War on the Margins

by Libby Cone

  The unending hell

  Of wintry nights.

  O fourteen-hour long nights

  Where dreams are

  Our only recourse

  Velvet nights.

  It is freezing weather.

  A cat the colour of ash

  Upon my heart melts

  Lies down in a circle.

  Voice the colour of smoke

  Which in the appeased night

  Softly calls out:

  I am waiting for you.

  The sun upon the sand ...

  Barely believable.

  Gardens are too green.

  So that’s the sea?

  Tomorrow maybe at dawn.

  Despite the lullaby, she couldn’t sleep. She was almost relieved when they came for her. First a trusty handed her a container of water so she could wash before appearing before the court. She quickly availed herself of it. Then the nurse and interpreter, along with a grave and sleepy Otto, escorted her to the room where she had undergone so much questioning, where she had last been able to see Lucille clearly.

  She sat down; Lucy was not there yet. An unfamiliar officer sat in front along with the two NCOs she had seen before. He looked as if he had been up for a while and had just breakfasted on coffee and sweet rolls. His uniform fitted him perfectly; he was freshly shaven. He avoided her eyes.

  Lucy was then led in, looking serious but not as ill as she had looked before. Suzanne locked eyes with her for as long as she could. Then Lohse and Sarmsen came in. Lohse was looking, she thought, a little sheepish. They saluted the new officer, whose name was Koppelmann, and the non-coms, and sat next to Koppelmann. There was rustling of papers and clearing of throats. Suzanne started to tremble.

  Koppelmann spoke up. ‘You are Miss Schwob?’ he asked Suzanne.

  ‘No, I am Miss Malherbe.’

  He turned, expressionless, to Lucy. ‘You are Miss Schwob?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This session of the court martial is called to order. The court has reviewed your sentences.’

  They looked straight ahead, expecting formalities followed by death.

  ‘The court has decided to commute your death sentences to life imprisonment. We have received communications from Bailiff Coutanche and from your attorney, Advocate Giffard, advising us that it would be ... ah... inconvenient for the Reich to execute two women on the Island of Jersey.’

  Suzanne smiled. Lucy sat expressionless. Sarmsen looked at them coldly. Maybe this was not good for his legal career. Their civilian lawyer and the Bailiff had succeeded where he had not.

  ‘In one sense you will still be in solitary confinement, but you may now share a cell.’

  This finally brought a smile to Lucy’s face.

  ‘Does Defence Counsel have anything to say?’

  ‘No, Herr Major.’

  ‘This Reich Court Martial is dismissed.’

  The officers rose, gave their Hitler salutes, and filed out.

  Otto came in as the officers were leaving; he saluted them, not too smartly. Lucy and Suzanne, numbed by the news, suddenly brightened when they saw Otto, giving him little hugs; then, seeing he had no objection, shared their first kiss since November.

  ‘Misses Schwob and Malherbe,’ he began -

  ‘Yes, Otto?’

  ‘Which cell do you wish to share? Tomorrow we will put you together.’

  That was easy. Lucy’s cell, number five, was larger and better-ventilated. They said in unison, ‘We would like number five.’

  ‘Jawohl. Große, uh, would you prepare any belongings you would wish to take?’

  ‘Yes, Otto.’

  They were escorted by Otto and the nurse back to their cells.

  CHAPTER 69

  St Helier, Jersey

  4 March 1945

  It was cold but sunny. Erica, her hair dyed black, shielded by dark glasses, sat in the back garden, away from prying eyes. The sunlight was almost as good as food, warming her face. She had borrowed a book from Albert’s little collection, but kept turning her face to the sun and closing her eyes instead of reading it. A few people came and went on the quiet road outside; she was protected by a tall wooden gate.

  Her reverie was broken by the sound of two men speaking German. She was startled, but their talk did not sound of an official nature. Rashly, she stood and walked over to the gate to peer between the boards. Two young soldiers were walking with a bundle between them; as they got closer, she saw that it was a tennis net. Wrapped inside of it were several large fish. An interesting use for a tennis net, she mused. I wonder who won the set?

  She let herself back into the house and told Albert about it; he laughed, really laughed, for the first time in a while.

