The Girl You Left Behind (10 page)

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. Hélène 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 Édouard. I felt
Hélène’s hand grip mine, and knew she was thinking the same.

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 toppled 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 Hélène’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 Hélène 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. Hélène’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 Péronne 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, René 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. Hélène 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 Édouard I remembered from
Paris. But seeing those pitiful Frenchmen marched through the streets made it harder for
me to hold on to my fantasy. Édouard 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. Hélène 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.

‘Hélène?’

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 können nicht berühren 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 Lefèvre.’

I was washing the last of the glasses.
Hélène 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.

I lay awake that night, despite my
exhaustion. I watched Hélène 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.

I was about to go back to my room to dress
when there was a rap at the door. I flinched, seeing a shadow behind the cotton screen.
I pulled my blanket around me, staring at the silhouette, trying to work out who would
be calling on us at such an hour, whether it was the
Kommandant
, come to
torment me about what he knew. I walked silently towards the door. I lifted the screen
and there, on the other side, was Liliane Béthune. Her hair was piled up in
pin curls, she was wearing the black astrakhan coat, and her eyes
were shadowed. She glanced behind her as I unlocked the top and bottom bolts and opened
the door.