Never Anyone But You

by Rupert Thomson

  He watched me carefully, as if he suspected I was playing a trick on him. The transparency of the look told me how inexperienced he was. What had his life been like before? I could see him tramping through flat fields with a knapsack and a loaded gun, a brace of rabbits with bloodied heads lolling in one fist. The evening would find him in a hostelry with other brawny, raw-boned men, a mustache of beer foam on his upper lip. Could his crudity be part of Bode’s strategy? Maybe Bode was trying to drive me to distraction. Maybe he was trying to bore me into a confession.

  “Names,” the young man said.

  As I looked at him, things around me began to swim and buckle. I coughed twice, and nearly vomited. “Can I go back to my cell?”

  “After you’ve given me the names.”

  “I don’t have any names,” I muttered. “I wish I did.”

  “Why are you protecting them? What have they done for you?” He was still standing in the middle of the room with folded arms. “They’ve done nothing for you. You owe them nothing.” He came forwards again, in the grip of a strange exhilaration. “They don’t give a shit about you. You’re dead to them. It’s almost as if you never existed.”

  I looked up at him, surprised. This was considerably more interesting than his previous line of questioning. He had surprised himself, perhaps. But I was tired. So tired.

  “This is going nowhere,” I said.

  Swooping down, he seized my jaw. His thumb dug into one of my cheeks, his fingers into the other. He was so close that I could see the sleep in the corner of his eye.

  “Aren’t you scared?” he said.

  I struggled to speak. “Yes,” I said. “All the time.”

  Wrong-footed, he stepped away from me, head lowered. I sensed that his thoughts were elsewhere. What shall I eat tonight? How much shall I drink? Who shall I fuck?

  The door opened and Bode walked in. He asked the young man if he had made any progress.

  “Not really, Herr Oberst,” the young man said. “She refuses to cooperate.”

  “She’s very stubborn.” Bode looked down at me, and I felt him select a weapon. “Perhaps,” he said at last, “you’ll have more joy with the other one.”

  I kept my eyes on the table. I would not plead on Claude’s behalf. I would not give him that satisfaction.

  “I’ve been observing you. You know what I see?”

  Once again I had been transported to Silvertide, only this time I was back on the first floor, and it was Wolf of the Gestapo who was sitting behind the desk.

  “Where’s the colonel?” I asked.

  “That’s no business of yours.” Wolf lit a cigarette and leaned back in the chair, watching me through the smoke. His lips were crumpled. Thin. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?”

  I sighed. “Not really.”

  “Pride,” he said.

  I felt my insides twist. My stomach had been upset by the watery soup they had been feeding me.

  “Your pride’s misplaced, though.” Wolf stood up and walked over to the window. His black leather jacket creaked as he lifted his cigarette towards his mouth. “You may have had some small significance when you lived in Paris, but you’re nothing now. You no longer count.” He gave me a long hard look, over his shoulder. “All those people you used to know—they’ve forgotten you. You’re worthless. Disposable.”

  I kept quiet.

  “You’ve only got one breast,” he went on. “You’re not even a proper woman.”

  “Apricot,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How old are you? Sixty?” This time he didn’t wait for an answer. “You have nothing to look forward to. Only pain, perhaps. The body breaking down. Then death.”

  My stomach twisted again, so sharply that I let out a gasp. Wolf didn’t appear to notice.

  “I need the lavatory—”

  He talked over me. “If you were to cooperate we might be lenient. We might let you and your sister share a cell. We might even send you back to that nice house of yours—”

  My legs were suddenly warm, then cool. A foul smell lifted into the room. Wolf stared at me in horror, one arm over his mouth and nose.

  “It’s not because I’m afraid of you,” I said.

