Page 22 of The Girl You Left Behind
“You exclude its subject?”
I didn’t answer.
He swilled the wine in his glass. When he spoke next it was with his eyes on the ruby liquid. “Do you honestly believe yourself plain, madame?”
“I believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When my husband tells me I am beautiful, I believe it, because I know in his eyes I am.”
He looked up then. His eyes locked onto mine and would not let them go. He held my gaze for so long that I felt my breathing start to quicken.
Édouard’s eyes were the windows to his soul; his very self was laid bare in them. TheKommandant’s were intense, shrewd, and yet somehow veiled, as if to hide his true feelings. I was afraid that he might be able to see my own crumbling composure, that he might see through my lies if I allowed him in. I was the first to look away.
He reached across the table to the crate that the Germans had delivered earlier and pulled out a bottle of cognac. “Have a drink with me, madame.”
“No, thank you, Herr Kommandant.” I glanced toward the door to the dining room, where the officers would be finishing their dessert.
“One. It’s Christmas.”
I knew an order when I heard it. I thought of the others, eating the roast pork a few doors away from where we sat. I thought of Mimi, with pork fat dribbling down her chin, of Aurélien, smiling and joking as he boasted of their great deception. He needed some happiness: Twice that week he had been sent home from school for fighting but had refused to tell me what it had been about. I needed them all to have one good meal. “Then... very well.” I accepted a glass, and sipped. The cognac was like fire trickling down my throat. It felt restorative, a sharp kick.
He downed his own glass, watched me drink mine, then pushed the bottle toward me, signaling that I should refill it.
We sat in silence. I wondered how many people had come to eat the pig. Hélène had thought it would be fourteen. Two of the older people had been afraid to break their curfew. The priest had promised to take leftovers to those stuck in their homes after Christmas Mass.
As we drank, I watched him. His jaw was set, suggesting someone unbending, but without his military cap his almost shaven hair gave his head an air of vulnerability. I tried to picture him out of uniform, a normal human being, going about his daily business, buying a newspaper, taking a holiday. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t see past his uniform.
“It’s a lonely business, war, isn’t it?”
I took a sip of my drink. “You have your men. I have my family. We are neither of us exactly alone.”
“It’s not the same, though, is it?”
“We all get by as best as we can.”
“Do we? I’m not sure whether anyone can describe this as ‘best.’”
The cognac made me blunt. “You are the one sitting in my kitchen, Herr Kommandant. I suggest, with respect, that only one of us has a choice in the matter.”
A cloud passed across his face. He was unused to being challenged. Faint color rose to his cheeks, and I saw him with his arm raised, his gun aimed at a running prisoner.
“You really think any of us has a choice?” he said quietly. “You really think this is how any of us would choose to live? Surrounded by devastation? The perpetrators of it? Were you to witness what we see at the Front, you would think yourself...” He trailed off, shook his head. “I’m sorry, madame. It’s this time of year. It’s enough to make a man maudlin. And we all know that there is nothing worse than a maudlin soldier.”
He smiled then, an apology, and I relaxed a little. We sat there on either side of the kitchen table, sipping from our glasses, surrounded by the detritus of the meal. In the other room the officers had begun to sing. I heard their voices lifting, the tune familiar, the words incomprehensible. TheKommandanttilted his head to listen. Then he put down his glass. “You hate us being here, don’t you?”
I blinked. “I have always tried—”
“You think your face betrays nothing. But I’ve watched you. Years in this job have taught me a lot about people and their secrets. Well. Can we call a truce, madame? Just for these few hours?”
“A truce?”
“You shall forget that I am part of an enemy army, I shall forget that you are a woman who spends much of her time working out how to subvert that army, and we shall just... be two people?”
His face, just briefly, had softened. He held his glass toward mine. Almost reluctantly, I lifted my own.
“Let us avoid the subject of Christmas, lonely or otherwise. I would like you to tell me about the other artists at the Académie. Tell me how you came to meet them.”
•••
Iam not sure how long we sat there. If I am honest, the hours evaporated in conversation and the warm glow of alcohol. TheKommandantwanted to know everything about an artist’s life in Paris. What kind of man was Matisse? Was his life as scandalous as his art?
