The Light from the Dark Side of the Moon Read online

  Toward evening, under a gibbous moon, we arrive at the outskirts of the village. I feel we have entered Dante’s 7th circle of Hell. Or, to put it like Milton, we have somehow fallen nine days from Heaven. Stone houses stand gutted on both sides of the road. Broken. Roofless. Jutting from the earth like giant swollen knuckles in the unnatural moonlight. Piles of wooden furniture with red-glowing embers hunkering deep inside. Coils of smoke like noxious incense snaking up from unclean thuribles worm into my nostrils. Over there, a burnt-out Citroën. And there, a charred sewing machine, a destroyed fuel pump. Melted eyeglasses! Some poor soul’s fucking, melted eyeglasses! An indecent tomb-like stillness hovers about the village, softened only by the sighing of wind through the broken walls, and the cavities, of buildings. And bodies. Human forms. Blackened. Unrecognizable. The silence curls around us like tentacles.

  Someone mumbles, “Merde!” The deeper we go into the village, the more the smoke assaults our eyes and nostrils. I am forced to squeeze my eyes shut repeatedly and wrinkle my nose against the acrid bite of smoke.

  Élodie stares at the destruction. “We cannot stay here. We must leave.”

  I know she’s right, and I wonder who gave the fucking moon a spin and turned that dark Janus face toward us.

  No one objects. We accelerate down the road, chased by miniature, swirling dust devils. Soon, we are clear of the village and, after a few kilometers, we pull over to the side of the road. No one speaks. Élodie pulls her violin case from the car and climbs a small hillock. At the top, she sits on a boulder under a spreading chestnut tree and takes out her violin. She begins to play a sorrowful, slow tune. It is that Catalan tune, “Song of the Birds,” she’d played before. We remain silent, listening, lost in our own thoughts.

  And a rain begins.

  It is a soft, feminine rain, a nurturing mizzle, the kind that nourishes fields and shivers leaves. It comes with the clean, ozone smell of fresh rain. I turn my face to the sky and open my eyes, blinking to allow the drizzle to rinse my burning eyes, to sooth my nostrils. The rain releases the steamy perfume of the earth, the bouquet of plants, the faint ozone of the rocks—the petrichor that accompanies rain. And there is the essential oil of lavender in the air.

  Several hours later, under a fat, hunchbacked moon, we round a bend in the narrow road and abruptly come face to face with the lights of a Wehrmacht staff car escorted by three motorcycles with attached sidecars.

  Claude stomps on the brakes and the Citroën skids to a sudden stop, catapulting all of us forward. I jam my broken pinkie painfully against the dashboard. Obscured by a moonlit dust cloud kicked up by the tires, we scramble out of the car and fling ourselves to the ground behind the Citroën, even as the Germans open fire. Above me, a Sten gun barks angrily. I look up. Élodie stands, scarcely shielded by the car, sweeping the stuttering Sten gun right and left. Her teeth are barred. She wears a crazed expression. The night is filled with frenzied muzzle flashes. I tear my gaze from her and take aim with my gun and crack off several shots and I am aware of the others firing their weapons and bullets rip the ground around me and ping off the Citroën and there are shouts of pain and, already, three Germans are sprawled on the ground but one of them is still alive, his legs jerking, and I aim, carefully, and fire and the man’s legs go still. Fuck! This is the first man I’ve ever killed! I make a quick count. There are at least six more Germans. I aim. Fire. A hole erupts in the forehead of an officer and the man crumbles to the ground. One German hops aboard a motorcycle. Another man vaults into the sidecar. Élodie springs out from behind our car. She slaps the Sten gun against her shoulder, grabs the magazine that juts at right angles from the barrel, and rips off a stream of bullets, mowing the Germans down with several short bursts of fire. The motorcycle with its sidecar runs off into the trees and flips, spilling the two Germans to the ground. “Merde!” Élodie cries when she pulls the trigger again and nothing happens. She snaps the empty magazine from the gun and flings open the door of the Citroën and dives into the rear seat where she snatches another magazine and slams it into place. I’m vaguely aware of shots coming from my left. I swing my gun in that direction but stop when I realize the shots are coming from Jean-Baptiste and Claude who have somehow scrambled into the trees and now have the Germans in withering enfiladed fire. Suddenly, there is no return fire. There comes a cry of “Nicht schießen! Nicht schießen! Wir kapitulieren!”22 Slowly, two Germans appear from behind the staff car, hands raised. “Bitte, nicht schießen!” one repeats. He is trembling. He is young. He is a boy. Ein Junge. So is his companion.

