Far From Home

Chapter 4

The train was slow and made frequent stops. It made two stops shortly after she got in, and didn’t stay long in either station. Notre-Dame-de-Courson, the third stop, was where Louis had told her to get off. Two other passengers did too. Both were men. They were older, wearing plain country clothes. The only thing unusual about Arielle, other than her looks, was the expensive brown alligator suitcase. Jeanne hadn’t had a different one to give her, and everything Arielle owned now was in that one bag. She had to take it with her. But no one seemed to pay any attention to her. There were no soldiers at the station, no visible authorities, just an old stationmaster who came out when the train arrived, waved the flag for the engineer to leave a few minutes later, and went back into the station after only a brief glance at Arielle, because she was a pretty woman. There was a board with notices on it hanging outside the station—an ad for a local restaurant, a taxi service, and an old sign canceling the local farmers’ market. The German army was still requisitioning all the local produce for free. Louis had told her about that. And there was a small card with a notice in neat penmanship, “Room to rent, center of town,” with the address. She committed it to memory, and went inside to ask the stationmaster how far the town was from the station. He was talking to an old man in hushed tones, and they both looked admiringly at Arielle.

“Not far, it’s a twenty-minute walk. Maybe longer, with that bag,” the stationmaster said. He could see that it was heavy for her to carry. The other man looked at her and spoke.

“I can give you a ride,” he offered. “Where are you going?” They knew everyone in town. The stationmaster’s friend was the local barber. Between them, they knew all the news and all the gossip. They were boyhood friends and had never lived anywhere else. Neither had ever been to Paris, although it was less than three hours away. They’d never had any desire to go. Notre-Dame-de-Courson was enough for them.

Arielle gave him the address she’d memorized from the card.

“Ah, Nicole Bouchon. She has a room to rent,” he confirmed.

“I saw the card on the bulletin board,” Arielle said. Both men were curious about what she was doing there, but didn’t ask. If she rented a room from Nicole, they’d know soon enough.

“There used to be a hotel here, but it’s been closed since the war started. The owner died and his two sons went to Paris to work. They’ll sell it after the war. There’s no one to buy it now. It’s all boarded up and falling apart.” No one came to stay in Notre-Dame-de-Courson anymore. Nowadays people just left.

She followed the old man to his truck. He helped her put her suitcase in the back. It was beginning to look a little marked up, which made it slightly less noticeable, and she got into the front of the truck as he started the engine. The truck seemed almost as old as he was, but the engine gave a series of spluttering sounds and started, and they headed toward the town.

“Are you visiting someone?” he finally couldn’t resist asking, and she shook her head.

“I just lost my husband. He had tuberculosis. We lived in Paris. I spent summers near here when I was a little girl. It’s safer than Paris, and I couldn’t afford the rent anymore.” Her suitcase alone would have paid a year’s rent, but he didn’t know that, and believed her story.

“No children?” She shook her head. “You’re right, we’re safe here. It’s too quiet for the soldiers. They drive through from time to time, but they’re staying in other towns, and around the countryside. There’s no chateau to take over here,” which was why Louis had told her to go there. “They’ll be leaving soon, once the Americans drive them out. Not a lot of jobs in town, but you can ask around, if you’re looking. What kind of work do you do?”

“I was a secretary,” she said, off the top of her head. “But I can do anything, work as a waitress, or in a store. Whatever I find.” He nodded. She seemed like a nice, genteel woman who had fallen on hard times.

“It would be easier to find a job in Paris,” he commented, “but it’s not a good place for a woman alone these days, with soldiers everywhere. You were smart to come here. You’ll be safe. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want her in Paris now.”

He stopped the truck at a small tidy-looking house. It was built on the Norman model, with dark beams inside and out. It was in good repair and there were flowers in the front garden and a notice in the window, “Room for Rent.” Arielle thanked him and reached into her purse to pay him, and he put up a hand to stop her.

