The Girl You Left Behind

tiptoed
     downstairs to boil water for coffee. The dining room was still infused with the scents
     of the previous evening: wood from the grate and a faint hint of sausage-meat that
     caused my stomach to rumble. I made myself a hot drink and sat behind the bar, gazing
     out across the empty square as the sun came up. As the blue light became streaked with
     orange, it was just possible to distinguish a faint shadow in the far right-hand corner
     where the prisoner had fallen. Had that young man had a wife, a child? Were they sitting
     at this moment composing letters to him or praying for his safe return? I took a sip of
     my drink and forced myself to look away.
    I was about to go back to my room to dress
     when there was a rap at the door. I flinched, seeing a shadow behind the cotton screen.
     I pulled my blanket around me, staring at the silhouette, trying to work out who would
     be calling on us at such an hour, whether it was the
Kommandant
, come to
     torment me about what he knew. I walked silently towards the door. I lifted the screen
     and there, on the other side, was Liliane Béthune. Her hair was piled up inpin curls, she was wearing the black astrakhan coat, and her eyes
     were shadowed. She glanced behind her as I unlocked the top and bottom bolts and opened
     the door.
    ‘Liliane? Are you … do you
     need something?’ I said.
    She reached into her coat and pulled out an
     envelope, which she thrust at me. ‘For you,’ she said.
    I glanced at it. ‘But … how
     did you –’
    She held up a pale hand, shook her head.
    It had been months since any of us had
     received a letter. The Germans had long kept us in a communications vacuum. I held it,
     disbelieving, then recovered my manners. ‘Would you like to come in? Have some
     coffee? I have a little real coffee put by.’
    She gave me the smallest of smiles.
     ‘No. Thank you. I have to go home to my daughter.’ Before I could even thank
     her, she was trotting up the street in her high heels, her back hunched against the
     cold.
    I shut the screen and re-bolted the door.
     Then I sat down and tore open the envelope. His voice, so long absent, filled my
     ears.
Dearest Sophie
    It is so long since I heard from you. I pray you are safe. I tell myself in
     darker moments that some part of me would feel it, like the vibrations of a
     distant bell, if you were not.
    I have so little to impart. For once I have no desire to translate into colour
     the world I see around me. Words seem wholly inadequate. Know only that,
     precious wife, I am sound of mind and body, and that my spirit is kept whole by
     the thought of you.
    The men here clutch photographs of their loved ones liketalismans, protection against the dark – crumpled, dirty images endowed with
     the properties of treasure. I need no photograph to conjure you before me,
     Sophie: I need only to close my eyes to recall your face, your voice, your
     scent, and you cannot know how much you comfort me.
    Know, my darling, that I mark each day not, like my fellow soldiers, as one that
     I am grateful to survive, but thanking God that each means I must surely be
     twenty-four hours closer to returning to you.
    Your Édouard
    It was dated two months previously.
    I don’t know if it was exhaustion, or
     perhaps shock from the previous day’s events – I am not someone who cries easily,
     if at all – but I put the letter carefully back into its envelope, then rested my head
     on my hands and, in the cold, empty kitchen, I sobbed.
    I could not tell the other villagers why it
     was time to eat the pig but the approach of Christmas gave me the perfect excuse. The
     officers were to have their dinner on Christmas Eve in Le Coq Rouge, a larger gathering
     than normal, and it was agreed that while they were here Madame Poilâne would hold a
     secret
réveillon
at her home, two streets down from the square. For as
     long as I could keep the German officers occupied, our little band of townspeople would
     be safe to roast and eat the pig in the bread oven that Madame Poilâne had in her
     cellar. Hélène would help me serve the Germans their dinner, then sneak
     through the hole in the cellar wall and out down the alley to join the children at
     Madame Poilâne’s house. Thosevillagers who lived too far from
     her to walk through the town unnoticed would remain in her home after curfew, hiding if
     any Germans came checking.
    ‘But that isn’t fair,’
     Hélène remarked, when I outlined the