The Girl You Left Behind

his men. He heard the girls’ voices and swung round. Édith
     shrieked, looked about wildly for me and bolted for my arms, her eyes wide with terror.
     Mimi, confused, stumbled along behind, trying to work out why her friendshould be so shaken by the man who came each night to the
     restaurant.
    ‘Don’t cry, Édith,
     he’s not going to hurt us. Please don’t cry.’ I saw him watching us,
     and prised the child from my legs. I crouched down to talk to her. ‘That’s
     Herr Kommandant. I’m going to talk to him now about his supper. You stay here and
     play with Mimi. I’m fine. Look, see?’
    She trembled as I handed her to Mimi.
     ‘Go and play over there for a moment. I’m just going to talk to Herr
     Kommandant. Here, take my basket and see if you can find me some twigs. I promise you
     nothing bad will happen.’
    When I could finally prise her from my
     skirts, I walked over to him. The officer who was with him said something in a low
     voice, and I pulled my shawls around me, crossing my arms in front of my chest, waiting
     as the
Kommandant
dismissed him.
    ‘We thought we might go
     shooting,’ he said, peering up at the empty skies. ‘Birds,’ he
     added.
    ‘There are no birds left here,’
     I said. ‘They are all long gone.’
    ‘Probably quite sensible.’ In
     the distance we could hear the faint boom of the big guns. It seemed to make the air
     contract briefly around us.
    ‘Is that the whore’s
     child?’ He cocked his gun over his arm and lit a cigarette. I glanced behind me to
     where the girls were standing by the rotten trunk.
    ‘Liliane’s child? Yes. She will
     stay with us.’
    He watched her closely, and I could not work
     out what he was thinking. ‘She is a little girl,’ I said. ‘She
     understood nothing of what was going on.’
    ‘Ah,’ he said, and puffed his
     cigarette. ‘An innocent.’
    ‘Yes. They do exist.’
    He looked at me sharply and I had to force
     myself not to lower my eyes.
    ‘Herr Kommandant. I need to ask you a
     favour.’
    ‘A favour?’
    ‘My husband has been taken to a
     reprisal camp in Ardennes.’
    ‘And I am not to ask you how you came
     upon this information.’
    There was nothing in how he looked at me. No
     clue at all.
    I took a breath. ‘I
     wondered … I’m asking if you can help him. He is a good man. He’s
     an artist, as you know, not a soldier.’
    ‘And you want me to get a message to
     him.’
    ‘I want you to get him out.’
    He raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Herr Kommandant. You act as if we are
     friends. So, I’m begging you. Please help my husband. I know what goes on in those
     places, that he has little chance of coming out alive.’
    He didn’t speak, so I seized my chance
     and continued. These were words I had said a thousand times in my head over the past
     hours. ‘You know that he has spent his whole life in the pursuit of art, of
     beauty. He’s a peaceful man, a gentle man. He cares about painting, about dancing,
     eating and drinking. You know it makes no difference to the German cause whether he is
     dead or alive.’
    He glanced around us, through the denuded
     woods, as if to monitor where the other officers had gone, then took another puff at his
     cigarette. ‘You take a considerablerisk in asking me something
     like this. You saw how your townspeople treat a woman they think is collaborating with
     Germans.’
    ‘They already believe me to be
     collaborating. The fact of you being in our hotel apparently made me guilty without a
     trial.’
    ‘That, and dancing with the
     enemy.’
    Now it was my turn to look surprised.
    ‘I have told you before, Madame. There
     is nothing that goes on in this town that I don’t hear about.’
    We stood in silence, gazing at the horizon.
     In the distance a low boom caused the earth to vibrate very slightly under our feet. The
     girls felt it: I could see them gazing down at their shoes. He took a final puff from
     his cigarette, then crushed it under his boot.
    ‘Here is the thing. You are an
     intelligent woman. I think you are probably a good judge of human nature. And yet you
     behave in ways that would entitle me, as an enemy soldier, to shoot you without even a
     trial. Despite this, you come here and expect me not just to ignore that fact but to
     help you. My enemy.’
    I swallowed. ‘That … that is
     because I don’t just see you as … an enemy.’
    He waited.
    ‘You were the one who
     said … that sometimes we are just … two