I stooped and put a few handfuls of twigs
into my basket, hoping their voices might drown the constant hum of dread in my mind.
And then, as I straightened, I saw him: in the clearing, a gun to his shoulder, talking
to one of his men. He heard the girls’ voices and swung round. Édith
shrieked, looked about wildly for me and bolted for my arms, her eyes wide with terror.
Mimi, confused, stumbled along behind, trying to work out why her friend
should be so shaken by the man who came each night to the
restaurant.
‘Don’t cry, Édith,
he’s not going to hurt us. Please don’t cry.’ I saw him watching us,
and prised the child from my legs. I crouched down to talk to her. ‘That’s
Herr Kommandant. I’m going to talk to him now about his supper. You stay here and
play with Mimi. I’m fine. Look, see?’
She trembled as I handed her to Mimi.
‘Go and play over there for a moment. I’m just going to talk to Herr
Kommandant. Here, take my basket and see if you can find me some twigs. I promise you
nothing bad will happen.’
When I could finally prise her from my
skirts, I walked over to him. The officer who was with him said something in a low
voice, and I pulled my shawls around me, crossing my arms in front of my chest, waiting
as the
Kommandant
dismissed him.
‘We thought we might go
shooting,’ he said, peering up at the empty skies. ‘Birds,’ he
added.
‘There are no birds left here,’
I said. ‘They are all long gone.’
‘Probably quite sensible.’ In
the distance we could hear the faint boom of the big guns. It seemed to make the air
contract briefly around us.
‘Is that the whore’s
child?’ He cocked his gun over his arm and lit a cigarette. I glanced behind me to
where the girls were standing by the rotten trunk.
‘Liliane’s child? Yes. She will
stay with us.’
He watched her closely, and I could not work
out what he was thinking. ‘She is a little girl,’ I said. ‘She
understood nothing of what was going on.’
‘Ah,’ he said, and puffed his
cigarette. ‘An innocent.’
‘Yes. They do exist.’
He looked at me sharply and I had to force
myself not to lower my eyes.
‘Herr Kommandant. I need to ask you a
favour.’
‘A favour?’
‘My husband has been taken to a
reprisal camp in Ardennes.’
‘And I am not to ask you how you came
upon this information.’
There was nothing in how he looked at me. No
clue at all.
I took a breath. ‘I
wondered … I’m asking if you can help him. He is a good man. He’s
an artist, as you know, not a soldier.’
‘And you want me to get a message to
him.’
‘I want you to get him out.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘Herr Kommandant. You act as if we are
friends. So, I’m begging you. Please help my husband. I know what goes on in those
places, that he has little chance of coming out alive.’
He didn’t speak, so I seized my chance
and continued. These were words I had said a thousand times in my head over the past
hours. ‘You know that he has spent his whole life in the pursuit of art, of
beauty. He’s a peaceful man, a gentle man. He cares about painting, about dancing,
eating and drinking. You know it makes no difference to the German cause whether he is
dead or alive.’
He glanced around us, through the denuded
woods, as if to monitor where the other officers had gone, then took another puff at his
cigarette. ‘You take a considerable
risk in asking me something
like this. You saw how your townspeople treat a woman they think is collaborating with
Germans.’
‘They already believe me to be
collaborating. The fact of you being in our hotel apparently made me guilty without a
trial.’
‘That, and dancing with the
enemy.’
Now it was my turn to look surprised.
‘I have told you before, Madame. There
is nothing that goes on in this town that I don’t hear about.’
We stood in silence, gazing at the horizon.
In the distance a low boom caused the earth to vibrate very slightly under our feet. The
girls felt it: I could see them gazing down at their shoes. He took a final puff from
his cigarette, then crushed it under his boot.
‘Here is the thing. You are an
intelligent woman. I think you are probably a good judge of human nature. And yet you
behave in ways that would entitle me, as an enemy soldier, to shoot you without even a
trial. Despite this, you come here and expect me not just to ignore that fact but to
help you. My enemy.’
I swallowed. ‘That … that is
because I don’t just see you as … an enemy.’
He waited.
‘You were the one who
said … that sometimes we are just … two people.’
