Anita Shreve - Resistance: A Novel

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright 1995 by Anita Shreve

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Little, Brown and Company

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Originally published in hardcover by Little, Brown and Company

The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

First eBook Edition: April 2006

ISBN: 978-0-316-04570-4

Contents

RESISTANCE

From the first sentence, Anita Shreve draws in the reader with the quiet poetry of her narrative voice. Resistance is a turn-off-the-phone, put-the-kids-in-bed-early, stay-up-till-two-in-the-morning-on-a-work-night reading experience.

Mary Gillis,
Detroit Free Press

In beautiful, unpretentious language, Shreve embarks on a complex journey exploring the human spirit. In Resistance, passion is heightened, courage is found, commitment is tested. Suspense, story, and character are mastered. The resultfrom its grasp of the darkness of war to its acute understanding of love and an unexpected eroticismwill send shivers up and down readers spines.

Nancy McAllister,
Columbus Dispatch

Shreve is an intelligent, powerful writer.

Rebecca Radner,
San Francisco Chronicle

Reminiscent of Helen MacInnes's Assignment in Brittany and Erich Maria Remarque's Arch of Triumph. Here's to Ms. Shreve.

Rollene Saal,
New York Times Book Review

With deceptive simplicity and superb control, Shreve evokes the impersonal horrors of wartime and its heartbreaking personal tragedies.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Lucid writing and a suspenseful plot make Resistance a thrilling read.

Chattanooga Free Press

A beautiful novel. Anita Shreve writes with a practiced perfection that gives brilliance to a stirring adventure tale.

Barbara Hodge Hall,
Anniston Star

Anita Shreve's perceptive novel relates a simple story set in terrible times in a clear dispassionate voice. Her respect for her characters is striking, as is the meticulous attention to detail. I reached the last chapter with hungry eyes, wanting more.

Danielle Roter,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

Shreve's prose is as gentle and dignified as the affair she describes.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With her signature spare prose and skill at spinning a taut tale, Shreve's characters spring to life as she evokes the fear, pain, and longing of their desperate situation. Resistance has all the authentic passion and intensity nestled in beautifully written prose. This is the real thing.

Dianne Bock Stern,
White Plains Reporter-Dispatch

A Wedding in December

Light on Snow

All He Ever Wanted

Sea Glass

The Last Time They Met

Fortune's Rock

The Pilot's Wife The Weight of Water

Where or When

Strange Fits of Passion

Eden Close

For our fathers who flew in the war

T HIS NOVEL IS ENTIRELY A WORK OF FICTION, YET IT would not have been possible without the help of the following individuals: Marlyse Martin Haward, Andre Lepin, and Rosa Guyaux, who shared with me details and anecdotes about Belgium during World War II; John Rising, Chief Pilot of the Collings Foundation, who checked over the flying sequences for me; George Cole, who took me up in his plane; and, in particular, Mable Osborn, who gave the seeds of a story. I would also like to thank my editor, Michael Pietsch, and my agent, Virginia Barber.

Finally, a necessary word about the Belgian surnames. I have used, for the most part, surnames that were or are prevalent in southern Belgium. Just as the novel is fictional, however, so are the names that are attached to the various characters. I mention this because the period about which I have written is a sensitive one, and my use of certain names is not meant in any way to confer honor upon, or castigate, any Belgian families.

10 November 1993

Gentlemen,

INAUGURATION OF A MONUMENT
TO YOUR FLYING FORTERESSE B 17

On Thursday next December 30, our association will inaugurate a monument in rememberance to your aeroplane fallen down on 1943 december 30th at the Heights nearly our village.

It consists in a marble block extracted out of our village quarry on which a stele with the following inscription will be fixed.

Homage nos allis

Equipage

Pilots: Lt. T. Brice

Co-pilote: Lt. W. Case

Navigateur: Lt. E. Baker

Bombardier: Lt. N. Shulman

Ingnieur: J. McNulty

Ass. Ingnieur: E. Rees

Radio: G. Callahan

Ass. Radio: V. Tripp

Mitrailleur: L. Ekberg

Mitrailleur: P. Warren

Delahaut, le 30 XII 1993

With this letter, we would like to invite you and your wife to be present at the inauguration. It will be a pleasure for us to offer you a lodge in Delshaut.

If you are still in contact with the other members of the orew, please will you make them known they are also welcome. Send us their address so we can invite them officially.

Meanwhile, Gentlemen, please agree our best rememberance. Jean Benot

T HE PILOT PAUSED AT THE EDGE OF THE WOOD, WHERE already it was dark, oak-dark at midday. He propped himself against a tree, believing that in the shadows he was hidden, at least for the moment. The others had fled. He was the last out of the pasture, watching until they had all disappeared, one by one, indistinct brown shapes quickly enveloped by the forest.

All, that is, except for the two on the ground, one dead, one dying. He could no longer hear the gunner's panicky questions. The cold and the wound had silenced him, or perhaps the morphine, administered by Ted's frozen fingers, had dulled the worst of it. Dragging his own wounded leg through the battered bomber, Ted had reached the gunner, drawn to him by the pitch of the man's voice. He had separated the gunner from the metal that seemed to clutch at him and pulled the man out onto the hard ground, still white with frost even at noon. The wound was to the lower abdomen, too low, Ted could see that at once. The gunner had screamed then, asked him, demanded, but Ted looked away, businesslike with the needle, and whispered something that was meant to be reassuring but was taken by the wind. The gunner felt frantically with oily fingers for the missing pieces. The pilot and the navigator had held his arms, pinned him.

Possibly the gunner was dead already, he thought at the edge of the forest. There was too much blood around the body, a hot spring that quickly pooled, froze, on the ground. The other man, the rear gunner, the man who was undeniably dead, dragged also to lie beside the wounded, had not a scratch on him.

Ted slowly tilted his head back, took the air deep into his body. As a boy he had shot squirrels in the wood at home, and there were sometimes days like this, days without color, when the sky was oily and gray and his fingers froze on the 22.

The plane lay silent on the frosty field, a charred scar behind it, the forest not forty feet from its nose. A living thing shot down, crippled now forever. A screaming, vibrating giant come obscenely to rest in a pasture.

He ought to have set fire to the plane. Those were his instructions. But he could not set a fire that might consume a living man, and so they had gathered all the provisions in the plane and made a kind of catafalque near the gunner, whom they had wrapped in parachute silk, winding sheets, the white silk stained immediately with red.