Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

I caught up, but we trudged back in silence. It was she who spoke finally, as we approached the little castle.

"Have I offended you, Dubin?"

"Of course not. I challenged you. You responded. Convincingly."

"But you are shocked."

"Pay no attention. I am easily shocked, Mademoiselle Lodz."

"Good for you," she said. "In France, no one will admit to being bourgeois."

I laughed. "In America, it is the universal aspiration. But I still must respect proprieties. I am sent to inquire of a man. The law might question my impartiality if I was interested instead in looking at his woman in her dainties."

"Not his woman. I am not with Martin in that way, Dubin. That is done between us. Long ago."

I thought of Martin embracing her in the kitchen.

"I have heard many refer to you as his woman."

"That is convenient for both of us. There are soldiers everywhere, Dubin. It is better to be known as spoken for. Do not be repelled for Martin's sake. Only your own." She gave me that sly smile. "A la prochaine," she said-Until next time-and breezed through the door, restored to her former self.

Biddy was waiting there. We needed to be back at the 18th before dark, but I was still reverberating like a struck bell. It had been months since I'd had anything to do with a woman, except with the clinical neutrality of a lawyer interviewing witnesses, and I had forgotten the pull that seemed to emanate from every cell. I had been resolutely faithful to Grace, even in the brothel atmosphere of London, where the joke went that every girl's knickers had the same flaw: one Yank and they were off. There I had known what to expect. Sex was everywhere-you could hear the moans when you passed a supposedly unoccupied air raid shelter, or walked in the dark through Hyde Park. The U. S. soldiers, with their Arrid and Odo*Ro*No, seemed rich and well-groomed compared to the poor beaten-down Brits, who had a single uniform and their noisy hobnailed boots. Now both Biddy and I were looking at the doorway through which Gita had gone.

"You have a girl at home, Biddy?" I asked.

"Hope. Had one, but let her get away. Joyce Washington. Courted with her all through high school. Was het up to marry, too. She got herself a job typing at the First National Bank. And there was some fella there, Lieutenant, I guess he just swept her off her feet. And her with my ring on her finger. She come to tell me and I said to her, 'How can you do this, go off with another man when you promised yourself to me?' And you know what she says? She says, 'Gideon, he's got a Hudson.' Can you imagine? I honestly got to say, Lieutenant, I really don't think it was the letdown that bothered me so much as wondering how in all get-out I could have been fool enough to love a woman like that." He fixed on the distance while the pain swamped him again, then shook it off.

"I done all right with those English girls," he said, "but I can't make head or tail of these Frenchies. All that ooh-la-la junk may go in Paris, but out this way, these are just country gals, Lieutenant, and it ain't no different than in Georgia, mamas tell them all their lives to keep their legs crossed till the day they say 'I do,' war or no war. What about you, Lieutenant? You been makin any time?" Unconsciously perhaps, his eyes diverted toward the doorway.

"I have a fiancee back home, Biddy." We both knew this was not a direct response. Eisley, with a wife in Ohio, could explain in utter seriousness how all formalities, especially marriage vows, were suspended during times of war. But I left it at that.

Martin had stepped out of the house, still flushed from the wine and smiling hugely. I took it that he'd had a word with Gita and had come outside to say goodbye to us.

"So I hear we actually found your precious papers. I could tell you came here with the wrong impression. Mark my words, Dubin, Teedle is trying to stir things up. He's giving orders where he has no call to."

"Mademoiselle Lodz says he has a grudge against you.

"That would be one way to put it." His blue eyes went for a moment to the horizon, the first occasion when I had seen him measure his words. "Look, Dubin, sooner or later you're going to figure out what this is all about. You don't need my faccuse.

If you'd rather I not share your response with General Teedle-"

"Oh, I don't care a fig about Teedle. Look, Dubin, it's this simple. He thinks I'm a Communist. Because I fought in Spain. After the Axis, the Soviets are next. I'm the new enemy. Or so he believes."

Are you?"

"An enemy of the United States? I should say not.

"A Communist, sir."

"I've been fighting too long, Dubin, to call myself anything. I believe in power for the powerless, food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless. Does that make me a revolutionary? Here, Dubin, it all comes down to this. The man is wasting your time and he knows it. I intend to fulfill my mission. And I won't allow Teedle to get in my way, or bog me down with Army folderol. I can melt into this landscape, or that of any other place from here to Berlin, if I choose."

He gave me a pointed look. I was startled by the openness with which he discussed insubordination, but there was no chance for rejoinder, because both of us were drawn to the buzz of planes overhead. Martin was immediately on alert, like a pointer in the field, squinting to search the sky. But the aircraft were ours.

"B-z6s, I reckon," he said then. "They're going to take advantage of the break in the weather to bomb."

Just as he predicted, the heavy sounds echoed a few minutes later. At first, the distant bombardment was like oil popping in a skillet, but as the squadrons kept passing overhead, the noise came closer. A barrier of smoke and dust arose and drifted back to us, damming the light and ghosting over the Comtesse's fields, carrying along the odor of gunpowder. We could hear German antiaircraft fire. No more than a mile ahead, we saw a plane burst into flame and parachutes bloom in the sky.

A number of the farmworkers as well as Antonio had joined us on the cobbles as spectators. Martin asked the Gypsy about the position of the 26th Infantry to be certain they would be able to reach the downed fliers. While this discussion was under way, another squadron passed, flying lower. We had been trading around a pair of field glasses that someone had brought from the house and when I took my turn, I could see the bomb bays open beneath the planes. I had just remarked on this to Martin, when an explosion shook the air around us, and a column of fire rose on the next hill.

"Lord," said Martin. "We'll be lucky if they don't drop on us as well." He looked up one more time, then dashed into the little castle, yelling first to Gita, then everyone else. He emerged in seconds behind the Comtesse and her servants. In both English and French, he commanded everyone into the old stone cellar beneath the house. He stood at the door, shooing all of us down, ordering us to be quick. The workers came running out of the fields, some still in waders they had been wearing in the flooded lower grounds. I was already in the earthen-floored cellar when another detonation reverberated, closer than the first. I looked to the entrance to see about Martin, but he appeared in a moment, slamming the door behind him and thumping down the stairs. The cellar was no more than six feet high and there was now no light. I'd seen Biddy hunched in the corner, next to the shelves of jarred fruits and an adjoining wall racked with dusty bottles of wine. There must have been twenty people huddled in the dark. The air quickly grew close. There were the usual jokes. One of the women said, "Keep your hands to yourself," and a man responded, "You, as well." In a far corner, a cat was meowing.

"D'ici peu, on va se sentir tous comme des cons," someone remarked across the room. In a moment we will feel like fools. He had barely spoken, when the atmosphere was rent by the fabulous concussion of an explosion directly overhead.