32
Pesha
A little over an hour after leaving Ulm the train pulled into the charming little southern German city of Ravensburg, a mere ten miles or so north of Friedrichshafen, and the shores of Lake Constance. Indiana Jones relaxed in his seat and waited for the train to start moving again after this next to last stop on their journey through the Reich. It hadn't been so bad after all, he thought to himself. Except for that oaf at the German-Dutch border it had gone smoothly. Jones was prepared for the possibility of trouble at the Swiss border, but had a feeling things would go smoothly there too.
In a brief moment all of his relaxed confidence disappeared.
Vadoma suddenly stood up and turned to him with a determined look on her face, "I am getting off here Indy. My kumpania, they are here. You can come with me or not, but I am going to see my people and find out what has happened to Pesha."
The sudden declaration left Jones stunned and speechless for a long moment; apparently too long for Vadoma who abruptly turned and walked towards the door of the train car.
Indy stood up, "Wait! Vadoma wait!"
Heads turned as Jones shouted. They watched curiously as the beautiful gypsy woman walked off the train and the man with the leather jacket and fedora ran shouting after her.
"Vadoma!" Jones caught up with her and grabbed her arm, "you can't do this!"
"I must do this!" she answered back forcefully.
Now they were beginning to attract a small group of onlookers. The couple standing on the train platform shouting at each other in English began to draw attention.
Jones looked around for a moment, then spoke more quietly, but no less sternly, "Come on, get back on the train."
Vadoma yanked her arm free from Jones' grasp, "I will not get back on the train Indiana Jones. I thought you...I thought you understood."
"Look, the only thing I understand is that we've been damn lucky to make it this far without any trouble."
His eyes looked around at the curious gazes of the small group of people gathered around them and whispering to each other on the platform. "I must do what I must do Indiana Jones. As I said, you can come with me or not..."
"I need you Vadoma! And you know it!"
She looked deeply into his eyes, "You need me? You need me to save your own skin Indiana Jones! You need..."
"It seems to me I saved your skin sister!"
Just as the words left his mouth Jones realized what he had said, and remembered Vadoma's sensitivity to the word. She looked down and then away.
"I'm sorry," Jones said softly.
But she didn't hear it. His words were blotted out by the shrill sound of a train whistle. Jones spun around just in time to see the doors close and the train begin to move.
"Damnit!" He exclaimed in frustration. Then he turned back to Vadoma, "Well, I guess you win," he said resignedly, and then looked around again at the small crowd of people who still gawked at them, "come on, let's get out of here before we attract any more attention."
This time though it was Vadoma's turn to take the lead. She reached out and took Indiana Jones' hand in hers and pulled him along towards the station's exit, and the street beyond.
Ravensburg was a quaint old town of red-roofed Bavarian style houses, wooden churches, cuckoo clocks, and small farms with neatly cut fields. Outside of town in the countryside were rolling meadows interspersed with thick stands of forest. It was through this idyllic scenery that Indy and Vadoma traveled twenty minutes after leaving the train station.
They were in a hired car with a driver. Indy had given up on the idea of Vadoma hiding her knowledge of German. It was no longer practical with the new scenario they found themselves in. She was quickly able to find a car and driver to take them out into the countryside in search of her kumpania of gypsies that she felt sure were nearby.
Indiana Jones remained skeptical, "Where in all of this countryside," he gestured out the window, "are you going to find one small group of people? We don't even have a map."
Vadoma gazed intensely out of the window of the car, "I don't need a map," she scoffed, "I have been through this country so many times. Besides, I am a gypsy, I can read the trees and the rivers and the streams," she looked over at him, "you gadje, you will never understand."
"Oh I understand," Jones said, feeling a little wounded by her rebuff, and thinking of his own rather prodigious capabilities of which he was justly proud....hieroglyphs, ancient languages, booby-traps, temples and tombs... "I can read things too. Maybe not trees, rivers and...."
"Stop the car!" Vadoma shouted at the driver in German.
Indiana Jones looked out the window and saw nothing but scenery.
"This is it Indy," she said.
"I don't see anything," he said with no little incredulity.
"Trust me," Vadoma said with conviction.
They got out. She paid the driver, who turned the car around and headed back towards town; leaving the two of them standing, for all Jones could see, in the middle of nowhere.
