Ordinary Heroes (50 page)

"The Americans believe he is a spy for the Soviets."

She wrenched her eyes shut in anguish.

"The things they have asked you to accept," she murmured. "C'est impossible. Martin despises Stalin. He was never a Stalinist, and after Stalin's pact with Hitler, Martin regarded him as the worse of the two. He calls Stalin and Hitler the spawn of the same devil."

"And what then is it he has been doing all these months, defying his orders, running from OSS, from Teedle, and from me? Has he told you his goal?"

"Now? Lately, he has, yes. Up to the time of the Ardennes, I believed what he told you--that he was on assignment for OSS, as he has always been. He would not say where he was to go, but that was not unusual."

"And do you believe him now?"

"I think what he says is what he believes."

When I asked her to say what that was, she looked down to her small hands folded in her lap, clearly reluctant even now to disclose Martin's secrets. And still, I cautioned myself that the reaction I saw might be another pose.

"Since I took him from the hospital at SaintVith," she finally said, "he has maintained the same thing. Martin says that the Nazis are making a machine that can destroy the world. He wants to kill all who understand its workings and bury their secret with them forever. It is madness, but it is madness in Martin's style. It is glorious. He claims this is his destiny. For the most part, I have felt like, what is his name, the little one who walks beside Don Quixote?"

"Sancho Panza."

"Yes, I am Sancho Panza. There is no telling Martin this is lunacy. And I have stopped trying, Dubin. The scientists are at Hechinger. Martin has established that much. But a single device that could reduce London to cinders? It is fantasy, like so much that Martin tells himself. But it will surely be the last.

"Because?"

"Because he will die trying to do this. A man with one hand? His left leg is still barely of any use. The pain is so severe at night from the nerves that were burned that he sheds tears in his sleep. And he has no one to help him."

"Except you."

"Not I. I will have no part of this, Dubin. He does not ask it. And I would not go. I have been a member of the resistance, not a vigilante. He has no allies in this, no organization. But it is paramount to him nonetheless."

"But not because of the Soviets?"

"Dubin, it is how he wishes to die. Whether or not he admits as much to himself, death is clearly his goal. He is maimed and in unending pain. But now when he dies, as he surely will, he will believe he was doing no less than assuring the safety of the world. It is a glory as great as the one he has always wished for. That is what you would deny him. He says that the Americans will hang him instead, if he is caught. True?"

I had told Martin as much a few hours earlier, and with time to calculate, I had decided it was no exaggeration. The story Martin had told me would be enough to send him to the gallows. Whether he was working for the Soviets, as most of his superiors would believe, or as the new Flash Gordon, he had admitted that he was an American soldier trying to undermine American forces and deny them a weapon regarded as essential to the security of the United States. That would, at a minimum, make him a traitor and a mutineer. The law would need to sift no finer.

"And is that just, Dubin?" she asked, once I'd nodded.

"Just? Compared to anything that has happened in this place, it is just. Martin disobeyed orders. He brought this on himself."

"But is that what you wish to see, Dubin? Martin trembling at the end of a rope?"

"That is not my choice, Gita. I must do my duty." "So the guards are claiming here. They did as ordered."

"Please."

"I ask again if that is what you would choose for him."

"I dare not choose a destiny for Martin, Gita. The law does not allow it. It would say I am hopelessly biased by jealousy. And in that, the law is surely wise.''

"Jealousy?" She looked at me blankly until my meaning reached her. "Dubin, I have told you many times, you have no need to be jealous of Martin."

"And that proved to be another lie. You slept with me to learn what I would find out about Martin and then deserted me to rescue him. Jealousy is the least of it."

She had drawn herself straight. The black eyes were a doll's now, hard as glass.

"You think that is why I slept with you?" "I do."

She looked askance and made as if to spit on the floor. "I misjudged you, Dubin."

"Because you thought I was more gullible?"

She actually lifted a hand toward her heart, not far from where the star was pinned.

"What do you believe, Dubin? That I am a statue and cannot be hurt? I value your esteem, Dubin. More, apparently, than you can understand. I cannot tolerate your scorn."

"I admire your strength, Gita. I still admire that." She closed her eyes for a time.

"Be angry, Dubin. Be hurt. Think I was too casual with your feelings. But please do not believe I would make love to you with such ugly intentions. Do you see me as a harlot? Because I am a harlot's daughter?"

"I see you as you are, Gita. As someone who knows how to do what she has to." I repeated Winters' story about the German officer in Marseilles to whom she'd succumbed in order to win details of the London bombing. And even as I recounted the OSS's sniggering about her sleeping with the enemy, I realized I had awaited this moment for months so that she would tell me it was untrue. She did not.

"Qui n'entend qu'une cloche n'entend qu'un son." He who hears one bell hears only one sound. There were, she meant, two sides of the story. "Something like that, Dubin, is so easy to judge from a distance."

I mocked her with another proverb. "Qui veut l
a f
in veut les moyens?" He who wants the ends wants the means.

"Is that not true? In this place, Dubin, there are thousands who have done far worse to save just their own lives, let alone hundreds of others. Thousands probably were spared because of what I did. There are many mistakes I have made, Dubin, for which I forgive myself less freely. I was young. It was a poor idea only because I did not understand that even when the soul wears armor, it remains fragile. I thought, a cock is just another thing, Dubin. And Martin, by the way, knew nothing of this in advance and begged me never to consider such an act again, for my own sake as much as for his. But let me tell you, Dubin, what was the most confounding part. This man, this Nazi, this officer, he was kind to me. He was a man with some goodness in him. And to learn that about him on false pretenses--that was the most difficult part."

"As I am sure you have said the same of me."

