War and Remembrance (83 page)

“There. That’s your son.”

In the dining room, many voices were joining in the chorus:

The little goat went into business,

That will be your career.

Raisins and almonds,

Sleep, little boy, sleep, dear.

Byron stood staring at the infant. At the sight of him the children stopped running, and their hubbub subsided. Exerting all her willpower not to cry, Natalie said, “Well, what do you think?”

“I guess he looks like me.”

“God, does he ever! He’s a stamped-out miniature.”

“Will he be afraid if I pick him up?”

“Try it!”

Byron walked to the baby through the silent children, and lifted him. “Hello, boy. I’m your dad.”

The girl who released the baby wrinkled her face at the English words. Louis looked from his mother to his father, then put his tiny hands to Byron’s cheeks.

“He’s a heavy kid,” Byron said. “What have you been feeding him?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Octopus. Blackbirds. Anything!” She was unaware of the tears springing from her eyes till he brushed her cheek with his knuckles, and she felt the sliding wetness. “He’s a travelling man, you see. A hell of a lot of goat’s milk and cheese. Byron, do you like him?”

“He’s all right,” Byron said.

The other children were watching and listening with scarcely a whisper or a smile, their faces set in solemn curiosity. And Natalie could see Byron as it were through their grave wide eyes: a tall tanned Gentile with a tough countenance, in alien clothes, with a leather bag chained to his wrist; in looks and language not of the tribe, yet handling one of themselves in a fatherly way.

“Come, you’ve got to see Aaron! Then we’ll go to my room and talk, my God, we’ve got to talk! You’ve got to tell me how you did this, I’m still gasping.” As she took the baby from him, the leather pouch swung between them. “Byron, what is this thing?”

“I’ll tell you about that, too.”

Byron’s visit to the dining room was a protracted and tumultuous sensation. Aaron’s drunken amazement, his excited explanation in Yiddish —
“Natalie’s mann fun Amerika, fun Amerikaner flot!”
— the general babble, the handshaking all around, the setting of a new place beside Rabinovitz, the parade of food and drink for them, the rousing welcome song in Yiddish while Byron forced down a few bites he didn’t want; all this took time, but one couldn’t fight off Jewish hospitality.

Bemused, Natalie stood in the doorway, holding Lcuis. There he sat amid the Mendelson ménage, Byron Henry, at a table where eight Sabbath candles burned, two of which she had herself lit — the most amazing sight in her life. Out of place though he obviously was, he was making cordial responses to the Yiddish compliments from all sides as Jastrow translated, and these people were warmly accepting him. He was her husband. That was enough. He was also an American naval officer. If the American consulate had rebuffed the applications of some visas, it didn’t matter. Like the French, like most of Europe, they were waiting for the American counterattack against Hitler as their believing ancestors had waited for the Messiah. Nor did they seem surprised at Byron’s thunderbolt appearance. Americans were supermen. Anyway, startling events were an everyday thing for these people; life was in chaos, and no one occurrence was very much stranger than another.

The contrast between Rabinovitz and Byron bit deep into her as the two men sat there side by side in candlelight, for the electricity had now shut off The white-faced stumpy Palestinian, his shoulders bowed, his expression in repose a mixture of weariness, sadness, and resolve, was of another breed than Byron. Her husband had the clear-eyed self-assured naive air of an American. His face bore new marks of experience she had yet to hear about, but Byron Henry, if he lived to be ninety, and if all his years were hard, would never look like Avram Rabinovitz.

“Sorry, now I go.” Byron stood up. They let him leave, with a clamor of good-nights. Carrying Louis, she led him to the little room lined with yellow
books. There Mrs. Mendelson, by the light of a tall candle burning on a dresser, was gathering Aaron’s pajamas and dressing gown from a closet. The double bed Aaron usually slept in had been freshly made up. Natalie’s cot was folded away. “Your uncle will sleep somewhere else, good Shabbas, good-night,” she rattled in Yiddish, and she walked out, giving Natalie no time to smile, or blush, or thank her.

