The agent believed it. The woman believed it. Even Marc believed it as he ate their food.
Yes, I am the raven, the stealer of the food, and you have your Iron Cross, but you will never get this sausage back from me,
he thought.
It is mine now, all mine
. Marc wondered if Officer Sean would return to play a game of cards as he devoured the precious sausage.
Marc stared at the board, which he had carried with him from 1940. He knew this would be the last time he would see it, and thought of the first time he had seen the wood.
“I suppose you must hate her,” the agent said next. Marc looked up from the board. “It is a curious thing that she saved your life not once, but twice.”
Marc’s body jerked a bit at the thought, and his mind did not have any memory of these supposed salvations from Marie.
“And how do you see that?”
“If it was not for her, I would have treated you as a Frenchman, and had you shot. But she is the one who helped us prove you are really an American so, for a while at least, you will live,” the agent said with a smile.
“That is only once,” Marc said, half asleep.
“Oh, yes, and she helped you breathe earlier. Apparently, you had a little too much to drink while listening to some music,” the agent said.
Marc felt the bottom fall out from inside of him, but then resisted the pull of despair. He gazed at the board and decided that this new path would eventually lead him out of this hell, just like he had turned that day and made it to the side of the ship. He thought of his mother, father, and sister back in America, and how much it would hurt them if he was gone. He made a pact with himself that he would survive.
“There is one other thing,” Marc said.
“What is that?” the agent asked.
“The board, it is from the banister of the ship that sank.”
The agent eyes squinted, and he looked down as he scratched the back of his head. “I will be sure to add that to the report.”
“Thank you,” Marc said.
“For what exactly?” the agent said.
“For taking the board away from me.”
“Oh, Marc, I assure you, we will take far more away from you than just this silly board,” the agent said. The guards then took Marc out of the room, and that was the last he would see of the railing from the ship.
Two days later, Marc was removed from the prison in Paris and moved south to Moulins. He was surprised to see Dr. Jackson and his son at roll call. It was good to see they were alive, but painful for him because he felt responsible for their arrest. He had not betrayed R, but his blindness to Marie had betrayed the Jacksons.
He now was a raven. He had become a bird between worlds that sees outside of time. He knew that it was due to Marie that they were betrayed and denounced. If only he had not trusted her, this would not have happened. If he had only let go of 1939 and seen who she was now, not in the past, not whom he’d met before. But letting go of the dream of loving her was harder than letting her go, as she walked out of the prison interrogation room. He would not be in this hell of watching Dr. Jackson and his son stand for prison roll call, had it not been for his greed.
Marc had tried to steal time. He’d tried to steal back the past that he lost. Now Dr. Jackson and Philip were like doves, innocent and pure, with white feathers. He had once been a dove, long ago, but then he fell into the sea, and his feathers were stained black as the night by the oil. Now, he was the raven. Marc felt neither life nor death, but only his own self-loathing. All the others in line were men, but he was a bird of death. Marc now stood at Moulins in a raven’s hell, watching doves pay for the raven’s sins.
July, 1944
Moulins Prison, France
T
he cell door flew open as Marc scrambled with the other prisoners to stand at attention. The guard came screaming in a rage, pushing through each of the men, first grabbing one and then Marc. He slammed Marc against the wall outside the cell and slammed the door. Then he kicked him twice in the butt and once in the back of his knee, all along pushing him down the hallway with his rifle.
Marc began to tremble with fear. He had heard the screams, and seen men leave his cell, gone from roll call, never to return. He crossed the threshold of a room to his left, and received a blow to his head. His ears rang from the blow.
The guard then ripped his shirt off his back, and forced him to kneel on a bench. Marc suddenly felt the overwhelming need to urinate. He held back, and tried to focus and concentrate. His eyes looked up the wall and he could see the splatters. Just then, the first strike of the whip fell upon his back. Every muscle inside him seemed to contract in a spasm and then a second, third, fourth, and fifth blow befell him, slicing open his flesh. Before the thought of screaming had reached his mind, it had left his mouth.
