Marriage before Death

By Uvi Poznansky

After D-Day, her photograph appears on the most-wanted Nazi propaganda posters. Who is the girl with the red beret? She reminds Lenny of Natasha, but no, that cannot be. Why does Rochelle step into the courtroom when he is lead by SS soldiers to the gallows? At the risk of being found out as a French Resistance fighter, what makes her propose marriage to a condemned man?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uvi Poznansky
• Release date: Aug 18, 2017

Uvi Poznansky

Uvi Poznansky is a California-based author, poet and artist. Her writing and her art are tightly coupled. “I paint with my pen,” she says, “and write with my paintbrush.” She earned her B. A. in Architecture and Town Planning from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. During her studies and in the years immediately following her graduation, she practiced with an innovative Architectural firm, taking part in the design of a large-scale project, Home for the Soldier. At the age of 25 Uvi moved to Troy, N.Y. with her husband and two children. Before long, she received a Fellowship grant and a Teaching Assistantship from the Architecture department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she guided teams in a variety of design projects; and where she earned her M.A. in Architecture. Then, taking a sharp turn in her education, she earned her M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan. During the years she spent in advancing her career—first as an architect, and later as a software engineer, software team leader, software manager and a software consultant (with an emphasis on user interface for medical instruments devices)—she wrote and painted constantly. In addition, she taught art appreciation classes. Her versatile body of work can be seen on her website, which includes poems, short stories, bronze and ceramic sculptures, paper engineering projects, oil and watercolor paintings, charcoal, pen and pencil drawings, and mixed media. In addition, she posts her thoughts about the creative process on her blog, and engages readers and writers in conversation on her Goodreads group, The Creative Spark. Uvi published a poetry book in collaboration with her father, Zeev Kachel. Later she published two children’s books, Jess and Wiggle and Now I Am Paper, which she illustrated, and for which she created animations. You can find these animations on her Amazon author page, and her Goodreads author page. Apart From Love is an intimate peek into the life of a strange family: Natasha, the accomplished pianist, has been stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Her ex-husband Lenny has never told their son Ben, who left home ten years ago, about her situation. At the same time he, Lenny, has been carrying on a love affair with a young redhead, who bears a striking physical resemblance to his wife—but unlike her, is uneducated, direct and unrefined. This is how things stand at this moment, the moment of Ben’s return to his childhood home. Home, her deeply moving poetry book in tribute of her father, includes her poetry and prose, as well as translated poems from the pen of her father, the poet and author Zeev Kachel. A Favorite Son, her novella, is a new-age twist on an old yarn. It is inspired by the biblical story of Jacob and his mother Rebecca, plotting together against the elderly father Isaac, who is lying on his deathbed. This is no old fairy tale. Its power is here and now, in each one of us. Twisted is a unique collection of tales. In it, the author brings together diverse tales, laden with shades of mystery. Here, you will come into a dark, strange world, a hyper-reality where nearly everything is firmly rooted in the familiar—except for some quirky detail that twists the yarn, and takes it for a spin in an unexpected direction. Rise to Power, A Peek at Bathsheba, and The Edge of Revolt are volume I, II, and III of The David Chronicles, telling the story of David as you have never heard it before: from the king himself, telling the unofficial version, the one he never allowed his court scribes to recount. In his mind, history is written to praise the victorious—but at the last stretch of his illustrious life, he feels an irresistible urge to tell the truth. With the exception of her newest release, these books are available in all three editions (audio, print and ebook.)

Book preview

Contents

Were These the Good Times?

In the Foxhole

The Girl with the Red Beret

Fire and Smoke

Caught

A Knock at the Door

Marriage before Death

Between a Ring and a Noose

A Dark Road to the City of Lights

Not the Girl I Knew

A Woman, Wanted

Young Men without Women

Two Hats, Two Faces

Around the Campfire

A Drop at Nightfall

This is the Man I Loved

About this Book

About the Author

About the Cover

Acknowledgements

A Note to the Reader

Bonus Excerpts

Books by Uviart

Children’s Books by Uviart

Marriage before Death © 2017 Uvi Poznansky

Were These the Good Times?

Prologue

The last line, she says, turning away from me. That’s where you should start.

Is it? I wonder. Over the years I have heard little advice from her, and accepted even less than that. When it comes to my literary aspirations I am used to getting few words of encouragement. Perhaps she doubts that a middle-aged man who is always fumbling about in search of a pen can be a writer.

But today of all days, in spite of her usual suggestions that I should apply myself to a stable profession, my wife seems agreeable—no, much more than that, eager—for me to write. The change she is undergoing must have caught up to her.