  Our trial took place in the middle of November. Not long after dawn, I was led down the stairs and out into the prison yard. It was cold in the shade, but the sky was a hard, pure blue. I drew the crisp air deep into my lungs. Our guilt was not in doubt. What would they do, though? Would they decide to make an example of us? Since the fall of Saint-Malo, all the shipping links to the mainland had been cut, but they could always fly us to Berlin and carry out our executions there. I couldn’t imagine what the future held. Still, at least all the uncertainty would be coming to an end.

  Claude was already in the car, sitting upright, her face white and tense, her hair scraped back from her forehead and smoothed down flat. As I climbed in, I thought I felt something ease in her. I took her hand. Her fingers closed round mine. Neither of us spoke.

  We were driven past Parade Gardens and along Rouge Bouillon to an address on Lower King’s Cliff. The car pulled in to the curb, and soldiers escorted us through the back door of a building and up a flight of stairs. The courtroom was heated, and sunlight slanted through the three tall windows that overlooked the street. We were shown to two upholstered chairs. They faced a long table that was covered with green baize.

  Claude leaned close. “Front row seats!” she whispered.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ve missed you.”

  She let out a sigh. “This is blissful, isn’t it? The armchairs, the central heating—a chauffeured car to bring us here…”

  The three judges sitting at the table wore military uniforms, and were flanked by the prosecutor and the defense counsel. Behind them, on the wall, was a portrait of Hitler. On the other walls were watercolor views of somewhere that resembled Switzerland. In front of the five men, on the green baize, was a seemingly random assortment of items. Among them I could make out several things that belonged to us—Claude’s gun, her typewriter, the Kodak camera, several piles of leaflets, and the radio. Claude was just murmuring that it looked like a jumble sale when one of the judges, a Colonel Sarmsen, silenced her by bringing down his gavel.

  The trial began.

  From the outset the judges appeared uneasy and irascible, perhaps because they found themselves in an awkward predicament. After all, France had already been liberated, and Germany itself was under threat. Early on, Sarmsen accused us of breaking all their regulations.

  “All of them,” I said, “except the ones that didn’t bother us.”

  Claude laughed.

  Sarmsen brought the gavel down again.

  The prosecutor was in a permanent state of outrage, his complexion so ruddy that there were moments when I feared for his health. He could not have had a stronger case. An initial search of the house had turned up a wealth of evidence. In addition, he had our confessions, since we had never denied our guilt. As if all that wasn’t enough, he attempted to smear our characters still further by referring to the “pornographic material” discovered in our house during the days following our arrest. There were various photographs of sadomasochistic practices, he claimed. One of the accused—Miss Schwob—appeared naked in several of the photographs, sometimes with a head that had been shaved. These obscene items confirmed the authorities’ suspicions, he said. We were, quite simply, “the worst kind of Jews.” I let out a stifled snort of derision. The Nazis hadn’t had any suspicions. That was why our activities had gone undetected for so long. What’s more, I wasn’t Jewish. Not even Claude could properly be called a Jew, since her mother was a Catholic. I glanced at our defense counsel, a fidgety man with the narrow jaw and bristly side whiskers of a rat, but he failed to object to any of these characterizations. H
e wouldn’t even meet my eye. It was clear that he had no interest in securing an acquittal.

  The aforementioned items had been seized, the prosecutor informed us, and would be summarily disposed of. I felt no embarrassment, no shame. If the Germans felt the need to destroy the images, it was because something in themselves had already been destroyed. It was because they were, themselves, obscene. All the same, I was saddened by the loss. I glanced at Claude. She was staring straight ahead, chin raised. As the prosecutor continued to build his case, various witnesses were called, including Bode. At one point, I caught our counsel giving us a look of sly satisfaction. It struck me that he was as hostile as the prosecution, if not more so, and I interrupted the proceedings to register a complaint. My remarks were noted, but no action was taken.

  We had not employed any violence, Sarmsen said in his summing-up, but that didn’t mean the verdict should be lenient. Contrary to popular belief, the use of what he called “spiritual weapons” constituted a more serious crime than the use of weapons that were real. The effect of bombs and bullets could be readily assessed, he said. With words, however, there was no telling how much damage they might do.

