by Graham Swift
We climbed up two flights of grand, carved stairs and emerged on to a landing in front of an ornate double door behind which, I instinctively knew, were my interrogators. An officer, whom I recognized as the dark-haired, fat-cheeked officer present at my capture, was lounging on the landing, his black tunic unbuttoned, a coffee cup in his hand. He looked at me with distaste and motioned to one of the guards. I was taken along a side corridor and ushered, almost considerately, into a cubicle containing a large marble wash basin, a mirror and a lavatory. In the mirror I became aware of the filth – dust and dried blood – that had collected on my face. The sentry removed my handcuffs. ‘Waschen Sie sich.’
Marian is finishing watering her plants. She straightens up and rubs a palm on her hip. She does not know I am looking at her. She is a creature undergoing scientific scrutiny: her sandy hair, slightly hunched shoulders, her slim, almost too slim body, her exposed midriff. She turns and catches my clinical stare. A bewildered look crosses her face. I return my eyes to the book and do not look up again until she speaks. ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she says, as if I’ve implied she’s unclean.
After I had washed (it seemed my handcuffs were not going to be replaced), the guard jostled me back towards the double doors, which had been partly opened. The second guard was standing on the landing. He jerked his head as a sign to his companion, who shoved me through the doors and pulled them shut behind me.
Here description must be blurred. Not through any weakness of recollection, but because events themselves at the time were blurred. The first step towards breaking the resistance of a spy is to confuse and disorientate him, and deprivation, isolation, hunger, sleeplessness, as well as the spy’s own ignorance of the next move of his captors, normally achieve this – even before other methods are employed. The room into which I was pushed was large, thick-carpeted, with a marble fire-place set in one wall, and the wooden scrollwork and gilt which characterized the corridors and staircase. Another door, in one corner, led off it. Blinds were drawn over the windows and although light filtered in, electric lights, set in chandeliers, were switched on. Before me was a large, leather-topped desk, strewn with papers, and behind it, sitting in heavily upholstered chairs, were the fat-cheeked officer and a second officer, in the uniform of an SS colonel, with neat grey hair and a long, delicate, almost scholarly face, like that of some amiable civil servant. Up to now my journey up from the cell had had a strangely reassuring quality, as if nothing worse were going to happen to me than happens to some refractory schoolboy. But I noticed that on the small wooden chair in which, if I was lucky, I would be told to sit, there were dark stains of blood, and the chair itself was placed on a large piece of canvas material, over the carpet, on which there were more obvious stains of blood, and, if my nostrils did not deceive me, urine.…
‘Do you want one?’
‘What?’
‘A bath.’
‘Why?’
‘I mean, do you mind if I take all the hot water?’
‘No, no.…’
She stands in the doorway, like some subordinate, waiting to be told she is dismissed.
… I was to sit in that chair, on that piece of filthy canvas, many times in the ensuing few days. How many times exactly, I could not say, nor for what duration, nor with what intervals in between; nor, were it not for certain regular daily procedures, could I have said at the time that what was involved was merely a matter of days, not weeks, months – an epoch. My recollection compresses into a series of dream-like, constantly recurring impressions: the darkness and silence of the cell punctuated (as you sank into exhaustion) by the tramping of boots, lights, shouts, the rasping of locks and bolts and the slam of doors; the journey, on which your own legs could scarcely convey you, along the passage-way, up the steps, along the upper corridor, past that incredible window, which every time became more and more like an illusion; the staircase, the double doors, the guard shoving you into the cubicle, and that persistent command: ‘Waschen Sie sich’. Perhaps there is much about my days at the Château which I simply do not remember. They say that you only recall what is pleasant. Or perhaps the truth is that certain things defy retelling.
When grey-hair and fat-cheeks had finished with me that first time, I was taken back down not, at first, to my cell, but to the room at the end of the cell corridor where the podgy German with the truncheon officiated. I was detained here for perhaps an hour.
What was it like, Dad? What was it really like?
