3.
FABIENNE WATCHED THROUGH THE living room window as two cars approached the house. She rubbed at the tight feeling in her chest, a constant reminder of the oppression, and felt the air lock in her lungs.
“We will soon find out what this new one brings,” Mamie said.
“I have a job to do before they get too settled.” Fabienne indicated with her eyes towards the house.
“Fais attention, ma chérie.”
“Toujours, Mamie.”
Nancy swiftly dodged out of Fabienne’s way as Fabienne shot through the living room doorway and into the kitchen. She held up a paper flower and smiled. “I made this for you. I used the red berries from the hedges to colour the petals and ash for the centre.”
Fabienne ruffled her hair. No matter how angry she was with everything else, she couldn’t take it out on Nancy. She sighed and studied the handmade flower. “It’s very pretty.”
“It’s for good luck. You must keep it with you.”
Fabienne tucked it into the breast pocket of her shirt. “It can stay close to my heart. How about that?”
Nancy stared up at her. “Will you come and play with me?” she asked, flickering her eyelashes.
Fabienne’s heart ached for her young cousin. Nancy wasn’t the only war child to become orphaned, but that didn’t make it any easier for Fabienne to accept. Nancy should be outside with friends of her own age, running around and climbing trees, getting scratched by brambles while picking berries from the hedgerows, not walking in fear of her own shadow.
Fabienne tugged her close and held her tightly. “I promise to do a jigsaw puzzle with you after tea. Right now, I have other things I need to do.” She eased out of the embrace and ruffled Nancy’s hair again, then tapped her lightly on the nose. “Can you look after Mamie for me?”
Nancy nodded. “Is she going to talk to ces putains de Boches?”
Fabienne chuckled. “Hey, no swearing, young lady, even if you are right. And remember to speak German when you are around them or they won’t like it.”
“I don’t care,” Nancy said.
Fabienne sighed. “I know, me neither, but we don’t want to get into trouble.” She tucked a strand of hair behind Nancy’s ear. “Mamie and I will go and cook for them later. Maybe you can help by washing some potatoes for our dinner? Hmm, what do you think?”
Nancy scrunched up her nose. “Can I draw a picture instead?”
Fabienne laughed. “Sure. Stay in your room and draw something we can put on my bedroom wall. I’ll sort out dinner when I get back, and then I’ll come and get you.”
Nancy held her gaze and nodded.
Fabienne checked her watch. “Right, I have to go or I’m going to be late.” She tapped her breast pocket. “This will keep me safe from ces putains de Boches.” She winked, and Nancy smiled through a frown.
Nancy’s gaze stayed on her as she packed a small cotton bag with a de-corked bottle of wine, cheese and bread, and left the house. She closed the back door and stepped outside. The low rumble of armoured vehicles now echoing in the distance would make her mission easier.
***
Johanna hadn’t given much thought about what to expect, but even so, she hadn’t thought that her new home would be like this.
The timber struts that fronted the upper storeys were weathered to a bleached brown and in desperate need of renovation. There was a dark archway at the left side of the main building that seemed to separate the house into two distinctive parts at ground level. The brickwork there was crumbling, although beyond it, at the back of the house in the sunlight, she got a glimpse of gardens. Shuttered windows made the construction look heavy and depressing. The driver stopped the car outside the open front door, and soldiers piled out of the house and formed a line from the driveway to the house.
Johanna stepped out of the car straight into a puddle and cursed the mud splatter that now coloured her beige shoes. She glanced around, taking in the hint of pine and unmistakeable smell of cow manure that drifted in on the breeze. This wasn’t the type of place she’d envisaged bringing her daughter up in. It was too remote, too raw and country, and not enough city. Where was the rich culture that would enhance her daughter’s most important education? She would pray that being here was a temporary arrangement and they would soon go home, and that Astrid wouldn’t be forced to join the Bund Deutscher M?del.
A soldier approached her and saluted. “Welcome to Erstein, Frau Neumann. I am Hauptmann Kohl. We have prepared the house for you, so everything is in order for your arrival.”
“Thank you, Hauptmann Kohl.”
Astrid tugged at her arm. “Mutter, Mutter, when can I see Vater?”
