He meant it, too. He waited. I waited. Those two waited-he couldn’t be serious, but he was, and yet I asked myself, Are they really going to have someone shot for this? I couldn’t believe it.
‘Madame, écoutez-moi, s’il vous plaît. Oberst Neumann has no other choice. All acts of sabotage are to be severely punished so as to set an example to others.’
‘But … but perhaps it wasn’t sabotage? Perhaps a crate of bottles fell off a lorry or wagon and the men only cleaned up what they could?’
I was frantic and hoped my voice hadn’t betrayed me. Dupuis took out his pipe, and I watched him slowly pack that thing. Then the pouch into the jacket pocket, then the pat to make sure it was safely there, then the match-would he strike it with the thumbnail or on the cleat of one of those shoes?
It was the cleat this time. ‘Glass,’ he said, puffing away to get the furnace going. ‘Madame, everyone who was at your house the night of the Reichsmarschall Göring’s visit is under suspicion.’
‘For what?’ I managed.
The match was waved out and pocketed as always. ‘For robbery, Madame de St-Germain. It is with regret that we must take you to Paris. There are some questions that need to be answered. The children you will leave in the care of your husband’s gardener and housekeeper.’
Georges and Tante Marie. That bastard wanted them to pump my kids. He saw that I knew it, and all he did was smile. He’d got me right where he wanted me.
8
The mound of ashes is now almost totally grey. There are big chunks, little ones, powdery flakes-several shades, with lasting embers that only glow when the gusting wind decides to fan them.
I’ve built this bonfire in the forest knowing they’ll see it from the house. As expected, they’ve sent André to reason with me, but I don’t trust any of them. Why should I?
Having made a careful circuit of the area to be certain they’ve sent no one else, I let him wait. He doesn’t yet know I’m close. I’ve walked in my bare feet-left those shoes they gave me by the fire, the stockings, too, so that he’ll see them and think I’ve gone to relieve myself. He won’t know that bare feet are so much better for hunting.
André has gained a good fifteen years, not the few that should have made him the fifty-seven he really is. The shoulders are slumped as if in defeat, there’s no pride, it’s all gone. The overcoat is the same grey tweed with the black velvet collar, but he has no hat and that just isn’t right, not with him.
Even so, I step from behind the trees. Without the wind to fan the embers, there’s barely light enough to see him on the other side of the ashes. ‘Ah, bon, André. It’s been a long time.’
‘Lily…’ He’s startled, casts a glance towards the house, wonders where the others are but somehow manages to ask, ‘How did you …? How are you?’
Searching the darkness for the others, I tell him it’s not important how I came to be alive.
At once, he’s irritable. ‘The war’s over, Lily. It’s finished. Forget it.’
‘Me? How could I?’
‘Look, I know you must have suffered terribly, but …’
‘What could you possibly know of my suffering?’
‘Simone …’
‘Ah, oui, Simone. I’m sorry she didn’t make it.’
‘She was the price I had to pay. Did she …’
‘Say anything, this woman who loved you so much? Is that what you’re wondering? Yes, she said lots of things. She asked us not to blame you for what you’d done, and when she died, I know her last wish was that others, not just myself, should show compassion towards you.’
This humbles him, and he stares at the ashes as a gust fans them to life. ‘The Nazis left me no choice, Lily. They said they had arrested her, and that if I’d agree to give them certain information, they would look the other way.’
‘The Vuittons told you that. Schiller was with them and … and Jules.’
‘Yes. They all came to my surgery. Your sister was too involved, Lily. I couldn’t …’
‘My sister, yes. And Michèle Chevalier, André, and Henri-Philippe Beauclair. You told those bastards where they could be found, but Janine, she managed to get away.’
‘They ought to have known better! I warned them many times. Janine was too impetuous. She took far too many chances. Michèle was far too innocent. She didn’t know how to lie, for God’s sake. She …’
I wait. He knows it’s no good trying to tell me Michèle was the first to break. At last, he says, ‘How did Simone die?’
He really wants to know, and I can see that he must have dwelt on this matter day and night.
‘Bergen-Belsen, André. Can you believe it? We’d been in Birkenau, the death camp at Auschwitz. Finally, they sent us to Bergen-Belsen, a so-called convalescent camp. Typhus, dysentery like you wouldn’t believe, mass starvation, no water at the end. Sixty … eighty thousand of us, the men in one part, the women in another, the soup so rotten and thin, everywhere people were dying so fast their last breaths made a constant whisper. A hush as the squeaking, lime-encrusted wheels of the carts hauled the heaps of bodies to the pits for burning and burial by those who were left and could still wield a shovel, myself among them.’
He says nothing. He can’t lift his eyes, but I feel no elation, only an emptiness that is hard to describe because he was once my friend. ‘Bergen-Belsen, André. Do you know what that must have meant for a woman like Simone? She was so thin. She needed rest, warmth, love-medical attention. You’re a doctor. Surely, you can appreciate that?’
Doubtless my voice shows traces of madness, but I have to get it off my chest. ‘That camp is in a kind of fir forest, low and swampy. Mud is everywhere. Always there is the mud, but on the morning she died it was all churned up and frozen solid. The spring of last year. March the 20th, so near the end and yet so far. They always woke us at four thirty in the morning for the roll call. The blockova would bash her truncheon against the wall of the hut, then scream at us in German, ‘Raus! Raus! Schnell, Huren!’ Out! Out! Hurry, whores! ‘Herunter!’ Down! — that means down from our so-called beds, André. The din is horrible, the panic indescribable. Sleeping, half-dead, exhausted women tumble from the Kojen where, tier upon tier, crammed head to foot, we’ve spent our nights. Arms, legs-sticks of bone; ribs showing-we fight to reach the floor and get outside. We have to get outside. It’s an order. AN ORDER!
‘Fog blankets the camp. Frost rims the ground, the barbed wire, and the trees in the distance. Huddled in our filthy rags, we wait under the blinding glare of the searchlights. Always it’s, ‘Achtung! Achtung!’ from the loudspeakers. ‘Zum Appell! Fünf Seite an Seite!’ Line up, five (by five), side by side. Sixty thousand of us … One hundred thousand. I really don’t know how many. Lots and lots of men and women, but segregated, of course. Oh, yes.
‘The frozen mud hurts our feet. Some have shoes; some have none. Socks are mismatched, rags bound around their feet. Shit and blood and pus. Simone? I ask. Where’s Simone?
‘Frantically, I began to look for her. I ran back to our hut, but Pani Nalzinski, our blockova, wouldn’t let me get her. ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘She’s okay. She’s just a little tired. I guarantee you, she’ll be on her feet all day.’
‘It began to snow, but it wasn’t snow, André. It was ashes from the cremation fires that burned in the open. The blockova gave me one across the seat and another across the shoulders, shrieking at me to get back in line, me begging her to let me get my friend. ‘All right. Both die. If one no good, other no good.’