Love in the Shadows

2.

Erstein, October 1943

“WILL THAT BE ALL for upstairs, Hauptmann Kohl?” Fabienne asked. She folded the towel in the kommandant’s bathroom and hung it over the edge of the bath. “Everything is tidy here and I need to help Mamie prepare dinner.”

“Yes, of course.” He hovered in the doorway, which was most unlike him because he normally left them to get on with their work in relative peace. He looked as if he had something else to say but didn’t know if he should, or how to start.

“May I go and do my duties, Hauptmann?”

He cleared his throat. “I will not see you again after tomorrow, Fraulein Brun. I have been re-assigned to the north.”

If he was looking for sympathy, he wasn’t going to get it from her. Although since he’d marched across the yard and knocked on their door two months earlier to give them their orders, he hadn’t been overly demanding. Perhaps it was because he was an older man, with a family back in Germany that included two young grandchildren he longed to see for the first time. Perhaps because he didn’t entirely agree with the war. For whatever reason, he had been kinder than Fabienne had expected of a German officer. He even had a sense of humour. He had also assumed direct contact with the kommandant, for which she was thankful, since the urge to assassinate the Boche bastard was still very strong.

She stared at Kohl, waiting for him to move so she could leave. “So, you will no longer be the baby-sitter.”

“The kommandant’s wife will arrive early this afternoon. Naturally, she will assume the running of the house on my departure. I must go and serve my country as a proper soldier.” He smiled.

Ruefully, she thought. “I wish you luck, Hauptmann Kohl,” she said, because she couldn’t very well say, I hope you get blown to pieces before you reach Strasbourg.

In fairness, she had him to thank for being able to continue with her work at the dairy. Reluctantly at the time, he had sought agreement from the kommandant and for that she, and the Resistance, should be indebted to him.

“You are a brave woman, Fraulein Brun. I hope things go well for you here.” He sounded sincere.

“Will I be able to continue working at the dairy in your absence?” she asked.

He avoided eye contact. “That I cannot answer. The kommandant’s wife will decide what happens next.”

Fabienne expected as much. “I hope you will put in a good word, Hauptmann.” She smiled.

“I don’t think my word counts for much, Fraulein Brun.” He stared into space, as if he was reflecting on something that saddened him.

“The kommandant listened to you when you asked him.”

His smile reached his eyes, and he looked younger for a moment.

“May I go now?” Fabienne asked.

He stepped back from the doorway. “Yes. I don’t want to keep you.”

She went down to the kitchen and started scrubbing mud from the potatoes in the sink, staring out the window across the lawn at the back of the house. “The captain is leaving tomorrow,” she said.

Mamie lit the wood to fire up the stove to provide hot water for the kommandant’s wife, should she wish to take a bath after the journey from Berlin. “He isn’t a bad man, that one.”

Fabienne couldn’t see how that mattered anymore. She stared at the swing hanging from the sturdy branch of the old oak that evoked memories of happier times. She used to push Nancy on it while their parents sat under the shade of the house sipping fine wine, eating fresh food, and talking fervently. She recalled her mother and aunt being thrilled about the new screening of La Grande Illusion, and her father and uncle debating heatedly the consequences of the Socialist and Republican Union joining the Popular Front. To think that a Jew had at that time held the office of the Prime Minister of France seemed inconceivable now.

“Where did you put the whisk?” Mamie asked. “I’ll start on the dessert.”

Fabienne pointed to a drawer. “Peaches with custard cream. It pains me to know how well they eat.”

In the past few days, the captain had made sure that the cupboards were well stocked with tinned goods: vegetables and lentils mostly, but also peaches. The fridge had been stocked with a selection of German wines, butter and cheese, and a joint of meat to make stew. They had a sack of flour for bread, and a small supply of fresh Italian coffee, and cocoa powder, all of which must have been acquired through the black market. Even the wood stack at the side of the house had been replenished.

“And the tin opener?”

“On the shelf.” Fabienne put the pan of potatoes on the kitchen surface ready to be cooked later and started preparing the carrots.

