The Secret of the Blue Trunk (12 page)

While Franz was still away, the machine I worked with broke down. I had no idea what had happened. I examined it closely, but didn’t spot anything unusual.

I immediately alerted the guard who paced up and down in front of me, but he walked on without looking in my direction. So I started shouting as loud as I could, “Hey! I can’t work anymore! It won’t run!”

When I saw that he kept on walking, ignoring me completely, I stuck my tongue out at him. He flew into a rage and hit me on the front of my leg with the bayonet of his rifle. Then he resumed his pacing as if nothing had happened.

I had a cut of about seven or eight inches, and the wound bled profusely. I didn’t have any clean cloths to stem the blood and therefore used my dress to mop up as much of it as I could and stop the bleeding.

I cried with pain, but even more with rage. I struggled to sit down again and, keeping my head lowered so the guard wouldn’t see my tears, tried to pull myself together. I cannot say how much time passed before the whistle announced the end of the work day. I mustered up my courage and dragged myself to the counting room. When the girls saw what state I was in, they rushed forward to help and support me. I nearly fainted, but they kept tight hold of me. That way I was able to remain standing during roll call.

While the officers bustled about doing something else, Simone applied a tourniquet to my leg with my bootlace. The blood stopped flowing. She advised me not to take off my boot because it would be impossible to put it on again. She was right. The swelling was already quite advanced. I stayed upright for two hours, in great pain.

Mathilde lined up afterwards for my evening ration. My pain was greater than my appetite, but Simone recommended that I eat to keep up my strength.

Immediately after curfew, I gave my dress to Simone, who hid it under hers and asked permission to go to the toilets, where she tried to wash the blood out of my dress with the thin trickle of water from the tap.

The cloth used for wrapping the chunk of sausage we were keeping for Iréna protected my wound during the night and the following two days. Mathilde stole two pieces of fabric from a first-aid kit in the administrative offices.

Simone did everything she could to help me, and her support was a great comfort. When she attended to my wound, it wasn’t just out of solidarity; to me, it looked like the love of a mother who wants to save her child at any cost. She did it without asking
the
question, which, I knew, she longed to pose: “Do you still want to put your trust in a soldier?” I very much appreciated her silence.

The day after this savage attack, the machine had been repaired. I was relieved to see yesterday’s soldier was not on duty. I certainly couldn’t have helped staring at him with the fury of a wounded animal. I knew I would have exploded if he’d looked at me with condescension and I definitely wouldn’t be here today writing down my story.

The incident had dealt my morale a severe blow. I now had doubts about Franz’s goodness. I questioned my talks with him. I had shown open-mindedness toward the enemy, but it hadn’t served me well. Although I missed Franz, I didn’t look forward to his return quite as eagerly. If I ever spoke to him again, I would be much less pleasant. My pride had been affected just as much as my leg. I didn’t want Franz to look upon me as an injured victim who couldn’t retaliate. I was obviously down in the dumps and needed to get a grip on myself. My anger helped me nonetheless to forget about my leg somewhat. When the siren announced the end of that first work day after the accident, it came as a relief, although it took an enormous effort to walk to the attendance room.

After a few days, my wound healed on the surface, but a yellow liquid dripped from the cut’s centre. A red patch appeared around the swelling. Obviously, infection had set in.

One morning, Simone came back with a piece of bread soaked in milk, stolen from the kitchens. She cut the bread into small bits and applied these to the red spots. Then she tightened the dressing around the wound. I had once seen my grandmother prepare such a poultice to treat a sore that was slow to heal. I limped to my work station.

The milk and the bread seemed to have an effect because I began to have sharp pains in the wound. I needed to use my injured leg all day to press down on the pedal activating the pin that fastened the bullet. Whenever the injury sent me a pain signal, I relived the scene in spite of myself and felt rage surge through me.

When Simone changed my dressing that evening, we noticed a distinct improvement, no doubt because of the milk-soaked bread. The wound wasn’t nearly as red, but there was still a bit of yellowish liquid inside it. All along, I was grateful to Simone for applying a tourniquet with my bootlace on the day of the accident; without her intervention, I would certainly have bled to death. We were living in hellish conditions, but luckily we had forged strong bonds of friendship and that encouraged us to surpass ourselves in helping others. I had never had the opportunity to know and experience such compassion, not even during my life as a nun.

At last, we received news of Iréna. Her wound infection had subsided, but her diarrhea started again, and she was far too weak to leave the infirmary. To make matters worse, she had broken her nose when she fell off a stretcher on her way to the toilets. We couldn’t take any more bad news. It affected our spirits as well as our physical health.

