5.
JOHANNA HAD PACED THE dining room for more than half an hour waiting for Gerhard to arrive home. She wore the same dress she had worn when they last went to the theatre together, hoping it would bring back fond memories, though that time seemed a lifetime ago and the remembrance did little to curb her building anxiety. Astrid’s excitement at seeing her father had paled. She’d given up asking when Vater was coming home and was practising her musical scales, rather poorly. The noise was starting to grate. Hauptmann Kohl stood in the foyer facing the front door.
Johanna heard the car approaching. Kohl’s back straightened like a board, and her heart strummed a heavy, thudding beat.
Kohl saluted sharply as Gerhard entered the house. “Guten Abend, Herr Kommandant.”
“Take this to my room. Leave it on my desk.”
Gerhard threw his satchel at Kohl. Kohl grappled with it, clutched it to him, clicked his heels hard, saluted sharply, and shot up the stairs like a frightened rabbit.
Johanna held her breath and clasped her hand to her chest. “Come here, Astrid,” she whispered and took her daughter’s hand. They waited for him to enter the dining room.
When he did, she stared at him in his pressed green-grey uniform and peaked cap with an absence of recognition. His face was thinner, his appearance sombre, and there was an emptiness in his eyes that shocked her. She forced herself to smile.
“Hello, Gerhard.”
“Vater.” Astrid stared at him and moved closer to her mother.
He removed his hat and set it on the sideboard, and ran his fingers through his fair hair. “I’m glad you arrived safely.” He picked up the open bottle of wine from the table, poured himself a glass and drank it swiftly, then came to Astrid. He bent towards her and held out his arms. She moved cautiously towards him. His hug was brief. He moved back, holding her shoulders, studying her. “You are taller,” he said.
“I’m nine now.”
Johanna recognised the disappointment in her daughter’s voice as her own when her father had returned from the Great War.
He smiled, though his eyes did not, and stood up, straightening his tunic as if to rid himself of her. He turned to Johanna, leaned towards her and kissed her cheek. “Let’s eat.” He poured himself another drink, withdrew a letter from inside his jacket and sat at the head of the table, his father’s image on the wall behind him as he read the document.
Johanna regarded the two men, father and son, one an older version of the other, and she realised that she had lost the husband she once knew. “Sit at the table, Astrid,” she said, and indicated a chair away from Gerhard.
As she started towards the kitchen, she locked eyes with Fraulein Brun and wondered how long she had been watching them. She continued into the kitchen. “You can serve dinner,” she said.
“The chicken will be tough, Frau Neumann,” Fraulein Brun said.
Johanna looked for an indication that the woman was claiming a victory over them but found none. She didn’t care that her husband would have to eat tough meat; it was a shame for Astrid though. “I’m sure Astrid will just be glad to eat.”
Johanna’s hunger had died at the grave appearance of her husband. She had a strong desire to drink to numb the sinister, leaden feeling in her stomach. She couldn’t tell anyone how she felt any more than she could consider the consequences for both her and Astrid of this transformation in Gerhard.
Maybe he was just tired, she told herself as she drank her third glass of wine after having picked at her vegetables. It pained her to waste precious food, but she couldn’t stomach anything that wasn’t going to blot out the atmosphere around him. He had said few words during the meal, though he had managed to ask Astrid what she was learning and seemed pleased that she was able to talk about German history and politics. He had been more relieved though to see his daughter ushered off to bed, and he hadn’t looked at Johanna since. She stared at the top of his balding head as he thumbed through a copy of Das Reich dated two weeks earlier. How revealing that old news was more appealing than his wife’s company.
“Why did you bring us here, if you don’t want to be around us?” she asked.
He didn’t look up. “Because you were not safe in Berlin.”
“And you can guarantee that we will be here? Have you looked around you?”
He turned a page. “I cannot talk to you about the war, Johanna. But you need to trust that you will be better off here than in Berlin.”
“Better off in isolation, surrounded by French people. You cannot discuss your work, and I have none to share with you. There’s nothing for us to talk about.”