Her attempt, early this morning, to write a letter to our son, Ben, may still be fresh in her mind. And now, sitting outside on the balcony, Natasha stares at the nothingness of the mist. In her hands are a few scribbled pages, which she casts away, one crumpled thing after another, releasing them over the railing.

I hesitate to tell her to stop that. When she is caught in this mood, who knows how she may react. Perhaps she already knows she can no longer rely upon herself to write her own story.

Natasha stands up, her figure so slim, so fragile, outlined against the background of a fog-dripping tree.

You should start, she repeats, with the last line.

And I ask, Of what?

Of that movie we saw, back then, in Paris, she says. What was the name of it? I forget.

Oh, I know, I say, in an attempt to relieve her of that strain, that effort to grasp for something that happened so long ago. You mean, the one we saw, when was that? The first day of our honeymoon?

Yes, she replies, and in the same breath, the name comes back to her, which surprises both of us. "Les Croix de Bois¹! she exclaims, with a French accent that is still, somehow, perfect, just like back then in the old days. Wooden crosses! That’s it!"

In truth, any type of romance would have been a more fitting choice for that occasion. Our marriage should have started on a lighter note.

Natasha lowers her eyelids, so at this point, the green glint in them is lost to me. And just when I wonder if her thoughts have drifted elsewhere, she says, So? Remember the last line?

I do.

Tell me.

The movie, I say, in which the hero went through a terrifying, seemingly endless trench war, where more and more wooden crosses have to be erected, signed off with, ‘When all this is over, we’ll say, These were still the good times.’

I must have used too many words. Natasha is silent for quite a while, which makes me wonder if she even heard me.

At last she asks, Were they, Lenny?

What she is asking me, in the most profound sense, is not about the script of some old flick—but rather about our lives.

Perhaps she longs for the excitement of what happened back then. But for me, if the good times are behind us, if they are over, then... Then, where are we heading now? I cannot tell her that our future is in doubt, cannot tell that even to myself—but I think that she knows it, even without words.

So I fall silent, ignoring her question, resisting her. With everything in me I try to avoid losing myself in the past, in reflection.

In place of an answer I busy myself. I slide open the glass door and go back inside for the wine bottle, which I bought yesterday for our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Having taken it out of the ice bucket, I uncork it. Then I bring it out to the balcony and hand her a wine glass.

She wraps her fingers around the stem. And again, her eyes sparkle.

With Cabernet Sauvignon, I tell her, pouring enough to fill the widest part of the glass, the rule is, old before young.

That I like, she says, raising the half-full thing to her lips.

Meanwhile I draw closer, my hand brushing a wisp of her red hair around the curve of her ear. For just a moment, my breath caresses the tender flesh at the back of her neck.

How can I start at the end, I say, or even at the beginning, when there’s so much in the center of your story that I don’t quite know.

She says nothing, and I go on to say, To this day, my love, you’ve been keeping your secrets from me.

In sudden agitation, her hand shakes. At this close range I spot the wine, surging up the side of the tipped glass, then over the rim. Then comes the aroma, in all its lovely variations: blackcurrant notes, accompanied by mint and cedar. It is mellow—yet intoxicating, which makes me neglect, for just a second, to watch out for what she does next.

In a flash, Natasha steps away from me and slides the glass door, which screeches as she draws it to a close behind her. Over the startled reflection of my face I see her piano, standing inside like an icy beast, waiting to be awakened.

She heads towards it, stepping over sheets of musical notes, which are strewn all about. All the while, the wine glass dangles carelessly from her fingers, dripping across the rug, staining it red.

She runs her fingers across the ivories, trying to improvise. The first sounds are soft, uncertain. Then, wave after wave, here come the reverberations, pounding strong, straight at my heart. They make me imagine our past. In the manner of an old fairytale, they conjure the beginning of our love, the way it should have happened.

A magical wedding, there in the city of lights. No secrets between us leading up to that moment, and nothing held back from each other, from then on.

Happiness. Openness. Trust.

But both of us know, that’s fiction. It is not how our life actually happened. Because of my covert mission during the first months of 1944, I had to keep my actions under wraps, only to be rewarded with an equal measure of concealment.

During that last meeting we had in London, two months before D-Day, Natasha told me she was on her way to board a ship, which was about to sail across the Atlantic, back home. Only later did I learn the truth, and to this day I am still piecing more of it together.

Her journey, I now figure, was no less dangerous than mine. It took her not to New York, as I was led to believe, but in the opposite direction: she landed on French soil at least a month before I did—perhaps even earlier—and stayed there, behind enemy lines, putting her life at risk.

