These were the days of the V-1, Hitler’s “secret weapon.” First one
heard something like the rattling of a plane, but with a difference. The
first time we heard it we leaned out of the windows at Down Street,
looking at the sky. In the distance we saw a small black point, coming
rapidly forward. It passed overhead, and everyone thought, If the noise
stops, it will fall on us. But the noise continued, and the fatal little
machine went on its way. Farther on we saw it suddenly halt, and the
noise stopped, and the V-1 plunged toward the ground. We heard a distant
explosion.
Panic was great in London. After the blitz, after four years of war,
people’s nerves were not in very good condition. They grew wild with
fear. As soon as an alarm sounded, one could see the crowds running in
the street, people plunging into the subways, into the shelters, mothers
seizing their children in their arms. Even the dogs howled. At the zoo,
as soon as the noise of an approaching V-1 was heard, the monkeys
screamed in terror and jumped around in their cages.
The universal terror arose first from the propaganda that had preceded
the secret weapon, and then from the feeling that nothing could be done
against it, that there was no defense.
The V-1’s caused a great deal of damage—almost as much as had been
caused by the blitz. But this time there was a difference. The seat of
destruction was moved, and it was the elegant streets that were
affected, particularly in the Kensington district and in the area around
Hyde Park. Every day I saw more houses in ruins.
Once more there was an exodus to the country. Many of the children who
had come back after the blitz were again evacuated. The railway stations
were crowded, and people climbed into the trains by the windows.
There was a high increase of nighttime subway occupants. As during the
great blitz of 1940, entire families slept underground and on the
stairways of the stations, clutching their most precious possessions,
which they carried along with them every night in battered old
suitcases.
* * * * *
Michel and Ursula had requested permission to be married. As they were
both under twenty-one, they had to secure not only the permission of
their superiors but the consent of their parents. Michel wrote to his,
in Palestine, and Ursula asked Claude to write a letter that she could
enclose with her own to her mother in America. It was a year since she
had written to her mother, and she had only an old uncertain address.
Her father was in China and she did not know his address at all.
Claude wrote a wonderful letter; she spoke of loving Ursula as her own
daughter, and declared that she knew Michel as a serious and intelligent
young man. She said that she herself was old enough to be their mother,
and believed that neither one of them could have made a better choice.
Michel and Ursula went together to post their letters, and then hand in
hand they walked through the foggy London streets. It was the end of
February. The weather was cold and damp. Ursula and Michel wore huge
khaki coats of the same sort; the garments gave them an awkward air.
After four years of military service, Ursula had finally received her
stripes as a first-class private. This had come so late that she could
not even take pleasure in it. Michel was a sergeant. In the mornings he
worked in a Polish headquarters office, and in the afternoons attended
lectures at the university. This was an exceptional privilege, which his
colonel had managed to secure by reporting him as an outstanding young
man of special intelligence and gifts. But Michel had consented to
accept this arrangement only on condition that he would be sent to the
front with the others as soon as there was an invasion.
Our little group continued to revolve around Michel. Everyone had faith
in him. Claude said, “Michel will certainly become someone very
exceptional after the war.”
And though no one knew quite why, everyone had this impression. Michel
himself was outwardly the same as ever—reticent and utterly unassuming.
No one knew him at bottom, not even Ursula.
And yet, since she had come to love Michel, she had been seized with a
desire for knowledge. She wanted to read, to study. She asked Michel to
tell her about socialism, Marxism, about anti-Semitism and about
religion. A world had opened; she was no longer a child. The world was
filled with unanswered questions. And her love had given her a kind of
optimism. Now, it was worth while to study.
One day when we were out with Michel, Jacqueline said to him, “Since
I’ve known you I’ve come to like the Jews. I never did before.”
Michel, smiling his sad serious smile, replied, “That won’t solve the
Jewish question.”
Then Ursula asked, “What will, Michel?”
He replied, “Perhaps a Jewish government in Palestine. In any case,
first a normal country, a normal government in Palestine.”
“And afterward?” Ursula insisted.
Michel laughed. “Afterward a world government of all people. Otherwise
there will always be wars.”
* * * * *
Jacqueline had become acquainted with a very rich and rather stupid
young Englishman whom she dragged with her wherever she went. He seemed
to be very much in love with her. Jacqueline would watch him with her
sparkling eyes, always smiling as she looked at him, but behind her
smile one felt her powerful will, as tenacious as ever, and stronger
than anything else between them. What did this young man matter to her,
so long as he might one day accept her child as his own? She never spoke
of De Prade or of John. But something indefinable, a sort of hard
shadow, often passed over her pretty face.