  “Extraordinary,” Claude whispered. “He actually said something that made sense.”

  Though Sarmsen’s remarks didn’t augur well for our sentencing, Claude didn’t care. Unlike most prisoners who appear in the dock, she wanted to be found guilty. It was important to her that our campaign was acknowledged and recorded, otherwise it would all have been in vain. At the same time, and even more importantly, it would expose the Nazis to embarrassment and ridicule. If any of those involved kept diaries, I doubted they would mention the trial. The entries for that day would focus on the weather—glorious—or perhaps November 16 would be left blank.

  While the judges deliberated, we drank a delicious ersatz coffee called Malt Kneipp from porcelain cups in an adjoining room. Three hours later, Sarmsen delivered the verdict. Since we had spread propaganda designed to jeopardize the Nazi war effort and—worse still—since we had tried both to incite mutiny and to encourage assassination attempts on high-ranking officers, we were to receive the death sentence. Though I had feared these words might be coming, I felt nothing. There was a sheet of glass between me and the men sitting at the table. I had to strain to hear what was being said. It was like the pinched, almost comical voice that comes out of a receiver when you hold it away from your ear. We were also sentenced to six years’ hard labor, Sarmsen went on, and a further nine months in prison, for possession of firearms, a camera, and a radio.

  “Do we have to do the six years and nine months before we’re shot?” Claude asked.

  I smiled.

  Sarmsen’s face stiffened—he knew he was being mocked—but he kept his voice level. “The death sentence takes precedence.”

  Claude thanked him for the clarification.

  If we would like to appeal against the sentence, he went on, there were documents we would be required to sign. As he reached for the relevant papers, I looked at Claude. She shook her head.

  “No,” I said. “No appeal.”

  Sarmsen gaped at us, his arm still outstretched.

  Since the day of our arrest, the Nazis had found it hard to accept that we were responsible for a four-year campaign of subversion, but once we were in front of them, in court, they could no longer ignore the fact. They had been outwitted by two middle-aged Frenchwomen, and it seemed likely that the harsh sentences they had handed down were a direct consequence of their discomfort. In finding us guilty, though, they were admitting their own incompetence. I think that explained Claude’s air of triumph that day. I felt triumphant too, though it rapidly ebbed away when Sarmsen told us that we would be held in separate cells until such time as our death sentences could be carried out.

  “And when will that be exactly?” Claude asked.

  Sarmsen told her that it was none of her concern.

  “The date of my death is none of my concern?” Claude said. “That’s hilarious.”

  Sarmsen spoke to the guards. “Take them away.”

  In that moment, I realized that I might never see Claude again. They say a heart breaks, but it doesn’t. It goes on working, mute and stubborn as a mule. I stared at the floor.

  “Suzanne?”

  I looked up, blinking back the tears.

  Claude was smiling at me. “I heard you singing, in the middle of the night. About three weeks ago.”

  “It was for you.”

  “I know. I loved it. And, once, I thought I heard you laughing…”

  “Did you?”

  “Maybe I imagined it. Or maybe it was a memory. Your laughter, though—I think it’s the most wonderful sound in the world.”

  As she was led to the door, she glanced over her shoulder and gave me a bright look. Then she was gone.

  During the days that followed, as I lay curled up on my hard bed wrapped in all the clothes I owned, my insides tightened like a small cold fist. Something in me had been dismantled or removed. Resilience, perhaps. Or hope. I remembered Wolf of the Gestapo’s words. You have nothing to look forward to. Maybe it was as simple as that.

