The Gathering Storm

  “I think, perhaps, time grows short for the world. For me, at last. I have seen so much—too much. But never anything like this. Surely the hour glass has run, and in these final moments, I am permitted to love again.”

  “Permitted? You speak in riddles.”

  “Love…you…Lora. No riddle in that.” He did not turn me but stepped around to block my view of the broken city. He held me in his gaze. “Open your eyes. Look at me. Eye to eye. We meet now, in this time and place. I am a man like other men. Do you understand? There is no time. I am in love with you.”

  I saw my reflection shining in his haunting green eyes and knew he was speaking the truth. He lifted my chin and kissed me gently.

  Warm coils unleashed within me. Breathless in his embrace, I could not answer. My knees weakened. I nodded, loving him as I had never loved anyone. Did Eben believe, like so many others, that the world had reached the breaking point?

  How many soldiers had proposed with these words: “We must live and love through every remaining hour.” Was all the suffering of centuries summed up in this war?

  Eben’s next words were a statement of fact, not a question. “You love me.”

  “Yes.” I rested my cheek against his chest. “Yes, Eben. I do.”

  I had never heard a story so horrific or sad or courageous as the story of the four Kopeck children who stood before me. But there was a problem.

  The line of waiting refugee children was long. The babble of European languages echoed in the hallway outside my Sunday school room office.

  The last transports of evacuee children to the United States were being arranged. Only those children with American relatives or sponsors would receive visas. The clamor and confusion were deafening as I attempted to sort out personal details like some petty government bureaucrat.

  “My name is Yehudit Kopeck. My uncle Shmuel, lives in Chicago,” insisted a mop-headed Polish teenage girl. Her arms encircled three younger siblings, all boys. They were thin and malnourished. Blue eyes had dark circles beneath them. “Uncle was called Shmuel Kopeck when he left for America, but he changed his name when he became a citizen.”

  I studied her paperwork. Brief words told of their escape through the woods as the slaughter of their entire village took place within their hearing. Mother and father were machine-gunned and buried in a mass grave. The siblings hid for weeks in the forest before finally making their way on foot to a refugee center at a Sacred Hearts seminary in Belgium.

  Then the Nazis broke through the West’s defenses and the Kopecks’ terror began again.

  Their story was so dreadful that surely these four children deserved a place on the evacuee ship to America. But there were too many blank sections on the forms for four children from Poland to be granted visas to America. I asked, “Do you have your uncle’s contact information?”

  “We lost his address when we lost…our parents. How many Jews could there be in Chicago from Poland, who used to be named Shmuel Kopeck?”

  I did not tell her how large the Jewish community in Chicago was, nor that her particular Shmuel, who now had an unknown last name, might be difficult to locate.

  Eben had heard the miraculous tale of the four children’s survival. He peered above the mob of heads. Pushing through the crowd he made his way upstream to my desk. Anxious, resentful glares followed him. He apologized in at least five languages.

  Smiling down at me, Eben took me by the arm and led me to the cloakroom, out of hearing of the children. He remarked quietly in English, “Uncle Shmuel, Chicago? It can be arranged.” He winked.

  I stuttered an incomplete protest. “But…but…but…”

  His lips against my ear, he said, “What these kids have been through, Lora. You know the Jewish Agency in America knows many American Jews in Chicago named Shmuel. Does it matter if it’s the right Uncle Shmuel? No. They’re going to America. We’ll work out the fine print later.”

  “Tell me how?”

  “I’ll send a wire. I promise there will be a Jew named Shmuel in Chicago who always dreamed of being uncle to four Jewish orphans.”

  His warm eyes were luminous. He was so certain of God’s mercy and leading. I simply smiled in awe of this man.

  “All right then,” I said, feeling giddy.

  “All right.”

  “Thanks. Thanks, Eben. You are sort of miraculous sometimes.”

  He tipped an invisible hat and bowed slightly. “At your service.”

