The Gathering Storm (2 page)

Loralei patted my shoulder. "It's a quick read, I think. Quicker to read than it was to write. Only Part One. I'll wash up and bring coffee...coffee or tea?"

"Coffee, please."

"White or black?"

"Black."

"Go on...enjoy." Loralei poked at the coals in the fireplace. "I love a good fire and a good read. She hopes...well, it reads like a novel, but she needs the help of an expert. Your help."

"I love a good story. Her letters are the bright spot of my day when they come. Always have been."

I suddenly realized this young woman knew a lot about me, but I knew nothing about her except the color of her eyes, that she cooked great pasta, liked red sweaters and boots, and wore a size six jeans.

Mellow baroque music played over the BBC. The fire crackled and embers glowed as the story of one life unfolded.

_{PART ONE}

A time to get, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to cast away.

ECCLESIASTES 3:6

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM MAY 8, 1940

The night before everything about my ordinary life changed forever, I dreamed a dream.

It was dark and I sat on a boulder in a garden where the stone of a tomb had been rolled away. A rose tree grew with thirty-six white roses in bloom beside the great stone. A nightingale sang in the branches among blossom and thorn.

I heard a soft voice like wind chimes sing,
"And if I want him to live until I return, what is that to you?"

Sleeping or half-awake, I saw thirty-five men and women, each dressed in the costume of a different generation. They gathered outside the gaping mouth of the grave. They were discussing something. What was it? The war? The Jewish refugees who slept in the dorms of Alderman Seminary? The conversations seemed familiar to me, but I could not quite make out what they were saying.

The first in line, a pretty woman of middle age, with gentle brown eyes and soft curls, was wrapped in a cerulean blue shawl. She held a torch aloft. Stooping low, she entered the cave, fire first, carrying the flame into the darkness without terror. A golden glow emanated from the hewn interior. Flickering light cast her shadow onto the feet of the tall young man who was second in line. He looked down at her shadow, then at his toes and smiled, before turning his face toward where I observed. He beckoned to me.

I did not move. I wondered how he had seen me dreaming about him....

By and by the woman emerged, smiling, from the tomb and said quietly, "Death is conquered at last. It truly is empty. He is risen indeed."

She passed the torch to the man. He entered as she had and returned, declaring her proclamation to the next in line. And so it went through the hours of the night, from one witness to the next and then the next. One by one, they left the garden, and I could hear their footsteps and their voices. "Don't be afraid," they declared. "The tomb is empty. Death is no more."

Finally, the last of the thirty-five, his face concealed, emerged from the tomb and looked to the right and then the left. The sun was rising. "Who's next?" he called.

I was the only one remaining. I stood, and the light was too
bright for me to see clearly. Lifting my hand to shield my eyes, I felt
the handle of the torch pressed into my palm.

"It's your turn now. The long night is almost over. It's your turn to stand as witness. You shall be the Watchman on the Walls."

This, then, is my story.

MAY 9, 1940

Light shone through the stained glass flanking the green lacquered door of the stone cottage. Ruby red blossoms and emerald glass leaves made puddles of color on the flagstone steps. I stepped onto a rose-hued pool, shifted my valise, and fumbled for the latch key. Though my mother had died four months earlier, the engraving of my parents' names remained unaltered on the brass lion's-head door knocker:
ROBERT & JANETBITTICK.

The lock clicked and turned. I wiped my feet and entered the
dimly lit foyer. It was almost curfew in Brussels. I closed the blackout
curtains. Today, May 9, 1940, was my twenty-second birthday. My first birthday without Mama. The house felt especially lonesome.

"I'm home," I called, hoping my sister, Jessica, and eight-year-old niece, Gina, might have dropped in. No one answered.

For most of seventeen years the stone headmaster's cottage bordering the parklike grounds of Aaron Alderman Seminary had been home to our family. But things were changing. Since Easter, every male student in the school of theology had been called up to military duty in Belgium's antiquated army. The news reports were grim. If the Nazis attacked, few expected Belgium could survive.

The classrooms were empty. Those faculty who had connections abroad fled the chaos of Europe for England or America. But Robert Bittick remained. Faithful Papa. The Alderman buildings had been leased and were now managed by the Jewish Agency. The seminary was transformed into a transit hospice for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland. The ebb and flow of desperate strangers was constant.

Thirty-six Jewish orphan girls from Poland had been given Aryan names and enrolled in St. Mary's Convent school, where I taught English. Girls were easier to assimilate than circumcised boys. If the Nazis attacked Belgium—if Belgium fell—Jews would be the first to be eliminated. A girls' convent school like St. Mary's would remain a safe haven for the children.

With one finger I parted the blackout curtain and peeked out the window.

A thin sliver of forbidden light gleamed from Papa's office in the
chapel. The air-raid warden would soon be knocking on the door to reprimand him. No light allowed. Only stars were permitted to
shine brightly over Belgium. Perhaps Papa was immersed in another
emergency meeting with the Jewish Agency. His grief over the loss of Mama had been submerged in travel permits and arranging pas
sage for hundreds of Polish Jews to England and South America and
the United States.

Perhaps Papa had forgotten my birthday. Without Mama to remind him, he was hopeless about remembering occasions.

I placed my briefcase on the scarred pine kitchen table. Opening a cupboard I mindlessly stared at the blue floral Meissen china Mama had bequeathed to me in a letter left in her top drawer.

And to my precious Loralei I leave my pair of silver can
dlesticks brought from Texas and also my best dishes. With them, I leave joy and laughter and the memories of all our special times together...