“You don’t need to pay me. Good luck,” he said kindly, and she thanked him and got out to pull her bag out of the truck and set it down on the walkway to Nicole Bouchon’s house. She had no idea what she’d do if the woman didn’t rent her the room, since there was no longer a hotel. She’d have to go to another town. She felt like a nomad now, with no roots anywhere. She’d survived five years of war in Germany, in ideal conditions, and she had lost everything now. Three days before she’d had a golden life with a husband, a home, Gregor’s enormous schloss, servants all around them, their daughter living nearby. She’d dined with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris at the Kommandant’s dinner party, and now she was on the run like a criminal, with a falsified passport, not sure if the SS was looking for her or not, and her husband had been executed as a traitor. She had no home, no husband, no place where she could be safe, no protection. She felt like a hunted animal lost in the woods, trying to escape danger, and hiding where she could. And even if the Americans came, since she was German, they were her enemies too.

She rang the doorbell, and the truck drove away. No one answered at first, and then an older woman peered out a window, observing Arielle. She had a long thin face, sunken eyes and cheeks, and white hair. She was painfully thin, which wasn’t unusual in France these days. No one was properly fed. The war had worn everyone down. The woman opened the door a minute later, wearing a housedress with an apron over it and slippers. She was somewhere in her sixties.

“Yes?” Neither friendly nor hostile, she was cautiously waiting to hear why Arielle was standing there.

“I saw your notice about the room,” she explained in a gentle voice. “I just arrived from Paris, and I need a place to stay.”

“For how long?” Nicole Bouchon stood in the doorway, assessing her. Arielle looked wellborn and sounded educated. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and the alligator suitcase hadn’t escaped the woman’s notice. She had seen one like it once and recognized it as expensive, but Arielle wasn’t wearing fancy clothes. She noticed that her shoes looked expensive, though, and she was wearing a wedding ring.

“I don’t know how long,” Arielle answered her. “I’m looking for a job too.”

“Will your husband be joining you?”

“I’m a widow. Very recently.” In fact, it had only been three days, which was hard for Arielle to fathom. And she had been on the run ever since.

The woman stepped aside then. “Come and see if you like the room. It’s my daughter’s. She got married and moved to Bordeaux with her husband. It’s very small.”

“I don’t need a big room. I stored everything in Paris, with friends,” Arielle lied. “This is all I have with me.” Piece by piece she was building a story about who she was and why she was there, and some of it was true. But she had to invent a credible history for herself.

She followed Nicole Bouchon up the stairs, and down a short hall to the left. The room was all decorated in pink, with flowered curtains and a matching bedspread. It looked neat and clean, with a shelf of dolls that reminded her of Marianna and her own childhood. It looked more like a childhood room than one for an adult, but it didn’t matter to her.

“It’s lovely,” Arielle said warmly, and the older woman smiled a wintry smile.

“I miss her. She’s only twenty, but she wanted to get married. I’m a widow too. My husband worked at the bank.” She didn’t say how he had died and Arielle didn’t ask. It was the etiquette of war, particularly in an occupied country. Nicole’s daughter was only two years younger than Marianna, but Arielle didn’t mention that. She had decided that admitting she had children would make her history more complicated and harder to explain. Nicole Bouchon told her the price of the room, which was very modest. Arielle could afford it easily for a while, particularly if she found a job, although she was sure that salaries weren’t high here either. She just needed enough to eat and pay the rent. “Meals aren’t included. But you can use the kitchen. And the room has its own bathroom,” a luxury in France. “We built it for her because she spent hours in the bathroom, which caused arguments with my husband.” She opened a door, and Arielle could see a toilet, a small sink, and a narrow shower with a hand-held hose and showerhead, makeshift but adequate for a teenage girl, and Arielle didn’t need more than that, and was grateful not to have to share a bathroom with her landlady.

“It’s perfect,” Arielle said politely. “Lovely.”

“You can move in,” Nicole Bouchon conceded. She was guarded, but everyone was now in wartime. Arielle seemed like an ideal tenant to her, she was proper and polite, she didn’t look like she’d be bringing men in, and she was respectful of Nicole.