  I started to return to my desk, but he clasped my arm and spun me around. His eyes drank me in, and I felt the flutter of yearning deep inside. “Eben?” I managed to whisper.

  “Lora? And I would like to ask you…do you enjoy cinema? American cinema?”

  I had seen so very few films since we had come to England. Our budget often put groceries beyond our reach. Going to the cinema was a luxury I had not allowed myself. “I suppose I would. If I could…”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out two tickets to the Odeon in Leicester Square.”I show you a miracle. Two tickets to Gone with the Wind.”

  I gasped. “Who did you kill to get them?”

  Eben wagged his finger. “No, no, no. You know how many months this has been sold out?”

  “Clark Gable.” I sighed.

  Eben laughed. “A true miracle. Lora Bittick Kepler, you have not had a break in weeks. These were given to me by a colleague from Oxford who was suddenly called away to Dover. He could have sold them, but I had a better plan.” The priceless tickets lay in his open palm. “Tonight I am taking you to see Gone with the Wind.”

  In my office after work I changed into a short-sleeved blue frock that was too long and several years out of fashion, but I thought the color would be nice with my eyes. Eben seemed pleased when he rapped on the door and I answered it eagerly.

  “You look like a summer sky.” He bowed slightly.

  “In London that is a very uncertain compliment.”

  “Well then, beautiful. You are…beautiful. I should take you to Simpsons for roast beef.”

  “Perhaps after the war, Eben.”

  I did not expect Eben to take me to a restaurant. Instead, I had prepared a meager picnic of our rationed food to share before the cinema. After all, there was rationing in effect, and prices were high. The hotels bought their food in enormous lots and tourists could eat pre-war amounts for five days before their ration coupons were required. With enough cash you could eat as if you lived in America, except…no one had cash but Americans. Dinner at Simpson’s on the Strand with soup and dessert was a costly two dollars. Though the price of all food items had risen, wages remained low and fixed. Margarine fortified with vitamins was a poor substitute for butter. Eggs were eighty p. a dozen, but we were only allowed four per week. Four ounces a week of bacon and ham per person. Eight ounces of sugar per week and only two ounces of tea. We could only purchase one shilling, tenpence—about 37 cents—per week of meat of any kind.

  England’s solution was to plant victory gardens in every spare inch of soil. As Eben and I tramped toward the river that evening, every flower box bloomed with purple cabbages and dripped with ripe red tomatoes.

  I reasoned that a meal at Simpsons would have been far too elegant for my plain blue frock. And what if the maitre d’ asked for our ration coupons? We would have starved afterwards for a week.

  So…on a bench beside the River Thames, Eben produced a packet of his ration of butter. We shared a plowman’s supper of thin cheese sandwiches with chutney, washed down with weak, slightly sweetened tea from a jar. “The most lovely picnic I have had in years,” Eben said with a sigh of contentment.

  Above us, in the last golden rays of twilight, the great silver barrage balloons swam in the summer sky. Though the German air raids were doubtless closing in again on London, I did not fear the Nazis. I had almost forgotten Eben’s words of warning. On such an evening it was hard to imagine the German air force making the short hop across the Channel to drop bombs on our heads.

&n
bsp; Behind us the stately Savoy Hotel towered. I was aware that the elite of London could see us as they ordered their meals in the posh Savoy dining room. Perhaps they pitied us our poor meal, but as I munched my slice of bread, I felt as though I was the wealthiest woman in London.

  Eben sat back and crossed his muscular arms across his chest. He gazed into the purpling sky. “The moon will shine full tonight. Not a perfect night to go to the cinema. But perhaps the German Luftwaffe will not interrupt us.”

  Nazi pilots navigated by the silver light of the moon. Moonlight reflecting on the river formed a road map leading to their targets.

  “I think it will be a perfect night,” I argued, not willing to believe that planes and bombs could interrupt as we watched Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh make love at Tara.