"Follow me," she said.
Indiana Jones could hear the excitement in her voice, but it was an excitement tinged with a layer of fatalism.
They crossed over a large meadow and into a group of trees that rapidly turned into a thick forest. The trees were dense here; they swallowed them up and nearly blotted out the sun. It was dark and foreboding to say the least, and it took nearly fifteen minutes to pass through to the other side. But as they broke through to a little meadow there was also a small dirt track. This led through another thick stand of trees, but the going here was far easier due to the track. Five minutes later they came out upon a large meadow beside a river, and next to the river was a gypsy encampment.
Indiana Jones was duly impressed by the woman's ability to navigate through this wilderness and find her people. There was indeed something almost supernatural about it, but that didn't matter for now. They were here, and now they had to find out about Pesha, and that's all that mattered.
The encampment consisted of about a dozen wagons; traditional, squared off, dome-topped caravans with narrow glass windows, set in painted wood frames. The horses, most used for pulling the wagons, but a few for riding, stood grazing peacefully in the meadow or drinking from the river. Children, chickens, clothes hanging up to dry, women tending cooking stoves, and men standing around smoking completed the picture of the gypsy camp. Vadoma could barely contain herself and ran across the open meadow shouting in the Rom language words that Jones could not understand. She was greeted warmly by all with many hugs exchanged. As Indiana Jones slowly approached though, a sudden cold wall of indifference and silence greeted him.
Vadoma turned to him with an apologetic look, "I am sorry Indy. They don't mean to be unfriendly, but you are a..."
Jones nodded his head knowingly, "Yes I know, I'm a ....gadje."
"Indy...can you please wait here, I must go and speak with Elena. She is my ala...my aunt. She has news of Pesha."
"Sure," Jones said, "I'll just go down by the river and ...talk to the horses. Don't worry about me," he said and walked down to the bank of the small river.
Vadoma disappeared into one of the caravan wagons.
'News of Pesha'; Jones wondered what that might be, as he picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the water. He suspected that it couldn't be anything good. She obviously wasn't here, so at best she was still being held by the Gestapo, at worst......
The scream of a woman suddenly rent the peaceful stillness of the meadow and the carefree bustling of the gypsy camp. The children stopped playing, the women stopped their chores, and the men all turned their heads abruptly in the direction of the caravan wagon into which Vadoma had gone to speak with her aunt.
It was Vadoma who had screamed. The scream tailed off into a grief stricken, mournful wail that continued for a long time. Jones ran back towards the stand of wagons, toward the one with Vadoma, but was stopped by several of the men. They roughly held him back. But though they were rough with him, Jones could read in their eyes that they knew to expect this. Jones knew that he should have expected it too.
Pesha was dead.
Indy pulled himself free of them, turned back around and walked back over to the riverbank. At least it was over, he thought. At least there would be no more uncertainty. What had been dreaded was now fact, and at least now Vadoma could move on.
It was nearly an hour before she finally emerged. Jones saw her and walked back over towards the wagons. This time the men did not stop him, and he went to her.
"Pesha is dead," she said, the grief weighing down her voice; her eyes red from crying.
"I know," was all that Indy could think to say back to her.
"The murderers...they made...they...made Elena pay for the coffin....the filthy beasts," Vadoma could barely speak through her sadness.
Jones wanted to reach out and hold her but felt that maybe he shouldn't do so here, and now.
A buzzing sound interrupted their thoughts, and caught the attention of all in the camp. Curious eyes searched around at the surrounding trees and over towards the river as the sound grew louder by degrees. Eventually it could be determined that the sound was from some kind of motorized vehicles. Not long after that the vehicles themselves appeared, bursting out along the tree line on the track.
Two grey painted German armored vehicles, emblazoned with the German cross and the double lightning bolts of the SS came out of the woods and crashed noisily across the meadow. They were followed by a small truck with about a couple of dozen soldiers riding in the back.
The vehicles came on fast, directly for the gypsy encampment. The lead armored car didn't even stop until it had crashed into one of the caravan wagons, knocking it over amid much destruction. The gypsies scattered everywhere. Jones pulled Vadoma close to him as he searched around for a place for them to run to. But the Nazis were fast and efficient. In just a few moments they had cordoned off the encampment with SS soldiers and now they brutally herded the gypsies together in front of the wagons.
