We took a winding route down arcades and alleys, until one opened through a stone archway onto a large square surrounded by grand buildings, hotels or mansions perhaps. On the far side was the town hall draped with Nazi flags and banners. Its domed and colonnaded clock tower was silhouetted against the sky. As we got closer, the clock told us it was six a.m., almost day. Armored cars and trucks marked with swastikas were parked outside in the square. Two sentries stood on guard beside imposing glazed and gilded doors. The sentries greeted our party with a salute and a “Heil Hitler.”
One door opened briefly, and we were pushed inside, hurriedly, so as not to let light and warmth escape. It was bright in the hall compared with the darkness outside, and I raised my hand to shade my eyes. A gun barrel knocked it down, and I almost cried out. I fixed my hands to my sides, formed fists of my fingers, concentrated on the pulsing pain where the steel had hit my hand. Curious eyes looked at us from more sentries and a sergeant at a desk, but nobody pointed a finger and asked if I was a woman.
We were in a long hallway with a high ceiling. Once, not so long ago, but in a different world, the town hall receptionist would have sat here, an older woman with iron gray hair and sensible lace-up shoes. The hallway was lit by huge bulbs, which hung from four massive mahogany columns, casting a cavernous glow. To the left were steps leading to the doors of Prostějov magistrate’s court. At the other end of the hall were more high glass doors with windows above, showing the first lightening of the sky, too late for us.
The soldier who cornered us explained the details in German, exaggerating a little about the length of the chase and the difficulty of the capture, and how we had resisted arrest. I thought how strange it was that Bill understood so little of this. Now it seemed we were really two parts of one whole. I could hear and understand everything, but only he could speak.
The soldiers had assumed we were both escaping prisoners, but if I was to say one word, make one noise, they’d know at once that I was a girl. Was I a girl still? A woman or, should I should say, a wife? I thought of the proverb Mluviti stříbro, mlčeti zlato. Speaking is silver, silence is gold. From now on, I must be a woman of gold.
The man at the desk cocked his thumb, and we climbed two flights of ornately decorated stairs. On the third floor the landing opened out to a waiting area with a red-and-yellow-checkered tiled floor, like a chessboard. I thought what very small pawns we were in this game. A tired-looking sergeant with orange hair sat at a desk and indicated for us to stand in front of him. A boyish private with a rifle slouched to one side.
“Name, rank, serial number,” said the sergeant, in English.
This had been no more real than a game of make-believe when Bill and I practiced it. Now it was actually happening, and it made my head spin.
Bill gave his details, and they were written down. The sergeant looked at me. I made a mime of my left hand as a notebook and my right hand as a pen.
“He don’t say nothing,” Bill told them. “Stumm. Mute.” He covered his mouth with one hand, turned to me and nodded. His blue eyes were dark with anxiety.
I started to move my left hand, as slowly as I could, and the young private trained his rifle on me. My heart was thumping as I reached inside the lining of my pocket to pull out the rolled-up cigarette paper Bill had given me, and unsteadily unfolded it.
The sergeant sighed exaggeratedly and beckoned me to give him the paper, as the guard stood at ease. I handed him the paper on which Bill had written “Private Algernon Cousins” and my fictitious rank and serial number in his English writing. I’d also practiced writing this, careful to form my letters in the English way and not to cross the number seven. The cross of a seven could be the end of everything. Panic swooped and dived in me.
He smoothed out the paper and read the details aloud. Then he beckoned again for me to bend toward him. I thought for certain he’d see I was a girl and not Private Cousins, that I’d be dragged away from Bill and never see him again. The sergeant stared so hard at me, it made me dizzy with terror. He checked again what Bill had written on the paper and then sighed and waved me back against the wall.
Our names and serial numbers were meticulously copied into a book, and the sergeant motioned us to sit on two chairs against the wall. I almost fell into the chair, so grateful to sit, aware again of the uncontrollable shaking in my legs and the dull throbbing in the back of my hand.
With a sigh, the sergeant stood, walked around the desk and tipped our kit bags onto the floor to sift through the contents. Bill’s harmonica, in the felt pouch I made for him, went spinning across the tiles, and the sergeant approached it carefully, as if it might be a hand grenade. When he realized what it was, he laughed in relief and passed it to the young soldier, who sucked and blew inexpertly, making them both roar with laughter. The noise of the harmonica and their laughter echoed in the high-ceilinged space, and they both suddenly looked like ordinary young men having what Bill would have called “a lark,” until another soldier appeared and barked at them for silence. They had woken the captain. The sergeant blamed the private, who furiously shoved the harmonica back in its bag. The sergeant returned to the other contents of our kit bags, scrutinizing Bill’s photographs, seeking cigarettes, weapons, food—who knows what? He handled the muddy “spuds” we’d pulled up from a field with the tips of his fingers. He didn’t find the hidden compartment at the bottom of my bag with the sanitary belt and rags I’d find so hard to explain. Of course, Bill didn’t know they were there either. How could I tell such a thing to a man? Blood thumped in my throat.
Finding nothing of interest, the sergeant ordered the private to stuff everything back in the bags and lay them at our feet. Some of Bill’s things ended up in my bag and vice versa.
Sitting here under the gaze of the soldiers, unable to move, to touch Bill, to escape, I was overwhelmed by the selfishness of my decision to run away with him. My desire to fight for my country, to be with Bill, and to see my dad and Jan again had led us both to this. What a fool I’d been to hold on so long to the childish illusion that my father would find us and carry us to safety. I looked at the date on the wall calendar above the desk—October 1944, eighteen months since Dad and Jan left to join the resistance and refused to take me with them. Perhaps it was even true that they were dead. I tried to count the red and yellow tiles on the floor in an effort to calm the panic sweeping over and over me.
Time inched slowly forward—minutes that might be our last together—and as it passed, the shaking in my legs and the throbbing of my bruised hand subsided. Nazi soldiers marched in and out, but none of them took any notice of us. They weren’t even curious, let alone concerned. We were less than pieces of furniture in their eyes. I looked up at the fake-medieval coffered ceiling and the fancy staircase. I became aware that I was terribly thirsty.
Bill leaned forward, with his fair head in his long delicate fingers. I wanted to reach out, to wash the sweat and mud from his face and neck with a cool flannel, but I dared not touch him. His bowed head looked so fragile, so easily broken or lost. What had I done? What had I done?
A cramp began to repeatedly grip my guts. I pressed my hands on my stomach, and then as the spasm passed, I stood. The sergeant at the desk glimpsed the movement, and his head jerked up. I wrapped my stomach with both arms and bent over in a pantomime of diarrhea.