“Thank you very much,” Arielle said with relief, and went downstairs to get her bag and haul it up the stairs. The room was smaller than any of her closets in Berlin, and their servants had had rooms that were five times the size of the room Nicole Bouchon was renting to her. Though her employees had had large communal bathrooms that they shared. But Arielle was grateful to have a place to stay, and she knew she’d feel safe there.

An hour later, she saw her landlady again. Arielle had unpacked most of what she’d brought into the chest of drawers in the room, and hung what she could in the closet, and left the rest in her suitcase. “Do you have everything you need?” Nicole asked her kindly, warmer now that Arielle was her tenant.

“Yes, thank you. I want to buy a few things, like tea, I don’t want to drink yours,” Arielle said. “Is there anything I can get you?” Nicole shook her head, pleased with the deal she’d made. It was a stroke of luck for both of them.

“What kind of job are you looking for?”

“Whatever I can get,” Arielle said.

“Try the general store,” Nicole suggested. “Olivia Laporte lost her husband last year. She has no children, and she can’t manage the store alone. She hired a man to help her a while ago. She has terrible arthritis and it’s getting worse. She can hardly walk. She probably can’t pay you much, but she needs more help than she has. The man she hired does the heavy work, but he doesn’t wait on the customers.”

“Thank you. I’ll talk to her and see what she says.”

“She’s very proud and stubborn and likes to think she can do it all herself, but she can’t. And we depend on her for all of our supplies. It would be a disaster if she had to close. She needs another person with her, if she’ll admit it.”

“I’ll give it a try,” Arielle said, grateful for the suggestion. It sounded better than waiting on tables at a restaurant or working in the local bar. They had driven past both on the way into town, and she didn’t look forward to working there if it was all she could find. Seeing the notice at the station for Nicole Bouchon’s room to rent was turning out to be the best piece of luck she’d had since this unexpected frightening journey had begun, and reconnecting with her cousins had been another one. She was going to need a lot more luck than that now, so that she didn’t get caught at the dangerous game she was playing, and to get back to her children in Germany eventually.

It was a five-minute walk to the center of the town. There was a quaint main street where most of the businesses were lined up, two restaurants at one end of the street, with the bar at the other end. A group of old men were playing pétanque outside, and some were sitting in the sun on old rusty metal chairs and seemed quite content. There was a bank, a post office, a barbershop, a dress shop with a single sad-looking dress in the window and a sign that said they also sold shoes. There was a feed store for livestock, the general store, and a food market. There was a small Catholic church around the corner whose steeple could be seen from the main street. The boarded-up hotel the barber had told her about was next to it. And so was the library. The general store was one of the largest on the main street, and Arielle made her way toward it, still wearing the clothes she had traveled in, black slacks and a short-sleeved black sweater and flat shoes. It was a warm day, but there was a nice breeze. She hesitated, trying to get up her courage, and then forced herself to walk into the general store.

A heavyset older woman struggled out of a chair to her feet behind the counter as Arielle walked in. The woman was somewhere in her sixties, but like everyone these days, she looked older, and she used two canes to get around. Her face was marked by either pain or sadness or both, and deeply lined.

“Can I help you?” she asked, looking Arielle over.

“I need a few things. I’ll look around.” She wanted to buy tea—if there was any, it was hard to get now—powdered milk, some biscuits, she needed shampoo and toothpaste, and she found that the store was well organized, with everything from gardening supplies to personal care items like toothpaste, some sewing goods, a few basic clothing items for men and women, some things for babies, and a small food section of dry goods. She found a second-rate brand of tea and bought a small tin of it. There were stationery supplies too, and a shelf of books and magazines. Everything one needed for daily life was in the store. And she noticed a tall man with dark hair and brown eyes about her own age carrying what appeared to be heavy boxes. He glanced at her and nodded and didn’t speak to her, as she gathered up the things she needed and went back to the counter, where the owner had settled back into her chair with her canes next to her. Arielle put what she’d collected on the counter, including a new toothbrush, the tea, toothpaste, some biscuits she planned to give to Madame Bouchon, and a magazine for herself. She was trying to get up the courage to ask the woman for a job. She had never worked in her life and would have to lie about it. She paid for her purchases, hesitated, and took a breath.

