Page 19 of The Girl You Left Behind
Less than a minute after the Germans had marched away, René Grenier’s clock chimed a mournful quarter past the hour into the silence.
•••
That night the mood in Le Coq Rouge was sober. TheKommandantdid not attempt to make conversation; neither did I give the slightest impression that I wished for it. Hélène and I served the meal, washed the cooking pots, and remained in the kitchen as much as we could. I had no appetite. I could not escape the image of that poor young man, his ragged clothes flying out behind him, his oversized shoes falling from his feet as he fled to his death.
More than that, I could not believe that the officer who had whipped out his pistol and shot him so pitilessly was the same man who had sat at my tables, looking wistful about the child he had not seen, exclaiming about the art that he had. I felt foolish, as if theKommandanthad concealed his true self. This was what the Germans were here for, not discussions about art and delicious food. They were here to shoot our sons and husbands. They were here to destroy us.
I missed my husband at that moment with a physical pain. It was now nearly three months since I had last received word from him. I had no idea of what he endured. While we existed in this strange bubble of isolation I could convince myself that he was fine and robust, that he was out there in the real world, sharing a flask of cognac with his comrades, or perhaps sketching on a scrap of paper in some idle hours. When I closed my eyes I saw the Édouard I remembered from Paris. But seeing those pitiful Frenchmen marched through the streets made it harder for me to hold on to my fantasy. Édouard might be captured, injured, starving. He might be suffering as those men suffered. He might be dead.
I leaned on the sink and closed my eyes.
At that moment I heard the crash. Jerked away from my thoughts, I ran out of the kitchen. Hélène stood with her back to me, her hands raised, a tray of broken glasses at her feet. TheKommandanthad a young man by the throat against the wall. He was shouting something at him in German, his face contorted, inches from the man’s own. His victim’s hands were up in a gesture of submission.
“Hélène?”
She was ashen. “He put his hand on me as I went past. But... but Herr Kommandant has gonemad.”
The other men were around them now, pleading with theKommandant, trying to pull him off, their chairs overturning, shouting over each other in an attempt to be heard. The whole place was briefly in an uproar. Eventually theKommandantseemed to hear them and loosened his grip on the younger man’s throat. I thought his eyes met mine, briefly, but then, as he took a step back, his fist shot out and he punched the man hard on the side of the head, so that his face ricocheted off the wall. “Sie dürfen die Frauen nicht anfassen!”he yelled.
“The kitchen.” I pushed my sister toward the door, not even stopping to scoop up the broken glass. I heard the raised voices, the slam of a door, and I hurried after her down the hallway.
•••
“Madame Lefèvre.”
I was washing the last of the glasses. Hélène had gone to bed; the day’s events had exhausted her even more than they had me.
“Madame?”
“Herr Kommandant.” I turned to him, drying my hands on the cloth. We were down to one candle in the kitchen, a wick set in some fat in a sardine tin; I could barely make out his face.
He stood in front of me, his cap in his hands. “I’m sorry about your glasses. I will make sure they are replaced.”
“Please don’t bother. We have enough to get by.” I knew any glasses would simply be requisitioned from my neighbors.
“I’m sorry about... the young officer. Please assure your sister it will not happen again.”
I didn’t doubt it. Through the back window I had seen the man being helped back to his billet by one of his friends, a wet cloth pressed to the side of his head.
I thought theKommandantmight leave then, but he just stood there. I felt him staring at me. His eyes were unquiet, anguished almost.
“The food tonight was... excellent. What was the name of the dish?”
“Chou farci.”
He waited, and when the pause grew uncomfortably long, I added, “It’s sausage meat, some vegetables and herbs, wrapped in cabbage leaves and poached in stock.”
He looked down at his feet. He took a few steps around the kitchen, then stopped, fingering a jar of utensils. I wondered, absently, if he were about to take them.
“It was very good. Everyone said so. You asked me today what I would like to eat. Well... we would like to have that dish again before too long, if it is not too much trouble.”
“As you wish.”
There was something different about him this evening, some subtle air of agitation that rose off him in waves. I wondered how it felt to have killed a man, whether it felt any more unusual to a GermanKommandantthan taking a second cup of coffee.
He glanced at me as if he were about to say something else, but I turned back to my pans. “You must be tired,” he said. “I will leave you in peace.”
I picked up a tray of glasses and followed him toward the door. As he reached it, he turned and put on his cap, so that I had to stop. “I have been meaning to ask. How is the baby?”