Dumped back in my cell, I was roused again, almost immediately, this time by a general activity in the corridor. What was about to take place was a regular event which occurred every morning; for the first time I was to see some of my fellow captives. In the corridor the cell doors were being opened and the prisoners were automatically forming a single file. I counted seven, excluding myself. Some of them were hardly able to stand. The doors to the cells either side of my own were unopened. I assumed from this and my previous unanswered tapping that they were unoccupied. Each of the prisoners in the corridor held a battered metal can – obviously provided for his needs of nature. I had none myself, but one was to be ‘issued’ to me during the proceedings that followed.
When all the prisoners were lined in the corridor a command was given by one of the guards and we shambled forwards towards the exit steps. I was last in the line and was denied, for the moment, the opportunity to look for faces I might know. We passed through the door at the top of the steps and then turned left, along the passage-way through which I had been bundled, blindfolded, on my arrival. I made a mental note of everything. From the outset, and as the only conceivable positive course in the circumstances, I had resolved on escape.
We filed through another doorway, at which guards were posted, turned right, and suddenly emerged into the fresh, blinding air of the Château courtyard. A staff-car, two motorcycles with side-cars and a light truck were parked on the gravel. Sentries were posted at the gateway into the courtyard, and, dotted around the courtyard itself, standing casually but with rifles at the ready, were soldiers of the SS – I counted over a dozen – looking at us with an air of somewhat listless mockery. Doubtless, this was their morning’s entertainment.
I copied the actions of the prisoners in front of me. The line moved along to the left, flanked now by several guards with pointed rifles. We passed in front of a pump, below which was a large, metal-grilled drain. As each prisoner reached the pump he emptied the contents of his can down the drain with the aid of a sluicing from the pump. My lack of a can caused ribald laughter amongst our onlookers. The line then moved on towards a long, low trough, filled with water and fed by another pump. The file broke up and we took up places on either side. The trough itself was not clean, but every man, before washing (that was clearly the purpose of the trough), dipped his face in the water and drank deeply. I did so, without hesitation, myself. I could not help reflecting on the apparent obsession of our captors with a token cleanliness. We were given a full five minutes to scrub and rinse ourselves, and the touch of the water, though it stung and stabbed at bruises and scars, gave a sort of bitter pleasure.
I had an opportunity now to study my comrades. They were a pitiful sight. Dressed in ragged clothes, hollow-eyed, unshaven, and bearing, without exception, the marks of heavy beatings – if not of more precise and calculated injuries. Some seemed so feeble it was a wonder they had made it to the courtyard. One, in particular, was unable to wash himself and had to be helped by his neighbours. His nose had been sliced and all the fingers on his right hand systematically crushed.
As we bent over the washing trough the guards encircled us and it was obvious that talking was forbidden. But while stooping low, and with the noise of slopping water and the pump, it was possible to exchange a few words that went unnoticed. French was the only language I heard amongst the prisoners; as far as I knew, I was the only Britisher at the Château. I found myself opposite a stocky figure with a ragged beard whom I vaguely recognized as one of the
group from Dôle. Without any preliminary introductions, he whispered through the cupped hands with which he washed his face:
‘You shouted last night.’
‘Shouted?’
‘When they brought you in – “Il n’y a personne?” If we make a noise in the cells we get no food. That is the rule. We will not eat now till tomorrow.’
He spoke without the slightest trace of friendship. I was beginning to realize that in prisons there is as much suspicion and enmity between the prisoners as between captives and captors. But I understood at last the odd question of the truncheon-wielder.
‘You are in one of the back cells – in the dark?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re lucky.’
It was not clear to me why being confined in the dark was lucky. But with the slightest movement of his head my neighbour indicated the base of the Château wall on the side of the courtyard where we had emerged. There were tiny, semicircular, barred openings at and (because of a sort of gutter which ran round the perimeter of the courtyard) just below ground level. I realized that these must mark the row of cells on the opposite side of the corridor to my own. While my own cell, perhaps, adjoined the outer wall of the Château, these adjoined the courtyard and were equipped with these small apertures which allowed light to enter.
