Is far more fine.
I know that other people’s tales
Take you to valleys and to trails
Under blue skies, by running streams…
But all you find there, when you go,
Are taxis, houses, empty roads – and so,
My darling, take care when it comes to dreams
Just look around at what is ours
The books, the songs, the flowers
With my two arms to ring you…
And my heart to sing you…
At the conclusion of the final refrain, Max eased himself away from the piano, smiling broadly. ‘That was the best one ever. I loved the way you handled the chorus in the middle – it was so intimate.’
‘Yes. I felt it. Here.’ She touched herself lightly on the chest. ‘I could really see the man watching me. Just as you described.’
‘What did he look like?’
It was as if he had dashed a jug of iced water over her face. Her expression closed, and he understood immediately without the need for words that he had gone beyond the instinctive bounds of her propriety – she might sing of love and passion, but she would not have it expressed verbally in the form of an emotional striptease.
‘I’m sorry. It was a stupid question.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘You know…’ He bent forward and began rolling a cigarette to cover his confusion. ‘You are the most extraordinary girl. I may say that, mayn’t I?’
‘I’m not extraordinary. Why do you say such things to me?’
He stopped in the act of licking his cigarette paper. ‘I’m afraid I have offended you again.’ He laid the cigarette aside. ‘You are no longer scared of me, at least?’
She hesitated. ‘No, I’m not scared of you.’
‘Because you were at the beginning. I could feel it. And there was nothing remotely I could do about it.’ He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice. He could feel her moving away from him by the second, and he instinctively knew that, once he had caused her to flee, she would never return to him. ‘I watched you gradually overcoming your fear, and I thought, if I had been put in a similar position, I would not have had the courage to act as you acted, to trust as you have trusted. That is why you are extraordinary, Mademoiselle Léré. And why I am so deeply grateful that you let me accompany you.’
She raised her hand, palm outwards, in a strange, almost gauche gesture of restraint, as though she wanted him to take his mouth away from their secret world. To leave it be.
‘No. Please. Please, let me finish. I promise you that I will say nothing indelicate.’
She let her hand fall. Her chest was heaving and her face looked white and drawn, as if she were only now comprehending, in a belated flood of awareness, the true ambiguity of her position.
He stood up. ‘I would like to give you a present. It would mean a great deal to me if you would accept it.’ The shoes and silk stockings were in a closed box in an alcove in a far corner of the room. He had only to step across the room and retrieve them.
He took a single pace and halted abruptly. Verflucht noch mal! Whatever was he thinking? Of course he couldn’t give them to her. Especially in the light of their earlier conversation. She could never possibly wear them. It would be like a signal to the entire female population of the village that she had agreed to become his mistress.
He hovered in mid-stride, more flustered than he cared to acknowledge at the depths to which his stupidity and his thoughtlessness had brought him. At no point in the entire proceedings had he given even a single thought to the effect on Lucie of his so-called present. He had merely thought of his own pleasure, in a riot – let’s face it – of passionate anticipation. What was he to do?
He racked his brains for an alternative gift, one that would carry no unwelcome connotations. He could feel her gaze pinning his conscience to the wall. He scrabbled at his collar, cursing himself for his ridiculous lack of tact.
‘Look. I have this silver cross. I’ve worn it all through the war. My mother gave it to me at my first communion. I want you to take it.’ He finished unbuttoning the collar and began groping awkwardly for the cross’s fastening.
Lucie took a step backwards, still watching him, her eyes wide open and steady, one hand now protecting her face. ‘No, I won’t.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I won’t take it.’
‘Why ever not?’
She dropped her hand. ‘It wouldn’t be seemly.’
‘But it’s a cross. A religious object. It’s not a piece of jewellery.’
‘I know that.’
He slumped back onto the piano stool. ‘Yes. It was a stupid idea. I don’t know what made me think of it. I’m not managing very well today, am I?’
