The Nicotine Chronicles Read online

  Everything okay in here? It was Margaret at her open door, her face hidden behind a gauzy veil.

  What? Yes. Did you just walk in my room without knocking? Alina pulled on the bedsheet to cover herself even though she was still fully dressed from the day.

  Yes—I mean, no, I knocked, you didn’t answer, said Margaret. I could hear you breathing—not regular breathing, but very hard. I wanted to make sure you were okay.

  She dragged on the cigarette as if she was powering up.

  Don’t come in my room.

  Your breathing was very ragged. I can’t have a sick woman in my house.

  You don’t.

  I don’t know, said Margaret, and tilted her head as if looking for symptoms of some kind.

  Alina shot up and closed the door, pushing the woman out into the hallway. She bolted it, then positioned the back of a chair under the doorknob. Later, Alina realized she couldn’t remember if they spoke in English or Spanish.

  * * *

  Every day, a feverish Alina would uncoil from the nest in the bed, take a cold shower, and flee to the National Library or the university or wherever her appointments took her: a private apartment at the Focsa building, a house made of cardboard in Marianao. Everyone around her smoked; even in the Special Collections room at the library, students would sneak a vape or two. Everything was dank, the heat an anvil on her head. She drank more than a gallon of water a day, but seemed to have the hiccups nonstop. Every time she thought someone had invited her to drinks or a meal for a professional reason, they’d bring an unattached (or perhaps attached—who knew?) brother or cousin or friend along without notice. They also fully expected her to pay.

  You know what helps with hiccups? a librarian asked her one afternoon, looking at her meaningfully. Did she also have a brother who wanted to meet foreigners who weren’t really foreigners?

  What? Alina replied. She was so very tired.

  A good cigar.

  A good cigar? You’ve got to be joking, she said, and gathered her books and notes into her satchel and swept out of there.

  Out on the streets men blew kisses at her and, tasting her own sticky brown tongue, she started blowing them back, which only made them laugh. Her mouth was tingling, her nose was tingling, her throat was tingling too. She was so lightheaded.

  Are you okay? asked one of the valets at the Hotel Inglaterra in English as she walked by.

  Yes, yes, of course, she said in Spanish—but wait, is the biennial over? Do you guys have any rooms available?

  You’re looking for a room? The hotel doesn’t, no, but I know someone . . .

  Is it a smoke-free room? A real smoke-free room?

  He pulled her close to him by the wrist. He smelled like a spray of violet water and a sweet, sugary cigar. She didn’t mean to but she burped in his face and he laughed, obviously repulsed but also somewhat amused. Alina knew he was going to tell someone about this later, over a shot of rum and a cigarette no doubt. Never mind, she said, embarrassed. Never mind! And she shook him off, waved her hand at a bici-taxi, and gave the driver Margaret’s address.

  As soon as she settled in, the driver began to pedal, his calf muscles expanding and contracting like billows. She realized immediately they were racing—there was another bici beside them, and the drivers were egging each other on, speeding over potholes and rocks and barely dodging pedestrians. Trying to stay upright, Alina kept falling over to one side or the other in the passenger seat. She could feel her muscles working, knotting. The passenger in the other bici-taxi was screaming bloody murder, but she couldn’t open her mouth except to breathe in the brume. Every second, it seemed they were on the verge of flight.

  It’s free, don’t worry about it, the driver said when he dropped her off. He’d bumped fists with the other driver as he rushed by and was now laughing up a sweaty storm. Alina stumbled out from the passenger seat. She was so dizzy, so nauseated, she had to wait for the desire to vomit to pass before she dared enter the house.

  She found a vase full of sunflowers in the vestibule and an envelope from the university addressed to her. The lamp was on but she figured she’d open the note upstairs. She began to tiptoe across the room to the stairs when she heard thin music playing from behind Margaret’s shut bedroom door: “Porque el sentimiento es humo / Y ceniza la palabra . . .”