  Élodie approaches the first boy. She asks him what unit he belongs to, even though, as she tells me later, she already knows the answer, for she sees the Wolfsangel, or wolf’s hook, shoulder patch of the Das Reich Division. But she wants to hear the boy say it.

  “Der zweite SS-Panzerdivision,23” he replies.

  She asks him if he was in Oradour. “Waren Sie in Oradour?”

  The boy glances nervously at his companion but remains silent behind his smooth, cherubic face.

  Élodie’s face reddens. Her nostrils flare. She leans forward and stares flinty-eyed at the boy. “Waren Sie in Oradour?” she shouts. She insists he answer yes or no: “Ja oder Nein?”

  Still, the boy remains silent. His lips quiver. Tears slip from the corners of his eyes and leave rills through the dust on his cheeks.

  “Ja oder Nein?” Élodie repeats. Her eyes are wide. Her voice is a screech. Her cheek muscles twitch. I shiver at the sight.

  “Ja,” the boy answers weakly.

  She asks if it was two days ago. “Vor zwei Tagen?”

  The boy’s forehead is creased. His raised hands are shaking. His eyes are pleading. Finally, he says, “Wir wurde uns befohlen, es zu tun.”24

  Élodie turns to me. In an acid voice she mutters, “Following orders!”

  I reply, “Fuck!”

  Jean-Baptiste approaches Élodie. “What will you do with your young prisoner?” he asks with a little smirk.

  Élodie takes several steps backward. She levels the Sten gun at the boy. She mumbles, “Fuckers!”

  “Don’t,” I say, reaching out for Élodie. But she takes another step back.

  “Nein!” the boy cries. “Nicht schießen! Nicht schießen!” He turns to run.

  Élodie cuts him down with a long burst of fire. She empties the magazine into him. She empties the whole, fucking magazine into him.

  The other boy starts to run.

  I glance at Élodie who is reaching for a new magazine and, before she can snap it into place, I take careful aim and shoot the boy in the back of the head. I hear Jean-Baptiste give a soft whistle of amazement.

  Birds in the trees that had fallen silent, begin to twitter again.

  There is a rustling in the underbrush, an unseen critter scrambling for cover.

  The wind soughs softly through the treetops and I can scarcely hear a breath.

  No one speaks for several long moments.

  Jean-Baptiste and Marcel and Claude busy themselves rummaging through the dead German bodies, collecting weapons, ammunition, other items. Élodie approaches one of the dead Germans from the overturned sidecar and kneels beside him.

  I crouch alongside her. “What are you doing?”

  “I want to see his Erkennungsmarke.”

  “His what?”

  “Dog tag. I want to know who he was.” She reads the tag aloud. “Fritz Dürbach.”

  A camera lies on the ground beside the man, a Voigtländer. Élodie picks it up. “Maybe there are photos I can send to his family after the war.” She lays her Sten gun on the ground, gently, like putting a child to bed. With the camera slung over her shoulder, she walks slowly toward the trees by the side of the road. She leans against the trunk of a chestnut tree. She vomits. I come up to her and put my arm around her shoulders. I squeeze. I say nothing. Her shoulders convulse as she heaves over and over again, the camera tapping lightly against the tree trunk.

  Jean-Bapt
iste comes up to us. Smiling, he says, “You see, American, it is good policy never to anger a woman.”

  I want to kill him. “Fuck you! Get away from her!” I scream. Jean-Baptiste’s face reddens. I struggle to hold back tears. I level my gun at him. “Get away from her, now! Clear out, or I’ll fucking kill you where you fucking stand!”

  Jean-Baptiste backs away, a look of deep hatred in his eyes.

  “Who the hell gave the moon a fucking spin,” I mutter.

  Élodie shoots me a quizzical look, but I don’t explain, and she doesn’t ask.

  14 Yes, I know morphine and wine is a dangerous combination. However, we didn’t know that much then and, besides, we were young and thought we were indestructible.