‘They look in on us like animals in cages. They watch us all the time.’
A guard drew close; we had to cease whispering for a moment.
‘You have visited “le goret”?’
Again, I followed a slight movement of my companion’s head. Our chubby acquaintance from the room at the end of the cell corridor had emerged into the courtyard and was sauntering up and down. ‘Goret’ is French for ‘piglet’. An apt word.
‘Yes.’
‘Too bad,’ he said, without feeling. He was evidently trying to gauge my qualities as a prisoner. I vaguely knew who he was, and he, most likely, had a clearer idea who I was. Many Frenchmen I had met had an ingrained distrust of captured Englishmen. They believed that the Gestapo treated them more leniently.
We spoke no more. My companion’s last remark had been detected. He was seized by the shoulder, knocked with a rifle butt, and when he fell, kicked several times in the ribs. It could just as easily have been me.
After washing, we were made to form into a line again. By this time another ten or so prisoners, with their cans, had been led out from another wing of the Château towards the first pump. So we were not the only ones.
It was clear we were not to be returned to our cells directly. At a command our party was made to parade in single file, several times, round the perimeter of the courtyard. This, perhaps, had the spurious purpose of ‘exercise’, but was really only a sadistic diversion. We were forced to march in mock drill fashion, arms swinging high, at a pace neither too slow nor too fast. One of the guards even stood calling out the time: ‘Links!… Links!’ Any failure to keep in step, to maintain the pace or to hold the head up was immediately dealt with by blows and kicks. For some of our number, who were tottering even as they stood by the washing trough, this ‘exercise’ was torture. I wondered how long it would be before I was like them. In such a condition you would not be able to escape.
But, as yet relatively fresh, I was able to take in, during this bizarre ritual, the scene around me. There was something cruelly incongruous about the Château itself – its solid, creamstuccoed walls, its tall windows capped with rococo scrollwork, its little French corner turrets, its air of tranquillity and gracious, harmonious living. Up above, on the weathered tiles of the roof, which was bathed in sunlight, there were even doves preening and cooing. And, all around, I could sniff (as though I hadn’t been living amidst it for the last four weeks) the tangy, woody, late-summer air of Eastern France. These things seemed impossible. It was the same inside: the carved woodwork, the gilt, the elegant stairways – and, below, the dungeons. As we paraded round, I noticed that four or five officers, one of whom was ‘grey-hair’, had emerged from the portion of the Château which lay opposite the arched gateway. Here there were large glass doors and a series of shallow, wide steps. They stood at the top of the steps or just inside the glass doors, smoking cigarettes and coughing behind raised hand. They looked at the proceedings in the courtyard like inspectors approving some project in hand.
‘Schauen Sie geradeaus!’ I was struck sharply on the side of the face.
One section of the courtyard wall, to the right of the gateway, I could not fail to notice. On it there were smears of dried blood, and on the ground beneath, darker, denser blood-stains. The wall itself was pitted with bullet marks.
We were now halted and made ready for being led back to the cells. First, each man had to collect his can from beside the first pump. I acquired one of my own in the following way. Since I was the last in the line and had brought no can with me up to the courtyard, I was empty-handed. One of the guards, however, snatched away the can belonging to the prisoner with the crushed hand and presented it, almost with courtesy, to me. ‘Prenez!’ he said. Then added, in German: ‘Er hat die letzte Scheisse gehabt.’ Guffaws arose from the other guards. Later that day (if day it still was), shots were heard – the first of several fusillades I was to hear from my cell – and at the next morning’s ‘muster’ the prisoner with the crushed hand was missing.
(I remembered a story Mathieu had once told me about another Gestapo establishment in Dijon, which I had thought was a joke: ‘They only have so many cans. So when there are not enough to go round they shoot one of the prisoners.’)
We were now marched back to the cells. I was anxious to know if they would return us to the same cells from which we came. They did – now and on subsequent occasions. They made a mistake here.
After only a brief respite in my cell, I was dragged up again by the guards to grey-hair and fat-cheeks; then to ‘le goret’s’ room; then back to my cell for another brief period; then to grey-hair and fat-cheeks again. And so on.