  She was surprised to realize she understood every word. She stopped and tried to place the song . . . She walked over to Margaret’s door and pressed her ear against it. The music played on but there was also a vague rustling, a shuffling, and she imagined Margaret dancing, swaying to the sad melody, maybe holding an invisible partner, maybe not. Alina’s hand turned on the doorknob but it refused to move.

  Suddenly her eyes were watery, her nose running; she felt on the verge of sneezing.

  Alina? Margaret asked tentatively from inside the bedroom.

  She dropped the doorknob, which rattled on being freed from her grip, and sprinted across the room to the stairs, scrambling as if she were being chased by a cloud of bats.

  * * *

  That night, Alina felt a weight along her body, like a leg between her legs. She tried to roll to one side and then the other but she was pinned. When she pushed up, her clitoris would rub against a cyclonic force, and when she dropped down, a heft would fall on her stomach and make her grunt. At some point just before daybreak, she prevailed. Whatever had held her lifted; a fresh breeze blew improbably through the room.

  When she opened her eyes, she found Margaret sitting cross-legged in her room, on the chair that had been propped under her doorknob, in the same housedress, her bare feet black on the bottoms. She was playing with a lighter and an unlit cigarette. Alina just shook her head as she got up. She felt a strange tingling in her left hip when she made her way to the bathroom, where she washed with the door open, first her face, then her armpits, and, finally, between her legs. She brushed her teeth and decided against combing her hair. Her sniffling was gone; her eyes were dry. Her cheeks bloomed.

  When Alina stepped back in the room, Margaret—who’d watched her every move—stood up and positioned the cigarette between her lips. She raised the lighter and looked over at her.

  Must you? Alina asked.

  Margaret nodded. I don’t know if you can stay here anymore.

  Oh, I can, said Alina.

  Margaret blinked. She lowered the lighter. I smoke a lot, you know. The nicotine will stick to your skin. It’ll get in your bloodstream.

  Alina imagined pulling Margaret to her, her hand going to the woman’s waist and feeling the elastic band of her underwear beneath her housedress, the way her breasts would press against her.

  It would all happen in a blue fog, and without a word.

  Spécial Treatment

  by Cara Black

  Dawn, September 1944,

  near the Ardennes Forest, France

  In dawn’s blood-orange blush Mila laid the last explosive on the track. Deep-green forest and birdsong her only companions. Her deft fingers pinched tobacco from her pouch, rolled it between the cigarette paper, licked the edge, and sealed it.

  Putting her ear to the metal rail, she listened for the vibration of the milk train. Nothing yet.

  Mila struck a match and lit her cigarette. Glanced at her watch. Time.

  She crushed the thin copper tube containing the cupric chloride of the pencil detonator under her heel. Wedged it carefully inside the plastique and checked her watch again.

  Perfect.

  She clambered down the rail embankment to her bike and rode twenty kilometers back. At the train station, she parked her bike. Catching her breath, she shook the dust off her bare legs and wiped the sweat off her upper lip.

  Once inside the station café, she wondered who her contact was; the gaunt man in overalls, who looked like a POW in hiding or a mechanic? Or the man in a rumpled linen suit with gray eyes who dabbed perspiration from his brow with a handkerchief? If German soldiers decided to pay a visit, she’d melt out
the door.

  Mila ordered what passed for coffee these days—a chicory mixture—eyeing the young woman at the sticky café counter next to her. Instead of holding the cup handle with three fingers the young woman cupped the demi-demitasse as if warming her hand. The signal.

  She was Mila’s contact. Code name, Azores. The café ceiling fan whirred listlessly, stirring hot fetid September air.

  She caught Azores’s gaze in the smudged mirror behind the counter. Dark eyes, hollow cheeks. Figured her for a fellow partisan based in the next forest. The Allies were advancing and needed the German supply trains destroyed. Sabotage was their business.

  Mila removed her compact, prepared with loose powder, spilling it in a dusty pink patch on the counter. With her finger quickly wrote, 20 k.

  Azores’s hand wiped it away a second later.

  Message understood.

  Doing so, Azores’s palm revealed red-brown scarred circles. Unmistakable marks of cigarette burns. Reflexively, Mila cringed imagining the pain. Had the SS tortured her?

