Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

He heard her intake of breath. “They will come back?”

“I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know if you’re telling the truth and I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t,” he said. “Either way, it’s none of my business. But it’s the usual civilian story when the enemy troops leave. Everybody hated them, everybody fought in the underground. Nobody ever drank with them or slept with them. They blew up trains, and prayed to the Virgin for the Yanks to arrive with chewing gum and chocolate to play Santa Glaus.”

Docker picked up the silver SS runes, juggled them in the palm of his hand, then put them back on the table. “You buried young Willi Bremer, kept his wallet and the pictures of his girlfriends, even saved his gun and goddamn SS insignia. If the Germans come back, you’ve got a nice story for them, and a well-tended grave of one of their finest.”

“Yes, we need a story like that,” she said. “We have nothing else.”

“And you’ve got another story for the Yanks, the resistance movement, reprisals, even a little Jewish refugee.”

Again he heard her soft intake of breath. “Bonnard told you... that Margret is in this house?”

“Yes, he told us that, ma’am. Would you like another drink?”

“No, thank you, I’ve had enough. Probably more than enough.” She looked at him, a deep weariness in her face. “At first I didn’t understand, when you said you thought I would be fluent in German,” she said. “But you thought I’d slept with so many I learned the language thoroughly, even all those impossible verbs.”

“I told you, it’s not my business.”

“I can’t tell you I didn’t have anything to do with Germans... after all, I was raped twice. But rape, I found out, is subject to interpretation. And Father Juneau didn’t agree with my interpretation. He wouldn’t give me absolution because he said it was my duty as a Catholic woman to struggle until I was unconscious, until I could no longer know or feel what was being done to me. To submit while conscious is a willingness, a mortal sin. The first time they were common soldiers and when I fought they put my head in a rain barrel until I choked. The second man was a captain. He was older and had been in the cavalry and his legs were so strong that when he clamped his knees around me I felt my back would break—”

“There’s no reason to tell me this,” he said.

She shook her head and lit one of his cigarettes. “It’s quite easy, it’s not difficult at all. Those men I had never seen before, I have learned to face what they thought of me. But if my husband comes back, can I expect him to think me unchanged? Will he want to know why I didn’t let them drown me? Or why I’m not a cripple like Jocko with my back broken?”

Docker heard a sound behind him and turned quickly. A child stood in the doorway, and he realized he had seen her once before, only then she’d been bundled up in sweaters and a red scarf so that only her dark eyes were visible. Now she wore a blue cotton dress, black woolen stockings and a small white bow in her hair. She came slowly into the dining room and laid a coloring book on the table beside the dried oak leaves, then moved closer to the schoolteacher, putting her dark head against her skirt. In his careful French, Docker asked if she remembered him, but the girl shook her head.

“Not even the chocolate?” Docker said.

“You must think chocolate is the greatest luxury in the world,” Denise Francoeur said. “It’s the second time you’ve talked about it. But the true luxury is anger, sergeant, and maybe that’s what the people who have lied to you can’t afford.”

The child picked up Docker’s mug of coffee, but he took it from her before she could drink from it. She looked anxiously at her aunt when he lifted her onto his knee, but after a moment she opened her book and pointed to a page where she had drawn pictures of small birds in flight, each wing made with a single curving stroke of a crayon.

The room was warm and quiet, silence broken only by the click of sleet on the windows and distant artillery fire. The child soon lost interest in the pictures and put her head against Docker’s shoulder. In a moment or so her faint breathing joined with the sounds of weather and the crack of logs in the fireplace.

“I’ll take her downstairs,” Denise Francoeur said.

“She sleeps there all night?”

“Yes, she has a cot with blankets. I go down often to see that she’s all right.” She took the child from him and went into the parlor where she turned and said, “Good night, sergeant.”

Docker pulled back a blackout curtain and stared out across a field that was dark except where the winds had swept snow into white banks against a hedge of thorn bushes, then watched the filmy texture of the fogs breaking close against the windowpanes.

He poured an inch of Trankic’s whiskey into his coffee mug and sipped it slowly. Was she right about anger? His father savored an anger, choleric in intensity, at the present political administration in the United States. But was that a luxury? Or high frustration? Dave Hamlin’s anger was pretty goddamn luxurious, to be able to stay out of a war and still feel qualified to criticize the manners of those caught up in it. But was Gelnick’s anger a luxury, or simply a burden that got him killed...

He turned and saw Denise Francoeur watching him from the doorway.

“Why did you stay?”

“I’m not sure.” He finished the coffee and put the mug down beside the German automatic. “Well, I unloaded this gun and I thought I’d better show you how to reload it.” He picked up the gun and pulled the receiver back to its maximum extension. When he released it, the receiver snapped forward and drove a round into the chamber. He pointed to the safe-fire lever. “When you move that to the red dot beside the trigger guard, the gun’s ready to fire.”

“And that’s why you stayed? To explain about the gun?”

“No, I stayed because I’m sorry about what I said. I was angry and I wanted to get rid of it.”

“There’s no reason to—”

“No, listen. A man in my section was killed yesterday. His name was Gelnick. He got the same survival kit the army gives everybody — stay alert, keep your rifle clean, don’t get trench foot, don’t get clapped-up, get behind something when they’re firing at you... but he didn’t pay attention. Maybe he didn’t want to, or just couldn’t.” Docker took a sip of Trankic’s whiskey. “You understand any of that?”

“No,” she said. “You’re talking too fast.”

“Well, it’s not important. But I was angry at what happened.”

“And I must say something too. It isn’t what my husband may think that frightens me, it’s what I think of myself.” The words came in a rush and there was a sudden, warm color in her cheeks. “I want to say this but I can’t if you look at me. Do you understand? Please sit down. But look at your coffee or the floor, please.”

Docker stared down at the candlelight glinting on the rim of the coffee mug. “What is it?”

“I hated those Germans, not just with my feelings, but with my body. I don’t want to bring that hatred to my husband. Ever since it happened, I don’t like looking at myself. I can’t help hating what they hated. And they must have hated me to hurt me so terribly. I thought if I could be with someone who didn’t force me or hurt me...” She swallowed, and the sound of it was dry in the warm room. “I watched you with Margret... I was happy for her, and I envied her. She seemed comfortable with you. Do you have children?”

“No, I’m not married.”

“This is very selfish, and very difficult. I thought I could say these things to a stranger quickly and without feeling anything. I’m not speaking of love or kindness, just to be with someone without contempt and pain... then it might be different for me...”