Thinking about her family brought back the vivid recollection of her parents’ deaths in the early days of the war. Their murders, along with those of her tante and oncle, had been an act of retaliation for the death of a German officer. At that time, many Alsatians were still debating the complexity of their position, no longer annexed to Germany since the end of the Great War, and after a failed attempt at claiming autonomy from the French government, not entirely French either. Everyone’s neighbour had hailed from one or the other of the two countries over the generations, and control had bounced from Germany to France and back again, but the region, Alsatians had insisted, belonged to neither country. No one really believed the war was going to take hold. And then, suddenly, no one had the power to stop it. The matter was settled. They were once again annexed to Germany.

The murder of her family had been one of several attacks aimed at instilling fear and encouraging compliance. The Germans had commandeered French-owned properties and thrown the owners onto the street, and French men had been immediately drafted into the Nazi army and sent to fight against Russia. The Nazi perspective was clear. They, with their Alsatian pride and their illusion of power and control over their destiny, had been incorporated into the Reich. The schools were under orders to teach in German. They were forced to speak German, live and breathe everything German, and it was suffocating. They even socialised in the same brasseries in town. If it hadn’t been for the killings and the uniforms, it might have been like life as normal.

Four years on and with significantly depleted rations and a lack of access to appropriate medicine, there was no evidence that an end to their suffering was coming any time soon.

“I hate this feeling, Mamie,” she said.

In the early days, she’d thought she might be better off dead with them, but she couldn’t leave Mamie and Nancy alone in this darkly changing world. They needed her, and she needed them, and they would get through it together or not at all. She was mentally tough, like her papa had been, but her heart remained empty, unreachable, in the absence of her parents’ love.

Her mamie’s deep sigh did nothing to abate the burning anger that had replaced the sadness and twisted Fabienne’s insides like a wet rag, squeezing out what little life she had left in her.

“It is much worse than the last time. They seem more determined, or maybe I am just getting older,” Mamie said, softly.

“You are wiser,” Fabienne said.

“You mean I don’t fight back anymore?” Mamie put the prepared dessert into the fridge.

Hauptmann Kohl appeared in the kitchen doorway, carrying a chicken by its broken neck. “You can prepare this for dinner?” He smiled as if he’d hunted it. “It’s a special night with Frau Neumann arriving.”

Mamie took the feathered hen, its head hanging over her hand, and put it on the table. She sat and started plucking. The captain clicked his heels softly, turned and walked away.

“At least it’s not one of our birds,” Mamie said. “Though if they have too many special nights, they’ll run out of their own soon enough.”

“I don’t suppose it occurs to them that hens are more productive when kept alive,” Fabienne said.

Mamie laughed.

The all-too-familiar thunderous roll coming from the heavy metal tracks grinding along the road towards town gained Fabienne’s attention. It seemed this train of vehicles hadn’t eased up since first thing that morning, like a death knell. She worried about where they were heading, the properties they would reduce to rubble en route, and how many would die in their wake.

“Will it ever end?” She sighed.

“Working here could prove helpful, Fabienne,” Mamie whispered.

Fabienne glanced through the kitchen doorway that led into the dining room. There was a straight line though the long room to the foyer and the main entrance, where the soldiers now gathered, their low, sharp tones travelling back to the kitchen.

Mamie got up from the table and took the plucked bird to the sink, cut off its head, and gutted it.

Mamie’s deep sadness reflected Fabienne’s, though Fabienne kept hers hidden beneath the veil of anger. Both emotions reflected the mood of most of the French citizens of Erstein, that hovered like the permanent cloud of injustice over them.

Mother, Father, Uncle Olivier, Aunt Jeanne, Fabien Dubois, Arsène Lauret, Jér?me Petite, the Cohens, the Bornsteins. She could name more than a hundred people, friends, neighbours, and that wasn’t counting the Jewish families who had just disappeared overnight. The list would only get longer, and news about the work camps they had been sent to more distressing. Meanwhile, these people ate fresh chicken and vegetables and drank the best wine available.

“These putains de Boches take from us every day,” she whispered.