The guard stopped as a second guard came in the room.
“You fool, he is the wrong one,” he yelled at the man with the whip.
“This is the one you asked for. Renee, the Parisian,” the guard protested.
“This is the American, you fool. Get him out of here and get me the other one,” the German guard yelled at the Frenchman.
Marc slammed down on the floor of the cell as they threw him back in. The guard then searched quickly through the other prisoners as the other German watched. None of the other prisoners was Renee from Paris. The other five were not the man they wanted. The door slammed. The darkness of the cell surrounded Marc. None of the other prisoners came near him.
Soon, across from his cell, Marc could hear the commotion of another search. Hollers came under the door as he heard the same shuffle with blows down the way. Then screams followed in the distant cell. But they did not stop. Marc thought,
they must have found poor Renee
. The guards did not inspect the cell again that night. At the morning roll call, Marc struggled to stand upright. He could also smell the pungent urine smell on his pants. He had no memory of urinating on himself.
Marc saw Dr. Jackson at roll call each day. He had been there longer than Marc. Once he also saw Philip, his son.
“I heard from another they are in Paris,” one prisoner would say.
“They have to be. Soon they will be here, in Vichy,” another prisoner would say.
“They landed, largest landing ever. There is nothing that can stop them,” yet another.
The rumors never stopped. Marc listened, but never spoke about them. He wondered if they were bait. He questioned the reality of any prisoner who was not whipped or handcuffed or beaten.
Dr. Jackson had a look of concern for Marc as he showed him his hands. They agreed never to speak if they should ever be arrested. Marc knew it was dangerous to talk of any Resistance work in the prisons. The only ears you could trust would be your own, and even they were a betrayal of screaming tortures night and day.
“That is a bad infection. How did you cut your hands?” Dr. Jackson asked him, as if Marc were no different from any other prisoner.
“Don’t recall. Sort of blocked it all out,” Marc said next.
Dr. Jackson cleaned Marc’s hands and drained the small abscess of pus. Then he treated the wounds with an iodine solution, and dressed Marc’s hands with bandages.
Marc looked for the words to say to him. He rehearsed a few variations in his mind. Then he would pull back and realize that by telling him that Marie betrayed them, it would only open up more questions, and cause him more pain. But Marc felt he needed to tell him, and that he had a right to know. The courage would then pass away and he’d slip back into silence.
“Keep the faith, my friend. It won’t be long,” Dr. Jackson said to him as he finished.
Marc thought as he left that he would tell him another time, but the opportunity never came about.
“What are you here for? You’re the American?” a new cellmate asked.
“
Je ne sais pas
, I don’t know,” Marc said shrugging his shoulders.
“Yes, you do. You must. What did they charge you with?”
Marc sat in silence in the dark, staring at the shadowy figure. He shook his head from side to side, slowly repeating, “I don’t know.”
“I’m here because of smuggling. They caught me, but before they did, I was able to get quite a few away,” he said proudly, looking at Marc.
“Soon, we will be out of here. Just watch. They don’t have much more time. They feel it. You can see it. Come on, what did they get you for?” he asked Marc again.
The more he talked, the more Marc turned inside. Marc thought to himself,
He is practically giving me a full confession. Why would he speak to a total stranger like this?
Marc listened to the man’s voice, his quiet confidence. He lacked the fear of every other prisoner in the cell. The others remained silent. He had not asked any of the others why they’d been arrested. Only Marc.
“Enough, I will tell you,” Marc finally said, as he moved over near the man. Then he said to his face, just loud enough for everyone else in the cell to hear. “I was hoarding the real nickels, you know, the coins. They caught me. I had a whole can of them in my room under the bed.” Marc smirked at the lie, but knew that hoarding of coins was a serious charge. Sometimes they gave people three months hard labor. The other prisoners chuckled a bit. Marc could see that the man knew it was a lie, but he laughed all the same.
