by Sharon Maas
‘What is it, Jacques?’
Her heartbeat, her breathing, had returned to normal. She knew this visit was not to be the one where he finally capitulated and confessed a burning love he’d finally become aware of; the confession she still, after all that had happened, dreamed of. She could tell that the fire in his eyes was not one of passion.
‘Marie-Claire – I need your help. I hope you can give it. We must defeat the Boche by all means at our disposal and – well, Margaux has told me you now work for the Kreisleiter at the Mairie. That you are his personal secretary.’
‘His personal assistant. Yes, it is so.’
‘Then, Marie-Claire, you must help! You are in such an excellent position – surely you know, surely you want to help?’
‘If you are asking me to spy on my boss, Jacques, the answer is no. How could you ask me such a thing? Do you not realise the danger? The danger to me? I and all of the staff at the Mairie – we have gone through rigorous security checks. We are trusted. It would be so dangerous. I can’t possibly—’
‘It is for France, Marie-Claire. For Alsace. There are things we need to know.’
‘But, Jacques, I know nothing that could be of interest to you. I am really only a typist, and the things I am given to type – they are nothing that could possibly be of interest to you. Anything confidential – anything to do with the military, anything to do with the annexation – that is not my job. He types his own confidential reports and keeps them in a safe and I don’t know the combination. I’m sorry, Jacques. There’s nothing I can do to help and even if I could, I don’t think I would. It’s just too dangerous.’
His shoulders slumped. ‘It’s just – there are things we need to know. Locations, movements of military instalments. It would be so useful. But if you have no access…’
‘I don’t, Jacques, and I don’t want to go sneaking about in drawers or fiddle with safes or anything. I can’t risk it! Why, they would execute me if they thought I was a spy, execute me probably even without a trial!’
‘If you can say that, Marie-Claire, then you know. You know how dangerous they are. You know that they’re your enemy too and that they’ve brought the Nazi poison to Alsace. The only reason to work for such a despicable enemy is to defeat him. Have you no conscience at all? Maman used to say that all the time: Marie-Claire is as shallow as a crêpe-pan; and I used to laugh it off and tell her she misjudges you. But I see now she was correct.’
‘Jacques! I—’
‘I understand. It is too risky for you. I won’t try to persuade you to do anything that will put you in danger. It’s disappointing, but there it is. But, Marie-Claire – if you ever change your mind…’
He hesitated.
‘I’m telling you this in complete confidence. Because somehow, I believe you do have a conscience, tucked away somewhere in the depths of your soul. And I believe that sooner or later you will wake up and want to help. Once you see, once you open your eyes and truly realise what we are up against. And when that day comes, we already have someone in the Mairie working for us. She has only a humble role, that of cleaner, but she is intelligent and dedicated to defeating the Nazis. Madame Guyon is her name. If ever you change your mind, let Madame Guyon know. She cleans the offices in the evening. You will find a way to let her know and I will take it from there. Salut, Marie-Claire. I will go now. I wish you well.’
He leaned forward, kissed her on both cheeks, and then he was gone; a ghost in the night, slipping out of the back door and into the darkness.
Marie-Claire stood alone, eyes closed, hands on her cheeks, as if to protect forever the place where his lips had warmly touched her.
* * *
She quickly settled in, quickly lived up to her role as head secretary, personal typist to the mayor, personal assistant to the Kreisleiter whenever the latter should deign to put in an appearance. This was, approximately, once a week. In he would stride, up the stairs and into the ex-mayor’s office, always with some new development that needed urgent attention. Marie-Claire would be summoned through the in-house telephone, rushing in with pencil and pad in hand, and with coffee, made to his specifications in the tiny Mairie kitchen.