  Azores slid something into Mila’s jacket pocket. Her movement invisible to anyone in the café. As planned.

  Immediately, Mila bought a phone token from the middle-aged man behind the counter. Then descended the stairs to the humid tiled downstairs that held the WC. Mila slotted the token in the telephone and pretended to make a call. In her pocket she found a slim packet of German cigarettes, Nordland, nonfilters. Took a cigarette, careful to look around, scratched a match that sparked, flamed, and lit the tip of a cigarette. She inhaled the harsh metallic-tasting tobacco. Awful, these German cigarettes. She preferred rolling her own.

  She read the message written on a cigarette paper inside: Inform engineer to uncouple at Ville Comblay.

  The engineer would uncouple the first passenger cars, leaving the German supply sections to explode, and the partisans would handle the rest.

  According to plan.

  She replaced the cigarette paper back into the packet.

  Looked around again.

  In the WC, she threw the disgusting half-burned cigarette in the hole of the Turkish toilet. Pulled the chain.

  At the mirror, Mila fixed her hair into one thick braid down her back. Took rouge and smudged her lips. Shimmied out of her reversible skirt, turned it inside out, pulled it back on, and belted it. Satisfied she had a different look, she smoothed down the skirt before mounting the steps. Guttural voices in German reached her ears. A raid? Stifling her fear, she waited, her heart pounding.

  After a minute came the creak of the café door, conversations resuming.

  Upstairs, she saw an empty space at the counter. Patrons murmuring. Azores had gone.

  If Azores had been a plant, this message could be compromised. Or Azores could have left to relay info to her partisans. Mila tried to steady her nerves. Focus. Either way, she’d activated the time pencil on the delay fuse.

  Too late.

  Seconds later, she put francs on the zinc counter for her coffee, shouldered her bag, and gave a quick “Merci” to the waiter behind the counter.

  Then out the door into the early-morning heat on the station platform. Mila kept walking. Kept her pace even. Her heart racing.

  Would she be arrested?

  Halfway up the train platform she took out her compact and checked in the mirror to see if anyone had followed her. German troops patrolled in the rail yard.

  Perspiration beaded her forehead. The arrival announcement echoed over the loudspeakers. She stayed at the front of the platform watching for the Neufchateau train.

  It appeared on time, steam billowing from the locomotive accompanied by the reek of oil and hot metal. A clanging bell heralded the short snaking line of railcars baking in the sun. Numbers chalked on their sides. The sun beat down, perspiration stung her eyes, her leg muscles ached.

  Concentrate.

  There came cranking, the shifting of metal, as men in blue work coats loaded wooden crates onto open railcars. Now German soldiers in feldgrau uniforms patrolled the rear by the train, their boots crunching on the gravel embankment.

  After a small contingent of soldiers mounted the open railcars, she climbed into the first one with her ticket. The conductor blew the whistle. Mila felt a lurch and grabbed the car rail. Heard the grinding as the flatbed coupled to the cars down the track. The military supply cars.

  Mila gripped the rail until the train chugged ahead, finally leaving the platform and gaining speed.

  Not out of the woods yet.

  Mila made her way to the engine car, knocked twice, and the door opened. The engineer’s blue cap pitched low over his sweating forehead. His thick arms and grease-encrusted hands worked levers in the sweltering heat.

  “Felicité,” she gave her code name.

  “Max,” he replied with his.

  Mila handed him the Nordland packet of cigarettes.

  Max tapped out a cigarette, lifted it to his thick lips, and lit a match. He fished the cigarette paper out. Read it, then tossed it in the stoked furnace.

  “We’re carrying two extra passenger cars,” he said.

  A complication. The mission was to cut off the munitions supply to Bastogne.

  “We weren’t informed,” she said. “The explosive goes off at 9:00.”

  He shrugged. Blistering heat came from the coal-fed engine. “Pas de problème. The passenger train only goes to the next station.” He put the cigarettes in his pocket.

  “You know what to do?”

  He nodded. “Everything ready?”