  15 While lifting these colors, these sounds, and mostly these scents from my diary, I got a momentary impression of Élodie. It was so vivid, yet so fleeting, my hands shook, and I had to take a break.

  16 “Leave your weapons on the ground.”

  17 “We are resistance fighters like you, and this man is an American.”

  18 “Tell them what you saw.” Footnotes are not needed for what follows because Élodie made certain I understood by translating simultaneously. She could have worked for the U.N. after the war!

  19 Wooden shoes.

  20 The Sten gun was a British-produced submachine gun, that could fire fully- or semi-automatic and that cost only $10 to manufacture (in 1941 dollars). It was capable of emptying a 30-round magazine in a single 5-second burst. It was a devastating, lightweight weapon favored by resistance fighters.

  21 Now, seventy years later, I can see I wrote these details, and those that follow, in my diary with considerable anger about the things that followed. The ragged-edged puncture where I broke the pencil tip is still plainly visible and the writing becomes shaky because I was forced to squeeze the stub of my freshly sharpened, and shortened, pencil between the tips of my thumb and my forefinger.

  22 “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! We surrender!”

  23 “The 2nd SS Panzer Division.

  24 “We were ordered to do it.”

  Chapter 5

  Moon Jelly

  I have never been able to erase the image of that damnable giant mirror. I can picture it up there, beyond the moon’s orbit, wrathful in its precise reflection of the dark side, and I am filled with dread. This sense has never left me. Almost anything can bring it on: a news bulletin about children being harmed in some way, the view of a swollen moon in a sullen sky, a neo-Nazi parade anywhere in the world, a dead moon jelly on the beach. It happens, and tears come to my eyes. They don’t tell you the nightmares never go away. Never. There’s no such thing as closure. And now I wonder if my plan to return to France isn’t, at least partially, an attempt to exorcise the Lucifers of my dream world—to see, first hand, a France where life has returned to normal, to see that Élodie’s sacrifice was worth something, and to somehow ennoble the grief.

  As much as a year before my encounter with the would-be rapist in the Navy Yard, I had formed the idea of returning to France for the 70th observance of D-Day, and as soon as that idea took hold, I realized Natalie would organize family resistance to it. So, I decided I needed, not only to announce my plan, but to demonstrate I knew what I was doing. I told my other children what Natalie already knew, that I was awaiting results from the tests my primary care doctor had ordered. Then, a week later, I called again to say I wanted them to gather for the weekend to celebrate my 91st birthday at the family home in Gloucester because I had something important to tell them. And when I asked them, collectively, to bring along the entire family, all thirty-two of them—spouses, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren—they, of course, assumed something was wrong and wanted to know what it was. But I only insisted I wanted everybody to hear it directly from me, and all at the same time. Sure, it was a cunning ruse, a bit of dissembling for which I felt only a tiny shiver of shame because it was well worth it if I could get them all together, something I’d longed for since the time everybody gathered for Anna’s funeral reception two years before. And besides, the ruse was nothing like the one I’d pulled off almost seventy years earlier to avoid a firing squad!

  How could they refuse? Natalie planned to drive up from the South Shore with Marshal. My son, Richard, booked a flight from Seattle with his wife, Sandra, and my daughter, Judy, said she would fly in from San Francisco with her husband, Denis. And, acceding to my wish, every one of them planned to bring their full complement of children and grandchildren. Richard’s son, Fred, planned to travel with his family from their home in Hermosa Beach, near Los Angeles, thus completing the West Coast contingent. Even better, a few days before the gathering, Callie called and said she would arrive early with her two children, Danny and Ashley, to help me prepare.

  “What do you say to having lobster, Papa?” she’d asked.

  “Perfect! We can get corn, too.”

  “A regular New England clam bake.”

  “Except we won’t be on the beach, and we won’t have clams and potatoes. Unless you think—”

  “No. The lobster and corn will be enough. Too many in our family don’t like clams the way you and I do.”

  “Primitives!” I said with a chuckle.

  Callie laughed with me and volunteered to take care of cooking the lobsters if I’d pick them up that morning.

