Wherever There Is Light (32 page)

It might have been awkward, getting into bed again after so many years, trying to recall the intimate wisdom that had once belonged to them alone or, perhaps more distracting with its twinges of jealousy and loss, noticing a touch or a word that had plainly belonged to someone else, someone who came afterward and who, in the pungent reality of their flesh and bone and sweat, drove Kendall and Julian to contemplate whether what they had shared had been adorned by the deceptive whisperings of memory and wasn't truly so special after all.

Fortunately, it wasn't awkward for either of them. In the suite, they fell onto the bed half-dressed, and the brief pause for Kendall to light a candle on the nightstand and insert her diaphragm while Julian nibbled at her ears seemed to last longer than the earth revolving from winter to spring. They were desperate to be joined, as though in the splendor of that instant they would corral the past and create a future. In the dancing, yellowy light of the candle, Julian, it appeared from his deep, relentless strokes, was determined to turn her to dust, then inhale her so she could never leave him. Kendall, lithe and strong, cooperated as if she knew what he wanted, her skin sliding against his like copper abrading ivory. They were silent as the bedsprings sang their two-note song and the room became as fragrant as upturned loam and clear seaside air until Julian, rising up so he could stare into her candlelit face, said, “You have to love me,” and Kendall answered, “I will—I do,” and then they continued on their ecstatic journey, worshipping each other with breathy devotion, and when it was over, her arms and legs were welded to him so that Julian thought he'd need a crowbar to pry her from his body.

The candle flame hissed out, and as Julian attempted to separate himself from Kendall, she held him tighter.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She shook her head against him, and her hair tickled his cheeks.

“Can I help?”

She hunched and unhunched her shoulders.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Again, Kendall shook her head. Julian rolled off her, but she clung to him, and he gathered her against him, and she slept with his arm around her and her head on his chest, and in the morning Kendall didn't tell him what had been bothering her or mention that it was the first night in some time that Manny hadn't barged into her dreams and begged her to save him.

O
ver the next few weeks, Kendall began sleeping at Julian's apartment. She had cut back on her wine, at least in front of Julian, but sometimes when she was reading a book or inspecting contact sheets through a magnifying glass, she'd glance up with her face contorted by outrage or despair, and Julian couldn't help but feel something was wrong. If he asked, she always replied, “No, nothing.” And though Julian didn't believe her, he let it drop, because he'd been so happy with their new arrangement that he was contemplating moving to Paris. Abe and Eddie could handle his rental properties and, with millions of GIs coming home and Uncle Sam backing their mortgages, Julian could sell his land in New Jersey for a bundle. Behind these calculations was his desire to marry Kendall and have children, yet their history was daunting, and Julian didn't want to scare her off by bringing up the future.

Despite his happiness, Julian still had trouble sleeping and would get up to join the other
vagabonds nocturnes
wandering the Left Bank. On this night, he tossed and turned until his restlessness woke Kendall. He remained still until she fell asleep again, then quietly dressed in the dark, slipped out of his apartment, and walked over to the Sélect, where he sat on the terrace drinking a cold beer. Two hours later, when he returned to Place de l'Estrapade, the moon and stars were putting on a show, and Julian was wide awake. He made himself comfortable on a bench and listened to the gurgling fountain. In a little while, Kendall came outside.

“I thought I tuckered you out,” she said, teasing him, sitting close.

“You did.” He liked the feel of her next to him, the pliant solidness of her, and her sharp, sweet smell—in her thick hair, on her smooth skin, and all over him when they finished making love. “I got a cable. Marcel stuck it under the door. My father had a heart attack.”

“Oh, no.”

“He's in the hospital. I'll fly to New York this afternoon and then to Florida.”

“You want me to come with you?”

“Don't you have to be in Arles?”

“They can dig up another photographer.”

“No, no thanks, I've got some business and—”

“Julian?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do you walk every night?”

“I try not to wake you.”

“It's not me I'm worried about.”

Even in the darkness, he could tell Kendall was studying him as if he were an image to be interpreted. He loved that about her, the intense curiosity, but she wouldn't push him. That was another thing he loved about Kendall, her patience.

Finally, he said, “I'm not sure if it was snowing.”

“Where?”

“In Belgium.”

“In the Ardennes? Fiona wrote me that you were in the Ardennes.”

“The Ardennes. I remember the moon was out and the snow on the hills and trees was a metallic blue. But I can't remember if it was snowing when I got there.”

Julian was clearer about the Ardennes on his way out. The charred tanks, half-tracks, jeeps, trucks, and artillery pieces, the smoldering houses in the towns, the American and German dead everywhere in the snow, many of them with the horror still on their waxy faces. Julian remembered thinking about the parents who wouldn't see their sons again, and the new widows with red-rimmed eyes, and wondering whether anyone would mourn him if he died.

“I think about it when I walk,” Julian said. “If it was snowing. Crazy, isn't it?”

“It isn't. Why don't you think about it now.”

“Why would I—”

Kendall, placing the palm of her hand under his chin, turned his face to hers so they could see each other in the moonlight. “Because I'm here. And because, whatever happened, I want to hear about it.”

The Ardennes was a dark, haunted forest. Julian couldn't recall if it was snowing when he got there since he was seated in the back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck with crates of ammo, medical supplies, and K-rations, and he was fixated on the towering firs, rocky hills, steep valleys, and frozen fields, the thousands of GIs going in one direction on the roads, while Belgian refugees flowed in the other, wheeling carts of their belongings. The truck stopped twice before reaching the outskirts of Marche. Four other OSS men came aboard. Julian had met one of them, Taft Mifflin, a lanky Yale grad, during jump training in England. All of them were fluent in German, and though they knew that Hitler had launched a surprise attack into the Ardennes, none of them knew their assignment. Nor was the driver able to enlighten them beyond saying that the division intelligence honcho, Lieutenant Colonel Shavers, was an ordained minister.