  She nodded.

  * * *

  She returned to the first passenger car. Tired, so tired. No sleep last night and she struggled to stay alert. She fingered the carte d’identité in her pocket. Worried since the name on this one was already known by the Gestapo.

  A group of ten or so young boys in short pants sat in the car, their bare legs dangling from the seats. A young woman, Mila figured their teacher or chaperone, passed out langues de chats—butter biscuits shaped like cats’ tongues. Name tags were clipped to the boys’ short-sleeved shirts; children sent to safety in the countryside.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle.” Mila smiled at the young woman wearing a blue scarf with butterflies knotted around her neck. “How far are you going?”

  “Just the next stop.”

  Relieved, Mila took out her small chipped-enamel alarm clock, calculated the time, and set the alarm. She organized her bag, her pistol inside, wrapping the handle around her wrist.

  It seemed only a few seconds, but it must have been much later when loud ringing from the alarm clock jolted Mila awake. The railcar shuddered keeping time to the wheels clacking rhythmically over the rails. The train would reach the point soon and she needed to prepare.

  The train rounded a bend and the passenger cars glinted in the morning heat. Laughter carried on the wind from the open windows.

  As they hurtled past fields of yellow mustard seed bent in the wind, she saw a pointed church steeple in the distance. The bucolic countryside where one could almost forget the war.

  She stood up, balancing on her espadrille-shod feet, reverberating from the clacking train wheels. A measured, hypnotic pounding in the gusting hot air. Mila wiped her hands, sooty from the windowsill, on her skirt. Her tongue was parched. She pinned up her braid in the heat. Apprehensive, she looked at the time.

  Had the engineer miscalculated? The cars should have been uncoupled ten minutes ago.

  Or were the cars already uncoupled? Something didn’t seem right. He needed to explain.

  She slid the railcar door open to the space between the carriages holding luggage racks and the WC.

  Then came a crunch. A thundering shaking. The unmistakable sound of an explosion.

  On time.

  She felt for the gun in her bag.

  Then a screeching whine and she was thrown across the floor. Rammed against the metal siding. Pain shot up her shoulder.

  More thundering of an explosion.

 
; Her body jerked. A whining of steel against steel as the train derailed. From the window, orange-red sparks painted the morning like fireworks.

  The force shot her back against the door, pinned her down under suitcases, the collapsing luggage racks. She heard cries and shouts from the children.

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening. They should have been past the explosive site. Why hadn’t the engineer uncoupled the passenger cars?

  Screams. The screaming she heard came from her throat. The train had shuddered onto its side, and she was pinned against the damaged half. The rest of the car crumpled, an accordion of mangled metal.

  She pulled herself up, willing her body to cooperate—her arms strained, her nose filled with smoke billowing from the interior. Roast meat if she didn’t get out. Or explode first. Frantic, she reached the twisted door handle, pulled with all her might. Flames licked the car ahead. Choking with the smoke, she somehow managed to pull herself out and fell onto the gravel embankment.

  Where were the partisans?

  Grass smells in her nose, dirt under her fingernails, a line of ants. Scraping her hands in the dirt to pull herself forward, her hand came back with a blue scarf.

  The teacher sat slumped, her eyes open to the azure sky.

  “Are you all right, mademoiselle?”

  Then she saw the woman’s severed arm in the grass. In the lilac bush was a little boy’s torso. His legs in short pants dangled from a tree. The damn engineer hadn’t uncoupled the right train cars. Horror coursed through her.

  She pulled herself up by her fingers in the dirt. Her legs were on fire with pain. The thumping of boots came from the grass embankment.

  In the smoke and flames, bodies were being pulled from the train.

  “Saboteurs. Ya wohl . . .” Soldiers fanned over the embankment among the bodies thrown from the train, going through the pockets, the bags. Would they shoot her? Panicked, she pulled off the bag strap cutting into her wrist, now using her scraped raw elbows to crawl away. But her hands were sticky with blood. Her own blood. She threw her papers and documents into the licking flame. Kept crawling toward the bushes, her gun now in her pocket.