She’d bring it up to him; tap cautiously on the door, wait for his bold Komm herein! before gently easing it open and as invisibly, silently as possible, slip through, trying not to make a sound as she tapped across the polished wood floor, bearing the coffee cup as if it were a fragile ornament to be placed before a king. Kurtz never looked up when she entered. He was a man of minute detail and it was she who attended to those details. It was she who refilled his fountain pen at the end of each day, she who sharpened his pencils, she who wound the clock, she who emptied his ashtrays – for he smoked incessantly, a trait that did not quite mesh with his otherwise controlled and meticulously ordered lifestyle, for surely smoking indicated a certain neediness, a lack of inner discipline? But it was not for her to question his habits or his predilections. So he liked her to do these little things for her – so be it. She would perform them to the best of her ability, and not complain, and not question.
She spoke only when spoken to. He was a silent man. He spoke only to give orders, except on the telephone, which he would bark into, punctuating his tirades with his favourite expletive: Unsinn! Nonsense! Once, he summoned her to command her to put fresh logs on the fire that burned constantly in the grate. Once it was to tell her to draw the curtains; the winter sun gave off a certain glare at certain times of the day.
Always, she obeyed with no more than a Ja, Herr Kreisleiter. She did as she was told, gliding in and out of the office, the only one of the four secretaries with permission to enter. Soon she had gained such familiarity she could come and go as she wished, bringing him papers from the lower offices to sign, keeping the flames in the fireplace dancing, fulfilling his every need. Three little knocks on the door, his call of herein, and she could walk in with confidence, coffee cup or file in hand.
He would be either sitting at the huge mayoral desk perusing documents or writing long-hand notes in a ledger. The items on top of the desk were all meticulously laid out – low heaps of papers precisely aligned with the edge of the desk, a small clock symmetrically placed at the other corner of the desk, bottle of ink and blotter in perfect constellation above the large leather writing pad he leaned over, pen in hand, blond-stubbled head bowed.
Or sometimes he sat at the smaller desk, tapping away at the typewriter; in such cases, Marie-Claire had to suppress a smile for the fact that he typed with two fingers somehow diminished him, removed a layer of dignity from the impregnable veneer of inaccessibility he wore as an armour. What was he typing? It was obviously far too confidential to involve her or any of the other professional secretaries.
Even Grötzinger did not use that typewriter. Whatever it was, it was not for her eyes and she respected that. Like everything Kurtz did in this room, it was secret, possibly of the highest significance for the success of the Nazi regime in France and all of Europe. It gave Marie-Claire a certain thrill to be so close to all these secrets. It gave her a sense of her own importance. What a pity, though, that nobody respected her for it; quite the opposite. They despised her. Most of all, Jacques.
Kurtz had had a safe built into the wall next to the fireplace. Everything he dealt with, all the paperwork, all the self-typed whatever-it-was, was concealed in that safe. Only he, apparently, knew the combination. What a treasure trove, Marie-Claire thought, for Jacques! If only… but no. She dismissed the thought even before it took form. She was a responsible employee, loyal to the bone. None of this patriotic disobedience Jacques had tried to instil in her. But if there was one thing she could do to win his favour, banish his censure… but no. Never. And so Marie-Claire grappled with herself and her guilt and her loyalty and her neutrality and her longing, deepest yearning, to win the approval of the one man on earth whose approval meant something to her. (Her father’s approval, after all, was guaranteed; she did not have to earn it.
It was always there, whatever she did.) That safe was the receptacle of all the power that kept Alsace a vassal state to Germany. Its secrets were sacrosanct. Verboten.
Yet, objectively, Marie-Claire knew: if she wanted to, she could. Once, she had seen him standing at that safe, twisting the lock back and forth several times to lock it before striding back to his desk and closing the open ledger. A hasty glance had shown her, just before it snapped shut, a number written on the inside cover of the ledger. It was the combination code; she was convinced of it. That ledger was kept in a locked drawer of the desk. And all she had to do was… but no. Never. She was neutral and she was loyal. And she feared Kurtz. He struck a certain kind of terror into her heart that she had never known before – a kind of inner immobility, a chilling sense of complete and utter obedience. She would never betray him. Not even for Jacques.