  Eben studied me intently. I pretended I did not feel his eyes upon me as I gazed at the barrage balloons. “Look. The wind has picked up. They are trying to break free and sail away.”

  Eben murmured, “The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, when the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise, in such a night….”

  I recognized the quote. “Shakespeare? Lorenzo to Jessica, I think. Merchant of Venice.”

  “The play first performed just there, on a summer night—across the river from where we sit now…on such a night as this.” He raised his arm and gestured over the brown current. “The Globe Theatre was there. You could shout from here and be heard by the actors.”

  “You tell it as if it was your own memory.”

  “Perhaps it is my memory. Of a kind. I see it in my mind from across a gulf of time. What was. What is. What will be. Written in Scripture. Your father knew this.”

  “You’re an Oxford professor through and through, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve played many parts.”

  “Papa kept us in touch with English by reading Shakespeare aloud.”

  He laughed. “How long was it before you learned Elizabethan English was no longer current?”

  “Awhile.” I smiled. “Once in Brussels, when I spoke to an American tourist needing directions, I was told I would fit very well into the Amish community in America.”

  “Thou wouldst.”

  I studied his profile. His features were beautiful, strong and chiseled, as though he had emerged from the marble of a Roman statue.

  He turned his face to me. Eyes searched my soul, somehow knowing more about me than I knew about myself. “Lora.” He leaned close and spoke my name as if he was asking a question.

  His face was so near mine. Close enough to kiss. I felt breathless for a moment. I drew back. “It just occurred to me. Eben? I don’t know anything about you. Not much anyway. I was a child when I first met you. You don’t seem to have a life but this. You were there when we needed you, but…”

  “No one listened. No one believed.”

  “How did you know? What was coming? We could not have imagined.”

  He shrugged. “The past gives us the clearest picture of the future. But this time the violence will surpass anything the world has ever seen.”

  “How can you know such a thing?” I remembered the fires of Kristallnacht and shuddered.

  He did not reply, but I knew he could see what was ahead of us. “I have lived long enough to know. That is all.”

  “You are alone?”

  “Do you mean, was I married?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was. Once. A long time ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “She flew away. Died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Leaving this world for the next. She is alive. After life comes life.”

  “Did you live here?”

  “Britannia.” He used the ancient name of Great Britain as a scholar might move in and out of a discussion on western civilization.

  “Have you lived alone, long?” I contemplated my own loneliness. As long as I had known Eben, he had never mentioned a wife.

  “Too long.” He stood abruptly as though the subject was too painful for him. “Centuries. Her name was Lily, and her hair was fair. The color of stalks of wheat glistening in the sun.” Gently, he brushed my hair back from my cheek. “Her eyes, the color of… bluebells. Like your eyes, Lora.” He blinked at me as though seeing me for the first time. “I thought I recognized you; knew you; the instant I saw you at your father’s house. You were so young. So long ago.”

  “Switzerland,” I said.

  “Was it? I thought we were last together…somewhere else. So long ago.” He gazed at me with such longing. Was he seeing Lily’s face? I could not mistake his unspoken thought or the familiar touch that accompanied his words to me. I resembled Lily, his beloved.

  I looked at the far shore of the Thames and imagined I could see Eben with his Lily sitting beside the river. Another time. “I am sorry for your loss.”

  “And I? I am sorry for yours, Lora.”

  “Does it grow easier with time, Eben? Missing her? Living without love?” I asked for my own sake.

  His smile was bitter, his reply curt. “No.”

  His honesty stung me. I had somehow envisioned growing content with loneliness. “The cinema…such a love story. Have we missed it? Are we too late?”

  Eben paused before he answered. “Too late? I truly hope not.” I knew he was not answering the question I had asked, but another. Glancing at his wristwatch, he extended his hand to me. “The world as I once knew it, Lora…Gone with the Wind.”