“I didn’t understand a word,” Byron said, “but there’s a fine woman. How does that door lock?”

“With two bolts,” Natalie said uncertainly, putting the yawning Louis down in his crib.

“Okay, lock them.” He undid the chain from his wrist with a key and dropped the pouch on a chair. “I’m a temporary diplomatic courier, Natalie. That’s what this thing is, and that’s how I got here. I’m stationed on a submarine tender in Gibraltar. I’ve been there since August.”

“But how did you manage that? And how did you find me? And — oh, sweetie —”

“All in good time.” He was sweeping her into his arms.

She yielded to his powerful embrace, to his kisses, trying to please him, stupefied as she was. She thought of the revolting underwear he might uncover if they made hasty love right now; gray heavy cotton things, fit for a sow, all one could find in Siena. She still had her treasured pretty lingerie from Lisbon, but how could she stop him to change? Natalie would have lain naked on the worn carpet for him then and there, she was flooded with marvelling admiration and gratitude, but what she could not do was feel aroused. He had smashed back into her life like a cannon shell.

Unexpectedly his kisses stopped, his embrace loosened. “Natalie, that kid’s watching us.”

Louis indeed was standing up, holding the crib rail, regarding them with a lively expression.

“Oh, it’s all right, he’s only a year old,” she murmured. “He’s just curious as a raccoon.”

“Raccoon, hell. He looks as though he’s taking notes.”

Natalie couldn’t contain a giggle. “Maybe he is, dear, at that. It’ll be his turn one day, you know.”

“I swear I’m embarrassed,” Byron said, and he let her go. “It’s ridiculous, but it’s the truth. That kid has grown-up eyes.”

“Actually, honey,” Natalie said, trying to keep her deep relief out of her voice, “why don’t I clean him up for bed? Would you mind that? We can talk, and I can get a little used to you.”

“Sure, go ahead. That’s better than my idea, which was to cover his crib like a parrot’s cage.”

“Look, love, you should feel reassured,” she giggled. Byron’s drolleries
had always amused her, and her nerves were stretched fiddlestring-tight. “The procedure is obviously quite new to him.”

“I guess so. Is it true that he walks and talks?”

She took him from the crib and set him down on his feet. Louis toddled a few steps, looking to Byron for applause; for which, it was clear, he had developed a great taste.

“Well done, sprout. Now say something.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand him.” She caught Louis up, and at a sink in the corner stripped and began washing him. “He babbles a mishmash of Yiddish, Italian, and French.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

With a shy sidewise glance she said, “You look so trim.”

“You’ve grown far more beautiful.”

Sweet warmth washed through her. “And your father, and Warren? Have you heard from them? Are they all right?”

“Warren? What do you mean? Didn’t the Red Cross forward my letters? I wrote to Slote too about Warren.”

His harsh tone made her turn scared eyes at him. “I got your last letter in May.”

“Warren’s dead. He died in the Battle of Midway.”

“Oh! Oh,
darling
—”

“He got a posthumous Navy Cross.” Glancing at his watch, Byron began to pace the narrow room. “Look, the train for Barcelona leaves at midnight. That’s four and a half hours from now. You’d better start thinking about packing, Natalie. You won’t have to take a lot. The shopping in Lisbon is still good.”

She said dizzily, “Packing?”

“Aaron will have to wait till the consul general clears him, but I’m taking you and the baby with me.”

“What! My God, Byron, did the consul general
say
you could?”

“We’re going to his apartment now.”

Like the dwellers in the Mendelson flat, James Gaither was hard to surprise. Wartime Marseilles was such a bubbling stew of political double-dealing, financial corruption, racial and nationalist crisscrossings, refugee agonies and tragedies, and Mediterranean finagling dating back to Phoenician times, that compared to Gaither’s daily grind, melodramas and spy yarns paled. And this was only his legitimate work. In his covert dealings’with the Resistance groups his experiences were right out of cheap cinema; of a drab sort, since sexy eyefuls never got into the action. All in all, in his two Marseilles years he had seen — so he liked to say — just about everything.

