The Girl You Left Behind, Page 7

  At first I was reluctant to talk, and then I found I could not stop. It was like being reminded of another life, another world. He was fascinated by the dynamics of the Academie Matisse, whether there was rivalry between the artists or genuine love. He had a lawyer's way of speaking: quick, intelligent, impatient towards those who could not immediately grasp his point. I think he liked to talk to me because I was not discomfited by him. It was something in my character, I think, that I refused to appear cowed, even if I secretly felt it. It had stood me in good stead in the haughty environs of the Parisian department store, and it worked equally well for me now.

  He had a particular liking for the portrait of me in the bar, and would look at it for so long and discuss the technical merits of Edouard's use of colour, his brushstroke, that I was briefly able to forget my awkwardness that I was its subject.

  His own parents, he confided, were 'not cultured', but had inspired in him a passion for learning. He hoped, he said, to further his intellectual studies after the war, to travel, to read, to learn. His wife was called Liesl. He had a child, too, he revealed, one evening. A boy of two that he had not yet seen. (When I told Helene this I had expected her face to cloud with sympathy, but she had said briskly that he should spend less time invading other people's countries.)

  He told me all this as if in passing, without attempting to solicit any personal information in return. This did not stem from egoism; it was more an understanding that in inhabiting my home he had already invaded my life; to seek anything further would be too much of an imposition. He was, I realized, something of a gentleman.

  That first month I found it increasingly difficult to dismiss Herr Kommandant as a beast, a Boche, as I could with the others. I suppose I had come to believe all Germans were barbaric so it was hard to picture them with wives, mothers, babies. There he was, eating in front of me, night after night, talking, discussing colour and form and the skills of other artists as my husband might. Occasionally he smiled, his bright blue eyes suddenly framed by deep crows' feet, as if happiness had been a far more familiar emotion to him than his features let on.

  I neither defended nor talked about the Kommandant in front of the other townspeople. If someone tried to engage me in conversation about the travails of having Germans at Le Coq Rouge, I would reply simply that, God willing, the day would come soon when our husbands returned and all this could be a distant memory.

  And I would pray that nobody had noticed there had been not a single requisition order on our home since the Germans had moved in.

  Shortly before midday I left the fuggy interior of the bar and stepped outside on the pretext of beating a rug. A light frost still lay upon the ground where it stood in shadow, its surface crystalline and glittering. I shivered as I carried it the few yards down the side street to Rene's garden, and there I heard it: a muffled chime, signalling a quarter to twelve.

  When I returned, a raggle-taggle gathering of elders were making their way out of the bar. 'We will sing,' Madame Poilane announced.

  'What?'

  'We will sing. It will drown the chimes until this evening. We will tell them it is a French custom. Songs from the Auvergne. Anything we can remember. What do they know?'

  'You are going to sing all day?'

  'No, no. On the hour. Just if there are Germans around.'

  I looked at her in disbelief.

  'If they dig up Rene's clock, Sophie, they will dig up this whole town. I will not lose my mother's pearls to some German Hausfrau.' Her mouth pursed in a moue of disgust.

  'Well, you'd better get going. When the clock strikes midday half of St Peronne will hear it.'

  It was almost funny. I hovered on the front step as the group of elders gathered at the mouth of the alleyway, facing the Germans, who were still standing in the square, and began to sing. They sang the nursery rhymes of my youth, as well as 'La Pastourelle', 'Bailero', 'Lorsque J'etais petit', all in their tuneless rasping voices. They sang with their heads high, shoulder to shoulder, occasionally glancing sideways at each other. Rene looked alternately grumpy and anxious. Madame Poilane held her hands in front of her, as pious as a Sunday-school teacher.

  As I stood, dishcloth in hand, trying not to smile, the Kommandant crossed the street. 'What are these people doing?'

  'Good morning, Herr Kommandant.'

  'You know there are to be no gatherings on the street.'

  'They are hardly a gathering. It's a festival, Herr Kommandant. A French tradition. On the hour, in November, the elderly of St Peronne sing folk songs to ward off the approach of winter.' I said this with utter conviction. The Kommandant frowned, then peered round me at the old people. Their voices lifted in unison and I guessed that, behind them, the chiming had begun.