“Is there something else?” the store owner asked her. She was standing up by then, leaning on her canes, as she put the money in the cash register.

“I was just wondering…I just moved here from Paris. I arrived today. I’m staying at Nicole Bouchon’s. I wanted to inquire if you need anyone to help you in the store. I’m looking for a job,” Arielle said, shocked at how hard it was to ask for work. She’d never done it before.

“I recently hired the young man you see back there, carrying those cartons. He’s been very helpful. I do everything else,” but it was obvious that her mobility was limited. Just getting up to put the money in the register had taken considerable effort. “What sort of work are you looking for?” The woman appeared to be thinking.

“Whatever you’d need me to do,” Arielle said politely, as the older woman looked at her intensely. She could tell from the way Arielle spoke, and her accent, which was upper-class Parisian, that she was fancier than a clerk in a provincial general store. “I need the work, and I’m willing to do anything.”

“Have you ever worked before?” she asked her bluntly, and Arielle hesitated. She had been planning to lie to her about an imaginary job as a secretary, and decided not to. She was already surrounded by enough lies. It was a lot to keep track of.

“No, I haven’t worked, but I can learn to do whatever you need.”

“Half of Paris seems to be moving to Normandy,” the woman grumbled. “The young man with the boxes is a lawyer, and he moved here a few months ago. I needed someone to do the heavy work. I have trouble getting around, and it’s not getting better.” She thought about it for another minute. “You could try it out for a week or so, and we can see how it goes.” If she was lazy or spoiled or stuck-up, Olivia wouldn’t hire her.

“I’d be very grateful for the opportunity,” Arielle said respectfully, and the woman sat down heavily in her chair again.

“This isn’t Paris, and we’re not Hermès. We’re the only general store for miles. You can’t sit around reading my magazines. There’s work to do here, unpacking the shipments, setting up the shelves, waiting on customers. Come back tomorrow at nine a.m . and we’ll see,” she said, and Arielle almost hugged her. She thanked her profusely and left a few minutes later. She had forgotten to ask how much she’d be paid. She knew it wouldn’t be much, but it was some kind of income, hopefully enough to pay for her room, once the money she’d brought with her ran out. She was going to work hard to prove that she was worth whatever the woman paid her. And she was grateful to work there. She thought it was interesting that her other helper was an attorney, and wondered why he had left Paris to do menial work in a store in Normandy.

She went back to the house, gave the tin of biscuits to Nicole Bouchon, and made herself a cup of the tea. She had a room and a job, and that took her mind off her troubles for a few minutes and felt like cause for celebration. The room and the job were two important steps for her survival in hiding.

She went upstairs to her room with the copy of Marie-Claire, and wondered what Gregor would think of it all. These were strange times and he had left her in a desperate situation, in a foreign country, no matter how at home she was in France. Her situation was precarious now, because of him. She had to make the best of it.

—

Arielle appeared at the store promptly at nine o’clock the next morning, the time she’d been told to be there. She was wearing a simple black skirt, a white blouse, and flat black shoes, with her hair pulled back in a bun, ready to work. The shop owner lived above the store, and she came awkwardly down the stairs to unlock the door and let Arielle in. The man Arielle had seen the day before arrived five minutes later. He was wearing work clothes, dressed for heavy work and manual labor. He didn’t deal with the customers. Olivia Laporte introduced her male worker as Sebastien Renaud, and he shook Arielle’s hand and then went to carry all the new deliveries into the store. There were a lot of them.

“He doesn’t talk much, but he’s very smart,” Madame Laporte told her. “And he’s an artist. He does beautiful delicate paintings. It’s just a hobby but he’s talented. I think something bad happened to his wife and daughter. He doesn’t talk about them much. He’s very quiet. He also helps me balance the accounts.” They had all become jacks-of-all-trades in the war. Arielle had no trade, but she was excited to work in the store.

