The Girl You Left Behind

side of the wall. ‘I hope you eat as well as we have done this
     night.’
    When I re-emerged into the hallway I jumped.
     The
Kommandant
was gazing at my portrait.
    ‘I couldn’t find you,’ he
     said. ‘I thought you would be in the kitchen.’
    ‘I – I just went for some air,’
     I stammered.
    ‘I see something different in this
     picture every time I look at it. She has something enigmatic about her. I mean
     you.’ He half smiled at his own mistake. ‘You have something enigmatic about
     you.’
    I said nothing.
    ‘I hope I do not embarrass you, but I
     have to tell you. I have thought for some time that this is the most beautiful painting
     I have ever seen.’
    ‘It is a lovely work of art,
     yes.’
    ‘You exclude its subject?’
    I didn’t answer.
    He swilled the wine in his glass. When he
     spoke next it was with his eyes on the ruby liquid. ‘Do you honestly believe
     yourself plain, Madame?’
    ‘I believe beauty is in the eye of the
     beholder. When my husband tells me I am beautiful, I believe it because I know in his
     eyes I am.’
    He looked up then. His eyes locked on to
     mine and would not let them go. He held my gaze for so long that I felt my breathing
     start to quicken.
    Édouard’s eyes were the windows
     to his soul; his very self was laid bare in them. The
Kommandant
’s were
     intense, shrewd and yet somehow veiled, as if to hide his true feelings. I was afraid
     that he might be able to see my own crumbling composure, that he might see through my
     lies if I allowed him in. I was the first to look away.
    He reached across the table to the crate
     that the Germans had delivered earlier and pulled out a bottle of cognac. ‘Have a
     drink with me, Madame.’
    ‘No, thank you, Herr
     Kommandant.’ I glanced towards the door to the dining room, where the officers
     would be finishing their dessert.
    ‘One. It’s Christmas.’
    I knew an order when I heard it. I thought
     of the others, eating the roast pork a few doors away from where we sat. I thought of
     Mimi, with pork fat dribbling down her chin, of Aurélien, smiling and joking as he
     boasted of their great deception. He needed some happiness: twice that week he had been
     sent home from school for fighting, but hadrefused to tell me what
     it had been about. I needed them all to have one good meal. ‘Then … very
     well.’ I accepted a glass, and sipped. The cognac was like fire trickling down my
     throat. It felt restorative, a sharp kick.
    He downed his own glass, watched me drink
     mine, then pushed the bottle towards me, signalling that I should refill it.
    We sat in silence. I wondered how many
     people had come to eat the pig. Hélène had thought it would be fourteen. Two
     of the older people had been afraid to break their curfew. The priest had promised to
     take leftovers to those stuck in their homes after Christmas mass.
    As we drank, I watched him. His jaw was set,
     suggesting someone unbending, but without his military cap, his almost shaven hair gave
     his head an air of vulnerability. I tried to picture him out of uniform, a normal human
     being, going about his daily business, buying a newspaper, taking a holiday. But I
     couldn’t. I couldn’t see past his uniform.
    ‘It’s a lonely business, war,
     isn’t it?’
    I took a sip of my drink. ‘You have
     your men. I have my family. We are neither of us exactly alone.’
    ‘It’s not the same, though, is
     it?’
    ‘We all get by as best as we
     can.’
    ‘Do we? I’m not sure whether
     anyone can describe this as “best”.’
    The cognac made me blunt. ‘You are the
     one sitting in my kitchen, Herr Kommandant. I suggest, with respect, that only one of us
     has a choice in the matter.’
    A cloud passed across his face. He was
     unused to being challenged. Faint colour rose to his cheeks, and I saw him with his arm
     raised, his gun aimed at a running prisoner.
    ‘You really think any of us has a
     choice?’ he said quietly. ‘You really think this is how any of us would
     choose to live? Surrounded by devastation? The perpetrators of it? Were you to witness
     what we see at the Front, you would think yourself …’ He tailed off, shook
     his head. ‘I’m sorry, Madame. It’s this time of year. It’s
     enough to make a man maudlin. And we all know that there is nothing worse than a maudlin
     soldier.’
    He smiled then, an apology, and I relaxed a
     little. We sat there on either side of the kitchen table, sipping