"It is not the same, Dubin! I will not leave this place with you believing that." She continued to sit tall, her face folded in fury. "I care for you, Dubin. Greatly. You know that. Look at me here. You cannot tell me that even four meters away from me, you cannot feel that? I know you can."

"And that is why you crushed my heart. Because you cared for me?"

"My only excuse is one you must acknowledge as true. I left you before you left me."

"As you say. That is an excuse. I believed I love
d y
ou.

"You never spoke to me of love."

"You were gone before I could. But please do not pretend that would have made any difference. What I felt and what I showed could not have been clearer with a name applied. You rewarded my love with lies. Until I came here, I thought that was the cruelest thing in life."

"Yes," she said. "Such a thing is unkind. But understand, Dubin, please understand. Could I have stayed and loved you and watched as you took Martin off in chains to be hanged? He gave me back my life, Dubin. Should I have quietly condemned him for the sake of my own happiness?"

"I do not believe that is how you thought of it."

"How I thought of it, Dubin, is that a man like you, a proper bourgeois gentleman, would never make your life with a Polish peasant with no schooling. That is how I thought of it. You would return to your America, to your law books, to your intended. That is how I thought of it. I dream of children, as you dream. I dream of being as far from war as a happy home is. For me that is a dream that will probably never come true."

"These are excuses."

"This is the truth, Dubin!" She shook her small hands at me in rage, again in tears. "You say I would not forsake Martin for you. But you surely have your own idols. If I had stayed and begged you not to do your duty with Martin, would you have refused?"

"I would like to believe that my answer is 'Yes.' But I doubt it. I am afraid, Gita, I would have done anything for you."

"And who would you be after that, Dubin, without your precious principles?"

"I do not know. But it would be who I had chosen to become. I could tell myself that. I could tell myself I had chosen love and that in a life as harsh as ours, it must come first."

She was motionless, staring at me in that way she had, a look so intense I thought it might turn me to flame. Then she asked if I had a cloth, meaning a handkerchief. She took it from me and returned to her chair to clear her nose. Finally, she sat forward and clasped her hands.

"Do you mean this? What you have just said? Do you speak from the heart, Dubin, or is this merely a lawyer's argument?"

"It is the truth, Gita. Or was. It is in the past."

"Must it be? We have our moment, Dubin. Here. Now. It can all be as you would like. As I would like. We will have love. We will have each other. But let him go, Dubin. Let Martin go and I will stay wit
h y
ou. I will tend your hearth and cook your meals and bear your brats, Dubin. I will. I want to. But let him go.

"'Let him go' ?"

"Let him go."

"I cannot even imagine how I could do that."

"Oh, Dubin, you are far too clever to say that. You would not need an hour's reflection to concoct a scheme that would work. Dubin, please. Please." She walked to my chair and then put one knee on the floor. "Please, Dubin. Dubin, choose this. Choose love. Choose me. If you send Robert to the hangman, it will stand between us forever. Here in hell, Dubin, you can choose this one good thing. Let Quixote fight his windmill. Do not make him die in disgrace. He has lived to be a hero. It would be worse than torture for him to die known as a traitor."

"You would do anything for him, wouldn't you?"

"He saved my life, Dubin. He has shown me the way to every good thing I believe in. Even my love for you, Dubin."

"Would you pledge your love to me, give up your life, just to see him die one way rather than another?"

"Dubin, please. Please. This is my life, too. You are precious to me. Dubin. Please, Dubin." Slowly she reached for my hand. My entire body surged at her touch and even so, I thought: Onc
e m
ore, she will engineer his escape. But I loved her. As Biddy had said, it was pointless to try to reason about that.

With my hand in hers, she wept. "Please, Dubin," she said. "Please."

"You have the personality of a tyrant, Gita. You wish to turn me into a supplicant so you will think better of yourself."

Despite the tears, she managed a smile. "So now you know my secret, Dubin."

You will mock me for being bourgeois."

"I shall," she said. "I promise to. But I will be thrilled, in spite of myself." She lifted her face to me. "Take me to America, Dubin. Make me your wife. Let Martin go. Let Martin be the past. Let me be the future. Please." She kissed my hand now, a hundred times, clutching it between hers and embracing every knuckle. What she proposed was mad, of course. But no madder than what I had watched men do routinely for months now. No madder than parachuting into a town under siege. No madder than combat, where soldiers gave up their lives for inches of ground and the grudges of generals and dictators. In this place, love, even the remotest chance of it, was the only sane choice. I pulled her hands to my mouth and kissed them once. Then I stood, looking down on her.

"When you betray me, Gita, as I know you will, I will have nothing. I will have turned my back on m
y c
ountry, and you will be gone. I will have no honor. I will believe in nothing. I will be nothing."

"You will have me, Dubin. I swear. You will have love. I swear, Dubin. You will not be betrayed. I swear. I swear."

Gita Lodz is my mother.

Chapter
32.

BEAR: END

When I
first read Dad's account, the end had seemed disappointingly abrupt. Not only did I think there was no mention o
f m
y mother, there was also no recounting of what had happened with Martin. Supposedly writing to explain things to his lawyer, Dad was silent about whether Martin fled, as Dad claimed, or had been murdered, as Bear feared.

According to the testimony at the court-martial, late on April 12, 1945, Martin had been loaded at gunpoint into the armored vehicle Dad had awaited. In convoy with the MPs, they traveled only a mile or two beyond the perimeter of Balingen toward Hechingen, to the bivouac of the 406th Armored Cavalry. There Martin was chained to a fence pos
t b
efore a tent was erected around him. At roughly 3:00 a
. M
., my father appeared and told the two MPs guarding the Major that Dad could not sleep and would spell them for two hours. When they returned Dad was there and Martin was gone. My father told the guards, without further explanation, he had let Martin go. A day later he was back in Frankfurt to admit the same thing to Teedle.