"Schnell!" An SS soldier shouted at a child, and then kicked him hard to the ground. The little boy struggled in terror to get up, and ran over to where his parents stood with the rest of the kumpania.
An old woman crawled out of the wreckage of the overturned caravan. She was injured and bleeding. One of the SS men came up behind her and mercilessly kicked her in the backside as she tried to get up.
Other men, women, and children were brutally kicked, beaten, and struck with rifle butts as these masters of brutality rapidly herded the clan together in efficient SS fashion.
Indiana Jones and Vadoma found themselves in the center and towards the rear of the cowering mass of people and had no chance to run. Jones felt down into his pocket and grabbed hold of his Webley. He resisted the urge to just draw the weapon and begin firing on the brutal killers. He knew that to do so would probably be suicide, and might cause the deaths of many of the innocent people around him, and so he reluctantly waited to see what would happen; and for the right opportunity.
When his men had finished herding the gypsies together the SS Hauptsturmfuhrer in command stepped down from the second armored vehicle, calmly lit a cigarette, and then walked slowly and arrogantly over to where the terrified people were huddled together at gunpoint. With the cold, practiced eyes of a remorseless killer the man scanned over the mass of people. Then with an exaggeratedly elegant gesture he pointed out one of the gypsy men.
The man was grabbed roughly and pulled out by the soldiers. They kicked him and struck with their rifle butts until the man was brought to his knees. Then as calmly as if he were practice-firing his weapon the Hauptsturmfuhrer pulled out his Lugar pistol and put a bullet into the base of the man's skull. A brief splatter of blood shot out from the unfortunate man's mouth as he fell forward, dead.
Screams of shock and terror were quickly subdued by kicks, and blows from rifle butts as the SS soldiers brutally quieted the terrified people. Then the Hauptsturmfuhrer began to speak in German.
Vadoma translated for Jones in a hushed, quivering whisper, "He says that this man was a criminal.............he says that there are other criminals and foreign spies among us.........he says..."
Jones interrupted her, "I think I get the picture, and I don't think I want to hear any more of his speech," he grabbed hold of Vadoma's hand tightly, "I think it's time for us to leave."
Pesha
A little over an hour after leaving Ulm the train pulled into the charming little southern German city of Ravensburg, a mere ten miles or so north of Friedrichshafen, and the shores of Lake Constance. Indiana Jones relaxed in his seat and waited for the train to start moving again after this next to last stop on their journey through the Reich. It hadn't been so bad after all, he thought to himself. Except for that oaf at the German-Dutch border it had gone smoothly. Jones was prepared for the possibility of trouble at the Swiss border, but had a feeling things would go smoothly there too.
In a brief moment all of his relaxed confidence disappeared.
Vadoma suddenly stood up and turned to him with a determined look on her face, "I am getting off here Indy. My kumpania, they are here. You can come with me or not, but I am going to see my people and find out what has happened to Pesha."
The sudden declaration left Jones stunned and speechless for a long moment; apparently too long for Vadoma who abruptly turned and walked towards the door of the train car.
Indy stood up, "Wait! Vadoma wait!"
Heads turned as Jones shouted. They watched curiously as the beautiful gypsy woman walked off the train and the man with the leather jacket and fedora ran shouting after her.
"Vadoma!" Jones caught up with her and grabbed her arm, "you can't do this!"
"I must do this!" she answered back forcefully.
Now they were beginning to attract a small group of onlookers. The couple standing on the train platform shouting at each other in English began to draw attention.
Jones looked around for a moment, then spoke more quietly, but no less sternly, "Come on, get back on the train."
Vadoma yanked her arm free from Jones' grasp, "I will not get back on the train Indiana Jones. I thought you...I thought you understood."
"Look, the only thing I understand is that we've been damn lucky to make it this far without any trouble."
His eyes looked around at the curious gazes of the small group of people gathered around them and whispering to each other on the platform. "I must do what I must do Indiana Jones. As I said, you can come with me or not..."
"I need you Vadoma! And you know it!"
She looked deeply into his eyes, "You need me? You need me to save your own skin Indiana Jones! You need..."
"It seems to me I saved your skin sister!"
Just as the words left his mouth Jones realized what he had said, and remembered Vadoma's sensitivity to the word. She looked down and then away.
