“And then you and Helene were all on your own with Pierre and Erich?”
“And then we were all on our own. I tried to make a plan with Helene, but she was swimming in tears and wasn’t capable of a single sensible thought. She was still refusing to go to Erich. I checked on him a few times, he was still unconscious, but he was groaning softly. I told Helene that he would probably die if we didn’t get a doctor, and right away Pierre said, that he would die, if we did get one … but then,” Beatrice went on, “as the afternoon went on, it was clear that Pierre wouldn’t make it. He was bleeding to death before our eyes. By then, the kitchen looked like the bathroom had when Helene had tried to take her own life. I went to the telephone and called Dr. Wyatt.”
Franca said quietly, “and you were able to reach him?”
Beatrice nodded. “Yes. I was able to reach him. And he came immediately.”
GUERNSEY, MAY 1ST, 1945
Dr. Wyatt arrived close to five o’clock and quickly administered first aid to Pierre, who was in a state of agony.
“He’s got to go to the hospital,” he said. “Beatrice, call over there. They should send a car. Hopefully,” he added, “they still have enough gasoline.”
Beatrice made the call and then went back to the kitchen.
“How did this happen?” Dr. Wyatt was asking.
“My husband shot him,” said Helene. She had stopped crying. “Today he was … well, he was …”
“I know how he was today,” Dr. Wyatt interrupted her, saying dryly, “I had the pleasure myself early this morning.” He had put on a tourniquet that had stopped the bleeding, but Pierre was looking more dead than alive. “Lord, why didn’t you get me sooner?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer, he added, “Where is Mr. Feldmann?”
Beatrice opened her mouth to tell him that Erich was lying in the next room and was also struggling with death, but before she could speak the words, Helene broke in. Her voice sounded surprisingly clear and firm.
“We don’t know,” she said. “My husband left the house after the shooting. He wasn’t in command of his senses. We couldn’t stop him.”
Wyatt didn’t seem to doubt this information. He just nodded and turned again to his patient. Beatrice stared at Helene, uncomprehending. She returned this look very calmly. She doesn’t want him saved, the thought flew through Beatrice’s head. My God, she wants to let him lie there and die!
Her legs grew weak and she sat down on a kitchen chair, watched Dr. Wyatt’s resuscitation attempts and waited for the ambulance. Hundreds of thoughts flew through her head: What was Helene up to? Why had she just lied to Wyatt? She was handing Erich a death sentence if she let him lie there in the next room without medical attention. Should she step in? Say that Helene’s report wasn’t correct? That …
Probably, she considered, Helene was guided by the thought that she, Beatrice, had already voiced during their hectic debates earlier that afternoon: if Erich were to be saved, he could immediately order Pierre’s arrest, which would then inevitably have to lead to his being shot.
Is that why? Beatrice asked herself, deeply confused. Is she sacrificing Erich to save Pierre? Is she sacrificing her husband for a French prisoner of war?
The ambulance appeared quickly, and Pierre was taken away. Dr. Wyatt followed shortly afterwards in his car. He disappeared at the foot of the drive, turned onto the street. The peaceful quiet of that May day again descended on the house and the garden.
The two women were now alone with Erich Feldmann.
Beatrice gave Helene a sidelong glance.
“Why did you do that?” she asked. “Why did you say that Erich was gone? Why did you …?”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Helene asked in return.
“Was it because of Pierre? Did you want to save him?”
“No. I didn’t want to save Pierre. I wasn’t thinking of him at all.”
“But …?”
“I was thinking of me,” said Helene. “It was me I wanted to save.”
She stared at Helene. She couldn’t fathom what she had said. Helene had as good as said that she was determined to let her husband die so that she could be rid of him, once and for all, and Beatrice had the sense that she had landed in a bad dream. All that day Helene had cried and quivered and not at any moment shown herself to be capable of facing the situation, and now she was standing here and saying cold-bloodedly that she would let her husband die in order to free herself from him for the rest of her life.
“We can’t do that,” said Beatrice, when she could finally speak again. “That’s … that’s like murder.”
The word murder hovered over the room like a foreign presence. No one knew exactly what it was or what it represented, but it emanated menace and horror.
“Pierre or Erich,” said Helene, but this wasn’t her motive, and that’s what was so horrible.
“Let’s go check on him,” was all Beatrice said.
Erich lay on the floor in the emptied-out dining room, in which the sideboard still stood lonely and crooked. They had put a blanket underneath him and one on top of him. Erich’s face had turned a yellowish color, he was gushing blood, and his breathing was shallow. But he was conscious, and turned his head when the women walked in.
“Bastard,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Goddamn bastard. Where is he? He mustn’t be allowed to escape.”
Beatrice assumed that he was talking about Pierre, and the fact that — obviously — he knew, at least at the moment, exactly what had happened proved how dangerous for Pierre it would actually be if they were to call a doctor.
But we can’t just leave him to his fate, she thought, shuddering.
