Page 46 of Love in the Shadows

“Your words will have you labelled a sympathiser. You will be hanged or shot. Is that what you want?”

She shook her head. She didn’t want this life with him either. “Why, Gerhard?” she whispered. “Do you ever really ask yourself why we are doing this?” She glanced up at the wall, at the picture of his father behind him and then at the new picture of the Führer overlooking the centre of the table that Gerhard had insisted be placed there for when they hosted dinners in the future. Fischer had commented that the absence of their leader in the room was an omission. Of course it had been Johanna’s fault.

He came to her and put his hand on her shoulder. There was no affection in his touch, more that he was putting her in her place or holding her before striking. “You are my wife, Johanna. If you were not, I would already have had you arrested.”

She mirrored his stare, refusing to show her fear. “For speaking my mind, Gerhard. Is that it?” she said softly.

“For challenging what it means to be German, Johanna. You have always been…”

He couldn’t seem to find the words, so she added them. “Intelligent, curious, liberal, accepting.” She shrugged him off.

He turned away. “Enough.” He paced the floor, going nowhere, running his fingers through his thinning hair. “My work here is critical to our success.”

She stood up to feel less intimidated. “You share nothing, Gerhard. How can I help when you treat me as if I’m the enemy?”

Suddenly, she saw vulnerability in his eyes, the kind that she’d seen when he’d asked her to marry him. He was scared. But this time there was no yes, I’ll marry you coming to brighten his bleak world. “Are you frightened of what I’ll say, Gerhard, or of what they will do to you?” She pointed towards the image of Hitler. He looked away, his jawline sharpened by anger.

He undid his top button and breathed deeply. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said softly.

She went to him and touched his cheek. “Try me,” she said. “I’m not very good at being left out, Gerhard, but I can be a good listener.”

He gave a thin-lipped half-smile. “The expectations on me are very high,” he said. “I cannot afford to fail.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

He frowned. “What for?”

“For letting me in.”

He leaned towards her as if to kiss her. She turned away from his mouth, met him cheek to cheek, and took him into her arms. This stranger that she felt nothing for, pressed into her body, remained tense and distant, though she sensed in him a desire to rekindle the connection they’d once enjoyed.

There was too much history between them for those days to be resurrected. The war hadn’t done that to them. It was Johanna who had changed, long before the war started. They’d been living a lie, for the sake of the children initially, and then they were paraded as the perfect German military family. They both knew the truth and she wasn’t going to compromise herself, give herself to him, just to comfort him.

She whispered, “I know you’re worried about us, Gerhard, but please, we also need to breathe. If you trust me, then send Müller away.”

He pulled back, shaking his head. “Even if I agreed with you, which I don’t, it would not look right.”

Müller beating the staff and killing a kitten doesn’t look right either, she wanted to say. She bit her tongue. He wasn’t going to relent, and she had to pick her battles. She touched his arm. “Okay, I won’t ask again. Tell me more about your work.”

He went to the table and drank his wine, refilled his glass. She plucked her glass from the table and moved to the seat closest to him facing the window and Hitler on the wall.

He topped up her drink. It felt familiar, like old times, except for the wedge that would forever keep them apart. “There’s nothing to talk about, Johanna. One of my duties is to keep the transport routes open, and three days ago I failed in that duty, and now we must hunt down the escaped Jews.”

His admission shocked her. “So, it’s your fault they escaped?”

He sipped his wine. “Of course. I failed to prevent the attack.”

“But you can’t know everything, Gerhard.”

If they hadn’t been transporting prisoners to a certain death, she would have felt sorry for him and the predicament he’d been put in. Instead, it was the ludicrousness of the situation that had her shaking her head in despair.

His lips curled upwards but there was no smile in his eyes. “It’s my job to know everything and ensure the safe transportation of supplies. It will take weeks to repair the bridge. Our men at the front will suffer because of my failing.”

Johanna thought about the infant that Fabienne had tried to bury, the heartbreak of the mother who had had to leave him behind, the number of women and children that had been executed. “But you’re not like them.” She indicated to Hitler again. “It’s one thing to do a job because you have to, but it’s something else to enjoy inflicting pain on others.” She had moved off the topic and he remained unresponsive. “You didn’t blow up the damned bridge, Gerhard, and you couldn’t have known it was going to happen.”

“I knew something was going to happen. I was a fool not to consider all possibilities.”

Johanna’s heart strummed a heavy thudding beat. If he had responded differently, Fabienne might have been the one to die. “You put additional patrols on the streets. You did what was expected.”

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