At some time later – how long I could not say – I found myself mercifully left to languish. It was then that I heard the shots from the courtyard. I was so numb and fatigued that I heard them almost with indifference. I slept – not the deep, oblivious sleep of exhaustion, but a fitful sleep, broken by the noise of scuffling in the corridor and screams from ‘le goret’s’ room. Then – at dawn again, as it turned out: grey-hair and fat-cheeks.
During those twenty-four hours, as my neighbour at the water-trough had predicted, we received no food – at least, I received none. On the second day a bowl of something was shoved into my cell. An unspeakable swill. We were given no drinking-water save what we gulped at the trough.
At the next muster in the courtyard my companion murmured under his breath: ‘They shot Fernand’ (the name, I gathered, of the prisoner with the broken fingers). ‘Now he is out of his misery. Sometimes they shoot you in the courtyard; sometimes they say, “Please, take a walk in the garden.” Among the roses, a machine-gun.…’
I could not help forming a dislike for this friend of mine and his grim brand of phlegm. His remarks did nothing to help morale, and I even suspected him of having some sort of double role. But then I realized that his way of seizing on me like a new boy and attempting to scare me was his means of gaining a little power and authority, and this in turn gave him the will to survive. A brief lesson in prison psychology.
Sometimes during these morning musters we would hear, on the air, the distant sound of shell-fire. Our captors put on unperturbed looks and so betrayed inward unease. The sound gave us all a flutter of hope, but, at the same time, if anything, it loaded the balance of fate against us. The chances of our captors abandoning the Château without first herding us all together and executing us were a thousand to one.
On the fourth morning (I believe it was the fourth morning) the Germans adopted a new ruse. In the courtyard, by the washing trough, we were told to strip. Our clothes were put in a heap. We were made to parade in the usual way, unclad, and were le
d back to our cells naked. From then on, at all times and in all circumstances, we were without clothes. A small matter, on top of so much; but of all the humiliations and cruelties – more intricate, more painful – we had to endure, none, I think, was more demoralizing, more appalling than this nakedness.
This was the pattern – but pattern is hardly the word – of our life at the Château. What remains? What more can be added? Memory provides its own, thankful censorship. If one dominant impression stays with me, it is that – the everyday man in everyday circumstances does not know what it means – of being absolutely in the power of another. This ought to be a condition of the utmost seriousness. But it is not. You feel yourself to be the mere pawn, the mere dehumanized toy that you are. Many times as I huddled naked in the dark in my cell, when even the redeeming will to escape had deserted me, I thought, nothing matters, I am in their hands: all this is a game.…
I look up from the book. Outside, the long June evening has grown dim and I realize that for some time, in my absorption, I have been straining to read without a light. But it is as though I have been straining not so much against the dark but to discern some hidden things behind the words. I switch on the light. From upstairs I can hear the sounds of Marian’s bath running and the noise of the water in the pipes. What happened in ‘le goret’s’ room, and in those interrogation sessions with fat-cheeks and grey-hair? Why do I need to know these things – to eavesdrop on my Dad’s suffering? So as to become like one of his tormentors? To become like Dad? With so much of Dad’s book I have to struggle to make it real, to wrest it out of the story-book realm into the realm of fact. Because I know I could not have done half those things Dad did in France, and so for me it has always seemed not wholly real. And yet in these last chapters there is more of the flavour of reality, because there is also more mystery – and more misery. Why should that be? I can believe in these scenes of cruelty and deprivation. I can believe that they happened. Is that shocking? Sometimes they can actually seem one, that silent dummy in the hospital ward and that figure in his pitch-dark cell. And not only this, but because I believe in these passages, I can put myself into them, I can imagine myself in that dark cell, in those passage-ways, that courtyard. Why does it seem that I know that Château? So that sometimes in my mind – it is like this tonight – it almost seems that Dad and I are one too. But I must know everything. I must know every detail. So whatever Dad endured, I will know if I could endure it too; what is expected of me too.