Erich tried to sit up but he couldn’t manage it. His head fell back heavily.
“Pain,” he whispered. “I’m in pain. I need a doctor.”
“There’s none to be had,” said Helene. She kneeled down next to him and laid a hand on his forehead. She looked perfect for the good Samaritan role. “All the doctors are engaged and can’t be reached. But we’ll keep trying.”
“The hospital,” Erich exclaimed. “Take me to the hospital!”
“We don’t have a car,” Helene said gently.
“Will should come here.”
“We don’t know where he is. We simply can’t reach any one. Just keep lying down, and stay calm. I’m certain that Dr. Wyatt can come tonight!”
“I’ll be dead by tonight,” Erich murmured. A thick film of sweat covered his face. He was losing too much blood, and now the pain was setting in too. Thus far he hadn’t been able to feel it because of the shock. The bullet must have torn through muscle and nerve, likely also his lungs. Finally, Erich began to whimper like a small child. Mixed in with his pain were a mounting fever and the fear of death.
What Beatrice most wanted was to hold her hands over her ears.
“Helene, this is inhuman,” she said. “I can’t take it. I …”
Their two roles had been, in a peculiar way, reversed. Helene was the adult, in control of the situation. Beatrice was almost losing her wits and didn’t know what to do.
“You go outside,” said Helene. “Do something sensible. You could try to find us something to eat. I’m staying with Erich.”
“But …”
“Go outside,” Helene repeated with a trace of harshness in her voice that Beatrice had never heard there before. Everything was at stake for her. She was determined to free herself from Erich, and she was summoning a strength that no one would ever have guessed was within her.
Beatrice stood up and slunk outside. The garden was hot and dry under the sun, which was now only very slowly losing height and beginning to approach the western horizon. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze, not a leaf, not a blade of grass was stirring. Beatrice sat down on the steps that
led from the porch down to the garden and rested her head in her hands. She could have gone off to see if a farmer in the village still might have anything to sell her, a few eggs or some bread, but she had the feeling that anyone would have to see it on her, what had happened. Anyone would have to be able to read it in her features, that at home Erich was lying in the dining room and would die, and that a doctor had been there, whom they had not told anything, and that Helene was determined to let him die, so that she would be free from him for the remainder of her life.
A nightmare, she thought, helpless and despairing, a terrifying nightmare, and I don’t know how it’s going to end.
She was weak with hunger, but she wouldn’t have been able to eat anything. She was convinced she’d never eat anything ever again. Once, she stood up and stumbled into the kitchen to drink some water, but otherwise she just sat there without moving and waited for something to happen — whatever that something was supposed to look like.
Around half past five Erich began groaning loudly. All that time no noise had made its way from the room out into the garden; when she had been in the kitchen, Beatrice had only heard a soft murmuring. Erich and Helene seemed to be talking to each other. That had livened her up a little, maybe things weren’t looking so dim for him. But when she heard him groan, she knew that the death throes had begun.
4
“The last phase of his dying lasted for about an hour,” said Beatrice. There was something of the horror of that day in her eyes, Franca could see it clearly. “When a person is begging for help for hours, when he is fighting against death, which he knows already has him in its clutches and won’t let him escape — those hours then seem to last for an eternity. It could have been years. It would never end, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to endure it. I ran to the back part of the garden, threw myself on the ground, pressed both fists to my ears. I prayed for it to be over. He had to suffer terribly. And there was no morphine, no ether, nothing. He had to endure it without the slightest relief.”
“And Helene stayed with him to the end?” Franca asked.
Beatrice nodded. “She saw it through. God knows who or what gave her the strength. I’d never have managed it. I don’t know anyone who could have managed it. Erich died a slow, agonizing death, and she didn’t just sit there next to him, she also held to her plan with iron resolve. The whole time I was thinking, Now she’ll give in. She can’t endure it. She’ll call a doctor. Only a monster could still refuse him help now … and Helene wasn’t a monster, she was a delicate, emotional, rather whiny person, who all her life, with a lot of whimpering and complaining, arranged things such that other people looked after her, that other people were the ones who get their hands dirty. She wasn’t capable of coming to any decision by herself or of taking responsibility for something. But she went in and watched as Erich lost his life, and she did nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent it.”
Franca drank the last bit of wine in her glass. It tasted warm and disgusting, it was two hours old and had been subjected not only to the warmth of the evening but also of her hands, which had been playing with the glass constantly. “I don’t think that’s what she was,” she said. “A frail, emotional person, I mean … Helene knew exactly what she wanted. She might have known better than anyone in the family, better than Erich or you. In her life, she made sure that what she wanted to happen, happened: she stayed on Guernsey, she stayed in the house, she had, with you and Alan, a small family … basically, everything always went the way she wished it to. She had a certain strategy, and it was: make yourself small and weak, whine and beg and force other people into doing exactly what you want. She accepted it that people thought she was weak and despised her, because she was only concerned with the results, and they ended up how she’d envisioned them. Her behavior when Erich died fit that same pattern, it was just that she had to make an exception and employ another tactic. She couldn’t sit and sob and let Beatrice act, because in this case it was Beatrice who fell apart. Helene had to become active, that is to say that this one time she had to become visibly active, because in her way she always was so. And she mastered this variation perfectly as well. She wasn’t another person that day, Beatrice. She was the same Helene she always was. She had come to a decision and she forced it through. Nothing about her behavior was atypical in the least.”