"I'm sorry," Jones said softly.
But she didn't hear it. His words were blotted out by the shrill sound of a train whistle. Jones spun around just in time to see the doors close and the train begin to move.
"Damnit!" He exclaimed in frustration. Then he turned back to Vadoma, "Well, I guess you win," he said resignedly, and then looked around again at the small crowd of people who still gawked at them, "come on, let's get out of here before we attract any more attention."
This time though it was Vadoma's turn to take the lead. She reached out and took Indiana Jones' hand in hers and pulled him along towards the station's exit, and the street beyond.
Ravensburg was a quaint old town of red-roofed Bavarian style houses, wooden churches, cuckoo clocks, and small farms with neatly cut fields. Outside of town in the countryside were rolling meadows interspersed with thick stands of forest. It was through this idyllic scenery that Indy and Vadoma traveled twenty minutes after leaving the train station.
They were in a hired car with a driver. Indy had given up on the idea of Vadoma hiding her knowledge of German. It was no longer practical with the new scenario they found themselves in. She was quickly able to find a car and driver to take them out into the countryside in search of her kumpania of gypsies that she felt sure were nearby.
Indiana Jones remained skeptical, "Where in all of this countryside," he gestured out the window, "are you going to find one small group of people? We don't even have a map."
Vadoma gazed intensely out of the window of the car, "I don't need a map," she scoffed, "I have been through this country so many times. Besides, I am a gypsy, I can read the trees and the rivers and the streams," she looked over at him, "you gadje, you will never understand."
"Oh I understand," Jones said, feeling a little wounded by her rebuff, and thinking of his own rather prodigious capabilities of which he was justly proud....hieroglyphs, ancient languages, booby-traps, temples and tombs... "I can read things too. Maybe not trees, rivers and...."
"Stop the car!" Vadoma shouted at the driver in German.
Indiana Jones looked out the window and saw nothing but scenery.
"This is it Indy," she said.
"I don't see anything," he said with no little incredulity.
"Trust me," Vadoma said with conviction.
They got out. She paid the driver, who turned the car around and headed back towards town; leaving the two of them standing, for all Jones could see, in the middle of nowhere.
"Follow me," she said.
Indiana Jones could hear the excitement in her voice, but it was an excitement tinged with a layer of fatalism.
They crossed over a large meadow and into a group of trees that rapidly turned into a thick forest. The trees were dense here; they swallowed them up and nearly blotted out the sun. It was dark and foreboding to say the least, and it took nearly fifteen minutes to pass through to the other side. But as they broke through to a little meadow there was also a small dirt track. This led through another thick stand of trees, but the going here was far easier due to the track. Five minutes later they came out upon a large meadow beside a river, and next to the river was a gypsy encampment.
Indiana Jones was duly impressed by the woman's ability to navigate through this wilderness and find her people. There was indeed something almost supernatural about it, but that didn't matter for now. They were here, and now they had to find out about Pesha, and that's all that mattered.
The encampment consisted of about a dozen wagons; traditional, squared off, dome-topped caravans with narrow glass windows, set in painted wood frames. The horses, most used for pulling the wagons, but a few for riding, stood grazing peacefully in the meadow or drinking from the river. Children, chickens, clothes hanging up to dry, women tending cooking stoves, and men standing around smoking completed the picture of the gypsy camp. Vadoma could barely contain herself and ran across the open meadow shouting in the Rom language words that Jones could not understand. She was greeted warmly by all with many hugs exchanged. As Indiana Jones slowly approached though, a sudden cold wall of indifference and silence greeted him.
Vadoma turned to him with an apologetic look, "I am sorry Indy. They don't mean to be unfriendly, but you are a..."
Jones nodded his head knowingly, "Yes I know, I'm a ....gadje."
"Indy...can you please wait here, I must go and speak with Elena. She is my ala...my aunt. She has news of Pesha."
"Sure," Jones said, "I'll just go down by the river and ...talk to the horses. Don't worry about me," he said and walked down to the bank of the small river.
Vadoma disappeared into one of the caravan wagons.
'News of Pesha'; Jones wondered what that might be, as he picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the water. He suspected that it couldn't be anything good. She obviously wasn't here, so at best she was still being held by the Gestapo, at worst......
