Winter 1944
Horst’s footsteps approached the shop door and my guts shrivelled inside me. After all this time I knew how those Russian men felt to be slaves. The food was ready on the table as he’d demanded, and I knew I should be grateful for the fact he had supplied a rind of bacon, potatoes and turnip, with which I had made a stew. I imagined his face would frown at it the way he usually did.
On his way past he put the newspaper down deliberately in front of me, and of course I read the headlines, as he intended me to do. Two old ladies from St Brelade – Suzanne Malherbe and Lucille Schwab – had been sentenced to death for distributing anti-German propaganda. Their leaflets had apparently been written as if by a German officer and signed ‘The soldier without a name’. Good for them.
Horst threw his cap down on the settee and went to wash. He didn’t even acknowledge me. It struck me that this was like the worst kind of a marriage, except that I hadn’t even volunteered for it. Fred seemed like a distant dream from a golden past.
By the time Horst had washed I was at the kitchen table. The fact that we hardly spoke made every sound in the house loud. I jumped at every fall of soot in the chimney, at every gurgle from the pipes, at every noise of children passing in the street outside. Although I knew Rachel was well aware of how she mustn’t even breathe loudly, the simple fact of her being hidden there behind the partition made every creak heart-stopping. And after so long, I was resigned to it with a kind of numb endurance.
‘I hate this wet weather,’ Horst said. ‘Jersey roads are very bad. A lot of work when cars and trucks are stuck in mud.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘We aren’t used to so much traffic.’
I cringed. Every statement I made felt like an accusation.
Horst regarded me coldly. ‘If I had wanted opinion from you, I would have asked.’ He glared at me and continued to eat. When the plate was empty he pushed it away. ‘This food is terrible. Don’t Jersey women know how to cook?’
‘I did my best with what we had.’
‘Miserable little island. The farmers cheat us. We know you do it. Only today we had a letter. Someone tell us that Flanders Farm is cheating us with the milk.’
I was silent; it was always best to let him talk if I didn’t want a fist across my face.
He stood up. ‘They have one more cow there than we have known. Not anymore. Cow has gone to slaughter. The woman she is deported. She will be on her way to Konzentrationslager.’ He gave a burp of a laugh. ‘Maybe slaughter for her too.’
‘Surely not. Mrs Flanders is an old woman. Maybe she didn’t know how many cows she had.’
He gave me a look that would shrivel anything within five yards. ‘We are not stupid. She knew of course. Now she pays the price.’
Much as I disliked Mrs Flanders, for I was convinced it was she who had colluded with the Galens about daubing my windows, she was one of us, and I had a sneaking admiration for her too. She had defied the Germans in a way I hadn’t. But then, maybe she hadn’t been forced to have one living under her roof. Resistance was easy if you were at a distance. Close up, it was hard, and even harder if you had a big secret to keep.
I set to cleaning away the plates, and I heard him go up to the bedroom. My tension increased as it always did when I thought of Rachel only a few feet away from him. And if I was terrified, how must she feel? However bad things got, I couldn’t imagine actually informing on her.
Above me, the thud of Horst’s pacing footsteps was followed by the smell of cigar smoke drifting down. Obviously he could still get cigars, and the bedside table always had a bottle of whisky or brandy on it. This was his usual pattern. He would be up there with his papers and his lists of men.
One day when he was out, Rachel and I took a look at his ledger. We hardly dared to open it, thinking that somehow he would know, but finally we plucked up the courage. In it were long lists of men, each one named and numbered. Over the months, we’d taken to looking at these lists every day. They were obviously the lists of men labouring at the quarry, and they held a strange fascination for us. Every day, more would be crossed out.
Yevgenievich, Drugov
Kautsky, Zubarev
Leonidovich, Konstantin
Frolov, Mikhalitsyn
Stepanovich, Gleb
‘Dead men,’ Rachel said, resting her finger on one of the names.
‘So many,’ I said.
Just seeing that scratched line through their names filled me with heartache. They would have family somewhere wondering where they were, and now they were reduced to this one line that erased them from existence.
Upstairs I heard the chink of a glass. He would be drinking again. The evenings were one long silent scream of waiting. I didn’t dare go anywhere, because wherever I went I was spat at and called ‘Jerrybag’. And I was ashamed of the bruises on my face.
The bakery had closed altogether. There was too little flour for bread to bake now and even the Germans were looking thinner. Since the Allied invasion of Normandy, Jersey had been cut off by both Britain and Germany. The effect on Horst of being abandoned by his Führer made him angry and resentful, and I was an easy target for his disappointment.
At the same hour every night Horst called me from the top of the stairs. At first this had been a request. Then it had become his right. Now it was an exercise in punishment.
When I heard him call, I put down my book. So soon? Things must be bad at the camp. Wearily, I braced myself for what was to come. I’d try to please him, and that way the pain and humiliation would be less.
When I got upstairs he was waiting by the window, stubbing out his cigar on the sill. I wanted to tell him to use an ashtray like a civilised human being. He saw my expression, and smiling slightly, he continued to grind the butt into the paint as he watched my face.
‘I don’t like that dress,’ he said. ‘Where is the one I buy for you?’
I began to walk from the room.
‘No. Undress here first.’
Fear and the cold had already made gooseflesh of my arms. Please God, let him not be rough today.
Awkwardly, I took off my cardigan and unbuttoned the dress. Horst himself never undressed. There was power in that uniform, in his black shiny boots, and he knew it. I tried to seem calm, because my fear made him worse.
Once I was shivering in my corselette and pants, I made to leave the room.
‘Wait.’
I backed away, knowing what was coming.
‘You’re a whore, Céline. A dirty little whore.’ He came towards me and hooked a finger under my chin. ‘What would my brother think if he could see you now, in your underwear, begging for it?’
‘Please, Horst …’ I tried to find the man behind the twisted leering expression. The man I’d known in Vienna, the smiling youth who formally shook my hand. But he was gone, and this man was something I had no answer for. His boredom, his rage, his pleasure in hurting, as if it somehow healed the hurt in him, were all impenetrable.
‘You know what happens to whores, don’t you?’ He grabbed my arm and swung back his fist. When it connected with my face I felt nothing, just the force of falling backwards, the crack of my skull against the wall. I tasted the iron of blood in my mouth before a boot landed in my stomach, and a flower of pain spread outwards until I heard my own cry. I slipped to the ground, felt him drag me into the middle of the floor, and then he was upon me.