Owen Sheers - Resistance

“Good,” Albrecht said. The word dislodged a rattle in his throat and turning to one side he coughed heavily into his gloved hand. The cough was deep, hoarse. “Excuse me,” he said, turning back to face her. He gestured to one of the chairs around the kitchen table. “Please, sit down.”

His voice surprised her. He spoke an English Sarah had rarely heard. Clean, clear, precise, like the English of the estate owners around Abergavenny, but gentler, more careful. In this last request, however, she’d detected the slightest hint of an order. She didn’t want to press that voice any further, so slowly she stood up and pulled out a chair from under the table. Still moving carefully, she sat in it. Tom’s chair, she thought as she did, the chair her husband sat in every morning for breakfast. The chair from which she missed him every day, its blank seat always a reminder of that morning when she’d woken to the silences and spaces of his going. The thought of Tom brought the air back into her lungs.

“What do you want?” she asked, keeping her shaking hands on her lap.

“My name is Captain Wolfram,” the soldier said slowly. He held his peaked cloth cap in both hands before him, as an altar boy might carry a candle down the aisle of a church. “I am in command of a patrol unit of the German army. I am here to inform you that myself and my men have established an observation post in your area.” He paused. “I understand you were not aware this area is under German military control?”

Sarah shook her head. The hammering at The Court, it was them. German soldiers, here in the valley. After all Maggie had said. Maggie? She’d been going to check on The Court when she left this evening. Was she all right? Was she alive even?

“No,” she said quietly.

“Well, it is,” Albrecht continued. “I wanted to inform you of our particular presence personally and to reassure you that while we are allowed to complete our work here without obstruction, then we will not disturb you, your belongings, or your families.” He took a step nearer the table and, resting his hands on the back of a chair, leant towards Sarah. “I do not anticipate we will be here for long,” he said in a more relaxed tone, a tiredness tingeing the edges of his voice. “A week, perhaps two.”

Complete our work . What did he mean by that? Sarah’s mind was racing, suddenly acute, trying to take in this sudden invasion. She looked over the German officer again. His uniform was worn, threadbare at the elbows. He wore a thick black belt about his tunic. The crosshatched stock of his pistol protruded from a heavy leather holster on one side and a long knife hung to halfway down his thigh on the other. No, not a knife, Sarah thought, a bayonet. Again she remembered the stories of the German invasions of Belgium and Holland.

Albrecht moved towards the dresser. “Is your husband at home, Mrs. Lewis?” he said, picking up their wedding photograph.

Sarah blinked rapidly, keeping her eyes fixed on the photograph as if it was her child he held so casually in one hand, not a picture in a cheap wooden frame. Suddenly she saw, felt, the taking of that picture again. A bright May day, standing on the steps of the chapel, her veil flicking into her face in the breeze. The path covered with a confetti of cherry blossom. Laying her hand on Tom’s sleeve. Feeling the delicate tensing of his forearm under the heavy cloth of his suit.

“No,” she said, trying to stop her voice quavering. “He’s on the hill. We found a ewe with liver fluke. He’s with her now.”

“Liver fluke,” Albrecht said quietly, weighing the term on his tongue. “I see. Well, Mrs. Lewis, if you could tell him of my visit I’d be most grateful.” He put the photograph back on the dresser and gave Sarah a tight smile. For the first time she saw his eyes behind his glasses. He looked exhausted. Older than his voice. She saw too that his short black hair was flecked with grey, like when the river ran shallow over the stones, foaming white in the dark.

Albrecht gave a curt bow of his head. “Good evening, Mrs. Lewis,” he said. “I am sorry for alarming you. I promise it was not intentional.” Stepping out the still-open door, he turned back. “I hope the sheep gets better,” he said, putting on his peaked cap. “And that Mr. Lewis is not away for too long.”

And then he was gone. He hadn’t been in the room for more than two minutes. He hadn’t even asked to search the rest of the house. Another hand closed the door. Sarah heard a few words of German, quick and impenetrable, and then the disjointed chorus of three sets of footsteps fading over the cobblestones and down the track. The dogs gave a couple of barks and once again she heard the shuffle of their chains. Then there was nothing. Just the unending rustle and hush of the river below the house and the wind playing a hollow note in the chimney behind her.

He shouldn’t have called after dark. He should have taken the old woman’s word and come back in the morning. But he had to check, that’s what Albrecht told himself as, flanked by Alex and Otto, he picked his way down the track from Upper Blaen. The long frozen puddles running between the peaks and ridges of mud crackled and split under their feet. Yes, he had to be sure. Not a single man in the valley. Because he hadn’t believed any of their stories. They hadn’t even kept to the same one. Farm sales, helping cousins, driving sheep to slaughter. They all seemed to have no idea. Such movement, such events simply weren’t happening anymore.

Otto and Alex walked on either side of him, one slightly ahead, one just behind, swinging their submachine guns in slow arcs as they walked. Albrecht noticed how the moonlight caught the thin barrels, slipping up and down the polished metal as the two men swung them, left and right, right and left. Their anxiety was understandable. However important it had been to check all the buildings in the valley, it was still irregular to be out after dark in new territory. But then everything about this mission had been irregular from the very start. Ever since he’d taken that motorbike over to SS Southern Headquarters over a month ago. An SS order to a Wehrmacht officer. He should have known then that he was going into unknown territory, in every sense of the word.

The meeting with the SS colonel had lasted no more than five minutes, but it had been enough for him to know this was no ordinary patrol. The colonel was evidently as unimpressed with the whole idea as Albrecht was confused.

“Read this,” he’d said, casting a cursory eye over Albrecht’s dirty uniform and handing him a slip of paper. The colonel’s own uniform was spotless; the leather straps polished to an ebony shine, his black tunic immaculate, the gold braids, intricate and bright. An Iron Cross hung solid at his breast. To have won that, Albrecht remembered thinking, he must have seen battle at some point. Once, early in the conflict, he must have known the fear, exhilaration, stench, and dirt of this war. His uniform must have known sweat, blood, shit, and soil. Once. But now it was unmarked, a peerless Nazi pattern of starch, insignia, and personal tailoring, typical of the peacocking SS. Unmarked, Albrecht noticed with some satisfaction, but for two light galaxies of dandruff dusting each shoulder.

“Any questions?” the colonel had asked without looking up from his desk. “The corporal outside has all the relevant maps and additional information.”

“Transport arrangements, sir?”

Only now, with just his eyes, without moving his head, did the colonel look up at him. “You’re to go to the transport pool and take what you need,” he said through a tight jaw. Perhaps he’d registered Albrecht’s surprise, or perhaps he just needed to hear his own explanation on the air, to convince himself once more that this order must be obeyed. For whatever reason, he relaxed his expression, gave a short sigh, and leant back in his chair before continuing. He spoke slowly, as if to a child.