Her heart started to thump a little harder and her stomach clenched, though she tried to smile and hoped Astrid was too young to pick up on her apprehension. “He will still be at work, darling. I expect later this evening. He will be very excited to see you.”
“The kommandant is expected back at eight-thirty,” Kohl said.
Astrid stared at him, moved closer to Johanna, and spoke in a whisper. “Mutter, can I go and explore the house?”
Johanna smiled. “Yes, of course, darling, but do be careful.” She turned to Hilda, whose expression reflected Johanna’s agonising thoughts about their new situation.
Hilda had been her nanny and then Ralf’s before Gerhard had enlisted him into the Hitler Youth. She was like a part of the family, and Johanna trusted her as much as she trusted her husband. Hilda couldn’t be faulted for the diligence with which she carried out her duties, and she was an excellent tutor. However, she was also overly strict and a staunch advocate of the Reich. That meant Johanna couldn’t voice her opinion or debate with her without her loyalties being called into question.
In truth, there wasn’t anyone in the world she could have a truly open and honest conversation with, in the way that she had while playing for the Berliner Philharmoniker. She missed the intellectual debates with her colleagues, the students who had challenged her understanding with their alert and brilliant minds, and the freedom of speech that had made her feel alive. She hoped they would be able to return to those times after the war, but in the meantime, she had this place to contend with. Entertaining Gerhard’s guests would give her something to occupy her time, and she could still hold her head up high for her contribution to the Reich. Hoping for anything more stimulating would be wasted energy.
“Would you go with Astrid and make sure she stays safe, please?”
Nanny nodded, looking towards the fields that extended behind and to the right of the cottage across the yard where cows grazed, and the pine forests that rose up steeply in the distance. “It’s not quite Strasbourg, is it?” she said, not hiding that the acrid smell had got up her nose.
Strasbourg, the city closest to Erstein, would certainly have been preferrable to this. Johanna tried to find something appealing about the place to lift her spirits. She could have a tree cut down for Christmas. She inhaled deeply. “It reminds me a bit of Gerhard’s grandparents’ holiday home in the Black Forest. I never enjoyed our visits there either.”
Nanny smiled. “Come along, Astrid.”
“Help her choose a bedroom, please.” At least her daughter could feel she had some control over things, which was more than Johanna felt. “It will help her to settle.”
“And what about your room, Frau Neumann?”
It wasn’t news to Nanny that Johanna and Gerhard hadn’t shared a bedroom since Astrid’s birth. Astrid had been a difficult baby and Johanna had refused to leave her during the nights. It had been a source of argument between her and Gerhard in the early years, but she had stood her ground and separate rooms had become the status quo. And then the war came.
“I’ll choose a room later.” She turned to Kohl. “Have my luggage left at the top of the stairs on the same floor as the kommandant’s room.”
He bowed his head. “There are also boxes of photographs and personal belongings in the hallway, Frau Neumann. We didn’t know which rooms they should go in.”
“Thank you, Kohl. I’ll take a look. Have one of the men made available to move them, please.”
He bowed his head again. “Would you like me to show you around, Frau Neumann?”
“No, that won’t be necessary.” Johanna wanted to take in the house alone, as she did when appreciating works of art. Maybe she could warm to the place a bit if she could get a sense of its history.
He saluted, instructed one of the soldiers to wait in the hall, and entered the house. The remaining soldiers saluted Johanna as she walked past them and in through the front door.
***
Fabienne had made her way south-west of the cottage, deep into the cover of the lush forest, and along a muddy path to the old stone mill.
She stood at the boundary checking around her, in the unlikely event that she been followed. The Germans didn’t stray too far into the dense woods, but she could never be too certain. Inside the mill, she set her bag on the ground and slipped through the narrow space between the large grinding stone and the floor, into a tunnel that led back to the kommandant’s house. This tunnel was one of several in the area that had been constructed before the First World War. As far as she was aware, there were no records of any of the tunnels, and to anyone investigating who didn’t know the area well enough, they would appear to lead nowhere.
In the advent of this war, Fabienne had constructed a wall inside the wine cellar below the ground floor of the house to create a secret cave in which they had initially stored food and supplies. Those items had long since been used up, and now the small space was home to wheels of cheese and pads of butter that she syphoned off from the dairy. The contraband was primarily for trading and gaining favours. She took what little she could justify, to supplement their meagre rations.
