The Major's Daughter (12 page)

“You're entirely grown,” he said, “and you're quite beautiful. It's strange, but I look at you, and now I see how Collie has reached womanhood as well. I suppose I hadn't seen it quite so clearly before. I keep thinking she is Marie's age, but now I see how badly mistaken I've been.”

“Thank you, Major. And thank you for allowing my visit.”

“Glad to have you. It's a funny way to spend the war, hiding out here in New Hampshire, but I imagine someone would have to do it so it might as well be me. Everyone pulls an oar.”

“I told Collie that I envy her her position at the camp. I often feel of no use to anyone.”

“I'm sure that isn't the case, but Collie has been a great help. It's true. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to run in and wash before dinner. What does Mrs. Hammond have planned for us tonight?”

“Chicken and dumplings,” Marie answered, though she had already said she had to go home.

“Wonderful. I'll just be a moment, then I want to hear about Ashtabula.”

He went inside while Collie saw Marie place her glass on the coffee table near the glider and sigh. Clearly she was overdue at home. She left in small pieces, an elbow first, then a foot, each limb cast away as if she could not believe she had to depart. She made many promises to return whenever she could, then finally ran off, her books dangling from a strap in her right hand.

“She's delightful,” Estelle said. “She's just as you described her. So sweet. I can't imagine we were ever like that.”

“She said the same thing about you. That you were exactly as I described you.”

Estelle stood and walked to the porch railing. She gazed out at the river. Collie watched her carefully. Did she regret coming all the way to New Hampshire? Did they all seem incredibly provincial? Collie had always felt slightly in Estelle's shadow, though it was a projection entirely of her own making. Estelle had never been anything but kind and open with her.

“I'm so relieved to be here,” Estelle said, turning to look back at the porch and house. “You can't know how I counted on seeing you, Collie. I needed to get away. My parents . . .”

She lowered her voice. Collie studied her friend.

“What is it, Estelle?” she asked.

“You've already guessed at it. It's Mr. Kamal. I may be falling in love with him.”

“And that's why your parents allowed you to make this trip?”

Estelle nodded. Then she shrugged.

“It's tangled up. It's not all one thing. My parents want the best for me, but they have misgivings about Mr. Kamal. They think I've seized on him because I am bored and restless. But he is such a kind, good man, and we have the most wonderful conversations. He's very knowledgeable and very well-read. He is a Sikh. I knew nothing about Sikhs until I met him, and I still know very little. I only know he's a gentle, kind man.”

“I didn't know it had gone so far.”

“It hasn't,” Estelle said, and blushed. “I didn't write to you because my feelings had only been friendly toward Mr. Kamal. He was just an acquaintance, you see? But then our conversations lengthened and he began to tell me more about his background. He's had such an interesting life, Collie, I can't even begin to tell you. It's all very proper, so there's no trouble there. But my mother especially thinks it's better to nip things in the bud, and perhaps she's right. We are from very different worlds, Mr. Kamal and me. So you see why you have to hike my legs off my body? I need to be tired to the point of exhaustion.”

“We can manage that. It will all be fresh air and exercise.”

“Aren't we a pair?” Estelle said, and laughed. “You smitten by a young German soldier and me keeping company with a man in a turban. Did two sillier women ever live?”

“Not silly. Engaged with life, that's all. And that's not a crime.”

“And you have a second suitor who we've hardly begun to dissect. What is he like?”

“At first I thought he was rather timid and awkward, but then he surprised me with the bouquet and he told me he was going to marry me. It was incongruent hearing it from him at first, but then, on second thought, it fit him perfectly well. He was joking, I think, or at least didn't intend to be taken seriously. But the words did pass his lips.”

At that moment Mrs. Hammond began calling people to dinner. Agnes rang a small triangle that sent out a merry sound. Estelle smiled broadly at the noises and grabbed Marie's lemonade glass to carry inside. Collie held the door. She glanced once more at the river before following her friend. Yes, a walk later, she promised herself. It was not a day to retire early, not a day to hurry toward an end.

Chapter Eight

A
ugust lay in bed with a length of fire hose across his chest. The hose was the best he could do. He had searched the camp carefully, looking for weapons, but the Americans were thorough: they left no metal objects around, nothing that could be turned into a weapon. During the day, all axes and shovels and saws were strictly inventoried, each with a corresponding number. The Americans feared for themselves, of course, but the precautions, August knew, made them all safer. If the Nazis had access to weapons, they would use them. He had no doubt about that. And so he had scoured the camp and managed to find a heavy length of discarded fire hose. A feeble weapon, he knew, but he had chinked the bottom end into a handle so that he could whip it with potent force. At the least, it made a fine cracking sound when it landed, and he hoped it would serve to scare them away or make the attack too annoyingly difficult to carry off.

