The Girl You Left Behind (17 page)

I was at the entrance to the farm. A hundred
feet ahead of me I saw the truck stop, the shadowy forms of women
walking in silence to a door on the left, as if this were a route they had taken many
times before. I heard men’s voices, the distant sound of singing.

‘
Halt.
’

The soldier stepped out in front of me. I
jumped. He lifted his rifle, then peered more closely. He gestured towards the other
women.

‘No … no. I am here to see
Herr Kommandant.’

He gestured again, impatiently.

‘
Nein
,’ I said, louder.
‘Herr Kommandant. I have … an appointment.’

‘Herr Kommandant?’

I could not see his face. But the silhouette
appeared to study me, then strode across the yard to where I could just make out a door.
He rapped on it, and I heard a muttered conversation. I waited, my heart thumping, my
skin prickling with anxiety.

‘
Wie heist?
’ he said,
when he returned.

‘I am Madame Lefèvre,’ I
whispered.

He gestured to my shawl, which I pulled
briefly from my head, exposing my face. He waved towards a door across the courtyard.
‘
Diese Tur. Obergeschosse. Grune Tur auf der rechten
Seite.
’

‘What?’ I said. ‘I
don’t understand.’

He grew impatient again. ‘
Da,
da
.’ He gestured, taking my elbow and propelling me forwards roughly. I
was shocked that he would treat a visitor to the
Kommandant
in such a way. And
then it dawned on me: my protestations that I was married were meaningless. I was simply
another woman, calling on Germans after dark. I was glad that he could not see the
colour that sprang to my cheeks. I
wrenched my elbow from his grasp
and walked stiffly towards the small building on the right.

It was not hard to see which room was his:
light crept from under only one door. I hesitated outside, then knocked and said
quietly, ‘Herr Kommandant?’

The sound of footsteps, the door opened, and
I took a small step back. He was out of his uniform, dressed in a striped, collarless
shirt and braces, a book dangling from one hand, as if I had interrupted him. He looked
at me, half smiled, as if in greeting, and stepped back to allow me in.

The room was large, thick with beams, and
its floorboards covered with rugs, several of which I thought I recognized from the
homes of my neighbours. There was a small table and chairs, a military chest, its brass
corners glowing in the light of two acetylene lamps, a coat hook, from which hung his
uniform, and a large easy chair by a generously stacked fire. Its warmth was evident
even from the other side of the room. In the corner was a bed, with two thick quilts. I
glanced at it and looked away.

‘Here.’ He was standing behind
me, lifting the shawls from my back. ‘Let me take these.’

I allowed him to remove them and hang them
on the coat hook, still clutching the painting to my chest. Even as I stood almost
paralysed, I felt ashamed of my shabby clothing. We could not wash clothes often in this
cold: wool took weeks to dry, or simply froze into rigid shapes outside.

‘It’s bitter out,’ he
observed. ‘I can feel it on your clothes.’

‘Yes.’ My voice, when it
emerged, sounded unlike my own.

‘This is a hard winter. And I think we
have some months of it to come yet. Would you like a drink?’ He moved to a small
table, and poured two glasses of wine from a carafe. I took one from him wordlessly. I
was still shivering from my walk.

‘You can put the package down,’
he said.

I had forgotten I was holding it. I lowered
it to the floor, still standing.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please
sit.’ He seemed almost irritated when I hesitated, as if my nervousness were an
insult.

I sat on one of the wooden chairs, one hand
resting against the frame of the painting. I don’t know why I found it a
comfort.

‘I did not come to eat at the hotel
tonight. I thought about what you said, that you are already considered a traitor for
our presence in your home.’

I took a sip of my wine.

‘I do not wish to cause you more
problems, Sophie … more than we already cause you by our
occupation.’

I didn’t know what to say to this. I
took another sip. His eyes kept darting to mine, as if he were waiting for some
response.

From across the courtyard we could hear
singing. I wondered whether the girls were with the men, then who they were, which
villages they had come from. Would they, too, be paraded through the streets as
criminals afterwards for what they had done? Did they know the fate of Liliane
Béthune?

‘Are you hungry?’ He gestured
towards a small tray of bread and cheese. I shook my head. I had had no appetite all
day.