  ‘I might have a tennis net somewhere,’ he said. ‘I wonder if they want to fish doubles?’

  A few days later, explosions rocked the town; the Palace Hotel had caught fire; this in turn set fire to an ammunition dump. A shed in a nearby Todt depot also burned. It was widely rumoured to be the result of sabotage by the German Marines, who had been running wild, stealing potato bread from the bakeries, daubing houses with swastikas. The Feldpolizei were afraid to take them on. Erica took this flourishing of anarchy to be a very good sign.

  It was another very good sign when the Vega docked with a huge cargo of flour. Real loaves of bread soon appeared in the bakeries, enough for everybody. Erica, Leo and Albert sat at the little table in her bedroom and ate bread and butter, tears streaming down their faces.

  ‘Erica,’ said Albert, ‘I think soon it will be safe for you to go home.’

  She beamed; Leo patted her on the back.

  ‘I will go and see Edmund today or tomorrow,’ Albert went on, ‘see how he is doing, and see how the neighbourhood looks. I think that if there is another big sabotage act, or some other distraction, like a mass German suicide, ha ha, you might be able to walk down the street without being noticed.’

  ‘Oh, I hope they start the mass suicide soon! It makes me want to play funeral music out the window to encourage them!’ she said.

  ‘They are doing a good job themselves without encouragement,’ observed Albert.

  ‘No, we must hurry them!’ shouted Leo after swallowing a mouthful of bread. ‘Albert, do you have such music?’

  ‘Yes, but I cannot play the gramophone without electricity, Leo. Also, it will call attention to me. What is really wonderful for us and bad for them is the wearing of the red-white-and-blue rosettes, sometimes on the right side of the lapel, that I have noticed. The Germans aren’t doing anything about it.’

  “The British colours? Oh, that is good!’

  The next day, more explosions. The Germans were demolishing the ruins of the Palace Hotel. Albert knocked on Erica’s door.

  ‘Shall we go for a stroll, Erica? They are demolishing the hotel.’

  ‘Yes!’

  She was ready in an instant; she put on her dark glasses and smoothed her dark hair, grabbed an embroidered pillowcase. They set out, looking like an average couple out to queue up for food, paying no mind to the frequent booms coming from the Palace site.

  They made their way to Dicq Road. She still had her keys. They knocked so as not to startle Edmund, and then entered. The house was much darker than she remembered; it smelled of boiled cabbage. She tiptoed over to Edmund’s bed and paled; Albert had not prepared her for how he looked, shrunken and fragile.

  ‘Edmund,’ she whispered hoarsely. His eyelids fluttered open and she was relieved to see the same twinkle, like diamonds in a skull. ‘Ohhhh,’ he sighed. ‘Is that my little Dutch girl? What happened to your hair?’

  She grabbed his hand and kissed him, her tears wetting his face. Albert turned towards the door.

  ‘Wait, Albert!’ she cried, turning back to Edmund. ‘Edmund, he saved my life!’

  ‘I know, dear. Albert, my man, I’ve said it before, you are a prince among men! Thank you for saving Erica and bringing her back to me.’

  ‘Not at all, Edmu
nd. I’ll leave you two now.’ He did not want them to see his own tears, and slipped out through the door.

  ‘Do you have rations, darling? We rushed over here, and I couldn’t bring much of anything. Oh! I did bring you this!’ Erica pulled the pillowcase out of her handbag and began to put it on his pillow. ‘I embroidered this for you, Edmund.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ he said in his it’s-very-nice-dear voice. How she had missed it! ‘I don’t have much. I haven’t been able to get out, dear, and the neighbours have been quite good, but...’

  ‘Do you have ration coupons? I suppose I shall have to go out and redeem them.’

  ‘Yes, look in the cupboard over the sink.’

  She looked in the cupboard, which contained a can of peas, a can of salmon, and coupons.

  ‘You have a little food, Edmund. I shall go out and get more.’

  Her hands began to shake. She kissed him (would this be the last time?), and put her coat and dark glasses back on, then set out.