Mamie touched her cheek. It didn’t comfort her the way it used to. How could it, if she wouldn’t let it? “It is always that way, ma chérie. We must fight in every way possible. But in here, we cook, and clean, and follow orders.”

The pit of Fabienne’s stomach remained leaden from the unfairness levied on all the innocent people who had died while simply trying to protect what was rightfully theirs.

In the early days, she’d wished they lived deeper into central France, or to the southwest, rather than three kilometres from the German border, but now nowhere was safe. She couldn’t trust her Alsatian comrades either. They were all part of the Reich, whether they liked it or not, and it was impossible to tell for certain who did and who did not enjoy privileges. Those who had jumped at the “opportunities” offered to them had been rewarded with new, elevated positions under their German bosses. They had gained the most, and lost the least. Many local women had given themselves to a German officer to secure protection for their family. Who could blame them? But who knew what else they might be capable of?

Fabienne and Mamie had lost their home to the first kommandant, and their dairy farm was now owned and managed by the Reich, but the Germans still needed workers and that meant Fabienne was needed at the dairy. Unless Frau Neumann had other ideas.

“We must go before she arrives,” Mamie said. She put the prepared chicken into the fridge, tidied the kitchen, and they left quietly via the back door. They would return later to cook.

***

They had dined at an acquaintance of her husband’s house just outside Nuremberg the previous evening. The air there had been thick with dust and smoke and sickening odours emanating from the sites that had been raised to the ground. Johanna had shared a damp mattress with Astrid, and both had tossed and turned until dawn. She still felt deeply troubled by the destruction of the historic buildings that had once made the city great. It was much worse there than in Berlin and not at all what the Das Reich newspaper had told them.

How cosseted they had been.

They passed the sign that read Erstein.

“We will have to make a detour, Frau Neumann,” the driver said. He pulled over to the side of the road to allow the vehicles approaching to pass.

Her insides trembled as the convoy of trucks dominated the main road. One after another after another, and then tanks that made the road vibrate. The constant drone left her with a strong sense of foreboding and a pounding headache. She turned to check that the car carrying her daughter and Nanny Hilda were still close behind. A small gap in the convoy allowed the driver to set off again, and he took a turn off the main route. Some buildings lay in ruins, and in places rubble blocked the pavements and narrowed the road. It smelled like Nuremberg, and yet the atmosphere was quieter, weightier.

They passed a queue of people waiting outside a bakery: women carried crying babies, children held hands, and all were dressed in ragged clothes that were too big for them. They saw her car and raised their right arm in salute. She would have expected them to appear angry, but they looked resigned, broken, lost. Who wouldn’t be under these circumstances?

She’d heard about the German dissenters in Berlin who’d been punished, imprisoned, shot even, but she hadn’t seen any alleged atrocities first hand, and she wasn’t quite sure what to make of the scene here. Where were the French people who willingly worked for the Reich? Where were the flags flying for her beloved Germany? Her heart thudded harder and heavier for the plight of the children. And yet, this was war. What else did she expect?

The level of devastation the British and American forces had inflicted on her homeland had been evidence enough that the information they’d been fed by the Nazi regime had been played down. But she hadn’t seen anything on their journey as divested of life as in Erstein. She would have preferred that Astrid hadn’t been subjected to the harsh reality. Astrid would never be able to unsee this terrible sight. What kind of impression was that for a nine-year-old to take with them through their life? Even Johanna had been better protected during the previous war.

Why had Gerhard forced this on them? She felt as bitter towards him now as she had when he’d sent their son away, and that wasn’t going to help their reunion after the years of separation.

As they drove out of the town and into the countryside, she was able to breathe more easily. Then her hands became clammy and started to tremble. She rubbed her palms together and took a few deep breaths to calm herself, repeating the mantra that Gerhard had told her.

You will be safe here.

The driver turned the car off the main road and drove down what appeared to be a farm track, and a swathe of relief brought some small comfort. Then she saw the four-storey house on the left-hand side of the driveway and the small cottage across the yard on the right. As aesthetically interesting as the buildings were, her only thought was that they should have stayed in Berlin.