His silence made me bolder. I lowered my
voice. ‘I know you are a powerful man. I know you have influence. If you say he
should be released, he will be released. Please.’
‘You don’t know what
you’re asking.’
‘I know that if he has to stay there he
will die.’
The faintest flicker behind his eyes.
‘I know you are a gentleman. A
scholar. I know you care about art. Surely to save an artist you admire would be
–’ My words faltered. I took a step forward. I put a hand out and touched his arm.
‘Herr Kommandant. Please. You know I would not ask you for anything but I beg you
for this. Please, please, help me.’
He looked so grave. And then he did
something unexpected. He lifted a hand and lightly moved a strand of my hair from my
face. He did it gently, meditatively, as if this was something he had imagined for some
time. I hid my shock and kept perfectly still.
‘Sophie …’
‘I will give you the painting,’
I said. ‘The one you like so much.’
He dropped his hand. He let out a sigh, and
turned away.
‘It is the most precious thing I
have.’
‘Go home, Madame
Lefèvre.’
A small knot of panic began to form in my
chest.
‘What must I do?’
‘Go home. Take the children and go
home.’
‘Anything. If you can free my husband,
I’ll do anything.’ My voice echoed across the woodland. I felt
Édouard’s only chance slipping away from me. He kept walking. ‘Did you
hear what I said, Herr Kommandant?’
He swung back then, his expression suddenly
furious. He strode towards me and only stopped when his face was inches from mine. I
could feel his breath on my face. I could see the girls from the corner of my eye, rigid
with anxiety. I would not show fear.
He gazed at me, and then he lowered his
voice. ‘Sophie …’ He glanced behind him at them. ‘Sophie, I – I
have not seen my wife in almost three years.’
‘I have not seen my husband for
two.’
‘You must know … you must
know that what you ask of me …’ He turned away from me, as if he were
determined not to look at my face.
I swallowed. ‘I am offering you a
painting, Herr Kommandant.’
A small tic had begun in his jaw. He stared
at a point somewhere past my right shoulder, and then he began to walk away again.
‘Madame. You are either very foolish or very … ’
‘Will it buy my husband his freedom?
Will … will I buy my husband his freedom?’
He turned back, his face anguished, as if I
was forcing him to do something he didn’t want to do. He stared fixedly at his
boots. Finally he took two paces back towards me, just close enough that he could speak
without being overheard.
‘Tomorrow night. Come to me at the
barracks. After you have finished at the hotel.’
We walked hand in hand back round the
paths, to avoid going through the square, and by the time we reached Le Coq Rouge our
skirts were covered with mud. The girls were silent, even though I attempted to reassure
them that the German man had just been upset because he had no pigeons to shoot. I made
them a warm drink, then went to my room and closed the door.
I lay down on my bed and put my hands over
my eyes to block out the light. I stayed there for perhaps half an
hour. Then I rose, pulled my blue wool dress from the wardrobe, and laid it across the
bed. Édouard had always said I looked like a schoolmistress in it. He said it as
though being a schoolmistress might be a rather wonderful thing. I removed my muddy grey
dress, leaving it to fall on to the floor. I took off my thick underskirt, the hem of
which was also spattered with mud, so that I was wearing only my petticoat and chemise.
I removed my corset, then my undergarments. The room was cold, but I was oblivious to
it.
I stood before the looking-glass.
I had not looked at my body for months; I
had had no reason to. Now the shape that stood before me in the mottled glass seemed to
be that of a stranger. I appeared to be half the width I had been; my breasts had fallen
and grown smaller, no longer great ripe orbs of pale flesh. My bottom too. And I was
thin, my skin now hinting at the bones underneath: collar bone, shoulder and rib all
forced their way to prominence. Even my hair, once bright with colour, seemed dull.
I stepped closer and examined my face: the
shadows under my eyes, the faint frown line between my brows. I shivered, but not from
the cold. I thought of the girl Édouard had left behind two years ago. I thought of
the feel of his hands on my waist, his soft lips on my neck. And I closed my eyes.
He had been in a foul mood for days. He was
working on a picture of three women seated around a table and he could not get it right.
