Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

For once, Robert Martin appeared to have told the truth. Madame Trausch said Martin had been intent on getting into southern Germany, and asked for help setting up Gita in Luxembourg near the German border. The Luxembourgers had not put up the same fight against the Nazis as the Belgians, but a loose network existed there of residents who assisted the Geheim Leger when they could. More than a month ago, Gita had been placed with one of these families on a small farm in sight of the Ourthe River, on the steep hills beneath Marnach. Gita posed as a milkmaid, taking the family cows to pasture and back each day. These rambles allowed her to watch the movement of the German troops from the heights over the river, leading to her unheeded warnings about tank activity near the German town of Dasburg.

In war, it is all noise, no one listens," said Madame Trausch. She had no idea whether Gita or the farmer or their house had survived the battles. No one had yet been heard from, but it was unclear whether the Germans had even been pushed back there. We started east, were roadblocked by combat, and did not get to the hamlet of Roder until the afternoon of January 19. By then the fighting was about two miles east.

Here, as in Belgium, the ocher farmhouses and barns, rather than being scattered over the landscape, were arranged in the feudal manner around a common courtyard with each family's land stretching behind their abode. The medieval notion was common protection, but now this clustering had made all the structures equally vulnerable to modern explosives. Every house was damaged, and one had fallen in entirely, with only two walls of jointed stone partially standing in broken shapes like dragon's teeth. The round crosshatched rafters of the roof lay camelbacked between them, beside a heap of timber and stone over which a family and several of their neighbors were climbing. Apparently searching for any useful remains, they proceeded in a determined and utterly stoic manner. At the top of the hill of rubble a man picked up scraps of paper, sorting them in a fashion, some in his trouser pockets, others in his coat. Another fellow was already at work with a hammer, knocking loose pieces of mortar from the stones, probably quarried a century ago, and stacking them so that they could be used to rebuild.

But I sensed this was the place I was looking for, due not so much to Madame Trausch's information as to what I'd heard from Private Barnes. He'd described the lady of the house as "a round old doll," and there would never be better words for the woman wobbling along near the top of the pile.

I had started toward her, when I heard my name. On the far side of the heap, Gita held a hand to her eye. She was dressed in a makeshift outfit-a headscarf, a cloth overcoat with fur trim on the sleeves, and torn work pants.

"Doo-bean?" She seemed only mildly surprised to see me, as if she presumed I'd been searching for her for weeks. She climbed up grinning and struck me on the shoulder, speaking English. It was only my physical appearance that seemed to inspire her wonder.

"You soldier!" she cried.

Despite all the vows I had made on the battlefield, I found myself enjoying her admiration. I offered her a cigarette. She shrieked when she saw the pack and dragged on the smoke so hungrily that I thought she would consume the butt in one breath. I told her to keep the package, which she literally crushed to her heart in gratitude.

We reverted to French. I said I was looking for Martin.

"Pourquoi? Still all this with Teedle?"

"There are questions. Have you seen him?"

"Moir She laughed in surprise. The round old doll teetered over to see about me. Soon, the whole family was describing the last month. In Marnach, like everywhere else, collaborators with the Germans had been severely punished when the Allies took control, and thus, once the Germans returned, those known to have aided the Americans were endangered, less by the SS than by their vengeful neighbors. Gita and the Hurles had endured many close calls. For several days, they had scurried like wood mice through the forest, eventually stealing back here and remaining in the woodshed of family friends. No one had food, and there was little way to know which side would bomb or shoot them first. The Hurles still had no idea who had destroyed their house, nor did it matter. All was lost, except two of their twelve cows. But the father, the mother, and their two married daughters were safe, and they all continued to hold out hope for their sons, who like most of the young men in Luxembourg had been forced into the German Army and sent to the eastern front. Madame Hurle remained on the Americans' side, but wished they would hurry up and win the war.

"Qu'est-ce gulls nous ont mis!" The Germans, she said, had beaten the hell out of them.

"But no sign of Martin?" I asked Gita. She had not really answered the question.

"Quelle mouche ea pique?" she answered. What's eating you? You are angry with Martin, no? Because he played a trick. And me, too, I suppose."

"I received your postcard," I answered.

"Robert was very put out when I told him I wrote. But I owed you a word. I was afraid you would be hurt when you woke."

"And so I was."

"It was a moment, Dubin. An impulse. War is not a time when impulse is contained."

"I have had the very same thoughts in the days since.''

"Ah," she said. "So between us, peace is declared."

"Of course," I said. We were both smiling, if still somewhat shyly. "But I must know about Martin. Tell me when you last saw him."

"A month, I would say. More. Since I am with the Hurles. When the battle is done, he will find me here. He always does." She was blithe, even childish in her conviction. Assaying her reactions, the question I had been sent here to pose seemed answered. Martin had made no miraculous escape, had sent no secret emissaries.

"Then I am afraid Martin is dead," I said. "Qu'est-ce que to dis?"

I repeated it. A tremor passed through her small face, briefly erasing the indomitable look that was always there. Then she gave a resolute shake to her short curls and addressed me in English to make her meaning clear.

"Is said before. Many times. Is not dead."

"The men in his company saw him fall, Gita. Tank shells struck the building where he was. He died bravely.), "Non!" she said, in the French way, through the nose.

I had watched myself, as it were, throughout this exchange. Even now, I could not completely fight off the fragment in me that was dashed that she took Martin so much to heart. But I felt for her as well. When I wondered where she would go next, I recognized much of the motive for her attachment to him. She was again a Polish orphan in a broken country. Even her time as warrior was over without Martin.

"I had very faint hopes, Gita. Hope against hope, we say. That is why I came. If he survived, I knew he would have contacted you."

She agreed with that in a murmur. I had toyed with the truth in my role of interrogator, and she might well have shaded her answers to me. After all, she wanted to be Bernhardt. But her grief looked genuine. She wandered down the mound by herself. She was not crying, though. Then again, I wondered if Gita ever wept. She stood alone, looking out at a field where a dead cow was frozen in the snow.

I asked Biddy how she appeared to him.

"Bad off," he answered. "I don't take her for foolin."

In a few minutes, I skirted the rubble heap to find her.

"You should come with us," I told her. She had nowhere else to go. "Even the cows you herded are gone. And my superiors may have questions for you. Best to deal with them now." I suspected OSS would want to glean what they could from her about Martin.

She nodded. "I am another mouth to them," she said looking back to the Hurle family.