Tanner’s Virgin

Chapter 6

The water permanently dispelled thoughts of frying pans and fires. If it had been any colder I could have played hockey on it. I left the rail in a lifesaver’s jump, body bent forward, legs apart, arms wide, but at the last moment I must have done something wrong, because instead of staying above water I sank like a brick. Eventually my brain sent a night letter to my arms and legs and I made furious scrambling motions while waiting for my whole life to pass before me. I guess that only happens if you really drown. I broke the surface and breathed out and in a few times, and then I heard shouts and saw a spotlight swing laboriously around toward me. I drew a last breath and went under again just as the first bullets began slapping at the water’s surface.

I tried swimming underwater, which is something I don’t do awfully well under optimum conditions, which these clearly weren’t. I surfaced and dove again before they could bring the guns around. Movement was very difficult, and at last I realized that it was my clothes which were causing the difficulty. But I’ll be cold without them, I thought. Then it occurred to me that they were doing nothing to keep me warm underwater.

Years ago, when I took a lifeguard course, they taught us to strip completely before entering the water. It only takes a few seconds on land and you more than make up for it in improved swimming speed. But I hadn’t had the time to spare when I left the ship. Now I worked my way out of jacket and shirt, kicked off shoes and socks, ripped open a stuck zipper and squirmed out of trousers. I would have left my undershorts on – they can’t slow one down much, certainly – but I hadn’t had them on to begin with. As far as I knew they remained in Julia’s room in London. So I swam on without them and worried about sharks.

The sharks in the boat were a more immediate source of danger. They must have circled for half an hour, playing that damned spotlight over the water and popping away with their guns in my approximate direction. As far as I know, none of their shots came particularly close. It was pitch dark out, I was underwater more often than not, and the sea was sufficiently choppy to make observation tricky, not to mention marksmanship. After maybe thirty minutes of this I guess they decided that if I hadn’t drowned already I would sooner or later. They stopped circling and went rapidly away. I treaded water for awhile until I couldn’t hear their engines any longer. Then I closed my eyes, and some of the more recent moments in my life passed before me, and drowning, now that I thought about it, seemed like a pretty good idea.

Virgins, white-slavers, smugglers, spies. I sighed heavily. The waves rolled on, as waves are apt to do. I remembered which way the boat had gone and pointed myself in that general direction and set out to swim the English Cha

It took forever. I used to swim a lot years ago, and they do say it’s one thing you never forget, and evidently I hadn’t. Even so I kept expecting my strength to give out, and I figured that sooner or later a wave would spill me under the surface and I wouldn’t have anything left to pull myself back up again with. But I kept on going. The water didn’t get any warmer, but I stopped feeling it before long.

Until finally there was a point when I knew I was going to make it. The waves were going the same way I was, which helped immeasurably. Whenever I got sufficiently exhausted I could roll over on my back and float for a while. It wasn’t quite as restful as a few hours in a hammock, but it helped.

I went off course, which was predictable but less than helpful. I missed the little peninsula that Cherbourg is at the tip of, and I suppose that must have cost me a couple of extra hours in the water. And when I did wash up on shore a few hours after sunrise there were some people on the beach. I staggered onto dry land, calling to them in French, and a woman shrieked, “Howard, he’s naked as a jaybird!” and Howard aimed his Instamatic at me and took my picture.

Howard, it turned out, had washed up on this very spot almost twenty-five years ago in June of 1944. He was part of the Normandy invasion, and my cha

My skin was more blue than not and my teeth were doing their castanet number. Worse than that, I was lightheaded almost to the point of delirium. If they had asked me anything at all I would have told them some thoughtless approximation of the truth, and I suppose they would have either run away from me or turned me in.

But they never asked. Only American tourists could have been capable of such a feat. It was not reserve that prevented them from asking. I’ve thought about it for some time, and I can only conclude that they didn’t ask because they didn’t care. Howard wanted to talk about the Normandy invasion and the way the French girls welcomed them at the liberation of Paris. Howard’s wife – I’ve forgotten her name – babbled intermittently about their wisdom in bringing rolls of American toilet paper with them.

Not that they ignored me. Howard found a terry cloth bathrobe in the trunk of the car that they were buying in Europe at a great savings, and I dried myself with it, thinking it was a towel, and then, realizing my mistake, put it on. This enabled Howard’s wife to look at me. Before I had been somewhat less naked than a jaybird – I was still wearing my moneybelt around my middle – but I’d still been distinctly exposed.

They made coffee for me. They had a thermos of hot water, and Howard’s wife had brought not only toilet paper but a small jar of genuine American instant coffee. They offered me a ride back to Paris, but I just couldn’t believe that I could spend that much time with them without something going wildly wrong. It also occurred to me that this might be a trap, that they would take me to Paris only to turn me in at the American Embassy. This, I told myself, was nonsense. But if my mind was capable of such fantasies it only proved that I needed a few hours of rest before making any major decisions. I rode as far as Caen, with Howard continuing his monologue on the fundamental superiority of the American fighting man. Howard’s wife said “yes, dear” a lot, and when Howard ran out of gas – figuratively, not literally, thank the saints – she told me that they were from Centralia, Illinois. I said that I had an aunt in Centralia, Washington. I don’t know why I said this. It isn’t true. Howard’s wife said that the two cities were often confused, and that on occasion their mail had been sent to Centralia, Washington by mistake. I said that my aunt had often spoken of the same problem.

I left them on the outskirts of Caen. “Now I’m not about to take that robe away from you,” Howard said. “Can’t go doing that, even if this is France and all.”

Howard’s wife said, “Oh, Howie!” and giggled.

“So I’ll just give you my card,” he went on, “and you send the robe back when you’re done with it.”

I wonder if he ever got the robe back. I left it in one of the outbuildings of an apple orchard outside of Caen. The hired men lived in the building, and they were all out picking apples when I got there, so I went from bed to bed until I found a set of clothes my size – corduroy button-fly trousers, a thick fla

It was nice to be wearing underwear again.