I had posed for him in each position and watched silently as he huffed and grimaced,
even
threw down his palette at one point, rubbing his hands through
his hair and cursing himself.
‘Let’s take some air,’ I
said, uncurling myself. I was sore from holding the position, but I wouldn’t let
him know that.
‘I don’t want to take some
air.’
‘Édouard, you will achieve
nothing in this mood. Take twenty minutes’ air with me. Come.’ I reached for
my coat, wrapped a scarf around my neck, and stood in the doorway.
‘I don’t like being
interrupted,’ he grumbled, reaching for his own coat.
I didn’t mind his ill-temper. I was
used to him by then. When Édouard’s work was going well, he was the sweetest
of men, joyful, keen to see beauty in everything. When it went badly, it was as if our
little home lay under a dark cloud. In the early months of our marriage I had been
afraid that this was somehow my fault, that I should be able to cheer him. But listening
to the other artists talk at La Ruche, or in the bars of the Latin Quarter, I grew to
see such rhythms in all of them: the highs of a work successfully completed, or sold;
the lows when they had stalled, or overworked a piece, or received some stinging
criticism. These moods were simply weather fronts to be borne and adapted to.
I was not always so saintly.
Édouard grumbled all the way along rue
Soufflot. He was irritable. He could not see why we had to walk. He could not see why he
could not be left alone. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know the pressure he
was under. Why, Weber and Purrmann were already being pursued by
galleries near the Palais Royale, offered shows of their own. It was rumoured that
Monsieur Matisse preferred their work to his. When I tried to reassure him that this was
not the case he waved a hand dismissively, as if my view was of no account. His choleric
rant went on and on until we reached the Left Bank, and I finally lost patience.
‘Very well,’ I said, unhooking
my arm from his. ‘I am an ignorant shop girl. How could I be expected to
understand the artistic pressures of your life? I am simply the one who washes your
clothes and sits for hours, my body aching, while you fiddle with charcoal, and collects
money from people to whom you do not want to seem ungenerous. Well, Édouard, I will
leave you to it. Perhaps my absence will bring you some contentment.’
I stalked off down the bank of the Seine,
bristling. He caught up with me in minutes. ‘I’m sorry.’
I kept walking, my face set.
‘Don’t be cross, Sophie.
I’m simply out of sorts.’
‘But you don’t have to make me
out of sorts because of it. I’m only trying to help you.’
‘I know. I know. Look, slow down.
Please. Slow down and walk with your ungracious husband.’ He held out his arm. His
face was soft and pleading. He knew I could not resist him.
I glared at him, then took his arm and we
walked some distance in silence. He put his hand over mine, and found that it was cold.
‘Your gloves!’
‘I forgot them.’
‘Then where is your hat?’ he
said. ‘You are freezing.’
‘You know very well I have no winter
hat. My velvet walking hat has moth, and I haven’t had time to patch
it.’
He stopped. ‘You cannot wear a walking
hat with patches.’
‘It is a perfectly good hat. I just
haven’t had time to see to it.’ I didn’t add that that was because I
was running around the Left Bank trying to find his materials and collect the money he
was owed to pay for them.
We were outside one of the grandest hat
shops in Paris. He saw it, and pulled us both to a standstill. ‘Come,’ he
said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Don’t disobey me, wife. You
know I am easily tipped into the worst of moods.’ He took my arm, and before I
could protest further, we had stepped into the shop. The door closed behind us, the bell
ringing, and I gazed around in awe. On shelves or stands around the walls, reflected in
huge gilded looking-glasses, were the most beautiful hats I had ever seen: enormous,
intricate creations in jet black or flashy scarlet, wide brims trimmed with fur or lace.
Marabou shivered in the disturbed air. The room smelt of dried roses. The woman who
emerged from the back was wearing a satin hobble skirt; the most fashionable garment on
the streets of Paris.
‘Can I help you?’ Her eyes
travelled over my three-year-old coat and windblown hair.
‘My wife needs a hat.’
I wanted to stop him then. I wanted to tell
him that if he insisted on buying me a hat we could go to La Femme Marché, that I
might even be able to get a discount. He had no idea that this place was a
couturier’s salon, beyond the realms of women like me.