Page 127 of The Girl You Left Behind
The judge leans forward a little. “And how would you know this, madame?”
Liv lifts her face to look up at Paul. His gaze is direct, steady, and oddly triumphant.
The older woman lifts a hand, as if to dismiss her granddaughter. She clears her throat and speaks slowly and clearly. “Because I am the person who gave it to Kommandant Hencken. My name is Édith Béthune.”
35
1917
I was unloaded some time after dawn. I don’t know how long we had been on the road: Fever had invaded me, so my days and my dreams had become jumbled, and I could no longer be sure whether I still existed or whether, like a specter, I flitted in and out of some other reality. When I closed my eyes I saw my sister pulling up the blinds of the bar window, turning to me with a smile, the sun illuminating her hair. I saw Mimi laughing. I saw Édouard, his face, his hands, heard his voice in my ear, soft and intimate. I would reach out to touch him, but he would vanish, and I would wake on the floor of the truck, my eyes level with a soldier’s boots, my head thumping painfully as we passed over every rut in the road.
I saw Liliane.
Her body was out there, somewhere on the Hannover road, where they had tossed it, cursing, as if she were a sandbag. I had spent the hours since speckled with her blood and worse. My clothes were colored with it. I tasted it on my lips. It lay congealed and sticky on the floor from which I no longer had the energy to raise myself. I no longer felt the lice that ate me. I was numb. I felt no more alive than Liliane’s corpse.
I knew then that I would die there, and in truth, I no longer cared.
My whole body glowed with pain; my skin prickling with fever, my joints aching, my head thick. The canvas flap at the rear was lifted and the back opened. A guard ordered me out. I could barely move, but he pulled at my arm, as one would a recalcitrant child. My body was so light that I almost flew across the back of the truck.
The morning was hung with mist, and through it I could see a barbed-wire fence, the vast gates. Above them, it said: “STRÖHEN.” I knew what it was.
Another guard motioned at me to stay where I was and walked over to a sentry box. There was a discussion, and one of them leaned out and looked at me. Beyond the gates I could see row upon row of long factory sheds. It was a bleak, featureless place with an air of misery and futility that was almost palpable. A watchtower with a crow’s nest stood at each corner to prevent escapes. They needn’t have worried.
Do you know how it feels to resign yourself to your fate? It is almost welcome. There was to be no more pain, no more fear, no more longing. It is the death of hope that comes as the greatest relief. Soon I could hold Édouard to me. We would be joined in the next life, because I knew surely that if God was good, He would not be so cruel as to deprive us of this consolation.
I became dimly aware of a fierce discussion in the sentry box. A man emerged and demanded my papers. I was so weak it took me three attempts to pull them from my pocket. He motioned to me to hold up my identity card. As I was crawling with lice, he did not want to touch me.
He ticked something on his list and barked in German to the guard holding me. They had a short conversation. It faded in and out, and I was no longer sure whether it was them lowering their voices or my mind betraying me. I was as mild and obedient as a lamb now. I no longer wished to think. I no longer wished to imagine what new horrors lay ahead. I heard Liliane’s voice and knew distantly that while I lived I should still be afraid:You have no idea what they will do to us.But somehow I could not rouse myself to fear. If the guard had not been beside me, holding my arm, I might just have dropped to the ground.
The gates opened to let a vehicle out and closed again. I drifted in and out of time. My eyes closed, and I had a brief vision of sitting in a café in Paris, my head tilted back, feeling the sun on my face. My husband was seated beside me, his roar of laughter filling my ears, his huge hand reaching for mine on the table.
Oh, Édouard, I wept silently, as I shivered in the chill dawn air. I pray you escaped this pain. I pray it was easy for you.
I was pulled forward again. Someone was shouting at me. I stumbled on my skirts, somehow still clutching my bag. The gates opened again, and I was shoved roughly forward into the camp. As I reached the second sentry post, the guard stopped me again.
Just put me in the shed. Just let me lie down.
I was so tired. I saw Liliane’s hand, the precise, premeditated way she had lifted the gun to the side of her head. Her eyes, locked on mine in the last seconds of her life. They were limitless black holes, windows on an abyss.She feels nothing now, I told myself, and some still functioning part of me acknowledged that what I felt was envy.
As I put my card back into my pocket my hand brushed against the jagged edge of the glass fragment, and I felt a flicker of recognition. I could bring that point up to my throat. I knew the vein, just how much pressure to apply. I remembered how the pig had buckled in St. Péronne: One brisk swipe and his eyes had closed in what seemed like a quiet ecstasy. I stood there and let the thought solidify in my head. I could do it before they even realized what I had done. I could free myself.
You have no idea what they will do to us.
My fingers closed. And then I heard it.
Sophie.
And then I knew that release was coming. I let the shard fall from my fingers. So this was it, the sweet voice of my husband leading me home. I almost smiled then, so great was my relief. I swayed a little as I let it echo through me.
Sophie.
A German hand spun me round and pushed me back toward the gate. Confused, I stumbled and glanced behind me. And then I saw the guard coming through the mist. In front of him was a tall, stooped man, clutching a bundle to his stomach. I squinted, aware there was something familiar about him. But the light was behind him, and I could not see.
Sophie.
I tried to focus, and suddenly the world grew still, everything silent around me. The Germans were mute, the engines stopped, the trees themselves ceased whispering. And I could see that the prisoner was limping toward me, his silhouette strange, his shoulders skin and bone, but his stride determined, as if a magnet were pulling him to me. And I began to tremble convulsively, as if my body knew before I did. “Édouard?” My voice emerged as a croak. I could not believe it. I dared not believe it.
“Edouard?”