The scream of a woman suddenly rent the peaceful stillness of the meadow and the carefree bustling of the gypsy camp. The children stopped playing, the women stopped their chores, and the men all turned their heads abruptly in the direction of the caravan wagon into which Vadoma had gone to speak with her aunt.
It was Vadoma who had screamed. The scream tailed off into a grief stricken, mournful wail that continued for a long time. Jones ran back towards the stand of wagons, toward the one with Vadoma, but was stopped by several of the men. They roughly held him back. But though they were rough with him, Jones could read in their eyes that they knew to expect this. Jones knew that he should have expected it too.
Pesha was dead.
Indy pulled himself free of them, turned back around and walked back over to the riverbank. At least it was over, he thought. At least there would be no more uncertainty. What had been dreaded was now fact, and at least now Vadoma could move on.
It was nearly an hour before she finally emerged. Jones saw her and walked back over towards the wagons. This time the men did not stop him, and he went to her.
"Pesha is dead," she said, the grief weighing down her voice; her eyes red from crying.
"I know," was all that Indy could think to say back to her.
"The murderers...they made...they...made Elena pay for the coffin....the filthy beasts," Vadoma could barely speak through her sadness.
Jones wanted to reach out and hold her but felt that maybe he shouldn't do so here, and now.
A buzzing sound interrupted their thoughts, and caught the attention of all in the camp. Curious eyes searched around at the surrounding trees and over towards the river as the sound grew louder by degrees. Eventually it could be determined that the sound was from some kind of motorized vehicles. Not long after that the vehicles themselves appeared, bursting out along the tree line on the track.
Two grey painted German armored vehicles, emblazoned with the German cross and the double lightning bolts of the SS came out of the woods and crashed noisily across the meadow. They were followed by a small truck with about a couple of dozen soldiers riding in the back.
The vehicles came on fast, directly for the gypsy encampment. The lead armored car didn't even stop until it had crashed into one of the caravan wagons, knocking it over amid much destruction. The gypsies scattered everywhere. Jones pulled Vadoma close to him as he searched around for a place for them to run to. But the Nazis were fast and efficient. In just a few moments they had cordoned off the encampment with SS soldiers and now they brutally herded the gypsies together in front of the wagons.
"Schnell!" An SS soldier shouted at a child, and then kicked him hard to the ground. The little boy struggled in terror to get up, and ran over to where his parents stood with the rest of the kumpania.
An old woman crawled out of the wreckage of the overturned caravan. She was injured and bleeding. One of the SS men came up behind her and mercilessly kicked her in the backside as she tried to get up.
Other men, women, and children were brutally kicked, beaten, and struck with rifle butts as these masters of brutality rapidly herded the clan together in efficient SS fashion.
Indiana Jones and Vadoma found themselves in the center and towards the rear of the cowering mass of people and had no chance to run. Jones felt down into his pocket and grabbed hold of his Webley. He resisted the urge to just draw the weapon and begin firing on the brutal killers. He knew that to do so would probably be suicide, and might cause the deaths of many of the innocent people around him, and so he reluctantly waited to see what would happen; and for the right opportunity.
When his men had finished herding the gypsies together the SS Hauptsturmfuhrer in command stepped down from the second armored vehicle, calmly lit a cigarette, and then walked slowly and arrogantly over to where the terrified people were huddled together at gunpoint. With the cold, practiced eyes of a remorseless killer the man scanned over the mass of people. Then with an exaggeratedly elegant gesture he pointed out one of the gypsy men.
The man was grabbed roughly and pulled out by the soldiers. They kicked him and struck with their rifle butts until the man was brought to his knees. Then as calmly as if he were practice-firing his weapon the Hauptsturmfuhrer pulled out his Lugar pistol and put a bullet into the base of the man's skull. A brief splatter of blood shot out from the unfortunate man's mouth as he fell forward, dead.
Screams of shock and terror were quickly subdued by kicks, and blows from rifle butts as the SS soldiers brutally quieted the terrified people. Then the Hauptsturmfuhrer began to speak in German.
Vadoma translated for Jones in a hushed, quivering whisper, "He says that this man was a criminal.............he says that there are other criminals and foreign spies among us.........he says..."
Jones interrupted her, "I think I get the picture, and I don't think I want to hear any more of his speech," he grabbed hold of Vadoma's hand tightly, "I think it's time for us to leave."