Still, Byron Henry’s story was something new, and he was writing an account
of it in his diary, in pajamas and dressing gown, when a knock came at the door. There stood Lieutenant Henry, pouch under his arm.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir.”

“You again?”

“Sir, my wife and baby are downstairs.”

“What! Out at night, without papers?”

“Rabinovitz is with them.” Glancing down at the consul general’s pajama legs, Byron said, “I regret the intrusion, sir.”

“Never mind that. Get them all up here, fast.”

Mrs. Henry came in with the baby in her arms, giving him a sweet apprehensive smile. Though her clothes were shabby, her hair carelessly combed, her whole aspect flustered and disarrayed, one look at her made the submariner’s romantic feat easier to grasp. Well might a man work his way around the world for this one! The fair infant she carried was a babyish replica of the lieutenant. Avram Rabinovitz slouched in behind Mrs. Henry, looking unusually depressed and anxious.

Byron was still explaining his plan when Gaither began to wonder how best to quash it. It was a terrible idea, rash and highly dangerous. Yet with Natalie Henry sitting there holding that baby, he quite understood the young husband’s impetuosity. Gently does it, he thought. “Lieutenant, the chargé d’affaires in Vichy has the exit visas. The telex came in confirming that today. We’ll be getting them any day now. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir, so you told me at dinner. But I’ve been thinking, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t just take Natalie and Louis along now. The thing is, I believe I can get them on the plane to the United States with me.”

The wife cleared her throat and said in a charming husky voice, “He’s good at that sort of thing.”

“No doubt, Mrs. Henry, but there’s the problem of crossing the border.”

Byron sat beside his wife on the sofa, tense, erect, but collected. “Sir, flashing my diplomatic passport will suffice. It cuts through immigration red tape like a hot knife through butter. You know that yourself.”

“Not always. Suppose you run into a nasty French border inspector or a German agent? I have myself. There’s a lot of both kinds on that railroad route. You’ve got your transit visa. Your wife and child have nothing.”

“I’ll have a story.”

“What’s the story?”

“The baby got sick as hell in Gibraltar. We rushed him to Marseilles at night. We didn’t bother with visas. I’ll talk in broken French. I’ll yell. I’ll be the dumb angry American official. I’ll make it stick, that I can promise you.”

“But their passports have no Gibraltar stamps, no French stamps, only Italian stamps months old.”

“Sir, all that flummery won’t matter, I promise you. I can handle it.”

“And unfortunately for your story, I’ve never seen a healthier-looking baby, Lieutenant. He’s in the absolute pink.”

On Natalie’s lap, Louis was yawning like a crocodile. He did have excellent color, and his blinking eyes were clear and bright.

“It could have been appendicitis, something like that, just a false alarm.”

Gaither turned on Natalie. “Are you prepared to sustain this story?”

Byron quickly struck in as she hesitated, “By the time we get to Perpignan we’ll have it all rehearsed and down cold. Please don’t worry, sir.”

Gaither went to a telephone and summoned the consulate car and driver. “How about something to drink, all around?” he asked. “Chilly night.”

Byron said, “Thanks, but we’d better keep clear heads.”

“I’ll take something,” Natalie said. “Thank you.”

“So will I,” said Rabinovitz.

Gaither mixed drinks, still thinking,
Gently does it.
Walking up and down the room, whiskey in hand, white hair in disorder, dressing gown flapping, he said, “Lieutenant, I want to talk plainly to your wife.”

“By all means, sir.”

“Mrs. Henry, as I said, there are Gestapo agents on the trains and at the border. When they’re on the trains, they do exactly as they please. They ignore all regulations. Rabinovitz knows that. Your husband may indeed get you by. He’s a resourceful man, that’s clear. On the other hand, the Gestapo has a keen nose for Jews travelling illegally. Those agents are hard and cruel men. You may be pulled off the train.”