  Except for Callie and her children, everybody was scheduled to arrive in the late afternoon on the first Friday in June. That morning, I climbed into my old ’71 fire-red Ford Mustang and drove the few miles to the dock across from the State Fish Pier in Gloucester. I’d bought the car, new, forty-two years earlier, but when Anna and I leased a more practical Toyota about ten years ago, I garaged the Mustang. Then, after Anna died, I had it restored and got rid of the Toyota.

  As I drove, I listened to the 8-track tape player which played Pablo Casals’ “Song of the Birds” and thought of Élodie and the way moonlight would glint off the body of her violin and how the light would play along the bow as it moved across the strings and how it reflected in her cheeks and how she made the strings shiver with grief for Oradour, the place of prayer. It’s like that often with scents or sounds. A memory comes into sharp focus, then disappears in an instant. In the time we were together, she played that piece often, almost obsessively, as if to lift herself from some dark place, as if grasping for a form of redemption for the things she had to do to fight the Nazis. Often, she’d said, “The worst thing about the Nazis is they drag you down to their level. You don’t want to go to that place in your soul, but it’s the only way to survive, the only way to fight them.” And then she’d play the music she learned from Casals during his exile in the South of France and she’d play it over, and over, and over again. I often think of that music as the soundtrack of our love affair and I listened through to its conclusion after parking the Mustang and sitting with the window open.

  The weather was clear, and I could see beyond Gloucester Harbor out to the Atlantic Ocean. There was the briny tang of sea breeze and, for the briefest of instants, I experienced another fragment of memory: Élodie’s hair floating on the wind and the salt-sea breeze rising up from the Mediterranean to where we stood high above Argelès-sur-Mer at the eastern end of the Pyrénées, peering through binoculars at a German column snaking along the moonlit shore toward Saint-Cyprien.

  I let the memory linger until it faded, then went into Captain Carl & Sons where I always bought my lobsters. Several large tanks lined the walls to my left and right, and directly in front of me was a polished oak counter, leopard-spotted with burn marks where long-ashed cigarettes had fallen from ashtrays. Behind the counter stood Carl, a burly man wearing a soiled apron that extended to his knees. “Henry!” he said, “I thought that was you pullin’ up in that ancient buggy o’ yours. What the hell were you sittin’ in the parkin’ lot for, anyways?”

  “That car’s a lot younger than me,” I replied. “Just listening to a piece of music.”

  �
��Come for your two one-pounders as usual, have you?”

  “Not this time, Carl. I’m needing three dozen for tomorrow night.”

  “Three dozen? You havin’ a gang over?”

  “The whole family,” I said. “First time since Anna died.”

  Carl gave a slow shake of his head. “Still miss her, I do. Loved it when you two came in together and she picked the lobstahs. How many people we talkin’?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  Carl frowned. “You sure three dozen’ll be enough?”

  “A bunch of them are kids. They’ll prefer hot dogs.”

  “Kids! Gotta love ’em. You want all chix like you usually buy?”

  “Not necessarily. Whatever you have, but nothing over two pounds. Too old and tough. Like me.”

  “Aggh! You ain’t that old! You’re still drivin’, ain’t yuh?”

  “You may be the first person in the world to say ninety-one isn’t old.”

  “Ain’t the years, Henry. It’s the fitness. You’re fitter’n most people half your age.”

  I had to laugh at that. “Maybe I’ll send my daughter, Natalie, over to see you. She’s always harping on me to quit driving. Wants to pack me away in some goddamned nursing home.”

  “You in a nursin’ home? Bullshit! Ain’t where you belong.”

  “Tell that to her.”

  “Sure, send her over. I’ll set her straight.”

  “No, I wouldn’t subject you to that, Carl. I’ll drop by around noon tomorrow to pick up the lobsters.”

  “They’ll be waitin’ for ya.”

  After leaving Captain Carl & Sons, I stopped at the shopping center and bought two new 20-quart stockpots—the 5-quart ones I already had were too small—and several nut crackers to augment my supply. I was thrilled Callie planned to arrive early to help me set everything up on the deck. I loved nothing better than spending time with her and Danny and Ashley. The previous evening, when we’d talked on the phone to make final arrangements, I’d told her, “Low tide is a little after three tomorrow. Come early and the four of us can go for a walk along the beach before everybody else gets here.”