Tightrope

If she stares out of the window perhaps the questions will stop. There have been so many questions. The American intelligence officer asked her questions, dozens of questions that referred to a time that seemed so distant as to belong to another person in a different world. She had wanted those questions to stop but they kept on mercilessly:

“How did you get to France?”

“I jumped.”

“Jumped?”

“Parachute. I parachuted.”

“When was this?”

When was it? Time was dilated, the whole of her previous life compressed into a few moments, the last year stretching out into decades. “I don’t recall. October, I think. The October moon. Look it up in your calendar.”

“Last year?”

Was it last year? Days, months stumbled through her brain, the units of misery, the texture of her existence, a medium she struggled through, like wading waist-deep through icy water. “The year before. Nineteen forty-three.”

“You parachuted into France in the fall of forty-three?” There was incredulity in his tone. “Where was this exactly?”

“The southwest. North of Toulouse. I forget the name of the place…’

“And who sent you?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s secret. If you contact British intelligence they’ll confirm my story. Please, do that. Please. I beg you.”

“And then you were arrested. Where was that?”

“In Paris. Near Paris, not in Paris. At a railway station.”

“Name?”

She shook her head. “I forget…”