nebulous that on plenty of occasions we wound up squandering our efforts. We accomplished so much and berated ourselves for not doing more. Isn’t it always the way?
Morven wasn’t going back into nursing either. She scored off the charts on a series of cryptography exams and was sent to Arlington Hall early on in the war. (It was around that time she found our apartment in Cat’s Hollow, though it would be years before we could actually live there.) The Signal Intelligence Service very magnanimously lent Morven to MI6, and they kept her there until V-day. She “broke”—translated, that is—plenty of codes from other beldames behind the lines, and at the end of the war they made her a member of the Order of the British Empire. She still keeps the medal in a box on her bedside table.
Yes, sir, the Harbingers pulled their weight. Uncle Heck and Uncle Hy were two of the most celebrated pilots in the U.S. Air Force; they volunteered for missions that seemed tantamount to suicide and came home again without so much as a ding in the chrome. Together they flew a B-26 Marauder all over Europe, yet the plane never made a blip on an enemy radar screen before it reached its target; the only evidence of its presence was a shadow gliding over wide green pastures in the moonlight. One could take over if the other ran low on oomph. They called them the “Immortal Duo.” They really did seem invincible back then.
In many ways espionage was even more frustrating than nursing. You had very little idea how your own bit would be of value, because you were never meant to know too much in case you were captured. No matter how trivial the errand, you trusted it mattered a great deal in the grander scheme, and so you put everything you had into fulfilling it safely. Get your hands dirty without leaving a smudge: that was the trick. Every detail was crucial, no matter how minute, for a man’s life was forfeit if an SS officer noticed his buttons were sewn parallel instead of crosswise. And if your luck ran out, you had to destroy the evidence and be prepared to die at your own hand. But I had all my oomph in those days—before there was a hide to slough—so there was little for me to fear in that regard at least.
As I say, foreign languages are a cinch for the likes of us. Still, I thought I might like to live in Berlin for a while, get fluent and such. I was there over twenty years but it passed like a blink: by day I studied this and that at the Universität , and for my living I read palms and tarot cards in a fusty parlor teeming with aspidistra; by night I drank pink champagne with kohl-eyed nancies in sequined chemises. The Romanisches Café was the best spot, the only spot. I’d drink lager by the quart before supper and tip a dainty bottle of Underberg at the finish—aids in the digestion, you know.
There was little I didn’t do and few I didn’t meet. I even ran with the socialist crowd from time to time, though I could only take their company in limited doses; they were angry men who deprived themselves of meat and drink and sex, rather like monks who’d lost their religion. The circus clowns weren’t much better—they were so sarcastic they could exhaust anyone who made an effort to engage them. They would stare at you over their empty beer steins, yellow stains under the arms of their undershirts, traces of greasepaint still ringing their nose and eyes, and tell you stories of their cheerless childhoods.
But oh, the acrobats! I tell you, making love to an acrobat is a singular experience. Sarrasani was Europe’s finest circus and Dmitri Nesterov—one of the aforementioned acrobats—its finest performer. I used to turn myself into a pigeon and roost on a tent pole so I could watch him perform every night high above the sword eaters and flame throwers.
And yet there was another member of the circus who was even dearer to me: the magician who called himself Neverino, a Bavarian shoemaker who’d fought in the
Morven wasn’t going back into nursing either. She scored off the charts on a series of cryptography exams and was sent to Arlington Hall early on in the war. (It was around that time she found our apartment in Cat’s Hollow, though it would be years before we could actually live there.) The Signal Intelligence Service very magnanimously lent Morven to MI6, and they kept her there until V-day. She “broke”—translated, that is—plenty of codes from other beldames behind the lines, and at the end of the war they made her a member of the Order of the British Empire. She still keeps the medal in a box on her bedside table.
Yes, sir, the Harbingers pulled their weight. Uncle Heck and Uncle Hy were two of the most celebrated pilots in the U.S. Air Force; they volunteered for missions that seemed tantamount to suicide and came home again without so much as a ding in the chrome. Together they flew a B-26 Marauder all over Europe, yet the plane never made a blip on an enemy radar screen before it reached its target; the only evidence of its presence was a shadow gliding over wide green pastures in the moonlight. One could take over if the other ran low on oomph. They called them the “Immortal Duo.” They really did seem invincible back then.
In many ways espionage was even more frustrating than nursing. You had very little idea how your own bit would be of value, because you were never meant to know too much in case you were captured. No matter how trivial the errand, you trusted it mattered a great deal in the grander scheme, and so you put everything you had into fulfilling it safely. Get your hands dirty without leaving a smudge: that was the trick. Every detail was crucial, no matter how minute, for a man’s life was forfeit if an SS officer noticed his buttons were sewn parallel instead of crosswise. And if your luck ran out, you had to destroy the evidence and be prepared to die at your own hand. But I had all my oomph in those days—before there was a hide to slough—so there was little for me to fear in that regard at least.
As I say, foreign languages are a cinch for the likes of us. Still, I thought I might like to live in Berlin for a while, get fluent and such. I was there over twenty years but it passed like a blink: by day I studied this and that at the Universität , and for my living I read palms and tarot cards in a fusty parlor teeming with aspidistra; by night I drank pink champagne with kohl-eyed nancies in sequined chemises. The Romanisches Café was the best spot, the only spot. I’d drink lager by the quart before supper and tip a dainty bottle of Underberg at the finish—aids in the digestion, you know.
There was little I didn’t do and few I didn’t meet. I even ran with the socialist crowd from time to time, though I could only take their company in limited doses; they were angry men who deprived themselves of meat and drink and sex, rather like monks who’d lost their religion. The circus clowns weren’t much better—they were so sarcastic they could exhaust anyone who made an effort to engage them. They would stare at you over their empty beer steins, yellow stains under the arms of their undershirts, traces of greasepaint still ringing their nose and eyes, and tell you stories of their cheerless childhoods.
But oh, the acrobats! I tell you, making love to an acrobat is a singular experience. Sarrasani was Europe’s finest circus and Dmitri Nesterov—one of the aforementioned acrobats—its finest performer. I used to turn myself into a pigeon and roost on a tent pole so I could watch him perform every night high above the sword eaters and flame throwers.
And yet there was another member of the circus who was even dearer to me: the magician who called himself Neverino, a Bavarian shoemaker who’d fought in the
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