Olivia Laporte kept her running all morning and gave her half an hour to eat the lunch she’d brought, an apple Madame Bouchon had given her and some crackers and a thin wedge of cheese she’d bought at the store. She had spent the morning setting up the sewing and knitting section. Arielle tried to arrange it by color and type of yarn, and Madame Laporte was pleased when she saw it. Arielle had done it very artistically and made it very appealing. Arielle opened one of the magazines, turned the pages to a knitting section, and propped it open, to inspire customers for their purchases. Olivia loved it, and Sebastien smiled when he walked past and saw what she had done. Most of the time he looked serious, but he had a warm smile and kind eyes.

“Very creative,” he said, and went back to his deliveries of hardware supplies, which he organized carefully. He was meticulous and uncomplaining about his job, although he was capable of a great deal more. But he needed the work. He couldn’t make the hardware supplies as appealing and pretty as the sewing/knitting section, or the books and magazines Arielle had arranged after that. She put the books in order by author, and rearranged the biscuit section at her boss’s suggestion. Sebastien was filling the shelves in the food department. Most of it was nonperishable. By lunchtime, the store was looking full and well set up, despite the shortages they had to deal with every day. Arielle had made parts of it look more attractive, and she had a knack for merchandising and display. It seemed easy and fun to do, and it was all new to her. It was a little bit like decorating.

They’d had a steady stream of customers all morning. Olivia took care of them herself, as they all knew her. They asked about Arielle in hushed whispers, and were impressed that Olivia had hired Arielle to assist her. Her creative touches were visible in several areas of the store, and customers commented on how nice it all looked. Arielle had tidied all the shelves as she walked around.

“Her husband died and she couldn’t pay her rent so she moved to Normandy. She’s from Paris,” Olivia whispered to her favorite customers, who commented that Arielle was a well-spoken, pleasant woman, and she looked like a Parisian. She upgraded the practical, lackluster, slightly haphazard style of the store. It still wasn’t Hermès, but it looked a lot better than it had before. Sebastien stopped to admire her work several times. Olivia gave her a short break and Arielle went to sit outside to eat the apple she had saved for lunch. Sebastien joined her a few minutes later. He seemed very quiet and withdrawn, most of the time. He had a sad look in his eyes, but after a few minutes he spoke to her. He had admired her creative work all morning but didn’t try to engage her in conversation until they were both on a break. He smoked a cigarette while she ate her apple.

“You have an artistic eye,” he complimented her. “I like the displays you set up. Olivia is a nice woman when you get to know her. She’s in a lot of pain most of the time from her arthritis. Some days she can hardly get out of bed. She comes downstairs anyway, but she needs you more than she wants to admit. I do all the heavy work, but there’s a lot more to do, like what you did this morning.” He was friendlier than Arielle had expected.

“I can see that. It’s fun to make little displays.” She was actually enjoying her work in the simple country store, making it look better.

“What did you used to do?” Sebastien asked her, and she hesitated.

“Not a great deal. Some charity work. I was married, and I was lucky, I didn’t have to work.” And it was true, in a simplified version.

“My wife was a lawyer, like me,” he said reverently. “She had to stop practicing, and then I did,” he said, eating the bread and a thin slice of sausage he had brought to work. The tragic look in his eyes stopped Arielle from asking what had happened to his wife. She just nodded and listened to what he wanted to say.

“Olivia says you’re a talented artist.” Arielle changed the subject to something less delicate, and he smiled.

“I just play at it, I’m an amateur. I love doing miniature portraits on wood or ivory, like in the eighteenth century.” He was so big and athletic, with such large hands, she couldn’t imagine him doing miniatures, but he seemed happier when he talked about the art he did. It was his passion. He was a good-looking man, especially when he smiled, which he didn’t seem to do often. Arielle didn’t know what her own passion was. She liked all forms of decorating, traveling, and buying art with Gregor. Those days were over forever.