What made her do such a crazy thing? And why didn’t she tell me, during that meeting, that she was about to join the French Resistance? Why didn’t she confide in me?

I admire Natasha, but think of her as a fragile beauty. So I shudder, even now, to think about the dangers my sweetheart must have faced.

Since then she told me, from time to time, about the ever-present danger of being caught with contraband, a pistol, or forged papers. But the more pressing fear, about which she rarely talked, was betrayal.

The effort to recruit new fighters contained within it the potential to destroy the entire organization, because when a traitor penetrated into it, like venom, he would crawl up the arteries to the heart.

From reading the London Gazette in the weeks leading up to the Allied invasion, I learned that the French people—even some of those who had once supported the Vichy regime—began to turn against its backing of the Nazis.

So in retaliation, the Milice, a secret-police force that collaborated with Hitler's government, began to investigate their own countrymen, using torture.

Then, the day before D-Day, the BBC broadcasted coded messages, which spurred Frenchmen into attacking German soldiers who were occupying their country. In revenge, the Nazis hanged over a hundred people in Tulle and murdered scores more in Argenton. 

Such were the circumstances when, during the first days of fighting in Normandy, I came across a Nazi propaganda poster, which depicted Resistance fighters as members of L'Armée du crime, the army of crime. And whose photo appeared right there, smack in the center of that poster, among others wanted dead or alive, but a most familiar face? At the time I thought, no, this must be a mistake. This could not be Natasha. She must be some other woman, a young, pale-face French girl who, somehow, looks remarkably similar to the one I love.

Now, all these years later, I wonder: does Natasha dream about operating in the shadows, about turning into a spy? When she cries in her sleep, is she still there, in a hideout or on some route of escape? Having lived through perils no one else can imagine, does she still sense the excitement, a heightened vibration of life going through her veins?

Is there enough time for me to listen to her story, to commit it to paper—even as she is losing the words?

I wish I could sweep her off her feet, the way I did in our youth, and kiss her till she is weak at the knees—but who knows how she will react. At this point I have to be more careful with her.

I hope you know, I say, at last answering her question and hoping she can, somehow, hear me on the other side of the glass door. These were still the good times.

I slide it open. Her hands fly faster and faster over the keys, to the point of becoming a blur, and her music is no longer the stuff of fairytales. It is becoming wilder, and I sense what it is she brings out of her piano, out of the belly of the beast.

It is darkness, downright darkness that can not be mistaken. What can it be called, but despair?

In the Foxhole

Chapter 1

This was the last place I expected to hear a mention of her name, not only because I knew none of the soldiers fighting by my side and not only because there was no time to speak—but also because she belonged elsewhere. In my mind, Natasha existed in another realm: a realm of peace, where I could immerse myself in thoughts, recalling our last moments together, recalling love.

Such a realm was far out of reach, because a fierce battle was raging all around me. With the shrill, howling noise of incoming rockets, which we nicknamed Moaning Minnies, this was not the time to think, let alone immerse myself in any kind of mental activity.

I had landed with one of our infantry regiments, but in the chaos that ensued got separated, somehow, from it, and had no choice but to join another team of soldiers. They wore British uniforms—except one who, to my surprise, wore a kilt. He was armed with nothing more than his bagpipes and played a Scottish marching song, even as his comrades fell around him.

For some reason, the German snipers seemed to spare him. They must have thought he had gone mad, and so did I.

Behind us, the coast was crowded with destroyers, landing craft, and battleships, their guns blasting the shoreline. At the same time, there was an ear-splitting crackle of firing, coming from enemy tanks here and snipers there. The sound was heavily punctuated with the boom of shells raining down upon us, all of which made me utterly confused. Scared, too.

There was no reason why one man lost his life and not another. It seemed to be nothing but a game of chance.

Was it my time to go? I tried to act indifferent, even as I drew a startled breath. If it was about to become my last one, then... Then, oh well, so be it.

After a while my mind became numb. It seemed as if it had always been that way, as if moving forward—for as long as I would be lucky enough to survive—that was how my mind would remain.

Looking across the river Orne I saw the Germans retreating. Even so, there was no time to get a sense of relief, because every now and again they turned around and came back to counter-attack.

The bagpipe music had long faded away. At the sound of an explosion, eight of the British soldiers just ahead of me went down as fast as pins in a bowling alley. Another soldier came forward from behind, and both of us went on our hands and knees, crawling through the tall grass to help the wounded.

The only thing we can do for them, he said, in his British accent, is this: stick their rifles in the ground and hang their tin hats on top.

Why?

To mark their position for the medics.

Once that was done, I advanced over a mound of earth, heading in a roundabout way