On last year's birthday I had come home to a white linen tablecloth and places set for twelve guests. Since Mama's death, I had not once set the table with her shining legacy.

Not even a cup of hot tea was waiting for my homecoming this evening. The copper teakettle was cold on the unlit back burner of the stove. Without Mama, the kitchen—neat, quiet, and uncluttered—was the loneliest room in the house.

No wonder Papa could not bear to be in the cottage alone.

Papa was Austrian while Mama, Janet, had been born in Texas. They met at a Gipsy Smith revival meeting in 1909 and fell in love.
Mama had a Texan's way of talking like no one else. She ended state
ments with a question, as if to ask if you really understood what she was talking about? Papa said she enchanted him. From their first conversation he knew she had to be his forever. They married two months after they met and Mama never stopped asking questions. Like a pair of eagles, their hearts were bound for life.

They pastored a church in a German-speaking settlement at Creedmore, Texas. My sister, Jessica, was born there, in 1911. I arrived seven years later. The family returned to Europe as missionaries after the "War to End All Wars" concluded. Though I had little memory of Texas, Jessica and I spoke perfect American English and considered ourselves Americans. Janet Bittick had not let her daughters forget their mother's first language. From our

childhood, Papa made sure the honor of our U.S. citizenship was prominently noted on our identity papers.

I switched off the lights and retreated down the hall.

The parlor was dark. The keyboard of Mama's upright piano was open, and sheet music spread out on the stand.

Someone had been visiting. The piano was seldom played since Mama passed away. No one could pound out a song like she did. Honky-tonk and Southern Gospel music.
"I'llfly away, Oh, Glory! I'll fly away!"
Mama could draw a crowd every time.

Perhaps some seminary student in a shining new military uniform had stopped in to visit Papa before being called to duty in the Belgian army.

My husband, Varrick, and Jessica's husband of nine years, William, were together at the border. With most of the young men of Belgium they stood guard against possible invasion by the German army. The horror stories of the Nazi invasion of Poland were fresh in everyone's mind.

Entering my bedroom, I kicked the door shut with my foot and closed the curtains before turning on the lamp. I picked up the framed photograph of Varrick and me beside the river Zenne last summer. We were squinting into the sun as Mama grinned around the camera and snapped the shutter. Holding the frame against my heart, I could almost see Mama's face, commanding us to smile and not blink. With a sigh, I turned my back on the memory. What was a birthday, anyway, with so much going on in the world?

"Only another day. Never mind."

Replacing the snapshot, I switched on the tabletop radio. Glenn Miller's band filled the space with "In the Mood." American big band music was becoming more and more popular these days as everyone dreamed of sailing into New York harbor.

I held my arms up as if Varrick had come into the room and asked me to dance. A moment. Imagination. Then I glimpsed my reflection in the round mirror on the wall. Alone. Same thick blond, unruly mane. Sad blue-gray eyes stared back at me as if I were

seeing a stranger within my own reflection. Full red lips curved unconvincingly up at the corners as I tried on a smile.
"I want you
to smile? Honey? Okay. Pretty. Pretty. Now don't blink while I just...
just..say cheese?"

I would not allow myself to think of other birthdays...like last year.
Belgian chocolate cake and presents on the table. Varrick and
the young men from the seminary gathered 'round to serenade.
Who
could have imagined what a difference one year could make? The sudden absence of Mama's cheerful strength had left me so weak.

I turned out the lamp, opened the curtains, and raised the win
dow. Sinking onto the edge of the bed, I lay back on my pillow. The
scent of lilacs drifted in. I remembered Mama planting the lilac bush on my tenth birthday. The thick bloom of Texas in her accent
had returned.
"My darling girl? You're a big girl now. Ten years old?
I can't believe it. Outside my bedroom window at home in Texas? When you were born? There were lilacs. Just beginning to bloom. Happy birthday. Happy, happy birthday, my Loralei. From now on?
I'll always give you lilacs for your birthday. Forever. And when I fly
away? Whenever you smell the scent of lilacs, you'll remember the sweet times of our life.... Can you hold onto that? How much your mama loved you? You'll remember me...remember us."

It was past the dinner hour when I heard the sound of Papa and Jessica outside on the walk.

"But are they all leaving Belgium?" Jessica was incredulous. "Tonight?"

Papa replied somberly, "If they don't make it to France before this begins..."

Little Gina reprimanded, "Grandpa, my daddy won't let the Nazis in."

A moment of silence passed. I leapt to my feet and hurried to meet my father, sister, and niece in the foyer. The door swung open, and Jessica, eight months pregnant, threw her arms around me in an awkward embrace. "Oh, Lora, the Wehrmacht is massing at the borders tonight!"

As Papa nudged them into the parlor, Gina piped, "Oh, Auntie Lora! All the Jews in the seminary? Leaving tonight! Going to France. Maybe us too."

"Papa?" I questioned.

"True." Papa's dark brown eyes flashed concern as he glanced toward Jessica.

"But...us?" I put my arm around Jessica's shoulders. "How can we?"

Papa ran his fingers through closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. The last months had wearied him immeasurably. "We can't stay. If they come..."

I understood who "they" were. But could it be that the Nazis intended to invade as they had in Poland? "Papa?"

Jessica replied quietly, "The train station. Chaos. Riots. They all
want to get away."

Papa looked around the room as though choosing what to take
away when we fled. "We're as much in the gunsights now as the peo
ple we have helped. It will be over in Belgium in a matter of days."