From inside the kommandant’s house, the wine cellar was accessed through a door in the kitchen. A featureless door panel that would reveal the secret cave could only be detected if a large section of bottle racks were moved, which no one would have reason to do, although sound travelled too easily through the thin wall, making the second function of the cave riskier to manage.
She reached the end of the tunnel under the house and lit a candle inside the cave. Across the space was the entrance to a second tunnel that led into the woods on the other side of the house, towards the German border. Where this tunnel ended, a series of paths and tunnels led eventually to the basement of an old mining house on the edge of a disused quarry, one kilometre inside Germany.
Fabienne’s cave had become a transition point in which she received prisoners, airmen and Jews, and others trying to escape from Germany. She moved them on to one of the safe houses in the town and from there they were helped to travel south to Switzerland for repatriation.
Carefully, she turned the two small cheese wheels to prevent the build-up of moisture and brushed the surface to remove any cheese mites. Hearing the voices and a child’s laughter on the other side of the wall, she froze. Her heart raced, and she hoped the prisoners wouldn’t arrive just yet. Time passed too slowly and the voices on the other side of the wall got louder. She closed her eyes and prayed.
Then the laughter faded, and she heard a door shut. She released her breath, took large gulps of air, and blew them out slowly.
Scuffling noises came from inside the tunnel and a few moments later a man appeared from the darkness, and then a second man. Their blue uniforms were torn and dirty and they smelled as though they hadn’t bathed for months, but she’d had prisoners arrive in a worse state before. She held up the candle to inspect their muddied faces. They winced and turned their heads from the light. One man held his arm tight to his chest, using his body as a splint. He had a pinched, pained expression and gaunt cheeks.
The other man sniffed the air.
“It’s cheese,” she whispered. She broke off a piece for each of the men and put her finger to her lips to quiet them. They ate hungrily. She licked the crumbs from her fingers, savouring the sour taste, and signalled for them to follow her. Slowing her pace to accommodate their fragile state, she led them back to the old mill. She’d stopped asking questions of the people she rescued more than a year ago because when she had asked, their stories had been too painfully vivid, and she worked better when she stayed focused on the task at hand.
She collected her bag at the mill, and they travelled on in silence along a path through the woods to an old barn that had once been used to store grain. Its rotting wooden doors hung defeatedly from broken hinges. More than half of the roof had caved in. But it was as safe a place as any.
She indicated to the space, rubble, broken beams and damp bales of old straw. “Sit down.” She took the wine from the bag, removed the cork and handed the bottle to the uninjured man. “You must be hungry.”
The men passed the bottle between them, taking small sips of wine. The whites of their eyes were even more evident in the daylight – startled, untrusting.
“Where are we?” the injured man asked.
“You’re in Erstein, in the Alsace. You’re almost home.” They would still have their work cut out to get to Switzerland, but they could relax for now.
The injured man wiped tears from his eyes. His hand trembled around the bottle as he took a sip. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I thought we were done for.”
“Are we safe?” the other man asked.
Fabienne took the bread and cheese from the bag. “For now. Tomorrow morning, at four-thirty, I will come for you, and we will go to the dairy where I have to collect the milk, then I will drive you to a safe house in town. From this place, you will be taken to Switzerland, and from there, repatriated. There is a stream behind the barn if you want to get cleaned up, but don’t stray any further. You cannot be seen in your uniforms, so tomorrow I will bring you some clothes.”
The injured man was still weeping, his shoulders hunched forwards, his head lowered. He looked too exhausted to wipe the tears away.
The other man touched his shoulder gently and leaned towards him. “We’re so close, Stephan. We’ll make it home.” His eyes became glassy as he spoke.
“You can see a doctor tomorrow,” Fabienne said. “I’m sorry we don’t have anything for the pain.”
“Are they close?” the injured man asked.
Both men stared at her with more fear in their eyes than she’d seen in a shot boar fighting for its last breath.
“Les Boches are always too close.” She glanced around. “This is not much, but you should try and sleep. There is no reason for the Germans to come searching.”
They both nodded.
“Now I must go. I will be back.”