A few days later, the man was transferred to another cell, and no one spoke or asked Marc anything else about his charges.
Marc considered jumping into the river as they marched toward the train station, but it was not deep enough. He watched along the way for any possibility of escape. The entire prison was in a long march. Dr. Jackson had left two days before with around two thousand others. The German guards yelled constantly. Marc could not understand where they got the energy. Shouting so much had to be exhausting.
The train cars looked like they were carriages for animals. The tops were rounded, and the slats were covered with wire. So many men were crowded into the car, there was no room to sit. The door slammed shut, leaving the men in the sweltering heat. Each one had a loaf of bread and a piece of sausage, but there was no water, and just a single bucket in the middle of the car for waste.
Marc leaned against the forward wall of the rail car, trying to get as far away as possible from the bucket of waste in the center. The train stopped, and then would start up again, to pass another train stopped on the tracks. Eventually, in spite of the smell and heat, he fell asleep leaning against the wall.
Marc awoke to a commotion on the other side of the car. Some prisoners had found a way to escape. One by one, a man would throw himself from the moving train as it rolled along. Marc’s heart pounded with excitement. The men just in front of him held their breath, waiting until it was their turn to jump. Marc had no idea how long the men had been tossing themselves through the open slats, but there were at least twenty now that had dropped out of the car because no one now was pushing or leaning up against him.
The train then came to a stop. The men started to panic, pushing and shoving for a chance to get out. Then a shot rang out and the back of one of the men exploded into the rail car, spraying the air with his flesh and blood. The men moved away and down from the hole in the side of the car. The Germans screamed and shouted just outside. Marc could hear running and shots in the distance.
The doors of the car flew open and the German guards shouted for everyone to get out. Marc fell to the ground and then stood at attention as he was counted. His throat was ablaze with thirst, and his stomach churned. His eyes scanned to the right and left, studying the movement of the other Germans. His mind raced with fear if they were going to shoot the rest of the car.
One soldier then started to move through the men making a selection, one to the left and one to the right. The man tapped his shoulder with the butt of the rifle and directed him to the right. The train car door was opened, and Marc climbed in with twenty-five other men. There must have been a hundred in the car.
The ones directed to the left went to the car just behind the one they’d been in.
The doors slammed shut, and then the guards shouted at the cars in German. Marc could tell they were going to shoot by the anger in their frantic shouting. Then one soldier on each side of the train ran past the two cars and released a clip of ammunition into the walls. At least three men slumped to the floor in Marc’s car. Two or three others were shot but not killed. The Germans then left, and the train started down the tracks again. This was the last of the three nights before they reached the new camp.
T
he train started to stop more and more frequently. About noon of the third day, the train finally came to a full stop. The doors opened and the men piled out onto the ground. The bucket had long since overflowed with waste, which now covered the floor of the car. Six men lay dead behind Marc, as he walked toward what appeared to be an enormous camp. He could see that the train had picked up more cars along the way.
SS officers walked down through the line, and with a whip, lifted the chin of each of the men. The older ones and truly young went to the left to form another line.
“If you are sick, or need care, then go to the left. We have a hospital for anyone injured,” the man said in German, with a sweet and enticing voice. Most of the men did not understand German, and their faces wore perplexed looks. A few who appeared healthy went to the sick line, but the SS picked them back out and placed them in the line to the right.
“Only those who need care, please. There is not much room in the hospital, so only the sick and weak,” Marc heard as clearly as the day the man asked him, “Do you believe the French and German people can know peace?” The line to the left then parted from the line to the right.
“Place your clothes carefully, because there will not be much time after you get out of the shower,” Marc heard over and over again. The men walked then into the shower room, and the door shut behind them. After a few minutes time, scalding water fell down upon them. Men yelled out in pain from the burning water.