  'But they are terrible,' he said, lowering his voice. 'It is the worst singing I have ever heard.'

  'Please ... don't stop them. They are innocent peasant songs, as you can hear. It gives the old people a little pleasure to sing the songs of their homeland, just for one day. Surely you would understand that.'

  'They are going to sing like this all day?'

  It wasn't the gathering itself that troubled him. He was like my husband: physically pained by any art that was not beautiful. 'It's possible.'

  The Kommandant stood very still, his senses trained on the sound. I was suddenly anxious: if his ear for music was as good as his eye for painting, he might yet detect the chiming beneath it.

  'I was wondering what you wanted to eat tonight,' I said abruptly.

  'What?'

  'Whether you had any favourites. I mean, our ingredients are limited, yes, but there are various things I might be able to make for you.' I could see Madame Poilane urging the others to sing louder, her hands gesturing surreptitiously upwards.

  The Kommandant seemed briefly puzzled. I smiled, and for a moment his face softened.

  'That's very -' He broke off.

  Thierry Arteuil was running up the road, his woollen scarf flying as he pointed behind him. 'Prisoners of war!'

  The Kommandant whipped round towards his men, already gathering in the square, and I was forgotten. I waited for him to go, then hurried across to the group of singing elders. Helene and the customers inside Le Coq Rouge, perhaps hearing the growing commotion, were peering through the windows, some edging out on to the pavement.

  There was a brief hush. Then up the main street they came, around a hundred men, organized into a small convoy. Beside me, the old people kept singing, their voices at first faltering as they realized what they were witnessing, then growing in strength and determination.

  There was hardly a man or woman who did not anxiously scan the stumbling soldiers for a well-known face. But there was no relief to be had from the absence of familiarity. Were these really Frenchmen? They looked so shrunken, so grey and defeated, their clothes hanging from malnourished bodies, their wounds dressed with filthy old bandages. They passed a few feet before us, their heads lowered, Germans at their front and rear, and we were powerless to do anything but stare.

  I heard the old people's chorus lifting determinedly around me, suddenly more tuneful and harmonic: 'I stand in wind and rain and sing bailero lero ...'

  A great lump rose in my throat at the thought that somewhere, many miles away, this might be Edouard. I felt Helene's hand grip mine, and knew she was thinking the same.

  Here all the grass is greener,

  Sing bailero lero ...

  I shall come down and fetch you o'er ...

  We scanned their faces, our own frozen. Madame Louvier appeared beside us. As quick as a mouse, she forced her way through our little group and thrust the black bread that she had just collected from the boulangerie into the hands of one of the skeletal men, her woollen shawl flying around her face in the brisk wind. He glanced up, unsure of what had arrived in his hands. And then, with a shout, a German soldier was in front of them, his rifle butt thrashing it from the man's hand even as he registered what he had been given. The loaf t
oppled to the gutter like a brick. The singing stopped.

  Madame Louvier stared at the bread, then lifted her head and shrieked, her voice piercing the still air, 'You animal! You Germans! You would starve these men like dogs! What is wrong with you? You are all bastards! Sons of whores!' I had never heard her use language like it. It was as if some fine thread had snapped, leaving her loose, untethered. 'You want to beat someone? Beat me! Go on, you bastard thug. Beat me!' Her voice cut through the still, cold air.

  I felt Helene's hand grip my arm. I willed the old woman to be quiet, but she kept shrieking, her thin old finger pointing and jabbing at the young soldier's face. I was suddenly afraid for her. The German glanced at her with an expression of barely suppressed fury. His knuckles whitened on his rifle butt and I feared he would strike her. She was so frail: her old bones would shatter if he did.

  But as we held our breath he reached down, picked the loaf out of the gutter and thrust it back at her.