They went back to their tasks a little while later and worked steadily till the end of the day. The store closed at seven, and they had had many customers that day who’d heard about Arielle and wanted to look at her. Olivia thanked them both for their diligence, and they left together as Olivia locked the door behind them, turning the sign to “Closed” as they walked into the street. Arielle knew Sebastien loved to paint, was an attorney, and had been married to a fellow lawyer. But other than that, she didn’t know any personal details about him, and he knew nothing about her, which seemed wiser to both of them. It was impossible to know whom one could trust, so it was best not to trust anyone, as Louis had said.

Arielle had come to Laporte’s General Store every day for a full week when Olivia handed her an envelope on the last day.

“What’s this?” Arielle asked her, puzzled.

“Your first salary.” Olivia smiled at her. “You’re hired, if you still want the job. You’ve added some very nice touches this week, our customers like them, and they like you.” Arielle worked hard, had a nice way with people, and was unfailingly polite and helpful to customers. Unlike Sebastien, who was chatty with Arielle now at lunch, but rarely interacted with their customers. He kept his guard up at all times, stayed behind the scenes, and kept to himself. But now that Olivia had Arielle, Sebastien’s reticence didn’t concern her. He preferred physical activity, except for the accounting he helped Olivia with, which he was good at too.

Olivia was grateful to have them. They were both dedicated and efficient and intelligent, and once she had hired both of them, the burdens were lifted from her, her physical handicaps didn’t interfere with her business, and she could sit at the desk, take in the money, and hold court with the customers she knew well. She knew everyone in town, and her business doubled with Sebastien and Arielle working for her. Within a month, they turned the general store into a much more effective operation, helping the customers find everything they wanted, and even making suggestions for additional items for Olivia to stock. Olivia was delighted. She liked them both.

Arielle was happy with her job. It paid her enough and filled her days, and she only had the painful nights to get through, missing Gregor and her children. Not being able to contact Marianna or even write to Viktor at the front was agony.

—

Marianna had broken the bad news about their father to Viktor in a letter, and told him their mother hadn’t returned from Paris, and hadn’t been heard from since. And Marianna didn’t know where she was. He was devastated by his father’s betrayal of the Reich, and being part of the plot to kill the Führer. It shattered all Viktor’s illusions about Gregor. And they had no idea what had happened to their mother or where she had gone. Marianna didn’t dare write to him that she hoped Arielle was hiding somewhere in France, and hadn’t been found by the SS and killed. Their letters were censored so she couldn’t tell Viktor what she thought or guess at where Arielle might be.

Her father’s dedication to his principles and his willingness to die for them, and her fears for her mother’s life, had shifted her own position about Hitler and made her reexamine her own feelings about his politics. Although no one talked about it openly, two of her best friends from school had been sent to concentration camps with their families and had disappeared. And Marianna knew her father was an intelligent, sensible man, with sound ideas. She thought he was right in his outrage at Hitler’s hatred of the Jews and determination to exterminate them, and other extreme views, always carried out with violence. And he had brought Germany to its knees in the war.

She tried to talk to Jürgen about it, but he was devoted to the Reich heart and soul, risked his life for the German cause every day, and didn’t like hearing her question their leader, despite how badly everything was going. But the truth couldn’t be ignored. The country’s losses were tremendous, and leading to disaster.

Marianna stayed off the subject with Jürgen as much as possible, but she was haunted by her father’s philosophies now, and the many good men who had been killed for their part in the assassination attempt of Operation Valkyrie. Marianna was deeply troubled by what she knew and read, she mourned her father and had begun to see him as a hero, and she missed her mother desperately.

Gregor and Arielle’s home in Berlin had been taken over by one of the SS generals in Hitler’s high command and their valuable possessions divided up as the spoils of war, many going to the Führer himself. The generals’ wives got Arielle’s jewelry, and the family schloss was filled with officers of the Reich living there. The most faithful of Marianna’s parents’ employees had been fired, others had been kept to run the general’s home.

