The Girl You Left Behind

glanced behind me. Then, barefoot, I ran down the
     stairs, across the courtyard and fled.
    It took me almost an hour to walk home. I
     lost the feeling in my feet after a quarter of a mile. By the time I reached the town
     they were so frozen that I was not aware of the cuts and grazes I had collected on the
     long walk up the flinted farm track. I walked on, stumbling through the dark, the
     painting under my arm, shivering in my thin blouse, and I felt nothing. As I walked, my
     shock gave way to understanding of what I had done, and what I had lost. My mind spun
     with it. I walked through the deserted streets of my home town, no longer caring if
     anyone saw me.
    I reached Le Coq Rouge shortly before one
     o’clock. I heard the clock chime a solitary note as I stood outside, and wondered
     briefly whether it would be better for everyone if I failed to let myself in at all. And
     then, as I stood there, a tiny glow appeared behind the gauze curtain and the bolts were
     drawn back on the other side. Hélène appeared, her night bonnet on, her white
     shawl around her. She must have waited up for me.
    I looked up at her, my sister, and I knew
     then that shehad been right all along. I knew that what I had done
     had put our entire family at risk. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to tell
     her I understood the depth of my mistake, and that my love for Édouard, my
     desperation for our life together to continue, had made me blind to everything else. But
     I couldn’t speak. I just stood in the doorway, mute.
    Her eyes widened as she took in my bare
     shoulders, my naked feet. She reached out a hand and pulled me in, closing the door
     behind her. She placed her shawl around my shoulders, smoothed my hair back from my
     face. Wordlessly, she led me to the kitchen, closed the door and lit the range. She
     heated a cup of milk, and as I held it (I couldn’t drink it), she unhooked our tin
     bath from its place on the wall and put it on the floor, in front of the range. She
     filled copper pot after copper pot with water, which she boiled, wrenched from the stove
     and poured into the bath. When it was full enough, she walked around me and carefully
     removed the shawl. She unlaced my blouse, then lifted my chemise over my head, as she
     might with a child. She unbuttoned my skirts at the back, loosened my corset, then
     unhooked my petticoats, laying them all on the kitchen table until I was naked. As I
     began to shake, she took my hand and helped me step into the bath.
    The water was scalding, but I barely felt
     it. I lowered myself so that most of me, except my knees and shoulders, was under the
     water, ignoring the stinging of the cuts on my feet. And then my sister rolled up her
     sleeves, took a washcloth, and began to soap me, from my hair to my shoulders, from my
     back to my feet. She bathed me insilence, her hands tender as she
     worked, lifting each limb, gently wiping between each finger, carefully ensuring that
     there was no part of me not cleansed. She bathed the soles of my feet, delicately
     removing the small pieces of stone that had embedded themselves in the cuts. She washed
     my hair, rinsing it with a bowl until the water ran clear, then combed it out, strand by
     strand. She took the washcloth, and wiped at the tears that rolled silently down my
     cheeks. All the while she said nothing. Finally, as the water began to cool and I
     started to shake again, from cold or exhaustion or something else entirely, she took a
     large towel and wrapped me in it. Then she held me, put me into a nightgown and led me
     upstairs to my bed.
    ‘Oh, Sophie,’ I heard her
     murmur, as I drifted into sleep. And I think I knew even then what I had brought down
     upon us all.
    ‘What have you done?’

10
    Days passed. Hélène and I went
     about our daily business like two actors. From afar perhaps we looked as we always had,
     but each of us floundered in a growing unease. Neither of us talked about what had
     happened. I slept little, sometimes only two hours a night. I struggled to eat. My
     stomach coiled itself tightly around my fear even as the rest of me threatened to
     unravel.
    I returned compulsively to the events of
     that fateful evening, berating myself for my naïvety, my stupidity, my pride. For it
     must have been pride that had brought me to this. If I had pretended to enjoy the
Kommandant
’s attentions, if I had imitated my own portrait, I might
     have won his admiration. I might