  _____________________

  6 Revelation 11:3, 7, 11-12

  29

  Eben and I were ushered to our seats in the crowded theatre as the musical prelude to Gone with the Wind played. The atmosphere was thick with the buzz of anticipation. House lights dimmed. The audience applauded and then fell silent. The music swelled as the red velvet curtain drew back.

  Eben took my hand in his and slid his other arm around my shoulders. I did not resist. The love story began.

  Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara looked remarkably like Eva, I thought. As Scarlett flirted with her southern beaus, I leaned closer against Eben. His jacket smelled of bay rum, cloves, and talcum. Strong fingers stroked my palm. The film flickered on the screen. Embers within me flickered, then sparked. I closed my eyes and inhaled the clean masculine aroma of Eben. Delicious warmth poured over me; electric desire coursed through me. I resisted the urge to bury my face against his neck. Scene by scene and line by line I imagined Eben as Rhett Butler, pulling me close against him in a passionate embrace. I only half heard the dialogue. I played out more intimate scenes in my mind.

  The intermission lights came up.

  “Well, what do you think?” Eben asked.

  I did not dare look at him. Did what I was feeling show in my expression? “Wonderful.”

  “It is warm in here.” He stood. “Your face is flushed.”

  “Is it?” My hand flew to my cheek. I felt my color deepen. There was nothing I could do about my cursed tendency to blush.

  I was certain I would not, could not, breathe, unless Eben’s lips touched mine before the night was over.

  “I think Rhett will tame Scarlett,” Eben said.

  “I do hope so.” I once more pictured Eben pulling me into his arms and kissing me hungrily. I felt my face redden again and hoped Eben would not notice.

  “So,” he said cheerfully, “it’s been a very long time for you, eh?”

  I swallowed hard. Was he a mind reader? “Long time?”

  “You said it had been a very long time since you had been to a cinema.”

  “Oh! That. Yes.” I fanned myself with a program. “I should. Come. More often. Good for language skills.”

  He observed me with unconcealed amusement. “You should. Perhaps I will come. We will. If you like, more often.”

  Inane conversation passed between us. It was something like lighting a candle to read by while the house was on fire.

  The music began again and, ready for Act
2, everyone took their seats.

  Eben put his arm around me. The electric current in my core uncoiled slowly. I grew weak at his touch. Hopeless, I leaned away from his arm and clasped my hands together. He looked at me curiously. The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. Did he understand what his touch had done to me?

  Atlanta burned. Rhett rescued Scarlett and Miss Millie from the Yankees. Something wonderful and powerful had reignited within me. I had known breathless, awkward love with the boy I had married, but only briefly. When I had learned of Varrick’s death, I had decided it was enough to live the rest of my life, merely remembering what it had been like to lay in a man’s arms and yield to his kisses. That night, as I sat beside Eben, I knew memory was not enough. I felt alive again. I wondered when Eben had last held his beloved in his arms.

  No sooner had we emerged from the theatre than the air-raid sirens began to wail. Since it was exactly straight up on the hour of eleven, all London’s clocks and bell towers appeared to also protest the disruption of the peaceful, romantic night.

  If the blacked-out byways of London were a pit of gloom, then the plunge inside the closely curtained Oxford Street underground station was to enter the mouth of something like Dante’s vision of hell. The steps were lined with reflective tape, but the procession of pedestrians tramping into the depths was so closely packed and so orderly that little guidance was needed. When we reached a landing and turned a corner, small electric lights again provided their dim glow. Even so I was grateful to have Eben in front of me, where the presence of his back beneath my hand was a comforting reassurance.

  All talking was subdued, almost as if the Londoners feared their conversation would climb to the ears of the German pilots. Once we reached the level of the train platform the crowd spread out. Movement slowed, like a wave subsiding on a sandy shore.

  “I’m scared, ’arry,” said a woman who trod on my toe as she searched for her husband in the mob. “Ooh, I’m sorry, dearie. Beg yer pardon.”

  “Now don’t fret, old girl,” returned Harry. “Naught to be a’frighted of. This is what’yer call just a precaution.”