Marianna was under constant surveillance now as a potential traitor. Jürgen was deeply upset by it. Only his war record as an outstanding pilot and hero gave her some margin of grace. All of her parents’ money had been poured into the Reich’s coffers, to help continue to fund the war. Marianna and her brother got none of it, and she worried constantly about whether or not her mother was alive, and if she would ever see her again. Whatever her sympathies or her husband’s sins, Arielle was still their mother. Like Jürgen, her brother was much less forgiving of his parents and wrote angry diatribes about his father in every letter to his sister. He had been indoctrinated by the Nazis for too long in his youth to doubt his path now or see it any differently. Viktor was fighting for the Reich in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, rejoicing at every Allied soldier he killed. Marianna had serious doubts now about their leader and the war. He was leading them to ruin.

In France, Arielle prayed for her children’s safety and survival every day and night, aching that she could not contact them. It was too risky for her and for them. Thanks to Gregor’s precautions, and the documents Carl-Heinrich had provided, she had vanished without a trace in France. And by late August, the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy was complete and they set about the arduous task of liberating France. There were bitter battles all over France, as the Germans refused to give up their stronghold. The Allies had to fight them village by village and city by city. Little had changed in Normandy. There was still fighting all over France. Paris was liberated on August 25, to great jubilation, but the rest of France was not free yet. Arielle and Sebastien talked about it constantly, listening to reports of the cities and towns where the fighting was heaviest.

In September, the Allies rained bombs on Darmstadt, with massive damage to military and civilian targets. They were trying to cripple German factories and military objectives, as well as morale, to force them to end the war they were already losing. Allied forces were attempting to reclaim the territories Hitler had occupied to create his empire. The tides were turning, but Hitler and his troops refused to give up.

In retaliation for the bombing of German cities, the Luftwaffe flew a rogue mission over England, which they claimed as a victory. Jürgen was due to come home for a two-day leave that night and hadn’t shown up, while Marianna waited for him in the apartment his parents provided them, and where she lived. It was her only home now, since her father’s disgrace and execution in July. It was late, and she was worried about Jürgen. When her phone rang at two a.m ., she was sure it was Jürgen calling to apologize for being late, or telling her his leave had been canceled at the last minute. It happened often. He had flown the last thirty days straight, normally unheard of. He was flying bombing missions all over Europe, to diverse locations, wherever his superiors thought they could do some damage. There was a desperation to their operations now.

It wasn’t Jürgen on the phone. It was his squadron leader. He had received permission to call her himself and informed her that her husband’s plane had been shot down over Poland. Jürgen had killed two RAF pilots before he was shot and his plane burst into flame. Others in the squadron saw his plane go down and saw it explode before it crashed. There were no survivors. Jürgen was dead. Marianna was too devastated to respond, managed to thank him for the personal call, and was distraught when she hung up. She had no parents to console her, no one to turn to. She couldn’t reach her brother in the trenches.

Jürgen’s parents had disapproved of Marianna since July, when her father had proven to be a traitor. Two days after Jürgen died, they told her to leave the small apartment they had provided for her and their son, saying they wanted no further ties to her, although Jürgen had loved her, whatever her father’s crimes and errors of judgment. His parents weren’t as generous. They gave her two days to leave the apartment and left her with no home and no means of support, since everything her parents had was gone. They did not allow her to attend her husband’s funeral. It was attended only by his entire squadron, with a posthumous decoration given to his parents. Marianna was in shock. She had lost the husband she had loved passionately, and her parents. She was a widow at twenty-two and possibly an orphan, if her mother was dead too, which she had no way of knowing. She’d never had a job and had no skills.

In desperation, she took a job as a waitress at a beer garden in a risky neighborhood, and rented a room in an apartment shared by some of the waitresses, several of whom had dubious side activities. Just as her mother was in France, Marianna was alone in the world, with no one to help her. She was working for a meager salary in a world she’d never known, exposed to the kind of men she’d never met. She cried herself to sleep every night, grieving for Jürgen. The life she had been cast into would have broken his heart, and her mother’s.