‘It’s not quite up to the normal
standards of your cooking, I admit. I was thinking the other day of that duck dish you
made last month. With the orange. Perhaps you would do that for us again.’ He kept
talking. ‘But our supplies are dwindling. I found myself dreaming of a Christmas
cake called
Stollen
. Do you have it in France?’

I shook my head again.

We sat on each side of the fire. I felt
electrified, as if each part of me were fizzing, transparent. I felt as if he could see
through my skin. He knew everything. He held everything. I listened to the distant
voices, and every now and then my presence there hit me.
I am alone with a
Kommandant,
in the German barracks. In a room with a bed.

‘Did you think about what I
said?’ I blurted out.

He stared at me for a minute. ‘You
would not allow us the pleasure of a small conversation?’

I swallowed. ‘I’m sorry. But I
must know.’

He took a sip of wine. ‘I have thought
of little else.’

‘Then …’ My breath stalled
in my chest. I leaned over, put my glass down and unwrapped the painting. I placed it
against the chair, lit by the fire, so that he could see it in its finest aspect.
‘Will you take it? Will you take it in exchange for my husband’s
freedom?’

The air in the room grew still. He
didn’t look at the picture. His eyes stayed on mine, unblinking, unreadable.

‘If I could convey to you what this
painting means to me … if you knew how it had kept me going in the darkest of
days … you would know I could not offer it lightly. But I … would
not mind the painting going to you, Herr Kommandant.’

‘Friedrich. Call me
Friedrich.’

‘Friedrich. I … have long
known that you understood my husband’s work. You understand beauty. You understand
what an artist puts of himself into a piece of work, and why it is a thing of infinite
value. So while it will break my heart to lose it, I give it willingly. To
you.’

He was still staring at me. I did not look
away. Everything depended on this moment. I saw an old scar running several inches from
his left ear down his neck, a lightly silvered ridge. I saw that his bright blue eyes
were rimmed with black, as if someone had drawn around each iris for emphasis.

‘It was never about the painting,
Sophie.’

And there it was: confirmation of my
fate.

I closed my eyes briefly and let myself
absorb this knowledge.

The
Kommandant
began to talk about
art. He spoke of an art teacher he had known as a young man, a teacher who had opened
his eyes to work far from the classicism of his upbringing. He spoke of how he had tried
to explain this rougher, more elemental way of painting to his father, and his
disappointment at the older man’s incomprehension. ‘He told me it looked
“unfinished”,’ he said sadly. ‘He believed that veering from the
traditional was an act of rebellion in itself. I think my wife is much the
same.’

I barely heard him. I lifted my glass and
took a long draught. ‘May I have some more?’ I said. I emptied it, then
asked for it to be refilled again. I have never drunk like that, before or since. I
didn’t care if I appeared rude. The
Kommandant
continued to talk, his
voice a low monotone. He didn’t ask anything of me in return: it was as if he
wanted me only to listen. He wanted me to know that there was
someone else behind the uniform and the peaked cap. But I barely heard him. I wished to
blur the world around me, for this decision not to be mine.

‘Do you think we would have been
friends, if we had met in other circumstances? I like to think we would.’

I tried to forget that I was there, in that
room, with a German’s eyes upon me. I wanted to be a thing, unfeeling,
unknowing.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Will you dance with me,
Sophie?’

The way he kept saying my name, as if he were entitled to.

I put down my glass and stood, my arms
useless at my sides as he walked over to the gramophone and put on a slow waltz. He
moved towards me and hesitated just a minute before putting his arms around me. As the
music crackled into life, we began to dance. I moved slowly around the room, my hand in
his, my fingers light against the soft cotton of his shirt. I danced, my mind blank,
vaguely conscious of his head as it came to rest against mine. I smelt soap and tobacco,
felt his trousers brush against my skirt. He held me, not pulling me to him, but
carefully, as one might hold something fragile. I closed my eyes, allowing myself to
sink into a haze, trying to train my mind to follow the music, to put myself somewhere
else. Several times I tried to imagine he was Édouard, but my mind wouldn’t
let me. Everything about this man was too different: his feel, his size against mine,
the scent of his skin.