* * *
When Kurtz was absent, she worked for the former Ortsgruppenleiter Grötzinger, now the district mayor, in his office across the hallway. His style was quite different, his desk covered with heaps of papers untidily strewn about its surface. Several newspapers in a heap on the floor beside the office chair – Grötzinger, it seemed, read every word. A radio blared from a shelf against the wall – news reports of Germany’s victories, its unchallenged crusade to become the undisputed single power in Europe. England is being decimated! Marie-Claire learned. German bombs are flattening London! We must celebrate as Germany marches across the continent, westwards and eastwards, consolidating power! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
Grötzinger himself loved to talk, over and above the radio. He informed Marie-Claire of Germany’s superiority over France and how it was a good thing for Germany to be in charge; it was a superior culture and France should thank Germany. He gloated at the way France had laid itself down on its back, submissive as a dog, and complained that England did not; but England would one day capitulate. He assured Marie-Claire of the rightness of it all. She merely nodded to everything he said and got on with the job.
Letters to write, reports to type, new regulations to impose. The entire French staff, those who had been kept on, had new, German, names; Marie-Claire, the book of names in hand, had helped some of them choose their names and, that done, everyone in the whole of Alsace had to be renamed. Her own name was now Margarethe Gauss, the surname chosen by her mother (who refused to use it) for the simple reason that the first three letters aligned with their French surname. Now Marie-Claire was, officially, Fräulein Gauss.
The streets in Colmar and all the surrounding villages also had to be renamed, new plaques with the new names commissioned, the old street signs replaced; and for this task, too, Marie-Claire found herself the main organiser.
Lists. Lists of farms and businesses and who ran them and what could be requisitioned from them. Billets for the officers; several houses that had once homed Jews were now empty, to be filled by German officers. Bakers and butchers instructed as to what they could and could not sell, and to whom. Schools! Alsatian teachers sent off to Germany for training, German teachers brought in to replace them and to introduce the German language and script to the pupils.
Marie-Claire was at the hub of all this work, work that piled up. More and more, she became the nucleus of the changeover from a French to a German administration; more and more, her new employers depended on her. More and more, she won authority in the Rathaus; more and more, she enjoyed her work, tedious as it mostly was.
She enjoyed the busy-ness of it; the sense of being important, valued, a sense of being indispensable to the new regime, a sense of worth, and new confidence, fulfilling tasks that nobody else in the building could, or would; either because they lacked the knowledge of Alsatian language and infrastructure (Germans) or because they resented the changes (Alsatians). Marie-Claire just did it, without judging.
‘But dear – surely you feel some sense of guilt? Working for the enemy?’ Tante Sophie put variations of this cautious query to her again and again, those winter evenings when the two of them sat before the dancing fire, Tatie knitting or embroidering, Marie-Claire leafing, as ever, through old copies of Vogue or reading a German novel ‘to improve her vocabulary’.
Marie-Claire would shrug. ‘Not at all, Tatie. I’m just doing a job. I maintain a sense of neutrality. I don’t judge, I don’t condemn. Society changes; sometimes there are great upheavals, as we all in Alsace know. This is just one of them. We were French, now we are German. It has happened before. C’est la vie.’
‘But, chérie – Hitler! The war! Doesn’t it all alarm you? Don’t you ever discuss the war at work? You and your colleagues?’
She shook her head. ‘No, of course not. We are kept up to date on what is happening by our German superiors. Germany is winning the war – that much we know. What is the point of resisting or even objecting? What’s the point of getting upset about a thing I, as a single person, can’t change anyway? It is as it is. Alsace will stay safe – the province is precious to Hitler and the war will never come here.’
‘And you don’t care about others caught up in it? In Poland, Russia? The bombing of London? It’s dreadful! People are dying from German attacks! Surely you care! What about those English friends you had, the girls who stayed with you for years, their mother? You were all so close! Don’t you wonder about them?’
Whenever Tatie brought up such ideas Marie-Claire would shrug externally and cringe internally. She didn’t care because she didn’t want to care. Because she could not allow herself to care. I’m just doing a job, she told herself, again and again.
