The Girl You Left Behind

postings in the occupied territory, his voice calm. This was not a man who felt
     threatened by the unexpected.
    ‘Livestock?’
    ‘A reliable source tells us that you
     are keeping a pig on the premises. You will be aware that, under the directive, the
     penalty for withholding livestock from the administration is imprisonment.’
    I held his gaze. ‘And I know exactly
     who would inform you of such a thing. It’s Monsieur Suel,
non
?’ My
     cheeks were flushed with colour; my hair, twisted into a long plait that hung over my
     shoulder, felt electrified. It prickled at the nape of my neck.
    The
Kommandant
turned to one of his
     minions. The man’s glance sideways told him this was true.
    ‘Monsieur Suel, Herr Kommandant, comes
     here at least twice a month attempting to persuade us that in the absence of our
     husbands we are in need of his particular brand of comfort. Because we have chosen not
     to avail ourselves of his supposed kindness, he repays us with rumours and a threat to
     our lives.’
    ‘The authorities would not act unless
     the source were credible.’
    ‘I would argue, Herr Kommandant, that
     this visit suggests otherwise.’
    The look he gave me was impenetrable. He
     turned on his heel and walked towards the house door. I followed him, half tripping over
     my skirts in my attempt to keep up. I knew the mere act of speaking so boldly to him
     might be considered a crime. And yet, at that moment, I was no longer afraid.
    ‘Look at us, Kommandant. Do we look as
     though we are feasting on beef, on roast lamb, on fillet of pork?’ He turned, his
     eyes flicking towards my bony wrists, just visible at the sleeves of my gown. I had lost
     two inches from my waist in the last year alone. ‘Are we grotesquely plump with
     the bounty of our hotel? We have three hens left of two dozen. Three hens that we have
     the pleasure of keeping and feeding so that your men might take the eggs. We, meanwhile,
     live on what the German authorities deem to be a diet – decreasing rations of meat and
     flour, and bread made from grit and bran so poor we would not use it to feed
     livestock.’
    He was in the back hallway, his heels
     echoing on the flagstones. He hesitated, then walked through to the bar and barked an
     order. A soldier appeared from nowhere and handed him a lamp.
    ‘We have no milk to feed our babies,
     our children weep with hunger, we become ill from lack of nutrition. And still you come
     here in the middle of the night to terrify two women and brutalize an innocent boy, to
     beat us and threaten us, because you heard a rumour from an immoral man that we were
feasting
?’
    My hands were shaking. He saw the baby
     squirm, and Irealized I was so tense that I was holding it too
     tightly. I stepped back, adjusted the shawl, crooned to it. Then I lifted my head. I
     could not hide the bitterness and anger in my voice.
    ‘Search our home, then, Kommandant.
     Turn it upside down and destroy what little has not already been destroyed. Search all
     the outbuildings too, those that your men have not already stripped for their own wants.
     When you find this mythical pig, I hope your men dine well on it.’
    I held his gaze for just a moment longer
     than he might have expected. Through the window I could make out my sister wiping
     Aurélien’s wounds with her skirts, trying to stem the blood. Three German
     soldiers stood over them.
    My eyes were used to the dark now, and I saw
     that the
Kommandant
was wrong-footed. His men, their eyes uncertain, were
     waiting for him to give the orders. He could instruct them to strip our house to the
     beams and arrest us all to pay for my extraordinary outburst. But I knew he was thinking
     of Suel, whether he might have been misled. He did not look the kind of man to relish
     the possibility of being seen to be wrong.
    When Édouard and I used to play poker,
     he had laughed and said I was an impossible opponent as my face never revealed my true
     feelings. I told myself to remember those words now: this was the most important game I
     would ever play. We stared at each other, the
Kommandant
and I. I felt,
     briefly, the whole world still around us: I could hear the distant rumble of the guns at
     the Front, my sister’s coughing, the scrabbling of our poor, scrawny hens
     disturbed in their coop. It faded until just he and I facedone
     another, each gambling on the truth. I swear I could hear my very heart beating.
    ‘What is