Meanwhile, he waited. His mind spun madly over various topics. For a moment he was back in his home near Vienna, and then he was in Italy, at a café, listening to two Italians argue about the war. Everything, it sometimes seemed, revolved around the war. Then for a long time he pictured his childhood dog, Chowder, who had been his constant companion. Dear Chowder, a dull gray mutt with crooked teeth. His father had named him, thinking it a joke, but the name had wounded August. He had wanted his dog to be noble and strong, a
shutzhund
if he could pull it off, but the name
Chowder
undermined all that. Nevertheless, he was a smart little animal, intelligent enough to go to the butcher's shop and beg at the back door for bones. He managed all that without getting run over by the trolleys, so, in the end, August did not have a noble dog but one that had a small reputation in any case, and people stood back when Chowder passed with a knucklebone in his mouth, laughing at the comical sight of such a small dog toting a huge meal. Even the butcher, Mr. Vankeuren, called it good advertising to feed the scrappy dog, so that, Chowder or not, the dog had found a way to earn a living. Yes, August remembered all that.

For a time, too, he thought of Collie, the commandant's daughter. He had seen her in the morning just in passing. Why was it, he wondered, that the sunlight seemed always to find her? Perhaps it was merely the presence of a woman among so many men, but everyone commented on it: beams of light seemed to find her more often than was explainable. She was uncommonly beautiful, but it was something about her step, too, that transformed her. She was light and obviously intelligent, and the men, he knew, yearned for her not as they yearned for the pinups of movie stars in provocative clothes but for the home she represented, the possibility of a fine wife and a happy laughter that could fill a house. That yearning—even more than a sexual yearning—struck deeper.

Those were a few of the thoughts that careened through his mind. Yet the primordial nut of his brain waited for the attacking Nazis. Let them come, he thought. That was one of the chief marvels of the war: he had learned he did not panic, but was, in fact, more deadly than he could have guessed. He had been good at war, he knew, and that knowledge did not trouble him nor did it embolden him. It remained in his consciousness like a simple tool, one that he could lift up and use when needed.

Twice, a thousand times, he heard them coming. Every creak of the barracks, every man turning on his cot to grumble and snore, every night sound shaped itself into the slither of the traitors coming to attack him. At those moments his skin prickled and his entire body seemed to vibrate and it took minutes for it to calm and resettle. Then another sound triggered the reaction again and he gripped the fire hose tightly, ready to spring from the bed to take on the first attacker.

But the assault did not come. Not until very late and then August had drifted too close to sleep to protect himself properly. When they came at last—hands gripping him, a hiss in his ear—he managed to whip one of the men in the face with the hose. The man fell back and cursed. Then August broke free and made it onto his knees, flinging the hose back and forth until someone—it was dark, impossible to see—managed to tangle his own arm around the hose and anchor it under his body. That freed the other men and they fell on him, the shoes smacking him. Some of the men turned the shoes on their sides so the soles served as hammer blows, and August felt one such blow crack his nose, another peel back a portion of his ear. He raged against the arms holding him, but he did not speak. Another shoe landed on his face, ripping his lip, then he felt the boots pummeling his ribs and upper arms. They held him open so that he could not cross his arms to defend himself. Someone jabbed the toe of a boot repeatedly into his testicles, and August could do nothing but flinch crazily at the immense pain. Eventually someone close by said, “
Genug
,”
enough
, but whether it was a bunkmate or one of the Nazis, August couldn't tell.

“Goddamn bastards,” Gerhard said.

That was all August heard other than the scuttle of the attacking party hurrying out of the barracks. He did not try to inspect his pain; it was too much. He thought of Chowder, that ridiculous dog, and how one day he had returned with a bullet in his rump. The bullet had remained like a plug in the hairy flank of his friend, until his father had removed it with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Afterward the remaining hole had oozed blood, heavier and heavier, as if the bullet had been a lifesaving thing all along and they had failed to understand its role. Removing the bullet had been like removing the cap on an inflatable toy, and his dog, his Chowder, had collapsed in on himself, no longer the butcher's friend, no longer his noble companion.

 • • • 

Major Brennan did not know the name of the nervous corporal who woke him. The young man—how had they become so young, he wondered absently as he stood in his robe and pajamas and watched the man salute—handed him a telegram. The corporal's hands shook as he handed over the paper. Major Brennan took the telegram and told the corporal to wait.

Major Brennan had to read the telegram twice before he could speak.

“They've done it,” he said to the corporal, his heart beating faster.