  She hadn’t noticed much on her walk over. Now she saw all the trees were gone. People carried railroad ties and odd branches on their backs. Some young boys went by, carrying milk bottles. She noticed two of them had tricolour rosettes on their jackets and felt a little braver. She made her way to the nearest bakery, not the one she used to go to, and looked on the shelves. There was bread! Nothing else, but bread. She looked through the ration book (of course, they could only use rations for one) and handed over the coupon, receiving a loaf in return. She went to the chemist, found aspirin and witch hazel, paid with the money still in her purse from two years before. Nobody paid her any mind. It was wonderful! She was able to find some tea at another grocer’s after a terrifying wait in line. She walked back to the house and made tea and little half-sandwiches of salmon. Then she bathed him with cool water and some soap she had found (he had indeed received a Red Cross parcel recently), finishing by rubbing him down with the witch hazel.

  ‘I’ll take care of you now, darling,’ she whispered to him as he began to doze. ‘I think the war is almost over.’

  CHAPTER 70

  Gloucester Street Prison

  Late April 1945

  Cell number five could have been more joyful were it not for the increasing frequency of executions. Even Otto was distressed; he would often ask the women for a book or cigarettes for the latest condemned man; they always obliged. But these gifts always had to be at Otto’s instigation; when Lucille slipped cigarettes under the door of a recently-executed prisoner’s cellmate, Otto saw her. He said nothing to her, but as he was locking all the cells for the night, he began roaring in the hallway, ‘They are evil, the lot of them! I get them food, I get them doctors, and still they pass notes and contraband! These undisciplined shits! These fucking ingrates! I cannot stand it! Fuck them all!’

  Suzanne interpreted his German for Lucille, who chuckled. ‘He is in quite a bad mood, isn’t he? I think the Reich is done for.’

  Evelyn left preventive; they could still wave to her on the civilian side through the hole in the bathroom wall. She was replaced by a near-catatonic, tall young woman who looked vaguely familiar to them. Apparently she was the lover of a deserter who was soon to be executed; she might suffer the same fate. They looked at her limping in the exercise yard, saying nothing, her auburn hair greasy and unkempt. Finally, they realised she was the woman Marlene had pointed out to them in St Helier as the jerrybag who had made trouble for her. This made no sense. They whispered through their channels; this girl was no jerrybag, all the replies said. She was very brave. She had sheltered the deserter and others, and had worked for the Resistance. Several people vouched for her. She had been a tough prisoner until they had brought her lover in and sentenced him to death.

  ‘I suppose Marlene was mistaken,’ Lucille muttered, her throat tightening.

  ‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ responded Suzanne matter-of-factly. ‘Marlene was hardly an experienced Resistance member. She cannot be blamed for being a little too suspicious.’

  She was a little taken aback when Lucy began to weep quietly. Later, they tried to share their cigarettes with the girl, whose name was indeed Pauline. She mutely accepted one, but was careless about concealing it and a guard took it away from her.

  The Feldgendarmerie brought in a new prisoner, a Russian. Lucy watched his arrival through a keyhole that afforded a view of a piece of back courtyard. He looked like Gary Cooper. His uniform was torn and blood dripped from his nose, but he carried himself with dignity even as the policemen searched him, tearing his clothes up further and pinning him up against the wall to violate him with a filthy leather-gloved finger. Tears interfered with her view as he was gone over with a truncheon and then dragged away to another building. The next morning, everyone said he had been shot.

  Dieter, the deserter, was pitied by the other prisoners but also despised by Germans and Jersians alike for deserting. Occasionally his pale face, proud and wild, was glimpsed in the other exercise yard on the other side of the garden; he would try to talk calmly to Pauline, who could only weep. Soon, he was no longer seen at exercise. The night before his trial, Lucille’s sleep was shattered by gasps and moans of pain. She lay awake next to Suzanne, listening for hours. The next morning one of the Jersian prisoners informed her matter-of-factly that it was ‘the German bloke’. Later, one of the trusties, Karlchen, his face tight with rage, said that the jailers were forcing him to swallow nails and knife blades during his interrogations. A loyal son of the Soldier Without a Name! Lucy summoned Otto, gave him tobacco and a can of Red Cross parcel salmon to take to Dieter. Otto returned later, still holding the can. The tobacco had been well-received, but the prisoner was not up to eating ... She gave Otto the salmon, unable to look at it.