‘I’m grateful for the thought. I really am.’ She slipped her pantoufles back on, then glanced up at him quickly, her face wearing an expression he had never seen on it before. ‘But it would be impossible. You can see that?’
He sat, one hand still fluttering hopelessly at his collar, and watched her leave.
The Oracle
‘Do you ever read books, Paul?’
Max was seated opposite Meyer at the kitchen table, his profile lit only by a table lamp. He was sipping black market coffee and smoking a papirosu made of locally grown tobacco. His thoughts were still on Lucie, and on her parting words to him – for she had been worse than silent while serving his lunch, and he, against all his baser instincts, had respected that silence. ‘But it would be impossible. You can see that.’
What had she meant by it? Perhaps she hadn’t merely been speaking of his ill-judged offer of a gift? Did she, when all was said and done, surreptitiously acknowledge their mutual attraction and shy away from it? Or was he reading entirely too much into their joint love of music and her foolhardy agreement to allow him to accompany her on the piano and step inside the recently vacated shoes of her father, as it were? When put like that, the situation seemed almost grotesque.
Meyer sucked on his pipe, pretending not to notice Max’s distraction. ‘Books? How do you mean?’ His eyes were crinkled in apparent thought.
Max forced himself to concentrate. He leaned forward and poured Meyer a second cognac. ‘I mean do you ever read for pleasure? Novels. Poems. Anything.’
Meyer took a sip of the cognac and smacked his lips. ‘That’s a strange question.’ He scratched his head with the stem of his pipe. Then his eyes lit up. ‘I did read a story once. Krambambuli. The one about the gamekeeper’s dog. Perhaps you know of it?’
Fascinated, despite his larger preoccupations, Max shook his head.
Meyer manifested a haughty surprise. ‘It’s by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. A distant relation of my employer, as I understand it. It was read out aloud to me whilst I was still at kindergarten, and I read it many more times myself in the years that followed. It seemed to me then, just as it does now, so perfect a story that there hardly seemed any point in attempting another.’
‘You can’t be serious?’
‘Perfectly serious.’ Meyer polished the bowl of the pipe against the side of his nose, then studied the effects ruminatively. ‘I am a forester by profession, Herr Major, as you well know. And we foresters dearly love our dogs. And this story is the best story about dogs ever written.’
Max tried and failed to mask his grin. ‘I hope, at least, that it has a happy ending?’
‘No. Sad. Very sad.’ Meyer’s face took on a mournful set. ‘The dog returns to its first master, a poacher. He betrays the gamekeeper. But the betrayal, of course, is no betrayal, since the dog was honouring a trust. At the very end the dog dies at the gamekeeper’s door, and the gamekeeper grieves. “Pity about that dog.”’ Meyer’s eyes were glistening.
‘And that’s it?’
‘That’s all there is. But it was the dog that caused his first master’s death by jumping up and spoiling his aim when he was trying to kill the gamekeeper. It’s a complicated story, you see. I’m still not sure I fully und
erstand it. That’s why I don’t read other books. For one day it will come to me. Then I shall die happy.’
Max sat back in his chair. He stared at Meyer with new eyes.
‘So why did you ask me if I read books?’ Meyer was returning Max’s gaze from across the table.
Max shrugged. ‘I don’t know. No particular reason.’
Meyer nodded, as if everything was now clear in his mind. He began chewing on his lower lip, as was his invariable habit before launching into a joke or changing the tack of a conversation. When he was sure he had Max’s full attention, he glanced up, an expression of studious mock innocence on his face. ‘The girl. The young one from the restaurant. The one with the bashed-in nose. You must know who I mean. Does she still come here at all?’
Max threw up his hands and groaned. ‘For God’s sake, Paul, you must be a crystal gazer.’ He shook his head unbelievingly. ‘You know very well that she does.’
‘I knew it.’ Meyer gave a satisfied grunt. ‘It was obvious what was tormenting you.’
Max sat up from his slouch. ‘Tormenting me? How do you mean, tormenting me?’