‘Sometimes,’ he said softly,
‘it seems there is so little beauty left in this world. So little joy. You think
life is harsh
in your little town. But if you saw what we see outside
it … Nobody wins. Nobody wins in a war like this.’

It was as if he was speaking to himself. My
fingers rested on his shoulder. I could feel the muscles move beneath his shirt as he
breathed.

‘I am a good man, Sophie,’ he
murmured. ‘It is important to me that you understand that. That we understand each
other.’

And then the music stopped. He released me
reluctantly, and went to reset the needle. He waited for the music to start again, and
then, instead of dancing, he gazed for a moment at my portrait. I felt a glimmer of hope
– perhaps he would still change his mind? – but then, after the slightest hesitation, he
reached up and gently pulled one of the pins from my hair. As I stood, frozen, he
removed the remaining pins carefully, one by one, placing them on the table, letting my
hair fall softly around my face. He had drunk almost nothing but there was a glazed
quality to his expression, as he watched, melancholy. His eyes searched mine, asking a
question. My own gaze was unblinking, like that of a porcelain doll. But I did not look
away.

As the last of my hair was released, he
lifted a hand and allowed the lock to trail through his fingers. His stillness was that
of a man afraid to move, a hunter unwilling to startle his prey. And then he took my
face gently between his hands and kissed me. I felt momentary panic; I couldn’t
bring myself to kiss him back. But I allowed my lips to part for his, closed my eyes.
Shock made my body alien to me. I felt his hands tighten around my waist, felt him
propelling me backwards towards the bed. And all the while a
silent
voice reminded me that this was a trade. I was buying my husband his freedom. All I had
to do was breathe. I kept my eyes closed, lay down against the impossible softness of
the quilts. I felt his hands on my feet, pulling my shoes off, and then they were on my
legs, sliding slowly up under my skirt. I could feel his eyes on my flesh as they rose
higher.

Édouard
.

He kissed me. He kissed my mouth, my chest,
my bare stomach, his breathing audible, lost in a world of his own imaginings. He kissed
my knees, my stockinged thighs, letting his mouth rest against bare skin as if its
proximity were a source of unbearable pleasure. ‘Sophie,’ he murmured.
‘Oh, Sophie …’

And as his hands reached the innermost part
of my thighs, some treacherous part of me sparked into life, a warmth that was nothing
to do with the fire. Some part of me divorced itself from my heart, and let slip its
hunger for touch, for the weight of a body against my own. As his lips traced my skin, I
shifted slightly and out of nowhere a moan escaped my mouth. But the urgency of his
response, the quickening of his breath on my face, quelled it as fast as it was born. My
skirts were pushed up, my blouse pulled from my chest, and as I felt his mouth on my
breast, I found myself turning, like some mythical figure, to stone.

German lips. German hands.

He was on top of me now, his weight pinning
me to the bed. I could feel his hands tugging at my underclothes, desperate to get
inside them. He pushed my knee to one side, half collapsing on my chest in his
desperation. I felt
him hard, unyielding, against my leg. Something
ripped. And then, with a little gasp, he was inside me, and my eyes were tight shut, my
jaw clenched to stop myself crying out in protest.

In. In. In.
I could hear the
hoarseness of his breathing in my ear, feel the faint sheen of his sweat against my
skin, the buckle of his belt against my thigh. My body moved, propelled by the urgency
of his.
Oh, God, what have I done? In. In. In.
My fists closed around two
handfuls of quilt, my thoughts jumbled and transient. Some distant part of me resented
their soft, heavy warmth more than almost anything. Stolen from someone. Like they stole
everything. Occupied. I was occupied. I disappeared. I was in a street in Paris, rue
Soufflot. The sun was shining, and around me, as I walked, I could see Parisian women in
their finery, the pigeons strutting through the dappled shadows of the trees. My
husband’s arm was linked through mine. I wanted to say something to him but
instead I let out a small sob. The scene stilled, and evaporated. And then I was aware
dimly that it had stopped. The pushing slowed, then stopped. Everything had stopped. The
thing. His thing was no longer inside me but soft, curling apologetically against my
groin. I opened my eyes, and found myself looking straight into his.