Page 90 of The Girl You Left Behind
At dusk, in a small forest, the train ground to a juddering halt. We waited for it to move off again, but this time the sliding doors opened at the rear. I was half dozing, and woke to Liliane’s voice in my ear. “Sophie. Wake up. Wake up.”
A German guard stood in the doorway. It took me a moment to realize he was calling my name. I jumped up, remembering to grab my bag, and motioned for Liliane to come with me.
“Ausweise,” he demanded. Liliane and I presented our identity cards. He checked our names on a list and pointed toward a truck. We heard the disappointed hiss of the other women as the doors slammed behind us.
Liliane and I were pushed toward the truck. I felt her lag a little. “What?” I said. Her expression was clouded with distrust.
“I don’t like this,” she said, glancing behind her, as the train began to move away.
“It’s good,” I insisted. “I think this means we are being singled out. I think this is theKommandant’s doing.”
“That is what I don’t like,” she said.
“Also—listen—I cannot hear the guns. We must be moving away from the Front. This is good, surely?”
We limped to the back of the truck, and I helped her aboard, scratching the back of my neck. I had begun to itch. “Have faith,” I said, and squeezed her arm. “If nothing else we have room to move our legs at last.”
A young guard climbed in the back, and glared at us. I tried to smile, to reassure him that I had no intention of running, but he looked at me with disgust and placed his rifle between us like a warning. I realized then that I, too, probably smelled unwashed, that forced into such close proximity my own hair might be crawling with insects, and I busied myself with searching my clothing and picking out those I found.
The truck pulled away and Liliane winced at every jolt. Within a few miles she had fallen asleep again, exhausted by pain. My own head throbbed, and I was grateful that the guns seemed to have stopped.Have faith, I willed us both silently.
We were riding for almost an hour on the open road, the winter sun slowly dipping behind the distant mountains, the verges glinting with ice crystals, when the tarpaulin flipped up, revealing a flash of road sign.I must have been mistaken, I thought. I leaned forward, lifting the edge of the flap so that I might not miss the next, squinting against the light. And there it was.
Mannheim.
The world seemed to stop around me.
“Liliane?” I whispered, and shook her awake. “Liliane. Look out. What do you see?” The truck had slowed to make its way around some craters, so as she peered out I knew she must have seen it, too.
“We are meant to be going south,” I said. “South to Ardennes.” Now I could see that the shadows were behind us. We were driving east, and had been for some time. “But Édouard is in Ardennes.” I couldn’t keep the panic from my voice. “I had word that he was there. We were meant to be going south to Ardennes. South.”
Liliane let the flap drop. When she spoke, she didn’t look at me. Her face had leached of the little color it had left. “Sophie, we can no longer hear the guns because we have crossed the Front,” she said dully. “We are going into Germany.”
24
The train hums with good cheer. A group of women at the far end of carriage 14 bursts into peals of noisy laughter. A middle-aged couple in the seats opposite, perhaps on the way home from some celebratory Christmas trip, have bedecked themselves in tinsel. The racks are bulging with purchases, the air thick with the scents of seasonal food—ripe cheeses, wine, expensive chocolate. But for Mo and Liv the journey back to England is subdued. They sit in the carriage in near silence; Mo’s hangover has lasted all day and must apparently be remedied with more small, overpriced bottles of wine. Liv reads and rereads her notes, translating word by word with her little English–French dictionary balanced on her tray table.
The pages are brown and fragile, and draw moisture from her fingertips. There are early letters from Édouard to Sophie, when he joins the Régiment d’Infanterie and she moves to St. Péronne to be with her sister. Édouard misses her so much, he writes, that some nights he can barely breathe. He tells her that he conjures her in his head, paints pictures of her in the cold air. In her writings, Sophie envies her imaginary self, prays for her husband, scolds him. She calls himpoilu.The image of them prompted by her words is so strong, so intimate, that, even struggling with her French translation, Liv feels almost breathless. She runs her finger along the faded script, marveling that the girl in the portrait was responsible for these words. Sophie Lefèvre is no longer a seductive image in a chipped gilded frame: She has become a person, a living, breathing, three-dimensional being. A woman who talks about laundry, shortages of food, the fit of her husband’s uniform, her fears and frustrations. She realizes, again, that she cannot let Sophie’s painting go.
Liv flicks through two sheets. Here the text is more dense and is interrupted by a formal, sepia-tinted photograph of Édouard Lefèvre, gazing into the middle distance.
October 1914
The Gare du Nord was a boiling sea of soldiers and weeping women, the air thick with smoke and steam and the anguished sounds of good-bye. I knew you wouldn’t want me to cry. Besides, this would only be a short separation; all the newspapers said as much.
“Make lots of sketches for me,” I said. “And be sure to eat properly. And don’t do anything stupid, like getting drunk and fighting and getting yourself arrested. I want you home as quickly as possible.”
You made me promise that Hélène and I would be careful, that if we got wind that the enemy line was moving anywhere toward us, we would head straight back to Paris.
I must have said nothing, because you said, “Don’t give me that sphinx face, Sophie. Promise me you will think of yourself first. I will not be able to fight if I believe you might be in danger.”
I reassured you. I remember that somewhere in the distance a train let out a piercing whistle. Steam, the stench of burned oil, rose around us, briefly obscuring the crowds on the platform. I reached up to adjust your blue serge kepi. Then I stood back to look at you. What a man my husband is! Your shoulders so broad in your uniform, half a head taller than anyone else there. I don’t think I believed even then that you were actually leaving.
You had finished a little gouache painting of me the week before and patted your top pocket where it sat. “I will carry you with me.”
I touched my heart with my hand. “And you with me.” I was secretly envious that I hadn’t one of you.
Carriage doors were opening and closing, hands reaching past us, fingers entwining for the last time.