  Whenever I closed my eyes I found myself thinking of the party we had given at the very beginning of the thirties. I saw Dalí in his tight-fitting suit and his starched collar—in those days he used to dress like a clerk—and I remembered how he told me I had gold paint on my lips and on my cheek. You have been kissing a god, perhaps. I remembered him talking about the fisherman’s cottage he was on the point of buying. Do you know Cadaqués? No? Then you must come and stay. I insist! Somehow the invitation, which we had never taken up, and René’s description of his time in Spain became entangled in my mind, and it seemed to me that Claude and I had been there too. I could see the shack with its white walls, a wooden table by the shore. I could see the swans. We swam as soon as we woke up. It was an inlet, a kind of lagoon, protected from the waves and currents farther out by the jagged, brooding island of Sa Farnera. At dawn, the water was cool and lazy, the color of lead. Later, it turned a silky pale blue. We ate fried perch with fennel and ham sliced thin as onion skin, and went for long walks on the rugged, rust-brown land behind the house. We visited the huge, contorted rock that inspired Dalí to paint The Great Masturbator. We took dozens of intimate photographs, all of which would have been burned by the Nazis. Some nights it was so hot that we slept on a flat roof, under the stars…Did Dalí spy on us while we were making love? Almost certainly. We didn’t care.

  I returned again and again to that landscape, which I had never seen. The simple wooden table by the water, the harsh brown ridge behind. The three swans floating, candlelit. A feeling of wonder and well-being as we sat in the deep blue dusk and listened to stories about Lídia Noguer, the paranoid woman who had owned the house before, and her two sons, the fishermen, both of whom had ended their days in an asylum in Girona…This fantasy that felt like a memory wasn’t something I would ever have expected, but I didn’t seem to have a choice. It just kept coming to me, unsolicited, as if the cinema inside my head could only play one film. We had always imagined we would visit Dalí at some point. Somehow we didn’t manage it. He became too famous, perhaps. Too sought after. As time went on, Gala took more and more control of his life, and she had no interest in us. Probably we weren’t famous enough ourselves…

  On waking, either from a shallow sleep or from a daydream—there was very little difference between the two—I would feel pleasure spiral through me, like smoke lifting from a cigarette, curiosity as well, but then I would realize where I was, and the curiosity and pleasure I had felt would be extinguished, and a dark, cold dread would take their place.

  Each silence was the silence that precedes a death sentence.

  Each footstep was the footstep of an executioner.

  Not long after New Year I was woken in the night by the sound of someone crying. In th
e cell next to mine was a German soldier who had been found guilty of desertion. I had seen him only once, as I was escorted down the corridor, and there had been no chance to speak to him, but Little Heinrich had told me that his name was Siegfried. Heinrich had also told me, in a whisper, that he sympathized. He too had lost faith in the Nazi cause, and longed for an Allied victory. Standing on my bed, I directed my voice towards the air vent high up in the wall.

  “Can you hear me?” I said in German.

  The crying stopped, but he didn’t reply. Perhaps he was embarrassed.

  “Would you like to talk?” I said. “It might make you feel better.”

  “Did I wake you?” he said.

  I told him not to worry about that. Since the verdict, I had only slept in fits and starts.

  “They told me I will be shot tomorrow,” he said. “In the morning.”

  “Don’t think about tomorrow,” I said. “Think about yesterday, and the day before that. Think about what you did, which was so brave.”

  “No one thinks I was brave.”

  “I do—and I’ll tell other people too. I’ll make sure they know your name.”

  “You’re the Frenchwoman, aren’t you.”

  “One of them.”

  “You have also been sentenced to death.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you’ve also been sentenced to death, you won’t have so long to tell people what I did.”

  I smiled. “Good point.”

  “Your German’s excellent,” he said.

  I told him I had spoken German all my life, but I had never thought it would come in so useful, or that it would bring about my downfall. I said I had no regrets. I would do the same again.

  Siegfried was silent for a while.

  “Perhaps I would also do the same again,” he said eventually.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “I don’t have a son,” I said. “I don’t know what that’s like. But if I did have a son, I would hope that he would be like you. Someone who wasn’t afraid to stand up for his principles. Someone I could be proud of.”