Max in the House of Spies, page 17
The flickering light of the Shabbat candles threw dancing shadows across Max’s face.
He did indeed.
As did his parents, who were living in the darkness. Without him.
CHAPTER
Thirty-Seven
One week left in Max’s training.
Max did not wait for Jean to greet him. As soon as the door to cottage number 2 opened and the sleeve of Jean’s red jumper winked through the fog, Max was off like a shot for West Field and then the Mansion beyond.
He ran hard, his bent arms like two pistons—left up, right down, right up, left down—just the way Jean did it. Max was still ahead, miraculously, when they made it to the field. As he felt Jean pulling even, he threw every ounce of energy he had into his sprint, and they reached the hay bale at the very same instant.
Jean sprang to the top of it in one fluid motion, and Max could not help but admire, amid his fury and determination, how perfectly she moved, how extraordinary Jean was at everything.
Berg tried to make Max lose his grip but he was ready for the little kobold, and he used his right elbow rather than the hand Berg yanked on to get purchase on the hay. He reached the top of the bale a moment after Jean. Then they were down the other side.
As they ran the rest of the way across the field, Jean was just a step ahead. But try as he might, Max couldn’t catch her. And as the Mansion came into view, the distance between them increased. She touched the brick wall of the grand house and turned to look at her watch.
Just ten seconds later, Max touched the wall, too.
“Well done, Max!” Jean crowed.
But Max spun away from her and gave the gravel at his feet a vicious kick, spraying tiny white pebbles everywhere.
* * *
—
Max held the dummy’s hand and dug his sharp thumbnail into the space between the dummy’s thumb and forefinger.
“Good,” Jean called. “He’d be bending toward you now trying to grab you by the neck! Strike!”
Max raised his elbow and connected with the center of the dummy’s throat.
“Good! End it!”
Max brought his opposite knee up between the dummy’s legs and shouted, “HYAH!”
He looked up. The dummy’s head remained disconcertingly intact.
Max cursed and punched the dummy in the solar plexus—and his fist bent back at an awkward angle.
As Max sat with an ice pack wrapped around his left wrist, Jean said, “You can’t be so hard on yourself, kiddo. You’re getting much better.”
Max said to Stein and Berg, “Better is a million miles from extraordinary.”
Stein said, “You’ll get there.”
But Berg tapped his wrist as if he were wearing an invisible watch. “Tick, tick, tick . . .”
* * *
—
Max’s back was plastered to the redbrick wall of a walled garden on the east side of the Mansion.
Chumley was somewhere nearby, looking for him. Max had to stay hidden for only three more minutes, and then he’d have won this round of hide-and-seek.
Max had never thought of hide-and-seek as a spy game before, but the way Chumley played it, it was. Chumley stood in a stationary position and watched Max sprint away from him. Max had five minutes to go anywhere on the Tring Park grounds to hide. Once the five minutes of waiting had elapsed, Chumley had another ten minutes to track Max down.
Max hadn’t won yet, but he was getting closer.
Max, hidden inside the walled garden, glanced at a wristwatch Chumley had loaned him. Two more minutes. Max took a deep breath. Wait. Be patient.
Trying to alert Chumley to their location, Berg grabbed at a ceramic vase that stood in a large niche—but Stein tackled him and pinned him down.
One more minute. As the immortal creatures grappled, Max slowly leaned forward to peer through the garden gate . . .
“MAX!”
Max ducked his head back as quickly as he could.
Too late.
Chumley was upon him in a moment, upbraiding him and wagging one of his preposterously long fingers in Max’s face. “You had it, boy! Stay still and you’d have won! For God’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you—the third rule of losing a tail: you don’t have to know every damn thing! It doesn’t matter where I am as long as I don’t know where you are!”
As Berg got free from Stein, he said, “I didn’t mess that up. Max did.”
Max hung his head and tried not to let the tears of frustration leak through his eyelashes.
* * *
—
The writing desk, the floor, the living room sofa—they were all blanketed with sheets of paper with an infinity of permutations of Chumley’s name. Max had exhausted every single possibility. The answer had to be here on one of these creamy leaves of stationery.
But which one?
Choose wrong, and the training was over.
Of course, the training would be over in a few days now, anyway. Pretty soon, he’d just have to submit a final guess.
Given the number of pieces of paper, and the number of spellings on each one, his chances of guessing right were just about one in infinity.
Max stood with his hands in his pockets. Sergeant Thompson leaned against the guardhouse.
This wasn’t part of training. Max simply liked Sergeant Thompson.
Maybe that’s why Max liked Sergeant Thompson. Because he was the only one who wasn’t testing Max and watching him fail.
They were contemplating the sun as it fought through the tops of the trees before it started its early afternoon descent.
“Even when it’s sunny, it’s not sunny,” Sergeant Thompson said.