Meyer appeared to be studying something in the depths of his glass of cognac. ‘It’s the talk of the village. You surely can’t imagine that the sound of a piano accompanying a singing voice will not eventually be heard by everyone?’
Max crushed out his cigarette. ‘But we are thirty metres from the main road. And I keep the windows firmly shut.’
‘The girl is not yet nineteen, as I understand it? And a virgin still, no doubt?’ Meyer raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And it is common knowledge that she comes here from her mother’s restaurant six days a week to prepare your lunch and take home your washing. Is it any surprise then that certain elements of village society interest themselves in your friendship?’
Max could feel his irritation building but did his best not to show it. ‘How did you hear this?’
Meyer shrugged. ‘I, too, live in a small village back in Bavaria. Such things are carried on the wind in such a place. You have only to raise your head and sniff them. It’s exactly the same way here.’
‘You are imagining things.’ Max raised his glass of cognac and seemed about to drink. Then he slammed the glass down untouched. ‘For God’s sake, Paul, you’ve never approved of my friendship with that girl. Ever since the beginning you’ve been trying to warn me off her. I remember you even suggesting that she would infiltrate herself in here and assassinate me, or something equally absurd.’
Meyer sat up straighter. ‘The division has lost a dozen men and nearly a hundred vehicles to terrorists already this month. Our unit has been insanely lucky not to be hit yet. It was a reasonable thought.’
‘Of course it wasn’t a reasonable thought. She’s a complete innocent.’ Max threw himself back in his chair, a petulant expression on his face. ‘Am I to be deprived of all female companionship? Even the most innocuous? Just because I’m a soldier?’
Meyer sighed. ‘Max. You are part of an occupying force. And your friendship with the girl is certainly not innocuous.’
‘What do you mean, “not innocuous”?’
‘I mean that you’re in danger of falling in love with her and causing a tragedy.’
Max stood up. He strode across to the basin, hunched down and threw water from the tap over his face. ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense. I’m not in danger of any such thing.’ He straightened up, reaching for a towel. ‘She’s a peasant. She’s got fuller’s earth beneath her fingernails. And her nose is broken all over her face.’ He switched off the tap. ‘In addition to all that, we have nothing whatsoever in common. Apart from a lamentable weakness for Music-Hall schmaltz, that is.’
‘I’m a peasant, too.’
‘That has absolutely nothing to do with anything.’
Meyer sucked on his cold pipe. ‘I think it has.’
Max dried his face rather too vigorously. ‘Sometimes, Paul, I think I know you. Probably better than I’ve ever known anybody in my life. We’ve been through hell and back together, and such intimacy is hard won.’ He glanced at Meyer over the towel. ‘Then you floor me with sudden wild insights into what is going on in my own head that you have no ways or means of actually knowing, and I lose track of you completely.’
‘Do you object?’
Max gave a long-suffering groan, and threw the towel onto a chair. ‘Part of me objects. The part of me that doesn’t wish to acknowledge reality. Another part of me accords you the right simply through our friendship. I would let no one else ever speak to me like this.’
‘It was you who asked the question.’
‘What do you mean, it was I who asked the question?’
‘You asked me, did I ever read books?’ Meyer was smiling now. ‘You expected me to say no, didn’t you? Then you would have sweated your way through what books can teach you – in a theoretical sense, of course, as far as I was concerned – until you had finally worked your way around to asking my opinion about the girl.’
Max grunted. ‘You should have been a staff officer. A tactician. Whatever in hell constrained you to join the Waffen SS?’
‘I joined the Waffen SS because they treat everyone as an equal. It doesn’t matter what background you come from, what your education consists of. If you can fight, they will have you. In what other branch of the service would you find a member of the so-called high nobility sharing a friendly cognac with a member of the so-called peasantry like me? The Wehrmacht, perhaps?’
Max clapped a hand to his chest melodramatically. ‘Touché.’
‘By the same token, when it comes to food and to music, all people are created equal, regardless of birth.’ Meyer began to suspect that he might be going too far. ‘Look, I’m not some bloody red Popov communist telling you this.’