  The trial took place, Dieter barely able to stand. He got the death sentence, as expected. Pauline’s death sentence had been commuted. She would be allowed to attend Dieter’s funeral after his execution.

  The next day, they heard the gunshot. It was an insane race to kill him with a bullet before the peritonitis did him in. Pauline’s mother had been in the day before, bearing a grey dress. Pauline had to be helped into it the next morning. She was able to stand unaided during the brief funeral, tears streaming down her cheeks as the guards unenthusiastically sang ‘The Song of the Good Comrade’. Then, as the body was lowered, she slid to the ground and rubbed dirt in her hair and on her face. Two guards pulled her up roughly and dragged her back to preventive. She lay motionless on her cell floor for hours; Otto finally let Suzanne in with a little warm water to clean her up.

  As Suzanne walked back towards her cell, one of the trusties was splitting half-rotten wood with an axe, shouting in French with each blow, ‘This is for Hitler! This one’s for Himmler!’ A few silent blows, then, ‘Another one for Himmler!’

  Suzanne regarded Lucille as she was let in and took her place on her bed. Lucille looked more pale and fragile than ever, even though their diet had improved and the weather was intermittently warm. Lucille clenched and unclenched her fists, not looking at Suzanne.

  ‘Cherie,’ Lucille sighed, ‘what did we do? How many corpses has the Soldier Without a Name got on his conscience?’

  Suzanne looked at her closely. ‘Lucille, I do not, I do not think...’

  ‘No, cherie, we had a hand in this.’

  ‘Well, everybody knows this here. They know what the stakes were. They are very loyal to us.’

  ‘Yes, now they are. I imagine when they were being reined in in ‘41 because of all our leafleting, they hated us.’

  ‘They did not hate us.’

  ‘Well, were we effective or not? Are you trying to tell me we were not very effective, so I feel better?’

  ‘No, ah ...’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m talking about the behaviour of people in normal times. In normal times, you do not do things to get other people in trouble.’

  ‘What? We got plenty of people in trouble in the Thirties! How is this any different now?�
�

  ‘You are right, Suzanne. I am crazy. We got people in trouble. We had to do it in order to fight the Nazis. We got Pauline in trouble, we made soldiers desert, we were ruthless.’

  She was sitting up, resting her hands on her knees.

  ‘Cherie, of course in a war like this the decisions are not clear, or rather they clearly can have both positive and negative results. The enemy likes that. They rely on that to keep the population tractable. What am I telling you that you do not already know?’

  ‘When you were in Pauline’s cell, did you tell her we informed on her?’

  ‘Mais non! Of course not! What would it do to her? Are you crazy?’

  ‘We have to make it up to her.’

  ‘Of course we do, but we cannot make everything nice! There are people out there who informed on us. Certainly the woman who sold us paper. Do you think she is going to bring us a gift when the war is over? You are making very fine arguments over a very coarse subject! I think you are too emotional over this! There are people out there I want to spit at, to strangle ...’ Now Suzanne clenched her fists and twisted up her face in a moment of permitted rage, then took a breath and went on. ‘But I have decided it is not worth it for me. I am just polite to them all. That is what you need to do! Look, you were nasty to Giffard, and he ended up helping our case! As for Pauline, we cannot tell Pauline anything. It would kill her. It is narcissistic to think otherwise! Merde, Lucy, what would you do? Say, “Pauline, did you start out as a jerrybag and then join the Resistance after your imprisonment, or did we inform on you wrongly?” To hell with your guilt, Lucy! To hell with whether people like us or not! You never cared about that before! All we can do is help her, and help poor Marlene, if we find her.’ A tear escaped down her cheek. ‘Oh, God, I hope she is still alive!’

  Lucille stood up, her heart pounding as much from the effort as from emotion.

  ‘You are my fierce lion!’ They embraced. ‘You are ruthless and quiet. I am full of hesitancy and guilt.’

  ‘This war is not neat and tidy. History is not neat and tidy.’