The next morning the door to the barracks was opened by two policemen,
who carried in the body of Ursula.
She did not remain long in Down Street. For an instant we looked at her
white face, her closed eyes, her blue lips; we saw the head fallen on
the shoulder, and the dead hands.
The Captain’s door was closed to us all. Only a few officers entered for
secret conferences.
The body was taken away at once, no one knew exactly where, and the next
day a lieutenant announced that Ursula Martin had been buried in the
French military cemetery outside London. It was all done quickly,
without fuss. The incident was quite annoying, very disagreeable. The
sooner it was over with, the better.
One of the corporals remarked that Ursula had always been a high-strung
child, and that was her entire obituary.
But Claude wept. She wept sincerely with all her heart, and she came to
me, to Ursula’s best friend, to accuse herself for the wrong she thought
she had done to Ursula long ago.
After a few days no one spoke any more about her, for their minds were
full with preparations for departure. We scarcely went to our offices
any more. We knew now that we were at last going to have active work to
do—with the wounded, driving trucks and jeeps on the bombed-out roads,
working in the newly liberated towns as telephone girls, as
interpreters, in liaison, and as guards. We wanted only to leave as soon
as possible.
Some days later, I learned that before his departure Michel had left a
thick portfolio with his Polish friends. The portfolio contained poems
he had written, as well as his diary. From what we knew of Michel, of
his sense of beauty, of his sensitivity, and from what Ursula had said
of his poems, portions of which Michel had read to her, it seemed
certain that this unique work of Michel’s was truly precious. But there
was a formal direction left with the portfolio: “In case of the death of
Michel Levy, please burn these papers at once, without reading.”
The young Polish sergeant spoke about the matter to Mickey and
Jacqueline and me. We were all absolutely of the opinion that Michel’s
instructions should be disregarded, that the poems had to be preserved.
We felt that their value—of which we were certain—was more important
than compliance with his last instruction.
But the Polish sergeant, a simple, direct lad, knew only one thing. He
had promised to obey the instruction, it was the wish of the dead, and
therefore he had to burn the papers. We attempted to explain our point
of view to him, to plead the cause of beauty and of poetry. It was the
only thing that remained of Michel, we said. Ursula and his child no
longer existed; at least his thoughts should remain.
But the sergeant burned the papers.
That night I wept for a long time. I promised myself that at least if I
ever had a son, I would name him Michel. With all my strength, I wanted
in some way to fill the emptiness that had come into the world where
there had been a voice that had something real to say, and that had been
destroyed.
I thought of all of my friends from this little room, and what had
happened to them. First Jacqueline had lost John, and now Ursula and
Michel were gone. And it had only begun. I felt them coming as though
within myself, all the young, the girls and the men who approached in an
endless line, the dead, all the dead who were being sacrificed without
anyone knowing why.
EPILOGUE
It was eleven o’clock in the evening. We were tired, and nearly all of
us were already in bed. Ginette was brushing her hair, and Ann was still
in the bathroom.
The guards were on the roof, watching for bombs. They telephoned to
Claude to ask for hot coffee, and Monique, who happened to be in the
hall, said she would go down to the basement to prepare it. Monique had
just gone down to the kitchen when a terrific explosion resounded all
around us. In the same second the lights went out, and stones and planks
and chunks of plaster and pieces of window rained down upon us. I heard
Ginette scream, and cries went up from all over the house.
After a time that seemed endless to us, we came to realize that a V-2
had fallen on Down Street. I remember that I was first of all stricken
with astonishment. For four years we had seen buildings crumble all
around us, but it seemed impossible that such a thing could happen now
to us.
I moved carefully and stood up. I was unhurt. Ginette was bleeding, but
she could walk. We felt our way forward in the darkness, climbing over
piles of rubble until we found the door of the room. When I opened it, I
saw that the hall was filled with women in pajamas. Someone had found a
candle, and its flame cast a flickering light over the scene. The
entrance to the building had been torn out, and with it the entire front
of the house.
Already groups were climbing over the debris to reach the street.
Presently we were all outdoors, and people came running toward us with
flashlights. We were cold, and Ginette was wiping her bleeding forehead
with a piece of cloth torn from her nightgown.
Opposite us was the big hotel, where a dance was going on. It was there
that the ARP took us, and we made a sensational entrance in our torn
nightclothes, with our faces covered with dust and blood, with our
scratched bare feet and our still half-awakened air.
We were put to bed in the Turkish bath.
The next morning, in the graying dawn, I looked again on Down Street.
The house was a ruin of blackened bricks, disemboweled, open to the sky,
with its rafters torn from their moorings, its stones crushed, its
windows smashed, its doors hurled from their frames. In a cluttered hole
there was a barrel from which a red stream dribbled, forming a puddle,
and under this mass of wreckage, of planks and iron and glass and
shrapnel, the ARP searched with their shovels for the body of Monique,
entombed in the ruins of the kitchen.
This was my last memory of Down Street. I gazed for a long while at the
annihilated switchboard room, at the great assembly hall open to all the
winds, at the bleeding, crushed house.
Standing beside me, I saw the Ambassador of Peru. And he too was gazing,
with a very thin smile, scarcely perceptible, on his overred lips.
Three days later we landed in France.
Transcriber’s Notes
This text was transcribed from the unchanged reprint edition by The
Feminist Press, City University, New York, 2005. Materials from a later
date than the original publication year 1950, such as editorial
information, introduction, or foreword, have been omitted.
The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
and punctuation errors as well as variations in hyphenation were
silently amended. All other changes are shown here (before/after):
[p. 74]:
... in a sudden access of remorse, had not wanted to spend ...
... in a sudden excess of remorse, had not wanted to spend ...
[p. 116]:
... throat. Happily, there was a desert of strawberries and
cream, ...
... throat. Happily, there was a dessert of strawberries and
cream, ...
[p. 120]:
... the wall. Ursula listened, and as he had expected, the
phonograph ...
... the wall. Ursula listened, and as she had expected, the
phonograph ...
[p. 140]:
... of a man utterly outside himself, with his mouth slightly
open ...
... that of a man utterly outside himself, with his mouth
slightly open ...
[p. 196]:
... had jumped, and the day she has slashed her wrists in the ...
... had jumped, and the day she had slashed her wrists in the ...