He put the paper on the table and lit a cigarette, then continued to read as he smoked. “You must realise we also have enemies in Berlin. You cannot be so na?ve as to think otherwise.”
Anger blossomed inside her head, making it hard to think. She was neither na?ve nor a fool, but the French hated the air they breathed and the ground they walked on. At least in Berlin she had been able to spend some time among old friends where she could forget the truth. She would rather die there than in this wilderness. “Astrid has no friends here, Gerhard. She’s a child, and children need to play.” She clenched her fists under the table and gritted her teeth.
He looked up and held her gaze with an emptiness in his eyes that unsteadied her. Unlike the resignation and defeat she’d seen in the French people queuing on the street, he also conveyed deep passion, not for her in the slightest but for his work. He frightened her.
“No one is our friend, Johanna.”
His tone softened and for a moment she thought she saw a glimmer of something of the man she knew. That hope was gone in the blink of an eye.
“I’m going to bed. I’ll be gone before you rise.” He stood, gathered up his paper and hat, and turned to her. “Remember, you’re here to help, Johanna. We will have important guests to host, and you will go to the National Socialist Women’s Group meetings, show your allegiance while you are here.”
She gritted her teeth. She had not come here to sit among a group of women she had little in common with and whose purpose in life had become the promotion of unopposed ideological rhetoric.
He turned and left her.
Tears welled in her eyes and slipped onto her cheeks. She hurt from his deception, and the loss of her career and the freedom she’d once had seemed suddenly more poignant than ever. A stronger man would not have felt threatened by her continuing to play for the orchestra. She hadn’t had the courage to insist back then because of the impact on his budding career. And after the war broke out, his perspective was reinforced by the Reich. Her life, her voice, had been stripped away from her. Now, all she was good for was hosting senior officers of the SS and listening to women spiel ill thought through nonsense. She would not go to the damned meetings, no matter what.
“Is everything finished with, Frau Neumann?”
She wiped her cheeks, cleared her throat and stood up, avoiding eye contact. “Yes. We are done here.”
She walked out of the dining room, a little unsteady on her feet, once again feeling the woman’s gaze on her back. She liked herself a little less too, for speaking to Fraulein Brun in a tone that resembled her husband’s. Johanna was not like Gerhard, and, for the sake of Astrid, she was not going to let herself become like him either.
“Bonsoir, Madame Neumann.”
Johanna turned her head at the softly spoken French. The tenderness in her tone was more unnerving than her earlier feistiness. “Gute Nacht, Fraulein Brun,” she said.
She left the dining room, sent Kohl in to watch over the French women as they cleared up, and made her way to bed feeling exposed and vulnerable.
***
FABIENNE WATCHED THE HOUSE from her bedroom, the slither of light that the shutters didn’t hide at her old bedroom window at the opposite end to the master suite. Frau Neumann had taken a separate bedroom, and who could blame her? The kommandant was a pig, and one Fabienne would be happy to see roasting on a spit.
The light went out just after midnight and she took herself to bed, lit a cigarette and smoked it while staring into the darkness, reflecting on the exchange between the Neumanns at dinner.
Frau Neumann wasn’t a bad person from what she could tell, though it was still early days. However, if the kommandant’s wife had wanted to make her mark with them, she would have done so already. It was clear that her relationship with her husband was more than a little fraught and upsetting to her. Theirs wouldn’t be the first marriage to suffer because of the war, and she hoped they suffered a lot and not just in their marriage.
But a spurned wife and doting mother might be less likely to adopt her fascist husband’s perspective and be more unwilling to condone the inhumane cruelty that the Nazis continued to inflict. Added to that, Frau Neumann had no friends here; she had no one to turn to other than the nanny or her daughter. And from personal experience, Fabienne knew that wasn’t the same as having a friend to speak to in confidence. If Fabienne was right, a division such as she had just witnessed between the Neumanns could prove very useful to their cause. If, and it was a big if, she could get Frau Neumann to trust and confide in her…