“Done what, sir?”

“They've landed in France. A second front. Eisenhower attacked Normandy. Five divisions went in, twelve thousand paratroopers, over a thousand warships.”

The corporal held out his hand and Major Brennan shook it as though he had had something to do with it.

“The prisoners won't like it when they get wind of it,” Major Brennan said. “A victory for us is a loss for them. That's why they've let us know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It's called Operation Overlord. The invasion, I mean,” Major Brennan said, still examining the telegram.

“They'll be on the run now,” the corporal said.

“Let's hope so. What's your name, son?”

“Vincenzi.”

“You've brought a car?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then hold on while I dress, if you will. I won't be a moment. I couldn't go back to sleep now if I wanted to.”

When he finished dressing, he followed the corporal out of the boardinghouse and told the man to be quiet as he closed the door. He knew, almost without thinking about it, that he had just passed through a moment he would remember as long as he lived. History happened on a summer night in a boardinghouse in Stark, New Hampshire.

“We'll remember this night, won't we, Corporal Vincenzi?” he asked the young man as he climbed behind the wheel.

“Yes sir, I suppose so.”

“Must have been a terribly bloody business.”

“No doubt, sir.”

“A beach landing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good old Ike.”

“Yes, sir. He's got brass in him.”

“Is it getting light beyond the river?”

“Yes, sir. Morning is already here.”

 • • • 

It was no good, Estelle thought at the edge of morning dreams. She kept her eyes closed and listened to the river, hoping the perpetual hum of it might carry her back to sleep, but her thoughts betrayed her. She had determined to keep thoughts of Mr. Kamal out of her consciousness, but that was impossible. The trip had not erased him as she had hoped but had only made his hold on her heart more difficult to abide. The place in her heart needed to be cauterized, she told herself. Something sharp and wicked must end her association with Mr. Kamal, she knew, but she could not imagine what that could be. The trip had been her best opportunity to rid herself of her feelings; even her parents understood that. Yet here she was, listening to a New Hampshire river whose name she could not pronounce or keep in her head, and thoughts of Mr. Kamal had only deepened.

She rose quietly from the bed and dressed. Soft sunlight barely illuminated objects in the room. Everything held a pale grayness, as if they had all been balanced on a pin and might as easily return to darkness as to morning. She carried her shoes in her hand and slipped out of the room without waking Collie. The risers creaked as she went downstairs. She found an old mackinaw hanging on a coat-tree beside the front door and slipped into it. Carefully making sure the door did not lock behind her, she crept onto the porch and sat on the same glider she had shared with Marie the day before. How long ago that already seemed! She pinched the rough wool of the jacket closer around her and waited for the sunlight to find her.

She nearly darted back inside when a car passed over the covered bridge and pulled up beside the house. Major Brennan stepped out of the back, his uniform jacket unbuttoned. For an instant Estelle worried she had caught him at some impropriety—an alley cat returning home—but he smiled when he saw her and asked if he might join her.

“You're awake early,” he commented, falling into the rocker beside the glider. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I think my schedule is flippy. I woke right up as though I could run a race.”

“Well, I've been awake myself. You'll be happy to hear we have invaded France. Normandy is the landing point. We've established a second front.”

“Really? And what will that mean, Major? I'm sorry I'm not very knowledgeable about these matters.”

“It's a tactic to divide the German forces. They can't be everywhere at once. If we establish a position in France, then we can close in on them from both sides. The Russians have the other side going.”

“Does it mean the war is ending?”

“I think it's hopeful. I've just been on the telephone with people up and down the line and there is consensus that it marks a major shift in the war. Hitler cannot hold out much longer. The German people are suffering.”

“How will you tell the prisoners?”

“I suppose straightforwardly. That's the best technique, wouldn't you say? No use babying them about it.”

“I agree, Major.”

“Still, it will be a tough pill to swallow. Some of them will be glad to hear it because it means the war might end sooner. But they'll worry about their families back home.”

“Naturally.”

Estelle watched him lean his head back against the chair and close his eyes. The sunlight had finally climbed onto the porch and had hardened into a bright white light. Estelle heard birds calling. She stretched her bare feet out into the light to warm them.

“Well,” he said, his eyes still closed, “I should wash for the day and get ready to go back to the camp. Is Collie still asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hiking today?”

“I hope so.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. Collie's young poet was injured quite badly last night. They brought him into the infirmary. He claimed he fell while visiting the latrine, but he's obviously been beaten. I looked in on him and it's not a pretty sight. His injuries are extensive.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“The trouble is, a dozen men would. Two dozen. The loyal Nazis have their own rules and they will only tighten them as victory becomes less likely.”