  She looked at him as if she had been stung. 'You think I would eat this knowing that you knocked it from the hand of a starving brother? You think this is not my brother? They are all my brothers! All my sons! Vive la France!' she spat, her old eyes glistening. 'Vive la France!' As if compelled to do so, the old people behind me broke into an echoing murmur, the singing briefly forgotten. 'Vive la France!'

  The young soldier glanced behind him, perhaps for instruction from his superior, but was distracted by a shout further down the line. A prisoner had taken advantage of the commotion to break for freedom. The young man, his arm in a makeshift sling, had slipped from the ranks and was now fleeing across the square.

  The Kommandant, standing with two of his officers by the broken statue of Mayor Leclerc, was the first to see him. 'Halt!' he shouted. The young man ran faster, his oversized shoes slipping from his feet. 'HALT!'

  The prisoner dropped his backpack and appeared briefly to pick up speed. He stumbled as he lost his second shoe, but somehow righted himself. He was about to disappear around the corner. The Kommandant whipped a pistol from his jacket. Almost before I had registered what he was doing, he lifted his arm, aimed and fired. The boy went down with an audible crack.

  The world stopped. The birds fell silent. We stared at the motionless body on the cobbles and Helene let out a low moan. She made as if to go to him, but the Kommandant ordered us all to stay back. He shouted something in German, and his men raised their rifles, pointing them at the remaining prisoners.

  Nobody moved. The captives stared at the ground. They seemed unsurprised by this turn of events. Helene's hands had gone to her mouth, and she trembled, muttering something I could not hear. I slid my arm around her waist. I could hear my own ragged breathing.

  The Kommandant walked briskly away from us towards the prisoner. When he reached him, he dropped to his haunches, and pressed his fingers to the young man's jaw. A dark red puddle already stained his threadbare jacket, and I could see his eyes, staring blankly across the square. The Kommandant squatted there for a minute, then stood again. Two German officers moved towards him, but he motioned them into formation. He walked back across the square, tucking his pistol into his jacket. He stopped briefly when he passed in front of the mayor.

  'You will make the necessary arrangements,' he said.

  The mayor nodded. I saw the faint tic to his jaw.

  With a shout, the column moved on up the road, the prisoners with their heads bowed, the women of St Peronne now weeping openly into their handkerchiefs. The body lay in a crumpled heap a short distance across from rue des Bastides.

  Less than a minute after the Germans had marched away, Rene Grenier's clock chimed a mournful quarter past the hour into the silence.

  That night the mood in Le Coq Rouge was sober. The Kommandant did not attempt to make conversation; neither did I give the slightest impression that I wished for it. Helene and I served the meal, washed the cooking pots, and remained in the kitchen as far as we could. I had no appetite. I could not escape the image of that poor young man, his ragged clothes flying out behind him, his oversized shoes falling from his feet as he fled to his death.

  More than that, I could not believe that the officer who had whipped out his pistol and shot him so pitilessly was the same man who had sat at my tables, looking wistful about the child he had not seen, exclaiming about the art that he had. I felt foolish, as if the Kommandant had concealed his true self. This was what the Germans were here for, not discussions about art and delicious food. They were here to shoot our sons and husbands. They were here to destroy us.

  I missed my husband at that moment with a physical pain. It was now nearly three months since I had last received word from him. I had no idea of what he endured. While we existed in this strange bubble of isolation, I could convince myself that he was fine and robust, that he was out there in the real world, sharing a flask of cognac with his comrades, or perhaps sketching on a scrap of paper in some idle hours. When I closed my eyes I saw the Edouard I remembered from Paris. But seeing those pitiful Frenchmen marched through the streets made it harder for me to hold on to my fantasy. Edouard might be captured, injured, starving. He might be suffering as those men suffered. He might be dead.

  I leaned on the sink and closed my eyes.

  At that moment I heard the crash. Jerked away from my thoughts, I ran out of the kitchen. Helene stood with her back to me, her hands raised, a tray of broken glasses at her feet. Against the wall, the Kommandant had a young man by the throat. He was shouting something at him in German, his face contorted, inches from the man's own. His victim's hands were up in a gesture of submission.

  'Helene?'