Even though my leg hurt, I was relieved I didn’t have a temperature. Gangrene was liable to set in if the wound wasn’t treated properly. Simone and I always examined it carefully so we could react without delay if it turned black or began to give off a foul smell. Fortunately Mathilde managed to find sulfa drugs, as she had for Iréna, and they unquestionably saved my leg.

Simone knew that Mathilde granted sexual favours to the soldiers in order to get all these privileges, but she didn’t suspect the half of what the soldiers asked of her for every favour granted. And I, I didn’t really know what “to provide sex” meant. It was all quite abstract to me.

Simone had got married late in life to Léon. So she had experienced some sexual freedom and was much more aware of the price Mathilde needed to pay to get these privileges for us. As for me, who had difficulty understanding what went on inside me when I happened to be with Franz, one can imagine how naive I was on the subject. I only found out much later what Mathilde endured for us, but I won’t talk about it because I wouldn’t want to tarnish, by giving certain sordid details, the memory of a woman who would have deserved more medals than a number of highly placed officers, for all the lives she saved.

I will never forget what she had to put up with to protect us from death. Every little favour we benefited from carried a steep price to be paid to the soldiers. Even her visits to Iréna in the infirmary, lasting barely five minutes, needed to be paid back. Our requirements for drugs, Iréna’s and mine, were so glaring that she didn’t hesitate to provoke the soldiers so she could get some.

I can imagine the kind of deal she had to make to prevent our three names and hers from coming up in the Lottery of Death. She would never give us details about the pact she had entered into with the soldiers. But I have always wondered how she was able to suffer the utmost humiliation and agree to be touched without desiring it, and even having to pretend she enjoyed it, no doubt. When the time came to thank her, she merely said, “You would have done the same thing in my place. It’s a matter of survival.” I honestly think I would have been much more of a coward.

My leg was getting better by the day and I limped less and less. In spite of the yellow liquid that hadn’t stopped leaking from the wound, there was no infection.

I still felt just as angry with the soldier who had hurt me, but after much thought, I couldn’t blame Franz. Quite the opposite. If there was a balm to be put on my injury and on this whole dreadful life, the talks with Franz might be part of it.

Franz had said he would be back in two weeks. To count the days, I put one machine-gun bullet aside, in my workbox, after each day.

At last Iréna came back to us and Karina was transferred. Mathilde reassured us by saying she wasn’t too worried for now about Karina’s fate because she was a very good worker. She never slowed her pace and had an extraordinary amount of energy. As long as that didn’t change, she wouldn’t need to fear for her life. We had avoided becoming too attached to her, since we knew she would leave as soon as Iréna returned. Once again Mathilde had “seen to it” that Iréna, upon leaving the infirmary, rejoined the three of us. When she arrived on our mattress, she was still weak, but had to show up for work the next day without fail, or else …

Iréna gave us news of Krystina, of whom we had caught brief glimpses since she gave birth. She no longer spoke and looked straight ahead, like a robot. Iréna told us her little Inga had lived only three weeks because her mother didn’t have enough milk. Although she had grown weaker, she had been forced to go back to work very soon after the delivery. During the breaks, she tried to feed her daughter, but she had no more milk. The women who worked at the infirmary made attempts to feed her with milk that was more like water than anything else, but it was no good, and Inga died a few days later. Then Krystina went back to the infirmary, suffering from severe depression. She was never seen again. As we listened to this story, we cried bitterly. Once again our morale took a blow. No one could say when this hell would end.

We went to sleep curled up against one another as never before. We wanted to celebrate Iréna’s return, having missed her so much, and we needed to warm ourselves, body and soul. It seemed to me that in all the time we had shared a mattress, our bodies had never been so attuned to each other. Every night, we went to sleep in the spoon position. We were the four pieces of a single set of cutlery.

I
carefully recounted the bullets I’d put in my workbox. I hadn’t made a mistake: Franz was expected back tomorrow. The thought of seeing him again excited me. I’d struggled to calm down for the past two days. My sudden good mood might be offensive to many, given the situation and the place we were in.

I was so filled with my new-found happiness that I lost my appetite. I burst with energy such as I hadn’t experienced for a long time. I even made the girls laugh by imitating a Quebecker from the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean area who tries to speak German. I’d never seen Mathilde in that state; her giggles lasted until curfew. She had dropped all her defences.
I
felt more like crying. We had a good time once again. Laughter was like tears: when you suppressed it for too long, you couldn’t stop it once you gave in to it. And that was all to the good.

When we woke up, Mathilde rubbed the top of my head. “You’re completely mad!” she said, remembering the previous night’s laughing fits. I was really proud to have cheered her up.