Max shook his head. “Do you ever regret coming to England?”
Sergeant Thompson didn’t hesitate. “Nah. I hate it here. But I told you, Max. When it comes to the people you love most in the world, you will do anything. And you’ll be right to do it.”
Max kept his eyes on Sergeant Thompson as he thought, I would do anything. If only I knew what to do.
CHAPTER
Thirty-Eight
Max couldn’t sleep. Every time he tried to close his eyes, another version of Chumley’s name occurred to him, and he would run downstairs and add it to a list—only to see it already there.
On his fourth time down the stairs, he decided to write another letter.
Dear Uncle Ivor,
I will never send this letter. I will destroy it as soon as it is written. Still, I cannot sleep, so I will write it.
I have good news and bad news. The good news is, I will likely see you very soon. I have missed our table tennis matches. I hope your advanced age has not stolen from you your last strength, and that you will at least try to score a couple of points the next time we play.
The bad news is I will likely see you very soon because I am a rubbish spy, I am slower than a tortoise, I also kick like a tortoise (which is to say not at all), and I have no idea how to spell English surnames.
Max lifted the pencil from the page. He caught his lips between his teeth. Then he wrote:
My mother and father gave me life. They worked so hard to raise me, to feed me, to keep me safe from the bullies and the tyrants and the Jew-haters. They took food from their own plates—when I could see how hungry they were—and put it onto mine. If I can’t help them now—if I can’t even be with them now, in case there’s something I could do to help them—what kind of worthless son am I?
How worthless am I?
How worthless am I?
How worthless am I?
Utterly worthless.
He went back upstairs and lay in bed and his thoughts pummeled him like he was a dummy with swastikas all over his body.
* * *
—
When morning came, Max didn’t get out of bed.
He had two days until the deadline.
Why even bother getting up?
He could lose a race to Jean. He could break his hands and feet and every joint in his body trying to make a dummy’s head explode. He could play a child’s game with Chumley / Tchumley / Chomlee / however you spelled his stupid name—and get beaten even though Max was the child and Chumley was a walking, talking umbrella.
But what was the point?
The only thing he had figured out over the last month was that he was worthless.
The door opened downstairs. “Max?” It was Jean. “Max, are you all right?”
He heard her walking around the living room and kitchen.
She’s looking at my avalanche of failures, he thought. The leaves of paper that represent the Fall of the Child Genius.
Then she began climbing the stairs. “Max! Max, are you all right? Are you there?”
She came into the bedroom. Max had pulled the covers up over his head.
When Jean saw this, she let out a single sad guffaw. Then she sat down on the edge of his bed.
“May I?” she asked.
“Leave me alone,” Max mumbled from under the covers.
He heard the rustling of paper. “Did you write this last night?”
Max didn’t have to look to know what she was referring to. Nor did he need to reply for her to know the answer.
It was the letter. He had forgotten to destroy it.
“Max,” said Jean. “I could tell you that you’re not worthless, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
Nope, Max thought.
“Me neither!” Berg added, also under the covers.
Jean said, “I could remind you that we have never trained a child before, in the entire history of the British secret service. We are only training you because you are the least worthless boy we have ever come across. But that won’t change your mind either.”
And Max thought, If I was worth something, I wouldn’t be failing my training.
I wouldn’t be failing my parents.
“So instead of telling you those things,” Jean said, “can I tell you why I joined Naval Intelligence?”
Still under the blankets, Max rolled his eyes. Here it came. A pep talk. How predictable. He groaned audibly.
Jean laughed and told him anyway. “On my application, I wrote that I wanted to join up because I love my country and I want to win the war. But if I’m really being honest, that’s not why.”
Max waited. He was listening. He was skeptical, but he was listening.
“The real reason I joined up, Max, is that life can be so deadly dull. There is so much sitting in small boxes—also known as rooms—and staring out holes in those boxes—also known as windows—wishing you were climbing through those holes and out of those small boxes.”
Despite himself, Max knew what she meant.
“There is so much scribbling on paper, words that don’t mean anything and that no one cares about. Schoolwork that you don’t want to write and the teacher doesn’t want to read—so why are they forcing you to write it? Do you know what I mean?”
Max did not reply, but of course he knew.
“There’s so much small talk, so much chitchat about things you don’t want to say and the other person doesn’t really care to hear. So much of life is like that. Isn’t it?”
In his current state of hopelessness, Max felt all these things acutely.
Jean said, “I don’t want to fill my life with that rubbish. I want to fill it with experiences. Challenges. Triumphs. And also with failures.”
Max was definitely listening now.
It seemed she could tell. “Yes, Max. I want failures, too. I want the biggest, broadest range of emotions that I can get. So you feel miserable and worthless, Max? Well, good. Because when you’re older and you’re sitting in a box scribbling words that you don’t want to write and no one wants to read, you can think back on these powerful, tempestuous feelings you’re having right now and smile.”