Fittingly enough, the command post was in a church, and the colonel looked like he belonged in the rectory: pudgy and wan with wire-rim spectacles. Yet his vocabulary was peculiar for a clergyman: “The cocksucking Krauts murdered eighty of our POWs in Malmédy. Forty miles from here. Now these miscreant motherfuckers are dressing up in our uniforms—a direct fucking violation of the Geneva Convention—and dicking with us. They speak English, shoot our sentries, switch road signs, and scare our replacements shitless. You OSS ladies are gonna fuck the Krauts in like fashion and make them reevaluate their strategy.”

Shavers, who had been standing over five olive-drab footlockers, flipped up the top of one with his boot. “Kraut paratrooper uniforms and weapons. These cocksuckers didn't have any papers on them when they got caught, but we got their dog tags. Put them around your necks after checking your new names. You go tomorrow. Briefing's at 0700. Return the day after at 1500. You see Krauts, say hi, and at your convenience, blow their balls off. Questions?”

None of the OSS men spoke until Shavers was gone. Then one of them said, “FUBAR.”

Julian, who had the most experience in the field and was designated at the morning briefing to lead the operation, suspected that the military acronym for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition applied. But even though he felt creepy putting on the uniform, coal-scuttle helmet, greatcoat, and side-laced boots of Captain Dierk Schmitt, he adopted a wait-and-see attitude. It didn't last long. As the OSS men began to wander through gusting snow and sheets of ground fog, observing dead Germans and GIs lying with each other along the ridgelines like kids at a campout, Taft Mifflin commented that FUBAR was not a sufficient superlative for their mission, and Julian had to agree. The problem was that when the Germans thrust into the Ardennes, creating the bulge that would give the battle its name, the lines became jumbled and both armies were thrown together in a lethal game of tag.

At 1630, with daylight dwindling to an ominous gloom, the OSS men were going through a clearing with firs and pines on either side when Julian heard movement to his right. Something arced through the air, and as Julian realized that it was an American grenade, he flung himself into the snow. The grenade exploded, a man screamed, and Julian heard a Thompson submachine gun and a couple of Garand rifles crackling from the tree line, the muzzle flashes winking like fireflies. If the OSS men tried to run or return fire, they would be cut to ribbons, to say nothing of shooting at GIs, so Julian, in German, instructed them to stay down, then yelled out in English, “ We surrender, we surrender.”

Suddenly, from the other side of the clearing, came the unmistakable buzz-saw whine of a German MG 42, its fearsome rate of fire tearing up the tree line where the Americans were hiding, along with the clatter of German small arms. In memory, this was the longest stretch of time in Julian's life, though it was probably no more than two minutes before the Americans withdrew. The clearing was silent, and Germans in grayish-green helmets and coats emerged from the woods. Julian counted seven of them. Taft was checking the OSS men. FUBAR was in full poisonous flower. Three of them were dead. Julian pocketed their dog tags and looked at Taft, who shook his head. They were too outnumbered to take the Germans. The colonel hadn't ordered them to commit suicide.

“
Danke
,” Julian said to the sergeant who was leading the German unit, which turned out to be the remnants of a reconnaissance company from the 688th Volksgrenadier Division. Julian had read the intel on Volksgrenadier divisions, the infantry that Hitler had cobbled together because of his staggering losses, sticking a smattering of experienced soldiers with those who, owing to age, lack of training, and physical condition, were barely fit for combat.

Julian explained that he and his men had parachuted into the Ardennes wide of their landing zone and had been evading capture ever since, then showed the sergeant two haversacks stuffed with K-rations that he and Taft—Lieutenant Walter Theiss—had been carrying, claiming that they had scavenged them from the Americans.

“You and your men are hungry?” Julian asked, knowing that the Germans—especially the Volksgrenadiers—were woefully underfed compared to the Americans.

“Very hungry, Captain,” the sergeant said.

“You are operating alone?” Julian wanted to avoid the more professional Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units. An officer might get on a field phone to confirm his story.

“Our company was ambushed by the Americans. We are at a farm. A kilometer north of here. Waiting to join a larger force when we find one.”

“Let's go.”

The farmhouse had been flattened by artillery, but the stone barn had survived. The Germans—the sergeant, four men on the cusp of middle age, another in his twenties with his arm in a sling, and a teenager—ate as if they were starving, devouring ham and eggs, crackers with cheese, sausage, meat loaf, instant coffee with sugar, malted-milk bars, and squares of chocolate. Afterward, all of them except the teenager started chain-smoking the Chesterfields that were boxed with the K-rations.

“No cigarette for you?” Julian asked the teenager.

The sergeant chuckled. “That's Willy Müller. Future Olympic champion.”

The man with the sling added, “Future sheepherder from Diepholz.”

Willy, who could have been featured on a Hitler Youth poster if he hadn't been so slight and cross-eyed, scaled the ladder to the hayloft, grabbed ahold of a rafter and hoisted himself up, then swung round and round and round.

“My father is a sheepherder,” Willy said, after he'd come down. “I am going to be an Olympic gymnast. When we have won the war and the Führer decides where the games will be.”

None of the Germans responded to the prediction of winning the war. They smoked instead. Two of them had gone up into the loft and were staring out a window.

The sergeant saw Julian gazing up at the soldiers. “We keep two men there on three-hour shifts.”