Max threw up his hands. ‘Gaah! I know you’re not.’
‘So why not cancel these lunches? Set the girl free. Come and eat with us non-commissioned officers for a change. Or get Berger to make you up a tray. The whole thing was a terrible idea in the first place.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I can’t give her up.’
Meyer raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you telling me that she has already given herself to you?’
‘Of course not. She’s behaved perfectly correctly. It is I who’s entirely at fault. I spend my mornings deciding how best to curtail our arrangement, and then at lunchtime, at the very moment she enters the room, all my resolutions collapse like the Hindenburg Zeppelin. The other day I even visited an officer’s brothel in Toulouse just to get rid of the itch, but found, at the very last moment, that I couldn’t go through with it. And do you know why, Paul? Because my behaviour would have been unworthy of her. Not of me. Of her. Now how do you account for that?’
The ghost of a smile hovered fleetingly over Meyer’s mouth, but Max was too bound up in his own world to notice it.
‘I find myself speaking and behaving like a teenage boy whenever she’s in the room. She’s so desirable, despite – or even because of – what’s happened to her face, that it stops my heart just to look at her. I can’t possibly give that up.’
‘What did happen to her? To her face? Has she got around to telling you yet?’
‘I haven’t asked her. I thought it wouldn’t be appropriate.’
Meyer sniffed. ‘Just like your relationship.’
Max looked up sharply. ‘That’s not fair. Our relationship – or rather the lack of it – is none of your fucking business.’
Meyer shrugged his shoulders, more shocked than he cared to let on at Max’s intemperate language. ‘Then I can’t possibly help you, can I?’
Max slapped his hand on the table. ‘I don’t remember asking you for help!’
Meyer stood up, his face flushed, and began to gather his belongings together. ‘Well, it sounded very much like it from where I was sitting.’
‘Oh, sit back down, for God’s sake.’ Max walked ar
ound the table and shunted the chair, placatingly, back towards Meyer.
Meyer sat down. He looked expectantly up at Max.
‘And don’t you dare tell me I ought to go back to the brothel.’
‘It wouldn’t have occurred to me.’
Max walked back around the table, downed his cognac and poured some more into both their glasses. ‘What would you do?’
‘How do you mean?
‘Well, you’re married, aren’t you? How can you stand to be away from your wife for such long periods?’
‘I’m not sure the situation is comparable.’
‘Of course it isn’t. I’m talking utter nonsense.’ Max began pacing up and down the room. ‘What if I married her? Such a thing is not unknown.’
Meyer raised his eyebrows incredulously.
‘Well, what if I made her my mistress, then? How about that? Dozens of officers I know have French mistresses.’
‘Why haven’t you done so already?’
‘Because she’d doubtless say no, and then refuse ever to come here again.’ He turned around, fixing his eyes intently on Meyer’s face. ‘I live for the moments when I see her, Paul. I can’t describe it. The tension is magnificent. Sometimes I think I could grab it out of the air and cram it into my mouth like a meringue.’
Meyer sucked in his cheeks. ‘I never thought I’d find myself wishing that the Tommies would invade. Or that the terrorists would target our unit. But you need action. You need someone to shoot at you and remind you of who you are – of what we are doing here.’
‘And what are we doing here? I confess that in recent weeks I have begun to question the sanity of our position more and more. I used to come to France as a child, Paul. Swim on the beach at Juan-Les-Pins. Play with my French friends. Eat marzipan cakes at Falconetti’s in Cannes. And now I’m meant to shoot any Frenchman I see carrying a gun – in his own country, dammit – to kingdom come.’
‘And you will, Max. Because you are a German soldier. And that is where your duty lies.’
Max threw up his hands in despair. ‘So that’s it then? Duty?’
Meyer pocketed his pipe and downed the remainder of his cognac in a single swig. ‘In a nutshell? Yes.’
The Occupation Secret Page 17