I don’t think I’ll be doing that, Max told himself. Though he had to admit, he wasn’t certain Jean was wrong.
“Shakespeare wrote, ‘ ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ Do you know what I think he should have said? ‘ ’Tis better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at all.’ ”
Jean became quiet.
Max pulled the covers down from his face.
Jean smiled at him with her crooked teeth and her deep dimples and her fawn-brown eyes. “Think about where we are, Max,” she went on. “We’re living in cottages on the Rothschild estate, with homemade bombs going off every hour, kangaroos and zebras wandering around just on the other side of the trees, while we train you in espionage for a mission to enemy territory to do your small part to help Britain defeat evil. And you’re working your arse off, pardon my French, and you are this close to succeeding.” Max didn’t think he was this close to succeeding. But everything else Jean said was true. “Max, think about it. Is there anyone luckier than you?”
“You’re luckier than me,” said Max.
Jean shook her head and her hair tossed about. “No, I’m not. I have to stay here, on the home front, and assist a bunch of pompous old men. But you, Max. You’re going to war. I’m sure of it. You’re the luckiest one here.”
“You think going to Nazi Germany as a Jewish child is lucky?” Berg cried.
Berg was right. Lucky was the wrong word. Max was as far from being the luckiest person as he was from his parents. He was as far from being the luckiest person as they were from safety.
He wasn’t the luckiest person. But maybe he was the most alive.
“We’ve got two days of training left,” Jean said. “How about I kick your butt in our cross-Tring race at least one more time?”
Max replied, “Jean?”
“Yes, soldier?”
“Thanks.”
She showed him her crooked teeth again. “Don’t thank me yet. I’m going to beat you so very badly this morning.”
And she did.
CHAPTER
Thirty-Nine
After he’d finished training for the day, Max swung by Sergeant Thompson’s guardhouse. The sergeant was preparing to go home for the night.
“How’s life, Max?” he asked.
Max sighed. “Well, tomorrow’s my last day.”
Thompson closed the large ledger that sat on the little table in the guardhouse and placed it delicately into a leather briefcase. “You gonna pass your training?”
Max shook his head.
“Really? I’m surprised! You’re such a smart boy!”
Max looked at his feet and said nothing. He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make it hurt worse.
Sergeant Thompson latched the briefcase closed and locked it with a small brass key.
For no reason at all, Max asked, “Why do you take the book with you? You could just leave it here for tomorrow morning.”
Sergeant Thompson lifted an eyebrow at him. “Are you joking? There’s some secret stuff in here. Names of agents, comings and goings . . . I take it to the safe at the Mansion every night.” As he closed up the guardhouse, he scoffed, “Leave it here for tomorrow morning . . . ha!”
Before he headed off for the Mansion, Sergeant Thompson shook Max’s hand. “Good luck, young man. I’m sure you’ll figure out something.”
Max stared at the briefcase as he said, “Thank you, Sergeant.”
And then, to Stein and Berg, he said, “I think I just did.”
* * *
—
As Max warmed up beef stew for himself in a small saucepan, he thought about ledgers and kangaroos.
Meanwhile, Berg was talking to Stein: “Will you tell me what in the world is going on with you? You’re acting . . . nice! Like you’re a garden gnome or something! It’s like I don’t know you anymore!”
Stein played with his toes. After a space, he said, “I’ve been doing some thinking.”
“For someone with your mental capacity, I really don’t recommend that.”
“What if . . . we’re doing it all wrong?”
“What?”
“What if . . . we’re not supposed to be heckling, or annoying, or haunting? The Boss didn’t give us any directions at the beginning of time. I’ve just been improvising! What if I’ve been improvising . . . not right?”
Berg said, “But it feels right! Being a pain in the butt feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Yes . . .” Stein admitted.
“So? It’s clearly what we were meant to do!”
Stein looked up from his toes at last, peered around Max’s neck, and made eye contact with the kobold. “But have you ever tried helping? It feels . . . good, too.”
“I don’t believe it,” Berg answered.
Stein shrugged.
Berg shook his ugly head. “I refuse to believe it.”
CHAPTER
Forty
On the last day of training, Max burst out of bed.
He knew what to do. He’d put it all together in the moments before he fell asleep last night. It had come to him. Like the pieces of a watch, assembled in just the right order, everything fitting just so.
Max did not meet Jean out in front of cottage number 3. She came in and found him in the small kitchenette, surrounded by half a dozen open jars of Marmite, shoving sandwiches into the rucksack she had given him.
“Are you running away, Max? On your last day of training?” she asked, perplexed. And then she added, “I thought you didn’t like Marmite?”
Max zipped up the rucksack, shouldered it, and walked out of the kitchen.
“Max! What about our run?”