  She was ashen. 'He put his hand on me as I went past. But ... but Herr Kommandant has gone mad.'

  The other men were around them now, pleading with the Kommandant, trying to pull him off, their chairs overturning, shouting over each other in an attempt to be heard. The whole place was briefly in uproar. Eventually the Kommandant seemed to hear them and loosened his grip on the younger man's throat. I thought his eyes met mine, briefly, but then, as he took a step back, his fist shot out and he punched the man hard in the side of the head, so that his face ricocheted off the wall. 'Sie konnen nicht beruhren die Frauen,' he yelled.

  'The kitchen.' I pushed my sister towards the door, not even stopping to scoop up the broken glass. I heard the raised voices, the slam of a door, and I hurried after her down the hallway.

  'Madame Lefevre.'

  I was washing the last of the glasses. Helene had gone to bed; the day's events had exhausted her even more than they had me.

  'Madame?'

  'Herr Kommandant.' I turned to him, drying my hands on the cloth. We were down to one candle in the kitchen, a wick set in some fat in a sardine tin; I could barely make out his face.

  He stood in front of me, his cap in his hands. 'I'm sorry about your glasses. I will make sure they are replaced.'

  'Please don't bother. We have enough to get by.' I knew any glasses would simply be requisitioned from my neighbours.

  'I'm sorry about ... the young officer. Please assure your sister it will not happen again.'

  I didn't doubt it. Through the back window I had seen the man being helped back to his billet by one of his friends, a wet cloth pressed to the side of his head.

  I thought the Kommandant might leave then, but he just stood there. I felt him staring at me. His eyes were unquiet, anguished almost.

  'The food tonight was ... excellent. What was the name of the dish?'

  'Chou farci.'

  He waited, and when the pause grew uncomfortably long, I added, 'It's sausage-meat, some vegetables and herbs, wrapped in cabbage leaves and poached in stock.'

  He looked down at his feet. He took a few steps around the kitchen, then stopped, fingering a jar of utensils. I wondered, absently, if he were about to take them.

  'It was very good. Everyone said so. You asked me today what I would like to eat. Well ... we would like to have that dish again before
too long, if it is not too much trouble.'

  'As you wish.'

  There was something different about him this evening, some subtle air of agitation that rose off him in waves. I wondered how it felt to have killed a man, whether it felt any more unusual to a German Kommandant than taking a second cup of coffee.

  He glanced at me as if he were about to say something else, but I turned back to my pans. Behind him I could hear the drag of chair legs on the floor as the other officers prepared to leave. It was raining, a fine, mean spit that hit the windows almost horizontally.

  'You must be tired,' he said. 'I will leave you in peace.'

  I picked up a tray of glasses and followed him towards the door. As he reached it, he turned and put on his cap, so that I had to stop. 'I have been meaning to ask. How is the baby?'

  'Jean? He is fine, thank you, if a little -'

  'No. The other baby.'

  I nearly dropped the tray. I hesitated for a moment, collecting myself, but I felt the blood rush to my neck. I knew he saw it.

  When I spoke again, my voice was thick. I kept my eyes on the glasses in front of me. 'I believe we are all ... as well as we can be, given the circumstances.'

  He thought about this. 'Keep him safe,' he said quietly. 'Best he doesn't come out in the night air too often.' He looked at me a moment longer, then turned and was gone.

  6

  I lay awake that night, despite my exhaustion. I watched Helene sleep fitfully, murmuring, her hand reaching across unconsciously to check that her children were beside her. At five, while it was still dark, I climbed out of bed, wrapping myself in several blankets, and tiptoed downstairs to boil water for coffee. The dining room was still infused with the scents of the previous evening: wood from the grate and a faint hint of sausage-meat that caused my stomach to rumble. I made myself a hot drink and sat behind the bar, gazing out across the empty square as the sun came up. As the blue light became streaked with orange, it was just possible to distinguish a faint shadow in the far right-hand corner where the prisoner had fallen. Had that young man had a wife, a child? Were they sitting at this moment composing letters to him or praying for his safe return? I took a sip of my drink and forced myself to look away.