Beatrice turned her glass in her hand. It had long been empty. “Yes,” she said quietly. “That’s right, Franca. She was strong. And selfish. And cunning. All my life I never realized this. Not until the day she was buried. When Kevin told me what else had happened on May 1st, 1945.”
Franca furrowed her brow. “What else happened? I mean, what more could possibly have happened without you knowing about it?”
Beatrice leaned forward. She looked like she was hurting, and her voice had become a whisper. “I’d like to know something first, Franca. You’re the first person to whom I’ve told the truth, the truth about Erich’s death. Other than Dr. Wyatt, whom we had to tell at the time in order to keep up our story. But Wyatt, who also was hiding Julien, was part of the conspiracy anyway, he was one with his time and what it demanded from people. But other than that there’s no one. No one who knew anything. And I would like … I would like to know, Franca, what you think of all of it. What you think of us. Of me and Helene, and of what we did. Was it murder, as you see it? Do you think that we were two murderers?”
She thought about this question as she walked along the St. Peter Port harbor promenade and kept a lookout for Alan. Now and again she peered into a restaurant or a bar, and she cast a look at every bench along the road. The streetlights burned around the edge of the harbor, and she could see everything rather well. But of course he could also be somewhere deeper into the old city, or he could have driven to a completely different part of the island.
She had sent Beatrice home. She seemed so tired and pale, so weakened, that as Franca saw it there was barely any sense in dragging her all over town. It had cost her all too much energy to talk about Erich’s death. She had looked pallid, drawn, and dead tired. “Listen,” Franca had said. “You drive home and put yourself to bed. Otherwise you’ll fall apart on me, and that’s no good for anybody. I’ll go look for Alan.”
Beatrice had protested vehemently, of course. “No way, Franca. Two people searching see more than one. And besides, you won’t have a car here if I drive yours back to Le Variouf!”
“I’ll have yours — as soon as I’ve found Alan.”
“And if you don’t find him?”
“Then I’ll take a taxi. Either way it’s not a problem.”
Beatrice gave in. A sure sign that she felt as bad as she looked. “But you’ll bring him with you?” she asked again to make certain.
“I’ll bring him with me,” Franca promised. “You can count on it.”
She couldn’t find him anywhere, and slowly she began to fear that she’d have to go back home without him. Poor Beatrice, she thought. If he’s not with me then she won’t sleep a wink.
She turned around a few times and took in the fairy tale scene that the brightly lit Castle Cornet presented. The night was very warm, and many people were still out walking around. They could have been in a vacation spot on the Mediterranean.
The word “murderers” flitted around her head.
“You and Helene were not murderers,” she’d said to Beatrice, as she’d been looking so tense over at The Terrace. “The shot that killed Erich wasn’t fired by you, but rather Pierre. What you did is called failure to render assistance.”
Beatrice had swatted the term aside with a surly motion of her hand. “I don’t want the judicial definition of what I did, I want the moral one. And there, we both know it was murder, right? We can’t dress it up.”
“You could also argue that saving Erich would have meant murdering Pierre. And Pierre would have been a more innocent victim than Erich by far.”<
br />
“But our motive wasn’t to save Pierre. What I’m concerned with is what we really felt, deep inside. In the eyes of the world, I know, where we stood wouldn’t be at all that bad. Erich was a Nazi thug. He’d done a few truly awful things, and he’d served his criminal regime with heart and soul. And we did in fact save Pierre — a young French prisoner of war, who’d been abused and exploited by Erich for years. I don’t think anyone would judge us for what we did. But I know that it wasn’t Erich’s loyalty to Hitler that led us to let him die, and it wasn’t the thought of Pierre either. Helene wanted to be rid of him. She had married the wrong man. And didn’t know how she was supposed to get out of it. Then an opportunity presented itself, and she took it. It was that simple; there was that little heroism involved. A basic marital murder, which had nothing to do with war, persecution, or what the times demanded. Not in the least.”
“What was your own motive, though?” Franca had asked, and Beatrice had looked at her, taken aback.
“My motive?”
“Yes. You’ve described Helene’s motive, but what was yours? The young Beatrice was an independent, capable person, she’d proven that often enough. She could have gone off and gotten a doctor, instead of fleeing to the garden and stuffing her ears to shut out Erich’s dying agony.”
Now, on the street along the shore, she thought again of the answer that Beatrice had given her, which had been simple, clear, and true.
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