I had slept very little, but felt wonderful nevertheless. Before seeing Franz again, I would have liked to look at myself in a mirror, comb my hair, put on lipstick, but none of that was possible. Still, I could smile, I thought. And I did, discreetly of course, as I walked toward the staple machine.

Franz was already there. I smiled at him. Instead of looking at me, he stared right away at my injured leg. Then he came toward me, forgetting we each had our own role. He immediately checked himself. I sat down on my work chair. He took several steps, breathed deeply, as though to try and calm down, and asked me if the wound was healing well. I reassured him and admitted I had somewhat provoked the soldier who injured me.

He muttered between his teeth that he couldn’t even ask me who had done this because, if he gave him a good thrashing, it would instantly backfire on me. He was terribly sorry.

Surprised he wanted to protect me, I didn’t know what to say. He obviously cared for me and didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. I was deeply moved. I suddenly felt important in his eyes. I couldn’t hold back my tears, couldn’t speak. I wanted to tell him I was happy to see him and my life stopped when I couldn’t talk to him, but I just went on crying.

He fell silent. I didn’t even hear him breathe anymore. I raised my head and saw him looking shaken. He didn’t say a word. Did he feel the way I did? I wanted to think so. I had quieted down and was able to admit to him that since the day of that injury I no longer trusted him quite as much.

I had something to ask him, a question that tormented me, and I wanted a straight answer. “Franz, if you ever receive the order to perform the Lottery of Death when you are on guard duty, how are going to get out of it?”

He was dumbstruck. The possibility had never occurred to him. He replied candidly, “You know, the first thought that comes to my mind … is to pretend I feel ill, while I writhe with pain, because I don’t have the right to disobey orders. You make me shake with fear, Armande. Until now, I have never had to kill or mistreat anyone. I have mainly had administrative jobs to do. But the war is becoming more and more difficult for the German army, and I know I’ll soon be required to carry out orders I won’t agree with. I would rather fight at the front. I know they’ll need me before long. Do I have to tell you I am very frightened? Yet don’t feel embarrassed about that. I sometimes wonder how I’d be able to live if I ever felt the urge to desert. I’m sure I would be tormented by shame for having forsaken my country. Because of my father and my upbringing. I wouldn’t be able to look my family in the face anymore.”

For three days we felt an urgent need to go on talking and forge an even closer bond. To encourage him to come and visit me, I tried to give him a taste for my country by describing the wide-open spaces, the four clearly distinct seasons, the great distances between towns. Paris might be a unique, extraordinary city, but nonetheless he had to see Quebec one day. I told him that the warm-hearted people of my region would make him very welcome.

To Franz, Quebec and Austria seemed to have much in common.

I abruptly stopped talking. Where exactly could he come to visit me? At the convent? I had forgotten who I was. That cruel reality made my stomach churn. When I got out of here, I would have to enter another prison. It would be impossible to stroll about freely with Franz. I was young and inexperienced, and in my imagination I pictured an ideal world where everything would be easy.

If I came out of this war alive, would I still hear the call of God? I wondered. Was I really made for that life? Did I have enough faith to be happy? After experiencing so many hardships, why wouldn’t I choose to be free? And if I did, how would I overcome the disgrace of renouncing my vows?

No doubt about it: My bond with Franz was upsetting all the plans made for me. What did I expect from him? That he would join me in Quebec, whose natural wonders I had just praised? But that would mean I would no longer be a nun when I returned.… And if Franz ever arrived in Quebec, what kind of a couple would we make? Would we be that couple who had come together in turmoil, who had met in an enclosed place marked by horror? How would we cope with the judgment of others?

However that might be, he told me on the fourth day what I didn’t want to hear: he had to leave for the front the next morning.

I expected the worst. Everything would fall apart for me after he left. What was the use of trying to make it through in those conditions?

Franz arranged to meet me in Paris, at the café at the Louvre, on the first May 7 after the war. This was the date of our first conversation at the camp.

“I will understand perfectly if you don’t come, because our two lives are so very different. It was a real pleasure to talk to you. It’s a pity, I think, that we met during this awful war. I wish you good luck and keep on being a fighter. It’s the only way to survive.”

Survive? How would I? Since I started talking to him, Franz had become my inspiration to carry on, my sole reason for resisting. Thanks to him, I could forget the suffering and the hell I was in.

Over the following days, I was inconsolable. My friends tried to talk to me, in vain because I had withdrawn into myself. Then, bit by bit, the grief subsided.

All wasn’t easy in the beginning, of course, and I often tossed about in my sleep. Sometimes gloom swept over me. One morning I got up determined to come out of the camp alive. From then on, that thought was my only reason to live.

In the end, Franz became my happiest memory of those dark years. Thank you, Franz!