to each other in body. If he
were there, he would keep her parents safe someway, a thought that
warmed her heart even more, pushing away the coldness surrounding
her. She would find him after the war, and they would be together
again, that much she was sure of. Julia’s silent musings were
suddenly shattered by the cracking noise of a large limb, laden
with ice, breaking loose from a nearby tree and falling with a
cushioned thud in the deep snow. Above their snow bed, two large
limbs seemed equally as fragile, bending precariously low towards
them with their thick coats of ice and snow. We should move, Julia
thought, starting to nudge Eva until she heard the muffled chugging
of motorcycles nearby, followed first by silence and then by a
cursing voice.

“
They must be our
contacts,” Eva whispered, stirring from the snow bed. But Julia
quickly held her back.

“
No, listen. They are
German soldiers, two, maybe three. One is complaining about the
choke on his motorcycle not working,” she whispered.

“
A night
patrol?”

“
Yes, I imagine. They must
be on a main road leading to Pilsen.”

The cursing stopped and loud laughter
came from the soldiers.

“
One is trying to relieve
himself, but can’t. Says his manhood has shriveled up like a dried
prune from the cold and all he can do is dribble on himself,” Julia
said with a giggle.