And yet. Sometimes she touched her cheeks, put her hands gently against them and closed her eyes. Sometimes she remembered. And sometimes, a little twinge of guilt filtered through the armour of neutrality. Guilt, carried on Jacques’ voice: The only reason to work for such a despicable enemy is to defeat him. Jacques, the only person whose good opinion of her she cared about. Jacques would not condone these arguments, put forward to Tatie so boldly, as if, deep down inside, she truly believed them.
She could hear his condemnation: ‘Have you no conscience at all? Tante Margaux used to say that all the time: Marie-Claire is as shallow as a crêpe-pan; and I used to laugh it off and tell her she misjudges you. But I see now she was correct.’
Sometimes that accusation would tap on the edges of her guilt-free shield, the shield that protected her conscience. Tap insistently, annoyingly. But invariably she would push away the tapping, silence it with self-assured denial. It didn’t matter what Jacques thought. His opinion of her was of no consequence, because he did not want her. In fact, there was a certain Schadenfreude in her denial; a certain sense of revenge, for Jacques had cruelly, humiliatingly, rejected her. Why should she live up to his hopes and expectations? No: she was doing the right thing. Of that she was confident, and would defend her actions to the death. She would.
Fourteen
One evening she happened to be the last to leave the building – apart, of course, from the armed security guards who kept watch day and night beside the Mairie’s front door. Grötzinger had been dictating all day, and the typing of reports had taken her an hour into the early evening. Just as she was coming down the main staircase, she met a portly woman in a headscarf walking up. A woman with a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other. The woman stopped on a lower step as she saw Marie-Claire.
‘Ah – Mademoiselle Gauthier! I recognise you though you are much older – you won’t remember me. I am Madame Guyon. I used to clean for your mother. You were fifteen at the time but who could forget that face! As beautiful as ever.’
Marie-Claire murmured a hasty bonsoir as she stepped past. How impertinent for the cleaner to address her in such familiar terms! She was secretary to the German administration in Colmar, after all!
‘Bonsoir, Mademoiselle, and vive la France! I believe Jacques has told you about me. Remember – if ever you feel the urge to stand up straight, I am here!’
Marie-Claire did not reply. She quicken
ed her step and fled the building. Madame Guyon had spoken French, and used a French name. Even responding to such a person would be against the rules of her employment. In fact, as a good employee she ought to report the woman.
But she wouldn’t. She knew she wouldn’t, and it troubled her.
* * *
Marie-Claire had not slept a wink, and it was long past midnight. She tossed and turned and worked the sheet into a knot around her legs, and the eiderdown had fallen to the floor three times, leaving her freezing cold in Tatie’s unheated attic room. Unravelled, tangled thoughts bothered her, prevented her from sinking into contented oblivion. It was getting worse by the day. It seemed that, while it was fairly simple to push away one’s nagging sense of guilt during the busy day, night-time, when all was quiet and no new task cropped up to distract one’s thoughts from returning to that little nub of agitation, left one completely exposed. And sleepless. The more she tried to push away the agitation, the more it seemed to knead at her being.
Outside, a giant yellow moon hung in the velvety night sky, centred in the dormer window she could see from her bed, and casting a gentle silver glow into the room. She stood up, wrapped the woollen bedjacket Tatie had knitted her for Christmas around her shoulders and padded over the icy bare floorboards to the sideboard, where she poured herself a glass of water from the jug, her feet well protected in the bedsocks that matched the jacket. She had never known a grandmother, and it was good to have Tatie in that loving role. Not so good the knowledge that Tatie, without ever letting it show, was deeply disappointed in her. As was every single person who had ever cared for her. Maman’s disapproval was, of course, palpable, had been from the beginning. Maman never minced words. Victoire’s was more cautious, expressed more in loaded questions tempered with smiles: do the Nazis expect you to Heil-Hitler them? Did you have to make a vow of allegiance when you started the job?